Intermezzo

This chapter functions as a bridge between the previous chapters, which dealt with the historical esotericists who have described Babalon (primarily, Aleister Crowley, Jack Parsons, and Kenneth Grant), and my research on the contemporary Thelemic and esoteric milieu, outlined in the subsequent chapters. Based on existing research in the field done by other scholars, the chapter provides a brief outline of the landscape and development of contemporary esotericism, with some reflections on the demographic composition, values, and behavior of contemporary Thelemites and esotericists. Attention is paid to how feminist ideas—which have influenced the broader Neopagan and occult milieus from the 1970s onward—appear to have gained increasing influence within Thelema from at least the 1990s.

Her Banner Is Unfolded

The chapter introduces and discusses how Babalon was interpreted by the American rocket scientist and Thelemite John Whiteside “Jack” Parsons. In 1946, Parsons undertook a series of magical operations, aided by his lover Marjorie Cameron and L. Ron Hubbard, with the aim of manifesting Babalon on earth as a human woman. Likely influenced by libertarian socialist and feminist ideas, Parsons believed Babalon would incarnate as a messianic figure connected to female emancipation, religious freedom, and sexual liberation. A few years later, Parsons proclaimed himself the Antichrist and sought to promote a version of witchcraft that venerated Babalon alongside Lucifer. I argue that Parsons’s feminist vision of Babalon challenged hegemonic notions of femininity as passive and nurturing. Parsons emphasized Babalon and the Scarlet Woman as important figures in their own right rather than characters defined in relation to a male magician. However, Parsons also reproduced perceptions of femininity as intuitive and natural.

“Like Fire and Powder”

This chapter reviews the initial questions of the study, including how interpretations of Babalon relate to hegemonic notions of gender; and whether Babalon has the potential to function according to what Rosi Braidotti denotes as a “feminist figuration,” which indicates alternate ways of envisioning and inhabiting femininity. I conclude that the Babalon discourse appears to function in this way, providing a feminine symbolic that especially women and LGBTQ esotericists can identify with and indicating the desirability of nonmonogamous, nonreproductive, and sometimes also nonheterosexual modalities. This symbolic may not be equally accessible to all feminine subjects, because the Babalon discourse is historically situated and contingent on the social positionality of many contemporary esotericists. In summarizing the findings of this study, I assert that the Babalon discourse—lauding the propensity for erotic undoing—nonetheless profoundly challenges Western notions of bourgeois, masculine, and bounded subjectivity.

Possession and Dispossession

This chapter analyzes how bodily technologies are used to materialize a “Babalonian” body in written descriptions of rituals centered around Babalon. In several rituals, female esotericists utilize “technologies of femininity” (e.g., high heels, lingerie, makeup) to embody Babalon, whereas one male esotericist succumbs to ritual scarification in devotion to the goddess, explicitly describing this as analogous to feminine technologies. While feminist theorization has frequently referred to investment in feminine adornment and physical modification as trivial, subordinating, and restrictive, I stress that technology is implicated in all materializations of gender as well as ritual. Thus, I contend that the esotericists’ use of feminine technologies should be acknowledged as ritual techniques used by agential religious practitioners, while also producing a feminine body that is open, vulnerable, and partly restrained. Thus, the rituals discussed produce femininities that are neither exclusively determined by, nor completely independent of, the (heterosexual) male gaze.

Feminist Difference

This chapter analyzes how contemporary esotericists conceptualize Babalon as a challenge to hegemonic perceptions of femininity. As highlighted in previous chapters, the 1990s onward has witnessed increasing gender-critical awareness in the esoteric milieu. Present-day esotericists connect Babalon to assertiveness, liberated sexuality, sexual aggression, and dominance, thus presenting her as a symbol that runs counter to normative ideas about femininity as nurturing, maternal, soft, and family-oriented. The chapter also explores how the Babalon discourse intersects with critiques of historical Western esotericism and Thelema as well as how esotericists today address perceived sexism in the writings of Crowley and other male occultists. A number of esoteric writers and practitioners posit Babalon as the epitome of the empowered woman magician. While some of these interpretations emphasize the link between femininity and biology, others stress femininity as something more flexible in ways that acknowledge genderqueer and transgendered experience.

