Edward Carpenter soul and body

Carpenter’s journey to sexual liberation was a long and convoluted one, due mainly to repression around his upper-middle class upbringing and his own inward-looking personality. The influence of Walt Whitman, the Bolton Whitmanites’ and especially JA Symonds, the deaths of his mother and then father leaving him a considerable inheritance, the radicalised socialist environment he was mixing in, alongside the young working-class nakedness he observed in Sheffield, and his own urges to experience sexual embraces, eventually coalesced. Nevertheless, with the Vagrancy Act in 1998, the world of homosexuality was generally one of fear.

Bringing sex and spirituality together then was no mean feat, especially wrapped around his socialist beliefs, in an environment where his socialist friends showed as much prejudice as mainstream, or at least saw his interest as a distraction from the main path towards democracy. Championing sexual intercourse for ‘union’ rather than for the purposes of procreation was not only a challenge to the accepted Christian orthodox, but a personal act of courage celebrating ‘homogenic, non-procreative sex’.

Carpenter’s attitude to sex though was tied up with his need to connect it to the ‘cosmic’. The enjoyment of sex was invested with the bonds of brotherhood and a new social order. His interest in Tantric approaches to love-making (or at least a Western colonial reading of Tantra) is often seen as the flame that sparked his mischievous lifestyle. While in reality, his references to Tantric approaches are scarce by comparison to his interest in contemporary scientific study. He had an especial affinity with the work of Roberto Assagioli (who developed the psychoanalytic approach called psychosynthesis). Indeed, in his book ‘The Drama of Love and Death’ Carpenter gives us a Self that is split into many selves, mirroring Assagioli’s sub-personalities.

Carpenter’s interest in folk tradition does reflect the Agamic roots of Tantra though, which were aimed specifically at the common folk and folk lore. Here we see connections to the Romantics, New Age, and Celtic National revivalists and the search for,

“A democratic Society with the object of bringing the arts and the lives of the people closer.”

This fuelled his search for ‘intermediates’; those of a homoerotic temperament drawn to creative and spiritual roles in ‘primitive’ cultures, causing Edith Ellis to call him,

“a prophet of the soul and the body.”

Bringing it all together

Carpenter’s mix of the body and soul allowed him to write about homo-sex in a way that kept him clear of the taboos and clutches of his opponents. His interest in comparative religion gave him access to sexual interpretations around fertility and the phallus as symbolic of the worldly and the spiritual. He was adept at using this ‘mysticism’ as a shield against prosecution in those oppressive years. His so called simple detached life not only held the wolfs at bay, but highlighted the sometimes contradictory nature of his thinking and lifestyle, reflecting the multiple selves he admired in Assagioli’s psychosynthesis.

Connect on Twitter / Instagram / Facebook

Join the NEW men-who-love-men Tantra Yogic Community Pink Tantra Towards Awakening

See my personal development / personality profiling book DISCover the Power of You published through John Hunt Publishing Ltd, 2017. ISBN: 978-1-78535-591-2

Look out for my NEW book Tantra Yoga - the dance of Shiva, to be published through Collective Ink, late August 2026.