The Wedding Night
The Wedding Night
- by IDA C. CRADDOCK, PASTOR OF CHURCH OF YOGA.
- third edition
- Copyrighted 1900 by IDA C. CRADDOCK.
- Published by
- IDA C. CRADDOCK,
- 134 West Twenty-Third St.,
- New York
- 1902.
- PRICE · · · · · · FIFTY CENTS.
RIGHT MARITAL LIVING
- By IDA C. CRADDOCK,
Treats of scientific motherhood and scientific
fatherhood; how to control impregnation absolutely,
and in a manner which is lawful ; how to render a
wife happy, and the honeymoon perpetual ; gives
suggestions for pre-natal culture of a child.
Something entirely unique in sexology, and in
touch with the latest science of the day. Approved
by medical magazines and physicians of standing.
A refined but frank and explicit presentation of
what every married couple ought to know.
Dr. Byron Robinson says :
- "Your little book * * * will do good work if placed in the hands of the young, as forewarned is forearmed."
A Woman Physician of New York City says:
- "You have struck the keynote sexually, as Bellamy has done socially, in his ‘Looking Backward’ and ‘Equality.’
The Syracuse Clinic says:
- "This book will answer certain questions as does no other work with which we are acquainted."
Pamphlet; 43 pages; 50 cents. To foreign countries,
15 cents extra for postage will be required for
Right Marital Living, and 10 cents extra for
The Wedding Night. These books will be sent
postpaid in sealed envelope on receipt of price. In
remitting, please do not send either stamps or personal
checks, as they will not be accepted. P. O. and
express orders are always safe; so is a registered letter
up to ten dollars. If remitting per bank draft,
add ten cents for collection.
Page 1
- THE WEDDING NIGHT
- By IDA C. CRADDOCK
Oh, crowning time of lovers’ raptures,
veiled in mystic splendor, sanctified by
priestly blessing and by the benediction
of all who love the lovers ! How shall we
chant thy praise ?
Of thy joys even the poets dare not
sing, save in words that suggest but do
not reveal. At thy threshold, the most daring
of realistic novelists is fain to pause,
and, with farewells to the lovers who are
entering thy portals, let fall the curtain of
silence betwixt them and the outside world
forevermore.
What art thou, oh, night of mystery
and passion ? Why shouldst thou be thus
enshrouded in an impenetrable veil of
secrecy ? Are thy joys so pure, so dazzling,
so ecstatic, that no outside mortal can look
upon thy face and live ?
Or art thou a Veiled Prophet of Khorassan,
and, under thy covering of silver
light, a fiend, a loathsome monster, a
Page 2
distorted and perverted semblance of what
thou dost profess thyself to the world ?
Whatsoever thou art, it were well,
methinks, that the veil, for a moment, were
lifted from thee, that the young and ignorant
may see thee as thou art, and, seeing,
be not misled by thy glamor to their own
undoing, but keep the higher law when
they shall have entered thy radiant doors.
When the last stanzas of the wedding
march have died away, and the bride, in
shimmering white, places her hand in that
of the bridegroom and pledges herself to be
his wife "until death do part," a shiver of
awe stirs the audience, as a field of wheat
is stirred by a strong wind. An uncomfortable
feeling pervades us all during these few
moments, for it is felt to be a solemn occasion;
and when the final words of the marriage
service have been pronounced, every
one feels relieved.
Yet there is a more solemn moment to
follow. It comes when the last kisses of
mother and girl-friends have been given,
and the last grain of rice has been thrown
upon the newly wedded pair, and the last
hack driver and hotel or railway porter
Page 3
have been gotten rid of, and the key is
turned in the bedroom door and the blinds
drawn, and the young girl, who has never
been alone in a locked room with a man
in all her life, suddenly finds herself, as
though in a dream, delivered over by her
own innocent and pure affection into the
power of a man, to be used at his will and
pleasure. She, who has never bared more
than her throat and shoulders and arms to
the world, now finds that her whole body,
especially those parts which she has all
her life been taught it was immodest to
fail to keep covered, are no longer to be
her own private property; she must share
their privacy with this man.
Fortunate indeed is the bride whose
lover at such a moment is a gentleman in
every fiber of his being.
For there is a wrong way and there is a
right way to pass the wedding night.
In the majority of cases, no genital
union at all should be attempted, or even
suggested, upon that night. To the average
young girl, virtuously brought up, the
experience of sharing her bedroom with a
man is sufficient of a shock to her previous
Page 4
maidenly habits, without adding to her nervousness
by insisting upon the close intimacies
of genital contact. And, incredible as it
may sound to the average man, she is usually
altogether without the sexual experience
which every boy acquires in his dreamlife.
