The House of Babalon

It is the sign of life in true Craft and true teaching, firstly that it be your Craft, your teaching, your revelation, and that it not be imposed on anyone else as ultimate rule or final truth. The next sign is constant evolution, and it is my experience that little evolves as quickly and into as many permutations as the stream I have been baptized into, which is 1734. Quickly I found the closest and most sacred revelation inspired by 1734, American Folkloric Witchcraft, native to my own Indiana. I feel such a part of that, but at the same time I was surprised to see how…. Christian… my private revelations and interpretations of 1734 and AFW were. Not that they would find home in any church, but my most powerful magics were coming from what I had learned not by ignoring my Catholicism, but by seriously and mystically working in it.

Because of this, the stream that I have suddenly taken a ride on needs its own name. It needs it so that when I lapse into Christian iconography no one thinks I am applying that to an already existent form of Craft which is not reliant on it. So we will call this, The House of Babalon, the Secret and Most Heretical Catholic Church. Secret, because even I do not know its members or its nature, Heretical because heresy means to follow ones own mind. In ancient times Christians thought this was the greatest danger, and so applied it to mavericks and praised group think, but that is done now. Catholic because it is all encompassing of all tradtions and, honestly, because it is Catholic in its orientation. Church because a church is both a mystical body and a house.

On May Eve, She has another name as well, Babalon, Babalon restored. The churches we have known, homophobic, imperialistic, silent on suffering, supporting slavery, anti woman, anti-choice, anti love, anti life in any real way, these are the Whore of Babylon in all its luridness. Whether a church in England that upheld imperialism, racism and slavery, churches in the southern United States that upheld white supremacy and racial violence or a great church in Rome with gold encrusted priests who regularly work their own black magic to take power from the people while turning a blind eye on suffering, molesting its loyal followers and continuing to attack femininity and the Mother, all of these are whores of Babylon. But what we seek is Babalon restored, not Babalon as a virgin, no, but Babalon as hierodule and high priestess, holy lover. As Cain is the Fiery Male intelligence in the East, the Great Smith, she is the May Queen, Eve, Guinevere, Mary the Magdalene. She is the Secret Fire. She is me. She is we. She is She.

As If

"Quasimodo geniti infantes, rationabile, sine dololac concupiscite."


"As if babes, alleluia, desire the spiritual milk without guile, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Rejoice in God our helper. Sing aloud to the God of Jacob!"

As newborn babes, alleluia, desire the rational milk without guile, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Rejoice to God our helper. Sing aloud to the God of Jacob.

Stepping outside to gather flowers, I see there is not only cold rain but snow. Now that the first few days around Easter showed us springtime growth, and after the flowers have erupted in yellow and red, snow comes and threatens to undo everything. There is always a struggle between the coming warmth, and the old coldness which, even a few days before the beginning of May, does not wish to pass. I am reminded of the end of Andrew Rissik's play Dionysus. where he gives a Gnostic Christian slant to the ancient play The Bacchae. When we begin the play, King Cadmus who was once harsh and unrelenting, and then, in his despairing old age passed his crown to his harsh grandson, is full of joy at the arrival of the young God of Wine the new order of the world the God has brought. But by the end, Cadmus cannot sustain his joy in the coming of Dionysus and so, retreats to his old way of thinking. This is how it can be after the dizzying heights of Easter. After the warmth, the world is gradually colder, and then it even seems like winter again, that which has grown is blighted by the return of the old familiar cold.

But I have gathered flowers for the altar, and during the mysteries of the Triduum one thing is revealed, the altar is not only the body of the Lord who has died, but his tomb. And on Easter it is the tomb of the one who was once dead, but now lives. The altar is visited for the reason every tomb is visited, not to hold court with a rotting corpse, but because the tomb of resurrection is the joining of earth to heaven, the above to the below, the sight of miracle and transformation.

Every tomb is the tomb of resurrection.

Today we light the candles for Low Sunday, the Octave of Easter, low in comparison to last Sunday which is the highest of them all. This Sunday is also called Quasimodo Sunday, because that Latin word is the beginning of the introit “As if infants,” or “In the mode of infants….” Which declares how we enter into this new spiritual life. And how fitting that Quasimodo is the name of the creature of Notre Dame, when it is also entering into its new life. Quasimodo, the reminder that after the sacred mysteries that passed, after the blighting snow, having stood before the tomb we are not like Cadmus who went back to his old ways, but infants in the new way, still hungering for this new and beautiful life which we have just entered.

