This is the ninth in a series of posts about my adventures during 2005, leading up to the performance of Paul Green’s play Babalon. The story is full of cloak and dagger, initiatory strangeness, chaos, and hysteria. It shows what can happen on the Magical path if one is not careful…(as if one has choice…)

Directed by occultist, Alison Rockbrand, Babalon was performed on December 5, 2005, at the John Gielgud Theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts to a sold out audience of London’s finest occultists and magicians. If you want to listen to it, click Radio QBSaul: Archives: Babalon. I played Marjorie Cameron/Babalon. I am called Angela Murrow because I had to hide my identity.

The Stuff That Conspiracy Theories Are Made Of...

Below is a video full of controversy.

The life of Jack Parsons is tailor made for conspiracy theories.

Born on October 2, 1914, Jack was a brilliant chemist, who grew up in the hey day of science fiction:  Weird Tales, the mass hysteria of 1938′s War of the Worlds, and the whole scary genre of horror films including the famous Frankenstein about a mad scientist and his homunculous monster.

When Jack Parsons got involved with Aleister Crowley, the Great Beast was old. His health was failing and the “wickedest man in the world” was reduced to selling love potions on Brighton Pier just to stay alive. He predicted the desperately needed arrival of a “rich man from the west”. This turned out to be Jack Parsons.

In the 1940′s Parsons was engaged in rocketry experiments in the desert with a group of friends who would become the founders of the Space Program after WWII. He also opened an Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) Lodge in his childhood home in Pasadena, California, a  once wealthy suburb of Hollywood. This branch of the OTO  was called Agape Lodge, and it was devoted to free love and experimental drugs.

This group attracted L.Ron Hubbard, science fiction author, and dubious founder of Scientology. Fate would have it that Hubbard would become deeply involved in Parson’s Babalon Working. The purpose of the ritual was to draw a Scarlet Woman into Parson’s orbit who would then become impregnated, through a series of sexual rituals, with a Magickal Child, Horus, the avatar of the New Aeon. The Scarlet Woman was the visionary red head, Marjorie Cameron who arrived on Parsons’s doorstep when he returned from several intense, mad nights of invocation in the desert.

Fallout from Babalon

When I was studying to play Cameron/Babalon in the play Babalon, by Paul Green, I knew none of this stuff. I had been given the script and then a book by Sara called “Strange Angel” about the life of Jack Parsons. The book was factual and focused primarily on Parson’s contributions to the Space Program and his invention of rocket fuel. The Babalon Working was discussed, but aside from Parson’s horrific death at the age of 38, it did not delve into the further consequences of the Babalon Working. This was taken up by Kenneth Grant, and videos like this one.

Connections have been made between Parsons, Hubbard’s Scientology, Hollywood (Kenneth Anger says he called his books on movieland scandals “Hollywood Babylon” in honor of Crowley),  the film “Rosemary’s Baby”, Charles Manson as a member of the OTO, and on and on….

During rehearsals for the play, I experienced a lot of weird fallout. Its effects continued for a long time, and I am constantly aware of how my personality has changed because I embodied Babalon, not once, but for several months as we worked on the play. Jung would call this experience “Shadow Work”.

The weirdest thing is how this scarlet shadow of mine has a connection to the Holy Grail. My Grail initiation in 1996 through the Tuatha deDannan was the reason I went to England in the first place and its trasmutations seem endless.

These details will come to light as the Babalon Diaries grow. Suffice to say here that in December 2005, my life became a journey through a series of explosions, both symbolically, psychically, and literally, and in some of the most uncanny ways.

The Moonchild

I have always loved the Moon. I watch it in all its phases, read myths about the moon, even identify with the Moon and her Goddesses. When I found a book called The Moonchild in the 1980′s, I was drawn more to the idea of a Moonchild than to its author, Aleister Crowley. I thought  The Moonchild would be a magical novel along the lines of Dion Fortune’s Moon Magic.  I was right, in the sense that it was a novel with a Moon ritual inside of it. But the atmosphere and intent were far different.

A Moonchild is created by impregnating the mother-to-be under certain Astrological tides related to the Moon. For the entire nine months, she is wrapped in a kind of occult cocoon in order to cultivate the extreme passivity needed so that she would be receptive to lunar visions. The images and energies of these visions imprinted the unborn child with the vibrations of the Moon. The mother dressed in white; she slept and ate in a room that was decorated as a kind of lunar chamber. She ate “moon food”: white, flabby things like oysters and cheese, and lived in a constant twilight state, almost of suspended animation.

Crowley’s description of this Moonchild Ritual stayed with me for years. As a born psychic and lover of the Moon, this ritual was  attractive as a fantasy, but totally repellent as a real experience. Cold, damp, endless, twilight or darkness, extreme passivity, loss of consciousness are pretty disturbing and unhealthy conditions. But then the Moon has a way of casting a glamor over things, and it is that lunar enchantment that makes the ordeal of the nine month  preparation of the Moonchild so compelling to the subconscious mind.

Dark Theories

In the year 1966,  the closest numerical approximation to the Beast’s famous number 666, the film Rosemary’s Baby was released. Based on a best selling novel of the same title, it is a story about the creation of the Moonchild.

(As I wrote the last sentence, I had  an intense deja vu…I think I have written it before and had the same deja vu then, as well…..)

Since Roman Polanski directed Rosemary’s Baby, and the film is about the anti-Christ, connections to the tragic, and apparently occult murder of Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate abound.

While filming, Polanski had Devil Worshipper, Anton Lavey, on the set acting as consultant for the ritual elements of the film

Manson was a member of the  California OTO.

Manson had studied Scientology. L.Ron Hubbard did magic with Parsons. Hubbard’s own son admits that Scientology is Black Magic.

Sharon Tate, while filming Eye of the Devil in England in the early 60′s, was initiated into Wicca by Alex Sanders. I believe she based her characterization of Odile on Maxine Sanders.

The media makes a connection between Roman Polanski’s alleged interest in the occult and Sharon Tate’s death. (I think that is B.S. and victim blaming.)

The Scarlet Woman brings in the Age of Horus through bloodshed. “Force and Fire!”

It was said that when Jack Parsons did his Babalon Working he tore a hole in the Universe and let in something evil. Is it any wonder that these illusions and allusions pile up under the influence of the Moon?

If you want to experience the atmosphere of the Babalon Working click this link:

Not for the faint of Heart: The Babalon Working

I have to hide it because it is too strong for some of my social networks.

If you do watch it, I would be curious to know what you think. The Add Commnets button is at the top of the post.

