One spring day in 1899, Liane was riding in an open carriage through the Bois de Boulogne. As usual, men tipped their hats at her as she passed by. But one of these admirers caught her by surprise: a young woman with long blond hair, who gave her an intense, worshipful stare. Liane smiled at the woman, who smiled and bowed in return.

A few days later Liane began to receive cards and flowers from a twenty-three-year-old American named Natalie Barney, who identified herself as the blond admirer in the Bois de Boulogne, and asked for a rendezvous. Liane invited Natalie to visit, but to amuse herself she decided to play a little joke: a friend would take her place, lounging on her bed in the dark boudoir, while Liane would hide behind a screen. Natalie arrived at the appointed hour. She wore the costume of a Florentine page and carried a bouquet of flowers. Kneeling before the bed, she began to praise the courtesan, comparing her to a Fra Angelico painting. All too soon, she heard someone laugh—and standing up she realized the joke that had been played on her. She blushed and made for the door. When Liane hurried out from behind the screen, Natalie chastised her: the courtesan had the face of an angel, but apparently not the spirit. Contrite, Liane whispered, “Come back tomorrow morning. I’ll be alone.”

The young American showed up the next day, wearing the same outfit. She was witty and spirited; Liane relaxed in her presence, and invited her to stay for the courtesan’s morning ritual—the elaborate makeup, clothes, and jewelry she put on before heading out into the world. Watching reverently, Natalie remarked that she worshiped beauty, and that Liane was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. Playing the part of the page, she followed Liane to the carriage, opened the door for her with a bow, and accompanied her on her habitual ride through the Bois de Boulogne. Once inside the park, Natalie knelt on the floor, out of sight of the passing gentlemen who tipped their hats to Liane. She recited poems she had written in Liane’s honor, and she told the courtesan she considered it a mission to rescue her from the seamy career into which she had fallen.

That evening Natalie took her to the theater to see Sarah Bernhardt play Hamlet. During the intermission, she told Liane that she identified with Hamlet—his hunger for the sublime, his hatred of tyranny—which, for her, was the tyranny of men over women. Over the next few days Liane received a steady flow of flowers from Natalie, and telegrams with little poems in her honor. Slowly the worshipful words and looks became more physical, with the occasional touch, then a caress, even a kiss—and a kiss that felt different from any in Liane’s experience. One morning, with Natalie in attendance, Liane prepared to take a bath. As she slipped out of her nightgown, Natalie suddenly flung herself at her friend’s feet, kissing her ankles. The courtesan freed herself and hurried into the bath, only for Natalie to throw off her clothes and join her. Within a few days, all Paris knew that Liane de Pougy had a new lover: Natalie Barney.

Liane made no effort to disguise her new affair, publishing a novel, Idylle Saphique, detailing every aspect of Natalie’s seduction. She had never had an affair with a woman before, and she described her involvement with Natalie as something like a mystical experience. Even at the end of her long life, she remembered the affair as by far her most intense.

Renée Vivien was a young Englishwoman who had come to Paris to write poetry and flee the marriage that her father was trying to arrange for her. Renée was obsessed with death; she also felt there was something wrong with her, experiencing moments of intense self-loathing. In 1900, Renée met Natalie at the theater. Something about the American’s kind eyes melted Renée’s normal reserve, and she began sending poems to Natalie, who responded with poems of her own. They soon became friends. Renée confessed that she had had an intense friendship with another woman, but that it remained platonic—the thought of physical involvement repulsed her. Natalie told her about the ancient Greek poet Sappho, who celebrated love between women as the only love that is innocent and pure. One night Renée, inspired by their discussions, invited Natalie to her apartment, which she had transformed into a kind of chapel. The room was filled with candles and with white lilies, the flowers she associated with Natalie. That night the two women became lovers. They soon moved in together, but when Renée realized that Natalie could not be faithful to her, her love turned into hatred. She broke off the relationship, moved out, and vowed to never see her again.

Over the next few months Natalie sent her letters and poems, and showed up at her new home—all to no avail. Renée would have nothing to do with her. One evening at the opera, though, Natalie sat down beside her and gave her a poem she had written in her honor. She expressed her regrets for the past, and also a simple request: the two women should go on a pilgrimage to the Greek island of Lesbos, Sappho’s home. Only there could they purify themselves and their relationship. Renée could not resist. On the island they retraced the poetess’s steps, imagining they were transported back into the pagan, innocent days of ancient Greece. For Renée, Natalie had become Sappho herself. When they finally returned to Paris, Renée wrote her, “My blond Siren, I don’t want you to become like those who dwell on earth.... I want you to stay yourself, for this is the way you cast your spell over me.” Their affair lasted until Renée’s death, in 1909.

