Alice Bunker Stockham was a physician, raised a Quaker. In Karezza: Ethics of Marriage she covers both practical and spiritual implications of the karezza practice. Don’t miss the letters from those practicing it, near the back of the book.
Availability
Consolidated version of second edition
Excerpts
With Karezza, satiety is never known, and the married are never less than lovers; each day reveals new delights….The common daily sarcasms of married people are at an end, the unseemly quarrels have no beginnings and the divorce courts are cheated of their records. …
These powers are given through the act of copulation when it is the outgrowth of the expressions of love, and is at the same time completely under the control of the will. [By contrast], the ordinary hasty spasmodic method of cohabitation…is deleterious both physically and spiritually, and is frequently a cause of estrangement and separation.
Karezza so consummates marriage that through the power of will, and loving thoughts, the crisis is not reached, but a complete control by both husband and wife is maintained throughout the entire relations, a conscious conservation of creative energy….One writer called it Male Continence, but it is no more male than female. …
During a lengthy period of perfect control, the whole being of each is merged into the other, and an exquisite exaltation experienced. This may be accompanied by a quiet motion, entirely under subordination of the will, so that the thrill of passion for either may not go beyond a pleasurable exchange. Unless procreation is desired, let the final propagative orgasm be entirely avoided. With abundant time and mutual reciprocity the interchange becomes satisfactory and complete without emission or crisis. In the course of an hour the physical tension subsides, the spiritual exaltation increases, and not uncommonly visions of a transcendent life are seen and consciousness of new powers experienced. …
Men who are borne down with sorrow because their wives are nervous, feeble and irritable, have it in their power, through Karezza, to restore the radiant hue of health to the faces of their loved ones, strength and elasticity to their steps and harmonious action to every part of their bodies. By manifestation of tenderness and endearment, the husband may develop a response in the wife through her love nature, which thrills every fiber into action and radiates tonic to every nerve. …
There is no limit to the power of true soul union. It specifically increases the gift of healing….As the creative potency of man becomes understood, and this knowledge is applied, men and women will grow in virtue, in love, in power, and will gladly and naturally devote this power to the world’s interests and development…
Karezza: Ethics of Marriage by Alice Bunker Stockham (1903)