If you want to listen to podcasts of our December 5, 2005 performance of Babalon, the links are just below.

Babalon: Part One

Babalon: Part Two

Please leave comments. For updates of the Babalon Diaries, subscribe to my RSS Feed or my email list. There is more to come…

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This is the eighth in a series of posts about my adventures during 2005, leading up to the performance of Paul Green’s play Babalon. The story is full of cloak and dagger, initiatory strangeness, chaos, and hysteria. It shows what can happen on the Magical path if one is not careful…(as if one has choice…)

Directed by occultist, Alison Rockbrand, Babalon was performed on December 5, 2005, at the John Gielgud Theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts to a sold out audience of London’s finest occultists and magicians. If you want to listen to it, click Radio QBSaul: Archives: Babalon. I played Marjorie Cameron/Babalon. I am called Angela Murrow because I had to hide my identity.

Babalon Dairy 8. Search for Babalon

Research is an important part of creating a character, especially if it is an historical figure. I was embarrassed to say that I had never heard of Marjorie Cameron, but then again, I was never a Thelemite. I had heard of Jack Parsons a long time ago, in some distant connection with the Manson murders, perhaps to do with the Hollywood location, and through this, I knew he was known for performing rites of black magic with L.Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology. I later found a reference to Parsons in a book by Kenneth Grant, a magician who seems to combine Crowely’s teachings with the Cuthulu mythos created by H.P. Lovecraft. In discussing Crowley, and the atom bomb, Grant mentions the rocket scientist, Jack Parsons, as an early American devotee of the Great Beast.

But Cameron was completely new to me, and it was she I had to become…

I was also not very familiar with the internet in those days. I had to be tutored by Sara, the graphics designer for the play, on how to find images on google. She also told me about wikipedia. What I read there was so astounding that I will just reprint it here because if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! (I had to edit some of it, I found to my chagrin, after this post was published…)

Marjorie Elizabeth Cameron (23 April 1922 – 24 July 1995) was an American writer, painter, actor, and occultist

Biography

Cameron was born in Belle Plaine, Iowa, the eldest of four children. Her father, Hill Leslie Cameron, was a Scot from Illinois who worked with the railroad. Her mother, Carrie V. Ridenour, of German and Dutch decent, was a native of Iowa. The night of Cameron’s birth was surrounded by chaos; there was a terrible thunderstorm and her father got drunk and attempted suicide because he thought his wife was dying. Her grandmother, a staunch churchwoman, believed Cameron to be a child of the devil because of her fiery red hair.

As a child, Cameron began to have strange and powerful visions that were so vivid, she could not be sure if they were real or imaginary. One night from her bedroom, she saw a ghostly procession of four white horses float by her window. Later she would recall these dreams in detail and was able to capture this in her artwork and poetry. In a letter to magician and Aleister Crowley associate Jane Wolfe, she mentions finding a “hole to hell” in her grandmother’s backyard:

“I remember always a tree on my grandmother’s property from which hung an old, old swing where my mother had played as a little girl. Near this spot I recall a well which I always believed was the hole to hell – also the blue Bachelor Button flower grew near this spot. Herein I find again a new concept of the 4 elements and the name of god – the tree, the well, the swing (water’s life) and the flower – which is seed.”

When she was 17, the Great Depression was underway and Cameron moved with her family to Davenport, Iowa, a considerably larger town than Belle Plaine. Having trouble adjusting after the suicide of a close friend, Cameron tried to take her own life several times by overdosing on sleeping pills. She claims that these near brushes with death further enhanced her psychic abilities, reportedly giving her a glimpse into the realm of the dead.

In 1943, in the midst of World War II, the 21 year-old Cameron turned down several scholarships to join the Navy. She was sent along with 3000 other women to boot camp in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Soon she was selected for a high-level job in Washington, DC, where she applied her artistic skills by drawing maps for the war efforts. She was then sent to the Joint Chiefs of Staff where she once met Winston Churchill. She had a drafting table at the head of their conference room. Later, she felt that many men died in the South Pacific as a result of her drawings, Cameron considered all of her drawings to be magical talismans that had a very real effect on the world, she always felt a karmic connection to these men and believed that later tragic events in her life were the result of her participation in their deaths.

By the late 1950s, Cameron was living in Malibu and hanging out with a crowd of artists that included the likes of Dennis Hopper, Wallace Berman, Bruce Conner, and others. Wallace Berman’s show at the Ferus Gallery was closed in 1957 after displaying one of Cameron’s drawings which depicted a woman, possibly Cameron, being taken from behind by an alien creature.

Cameron also played the role of a ‘sea witch’ in experimental avant-garde film directed by Curtis Harrington. This 1960 black and white supernatural thriller, Night Tide, starred actor Dennis Hopper and Linda Lawson. This film was shown at the Venice Film Festival in 1961, and released in the U.S. in 1963.

Hmmm. With all the visions I was having, I felt an sense of coincidence to be playing Cameron. But my visions were not so dark, but sublime, and beautiful. I was not a dark person, but a nature loving witch, and healer. The sense of foreboding returned as I wondered how deep I was going to have to go into this whole Babalon thing….where was it going to take me?

The Scarlet Woman

When rocket propulsion researcher and occultist Jack Parsons met Marjorie Cameron, he regarded her as the fulfillment of magical rituals he had been performing as the beginning of the Babalon Working, roughly, an attempt to incarnate, in a physical body a divine entity, a living Goddess, that would usher in the Aeon of Horus ,and change the course of history.

Parsons wrote of Cameron in a letter to his mentor Aleister Crowley in 1946:

Jack Parsons

“The feeling of tension and unease continued for four days. Then on January 18 [1946] at sunset, whilst the Scribe and I were on the Mojave Desert, the feeling of tension suddenly stopped. I turned to him and said ‘it is done’, in absolute certainty that the Operation was accomplished. I returned home, and found a young woman [Marjorie Cameron] answering the requirements waiting for me. She is describable as an air of fire type with bronze red hair, fiery and subtle, determined and obstinate, sincere and perverse, with extraordinary personality, talent and intelligence. During the period of January 19 to February 27, I invoked the Goddess Babalon [a particular aspect of the Egyptian goddess Nuit] with the aid of magical partner (Ron Hubbard), as was proper to one of my grade.”

They termed this incarnation the Moonchild. Writes Aleister Crowley on the subject:

“The Aeon of Horus is of the nature of a child. To perceive this, we must conceive of the nature of a child without the veil of sentimentality – beyond good and evil, perfectly gentle, perfectly ruthless, containing all possibilities within the limits of heredity, and highly susceptible to training and environment. But the nature of Horus is also the nature of force – blind, terrible, unlimited force.”