The average, typical girl does not have
erotic dreams. In many cases, too, through
the prudishness of parents-a prudishness
which is positively criminal-she is not
even told beforehand that genital union
will be required of her. I once talked with
a young married woman, the daughter of
a physician, well educated, and moving in
cultured society, who had been allowed to
marry at the age of 20, in entire ignorance
of this. She remarked to me : "I think the
relation of husband and wife is something
horrid. I knew, of course, before I married,
that married people had children ; but I supposed
that God sent them babies, and that
that was all there was about it. I was never
told about the physical relation." Her husband
was so lacking in self-control as to
make her pregnant on her wedding night.
And her experience is but one out of
thousands.
Page 5
In the ideal honeymoon, the bridegroom
will not seek genital contact until the
bride herself shows indications of desiring
it. "But she might never want it ?" My dear
sir, you must be indeed lacking in manhood
to be unable to arouse sex desire in a
bride who loves you with even a half-way
sort of affection.
"How can this be done ?"
Well, I think that the very first thing
for you to bear in mind is that, inasmuch as
Nature has so arranged sex that the man
is always ready (as a rule) for intercourse,
whereas the woman is not, it is most unwise
for the man to precipitate matters by exhibiting
desire for genital contact when the woman
is not yet aroused. You should remember that
that organ of which you are, justly, so proud,
is not possessed by a woman, and that she is
utterly ignorant of its functions, practically,
until she has experienced sexual contact ; and
that it is, to her who is not desirous of such
contact, something of a monstrosity. Even
when a woman has already had pleasurable
experience of genital contact, she requires
each time to be aroused amorously, before
that organ, in its state of activity, can become
Page 6
attractive. For a man to exhibit, to even an
experienced wife, his organ ready for action
when she herself is not amorously aroused,
is, as a rule, not sexually attractive to her ; on
the contrary, it is often sexually repulsive, and
at times out and out disgusting to her. Every
woman of experience knows that, when she is
ready, she can cause the man to become sexually
active fast enough.
If this be so with the wife who has had
pleasurable experience in genital contact,
how much more must the sight or touch of
that apparent monstrosity in a man shock
and terrify the inexperienced young bride !
Yet, if you are patient and loverlike and
gentlemanly and considerate and do not seek
to unduly precipitate matters, you will find
that Nature will herself arrange the affair for
you most delicately and beautifully. If you
will first thoroughly satisfy the primal passion
of the woman, which is affectional and
maternal (for the typical woman mothers the
man she loves), and if you will kiss and caress
her in a gentle, delicate and reverent way,
especially at the throat and bosom, you will
find that, little by little (perhaps not the first
night nor the second night, but eventually, as
Page 7
she grows accustomed to the strangeness of
the intimacy), you will, by reflex action from
the bosom to the genitals, successfully arouse
within her a vague desire for the entwining of
the lower limbs, with ever closer and closer
contact, until you melt into one another’s
embrace at the genitals in a perfectly natural
and wholesome fashion ; and you will then
find her genitals so well lubricated with an
emission from her glands of Bartholin, and,
possibly, also from her vagina, that your gradual
entrance can be effected not only without
pain to her, but with a rapture so exquisite to
her, that she will be more ready to invite your
entrance upon a future occasion.
If the wedding day has been one of prolonged
excitement, the most sensible thing
that the bride and bridegroom can do upon
retiring, is to go straight to sleep like two
tired children. On waking in the morning,
the first marital endearments may suitably
take place, and will be found conducive to
the exchange of sexual magnetism which
will strengthen and refresh. Indeed, you
should never, never allow genital contact to
be attempted when either of you is physically
weary or mentally fagged out.
Page 8
If you are accustomed to the use of tobacco
and alcoholic drinks, it is to be hoped that
you will have sufficient self-control and consideration
for you bride to abstain from them
at least upon your wedding night. Not only
are their odors, especially when stale, disgusting
to any woman of delicate sensibilities,
but the use of either or both will go far
toward coarsening your emotional relations
toward her on that occasion.
The effect of alcohol will be to lessen
the co-ordination among your nervous
ganglia, accentuate your prominent weaknesses
(this, too, at the very moment
when you wish to appear especially manly
in her eyes !) and inhibit your powers of
self-control.
The effect of tobacco always is to deteriorate
the moral and emotional sensibilities
through its capacity for blunting sensation.
