You who are waiting for me, take me to yourselves.
And do not pursue me from your vision.
And do not make your sound hate me, nor your hearing.
Do not be ignorant of me at any place or any time.
Be on guard!
Do not be ignorant of me.
For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored and the scorned,
I am the harlot and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother and the daughter.
I am the members of my mother.
I am the barren one and the one with many children.
I am she whose marriage is multiple, and I have not taken a husband.
I am the midwife and she who does not give birth.
I am the comforting of my labor pains.
I am the bride and the bridegroom.
It is my husband who begot me.
I am the mother of my father and the sister of my husband.
And he is my offspring.
I am the servant of him who prepared me and I am the lord of my offspring.
But he is the one who begot me before time on a day of birth and he is my offspring in time, and my power is from him.
I am the staff of his power in his youth and he is the rod of my old age. And whatever he wills happens to me.
I am the incomprehensible silence and the much-remembered thought.
I am the voice of many sounds and the utterance of many forms.
I am the utterance of my name.
Why, you who hate me, do you love me
And hate those who love me?
You who deny me, confess me,
And you who confess me, deny me.
You who speak the truth about me, tell lies about me,
And you who have told lies about me, speak the truth about me.
You who know me, become ignorant of me; and may those who have been ignorant of me come to know me.
For I am knowledge and ignorance.
I am shame and boldness.
I am unashamed, I am ashamed.
I am strength and I am fear.
I am war and peace.
Give heed to me.
I am the disgraced and the exalted one.
These are the words of Thunder, Perfect Mind, written sometime in the early centuries of the Common Era, when ancient philosophy, and paganism, and mystery religions, and Christianity, created a stew of belief called Gnosticism. Who is this woman that contains multitudes? Surely, to encompass such a dichotomy of being, these are the clams of a goddess. But who?
The statement, “I am” echoes the ancient hymns sung to Isis. For the Gnostics, Isis was analogous to the principle of Sophia, the representation of wisdom, and in her way a manifestation of YHVH’s wife Asherah. And so we have, almost two millennia before Gardner, a universal feminine divine.
I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that John of Patmos, just across the Mediterranean Sea from the hotbed of Gnosticism heating up in Egypt, would have heard these ideas and been alarmed. While he had much reason to hate the Roman government at the time, John himself was Roman. His screed against Emperor Nero was probably only part of his beef. A rail against the current regime. If he was anything like his fellow Romans, who found the comforts of order irresistible, the idea of One God, One King, One Law, was being challenged. And to many a church founder’s total dismay, being challenged by those who identified as Christian.
It seems too good to be true. That a goddess fitting the bill did exist a mere 500 miles across the Roman pond where John the Revelator wrote about her with awe and disgust. That she meets all the requirements in the Kabalistic sense as well. The she is, our Babalon, the wisdom of womanhood.
Alas, John and Constantine’s need for order were aligned. The council of Nicaea purged all Gnosticism from the burgeoning Christianity. The Emperor of the East, knowing a good idea when he saw one, conquered under the sign of the One God, with his One King, One Law, and for a time, One Church. The victors write the history and the Bible, and she is relegated to the role of apocalyptic boogie-woman. Sexed-up, with a touch of the old symbolism, yes, but no doubt a villain in John’s tale.
It’s another thousand years until another mystic gives her a chance. Words strangely similar to Thunder, Perfect Mind, are received by the famous magician John Dee and his seer Edward Kelly. Kelly described her to Dee, saying:
“All her attire is like beaten gold; she hath on her forehead a cross crystalline, her neck and breast are bare unto under her dugs. She hath a girdle of beaten gold slackly buckled unto her with a pendant of gold down to the ground.”
And to Kelly she spoke:
“I am the daughter of fortitude and ravished every hour from my youth. For behold, I am understanding,”
No coy allusions, she is the goddess of wisdom.
“ and science dwelleth in me; and the heavens oppress me. They covet and desire me with infinite appetite; for none that are earthly have embraced me, for I am shadowed with the circle of the sun, 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 my self. The lion knoweth not where I walk, neither do the beasts of the field understand me. I am….”
Once again, “I am” echoes, the same as the prayers given to Isis before the birth of Christ. She the same as she did to her priests and priestesses. It’s hard to believe that an Oxford drop-out has knowledge of the ancient prayers.
“deflowered, and yet a virgin; I sanctify, and am not sanctified.”
Once again, she is the all encompassing between the opposites.
“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 by many, and I am a lover to many; and as many as come unto me as they should do, have my knowledge.
As yet, I walk in the clouds; as yet, I am carried by the winds, and cannot descend unto them. For the multitude of their abominations, and the filthy loathsomeness of their dwelling places.
Purge your streets, o ye sons of men, and wash your houses clean; make yourselves holy, and put on the garments of truth. Cast out your old strumpets, and burn their clothes; avoid the company of the profane, for they do not know me and then will I come and dwell amongst you. I will open my garments, and stand naked before you, that your love may be more enflamed towards me. And behold, I will bring forth children unto you, and they shall be the sons of love in the age that is to come.”
Alas, more vizier than witch, Dee is disturbed by these words. Later, when the spirits tell Kelly that all things are to be shared, even their wives, Dee and Kelly have a falling out. It is not known if the two ever went through with it. Kelly called the spirit that instructed them to swap wives, Madimi. Was this some emissary of Babalon?