The Babalon Working was allegedly successful.

After her husband Jack Parsons’ death, Cameron starred in Kenneth Anger’s 1954 cult-film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, which also featured Anais Nin. Both Cameron and Anger believed that this film was proof to the world that she had manifested the force of the Goddess. “She was doing art for the sake of magick and her soul. She never sold her paintings.”

Cameron burned most of her paintings in the late 1950s in a symbolic suicide performed with her second husband Sherif Kimmil. They had been up for several days on speed and had formed what Cameron called a “suicide club”. Kimmil slit his wrists in the bathroom while the paintings were burning.

Cameron’s two brothers, her sister, and her father worked at JPL, the company co-founded by her husband, Jack Parsons. She was a protege of mythologist Joseph Campbell.

Marjorie Cameron Parsons Kimmel died of cancer on July 24, 1995.

Alison Rockbrand is also a highly creative person who fuses her art with occult workings. I am still not sure exactly what was going on behind the scenes, but there was an enormous energy at rehearsals. It was unsettling for me, destabilizing at times, and yet created a wonderful spell of bright darkness  that is very hard to describe to someone who has not experienced it. Alison and I both resonanate with Cameron/Babalon. She more consciously than I.

To listen to the Radio Show, Babalon, click here:

Babalon: Part One

Babalon: Part Two

Please leave comments. For updates of the Babalon Diaries, subscribe to my RSS Feed or my email list. There is more to come…

Fossil Angel by Cameron

Below, I have posted some books and DVD’s from Amazon that I used to study these incredible people. Among them Kenneth Anger’s Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome from which most photos of Marjorie Cameron are pulled.

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For you fiction lovers out there, the complete Part One of Salome: The Seventh  Queen is posted under under Fiction on the navigation bar, or you can find the chapters listed in the side bar.

It is a draft of my own work. Part Two will begin when I get a response for Part One. Critiques, feedback, all is good and will help me write a better story. This is a draft, not a finished piece, but hopefully entertaining.

Thanks and sign up to email updates or RSS Feeds. And leave comments….I adore comments!

All commentators will recieve a free ebook of Salome: The Seventh Queen in its finished form just for helping and being interested.

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This is the seventh in a series of posts about my adventures during 2005, leading up to the performance of Paul Green’s play Babalon. The story is full of cloak and dagger, initiatory strangeness, chaos, and hysteria. It shows what can happen on the Magical path if one is not careful…(as if one has choice…)

Directed by occultist, Alison Rockbrand, Babalon was performed on December 5, 2005, at the John Gielgud Theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts to a sold out audience of London’s finest occultists and magicians. If you want to listen to it, click Radio QBSaul: Archives: Babalon. I played Marjorie Cameron/Babalon. I am called Angela Murrow because I had to hide my identity.

Babalon

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ANNOUNCER: BABALON

CAMERON/BABALON: (SFX: whispered, reverb) I am the naked brilliance of the
voluptuous night-sky….Come to me..

Priestess/ Nuit

In the end, I had no choice.

Here’s a little back story:

The skinny, blond Hungarian pole dancer who had been my flatmate in Highgate got her thong too far up her _____ and decided she and I were “not friends”. I could never figure this out as I liked her well enough. I had been warned about “Hungarian women living abroad” , but she being a pushy little thing, and life at Oak Lodge on the Heath having sunk into a morass of stormy Kiwi DJ NOISE!!!! made moving imperative. I was also outlining this Vampire novel (mentioned in part 666)  and thought hearing the  Hugarian language every day would be good research. Besides, living next to Highgate Cemetery was irrisistable. Of course my Vampire/ heroine would begin her adventures in Highgate! Thus was I seduced into giving in to Salamadra’s demands.

Lease up, she moved out. I wanted to stay put, so in a moment of desperation, I talked Kallistratus and Pippi into moving in. I am so glad I did….

I met them when they were working in Camden Lock Market. Journeying to London from far Grantham, in search of decadance, they sold their own line of clothing in an attempt to survive.  Hung on  outdoor railings, these glamorous togs blew in the wind  like black smudges in the English gloom. Business was not that great, so they started working in Fairy Goth Mother, a Goth shop specializing in beautiful corsets and fetish gear.

Fairy Goth Mother, London

They were great friends. Kallistratus had a way with the ladies. “Hello, lovely lady,” was his special greeting.Though he is tall, dark and handsome, I didn’t fancy Kallistratus, though we loved each other dearly. Pippi liked me– perhaps because I was the only woman on earth who didn’t fancy her husband.

Once they moved in with me, my Gothic Romance flat was transformed into proper a Goth lair. Bats hung from the ceiling, a collection of Living Dead Dolls and Tortured Souls gazed out from the shelves, a picture of Bram Stoker hung over the kitchen table.  When the picture fell off the wall, breaking the glass, we all three crossed ourselves and groaned…

Posey, Living Dead Doll

Kundalini Rising

I had a full blown Kundalini Awakening in 1986. This was after clearing my energy fields through 18 months of  almost constant meditation. Dramatic, archetypal, hallucinatory images rose and subsided within me for weeks. ( Without LSD, mind you.) My  third eye blossomed open, intensifying my psychic abilities, and making me a clear channel for healing energies. Kundalini launched my career as a healer.

Kundalini has another side to it, though. A sexual side. I had become Shakti.

I was attending a talk on Chaos Magic at Treadwells. There was a pleasant looking young man there that I will call G.G. ( he is commonly known as the sitar playing Bulgarian)  The next time I was at Treadwells, he came into the shop. When he saw me, he made a beeline for me and gazed into my eyes. G.G. looks a bit like a cross between a Russian Prince in a fairy tale, and a deer. Pretty cute, but I was dazzled by his eyes! They were pale fiery green!

After that, we kept running into each other. One night G.G., and a friend of his followed me home wanting to go to Highgate Cemetery. It was 2 or 3 AM, but what fun! We wanted to go into the cemetery but it was locked. Walking around on the road below the tall wrought iron railings, we found a black kitten, sitting peacefully on a grave, peering out through the bars. Not far along there was a gap in the fence. We broke in and hiked up to Waterlow Park . On this clear autumn night, the moon was full, the trees rustled and dropped their leaves. We lay on the dewy grass looking up at the stars.