Quasimodo, As if. Though the weather is foul again, we celebrate as if it were not. Though everyone celebrated transformation with us, and it seems like all that has passed, we celebrate as if it were still clearly before us, as if what we just barely saw we could see clearly, as if we were at the beginning of a thing and not at its ending, as if…

The Three Marys

As long as I was in the Church, Easter and to some extent Christmas, was troublesome. Both holidays promised so much and delivered basically nothing. Holy Week was easy to understand, and all through that week, as a church, we usually moved together becoming kinder, better people, people who behaved as if they actually believed not only in the Gospel, but in the power of the Gospel, what in some terms might be called the magic, the sacredness of things. Holy Thursday was a day when it seemed we really were devoted, really did love one another, and Good Friday was a day we were all in the mystery of the death of God. And then came Easter, with its blinding white and gold, with the word ‘alleluia’ sung for the first time in forty days, with the flowers on the altar and with, yes, business as usual. For a brief window we had behaved as if there was something else, something brilliant awaiting us and now, shrinking from the light, we were back to the middling place Christians generally inhabit.

            The writer Ali Smith, talking about her new book Spring says spring is a hard time, and everyone has always known this. It is the hinge time when we are coming out of the dark into the light and the truth is we really don’t want that light as much as we say we do. It is too much, too stark, come to quickly. This is the peculiar burden of Easter, and the failure of Easter. Christmas, for all of its peculiarities is, in the end, about the birth of a baby. Good Friday about a death. These are things we can wrap our heads around, but resurrection is a thing from the otherworld. It is a mystery all the way around. It is a deeper looking in at things, and I’m not sure as an entire people, barely initiated and only half awake, a church could honestly perceive it. Resurrection would require your whole life to change. It would require a deep devotion, a love that, frankly, en masse, Christians (or any other people) do not possess. Because of this, Easter, like the other Christian events, becomes a spectator event rather than an initiation and awakening. It becomes the story of one very particular and special man coming out of a tomb and the vague promise that one day, in the far off future, after you are long dead, you will rise too. It becomes the promise of a heaven which, wherever it is, definitely is not here.

The mystery of Easter is not a brightly lit church. It is a cold an empty tomb, and inside of it there is no baby and certainly no virgin. There is nothing, and there are the three Marys. In a text which knows no Goddess and no priestess, the only name for both is Mary, and the revolving number of women who swirl about Jesus, his mother, his fostermothers, his disciples, his spiritual lovers, are called the Three Marys. Two of them, Salome and Joanna, are not even actually called Mary. To learn about these women is to learn about a mystery long ignored.

These Marys who were at the foot of the Cross, who were at the burial of the Lord when the male disciples had left, are also first to visit the tomb on Easter morning. But there is no one to visit. There is only the emptiness of nothing. Looking in, not knowing how they feel, plunged from one terror to a deeper one, they are finally going to tell the men, but the men don’t hear them, and the men still aren’t hearing them twenty centuries later. The Marys have left now, except for Mary Magdalene, who sits there in a blasted garden by a grave with a robbed body all on her own. And it is on her own, in this strange space, that she receives the holy revelation because, though we always ache for others, it on our own that revelation and initiation always comes.

The Passion of Erishkigal

Erishkigal, Queen of the Dead, is our primitive Persephone. She is Inanna’s sister, but the nature of this sisterhood is less than joyous. She is morning the death of her husband, the Bull of Heaven, and we are told that when she hears Inanna, more than dressed to the nines, is coming for the funeral she slaps her thigh and stops to think. She commands the price for the visit is that Inanna strip her finery and power at each gate until she arrives in Erishkigal’s presence naked, and there, judged by the lords of the dead unworthy, she is struck dead by her sister and hung, like dead cattle, on a meat hook.

Something has gone wrong in this meeting to say the least.

After the traditional passage of three days and nights, Erishkigal’s friend and priestess Ninshubar goes seeking out the three gods whom Inanna called to help her, her three fathers. Ninshubar runs to the temple of Enlil and to the temple of Inanna. Both gods turn their backs on Inanna saying that since she went to the world of the dead, she is dead to them. Only Enki, the lord of craft, the lord of wisdom and compassion reacts with great sorrow and makes from the dirt under his fingernails two creatures neither male nor female who are sent with instructions to the world of the dead to bring back Inanna.

