Ida Craddock (1857-1902) was a passionate soul, a powerful public exponent of women's rights and sexual freedom. She explored Theosophy and Spiritualism, then created her own New Thought Church called the Church of Yoga which was in the Vedanta School of New Thought and focused on Tantra and other practices which teaches that healthy sexuality has a foundation of love and that through partnership which is mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical a couple can raise their consciouness and channel sexual energy to create healthier, happier and more productive lifes. Ida Craddock's work anticipated the work of Rianne Eisler whose work in the area of partnership versus domination is considered the most important work in the field of human relationships to date.

Links to Ida Craddock's Works:

• Psychic Wedlock The philosophy behind Tantric Marriage and Sexuality
• Spiritual Joys Describes the underlying Spiritual Joys that can be achieved through her Tantric Sex techniques
• The Wedding Night Instructions to the bride and groom for their wedding night
• Right Marital Living Instructions to a married couple
• Ida Craddock's Letter to her Mother on the day of her suicide
• Ida Craddock's Letter to the Public on the day of her suicide

Craddock became the focus of an organised campaign of persecution after she was accused by conservatives of promoting obscenity and immorality because of her work supporting women's rights and the partnership model in sex and marriage. Facing a lengthy prison sentence and told that she would be tortured and murdered in prison she took her own life, at age forty-five.

Craddock's work on "sacred sexuality" and occultism attracted the interest of a number of well-known figures, including Aleister Crowley, who wrote that she possessed "initiated knowledge of extraordinary depth. She seems to have had access to certain most concealed sanctuaries. She has put down statements in plain English which are positively staggering."

Ida was raised a Quaker but as she matured she became a Unitarian. She would have been the first woman to attend University of Pennsylvania, but her entrance was blocked. As is often the case with brilliant people, this simply spurred her on to greater efforts.

Ida's Unitarian studies led her to a deeper understanding of the unified message within all religions prompting her to study various mystic traditions and to find the threads which united them forming an underlying system. She discovered the traditions of Sacred Sexuality which prompted her to found the Church of Yoga. Her freethinking teaching that women could have multiple orgasms through masturbation and that unmarried women could have lovers and great sex in a mystical context that would raise the life energy and bring them closer to God / Goddess enraged her mother who burned some of Ida's papers and threatened to have her institutionalized.

Ida responded to these threats by moving to Chicago and opening a sex clinic on Dearborn Street, where she gave "mystical" sex counseling to married couples which taught techniques of clitoral stimulation and G-spot stimulation before the G-spot was fully understood. Needless to say her service thrived. This led her to publish her techniques and create a thriving mail order business selling her pamphlets which included: Heavenly Bridegrooms, Psychic Wedlock, Spiritual Joys, Letter To A Prospective Bride, The Wedding Night and Right Marital Living.

Anthony Comstock pursuued Ida on the same grounds that he pursued Margaret Sanger. The text that he used as an example for prosecuting her was her book, The Wedding Night which included instructions for the groom to stimulate his bride with oral sex prior to coitus. Craddock's in depth instructions regarding clitoral and manual stimulation led the judge to declare that it was so “obscene, lewd, lascivious, dirty” that the jury should not be allowed to see it.  

Ida's work presaged emerging New Thought groups in the 21st Century which include Sacred Sexuality as part of their teachings.