Carl Abrahamsson: ”Babalon: the psychology of supra-sexual transformation.” You can watch this video lecture here:
Author Carl Abrahamsson takes a look at the infamous ”Babalon” concept. Who is she? What is it? Experiencing a quantum leap within Aleister Crowley’s Thelema mythology specifically, Babalon has become a major contemporary force in esoteric and sexual individuation processes. Appropriated by many, Babalon has become a cornerstone of sorts in modern occultism, and one onto which one can project seemingly almost anything that feels right for the projector. But wherein lies the substance?
Abrahamsson traces Babalon’s historical roots via Babylonia, John of Patmos, John Dee & Edward Kelly, Aleister Crowley, Jack Parsons, CF Russell, and others, and looks at how a general cultural Judeo-Christian fear of women, sexuality, and freedom took on crystallized, personalized traits that then in turn transcended their own ostracized positions, and morphed into a latter day naughty magical goddess of sorts.
But it’s important to never forget that no matter how alluring and attractive the contemporary myth-making and its inherent iconography is, Babalon is essentially a magical formula that encourages actively working with transgressive transcendences. Regardless of the gender (or even the sexual aspects of gender) of the practitioner, Babalon is quite simply a force that can be integrated and applied by anyone under any ritual circumstances to ”cause change to occur in conformity with will.” The key is to always rebel contextually, and not slavishly within a given ”cultic” and homogeneous environment; this in order to set the maximum amount of fusion/fission energy free, which can then be integrated and directed as the magician sees fit.
If you would like to read this lecture, it has been published in Carl Abrahamsson’s Reasonances (Scarlet Imprint, 2014):
