A NOTE ON GENDER AND SEXUALITY. Though the terms Scarlet Woman and Babalon have traditionally referred to currents channeled exclusively by biological females, I find no compelling reason that this should be so, and believe that in our current state of psychological and spiritual evolution, our only limitations in what energies we are able to experience, explore and embody, are our own imaginations. Therefore, I have attempted to express the following ideas in gender-neutral terms. Where I have failed in this reflects only the limitations of my own imagination, and not the limitations of the human soul as it seeks itself. I hope that all readers, regardless of gender, will find here inspiration for their own creative paths.
To walk the path of BABALON is to seek to allow oneself to experience existence as pure sensation, suspending value judgments of pleasure-pain, good-bad, attractive-repulsive by which we commonly limit and define our everyday human experience. To walk the path of BABALON is to seek to allow oneself to totally yield to sensations of pleasure and desire in encountering all facets of existence, without fear of dissolution of the "I". To walk the path of BABALON is to allow oneself the freedom of initiating passion, within others, within oneself.
Among the five faces of the goddess -- Maiden-Nymph-Mother-Warrior-Crone -- Babalon is Warrior. Babalon is that individual of power who is open and aware and in touch with hir magickal sexuality, yet is defined by no other individual, only by hir own Will to experience existence. S/he is that individual able to stand-in for the goddess in channelling the total unconditional love of the universe for all things in creation -- regardless of perceived beauty or ugliness, attractiveness or repugnance, gender, or age, or personal emotional reactions. Secure in hir self and in hir magickal power, one who walks the path of BABALON is free within hirself to be totally yielding to desire, open to that of others as well as to hir own, yet retaining hir personal integrity, independence, and power.
Able to open hir hightened sensitivities to an awareness of existence as pure sensation, Babalon is the tantric adept, with all the powers that this implies. Babalon functions as skryer, as psychic medium, and oracular voice, in the voicing of hir own dreamings of reality, and not those of another. As Warrior, one who walks the path of Babalon actively works for the positive transformation of culture and society, in a role of leadership, through the application of courage, will, creativity, love, and above all, the Feminine Voice.
a) "Take what they give." In each encounter in your daily life, take whatever the other gives you. If they are angry, accept that. If they are sad, let that pass into your consciousness. If they are sexually attracted to you, let that into your energy field as well. No matter what your personal reaction might normally be, whether fear, attraction, boredom, repulsion, accept the individual before you without judgement. Absorb their energies into yourself through touching them lightly on the shoulder, take their hand in yours, let essence flow from their eyes into yours. Radiate back to them both love and acceptance. Realize that this has nothing to do with your "personal" reactions, but is the channeling of Babalon as s/he touches the human sphere.
b) As an extension of the above, imagine having sex with everyone you encounter, whether attractive or not, whether old or young, reagardless of gender, and traditional sexual taboos. Continue this practice until you are able to imagine such encounters without excitement, repulsion, guilt, shame, or fear. All such emotions having lost their power over you, you will have developed kindness and tolerance for others' differentness, for we love that best which is most like ourselves.
c) Dissolve ego-boundaries via the moment of "the kiss". In that ineffable moment, the boundaries between oneself and the other blurr. Prolong this moment until you feel an energy and awareness other than "yourself" move through you. Kiss a plant. Kiss an inanimate object, such as a stone, a car, a pencil, your athame. Kiss an animal. Kiss another human being. In so doing, you will for that moment of the kiss, merge your interior essences and learn something of the being of the other. Be warned that the other in turn will have taken away a part of you as well.
d) The mirror: trade places. Using your imagination, stare into the eyes of another person until you have "become" that person, looking back at yourself who has thus become "the other". This can be very intense, even unsettling for both parties. When successful there is a flash of union with the other that is a flow of pure universal love, a reaching out and identification with them, as all love is union with that which we desire, that which we would absorb into ourselves.
For the adventurous: try this with someone you don't like, or someone with whom you are angry.
e) Mirror, mirror. Gaze at your reflection in a mirror until it is no longer familiar to you, until the face has become that of the other gazing back. Radiate kindness to that other in the mirror, give it your acceptance, let your love flow out to it and then return as it is again reflected back to you.
f) "Magickal Monogamy". When we seek the muse of inspiration via union with the other, we encounter this difficulty: the muse lies within us, not the other. No individual can therefore give us what we do not already possess within ourselves. Though, we may find in that first thrill of a new lover the spark which ignites the elusive inspiration which we seek -- at least temporarily. Yet, if one persists in tantric practice with one given individual, there is a deepening of power as masks are shed. Rather than becoming familiar and boring, there is a point at which the lover becomes totally mysterious, totally OTHER -- and thus a transcendent channel of creative magickal force.