Do you wish to be truly a man upon the
wedding night? Then forego both tobacco
and alcohol upon that occasion and for a
long time previously.
Do not, upon any account, use the hand
for the purpose of sexual excitation at the
bride’s genitals. There is but one lawful
Page 9
finger of love with which to approach her
genitals, and this is the male organ. Even
where there is a hymen whose orifice requires
to be gradually enlarged in order to effect a
painless entrance, the male organ, and not
the finger, should be employed, lest a masturbative
response be set up in the bride at the
outset, which would be most unfortunate.
Bear in mind that the more gentle, slow
and lingering your entrance, the more passionate
will be the response of the bride.
Also, the more readily will you yourself
attain to the sexual self-control inculcated
in my Right Marital Living.
As to the clitoris, this should be simply
saluted, at most, in passing, and afterwards
ignored as far as possible ; for the reason that
it is a rudimentary male organ, and an orgasm
aroused there evokes a rudimentary male
magnetism in the woman, which appears to
pervert the act of intercourse, with the result
of sensualizing and coarsening the woman.
Within the duller tract of the vagina, after
a half-hour, or, still better, an hour of tender,
gentle, self-restrained coition, the feminine,
womanly, maternal sensibilities of the
bride will be aroused, and the magnetism
Page 10
exchanged then will be healthful and satisfying
to both parties. A woman’s orgasm is as
important for her health as a man’s is for his.
And the bridegroom who hastens through
the act without giving the bride the necessary
half-hour or hour to come to her own
climax, is not only acting selfishly ; he is also
sowing the seeds of future ill-health and permanent
invalidism in his wife.
A woman’s clitoris is sometimes hooded,
which, of course, is an unnatural condition,
and is apt to result in sexual coldness on her
part, or, at best, in a stunted sex desire. Here
a physician should be appealed to, as the clitoris
can be freed from its hood by circumcision;
and the earlier that this is done in a
girl’s life the better for her health. Many a girl
infant, it is now maintained by some physicians,
is nervously deranged by the existence
of such a hood, and would be restored to
health by its circumcision.
Some woman have an abnormally long
clitoris, which it is impossible not to engage
during coition, and such women are usually
sensual, and lacking in the ability to prolong
the act. In extreme cases the excision of such
a clitoris may be beneficial ; but it would
Page 11
seem preferable to first employ the milder
method of suggestive therapeutics, and for
the wife to endeavor to turn her thoughts
from the sensation induced at the clitoris
to that induced within the vagina, which is
the natural and wholesome sensation to be
aroused in a woman.
Do not expend your seminal fluid at any
time, unless you and the bride desire a child,
and have reverently and deliberately prepared
for its creation on that especial occasion. Your
semen is not an excretion to be periodically
gotten rid of ; it is a precious secretion, to be
returned to the system for its upbuilding in
all that goes to emphasize your manhood. It
is given to you by Nature for the purpose of
begetting a child ; it is not given to you for
sensual gratification ; and unless deliberate
creation be provided for by both of you, it
should never, never be expended. This, however,
does not mean less pleasure, but more
pleasure than by the ordinary method of sex
union. As to the details of how such sexual
self-control may be exercised during coition,
and without harm to the nervous system,
you can learn these from my pamphlet on
Right Marital Living (price fifty cents).
Page 12
I would add that the habit of using a wife
as a convenience for a man’s easing himself of
a fluid which is looked on as an excretion, is
chiefly responsible for the widespread idea
that the sex relation is unclean, and for the
growth of Comstockism, with its baneful
efforts at suppression of all enlightening literature
upon the details of coition as being
"obscene, lewd, lascivious." The sex relation
is indeed unclean, when made use of by
a man for the purpose of easing himself of a
supposed excretion; and the details of such
a union are truly "obscene, lewd, lascivious."
No bridegroom of any delicacy of sentiment
will want to thus befoul his wedding night
or his honeymoon. But when the higher law
is known and kept-that of genital union in
self-control and aspiration to the Divine -
the sex relation at once becomes refined and
spiritualized, and the morbid ideas about its
being impure cease.
When you are performing your movements,
do not indulge in the thought of how
much you are enjoying them; rather dwell,
in thought, upon how much pleasure you
are giving to your bride, and study carefully
every movement with reference to its pleasure-
producing effect upon her.
