Alma Hirsig Bliss

When she was ten years old, Alma Hirsig Bliss moved to the United States with her mother and eight siblings. She and her younger sister Leah were drawn to the Tantric occult, a Western fusion of Eastern meditative practice and sexual experimentation. In 1918 they visited Alistair Crowley, then the leading practitioner of the rites in New York. Although Leah became deeply involved with Crowley’s occult mysticism, Alma followed the teachings of the American Tantric occultist Pierre Bernard, and was named by him the “High Priestess of Oom.” She ultimately recanted her faith and in 1928 published an exposé of American Tantric practice, My Life in a Love Cult: A Warning to All Young Girls, using the pseudonym Marion Dockerill.