In its entirety for the first time. I think I make my views on this pretty clear.
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 claims 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. That 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 the words, “I am” echoes. The same as Thunder, Perfect Mind. The same as the prayers given to Isis before the birth of Christ. It’s hard to believe that an Oxford drop-out has knowledge of the ancient prayers before those in the West even learned to decipher hieroglyphs.
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 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, though not for lack of wanting. Crowley pursues her as a man in the desert pursues water. 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! To me! To me! 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 than truly experiencing 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 in the darkened wood 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 Magician 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.
Always a rebel, Jack Parsons ignores Crowley’s warnings and performs his own magnum opus, the Babalon Working. From it, in an act of supreme arrogance and disregard for his superiors in the OTO, he produces his own chapter for Crowley’s precious Book of the Law. Finally, the Red Goddess gets her due in Liber 49 – The Book of Babalon.
From the get-go, Parsons recognized just how fucked the Age of the Tantrum Throwing Brat Prince has become. He calls the Aeon of Horus the shit-storm that it is in the introduction to the Book of Babalon. He writes:
The present age is under the influence of the force called, in magical terminology, Horus. This force relates to fire, Mars, and the sun, that is, to power, violence, and energy. It also relates to a child, being innocent (i.e. undifferentiated). Its manifestations may be noted in the destruction of old institutions and ideas, the discovery and liberation of new energies, and the trend towards power governments, war, homosexuality, infantilism, and schizophrenia.
This force is completely blind, depending upon the men and women in whom it manifests and who guide it. Obviously, its guidance now tends towards catastrophe.
The catastrophic trend is due to our lack of understanding of our own natures. The hidden lusts, fears, and hatreds resulting from the warping of the love urge, which underly the natures of all Western peoples, have taken a homicidal and suicidal direction.
This impasse is broken by the incarnation of another sort of force, called BABALON. The nature of this force relates to love, understanding, and dionysian freedom, and is the necessary counterbalance or correspondence to the manifestation of Horus.
The book also contains instructions on how to honor Her. They seem a bit less restrained than the derivative Gnostic Mass:
And gather my children unto me, for THE TIME is at hand.
And this is the way of my incarnation. Heed!
Thou shalt offer all thou art and all thou hast at my altar, withholding nothing. And thou shalt be smitten full sore and thereafter thou shalt be outcast and accursed, a lonely wanderer in abominable places.
Not the description of a bunch of solid citizens. These are the kind that throw Sabbaths on blasted heaths. As She instructs:
Gather together in the covens as of old, whose number is eleven, that is also my number.
Gather together in public, in song and dance and festival. Gather together in secret, be naked and shameless and rejoice in my name.
Work your spells by the mode of my book, practicing secretly, inducing the supreme spell.
The work of the image, and the potion and the charm, the work of the spider and the snake, and the little ones that go in the dark, this is your work.
Who loves not hates, who hates fears, let him taste fear.
This is the way of it, star, star. Burning bright, moon, witch moon.
You the secret, the outcast, the accursed and despised, even you that gathered privily of old in my rites under the moon.
You the free, the wild, the untamed, that walk now alone and forlorn.
Of the woman who is to be Her vessel, Parsons transcribes:
But let her think on this: my way is not in the solemn ways, or in the reasoned ways, but in the wild free way of the eagle, and the devious way of the serpent, and the oblique way of the factor unknown and unnumbered.
Her ways are not shackled by astrological determinism or gematria number games. Her ways are the witch ways.
And unlike Crowley, there are no Victorian mealy-mouthed metaphors.
Thy tears, thy sweat, thy blood, thy semen, thy love, thy faith shall provide. Ah, I shall drain thee like the cup that is of me, BABALON.
Let me behold thee naked and lusting after me, calling upon my name.
Let me receive all thy manhood within my Cup, climax upon climax, joy upon joy.
Apologists for Crowley often say that he worked within the constraints of Victorian sensibilities. That he disguised his sexual metaphor in order to avoid persecution. Maybe it’s true. But Parsons wrote this in 1945, when sodomy was still illegal, even in California. Truly he was a man ahead of his time.
But being only a man, he falls into the same trap as Crowley. He sees his manifestation of Babalon, his Scarlet Woman, as a possession. To his dismay she never manifests her true destiny. Parsons would die in fire, an accident that happened while he mixed explosives, a request from a film company.
As the newly born OTO went through its first growing pains, dwindling to just a few members, so did interest in Babalon dwindle. In a story most of us know, it took the licentious 60s to reignite interest in the metaphysical. Crowley’s glowering image on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s, was a ghost that whispered in the ears of those who were building the counter-culture. If the Ordo Templi Orientis is to be credited with anything, it’s the task of keeping the idea of Babalon alive until it could once again find fertile soil.
