Some believe this means destroying and leaving behind civilization. There are those among us that look into the mouth of the Beast of the Apocalypse and fear. They say, “Go back! Retreat to the farms and the woods. Hide in the faerie places. We must abandon our folly!” They pretend that we can put the genie back in the bottle.
The idea is foolishness. The Singularity is here. The Aeon of Horus flares out quickly like the temper tantrum of a crowned and conquering child.
Many would also argue that we just haven’t given Horus a chance. All this bloodshed is just the growing pains of a new aeon. We only have to wait a bit more before his illumination shines upon us.
I’m sorry, I just don’t trust a warrior god, especially one with his numbers.
No aeon in our history directly coincides with its revelation. The prophecy either comes before or after the event. In this case, The Book of the Law comes woefully too late to act as a warning, it is only an explanation. A window into a change of psyche towards infantilism. Only this child does more than pluck the wings off butterflies. Hindsight pegs the start of the Aeon of Horus at the Enlightenment. An age that culminates with the rise of Napoleon, who introduces us to the citizen army, so that whole nations can participate in the orgy of bloodshed. Since then we have had:
The Napoleonic Wars: 3,500,000 dead.
The American Civil War: 750,000 dead.
The Russo-Japanese War: 136,000 dead.
The Franco-Prussian War: 167,000 dead
World War I: 16 million dead.
World War II: 60 million dead.
And the accompanying Holocaust with over 10 million dead.
None of this includes the colonial genocides of indigenous people or all the other wars before, between, or since. This is not a hiccup. These are not growing pains. This is a record indicative of a world gone mad. While war was certainly a constant in the ages before, seldom were they mass slaughter. Ancient wars are characterized by ceremonial combat and fighting between the warrior classes. Modern war is death and the targeting of civilians.
Now you’re saying, “We’re fucked. An Aeon lasts a millennia at least.”
That may not necessarily be so. There is every indication that the progress of aeons, like computer processing power, flows exponentially. Using our most familiar aeonic system, if you perceive the Aeon of Isis as goddess centered, hunter-gatherer, pre-history, then it lasted a good 140,000 years. If the Aeon of Osiris is god centered, agricultural, and civilized, then it only lasted a mere 12,000 years at the most. How long will the Aeon of Horus last? Will it be a tenth or a hundredth of that ruled by Osiris? Time will tell.
Our job as magicians is to promulgate the character that the new aeon will take. This time there’s too much at stake to lose to the Black Brothers.
First thing, to prevent our Eschaton from becoming Armageddon, we must get back into harmony with nature. The only way to do this is to know our nature. As it is writ large over the entrance of the great temple at Delphi, where the Oracles gave their wisdom – Know Thyself.
Once again, we can look to the Red Goddess.
As noted, she was with us from the start of civilization in her holy land between the Tigris and the Euphrates. And thousands of years before when we made rough-hewn fetishes of a goddess that was all tits and hips and cunt. Yet as old as the Goddess of Willendorf is, her age is but a fraction of the 150,000 years that have passed since homo sapiens stood upright on the plains of Africa.
If we are to know ourselves, isn’t it vital to know who we were at the beginning? Who we have been for the vast majority of human history before we built cities? Sadly, little can be known.
Little, but we do know some things.
The first thing we can examine is our own biology, hardly changed since those times. We are one of the few mammals with no estrous cycle. Humans are ready to fuck at the drop of the loin cloth. In its place, the menstrual cycle regulates breeding but not appetites.
Human males sport a larger penis and larger testicles than all save one of the primates. But gentlemen, before you pound your chest in pride over having a dick bigger than a gorilla’s, it’s time to bust some common myths.
The idea that females are the coy, demure, and reserved half of the species when it comes to sex has proven to be absurd. The idea that females choose mates based on their loyalty and ability to provide for children is equally false. These ideas are but a thin veneer painted onto womankind by misogynist civilizations.
