Babalon

 

Not to be confused with Babylon (New Testament).

Babalon—also known as The Scarlet Woman, The Great Mother, or the Mother of Abominations—is a goddess found in the mystical system of Thelema, which was established in 1904 with Aleister Crowley's writing of The Book of the Law. In her most abstract form, she represents the female sexual impulse and the liberated woman; although she can also be identified with Mother Earth, in her most fertile sense. At the same time, Crowley believed that Babalon had an earthly aspect in the form of a spiritual office, which could be filled by actual women—usually as a counterpart to his own identification as To Mega Therion (The Great Beast)—whose duty was then to help manifest the energies of the current Aeon of Horus. Her consort is Chaos, the "Father of Life" and the male form of the Creative Principle. Babalon is often described as being girt with a sword and riding the Beast. She is often referred to as a sacred whore, and her primary symbol is the Chalice or Graal. As Crowley wrote, “She rides astride the Beast; in her left hand she holds the reins, representing the passion which unites them. In her right she holds aloft the cup, the Holy Grail aflame with love and death. In this cup are mingled the elements of the sacrament of the Aeon” (Crowley 1981, p. 94).

The three aspects of Babalon

Babalon is a complex figure, although within Thelemic literature, she has three essential aspects: she is the Gateway to the City of the Pyramids, the Scarlet Woman, and the Great Mother.

Gateway to the City of Pyramids

The Seal of Babalon

Within the mystical system of the A.A., after the adept has attained the Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel, he then might reach the next and last great milestone—the crossing of the Abyss, that great spiritual wilderness of nothingness and dissolution. Choronzon is the dweller there, and his job is to trap the traveler in his meaningless world of illusion. However, Babalon is just on the other side, beckoning. If the adept gives himself totally to her—the symbol of this act being the pouring of the adept’s blood into her graal—he becomes impregnated in her, then to be reborn as a Master of the Temple and a saint that dwells in the City of the Pyramids.

[S]he guardeth the Abyss. And in her is a perfect purity of that which is above, yet she is sent as the Redeemer to them that are below. For there is no other way into the Supernal mystery but through her and the Beast on which she rideth.^[1]

and from The Vision and the Voice (12th Aethyr):

Let him look upon the cup whose blood is mingled therein, for the wine of the cup is the blood of the saints. Glory unto the Scarlet Woman, Babalon the Mother of Abominations, that rideth upon the Beast, for she hath spilt their blood in every corner of the earth and lo! she hath mingled it in the cup of her whoredom.

She is considered to be a sacred whore because she denies no one, and yet she extracts a great price—the very blood of the adept and his ego-identity as an earthly individual. This aspect of Babalon is described further from the 12th Aethyr:

This is the Mystery of Babylon, the Mother of Abominations, and this is the mystery of her adulteries, for she hath yielded up herself to everything that liveth, and hath become a partaker in its mystery. And because she hath made her self the servant of each, therefore is she become the mistress of all. Not as yet canst thou comprehend her glory.

Beautiful art thou, O Babylon, and desirable, for thou hast given thyself to everything that liveth, and thy weakness hath subdued their strength. For in that union thou didst understand. Therefore art thou called Understanding, O Babylon, Lady of the Night!

The concept contained within this aspect of Babalon is that of the mystical ideal, the quest to become one with All through the annihilation of the earthly ego ("For as thy blood is mingled in the cup of BABALON, so is thine heart the universal heart."^[2]). The blood spilling into the graal of Babalon is then used by her to "flood the world with Life and Beauty" (meaning to create Masters of the Temple that are "released" back into the world of men), symbolized by the Crimson Rose of 49 Pedals.^[3] In sex magic, the mixture of menstrual blood and semen produced in the sexual act with the Scarlet Woman or Babalon is called the Elixir Rubeus (abbreviated as El. Rub. by Crowley in his magical diaries), and is referred to as the "effluvium of Babalon, the Scarlet Woman, which is the menstruum of the lunar current" by Kenneth Grant.^[4]

The office of the Scarlet Woman

"This is Babalon, the true mistress of The Beast; of Her, all his mistresses on lower planes are but avatars" ^[5]. Although Crowley often wrote that Babalon and the Scarlet Woman are one, there are also many instances where the Scarlet Woman is seen more as a representative or physical manifestation of the universal feminine principle. In a footnote to Liber Reguli, Crowley mentions that of the “Gods of the Aeon,” the Scarlet Woman and the Beast are “the earthly emissaries of those Gods.” (Crowley 1997, Liber V vel Reguli). He then writes in The Law is for All:

It is necessary to say here that The Beast appears to be a definite individual; to wit, the man Aleister Crowley. But the Scarlet Woman is an officer replaceable as need arises. Thus to this present date of writing, Anno XVI, Sun in Sagittarius, there have been several holders of the title.