We have another fifty years until a new prophet emerges. She presents Herself to another Englishman, for on that tiny island we have a unique mélange of an ineffectual and tepid Christian church, and significant magical subcultures, including: Wicca, Druidism, Thelema, Neo-Paganism, Reconstructionists, and chaos magicians. A man dedicated to the old ways, who started a publishing company just to print the book devoted to her. Peter Grey, founder of Scarlet Imprint, knows where the power of Babalon comes from, and he is not afraid.
In The Red Goddess, he says:
BABALON IS LUST, sexual, primal power. Lust knows no limits. Lust violates moral sense. Lust is strength, vitality and joy. Lust is action. Why do we hesitate to call Babalon a Goddess of Love? Love has been bled almost to death, drained to an insipid pink when it should be a shameless scarlet. The commercialized face of Love is the very opposite of Lust, a weak, warm fuzz of nebulous good feeling. The arrows of Eros are no longer barbed, but smothered in sentiment. The hounds of Love are muzzled. It is a product without passion, a stupefying cocoon.
For the first time, Babalon has a purpose. She’s here to rescue love from greeting card companies and bad romance novels. She’s here to rescue women from sexual denial and repression. She’s here to rescue all of us from our monolithic, monotheistic, misogynistic culture.
To approach the Holy Whore is to reclaim our pagan heritage from the distorted lies of Christianity. To some this may sound profoundly Satanic, but this is not the inversion of Christianity that leads down a pathway to the Black Mass, the ill use of goats and truly bad music. This is a breaking of the seals on our pagan past and rediscovering our primal power. It is a journey beyond taboo into the dark places of our souls.
However, later on in The Red Goddess, Peter Grey backpedals and exposes the virtues of the Black Mass.
THE BLACK MASS IS SPIRITUAL TERRORISM, an act of defiance against the dominant Christian empire. Discounted as mere inversion or straight perversion by many witches, magickians and pagans, this is in fact our Tantra. As such the Black Mass deserves a place in the history of Babalon. We should not forget that She is here to bring forth the Antichrist.
Our society is not Hindi, it is Christian beneath the secular gloss. Our taboos and social structure are very different to those of India, so it makes more sense to use our native traditions to achieve our liberation. We may not be medieval peasants, but we all need to destroy our Christian conditioning if we want to be free. The Black Mass is the perfect way to do this. We have all made pacts with the Horned One in childhood, should we not go on from this and join him in celebrations at least one night a year? Why pussy-foot around the subject of the Devil? Why are we afraid to affirm, like the Cathars, that Christ was a false prophet? Surely it cannot hurt to indulge in a little blasphemy? If we are unwilling to consider the Black Mass as an integral part of our magickal history then we are failing to challenge ourselves at the deepest levels.
I think it’s important to look carefully at what is said and unsaid here. I for one, would not advocate spitting venom on Christians. Not only because openly fighting the dominant religious power is suicide, but it violates the principles of that bind us together—the central belief in, “Do as thou wilt.” If I were to vilify Christians for choosing to follow the Prince of Peace, I would be just as guilty as the Evangelicals. While I fail to understand why they would choose the neuter path, good luck to them in their quest.
What is advocated, and what Babalon facilitates, is a breaking down of our own ingrained, oftentimes subconscious, prohibitions. One must be willing to burn a Bible in the comforts of their own temple. Not as an act of denigration, but as a way to destroy one’s own vestigial need to obey. Babalon will, if you give yourself over to her, finally get you to truly accept, in your heart and soul, that nothing is true, and everything is permitted.
Service to Babalon also requires a disdain for those who would misuse power as a means of repression and control. If you do not already track to antinomian tendencies, She may not be the Goddess for you. It’s important to reiterate here that this is not an attack on those victimized by power. Our only duty to them is to let them know how much fun we’re having. Those who follow the witch ways should not seek to replace those in dominion.
What She really wants is complete self-immolation in the cause of complete freedom. Most eloquently, Peter Grey puts it:
We must aim for liberation. Babalon is at war with limitation. For you that may be Christianity or Islam or Capitalist consumerism. Her injunction is simple: Destroy all limits with Love.
This leads us to the ultimate reason why a magician would submit themselves to the ultimate chaos that is Babalon.
For the Apocalypse, of course.
That word, however, has become synonymous with Armageddon, the horror show that leads up to the Battle of Megiddo, where Christ and Anti-Christ slug it out by proxy. I am fairly certain that’s not the end product we seek. To describe what we want, a sea-change in consciousness, a universal acceptance of law of thelema, modern magicians and idealists have adopted the word Eschaton. Eschaton is the end, and a new beginning. Eschaton is acceptance of humans as part of the biosphere, and as spiritual beings. Eschaton is the overturning of current political systems to something of the people.
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, I see little evidence of this. 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