Orgasm is energy. Voluntary rhythmic movements of body and breath build energy patterns, inducing deep primal responses in body and psyche. At the moment of orgasm the sense of personal "I" enlarges its boundaries, merging with the life stream of the universe, the mind and body aglow with a thousand pin-pricks of dancing energy and light. Orgasm creates a gate into other dimensions. Where the ordinary person merely looses consciousness of self, falling happily asleep, the tantric adept rides the stream of orgasmic discharge into astral worlds, where s/he accesses creative realities where the power to will a thing is enough to make it so.
In your temple or shrine room, establish a breathing rhythm. Visualize the life force around you as brilliant dancing points of light. Breathe this light into your body; allow yourself to experience the surrounding ocean of vibrating energy in which we constantly swim, and from which we derive our being. As the breathing rhythm becomes established, you will move deeper and deeper into a meditative state; your consciousness will calm, becoming lucid and clear. Experiment with each of the following practices until distinct physical sensations come through:
Imagine that you are breathing in and out not through your nose or mouth, but through the bones of your legs, breathe through the bones of your arms.
Breathe through the top of your skull, continuing until your mind expands, opening to the universe.
Breathe through the pores of your skin, until your body feels cleansed, entirely alive and open to sensation.
Breathe energy up from the base of your spine to the top of your skull. Breathe energy back down from your head to the base of your spine, your body becoming charged with energy and light as you breathe the energy current up and down your spine.
Breathe energy up and out through the top of your head, then down and around your body, appearing as the brilliant blue of your protective aura, growing into the bright blue of the circle that encloses you within your sacred space, a circle that becomes brighter, more vital with each breath.
Breathe through the seven vital centers of the chakras each in turn, awakening them to vibrate with living light.
In communion with the Angel of your Higher Self, bring yourself to orgasm, without anxiety, without guilt. Record your visions.
Orgasm through the base of the spine -- Malkuth. This gives the power of tantric energy exchange; the power of distilling the transforming elixir as the semiochemicals of the sexual kalas pour forth from your body, and the Silver Rain of Nuit falls down from the stars.
Orgasm through the center below the navel -- The Knot of Brahma. This gives personal power, the experience of Ch'i as tentacles of light radiating from your Center, reaching out to objects of attention and desire. Here is the power to "see" yourself and other humans as glowing luminous eggs of light, interconnected nodes, vortices of sentience, throbbing with the rhythm of life.
Orgasm through the navel -- Yesod. This gives powers of fascination and enchantment, of imagination kindled by desire; the power to create illusions, to create one's own universe -- be it heaven, or, be it hell. Here is power to experience the "juiciness" of life, its richness, and the sensuousness inherent in all that flows: emotions, rivers, blood.
Orgasm through the diaphragm -- Veil of Paroketh/Knot of Vishnu. This gives the power of speech in silence; the power of invisibility; the power of the shroud. Here too is power to enter outre dimensions via the cosmological Black Hole of interstellar space, matter collapsed upon itself by the power of internal attraction. Orgasm through the compassionate heart -- Tiphareth/The Crossroads. This gives the power of invisibility, the power of entering another's body, heart, and mind, the power to experience the reality of Self as nothing more than an Ego-less Void.
Orgasm through the throat area -- Knot of Shiva/Daath/the entrance to "Universe B" and the Tunnels of Set. This gives the power of the shaman, the power of shape-shifting, the power of cosmic transmutation of the primal cell. Here is the power to touch and experience the combined male-female / female-male existent as nascent possibility within one's own body of light. Here too is knowledge of past-present-future as existent in the Now.
Orgasm through the third eye -- twin-petalled Binah / Chokmah at the center of the brow. This gives power to enter the Dream Time; power to leave the body at will; power to externalize, objectify, and universalize one's internal, subjective, and highly personal conception of reality. Here too is power to utter the "birth words" of Master of the Temple.
Orgasm through the crown of the head -- Kether/thousand-petalled Sarasrara Chakra -- raising kundalini up the spine, allowing consciousness to pour out through the top of the skull into the exploding universe, the ever-expanding shower of stars. Experience the light and energy of the Stars above as source of inspiration and spiritual sustenance, the seeding of our race. Orgasm here brings the power of trans-dimensional, interstellar time-travel.
Orgasm through every pore of your body, experiencing the interconnecting points of singing light that cover the living flesh. Feel these vibrating nadis of the subtle body, tiny pricklings of light that are the blessings of the kalas of the stars as they rain down from transplutonian dimensions. Feel the fireworks as they impinge upon your body, see in them the image of the universe alive with whirling, pulsing many-colored stars. Orgasm here brings the power of calling the Great Old Ones, timeless travelers, the gods who are ever-returning, spiralling from past and future into an eternally unfolding now.
Breathe in sun, moon, and stars. Reaching up to them, let their energy flow through you. Experience their benediction as a prolonged kiss.
Placing hands upon the earth (if indoors, floor, yet visualizing earth), send streaming orgasmic energy into the all-accepting body of the earth. Experience the blessing of Hir all-embracing love as a profound opening of the heart into stillness, silence, peace.