Natalie Barney, on the other hand, was buoyant, lighthearted, absorbed in the world around her. Her seductions—and by the end of her life they numbered well into the hundreds—all had a similar quality: she took the victim outside herself, directing her attention toward beauty, poetry, the innocence of Sapphic love. She invited her women to participate in a kind of cult in which they would worship these sublimities. To heighten the cultlike feeling, she involved them in little rituals: they would call each other by new names, send each other poems in daily telegrams, wear costumes, make pilgrimages to holy sites. Two things would inevitably happen: the women would start to direct some of the worshipful feelings they were experiencing toward Natalie, who seemed as lofty and beautiful as the things she held up to be adored; and, pleasantly diverted into this spiritualized realm, they would also lose any heaviness they had felt about their bodies, their selves, their identities. Their repression of their sexuality would melt away. By the time Natalie kissed or caressed them, it would feel like something innocent, pure, as if they had returned to the Garden of Eden before the fall.

Religion is the great balm of existence because it takes us outside ourselves, connects us to something larger. As we contemplate the object of worship (God, nature), our burdens are lifted away. It is wonderful to feel raised up from the earth, to experience that kind of lightness. No matter how progressive the times, many of us feel uncomfortable with our bodies, our animal drives. A seducer who focuses too much attention on the physical will stir up self-consciousness, and a residue of disgust. So focus attention on something else. Invite the other person to worship something beautiful in the world. It could be nature, a work of art, even God (or gods—paganism never goes out of fashion); people are dying to believe in something. Add some rituals. If you can make yourself seem to resemble the thing you are worshiping—you are natural, aesthetic, noble, and sublime—your targets will transfer their worship to you. Religion and spirituality are full of sexual undertones that can be brought to the surface once you have made your targets lose their self-awareness. From spiritual ecstasy to sexual ecstasy is but one small step.

Pleasure is the bait that you use to lure a person into your web. But no matter how clever a seducer you are, in the back of your targets’ mind they are aware of the endgame, the physical conclusion toward which you are heading. You may think your target is unrepressed and hungry for pleasure, but almost all of us are plagued by an underlying unease with our animal nature. Unless you deal with this unease, your seduction, even when successful in the short term, will be superficial and temporary. Instead, like Natalie Barney, try to capture your target’s soul, to build the foundation of a deep and lasting seduction. Lure the victim deep into your web with spirituality, making physical pleasure seem sublime and transcendent. Spirituality will disguise your manipulations, suggesting that your relationship is timeless, and creating a space for ecstasy in the victim’s mind. Remember that seduction is a mental process, and nothing is more mentally intoxicating than religion, spirituality, and the occult.

In Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary, Rodolphe Boulanger visits the country doctor Bovary and finds himself interested in the doctor’s beautiful wife, Emma. Boulanger “was brutal and shrewd. He was something of a connoisseur: there had been many women in his life.” He senses that Emma is bored. A few weeks later he manages to run into her at a county fair, where he gets her alone. He affects an air of sadness and gloom: “Many’s the time I’ve passed a cemetery in the moonlight and asked myself if I wouldn’t be better off lying there with the rest.... ” He mentions his bad reputation; he deserves it, he says, but is it his fault? “Do you really not know that there exist souls that are ceaselessly in torment?” Several times he takes Emma’s hand, but she politely withdraws it. He talks of love, the magnetic force that draws two people together. Perhaps it has roots in some earlier existence, some previous incarnation of their souls. “Take us, for example. Why should we have met? How did it happen? It can only be that something in our particular inclinations made us come closer and closer across the distance that separated us, the way two rivers flow together.” He takes her hand again and this time she lets him hold it. After the fair, he avoids her for a few weeks, then suddenly shows up, claiming that he tried to stay away but that fate, destiny, has pulled him back. He takes Emma riding. When he finally makes his move, in the woods, she seems frightened and rejects his advances. “You must have some mistaken idea,” he protests. “I have you in my heart like a Madonna on a pedestal.... I beseech you: be my friend, my sister, my angel!” Under the spell of his words, she lets him hold her and lead her deeper into the woods, where she succumbs.