It certainly followed her modus operandi. For in future encounters we will see a goddess that uses the most powerful tool in her arsenal—sex—to change the minds of men. It’s this power that men fear. It’s the power that demonizes Salome. It’s the power that topples kingdoms and kings. The ultimate eschaton lies between her legs, capable of destroying everything you think you know about yourself and what you are capable of.
But the always reluctant Dee refuses her, and she moves on to easier prey.
She waits another three hundred years to find the perfect emissary—strong willed, virile, magically endowed—a man with appetites. After surviving a soul-crushing childhood in a household of Plymouth Brethren, a sect that found Anglicanism just too racy, our Dear Old Uncle Al was ready to embrace anything that his parents were against. That included the ultimate bad girl of Revelations. Crowley fetishized the image of her astride the Beast, especially since he saw himself as the Beast she should be riding.
He describes her power:
“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!”
She’s the most interesting figure never mentioned in the Book of the Law. And it seems at times that Crowley doesn’t know what to do with her. For him she remains eternally across the Abyss. Not for lack of wanting. Crowley pursues her as water for a man in the desert. But he never gives in to her. His giant ego prevents it.
She at least gets mention in the Gnostic Mass, and makes the short list for the Gnostic Creed. It’s also plainly obvious that the words of the priestess in the Gnostic Mass are the words of Babalon. Once again, we see the chain as the words sound familiar to those who have read about Dee and Kelly’s encounter.
The PRIESTESS speaks: “But to love me is better than all things; if under the night-stars in the desert thou presently burnest mine incense before me, invoking me with a pure heart, and the serpent flame therein, thou shalt come a little to lie in my bosom. For one kiss wilt thou then be willing to give all; but whoso gives one particle of dust shall lose all in that hour. Ye shall gather goods and store of women and spices; ye shall wear rich jewels; ye shall exceed the nations of the earth in splendour and pride; but always in the love of me, and so shall ye come to my joy. I charge you earnestly to come before me in a single robe, and covered with a rich head-dress. I love you! I yearn to you! Pale or purple, veiled or voluptuous, I who am all pleasure and purple, and drunkenness of the innermost sense, desire you. Put on the wings, and arouse the coiled splendour within you: come unto me!” [Liber AL, I:61] “To me! To me!” [Liber AL, I:62] “Sing the rapturous love-song unto me! Burn to me perfumes! Wear to me jewels! Drink to me, for I love you! I love you. I am the blue-lidded daughter of sunset; I am the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night-sky. To me! To me!”
Crowley never follows his own instructions. Incapable of surrendering himself, he transforms her into a concept and nails her to the Tree of Life where she can die a slow death. Then he turns her into an “office” as if she were a mere figurehead. Crowley’s molls are dubbed Scarlet Woman, and they somehow manage to be under the Beast they are supposed to ride. At least until he tires of them, or they of him, and he picks another.
This is not surprising. For once again we have a court wizard proclaiming her. Crowley is so much better at organizing tables and abstracting the universe into ten convenient sephiroth to truly experience her power. And she must be experienced. Thelema, and here I am talking about big T Thelema, the faith not the concept, is another solar-centric religion that has God the Sun at the center. Thelema, like its founder, cannot truly represent her because it will not give itself over completely to pagan ways. Though they claim ownership, and some ridiculously try to separate her from the whore of Revelations, she’s not their goddess. At least not entirely.
Thelema suffers because, in the end, Crowley never got over his fear of God the Father. “I never hated the one true God, just the god of the people I hated,” does not leave room for a goddess.
Luckily, Crowley rubs off just enough on the hero who comes to her rescue. Her champion. Her Marvel. That would be Marvel Whiteside Parsons, who later changed his name to John, and was known as Jack to his friends. The American rocket scientist, inspired by tales of Greek Fire, created the fuel that sent men to the moon and was the basis for all the solid fuel NASA used for decades.
He understood that you couldn’t usher in the eschaton while sitting next to the powers that be. That you need to side with the people, because all movements have always come from the ground up. It’s the people that say “no more,” and cause the wheel to turn, not the scholars and schemers, who only later co-opt the movement for their own ends.
In Parson’s book, Freedom is a Two-Edged Sword, he does not declare himself Catholic. He does not hide in the library. He is out on the heath with the people. He names the true disciples of Babalon:
“WE ARE THE WITCHCRAFT. We are the oldest organization in the world. When man was born, we were. We sang the first cradle song. We healed the first wound, we comforted the first terror. We were the Guardians against the Darkness, the Helpers on the Left Hand Side. Rock drawings in the Pyrenees remember us, and little clay images, made for an old purpose when the world was new. Our hand was on the old stone circles, the monolith, the dolmen, and the druid oak. We sang the first hunting songs, we made the first crops to grow; when man stood naked before the Powers that made him, we sang the first chant of terror and wonder. We wooed among the Pyramids, watched Egypt rise and fall, ruled for a space in Chaldea and Babylon, the Magian Kings. We sat among the secret assemblies of Israel, and danced the wild and stately dances in the sacred groves of Greece.”
“Sometimes we move openly, sometimes in silence and in secret. Night and day are one to us, calm and storm, seasons and the cycles of man, all these things are one, for we are at the roots. Supplicant we stand before the Powers of Life and Death, and are heard of these Powers, and avail. Our way is the secret way, the unknown direction. Our way is the way of the serpent in the underbrush, our knowledge is in the eyes of goats and of women.”