Highgate Cemetery

On our way out of the park, a a red fox crossed our path. G.G. knelt down and beckoned it over. Next thing we knew, the fox was sniffing his fingers and letting G.G. pet him.                  

I Am Called.

Scarlet Woman, by Air Adam

To listen to the Radio Show, Babalon, click here:

Babalon: Part One

Babalon: Part Two

Please leave comments. For updates of the Babalon Diaries, subscribe to my RSS Feed or my email list. There is more to come…

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Pharaon was the constant companion of a gentleman who will henceforth  be referred to as the Wizard, or the Wiz if I get lazy.  When I first saw the Wizard, and he saw me, we were attending a talk by Gareth Knight at Treadwells.  Gareth Knight is one of the great Western Mystery magicians of Britain, author of many books on Arthurian material and the Goddess. This was the second time I heard him speak, the first being shortly after I arrived in London in 1998 when I went to Wales for a Holy Grail Conference starring most of my favorite teachers and authors. Gareth Knight is a shy, quiet man, so to have seen him speak twice is a privilege.

Anyway, Pharaon and the Wiz were sitting together, as always. The Wiz was looking at me, and I had the strange sensation of energy bouncing back, or reflecting back as in a mirror.  I didn’t like this feeling. Perhaps he had psychic protection up, but I sensed the vibe had a manipulative undercurrent that was being blocked by me. It is still a mystery…He put me on red alert anyway.

After I gave the Grimoire to Kallistratus, we all met up at the famous Goth Pub, the Devonshire Arms, (now the Hobgoblin)  in Camden Town.  (This pub used to scare me before I found my Dark Side. It is full of Vampires. The owner, Robin, painted all these Tarot images along the walls that are very cool. He shows the most amazing old films and has the best music I heard in London where James Blunt had taken over the airwaves as an alternative to constant HipHop. I have outlined a Vampire novel that begins in the Devonshire Arms if I ever get to it…)

Devonshire Arms

My friend/ Tarot client, Katy, came along as well. Pharaon took a fancy to Katy and decided she was a natural Sorceress. Kallistratus, expecting the author of such a powerful little book to look like Anton LeVay,  decide Pharaon looked like a milkman.  I mention these people because they all have their parts to play in my near demise…

Vampire meeting at the Dev

Cutting to the chase!

I had arranged a meeting newteen Pharaon  and Kallistratus at the Dev because he was looking for  actors to audition for a play called ‘Babalon’ to be directed by Alison Rockbrand. I thought Kallistratus might make a good Aleister Crowley. If  not,  the Goth scene in  general, would be a good place to find someone to play Crowley — the most difficult role to cast. Pharaon came with a few fliers calling for auditions. As he was putting one up on the wall, he mentioned that they needed someone with an American accent to play Marjorie Cameron. I told him I had a lot of theater experience, but I was uneasy about getting involved.

“Magic has a very disruptive effect on me. I am writing a novel. I don’t need any horrible upheaval just now.”

“Well, just come read for it. It will be fun. Jack Parsons is my favorite magician of all time.”

“I bought a Grimoire from a milkman…I can’t believe I bought a Grimoire from a milkman…” moans Kallistratus to himself.

“I don’t know…”

“Please, just come an read for it so we can get a sense of it. You can say ‘no’ later.”

“OK.” I didn’t want to admit I had no idea who Marjorie Cameron was, though I had heard of Jack Parsons in passing as someone who was a follower of Crowley and done Black Magic with L.Ron Hubbard.

Alison Rockbrand as Babalon

Later that week:

That evening at Treadwells, I was sitting in a circle with other hopefuls clutching a script handed to me by Alison. This was the second time I had met her. This time she was dressed in office clothing having come straight from work, looking very professional and capable.  As we read the through the script, I played Marjorie Cameron, called Cameron, with my usual sense of irony, for laughs.

I did not want to to be in this play! At that point the kind of Magick these folks were into scared me. But I am fearless and a fool sometimes, so I let Alison talk me into taking the script home and at least giving it a good once over.

Script

This was the first page of the script I got. It has a little information about these characters.

SYNOPSIS -CONCEPT & BACKGROUND

Jack Parsons (1914-1952) pioneered the rocket-fuel technology that culminated in NASA’s Apollo missions and Space Shuttle flights. He was also the Californian head of the Order of Oriental Templars, an esoteric group founded by the occultist Aleister Crowley (1875-1947)
who was his mentor and inspiration.

By 1946 Crowley, prophet of the turbulent Aeon of Horus, was slowly dying in an English seaside boarding house. With the assistance of the writer L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986) and the artist Marjorie Cameron (1922-1995), Parsons performed the notorious “Babalon Working”, a magical experiment allegedly intended to invoke a new entity who would re-focus the energies of the Aeon.

The Babalon Working transformed the lives of the main participants -notably Parsons himself, who suffered a series of personal and career crises, ending with his death in a mysterious explosion -another episode which has been the focus of much speculation.

I’ve done extensive research into the source materials -which are often obscure or contradictory, particularly for the period 1947-52. So BABALON is not a definitive “drama-biog” of Parsons’ life. It is rather a dramatic exploration of the Parsons myth, in all its mysterious paradoxes. The story time covers the years 1938-52.

VOICES & CHARACTERSJACK : John Whiteside Parsons -educated Californian. Frater 210 of the OTO.

ED: Ed Forman – technician at CIT -Californian. Life-long friend of Jack.

CROWLEY: Aleister Crowley, Baphomet, Frater Perdurabo 666, Master Therion, the Great Beast, Supreme Caliph of the Order of Oriental Templars etc etc. In this last phase of his life, Crowley suffered from severe asthma. A 1920s recording of his inimitable voice survives.

FRIEDA: Lady Frieda Harris -artist, wife of Sir Percy Harris, Bart. Crowley’s loyal pupil and patron. In her sixties. Patrician English.. .

SMITH: Wilfred T. Smith. In his fifties. suave Anglo-American. Frater 132. Crowley’s original OTO representative in California.

HELEN: Helen Northrup Parsons, Jack’s first wife. Californian

BETTY: Sara Elizabeth Northrup, Helen’s sister. Later Jack’s mistress.

RON: Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, author, explorer and religious teacher. Mid-West

CAMERON : Marjorie Cameron Parsons, aka Candida or Candy, artist and vessel of BABALON.

POLICE OFFICER/FBI OFFICER/RADIO ANNOUNCER

and YOUNG CROWLEY

666: Number of the Beast

In those years I was living in Highgate in a wonderful flat ten minutes walk from Highgate Cemetery and about two minutes from the Highgate Tube Station (a very important consideration when renting a flat in London.)

