I’ve read a variety of confusing mentions of how the old school gnostics felt about sex, but nothing that was a wholly satisfactory explanation. That metahistory site mentions in passing that Gnostics practiced “orgiastic sex rites” or something to that effect, which seem somehow related to tantric sexual practices. Other places say that the Gnostics were opposed to sex altogether, since the flesh was basically corrupt. And some others say that they were only opposed to procreative sex, because they didn’t want to bring other souls into the prison of matter.

I also came across the following quote which suggests that gnostics, unlike rapper 50 Cent (”I’m into having sex, I ain’t into making love“), were only ultimately into “making love:”

“The esoteric teaching of the Christian-Gnostics and that of Mani concerned the creation of dense bodies by evil archons and their originating of sexual intercourse to keep the soul chained to those bodies through procreation. It was a misuse and abuse of this doctrine that caused the Church Fathers to so detest sex and woman, whom they considered a lure for man. They neglected to teach the laity that the establishment of sexual intercourse in lower bodies was the work not of woman but of archons/ fallen ones and that there existed a form of procreation in the archetypal universe and on the “etheric” earth (paradise) which man once inhabited quite different from the present method as we now know it. The other aspect of this teaching they suppressed was the doctrine that when man and woman come together in love and not in lust (which was the trademark of the Watchers and archons) and when “God hath joined them together” (i. e., when their union is infused with the spiritual element) they can bring forth sons and daughters of God into incarnation.”

This reminds me (like so many things do) of something in a Philip K. Dick book, Ubik. He is referencing the Bardo Thodol (the Tibetan Book of the Dead), which has instructions for souls after they leave a body through death, and pass through the in-between realms in search of another incarnation.

“I was dreaming,” Ella said. “I saw a smoky red light, a horrible light. And yet I kept moving toward it. I couldn’t stop.”

“Yeah,” Runciter said, nodding. “The Bardo Thodol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, tells about that. You remember reading that; the doctors made you read it when you were-” He hesitated. “Dying,” he said then.

“The smoky red light is bad, isn’t it?” Ella said.

“Yeah, you want to avoid it.”

… “Well, like they say, you’re heading for a new womb to be born out of. And that smoky red light - that’s a bad womb; you don’t want to go that way. That’s a humiliating, low sort of womb. You’re probably anticipating your next life, or whatever it is.”

I forget if it’s in that book or another one where he says something to the effect of that these portals to wombs which are indicated by “smoky red light” are sexual unions which are driven wholly by lust rather than love. I’ll have to look around for the actual quote.