Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Babalon — the Scarlet Woman, the Mother of Abominations, the sacred whore. Her name burns like incense across the landscape of Thelemic mysticism. She is not merely a figure, but a door — an opening into the radiant, terrifying, liberating power of feminine divinity unchained.
In the Catholic tradition, the feminine is mostly shaped into two archetypes: the Virgin Mary and the Whore of Babylon. One is submissive, pure, and obedient — an idealized mother who suffers in silence. The other is a threat: decadent, lascivious, and marked for destruction. The polarity serves a moralistic system: obedience is exalted, sexuality is demonized.
Thelema reclaims that second image. In Liber AL vel Legis we read:
“Let the woman be girt with a sword before me: let blood flow to my name. Trample down the Heathen; be upon them, o warrior, I will give you of their flesh to eat!”
This is not a woman tamed. This is Babalon: sovereign, sexual, and ecstatic. She is the embodiment of Will without shame. The sacred prostitute in the Temple of the Beast. The power of eros in union with spirit.
Babalon calls women not to be passive vessels, but chalices brimming with their own fire. She is not the counterpart to a man, but the completion of herself. In a world that teaches women to shrink — she invites them to expand.
And she challenges us, all of us, to face what we’ve buried: our fear of the wild feminine, our disgust with pleasure, our distrust of surrender. To invoke her is to walk a blade — it is to surrender control, pour yourself into the Cup, and burn.
In this way, Babalon becomes not just a goddess, but a path. For women, she can be a reclamation. For men, a call to dissolve the patriarchal God-image and embrace something deeper, more electric. For nonbinary seekers, she offers something beyond dichotomy — a current that defies category, pure becoming.
To live in her light is not easy. But it is holy.
Love is the law, love under will.