I went home on the tube and read the script, full of inner conflict. The script was really good. So good in fact that I felt I would miss out if I didn’t participate. But I had determined NOT to engage in other peoples’ magic. It just wasn’t safe. I rolled the script up and put it in my bag.

I had to pick up a few things at the corner shop. Squeezing in between the loaded shelves in the tiny store owned by very nice  brothers from Sri Lanka, I picked up a few bits and headed for the checkout. Imagine my surprise — NO! Total shock at the amount of my purchases. Up on the face of the old fashioned cash register, big white and shiny, were the numbers 666!

Aleister Crowley

***

Foolish People

BABALON – A Fable of Rocketry, Sex and High Magick Mystery Theatre of the Aether and 93 Fm present Travesty Theatre’s production of BABALON – A Fable of Rocketry, Sex and High Magick  on FRIDAY DECEMBER 16 at 8.00
in the Gielgud Studio Theatre  at RADA, Malet Street, London WC1
£7.00

On Friday December 16th at 8.00 in the Gielgud Studio Theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art , Mystery Theatre of the Aether presents Travesty Theatre’s production of Babalon.

***************************************************************************************************************

Paul Green’s play, originally written for radio, explores the enigmatic life and mysterious death of Jack Parsons (1914-52),  pioneering American rocket scientist,  disciple of the magus Aleister Crowley, and passionate devotee of Lady Babalon,  the Scarlet Woman of the New Aeon.   Alison Rockbrand’s highly stylised production  reinforces the resonance of the text with soundscape and visual projections to create  unique moments of ritual theatre. There are also elements of dark farce and tragedy as Parsons’ apocalyptic vision is subverted by hostile forces.

Paul Green’s plays include: The Dream Laboratory, The Aleph (CBC Radio Canada); Ritual of the Stifling Air (BBC Radio 3); Powerplay, (Capital Radio); The Mouthpiece (Resonance FM); Terminal Poet (New Theatre Works)

Alison Rockbrand founded Travesty Theatre  and  the  Dead Dolls Cabaret in Montreal.  Her productions include the collective creation Mumbo Jumbo: King Leopold’s Opus  and a rendition of Macbeth including stylised dance gestures based upon the Kathakali  dance tradition in India.  In February 2006 she is directing Stuart Draper’s Departure Lounge in the Prompt Corner at the South London Theatre Company.

Tickets for Babalon can now be reserved via  the RADA Box Office on 020 7908 4800.

Posted by John Harrigan on December 02, 2005 at 09:39 PM in Magick, Occult, Theatre

To listen to the Radio Show, Babalon, click here:

Babalon: Part One

Babalon: Part Two

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A page out of the Demons’ Book

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Before I found Treadwells Bookshop in Covent Garden, I had been in hiding from all things Arcane for a few years. This was due a  spontaneous, prolonged, and shattering Initiation by the Horned God shortly after I moved into a bedsitting room close to Hampstead Heath. I had also been the target of constant, virulent psychic attacks from, in her own words, The Overseer of All Tarot Readers in London. (It took two years of being  back in the States to realize who was behind these attacks. She’s that good.)  Apparently she resented my thriving practice as a Tarot Reader in Camden Lock Market, as well as the fact that I didn’t bow and scrape to her. Why would I? As an American, that type of obeisance wouldn’t even occur to me.  All the time I was London, I didn’t think of this woman because I so seldom saw her. I thought the Universe was trying to destroy me, that the Goddess, and the Faery Realm, had turned against me. I was wrong.

For the first time in my life, I wanted nothing to do with Magic or practitioners of Magic. This led to a Dark Night of the Soul, for never had I felt so isolated, so cut off from the sources of life and inspiration.

I will tell these stories in more detail in future blog posts.

The Cycle of the Horned God’s Initiation Ends

One of my Tarot clients was an interesting Goth girl from New England. I was telling her how much I missed like minded friends, and she told me about Tteadwells Bookshop. There I would be able to reconnect with the only people I felt I had  anything in common with: Magical People and Artists.

It was late 2004,  when I started going to talks there. There are so many interesting people speaking at Treadwells. The first talk I attended was with Caroline Wise . She was discussing the Deer Goddess Elen of the Ways. This  Goddess, with her antlers and woodland aspect, was very resonant with me. Through the  discussion, I gained many insights that brought me back in touch with myself. It was no accident that Elen of the Ways, or the woodland track, led me out of the darkness into which I had been plunged by the Horned God seven years before. Her’s was the feminine end of the cycle of Initiation I had undergone with the masculine Stag God, Cernunnos.

Elen means Light. In the case of this Woodland Goddess, it is the gentle light that filters through the trees. My time of endarkenment was over…one would think.

Cheska Potter, Elen

Magicians

I went back  to Treadwells again and again, thinking I had found a second home. I later found out I had cut quite a dash without realizing it. This was not a necessarily a good thing…

I met all sorts of people there, from Celtic Pagans to Black Magicians. In my years reading Tarot in Camden Lock Market, I had met many Goths and became friends with an amazing couple, Pippi and Kallustratus, who had links with Gothic Satanists. Kallistratus claimed to come from a line of Cuthulu devotees, a magical path based on the. literary works of H.P.Lovecraft. These paths and lifestyles were not my cup of tea. I didn’t understand how the Necrinomicon could be the basis of a religion. As Pippi said about me, “She doesn’t have any evil in her.” It is pretty true despite appearances. It’s just that, as an artist, I have a tendency to go where angels fear to tread….

Out of curiosity, open mindedness,  and a quest for material, I allowed myself to get to know various Dark Magicians. They turned out to be extremely intelligent, creative, and quite fun to be around, though I kept a firm limit on how far I would get involved. I am very sensitive, and have to work overtime to keep my psychic boundaries intact, never mind the  social ones. After my  Underworld Initiation when the Holy Grail erupted form the earth in 1996, I was well aware of the extremely powerful effect magic has on me, and am very careful not to get involved with other peoples’ workings.

It was among these Magicians that I met Pharaon, author of the wonderfully poetic Grimoire, Liber Niger Legionis. This magically inspired book is filled  with invocations to Infernal Deities, or Demons. I told P. and K. about it and they wanted a copy. It was a limited edition, beautifully bound by hand. A work of Art. Each one of the 72 Grimoires is dedicated to a certain Demon.

