Marla Segol, "Kabbalah and Sex Magic: A Mythical-Ritual Genealogy" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2022)

Marla Segol, "Kabbalah and Sex Magic: A Mythical-Ritual Genealogy" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2022)

In Kabbalah and Sex Magic: A Mythical-Ritual Genealogy (Penn State University Press, 2021) a provocative book, Marla Segol explores the development of the kabbalistic cosmology underlying Western sex magic. Drawing extensively on Jewish myth and ritual, Segol tells the powerful story of the relationship between the divine and the human body in late antique Jewish esotericism, in medieval kabbalah, and in New Age ritual practice. Kabbalah and Sex Magic traces the evolution of a Hebrew microcosm that models the powerful interaction of human and divine bodies at the heart of both kabbalah and some forms of Western sex magic. Focusing on Jewish esoteric and medical sources from the fifth to the twelfth century from Byzantium, Persia, Iberia, and southern France, Segol argues that in its fully developed medieval form, kabbalah operated by ritualizing a mythos of divine creation by means of sexual reproduction. She situates in cultural and historical context the emergence of Jewish cosmological models for conceptualizing both human and divine bodies and the interactions between them, arguing that all these sources position the body and its senses as the locus of culture and the means of reproducing it. Segol explores the rituals acting on these models, attending especially to their inherent erotic power, and ties these to contemporary Western sex magic, showing that such rituals have a continuing life. Asking questions about its cosmology, myths, and rituals, Segol poses even larger questions about the history of kabbalah, the changing conceptions of the human relation to the divine, and even the nature of religious innovation itself. This groundbreaking book will appeal to students and scholars of Jewish studies, religion, sexuality, and magic. Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Julie Berebitsky, “Sex and the Office: A History of Gender, Power and Desire” (Yale University Press, 2012)

Julie Berebitsky, “Sex and the Office: A History of Gender, Power and Desire” (Yale University Press, 2012)

How to research the history of sexual harassment in the office, when the term sexual harassment was only invented in 1975 and it was long tabou to even use the word sex in conversation? Using an array...

11 Joulu 20131h 4min

Elizabeth H. Pleck, “Not Just Roommates: Cohabitation after the Sexual Revolution” (Chicago UP, 2012)

Elizabeth H. Pleck, “Not Just Roommates: Cohabitation after the Sexual Revolution” (Chicago UP, 2012)

Most countries, believing that married people form a kind of demographic and political bedrock, promote marriage (and, of course, child-having within wedlock). Nonetheless, many couples choose to live...

31 Touko 201347min

Helen Longino, “Studying Human Behavior: How Scientists Investigate Aggression and Sexuality” (University of Chicago Press, 2013)

Helen Longino, “Studying Human Behavior: How Scientists Investigate Aggression and Sexuality” (University of Chicago Press, 2013)

What explains human behavior? It is standard to consider answers from the perspective of a dichotomy between nature and nurture, with most researchers today in agreement that it is both. For Helen Lon...

15 Touko 20131h 4min

Dan Healey, “Bolshevik Sexual Forensics: Diagnosing Disorder in the Clinic and Courtroom, 1917-1939” (Northern Illinois UP, 2009)

Dan Healey, “Bolshevik Sexual Forensics: Diagnosing Disorder in the Clinic and Courtroom, 1917-1939” (Northern Illinois UP, 2009)

I have long been an admirer of Dan Healey‘s work. His research has opened the world of homosexual desire and the establishment of the gay community in revolutionary Russia and has made an important co...

26 Marras 20121h 23min

Julietta Hua, “Trafficking Women’s Human Rights” (University of Minnesota Press, 2011)

Julietta Hua, “Trafficking Women’s Human Rights” (University of Minnesota Press, 2011)

In Trafficking Women’s Human Rights (University of Minnesota Press, 2011), Julietta Hua analyzes how discourse on human trafficking creates the boundaries of victimhood and thereby restricts concepts ...

13 Loka 201241min

Amy Stanley, “Selling Women: Prostitution, Markets, and the Household in Early Modern Japan” (University of California Press, 2012)

Amy Stanley, “Selling Women: Prostitution, Markets, and the Household in Early Modern Japan” (University of California Press, 2012)

With prose that is as elegant as the argument is clear, Amy Stanley‘s new book tells a social, cultural, and economic history of Tokugawa Japan through the prism of prostitution. Selling Women: Prosti...

19 Syys 20121h 6min

Heather Munro Prescott, “The Morning After: A History of Emergency Contraception in the United States” (Rutgers UP, 2011)

Heather Munro Prescott, “The Morning After: A History of Emergency Contraception in the United States” (Rutgers UP, 2011)

What would a Presidential campaign be without a good dose of reproductive politics? To be sure, many of us are surprised to see contraception, and not just abortion, called into question – but maybe t...

16 Huhti 201243min

Elizabeth Heineman, “Before Porn Was Legal: The Erotica Empire of Beate Uhse” (University of Chicago Press, 2011)

Elizabeth Heineman, “Before Porn Was Legal: The Erotica Empire of Beate Uhse” (University of Chicago Press, 2011)

When I was in college in the 1980s, I liked to listen to Iggy Pop (aka James Newell Osterberg, Jr.). I was always mystified, however, by his song “Five Foot One,” with its odd and catchy refrain “I wi...

2 Syys 20111h 6min

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