Individual Scarlet Women

Aleister Crowley believed that many of his lovers were playing a cosmic role, even to the point of fulfilling prophesy. The following is a list of women that he considered to have been (or might have been) Scarlet Women (quotes are from The Law is for All):

• Rose Edith Crowley , Crowley's first wife. —Put me in touch with Aiwas; see Equinox 1, 7, "The Temple of Solomon the King." Failed as elsewhere is on record.
• Mary d'Este Sturges . —Put me in touch with Abuldiz; hence helped with Book 4. Failed from personal jealousies.
• Jeanne Robert Foster . —Bore the "child" to whom this Book refers later. Failed from respectability.
• Roddie Minor —Brought me in touch with Amalantrah. Failed from indifference to the Work.
• Marie Rohling . —Helped to inspire Liber CXI. Failed from indecision.
• Bertha Almira Prykryl . —Delayed assumption of duties, hence made way for No. 7.
• Leah Hirsig —Assisted me in actual initiation; still at my side, An XVII, Sol in Sagittarius.
• Leila Waddell

The Great Mother

Within the Gnostic Mass, Babalon is mentioned in the Gnostic Creed:

And I believe in one Earth, the Mother of us all, and in one Womb wherein all men are begotten, and wherein they shall rest, Mystery of Mystery, in Her name BABALON.

Here, Babalon is identified with Binah on the Tree of Life, the sphere that represents the Great Sea and such mother-goddesses as Isis, Bhavani, and Ma'at. Moreover, she represents all physical mothers. Bishops T. Apiryon and Helena write:^[6]

BABALON, as the Great Mother, represents MATTER, a word which is derived from the Latin word for Mother. She is the physical mother of each of us, the one who provided us with material flesh to clothe our naked spirits; She is the Archetypal Mother, the Great Yoni, the Womb of all that lives through the flowing of Blood; She is the Great Sea, the Divine Blood itself which cloaks the World and which courses through our veins; and She is Mother Earth, the Womb of All Life that we know.

Origins

Babylon and Ishtar

Main articles: Babylon, Ishtar, and Inanna

Perhaps the earliest origin is the ancient city of Babylon, a major metropolis in Mesopotamia (modern Al Hillah in Iraq). Babylon is the Greek variant of Akkadian Babilu (bāb-ilû), meaning "Gateway of the god". It was the "holy city" of Babylonia from around 2300 BC, and the seat of the Neo-Babylonian empire from 612 BC. One of the goddesses associated with Babylonia was Ishtar, the most popular female deity of the Assyro-Babylonian pantheon and patron of the famous Ishtar Gate. She is the Akkadian counterpart to the Sumerian Inanna and the cognate to the northwest Semitic goddess Astarte. The Greeks associated her with Aphrodite (Latin Venus), and sometimes Hera. Ishtar was worshipped as a Great Goddess of fertility and sexuality, but also of war and death, and the guardian of prostitutes. She was also called the Great Whore and sacred prostitution formed part of her cult or those of cognate goddesses.^[7] Many have associated Ishtar with the figure in the Book of Revelation of Babylon the Great, Mother of Harlots and Abominations.^[8]

The Book of Revelation

The Whore of Babylon. Painted by Gnostic Saint William Blake in 1809.

Babylon is referred to in several places in St. John's Book of Revelation in the Bible (which certainly had an influence on Thelema—Aleister Crowley says he read it as a child and imagined himself as the Beast). She is described in Chapter 17:3-6:

So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.