Page 13
Also, to the bride, I would say: Bear
in mind that it is part of your wifely duty
to perform pelvic movements during the
embrace, riding your husband’s organ gently,
and, at times, passionately, with various
movements, up and down, sideways, and
with a semi-rotary movement, resembling
the movement of the thread of a screw upon
a screw. These movements will add very
greatly to your own passion and your own
pleasure, but they should not be dwelt on
in thought for this purpose. They should
be performed for the express purpose of
conferring pleasure upon your husband,
and you should carefully study the results
of various movements, gently and tenderly
performed, upon him.
We human beings are so constituted
that when we seek happiness for ourselves,
it eludes our grasp. But when we seek to
make other people happy, happiness comes
and abides with us. If each will seek to give
pleasure to his or her wedded partner, the
bliss of each will be greatly intensified.
Especially will this be so if God be included
in this pleasure-giving partnership, along
the lines which I have laid down in Right
Marital Living.
Page 14
The custom of brutal rupture of a woman’s
hymen on the wedding night, and, too often,
the consequent tearing of the walls of the
vagina, with attendant pain and loss of blood,
is wholly unnecessary. The bride-elect should
go to a physician some little while previous
to the wedding, and, if their be a hymen of
any toughness, have it snipped by a pair of
surgical scissors. This will not be painful, and
the hymen, which is a membrane attached
to the walls of the orifice, will soon shrivel
away, being now but a piece of dead skin. It
would be advisable, however, for the woman
to let her future husband know that she
intends to do this, for the reason that there
exists a popular superstition to the effect
that the presence of the hymen is a proof of
virginity. On the contrary, it is not a true
test of virginity, for many women never had
any hymen, and others have lost theirs when
children, by romping. Also, prostitutes are on
record as having had a hymen which deceived
physicians into thinking them virgins. Nevertheless,
because men still ignorantly hold to
the popular superstition about the hymen,
it is prudent for the bride-elect to state her
intention ahead of time. Some men with brutal
Page 15
instincts feel themselves defrauded of
their rights if the bride’s hymen be not there,
unbroken, for them to rupture. Of course,
no intelligent, self-respecting woman would
feel herself bound to accord a husband such
a right, if she knew beforehand all the pain
and suffering which the exercise of his supposed
prerogative would involve. (I know of
one case where a bride was confined to bed
for six weeks with abscesses in her vagina,
because of her husband’s brutal manner of
effecting entrance on the wedding night.)
And if the bridegroom-elect be the sort of a
man who claims this as his conjugal right,
perhaps it would be as well for the bride to
find it out before she marries him.
But, of course, the natural instrument
for effecting entrance is the bridegroom’s
organ of penetration, and, if at all possible,
it should be employed in preference to any
other. Even where there is a fairly tough
hymen, if the bridegroom will use gentleness,
patience, and tender love-making, and
refrain from genital contact until the bride is
thoroughly aroused, it will usually be found
that she will, upon genital contact, instinctively
bear down so quickly and effectively
Page 16
that the dreaded entrance will be all over
within a moment. Allay the bleeding by the
use of water as hot as can be borne, dipping
therein a wad of clean absorbent cotton,
squeezing it out, and placing the wad up
between the lips of the bleeding orifice.
It should be the privilege of the woman,
and not of the man, to choose between these
two methods.
Another thing which often causes unnecessary
suffering to the bride at first is the
smallness of her orifice, as compared with
the bridegroom’s organ, especially if the latter
be unusually large. Like a glove which
is a trifle small in the fingers, however, this
disparity in size can be overcome by successive
attempts at entrance, provided these be
gentle and slow, and provided, also, that the
parts be anointed with some simple ointment,
such as petrolatum, cosmoline, or
vaseline. Do not use an ointment containing
unknown ingredients, as there may be
a harmful drug among them. Nature will,
indeed, furnish a natural lubricant in the
woman’s own emission after awhile, but at
first it is well to have the ointment at hand.
Do not be in a hurry ; be patient. In some
Page 17
cases, it may take months for the parts to
become fitted to one another, but the result
is worth the trouble.
Many and many a divorce dates its beginning
to the ignorance or the lack of consideration
shown by one party for the other in
the nuptial chamber. And those who think
to render marriage pure and holy by keeping
our young people ignorant of the functions
and proper management of their bodily
organs, are the ones directly responsible for
such divorces.
The following out of the above directions
is of especial importance where the
organs of the bride and bridegroom are so
ill-matched as to make what is termed "a
matrimonial misfit." Sometimes the man’s
organ, which in a state of activity should be
about six inches in length, is much longer
and proportionately large ; and if the woman’s
orifice and vagina chance to be unusually
small, great suffering will result unless
one party or the other has been cautioned
and knows what to do. In a case where the
organ had attained a phenomenal length,
the man married a young woman of average
proportions, and almost killed her upon
Page 18
the wedding night. Fortunately, the family
physician, to whom the suffering bride
referred her case, insisted that the husband
should wear a pad, made as a ring, which
prevented the entrance of the organ beyond
a certain distance; and the couple are now
living happily and have had several children.