Ophiel

When I went into Treadwells to make the purchase, its author was unexpectedly there to greet me. There were only 3  Grimoires left. The one I chose was dedicated to  Ophiel, an Angel of the Air sigilized as a kind of vortex of dark wind. Pharaon happily signed the Grimiore for me, increasing its value for my friends. We had a nice chat and a laugh. I was relieved to find him genuinely friendly and easy to talk to.  I took the Grimoire home planning to give it to K. and P. at the Market on the next Monday.

The Grimoire Speaks

When I got it home, I laid the Grimoire on the kitchen table thinking I would take a look at it during dinner. As I was cooking, I my attention was drawn by the sound of tinkling bells. The sound seemed to be coming from the book! I was a bit concerned because I wasn’t up for any more ‘Initiations’. I went into denial for a moment because I wanted to look through the book. It was so well written and beautifully put together. I felt P.and K. would be very pleased with it, but I hadn’t bargained for Magical contact with Demons. The bells continued to tinkle. When I opened the book the sound of soft , dark chanting, far away as if it was in the back of my mind, came through. Then the unmistakable scent of dirty laundry, that I have come to associate with the presence of unclean spirits, wafted up.

Oh, no! What have I gotten myself into now?

Demons and Nightmares

.
Later that night, I was visited by a dream so vivid, it woke me up.  A huge, black serpent was in the living room growing larger and larger, unwinding and rewinding its coils, filling the space with breathing, groaning, and menace. Opening one eye, I lay very still. If you can see them, they can see you and I wasn’t sure I wanted Ophiel to know I could see him.
I stole a glance at the clock on the stand beside my bed. It was about 3 AM. I learned in my ordeal with the Horned God, that 3AM-6AM are the true witching hours. These are the hours when the cock crows, the hours when most people die.
As Ophiel breathed, expanded, and contracted in the living room, there were other sounds, voices murmuring. Much of the phenomena that I don’t remember, but it kept me awake in a state of hyper-vigilant fear until dawn. Suddenly I heard all these little chattering baby voices. It felt as if a cloud of tiny spirits had entered my ear and gone into my head!  I sat up and decided I had to get the Grimoire out of the flat.
The book was still sitting on the kitchen table. This meant I had to  creep quietly out of my room (as if it mattered!) and cross the dark living room where Ophiel still wound in and out, seething and breathing like a black cloud of pollution. The lights from the street lamps came in through the windows, casting shadows on the floor, but the mass of shadows in the center of the room still swirled and oozed. When I reached the kitchen table, I grabbed the Grimoire. I knew it had to go outside, but where?

There was a small balcony outside a door in the wall of my bedroom, but it was often wet with rain. Frantically, I rummaged  through a kitchen drawer for a plastic bag, and wrapped the Grimoire in it — it was expensive, and a gift after all! Then I slunk back to my bedroom and placed it outside on the threshold of the door under the eaves. Then I tried to get back to sleep.
Though the book was now outside, wrapped in a plastic Sainsbury’s bag,  I still didn’t get any sleep because the phenomena continued. Spirits are not barred by walls or doors. I endured their haunting me until  6AM — the same hour the Horned One vanished had when he Initiated me into his mysteries seven years before.

***

This was just  the beginning of my association with Pharaon and his magical associate, Alison Rockbrand, talented director of Babalon.

Preview of Coming Attractions

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This is a creatively re-edited bit from Kenneth Anger’s film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, based on Crowley’s Babalon Working. In this scene, Marjorie Cameron plays Kali, Goddess of Death and Rebirth, for Transformation of the soul. I studied this film when I was preparing to play Marjorie Cameron, though the Babalon that I portrayed was very different.

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This film gives some idea of the energies I was dealing with as things heated up for the Play.

To listen to the Radio Show, Babalon, click here:

Babalon: Part One

Babalon: Part Two

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Cheers!

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Treadwells Bookshop

Treadwells Bookshop, Covent Garden

Treadwells Bookshop in Covent Garden is gathering place for esoteric people of all stripes. The owner, Christina Oakley-Harrington, holds fascinating talks and workshops in a small open space in the basement.  Often transformed with draperies, altars, ritual tools, even a coffin when the vampires want to do a reading, this Temple of Arte is the venue for weekly lectures, workshops and events that attract magical people from all over the world..
One August night, Christina was hosting an interesting event that would bring me into contact with an unexpected destiny. This event was to be a consecration of a Grimoire dedicated to the Infernal Powers called Liber Niger Legionis, Grimoir of Phaoron.

Grimoire

Before this I had steered clear of the dark powers, but I was working on a novel, Dark Night, Lily Bright, in which the Sorceress Lianna Hedegwicke, was a practitioner of the Elizabethan Magic and demonology. I wanted to learn as much as possible about the psychology of those attracted to the Left Hand Path, and find out what techniques they used to invoke spirits. The consecration of a Grimoire was an opportunity to do a little research. Naughty me, but the writer’s mentality is such.

As I descended the narrow Georgian stairs of Treadwells the smell of incense told me preparations were being made. I had never seen the room decked out like this before! The walls were hung with long swathes of red and black cloth, the black draped altar was facing the South wall, placing the Magician in the North, facing the fiery South. (The desire of the Magician to bring the Fire Element to him in order to invoke infernal spirits is obvious. In Left Hand cosmology, Fire is the element of Satan).

There were a few people sitting in a half circle of chairs facing the altar.  At the center of the altar was frightening horned mask, and on its horns lay the Grimoire, bound in black leather with a reversed red pentagram embossed in the center. Candle branches illuminated the darkness with sputtering and smoky lights. A slim girl in tight black clothes, with a cloud of dark curls around her pale pretty face, paced around the room trying to keep us entertained, while some creepy ambient music clashed and thrummed to create an atmosphere of incipient chaos.

Liber Niger Legionis

Phaoron was late, as I was his habit I would learn….The guests sat patiently. One man kept talking to me about something to do with sigils — a subject I didn’t understand very well at the time.   His chatting me up his was wearing  thin when Phaoron finally arrived flustered, but with no need of a wardrobe change.

The Ritual began with Pharaon reading from the Introduction to his little black book.
It was worth waiting for, for Pharaon’s writing was sheer poetry, his deep connection to the demonic world that would inspire my research.

Babalon sigil

Review

Here is a  review of the Grimoire  from  the website of the Chaos Magical Theatrical Group, Foolish People. Their director, John Harrigan, is a talented magician himself.

They often perform at the Horse Hospital in London.

