Babalon

Origins

Whore of Babylon

The Whore of Babylon is referred to in several places in the Book of Revelation, a book which may have had an influence on Thelema, as Aleister Crowley says he read it as a child and imagined himself as the Beast. She is described in Chapter 17:3-6:

Aleister Crowley recorded his view of the Book of Revelation in The Vision and the Voice.

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.

Great Mother

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

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:

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 can be found in a communication received by Dee and Kelley in 1587:

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.

Gateway to the City of Pyramids (12th Aethyr)

Main article: A∴A∴#Milestones

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 its 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. From Crowley's book Magick Without Tears:

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

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 their ego-identity as an earthly individual. This aspect of Babalon is described further from the 12th Aethyr:

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!

Babalon's daughter (9th Aethyr)

One of the most extensive descriptions by Crowley of Babalon's daughter is to be found in The Vision and the Voice, 9th Aethyr, quoted in The Book of Thoth:

[From The Vision and the Voice, 9th Aethyr]

We are come unto a palace of which every stone is a separate jewel, and is set with millions of moons.

And this palace is nothing but the body of a woman, proud and delicate, and beyond imagination fair. She is like a child of twelve years old. She has very deep eyelids, and long lashes. Her eyes are closed, or nearly closed. It is impossible to say anything about her. She is naked; her whole body is covered with fine gold hairs, that are the electric flames which are the spears of mighty and terrible Angels whose breastplates are the scales of her skin. And the hair of her head, that flows down to her feet, is the very light of God himself. Of all the glories beheld by the Seer in the Aethyrs, there is not one which is worthy to be compared with her littlest finger-nail. For although he may not partake of the Aethyr, without the ceremonial preparations, even the beholding of this Aethyr from afar is like the par taking of all the former Aethyrs.

The Seer is lost in wonder, which is Peace.

And the ring of the horizon above her is a company of glorious Archangels with joined hands, that stand and sing: This is the daughter of BABALON the Beautiful, that she hath borne unto the Father of All. And unto all hath she borne her.

This is the Daughter of the King. This is the Virgin of Eternity. This is she that the Holy One hath wrested from the Giant Time, and the prize of them that have overcome Space. This is she that is set upon the Throne of Understanding. Holy, Holy, Holy is her name, not to be spoken among men. For Kore they have called her, and Malkah, and Betulah, and Persephone.

And the poets have feigned songs about her, and the prophets have spoken vain things, and the young men have dreamed vain dreams: but this is she, that immaculate, the name of whose name may not be spoken. Thought cannot pierce the glory that defendeth her, for thought is smitten dead before her presence. Memory is blank, and in the most ancient books of Magick are neither words to conjure her, nor adorations to praise her. Will bends like a reed in the tempests that sweep the borders of her kingdom, and imagination cannot figure so much as one petal of the lilies whereon she standeth in the lake of crystal, in the sea of glass.

This is she that hath bedecked her hair with seven stars, the seven breaths of God that move and thrill its excellence. And she hath tired her hair with seven combs, whereupon are written the seven secret names of God that are not known even of the Angels, or of the Archangels, or of the Leader of the armies of the Lord.

Holy, Holy, Holy art thou, and blessed be thy name for ever, unto whom the Aeons are but the pulsings of thy blood.}}

Cup of Babalon (5th Aethyr)

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."). 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 Petals.

In sex magic, the mixture of female sexual fluids and semen produced in the sexual act with the Scarlet Woman or Babalon is called the elixir of life. Another alternative form of this elixir is the Elixir Rubeus consisting of the menstrual blood and semen (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.

Office of the Scarlet Woman

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." In The Vision and the Voice, he wrote "This is Babalon, the true mistress of The Beast; of Her, all his mistresses on lower planes are but avatars." In The Law is for All, he writes:

Individual scarlet women

Aleister Crowley believed that many of his lovers and magical companions were playing a cosmic role, even to the point of fulfilling prophecy. The following is a list of women that he considered to have been (or might have been) Scarlet Women (quotations 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 Prykrl —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, also known as Laylah

Babalon Working

The Babalon Working was a series of magic ceremonies or rituals performed from January to March 1946 by author, pioneer rocket-fuel scientist and occultist Jack Parsons and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. This ritual was essentially designed to manifest an individual incarnation of Babalon. The project was based on the ideas of Aleister Crowley, and his description of a similar project in his 1917 novel Moonchild.

Rituals of the working

Almost immediately after Parsons declared that the first of the series of rituals was complete and successful, he met Marjorie Cameron in his own home, and regarded her as the elemental that he and Hubbard had called through the ritual. Soon Parsons began the next stage of the series, an attempt to conceive a child through sex magic workings. Although no child was conceived, this did not affect the result of the ritual to that point. Parsons and Cameron, who Parsons now regarded as the Scarlet Woman, Babalon, called forth by the ritual, soon married.

The rituals performed drew largely upon rituals and sex magic described by English author and occult teacher Aleister Crowley. Crowley was in correspondence with Parsons during the course of the Babalon Working, and warned Parsons of his potential overreactions to the magic he was performing, while simultaneously deriding Parsons' work to others.

''Liber 49, The Book of Babalon''

A brief text entitled Liber 49, self-referenced within the text as The Book of Babalon, was written by Jack Parsons as a transmission from the goddess or force called 'Babalon' received by him during the Babalon Working. Parsons wrote that Liber 49 constituted a fourth chapter of Crowley's Liber AL Vel Legis (The Book of the Law), the holy text of Thelema.

References

Citations

Works cited

Primary sources

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Secondary sources

References

1. "Revelation 17 KJV - And there came one of the seven angels - Bible Gateway". biblegateway.com.
2. ''The Vision and the Voice'', 9th Aethyr, quoted in ''The Book of Thoth'' pp. 143–144
3. Urban, Hugh B.. (2011). "The Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religion". Princeton University Press.
4. Urban, Hugh B.. (2006). "Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic, And Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism". University of California Press.
5. Nichols, Larry A.. (2010). "Encyclopedic Dictionary of Cults, Sects, and World Religions: Revised and Updated Edition". Zondervan.