NOTE: Italics are noted by an underscore before and after the _italicized_ text. Sex After Death (Worth the Price of Admission Alone) by Don Webb Dr. Pascal Beverly Randolph is a little-known Nineteenth Century American occultist whose theories have had a great effect on modern occultists. The way he presented his magical techniques in a guided curriculum for his own Order, and in a senationalistic La Veyan romp to the outer world, provides a model for presenting ideas to the world so that they stick. His strategy for presentation insured that his system prevailed, and his will continues to effect both subjective and objective universes; although his name is generally forgotten. I hope to expose this hidden root of Golden Dawn and O.T.O. teachings. Randolph used a threefold technology of sex, wonder and sentiment to attract attention to his many public books. This attracted a wide readership not only for his occult ideas, but for his political and moral ideas as well. He invokes Sentiment -- the story of his hard life as an orphaned mulatto child who put out to sea at age twelve; Wonder -- his mother, who is mentioned in all his books (even the introduction to his novel _Ravalette_), is often presented as a Madagascan princess, and he hints at vast and secret initiations -- at the Third Dome of the Rosicrucians in Paris, among ultra-secret Syrian societies, etc.; and finally, Sex. With this blend he achieved wide-scale distribution of his work and ideas, and with these formulas his techniques continue to shape Western occultism, in hidden manners. In this article I report on his life (as told by Randolph), his techniques, his influences, and sources for research. Pascal Beverly Randolph was born on October 8, 1825 in New York City. His famous white father Edmund Randolph, a member of Washington's cabinet, was far away and never met his gifted son. His mother, Flora Beverly, alternately a Madagascan princess or a Native American from Vermont, died when Pascal was five. Fortunately she would materialize at his orphanage, on one occasion witnessed by his fellow orphans. He taught himself to read, and at age twelve shipped out on the _Phoebe_ as cabin boy. His eight years at sea apparently taught him French and a great deal about human nature. Returning to land after a wood-chopping accident, he wandered aimlessly for several years. He briefly worked as a barber in New York City (or a rural New England village). He extended his barbering to include acting as a medium at the height of America's Spiritualism craze. In 1854 he set up a medical practice in Boston. He produced a variety of elixirs, and began experimenting with consciousness-altering drugs. He also began speaking out on free love and women's rights. In 1856 he is known to have taken the place of Douglas Home as medium for the Charing Cross circle. In 1861 he went to California and founded the first Rosicrucian lodge in that state. He then made a world-sweeping tour, meeting and participating in secret Rosicrucian rites with Eliphas Levi and Napoleon III. On his return to Boston, Dr. Randolph raised a regiment of black Union solders known as the "Fremont Legion." Because of this Lincoln (to whom Randolph's first book, _Pre-Adamite Man,_ is dedicated) appointed him principal of the Lincoln High Grade and Normal School for Freed Slaves. In 1866 he made a bid for politics, and after this proved unsuccessful, wrote _After Death_, which was standard Spiritualist fare (an ad appearing in the back of _Eulis_ promised it was worth reading for the chapter on "Sex After Death" alone). During his trips to Europe, he encountered French and German works on the mysteries of the Ansaireh. True to form, he cast his ideas into the world under the marketable, mysterious name "the Ansairetic Mysteries" (The real Ansaireh are a small Islamic sect with some Saeben nomenclature for cult titles of Allah). In _Eulis_, a book written in 1873 as he feared death due to an injury he had sustained in a railway accident, he penned an interesting confession: Very nearly all that I have given as Rosicrucianism originated in my soul; and scarce a single thought, only suggestions, have I borrowed from those who, in ages past, called themselves by that name -- one which served me well as a vehicle wherein to take my mental treasure to a market, which gladly opened to doors to that name, but would, and did, slam to its portals in the face of the tawny student of esoterics. Precisely so was it with things purporting to be Ansairetic. I had merely read Lydde's book, and got hold of a new name; and again mankind hurrahed for the wonderful Ansaireh, but incontinently turned up its nose at the supposed copyist. In proof of the truth of these statements, and of how I had to struggle, the world is challenged to find a line in my thought in the whole 4000 books on Rosicrucianism; among the brethren of that Fraternity -- and I know many such in various lands, and was, til I resigned the office, Grand Master of the only Temple of the Order on the globe; or in the Ansairetic works, English, German, Syriac or Arabic. In 1870 he founded the Order of Eulis, which kept its teachings secret because of the sex and drugs. Some people must've talked, though: H. P. Blavatsky denounced Randolph as immoral, a charge also leveled at the Luciferian Freemason Sir Albert Pike. An occult war followed. In 1872 his "Rosicrucian Rooms" were raided by police and he was jailed for distributing "Free Love" literature. Fires, robberies, and disease followed, and on July 29, 1975, he shot himself. His friends and followers claimed that Blavatsky's curses had nailed him. Blavatsky founded the philosophical society the same year. His system of magical training consists of visualization and concentration, mudric training, evocation, clairvoyance, and sex magic. His visualization and concentration exercises are strikingly similar to those practiced in the Golden Dawn twenty-five years later. The description of "Volantia" and "Flashing Colors" tally very nicely. Randolph also describes the effect of will as the "lightning flash." Walter Moseley, one of the founders of the Order of the Rosy Cross, had been a Randolph follower. The principals and grade structure of this order were absorbed into the Golden Dawn. Randolph's sexual magic teachings are very similar to the heterosexual practices of the O.T.O. Some of his notions for exercises -- not only what to do, but what to master as a curriculum -- are echoed in Franz Bardon's _Initiation into Hermetics_. His suggestions for sexual magic are a little quaint, but workable. _Sexual Magic_ was published privately for his own order. It lacks the florid style and emotional anecdotes of his public works. He produced sixty copies (few remain). By chance Robert North discovered a French translation of the work and returned it to English. This nicely edited and annotated volume -- which yielded most of the information for this article -- is available from Magickal Childe. Other material came from _After Death_, _Eulis_, and _Seership_, all available as reprints from Health Research (P.O. Box 70, Mokelumne Hill, CA 95245). Minor details come from _The Secret Societies of all ages and Countries_ by Charles William Heckethorn (also available as a reprint from Health Research) and Arthur Waite's _The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross_, a good piece of vulgar journalism on the subject. Robert North has founded a Sexual Magick order called "the Palladium of the New Flesh" in Providence, Rhode Island. I will leave you with what Randolph claimed to be the watchword of the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, "There is no difficulty to him who truly wills." BIBLIOGRAPHY Heckethorn, Charles William. _The Secret Societies of All Ages and Countries_, second edition, 1896. North, Robert. _The New Flesh Palladium: Magica Erotica_. Privately published by the author (Robert North, 232 Doyle Avenue, Providence, RI 02906), 1991. Randolph, Paschal Beverly. _After Death: The Disembodiment of Man_. Toledo, Ohio: Randolph Publishing Company, 1886. Randolph, Paschal Beverly. _Eulis, the History of Love_. Toledo, Ohio: Randolph Publishing Company, 1874. Randolph, Paschal Beverly. _Seership, or Soul Sight_. Reprinted in 1960 by Health Research. Randolph, Paschal Beverly. _Sexual Magic_. Translated by Robert North. New York, New York: Magical Childe, 1988. Spence, Lewis. _An Encyclopaedia of Occultism_. New Hyde Park, New York: University Books, 1960. Waite, Arthur Edward. _The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross_. New Hyde Park, New York: University Books, (no copyright date given). .