These creatures have the power of smallness. They buzz like insects through the gates of the underworld and, at last, come to the chamber of Erishkigal finding her. as Enki had told them they would, lying half naked on her bed, her “hair swirling about her like leeks,” as she weeps. She announces the pain in her body, “Oh, oh, oh my head. Oh, oh, oh, my insides,” and they say , “Oh, oh, oh, your head. Oh, oh, oh, your insides.” As she cries out, they cry out for her until at last they cry out when she says, “Oh, oh, oh, my heart.”

Finally she has noticed these who are mourning with her, acknowledging her sorrow, and she promises to reward them. They only wish for Inanna, which they receive.

One journey to the underworld works and other does not. Much has been made of Inanna’s journey, the symbolism of dropping one symbol of power after the other in order to reach Erishkigal. But in all of this symbolism we forget two things. First, we never actually understand the nature of Inanna’s journey and, unless Inanna planned to be murdered, we forget that her journey actually fails. The journey which succeeds is the journey of the galla, the little creatures made by Enki. They have not come into the world of the dead for curiosity or to display their might. They do not even have names! They have come in compassion to bring back Inanna, but also in compassion for Erishkigal. It is their compassion which she rewards, and their compassion which takes her out of weakened state of pain. It is their smallness and their humility, their dedication to their mission which brings them through the world of the dead without the harrowing rituals of undressing which Inanna, in her determination to storm into the underworld, faces.

Inanna has told Ninshubur to call on Enki last, after Enlil and after Nanna, the great father gods, but is in Enki, her grandfather and the primal and often forgotten deity, who remembers and loves her. It is Enki who brings forth the creatures neither male nor female who come down to the land below and rescue her. This says something because the debate between patriarchy and matriarchy, between the masculine and the feminine has been a very real thing, but what Enki is doing is bringing into being something beyond binary. The creatures of compassion he creates are beyond male and female, beyond roles, beyond binary, their two characteristics being compassion, and dedication to their mission. Unlike Enlil, or Nanna who only know heaven and have no time for the underworld, and unlike Inanna who would storm the underworld, Enki and his creatures embrace the above and the below and eschew nothing. This is the way of entering the deeper country.

Inanna's Descent

Teri Uktena's reading of Inanna's Descent into the Underworld, originally translated by Diane Wolkstein.

Inanna's Descent

Happy Ishtar

Venerable Bebe, the Christian monk and scholar who was the first historian of England is the person who gives us the etymology of Easter saying it comes from a lost Saxon goddess called Eostre. She is very much lost for this is the only reference to her and yet, ironically, this Christian monk invented a goddess adored by modern pagans looking for an Easter replacement.

    The truth is a little more obvious, Easter has connotations with the East, the place of the rising sun, and the Goddess who had connotations with both is Ishtar. In fact, after you have three Scotches and perhaps a joint, pronounced Ishtar and Easter are exactly the same. Her ancient feast, the story of her willing dying and rising, were marked around this time of year and she is known variously as Asherah, Aphrodite and Inanna.

    Saint Paul, who probably never read Babylonian or Sumerian stories, nevertheless echoed the story of Inanna when he said that Christ put aside all of his power and glory to come into this world and give his life. This is the same thing Inanna does to visit the underworld. Unlike the rather straightforward story of Easter, Inanna’s visit to the underworld is slightly more complicated and longer lasting, but then, a close look at the Christian story reveals that it is not that simple either. In these last few days of Lent, we will pay attention to Inanna and her story.

Passiontide

Perhaps all of the Castles mirror the Spiral Castle. To some degree, every castle is the light the Spiral Castle reflected to the different corners of the compass. I am finding the The Golden Castle and the Spiral Castle nearly inseparable. Here, light and dark are together. The beauty of bright sky and warm days is upon us, but for many of us, for me, the toll of changing seasons includes bodily sickness. Some people I know are struck by depression coming out of winter. We are in the glory of days when we no longer need the furnace and can open the windows, when we can walk outside not burdened by a surfeit of clothes and the sun remains in the sky. Yet my body aches with a springtime sickness.