Rodolphe’s strategy is threefold. First he talks of sadness, melancholy, discontent, talk that makes him seem nobler than other people, as if life’s common material pursuits could not satisfy him. Next he talks of destiny, the magnetic attraction of two souls. This makes his interest in Emma seem not so much a momentary impulse as something timeless, linked to the movement of the stars. Finally he talks of angels, the elevated and the sublime. By placing everything on the spiritual plane, he distracts Emma from the physical, makes her feel giddy, and packs a seduction that could have taken months into a matter of a few encounters.

The references Rodolphe uses might seem clichéd by today’s standards, but the strategy itself will never grow old. Simply adapt it to the occult fads of the day. Affect a spiritual air by displaying a discontent with the banalities of life. It is not money or sex or success that moves you; your drives are never so base. No, something much deeper motivates you. Whatever this is, keep it vague, letting the target imagine your hidden depths. The stars, astrology, fate, are always appealing; create the sense that destiny has brought you and your target together. That will make your seduction feel more natural. In a world where too much is controlled and manufactured, the sense that fate, necessity, or some higher power is guiding your relationship is doubly seductive. If you want to weave religious motifs into your seduction, it is always best to choose some distant, exotic religion with a slightly pagan air. It is easy to move from pagan spirituality to pagan earthiness. Timing counts: once you have stirred your targets’ souls, move quickly to the physical, making sexuality seem merely an extension of the spiritual vibrations you are experiencing. In other words, employ the spiritual strategy as close to the time for your bold move as possible.

The spiritual is not exclusively the religious or the occult. It is anything that will add a sublime, timeless quality to your seduction. In the modern world, culture and art have in some ways taken the place of religion. There are two ways to use art in your seduction: first, create it yourself, in the target’s honor. Natalie Barney wrote poems, and barraged her targets with them. Half of Picasso’s appeal to many women was the hope that he would immortalize them in his paintings—for Ars longa, vita brevis (Art is long, life is short), as they used to say in Rome. Even if your love is a passing fancy, by capturing it in a work of art you give it a seductive illusion of eternity. The second way to use art is to make it ennoble the affair, giving your seduction an elevated edge. Natalie Barney took her targets to the theater, to the opera, to museums, to places full of history and atmosphere. In such places your souls can vibrate to the same spiritual wavelength. Of course you should avoid works of art that are earthy or vulgar, calling attention to your intentions. The play, movie, or book can be contemporary, even a little raw, as long as it contains a noble message and is tied to some just cause. Even a political movement can be spiritually uplifting. Remember to tailor your spiritual lures to the target. If the target is earthy and cynical, paganism or art will be more productive than the occult or religious piety.

The Russian mystic Rasputin was revered for his saintliness and his healing powers. Women in particular were fascinated with Rasputin and would visit him in his St. Petersburg apartment for spiritual guidance. He would talk to them of the simple goodness of the Russian peasantry, God’s forgiveness, and other lofty matters. But after a few minutes of this, he would inject a comment or two that were of a much different nature—something about the woman’s beauty, her lips that were so inviting, the desires she could inspire in a man. He would talk of different kinds of love—love of God, love between friends, love between a man and a woman—but mix them all up as if they were one. Then as he returned to discussing spiritual matters, he would suddenly take the woman’s hand, or whisper into her ear. All this would have an intoxicating effect—women would find themselves dragged into a kind of maelstrom, both spiritually uplifted and sexually excited. Hundreds of women succumbed during these spiritual visits, for he would also tell them that they could not repent until they had sinned, and who better to sin with than Rasputin.

Rasputin understood the intimate connection between the sexual and the spiritual. Spirituality, the love of God, is a sublimated version of sexual love. The language of the religious mystics of the Middle Ages is full of erotic images; the contemplation of God and of the sublime can offer a kind of mental orgasm. There is no more seductive brew than the combination of the spiritual and the sexual, the high and the low. When you talk of spiritual matters, then, let your looks and physical presence hint of sexuality at the same time. Make the harmony of the universe and union with God seem to confuse with physical harmony and the union between two people. If you can make the endgame of your seduction appear as a spiritual experience, you will heighten the physical pleasure and create a seduction with a deep and lasting effect.

Giovanni Casanova used many spiritual lures in his seductions—the occult, anything that would inspire lofty sentiments. For the time that he was involved with a woman, she would feel that he would do anything for her, that he was not just using her only to abandon her. But she also knew that when it became convenient to end the affair, he would cry, give her a magnificent gift, then quietly leave. This was just what many young women wanted—a temporary diversion from marriage or an oppressive family. Sometimes pleasure is best when we know it is fleeting.