In other cases the man’s organ is small, like
a little boy’s, so that entrance is an impossibility.
Such a husband simply arouses and
excites his wife, without being able to afford
her the normal sexual satisfaction. Or, again,
the organ, while of average length, may be
slender, and the woman’s orifice and vagina
unusually large, so that his organ does not
completely fill it, and this also often fails to
result in full satisfaction to the woman. In the
latter case the male organ can sometimes be
enlarged by electrical treatment. But I think
that where the organs of either party depart
very greatly from the average size, the party
who is abnormal in size one way or the other
is committing a great wrong upon the other
party not to give due notification of his or her
abnormality in advance. Such notification, if
given to the family physician, could be acted
upon by him and advice given which in many
Page 19
cases would greatly lessen the annoyance of
the matrimonial misfit, and preserve both
parties from making a wreck of their lives.
It is possible that much could be done by
suggestive therapeutics to gradually adapt
the organs of such ill-matched couples to
one another. Intelligent control of the subconsciousness,
and, through it, of the sympathetic
nervous system, at a time when the
sexual organs of both parties are excited and
engorged with blood, ought to be able to
effect very marked changes in the tissues of
these organs.
I here use the term "suggestive therapeutics,"
because this is a term which does not
jar upon the orthodox medical ear. But the
method may also be called applied psychology,
or mental science, or divine science, or
yoga. The phraseology adopted by these several
schools of thought varies ; so, also, does
some of the philosophy taught; but the scientific
process is essentially the same in all.
To the average uninstructed man or
woman, there is no apparent relation
between the honeymoon and that philosophy
which I prefer to call "yoga." And yet,
if yoga were properly understood and prac20
ticed in the marital embrace by every newly
married couple, their sex life would be, from
the start, so holy, so healthy, so happy, that
they would never care to descend to the
methods commonly practiced among married
people today-methods which involve
loss of sexual self-control, tigerish brutality,
persistent rape of the wife’s person, and
uncleanness.
The word "yoga" is a Sanskrit word
which means "union." It comes from the
same root as our English word "yoke," i. e.,
that which unites. It has been used for centuries
by Hindu occultists and metaphysicians,
to signify the philosophy which teaches mankind
to enter into that state of oneness with
the Divine which will secure them both spiritual
bliss and power over their bodies and
over material things. To what a wonderful
extent this yogic power can be carried is only
beginning to be dimly apprehended by us in
America, here and there, among students of
the "higher thought." But the Orientals have
known of it for centuries.
"Whosoever is born of God," writes the
Apostle John, in the third chapter of his first
Epistle, "doth not commit sin ; for his seed
Page 21
remained in him; and he cannot sin, because
be is born of God."
Paul ( I. Thess. iv.) admonishes : "This is the will of God, * * * that ye should abstain from fornication: That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor ; not in the lust of concupiscence [unlawful desire of carnal pleasure], even as the Gentiles which know not God : * * * For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness." In Gen. vi. we find that Noah is especially praised because he was "perfect in his generations
- Noah walked with God" (evidently,
during coition).
In my Right Marital Living, I emphasize
the importance of thought union with
the Divine, Central Force of the universe as
the third partner during the sexual embrace.
This is physiologically of importance because,
without such union, it is impossible to fully
control one’s mentality or sub consciousness,
and, through the mentality, the orgasm, which
always begins on the mental plane, and which
is partly worked out on that plane; and if the
orgasm be not fully controlled, it is dangerous
to the man to attempt to suppress the ejaculation
Page 22
of semen at this moment, as such suppression
is apt to result in an enlarged prostate
gland, or in damage to the nervous system in
various ways.
But there is another reason for union with
the Divine during the act; it is that one thereby
enters into fuller harmony with the universe,
giving and receiving sexual pleasure, in a way
undreamt of without such union.
Moreover, it is a duty -a courtesy, if one
may use such a term in this connection-
which we owe to that wonderful, all-pervading
Force in whom we live and move and have
our being.
