Babalon, Scarlet Woman, the Great Mother is a divine feminine archetype

Babalon is a divine feminine figure in Thelema, the spiritual system that Aleister Crowley founded with The Book of the Law in 1904. She is also called the Scarlet Woman, the Great Mother and the Mother of Abominations. She joins femininity, sexuality, power and transformation in one figure.

Characteristics of Babalon

1. Divine feminine power
   Babalon stands for a sacred feminine energy without restraint. It nurtures and it destroys. She is the creative power of the feminine in its fullest form.
2. Sexual liberation
   Babalon is the archetype of sacred sexuality. She is linked with taking back sexual power and with joining spiritual and physical desire. She breaks the taboos around sex and shows it as a divine force.
3. Cosmic mother
   As the Great Mother, Babalon is a source of life and a vessel of transformation. She is bound up with the cycles of creation and destruction.
4. Mystical wisdom
   She is linked with the search for hidden knowledge and mystical truth. She calls those who seek her to be true to themselves and to go beyond the norms of society.
5. The cup
   In Thelemic cosmology Babalon holds the “Cup of Fornication”. It stands for the universal womb, the vessel that receives all experience. Those who drink from her cup give up the ego and merge with the infinite. In The Vision and the Voice Crowley calls it “the cup of her whoredom”.

Symbolism

1. Scarlet
   Scarlet is her colour. It stands for passion, life force and divine power, and it points to sacrifice and transformation.
2. The Beast
   Babalon often rides the Beast, a symbol of raw, untamed energy. Together they stand for the union of spirit and matter, or of divine will and its form on earth.
3. Liberation through transgression
   Her path often breaks with social and moral rules. It asks people to face their shadow side and to reach their full potential.

Key texts

1. The Book of the Law
   Crowley’s Liber AL vel Legis does not use the name Babalon. It speaks of the Scarlet Woman, and through her Babalon stands for love, strength and freedom.

Now ye shall know that the chosen priest & apostle of infinite space is the prince-priest the Beast; and in his woman called the Scarlet Woman is all power given.

Aleister Crowley, Liber AL vel Legis I:15

The Scarlet Woman holds all power. The Book of the Law pairs the Beast with his woman, the Scarlet Woman, and gives all power to her.

2. The Vision and the Voice
   Crowley records his visions of Babalon here. He describes her dwelling in the City of the Pyramids, where she offers the final transcendence to initiates. In the 12th Aethyr (1909) the Beast she rides is the Lord of that city.

Glory unto the Scarlet Woman, Babalon the Mother of Abominations, that rideth upon the Beast, for she hath spilt their blood in every corner of the earth and lo! she hath mingled it in the cup of her whoredom.

Aleister Crowley, The Vision and the Voice, 12th Aethyr

Babalon and her cup. Crowley praises Babalon, who rides the Beast and gathers the blood of the saints in her cup.

And the Beast whereon she rideth is the Lord of the City of the Pyramids, that I beheld in the fourteenth Aethyr.

Aleister Crowley, The Vision and the Voice, 12th Aethyr

The Beast and the City of the Pyramids. Crowley names the Beast that Babalon rides as the Lord of the City of the Pyramids.

3. Parallels with other goddesses
   Babalon has parallels with other divine feminine figures such as Inanna and Ishtar, Kali and Sophia. Each of them carries part of destruction, creation, wisdom and empowerment.

Babalon invites us to explore the mysteries of existence through self-liberation, the merging of opposites and the search for spiritual unity. She is a strong symbol of transformation and of the boundless power of the divine feminine.

The channeled book Anna, the Voice of the Magdalenes, received by Claire Heartsong, makes the same point about the Great Mother:

It is also true that, we, as Magdalene priestesses, have been called harlots throughout time – as has the Great Mother been called the Great Whore. Such is the way of ignorance and distrust of the Divine Feminine and her union with the Divine Masculine – for true alchemical union of the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine would mean the cessation of the ‘dramatic play’ of duality and separation.

Anna, the voice of the Magdalenes

Harlot as a name for the sacred feminine. The Magdalenes say that calling the Great Mother the Great Whore comes from distrust of the Divine Feminine and of her union with the Divine Masculine. See also Mary Magdalene.

Babalon and Babylon

Babalon is connected with the biblical Babylon, but the link is symbolic and esoteric rather than literal. Thelema and Western esotericism take the imagery of Babylon and give it a new meaning.

Babylon in the Bible

1. Historical Babylon
   Babylon was a real city in ancient Mesopotamia, known for wealth, decadence and power. In the Bible it became a symbol of worldly corruption and human pride.
2. Babylon in Revelation
   In the Book of Revelation, Babylon is the “Great Whore”. She rides a beast and is dressed in scarlet and purple. She is a figure of judgment and stands for spiritual unfaithfulness, moral decay and opposition to God.

So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.

Revelation 17:3–5 (KJV)

The woman on the scarlet beast. John sees a woman in scarlet on a beast, holding a golden cup, with the name Babylon the Great on her forehead.

3. What Babylon stands for
   • Babylon stands for the material world, indulgence and the rejection of divine will.
   • It is often seen as the opposite of spiritual purity and righteousness.

Babalon in esotericism

1. Taking back the imagery of Babylon
   Crowley’s Thelema reads the biblical Babylon through a mystical lens and turns it into Babalon, the Scarlet Woman. She is no longer a symbol of sin or corruption. She becomes an archetype of sacred femininity, empowerment and liberation.
2. Against the biblical view
   • The Bible condemns Babylon as immoral. Babalon celebrates the same qualities (passion, sensuality, power) as parts of divine creation.
   • Babalon joins spiritual and physical experience. She rejects the dualism that is often found in biblical morality.
3. The Beast and Babalon
   • The biblical Beast is often seen as a symbol of evil and chaos. In Thelema the Beast stands for raw energy and divine will.
   • Babalon riding the Beast stands for the union of spirit and matter, a key idea in esoteric traditions.

Shared symbols, different meanings

1. Scarlet and wealth
   The biblical Babylon and Babalon both go with scarlet, wealth and sensuality. Thelema sees these qualities as gateways to transcendence, not as moral failures.
2. Challenging authority
   The biblical Babylon opposes divine authority. Babalon also challenges conventional morality and the norms of society, but as a force that frees rather than destroys.
3. Mystical feminine power
   Babalon takes back the feminine archetype that the biblical story turns into a demon. She puts it at the centre of spiritual growth and cosmic unity.