Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic: The Essential Ida Craddock

Persecuted by Anthony Comstock and his Society for the Suppression of Vice, Ida Craddock was a turn-of-the-century sex educator and spiritualist. Born in Philadelphia in 1857, she became an occult scholar around the age of thirty, taking classes at the Theosophical Society and studying various occult subjects. She also taught correspondence courses to women and newlyweds on the importance of viewing sex as a sacred act, and much of her knowledge of the marriage bed came to her from her nightly visits with her angelic husband Soph. She wrote the essay Heavenly Bridegrooms on this topic, later reviewed by Aleister Crowley in The Equinox. "No Magick library is complete without it!" he wrote.

In 1902 Craddock was arrested under New York's anti-obscenity laws. She committed suicide rather than face life in an asylum. Now for the first time, scholar Vere Chappell has compiled the most extensive collection of Craddock's works, including original essays, diary excerpts, and suicide letters.