Take, for instance, the case of a child to
whom you give a box of bonbons. If the child
has been properly brought up, the first thing it
will do, after thanking you for the gift, will be
to open the box and share the goodies with its
little brothers and sisters, and its father and
mother; then it will come to you, the giver,
and offer to share them with you, and insist,
sweetly, that it will enjoy them ever so much
more if you will eat just one or two also. This
is the right thing, the courteous thing, the loving
and altogether fitting thing for a child to
do on such an occasion.
Now the Lord has given each one of us a box
of delicious sexual bonbons, and, for my part, I
Page 23
think it is little enough that we can do, to offer
to share one or two of these bonbons with the
Giver. It would seem, at least, common courtesy
on our part to do so.
"But," you object, "the Ultimate Force
which we call God is impersonal, and does not
experience sexual desires or passions."
Indeed ! Then, may I inquire, my friend,
whence you received your own sex desires?
Do you suppose, for one moment, that there
is any attribute of your being which is not an
inherency of the First Cause ?
Is there, indeed, anything in all the universe,
even your own capacity for individual,
personal liking for a given man or woman,
which can be conceived of as not inherent in
the First Cause ?
Therefore the First Cause, the Ultimate
Force, impersonal though it be, must be inherently
capable of sexual feeling and of individual
personal attraction to any given creature.
The Ultimate Force of the universe must,
of necessity, be both masculine and feminine
in its inherencies. As masculine essence, it
should be thought of as entering through
the man’s organ during the sexual embrace,
giving pleasure and receiving pleasure from
the wife. As feminine essence, it should be
thought of as residing within the wife’s
body (the temple of the Holy Spirit) at the
vagina and uterus, riding the man’s organ,
giving pleasure and receiving pleasure there
Page 24
from. Thus, the experience is shared with
God in every possible way, and is sanctified
and glorified.
Remember that Jesus said that the first
and greatest commandment is to love God
with all our soul and mind and heart, and with
all our strength.
No bridal couple who have once shared
the joy of a controlled orgasm and sustained
thrill with God will ever care to leave God
out of the partnership in future.
The Oriental occultists claim that a prayer
breathed at such a supreme moment of self
controlled and rapturous union with Deity is
sure to be granted. This is because such a process
is a divinely ordained way of so displacing
the psycho-physical threshold of sensibility as
to enter into the most perfect communion with
the Spirit of God which is known to us earthly
beings. When the inward self realizes its oneness
with the Ultimate Force of the universe,
it will ask only for what it is right it should
receive; and, as the Divine Scientists insist, all
power is ours, when we rise in thought to oneness
inwardly with the Divine Central Force.
Page 25
Only that wedding night, only that honeymoon in which spiritual communion with the Ultimate Force of the universe forms part and parcel of the sexual act, is truly blest.
- Ida C. Craddock
- 134 W. 23rd St., Room 5,
- New York.
Personal Instruction and Advice.
Personal instruction and advice can be had
from Mrs. Craddock upon Marriage, Parenthood,
Pre-Natal Culture, The Science and Art of Self-
Control, Yoga, etc.
Fees are as follows (except in regard to lectures upon marriage, which see below):
Individual instruction .................................... $1.00 Private class, per pupil ................................... 0.75 Advice at office, per individual ........................... 1.00 Advice by letter, payable in advance ....................... 2.00
To those who wish explicit instruction, orally, upon Marriage (a lecture occupying about an hour and a half, with opportunity for asking questions at the close) the fees are as follows:
Individual instruction ......................................$5.00 Instruction in private class of two, each pupil ............. 3.00 In class of three, four or five, each pupil ................. 2.00 In class of six to ten, each pupil .......................... 1.00
There is also a course of three lessons, giving fuller instruction, fees for which are as follows
Instruction to one person (for the course) ..................$10.00 :Private class of two, per pupil (for the course) ............ 5.00 :Private class of three or more, per pupil (for the course)... 3.00
Page 26
About the Author
Ida Craddock (1857-1902) was a writer, teacher,
freethinker, spiritualist, and sex researcher from Philadelphia.
She first came to national prominence for
her defense of the "Danse du Ventre" ("Dance of the Abdomen")
exhibition at the Chicago Columbian Exposition
of 1893. Staged in the Egyptian Theatre in Cairo
Street, the performances featured young women in
Oriental costumes performing versions of the belly dance,
accompanied by tambourines, flutes, castanets,
and drums. Local moralists were horrified, and Anthony
Comstock, the nation’s leading anti-vice crusader
was called on to lead the opposition. Fair organizers
were loathe to close down one of their most
popular attractions, and the ensuing controversy was
conducted through the press. Craddock contributed a
long defense of the dance in Joseph Pulitzer’s The New
York World for Sunday August 13, 1893. There, and in
a re-worked pamphlet edition issued later that year,
drawing on her own folkloric researches, Craddock
offered an unapologetic interpretation of the dance
and its regalia as an education in human sexuality,
pointing toward purity, continence, and controlled
orgasm. Craddock subsequently embarked upon a
controversial career as a lecturer, billing herself as an
expert on "phallic and sex worship", but in 1894 fled
to London to escape her mother’s attempts to have
her institutionalized.