Inhabiting the Uninhibited

This chapter analyzes how feminine sexuality is articulated in the contemporary Babalon discourse. The idea that female sexuality has been repressed, and that women are in need of sexual liberation, is a recurring trope in the source material. Babalon is frequently conceptualized as a sexually liberated woman. She is also associated with sexual modalities outside of the sexual norm (e.g., sex work, BDSM, and nonmonogamy). My interviewees critique expectations of female sexual availability resulting from notions of Babalon as a “sex goddess,” and they emphasize the right to decline unwanted sexual advances. I argue that understandings of feminine sexuality in the contemporary Babalon discourse show influence from (sex positive) feminism and broader discourses on sacred sexuality, with concepts of “sacred whoredom” recurring. I also contend that notions of universally repressed female sexuality, prevalent in the Babalon discourse, obscure racialized and classed inequalities between groups of women and femininities.

Yielding Peaches and Women with Whips

This chapter analyzes how Aleister Crowley’s ideas about Babalon and the Scarlet Woman—a title Crowley bestowed upon his most important female lovers and magical partners, designating them earthly representatives of Babalon—developed after 1909, when Crowley increasingly systematized his magical teachings. In 1912, Crowley became British head of Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), an initiatory fraternity claiming to possess the secret of sexual magic, which subsequently became increasingly important to his magical practice. In 1920, Crowley cofounded a religious commune, the Abbey of Thelema, in Cefalù, Sicily, with his lover and disciple Leah Hirsig, who became Crowley’s Scarlet Woman. Later in life, Crowley developed Babalon’s function further in a number of texts. I argue that Crowley’s Babalon—by symbolizing assertive and transgressive feminine sexuality and the erotic threat to stable, bounded subjectivity—both reifies and challenges dominant perceptions of femininity and feminine sexuality in the early twentieth century.

The Scarlet Goddess and the Wine of Her Fornications

Beginning with an overview of feminine stereotypes in fin-de-siècle culture, the chapter introduces Aleister Crowley and his concepts of Babalon and the related figure of the Scarlet Woman. An unconventional figure and founder of the religion Thelema, Crowley led an openly bisexual life and advocated free sexuality. In 1909, Crowley experimented with Enochian magic in the Algerian desert with his lover and disciple Victor B. Neuburg, beholding a series of visions, including one featuring a great goddess. Based on a positive reinterpretation of the Whore of Babylon (Rev. 17), Crowley linked this goddess—called Babalon—to the initiatory ordeal of crossing the Abyss, when the seeker must annihilate their ego to become one with all. I argue that Crowley’s articulation of Babalon built on the fin-de-siècle trope of the femme fatale, which he reinterpreted as a soteriological ideal, thus challenging notions of feminine sexual modesty and bourgeois, masculine rationality.

Kundalini, Kalas, and Qadeshim

This chapter analyzes how Babalon was articulated in the writings of the British occultist Kenneth Grant, who was briefly Crowley’s secretary. Influenced by Indian Tantra and Advaita Vedanta, Grant challenged Crowley’s understanding of sexual magic, and emphasized the magical primacy of the female sexual secretions (or kalas). Grant uses the terms “Babalon” and “Scarlet Woman” synonymously to denote the trained sexual priestess who exudes the kalas and transmits the tremendous power of the divine feminine. Grant’s interpretation of Babalon is, in some sense, biologistic, with female embodiment and genital morphology being central to his conceptualization of femininity in magic. However, Grant also presents one of the earliest critiques of androcentrism in Crowley’s magical system. His articulation of Babalon—and femininity—can be interpreted as an attempt to conceptualize femininity as something in itself, rather than being defined in relation to masculinity.

Encountering the Scarlet Goddess

This chapter sets the scene for the study by briefly introducing some of its core contents and defining the aim of the book: to analyze constructions of femininity and feminine sexuality in interpretations of the goddess Babalon from the fin-de-siècle until today. The chapter presents Babalon and her origins in the writings of the British occultist Aleister Crowley and establishes the focus of the study. The idea of a “Babalon discourse,” comprising written, verbal, textual, and embodied interpretations of the goddess, is introduced. The source material for the present study is related to broader categories within the history of religions, such as Western esotericism, occultism, and magic, which are briefly explained and demarcated. Sources and methodology are cursorily presented, and the chapter concludes with an outline of the study.