Babylon is also addressed as a city, usually as an image of a once-glorious paradise that has fallen into ruin, a warning against the evils of decadence:

And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. ^[9]

Aleister Crowley recorded a revelation of his own in The Vision and the Voice, Second Aethyr, which suggests a non-Christian origin for some of this symbolism:

All I get is that the Apocalypse was the recension of a dozen or so totally disconnected allegories, that were pieced together, and ruthlessly planed down to make them into a connected account; and that recension was re-written and edited in the interests of Christianity, because people were complaining that Christianity could show no true spiritual knowledge, or any food for the best minds: nothing but miracles, which only deceived the most ignorant, and Theology, which only suited pedants. So a man got hold of this recension, and turned it Christian, and imitated the style of John. And this explains why the end of the world does not happen every few years, as advertised.

Enochian magic

Another source is from the system of Enochian magic created by Dr. John Dee and Sir Edward Kelley in the 16th century. This system is based upon a unique language, Enochian, two words of which are certainly relevant. The first is BABALOND, which is translated as harlot. The other is BABALON, which means wicked. Some flavour of context in which they appear in can be found in a communication received by Dee & Kelley in 1587:^[10]

I am the daughter of Fortitude, and ravished every hour from my youth. For behold I am Understanding and science dwelleth in me; and the heavens oppress me. They cover and desire me with infinite appetite; for none that are earthly have embraced me, for I am shadowed with the Circle of the Stars and covered with the morning clouds. My feet are swifter than the winds, and my hands are sweeter than the morning dew. My garments are from the beginning, and my dwelling place is in myself. The Lion knoweth not where I walk, neither do the beast of the fields understand me. I am deflowered, yet a virgin; I sanctify and am not sanctified. Happy is he that embraceth me: for in the night season I am sweet, and in the day full of pleasure. My company is a harmony of many symbols and my lips sweeter than health itself. I am a harlot for such as ravish me, and a virgin with such as know me not. For lo, I am loved of many, and I am a lover to many; and as many as come unto me as they should do, have entertainment. Purge your streets, O ye sons of men, and wash your houses clean; make yourselves holy, and put on righteousness. Cast out your old strumpets, and burn their clothes; abstain from the company of other women that are defiled, that are sluttish, and not so handsome and beautiful as I, and then will I come and dwell amongst you: and behold, I will bring forth children unto you, and they shall be the Sons of Comfort. I will open my garments, and stand naked before you, that your love may be more enflamed toward me.

See also

• Babalon Working
• Whore of Babylon
• Magical formula

Notes

1. ^ Magick Without Tears, ch.12
2. ^ The Cry of the 5th Aethyr
3. ^ The Vision & the Voice, 1998, p.54, 61, 131
4. ^ Grant, Kenneth. Nightside of Eden. London: Frederick Muller Limited. ISBN 0-584-10206-2
5. ^ The Vision & the Voice, 1998, p.129
6. ^ Apiryon, T; Helena (2001). Mystery of Mystery: A Primer of Thelemic Ecclesiastical Gnosticism (2nd ed.). Red Flame. ISBN 0971237611.
7. ^ Sources at [1] retrieved April 28, 2007.
8. ^ For example, this author at Endtime Prophecy Net, retrieved April 28, 2007.
9. ^ Revelation 18:1-5
10. ^ Dee, John (1659). A true & faithful relation of what passed for many years between Dr. John Dee ... and some spirits. London: Printed by D. Maxwell for T. Garthwait.

References

• The Bible, King James Version.
• Crowley, Aleister (1981), The Book of Thoth, Weiser
• Crowley, Aleister (1998), The Vision & the Voice : the Equinox, IV(2). York Beach, Me. : Samuel Weiser.
• Crowley, Aleister (1997), The Book of the Law [Liber AL vel Legis]. York Beach, Me. : S. Weiser.
• Crowley, Aleister (1996), Commentaries on the Holy Books and Other Papers : the Equinox,IV(1). York Beach, Me. : S. Weiser.
• Crowley, Aleister (1995), The Book of Lies. York Beach, Me. : S. Weiser.
• Crowley, Aleister (1997), "Liber V vel Reguli", Magick: Book 4, Weiser
• Crowley, Aleister (1997), "Liber XV", Magick: Book 4, Weiser
• Helena and Tau Apiryon (1998), The Creed of the Gnostic Catholic Church: an Examination.

External links

• The Book of Babalon by Jack Parsons.
• Liber Cheth Vel Vallum Abiegni Sub Figur CLVI, Thelemic Holy Book dealing with Babalon.
• Waratah-Blossoms, chapter on Babalon from Crowley's The Book of Lies.
• Kaos-Babalon 156 current, original approach to Babalon by Joel Biroco