Page 27
Page 28
Craddock returned to Philadelphia in the summer
of 1895 and worked there as a secretary for the
city Bureau of Highways until November 1897. Her
book The Heaven of the Bible, a decidedly unconventional
(but not overtly sexual) description of the
heavenly city was published by Lippincott in 1897
(http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeaamericanstudies/13/).
During that time, she also began to distribute her
works on sex education in pamphlet form: Helps to
Happy Wedlock: No. 1 for Husbands (1896), Letter to a Prospective
Bride (1897), Advice to a Bridegroom (1897), and
Right Marital Living (1899). She was dismissed from her
city job when some of her sex education writings were
discovered by a co-worker, and she subsequently relocated
to Chicago, where she focused on giving lectures
and consultations, while also conducting an extensve
mail-order business.
In October 1899 Craddock was arrested for sending
obscene literature (her pamphlet Right Marital Living)
through the mails. She avoided jail through the
intervention of her lawyer Clarence Darrow, but received
a 3-month suspended sentence, and all of her
publications were confiscated and destroyed. She then
moved to Denver, where The Wedding Night was first
printed in 1900. In the spring of 1901 Craddock moved
to Washington D.C. and was arrested there in April
for circulating indecent publications-in this case The
Wedding Night. Those charges were eventually dropped
in exchange for Craddock’s agreement to leave the
city. She then settled in New York, established an office
at 134 West 23rd Street, and apparently had more
Page 29
copies printed to replenish her supply, later telling
her lawyer Hugh Pentecost that she could only afford
to print 500 at a time. The third edition (reproduced
here) was probably printed before February 4, 1902,
when Craddock was arrested once more. She was convicted
on state obscenity charges on March 17, and
served a three-month sentence in the Blackwell’s Island
workhouse. She was released in June, but was reindicted,
this time on federal charges, for sending copies
of the pamphlet through the mail. At her trial on
October 10, Judge Edward B. Thomas summarily declared
The Wedding Night obscene; the jury, agreeing that
it had been deposited in the mail, convicted her without
even retiring; and a sentencing date was set for October
17. Facing a possible five-year prison term, and
unwilling to endure further incarceration, Craddock
took her own life on the night of October 16, 1902.
Craddock had arranged for her notebooks, diaries,
and unpublished writings to be sent to English journalist
and editor, W. T. Stead, who had been her patron
and employer in London in 1894–95. After his
death in 1912 (aboard the RMS Titanic), his widow
gave Craddock’s papers to Theodore Schroeder (1864–
1953), a psychic researcher and free speech advocate.
Schroeder excerpted and edited parts of Craddock’s
unpublished writings for publication in the journal
Alienist and Neurologist (1915-1917) and then in book
form in 1918 under the title Heavenly Bridegrooms. Schroeder
was most interested in Craddock’s accounts of
her "spiritual marriage" with a being she called "Soph",
with whom she described a long-term non-physical
Page 30
but intensely sexual relationship. Schroeder viewed
Craddock as mentally unbalanced, and used her experience
to illustrate his own theories about the psychosexual
origins of religion. Nonetheless, his works
brought her to the attention of the Ordo Templi Orientis
and its leader Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), English
Freemason, occultist, and founder of Thelema, a
syncretic belief drawing on multiple religious traditions.
Thus, ironically perhaps, her works and ideas
found greater acceptance among practitioners of ceremonial
magic than among researchers, educators, and
proponents of a more equitable human sexuality. Today,
Craddock’s papers (along with Schroeder’s) are
held by the Southern Illinois University Libraries.
Two recent works on Ida Craddock are Sexual Outlaw,
Erotic Mystic: The Essential Ida Craddock (San Francisco:
Weiser Books, 2010) by Vere Chappell, and
Heaven’s Bride: The Unprintable Life of Ida C. Craddock, American
Mystic, Scholar, Sexologist, Martyr, and Madwoman
(New York: Basic Books, 2010), by Leigh Eric Schmidt.
Page 31
Note on the Text
The preceding work is a digital "facsimile" of Ida C.
