Spirit Core

Lore & Background

Edwardes authored multiple novels that claimed to explore eroticism and sexuality outside of Western culture. Edwardes also penned The Jewel in the Lotus: A historical survey of the sexual culture in the East, a novel that analyzes peculiar sexual behaviors of Asian ethnographies. His Erotica Judaica investigates the sexual history of the Jews. Masters is a close confidant of Edwardes. Masters's novels focused on human conscientious and potential. Together these two authors crafted The Cradle of Erotica to examine and access sexual activities of Afro-Asian cultures.

In Their Own Story

The book's philosophy chapter begins by explaining the importance of copulation in both the Muslim and Hindu faiths. The Turkish writer Khojeh ’Omar Halebi Abbbu ‘Othman, author of the Book of the Secrets Laws of Love, details how Allah and Eros, Greek for intimate love, are one of the same divine law. This divine attraction between man and woman is mirrored in Hindu belief. Wang Shih-cheng explains how this attraction is as natural as the Earth and one cannot blame this attraction on evil. Edwardes and Masters then address and explain the matriarchal dominance of sex in Afro-Asian sexual practices, especially those relationships seen in the Muslim faith. Conservative Muslims believe the liberation of women from their natural position of subservience in Muslim culture is a pathway to indulging in lustful sex without shame. Differing from the intimate love synonymous with Allah, lustful sex is strictly for physical enjoyment, while intimate sex is a connection in both spirit and body. This chapter then goes on to describe the allegedly lascivious natures of Hinduism and the Chinese. This supposedly endless thirst for sexual activity in Oriental ethos is compared to various animals.

Reader's Guide

The book and its authors, Allen Edwardes and R.E.L Masters, have been criticized for perpetuating orientalism, especially in retrospective reviews. Orientalism is a patronizing, and often racist branch of Western thought about the beliefs and practices of cultures in India, East Asia, or the Middle East. A contemporary positive review for Psychosomatics written by "W. D." claimed the book was well cited and a useful resource for sexologists. Another contemporary review in the American Sociological Review by Evelyn Hooker praised the intention of the work, but argued its propensity to exaggerate made it unfit for scientifically rigorous research. In recent years, Joseph Boone uses orientalism as his weapon of demystification against what he argues is Edwardes and Masters' fictional portrayal of Eastern sexuality. Boone states that homosexuality is recognized and glorified in Eastern sexuality in order to make Western, white, civilization more pure and civilized. He uses the obsession with the penis sizes of Egyptians and Arabian men in The Cradle of Erotica as a perfect example of sublimation. Boone goes on to say that through a complicated method of execution, Edwardes and Masters use exotic Eastern sexuality as a platform for expressing Western homosexual thought, without sacrificing any homologous sexual belief that is supposedly shared among all Western people. Roland Boer goes further in his 2012 work The Earthly Nature Of The Bible, stating that The Cradle of Erotica is an example of what he called "Orientialist camp" that was a hallmark of Edwardes' career.

Did You Know?

• The book was first published in 1963 by The Julian Press Inc.
• Edwardes also authored The Jewel in the Lotus and Erotica Judaica.
• A contemporary review in the American Sociological Review by Evelyn Hooker praised the intention of the work but argued its propensity to exaggerate made it unfit for scientifically rigorous research.
• Joseph Boone used the book's obsession with penis sizes of Egyptians and Arabian men as an example of sublimation.
• Roland Boer in his 2012 work The Earthly Nature Of The Bible called The Cradle of Erotica an example of 'Orientialist camp'.