The Grimoire of Pharaon:

Sorcery, Chumbley, Spare, Chaos

Liber Niger Legionis, The Grimoire of Pharaon

£350
First Edition: Octavia Press 2005. Hardback 162pp. Author: Pharaon. This copy is Number 4 of the numbered limited edition of only 36 copies. It is signed and sigilised by the author. In this first edition, sigils to 36 daemons were individually produced. Copy 4 is dedicated to Samael; this unique sigil is starkly remarkable. The book’s content consists of an original grimoire, though it is evident that inspirations are drawn from Austin Osman Spare, Kenneth Grant and Andrew Chumbley. The grimoire presents an original system of Gnostic sorcery, which is both practical and cosmological. Eschewing the traditional esoteric cosmology that describes the Supernal or Divine that is in opposition to the Infernal, it instead it regards the ‘hostile’ or ‘demonic’ forces as being inherently illusory, indeed that which is the illustory itself. The response to this insight is the spiritual aim, what Pharaon calls ‘Black Gnosis’. In it, the sorcerer apprehends mystically the transience of identity. As the infernal (illusory) nature of reality is identified, one is enabled to ford the currents that underlie it, recognizing their sentience and power. In this system, the sorcerer becomes a mirror for that which is beyond. As the author draws upon the entire magical tradition, the Daemons summoned are traditional ones, ones that most will recognize. It is their relevance to postmodern reality that is emphasized, however. The author is transgressive, fiercely iconoclastic, and solitary; despite the fact that Infernal Sorcery is explicitly referred to as Cainite and relates to the work of Andrew Chumbley, the author is not a member of his Cultus Sabbatai, but instead works independently. The book, after outlining and instructing the system of Gnosis and magical practice, lists the 36 daimons, with their natures, their meaning and relevance to the system and sigil. The first edition, in which only 36 copies were printed, has become highly sought after even within the first six months after its release. Issue points distinguishing it from the second edition are the upright direction of the cover pentagram, and the particular decoration of the endpapers.

Liber Niger Legionis, The Grimoire of Pharaon

Author: Pharaon
£60.00
Second Edition: Octavia Press 2005. Hardback 162pp. This copy is Number 22 of the numbered limited second edition of only 72 copies. It is signed and sigilised by the author. This second edition features a different decorated end paper to the first edition. Also, compared to the first edition, the pentagram on the cover is inverted, which in fact was the author’s original intent.

Liber Niger Legionis, The Grimoire of Pharaon
Another copy of the second Edition: Octavia Press 2005
£60.00 – Number 36, of the numbered limited edition of 72 only copies

I just saw one of these for sale on Ebay for $1250.00.

To listen to the Radio Show, Babalon, click here:

Babalon: Part One

Babalon: Part Two

by Andrew Chumbley

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This quote is from the anonymous author of a blog post at www.arcropad.com  on the subject of these engravings. I think it says it all.  Here it was I found the artist’s name.
“Although the idea of books containing dark secrets is nothing new (a literary device perfected decades ago by H.P. Lovecraft), Francisco Sole’s engravings constitute a unique graphic representation of an occult mystery. These engravings, along with Arturo Perez Reverte’s tale, present a troubling meditation on the nature of knowledge.  If knowledge is power and power corrupts- if eating of the tree of knowledge was the original sin- then can enlightenment come only at the price of damnation?”

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The Nine Gates to the Kingdom of Shadows

These are the engravings from the book, The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows. They also apear in the original book, El Club Dumas by Spanish writer, Arturo Perez Reverte. Reverte is so determined to convince readers of the authenticity of this book, that he gives no clue as to the identity of the artist,  Francisco  Sole. I found them on the web compliments of www.gildthelily.com.

The identity of the artist is still a bit of a secret, so let us continue to attribute them to Aristide Torchia and Lucifer. They are a true and marvelous mystery…

The Book of the Nine Gates to the Kingdom of Shadows

De Umbrarum Regis Novum Portis.
Written by Aristide Torchia in Venice, 1666. The book contains nine woodcut engravings rumored to be copied from the Delomelanicon, a book purportedly written by the devil himself. The Nine Gates to the Kingdom of Shadows is said to contain, within its pages, knowledge to raise the devil. The author was burned, along with all his works in 1667 – only three copies of  De Umbrarum Regis Novum Portis survived.

None of those who have fought after the rules will arrive…

Open the closed…

The lost word guards the secret…

Fortune is not the same for everyone…

Fruitless…

I enrich myself with death…

The student surpasses the Master…

Death lies conquered…

Now I know that the light comes from darkness.

Thank you to www.gildthelily.com for arranging these.

This trailer is a  brilliant synopsis of Ninth Gate and the power of the Book.

To listen to the Radio Show, Babalon, click here:

Babalon: Part One

Babalon: Part Two

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This is the second in a series of posts about my adventures during 2005, leading up to the performance of Paul Green’s play Babalon. The story is full of cloak and dagger, initiatory strangeness, chaos, and hysteria. It shows what can happen on the Magical path if one is not careful…(as if one has choice…)

Directed by Alison Rockbrand, Babalon was performed on December 16, 2005 at the John Gielgud Theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts to a sold out audience of London’s finest occultists and magicians. If you want to listen to it, click Radio QBSaul: Archives: Babalon. I play Marjorie Cameron/Babalon. I am called Angela Murrow because I had to hide my identity.

After putting this post together, I understand what it was about Lucifer, the Gates, and the Whore of Babylon, as shown in the film Ninth Gate, that was so magnetic for me. As a Faery Seer working in Celtic Faery Tradition, I had  deep encounters with the Irish Goddess Brighid in her  Dark Moon aspect, for it mirrors the phase of the moon at my birth.

For eight years, I led bi-monthly Moon Circles at my house with a group of women friends.  Once the Circle was cast we worked with our Animal Familiars and moved into the Otherworld in the manner of a Shamanic Journey. When one moves into the Underworld of Elfhame, encounters with the dark aspect of the Goddess are inevitable. Many people would like spiritual experiences to be bright and sunny and healing all the time. But that cannot be, for everything is cyclical, especially with the Great Goddesses of Nature. If one never experiences the darkness, one cannot spiritually mature. Shock and trauma are needed to shake the character loose of the karmic crud of the past. If the dark side is successfully avoided, the practitioner is not on a spiritual path, but is merely amusing him or herself in a fantasy land that they control.