Craddock’s pamphlet The Wedding Night, third edition,
published at New York in 1902. The original work is a
24-page booklet with stapled ("saddle-stitched") covers,
measuring approximately 9 × 15 centimeters (3.5
× 6 inches). Scanned images of the original are online
at the Southern Illinois University Library CARLIdigital
Collections, at http://collections.carli.illinois.
edu/u?/sic_scrcper,6782. An earlier copy (first edition,
Denver, 1900) is held by the Library of Congress. The
only other known surviving copy is held at the University
of Rochester Medical Center Library. An html
text version of the work is online at http://www.idacraddock.
com, although the version there shows several
disparities and some significant omissions from
the printed 1902 original.
The digital edition presented here matches the
1902 New York third edition for layout, design, and
pagination. Page breaks in this edition correspond
roughly (usually within several words) to those of the
1902 version. This version also reflects the diminishing
of the line heights on pages 22–24, as the original compositor
struggled to fit the text within the 24-page
limit, setting up to 34 lines to a page rather than the 28
lines set on earlier pages. The text is set in Californian
FB, a digital version of the typeface designed by William
Goudy. In accordance with turn-of-the-century
Page 32
typographic practices, colons, semicolons, and question and exclamation marks are set with a thin space preceding, and sentence-ending periods are followed by a double word space. Spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and orthography in general follow the 1902 edition, except for the correction of four errors: at page 11, line 24, "selfcontrol" is corrected to "self-control" (as it is spelled elsewhere); page 16, line 2, "with in" is corrected to "within"; page 18, line 25, "ab-/abnormality" is corrected to "abnormality"; and at page 21, line 23, "organism" is corrected to "orgasm" (a correction indicated by hand in the original copy).
- Paul Royster
- University of Nebraska–Lincoln
- November 26, 2012
Page 33
Notes
(Keyed to page & line in the present edition.)
Cover. 6 Pastor of Church of Yoga ] This was a
self-appointed office in an invented organization.
There is no evidence that Craddock
received yogic instruction from a
trained practitioner. She was, however,
familiar with Vivekananda’s Râja-Yoga:
Or, Conquering the Internal Nature (1896)
and had seen Srichandra Basu’s The Esoteric
Science and Philosophy of the Tantras,
Shiva Sanhita (Calcutta, 1893). Craddock
did hold regular Sunday meetings in Chicago
in 1899 under this title, but there is
no indication that it existed as a formal
organization or congregation.
1.22–23 Veiled Prophet of Khorassan ] Hashim Al-
Muqanna, or Mokanna, (d. 779) of Merv
in the province of Khorassan in Persia,
founder of a heretical sect incorporating
elements of Zoroasterianism and Islam.
He wore a veil to conceal his face-
for its ugliness according to his enemies,
or for its brightness according to his followers.
The first narrative in Thomas
Moore’s Lalla Rookh (1817)-titled "The
Page 34
Veiled Prophet of Khorassan"-is based
on his life. This was later the basis of an
opera (1879) by Sir Charles Villiers Stanford.
Beginning in 1878, a secret society
in St. Louis sponsored a Veiled Prophet
Ball and agricultural fair, presided over
by a "Veiled Prophet of Khorassan."
7.10 glands of Bartholin ] At the opening of the vagina;
they secrete mucus for lubrication.
12.6 Comstockism ] Anthony Comstock (1844–
1915) was the chief and most enthusiastic
persecutor of Ida Craddock. He presided
over her arrest in New York in
1902 and orchestrated her prosecution.
He had founded the New York Society
for the Suppression of Vice and succeeded
in getting Congress to enact the
Comstock Law (1873), outlawing the delivery
or transport of "obscene, lewd, or
lascivious" material, including information
regarding birth control and sexually
transmitted disease. He became a special
agent of the U.S. Postal Service, with
extraordinary powers to investigate and
prosecute the distribution of so-called
pornography. He wielded extraordinary
power despite the opposition of free
speech and women’s rights advocates.
Page 35
16.20 petrolatum, cosmoline ] Petrolatum or petroleum
jelley, developed by Robert Chesebrough
and patented in 1872, was sold
under the name Vaseline from 1870; cosmoline
was a similar, slightly stiffer, substance,
now used mainly as a rust preventative.
Back cover.3 Mrs. Craddock ] Ida Craddock never married but sometimes did use the honorific "Mrs." in connection with her marriage and sex counselling practice.
See also [ Comstock Laws ]
Chat rooms • What links here • Copyright info • Contact information • Category:Root