Central to this is the glorious mystery of Passiontide, the last two weeks of Lent, beginning with Passion Sunday. I had always thought Passion Sunday and Palm Sunday were the same, but it turns out that Passion Sunday was abolished by the Catholic Church in the 1960’s and most churches no longer have it. By the magic and miracle which I have come to understand is part of life, I heard someone give a Passion Sunday service though, reconfirming my desire to celebrate Passiontide.

Why Passiontide was stopped may mirror why I left the Church, all churches. I imagine the powers that be decided that people could not sustain the mystery of sorrow for two whole weeks, so now the Passion and the story of Palm Sunday are rolled into one day and silenced from Sunday until Holy Thursday. All the marvelous power of that initiatory story of the suffering of Christ is compacted to as short a time as possible so that people can glance at it and move on.

Several years out of the Church, Passiontide comes to me, and so does the sermon the Coptic bishop on the radio gave: “Now we leave behind the active God and enter into the God who comes into this world and is done to, suffers.” To get my writerly mind right, I need to type something down, but the greatest frustration for me is not acting, not thinking out the thing, simply stumbling through what is happening to me and inching along as best as I can, simply taking the sufferings and joys of life as they come, deaing with my physical weakness. The witch longs to be active, but another part of the Craft is the passive initiation, the reception of what God has for us, the power bestowed in waiting in the center which is eloquently represented by Christ on the Cross. And so, here I am, waiting.

The Uncaptured Castle

 

In Andrew Rissik’s play, Dionysus, Cadmus is the old King of Thebes, reawakened to the wonder of the gods, and to the union of heaven and earth, and Pentheus is the king who, confronted with the wonder of Dionysus and the new order of hope and joy, wishes to quash this and reassert the status quo. When the women who are worshipping Dionysus call the Princess Agave out to join them she says that she cannot, and she prays: “Let the one who pities our tears receive us at the last with beauty and gentleness and purge us of all fear.”

            The city of Thebes build itself on hardship and a repression of hope, and joy, and ignorance of human suffering, that it might develop quickly, but now the wonderful God Dionysus has come to spread love and wonder, to turn water into wine, to have rocks sweat milk, to relieve women from abuse and shame and toil and free old men from their constraints. A young maid sings, flowers in her hair:

            “Godlike we came and joyous, out of the womb, not grief bound and jealous, but open, and full of song. Not to pale men do we belong, but to a realm of angelic bliss! To the blinding brightness, will we return at last!”

This is the realm of the Golden Castle. The changing seasons echo it, but it is beyond the seasons outside our window. The lessons of the Golden Castle, pitched between the end of winter and the growth of spring, are lessons on how to look at the world. No sooner is there sun and blossoms, bright blue rivers under blue skies, then we are hit with grey sky and thirty degree days, and the spring we hoped would come so quickly is once again struck by winter. We are in the realm of hope. We have seen things turn warmer, the beginning of color. We have been touched by beauty and, indeed, if we have any sense we know that the natural way of things goes toward that heat and color. What is more, we do not have to despair that winter will  eventually come again. That is part of the circle of things as well.

What we see so often around us, in people who do not keep their promises, in friends and lovers who refuse to do their best or honor their word, is a distinct boredom, a preventative despair, a sort of teenage coolness in unbelief that characterizes a stunned and hopeless world,  and the lessons of Lent are to continually shock us because we have become used to this, because it is easier to expect endless cold, constant disappointment and a snowbound life, to resist the good fight. It is easier to lie down than to create heat and light. Here, in the disciplines of the Golden Castle, fasting, restraint, meditation, self examination, we strip away weakness, laziness, despair, jadedness, unrelenting anger over the past, and open our eyes to the simple beauty of the God of Growing Things and the Mother of the Budding Earth.

The truth is, the world is in bad shape, and on the surface of things that can be all we see. We are surrounded by disenchanted, unenchanted  and chant resistant people who refuse to believe in goodness,  and act cheaply, challenging our convictions every day. Against what we have seen, is what we remember, the reminder of the realms of angelic bliss which are our home, the inheritance of glory which in our initiations, we remember again and again. This is why the Golden Lantern is the treasure of the Golden Castle. This precious lantern is the light within, the divine light of hope, the spark of God burning steadily in the safe keeping of our persisting and persevering hearts, and when others refuse to embrace the mysteries, when the perfect love and perfect trust required for all true working is scorned, we turn to that fire within, again and again.