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Ida Craddock
Ida C. Craddock (August 1, 1857 – October 16, 1902) was a 19th-century American advocate of free speech and women's rights. She wrote extensively on sexuality, which led to her conviction and imprisonment for obscenity. Facing further legal proceedings after her release, she committed suicide.
Ida Craddock was born in Philadelphia; her father died before she was five months old. Her mother home-schooled her as an only child and provided her with an extensive Quaker education.
In her twenties, after passing the entrance exams, Craddock was recommended by the faculty for admission into the University of Pennsylvania as its first female undergraduate student, but her entrance was blocked by the university's board of trustees in 1882. She went on to publish a stenography textbook, Primary Phonography, and to teach the subject to women at Girard College.
In her thirties, Craddock left her Quaker upbringing. She began to develop an academic interest in the occult through her association with the Theosophical Society around 1887. In her writing, she tried to synthesize translated mystic literature and traditions from many cultures into a scholarly distilled whole. As a freethinker, she was elected Secretary of the Philadelphia chapter of the American Secular Union in 1889. Although a member of the Unitarian faith, Craddock became a student of religious eroticism and proclaimed that she was a Priestess and Pastor of the Church of Yoga. Never married in a traditional sense, Craddock claimed to have a blissful ongoing marital relationship with an angel named Soph. Craddock stated that her intercourse with Soph was so noisy that it drew complaints from her neighbors. Her mother responded by threatening to burn Craddock's papers and attempted to have her institutionalized.
Craddock moved to Chicago and opened a Dearborn Street office offering "mystical" sexual counseling to married couples by both walk-in counseling and mail order. She dedicated her time to "preventing sexual evils and sufferings" by educating adults. She achieved national notoriety with her editorials to defend Little Egypt and her controversial belly dancing act at the World's Columbian Exposition, which was held in Chicago in 1893.
Craddock wrote many serious instructional tracts on human sexuality and appropriate respectful sexual relations between husband and wife. Among her works were Heavenly Bridegrooms, Psychic Wedlock, Spiritual Joys, Letter To A Prospective Bride, The Wedding Night, and Right Marital Living. Aleister Crowley reviewed Heavenly Bridegrooms in the pages of his journal The Equinox and stated that it was:
...one of the most remarkable human documents ever produced, and it should certainly find a regular publisher in book form. The authoress of the MS. claims that she was the wife of an angel. She expounds at the greatest length the philosophy connected with this thesis. Her learning is enormous. ...This book is of incalculable value to every student of occult matters. No Magick library is complete without it.
The sex manuals were all considered obscene by the standards of her day. Their distribution led to numerous confrontations with various authorities that were often initiated by Craddock. She was held for several months at a time on morality charges in five local jails, as well as the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane.
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Ida Craddock
Ida C. Craddock (August 1, 1857 – October 16, 1902) was a 19th-century American advocate of free speech and women's rights. She wrote extensively on sexuality, which led to her conviction and imprisonment for obscenity. Facing further legal proceedings after her release, she committed suicide.
Ida Craddock was born in Philadelphia; her father died before she was five months old. Her mother home-schooled her as an only child and provided her with an extensive Quaker education.
In her twenties, after passing the entrance exams, Craddock was recommended by the faculty for admission into the University of Pennsylvania as its first female undergraduate student, but her entrance was blocked by the university's board of trustees in 1882. She went on to publish a stenography textbook, Primary Phonography, and to teach the subject to women at Girard College.
In her thirties, Craddock left her Quaker upbringing. She began to develop an academic interest in the occult through her association with the Theosophical Society around 1887. In her writing, she tried to synthesize translated mystic literature and traditions from many cultures into a scholarly distilled whole. As a freethinker, she was elected Secretary of the Philadelphia chapter of the American Secular Union in 1889. Although a member of the Unitarian faith, Craddock became a student of religious eroticism and proclaimed that she was a Priestess and Pastor of the Church of Yoga. Never married in a traditional sense, Craddock claimed to have a blissful ongoing marital relationship with an angel named Soph. Craddock stated that her intercourse with Soph was so noisy that it drew complaints from her neighbors. Her mother responded by threatening to burn Craddock's papers and attempted to have her institutionalized.
Craddock moved to Chicago and opened a Dearborn Street office offering "mystical" sexual counseling to married couples by both walk-in counseling and mail order. She dedicated her time to "preventing sexual evils and sufferings" by educating adults. She achieved national notoriety with her editorials to defend Little Egypt and her controversial belly dancing act at the World's Columbian Exposition, which was held in Chicago in 1893.
Craddock wrote many serious instructional tracts on human sexuality and appropriate respectful sexual relations between husband and wife. Among her works were Heavenly Bridegrooms, Psychic Wedlock, Spiritual Joys, Letter To A Prospective Bride, The Wedding Night, and Right Marital Living. Aleister Crowley reviewed Heavenly Bridegrooms in the pages of his journal The Equinox and stated that it was:
...one of the most remarkable human documents ever produced, and it should certainly find a regular publisher in book form. The authoress of the MS. claims that she was the wife of an angel. She expounds at the greatest length the philosophy connected with this thesis. Her learning is enormous. ...This book is of incalculable value to every student of occult matters. No Magick library is complete without it.
The sex manuals were all considered obscene by the standards of her day. Their distribution led to numerous confrontations with various authorities that were often initiated by Craddock. She was held for several months at a time on morality charges in five local jails, as well as the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane.
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