The truth is, the size of our organs developed solely for sperm competition. True natural selection takes place on the microscopic battlefield. Our big cocks and unique thrusting motion are designed to remove previous semen deposits. Our giant testicles produce huge amounts of sperm in order to overcome a rival’s forces within the womb.
In case you haven’t caught on, this means, biologically, we are designed to fuck a woman who has sex with multiple males at the same time. In essence, each vagina is a Holy Grail, holding the “blood” of many “saints.”
Why is it beneficial for a species to be veritable fuck machines? Perhaps we can turn to our closest genetic relatives, that one primate that does have bigger balls than us – the bonobo ape. While other primates, when confronted with a new source of food, will proceed to pummel each other senseless so that the biggest, strongest, and most violent get the largest share, bonobos take a different approach. Upon discovering an abundance of food the matriarchal bonobos throw an orgy. Only after renewing their social bonds and blowing off steam – male on female, female on female, and male on male – do they take their time and share the feast as equally as they can.
You may be saying at this point, “nothing is true, everything is permitted.” We are magicians. We are not bound to what has been. We can be anything.
Maybe so, but the question remains. Which ape would you rather be, the warrior chimp or sex-loving bonobo? Me, I side with Babalon’s breed.
If we, as magicians, envision a new era where war is anathema, an aeon of peace and cooperation, an aeon with no restrictions on who and how we love, than we must turn to Babalon, as both a role model and a standard bearer for a new age to come.
Is the next aeon then the Aeon of the Red Goddess? I think Parsons had it right when he saw Babalon as a means to temper and then destroy the Aeon of Horus if necessary, not as the main aeonic current. As a witch goddess she represents the other, the outsiders. She can never truly be of an age, because She always seeks to destroy an age.
What will replace The Crowned and Conquering Child remains unknown. As I have said, it is up to us, as magicians, as cultural warriors, and people of a shared planet.
If the law of this age is, “Do as thou Will,” perhaps we should ponder what the law of the next age should be. Some say we will move straight on to a magical paradigm, an Aeon of Baphomet. Sadly, there’s little evidence to support that conclusion. For those who wish to see, however, the nature of the next aeon seems radically clear.
If doing what we will without forethought has shown to be a recipe for catastrophe, perhaps now we can step back, examine the wreckage for evidence and learn something from it.
Knowledge is key. We can see it exploding all around us. We have created a knowsphere, a memesphere, a reality of pure information of titanic proportion and potential.
Perhaps, “Know thy True Will,” shall be the whole of the Law in the next aeon.
For the first time in human history, this may be possible.
If thelema has elevated us to gods, then do we not suffer the same limitations as the godhead? If creation is nothing but what we will it to be, how can we know anything else? How can we look at ourselves when we have no other perception? How can we truly know ourselves when we have no one else’s opinion?
We must do then what gods do. We must create.
The next aeon—the Aeon of Thoth—when we truly know ourselves, can happen, most likely will happen, when we perfect artificial intelligence. Among the technological eschatologists this is called the Singularity, when our machines become smarter than we are, and design even smarter machines, until the exponential explosion of knowledge makes all things possible. Perhaps then Baphomet will come around.
For now, it’s time for me and men like me to stand aside. I appear before you today completely embarrassed because I am not a worthy messenger. For all the prophets of Babalon I have named have had a single characteristic, a cock. Perhaps genitalia are not the defining characteristic of gender, but all of them have certainly identified themselves as male. Sorry to all you androgynous as well, Babalon has always been a decidedly female goddess.
What we need, and perhaps what this aeon has made possible, is for a woman to be the penultimate scion of Babalon. While women have held power, and been her disciples, and served her throughout the ages, their voices have been squashed and erased by the patriarchal culture at large. Remember, it was Rose Kelly that was first visited by Aiwass. Crowley was only following instructions.
It’s time for the Beast to lope aside, stop gnashing his teeth and hogging the spotlight. He was always just Babalon’s ride anyway. Let her come forth, banner in her left hand, grail in her right, girt in love, the sword of lust at her side. Bring on the new aeon.
Ave Babalon