My attraction to the Nine Gates was resonant with my descents into the Underworld of Faery. But, as was the case when I found out that the Spirits of the Land in London  are totally different, more violent and shocking, than those in Seattle, I also found going through the Nine Gates of the Luciferian Path led to a very different form of the Goddess. Lucifer: the Morning Star, Venus, the Angel of Light ( how those images move through the body in their darkness illuminated by green fire!)  left his exile in the green Underworld Faery Hill to return to red-gold earth of ancient Mesopotamia where he is the Underworld King. He is accompanied by Babalon, Goddess of Love and War, disparaged deity of the ancient Middle East filtered through the Magickal thought processes of Aleister Crowley.

Lucifer by Blake

Lesson: Do not take lightly the forces of Magic. Pay attention to details if you don’t want surprises. The price of liberation is constant vigilance. Everything is connected.

Lucifer, Faery, & Babalon

Although the experience was overpowering and mind bending, I do not regret my initiation into the Mysteries of Babalon. But the dark side of anything brings, with its endarkenment/ enlightenment, pain, loss, sorrow, even death. There are not many volunteers for that!

The Faery Realm is also “ruled” by the fallen Angel, Lucifer. This Tale of the Nine Gates gives us a glimpse of Luciferian Gnosis at its source. Faery Witchcraft is of the Green Ray of Nature and the Earth. Babalon is of the Red Ray of Blood and Passion. Red and Green are complimentary, or Flashing Colors, on the color wheel. Their juxtaposition charges them both. Their blending results in muddy gray.

Our Lady

One of my favorite things about the film Ninth Gate is flying through the nine gates to this gorgeous music. It has proven to be a Shamanic journey inducer — if you want to go to the Kingdom of Shadows. Click this and you will go straight to YouTube to watch it.

The Place: The Devil’s Tower, Puivert, France

This is the postcard of the castle Corso found in Baroness Kestler’s Book of the Nine Gates. It also shows up on the wall of Balkan’s library, just over his shoulder when he tells Corso how privedged he is.  An ancient Cathar stronghold during the Albigensian Crusade, this fortress was called the Devil’s Tower in the film.  Corso chases Balkan to this sinister place for the ‘tragic’ climax of the story. And as it burns he is initiated in a scared sexual rite, into the Mysteries of the Goddess as Babalon.

Isn’t it strange, a stronghold of the Gnostic Cather sect who were annihilated for heresy, should become the setting for  Luciferian heresy in Roman Polanski’s film? But Polanski knew what he was doing, for the themes of pre-ordination, resonance, and return run through the film.

The Music: sung by Sumi Jo

This music by Kilar Wojciech has a tremendous trance inducing power. It evokes the mystery of the Underworld; the melody transports consciousness into another realm, dark and fiery, ancient and cosmic.  When you listen you feel as if you had entered through a mysterious door into Magic.

As an aside, Kilar also wrote the soundtrack for Coppola’s Dracula. He is master of musically evoking the shadowy side of the soul.

Luciferian Gnosis

Awen

The Goddess first appears to Corso as a young, nameless, blond woman whom he calls Green Eyes.  The green eyes are a clue to her demonic origins, for green is the color of Faery, and is also the color Lucifer. In Celtic Tradition, the Holy Grail was said to be the emerald that fell from Lucifer’s diadem when he plunged to earth after losing the War in Heaven. Alchemists believed that this green emerald was the Philosophers Stone. Another link with Faery is the girl’s use of  her own (angelic) blood to trace the Awen on Corso’s brow, signifying enlightenment.

Though I suppose there some who would see the blood on his forehead as a pitchfork…..

Babalon Returns

She carries a book like the High Priestess in the Tarot, who in older decks, is called The Papess. She waits on the other side of the Abyss and points to the heretics’ Castle of Fire and Light. Her mysteries are sexual but have little to do with procreation. Rather sexual energy, and union with an enlightened partner, is a vehicle that transforms consciousness and builds the Body of Light.

This is Her secret…

Whore of Babylon

Now I know that the Light comes from Darkness.

The Light of the Underworld

The Ninth Gate

To listen to the Radio Show, Babalon, click here:

Babalon: Part One

Babalon: Part Two

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Crowley’s Babalon: Number 159, The Whore of Babylon

Mistress of Abominations

This is the first in a series of posts about my adventures during 2005, leading up to the performance of Paul Green’s play Babalon. The story is full of cloak and dagger, initiatory strangeness, chaos, and hysteria. It shows what can happen on the Magical path if one is not careful….( as if one has choice…)

Directed by Alison Rockbrand, Babalon was performed on December 16, 2005 at the John Gielgud Theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts to a sold out audience of London’s finest occultists and magicians. If you want to listen to it, click Radio QBSaul: Archives, parts 1&2. I play Marjorie Cameron/Babalon. I had to be called Angel Murrow to disguise my identity.

Toth Tarot: Stregnth, Babalon

When I began my Magical Path, I was not drawn to Aleister Crowley. Naturally in the course of my studies, I came across his work. I respected his knowledge, but didn’t like him. I had worked with his Toth Tarot and not found it to my liking, even though I admired the art work of Lady Frieda Harris. While living in Seattle, I didn’t notice her, but the essence of Babalon was there all along just waiting for the right time to surface.

My move to London in 1998 was the catalyst for a major transformation. I was destined to  be pulled into the cycle of darkness, to have my head forced under the water of my deepest unconscious mind. The images that crossed my path were no longer the Green Ray Faery Magic that had been natural to me for half my life, but rather those of the Red Ray of Ceremonial Magic, Sorcery, and by extension, Thelema — the school of Aleister Crowley.

John Dee and Edward Kelly

Dr. Dee

The first sign on the road I didn’t know I was taking, grew from my interest in Dr. John Dee. This Elizabethan Magus had always been a favorite of mine since I discovered him many years before in my studies of Elizabethan theater, culture, and magic. John Dee, and his accomplice seer, Edward Kelly, were engaged in contacting the Angels through the medium of the shew stone, an obsidian mirror polished like glass.

The Angels spoke a  strange, Magical language that Dee called Enochian. The system  of Magic he created around these transmissions is very complex, and in my effort to understand it, I acquired the Enochian Tarot created by Gerald and Betty Schuler and Sallie Ann Glassman. These cards are very beautiful, but I was struck most forcibly by two images. Trump #2: Arn: Babalon, and Trump #9: Zip:The Daughter of Babalon.

2: Arn: Babalon

9: Zip: The Daughter of Babalon

(Sorry about these photos. Someday I will get a proper camera or a scanner so they will look right.)

My fore-shadowing of my Initiation into the Mysteries of  Babalon would take another form before I was properly under Her influence. That was my obsession with the Roman Polanski film, Ninth Gate.

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Babalon: Part One

Babalon: Part Two

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