I. VAMA MARGA Foundations Of The Left-Hand Path - staticfly.net

Tiamat, atavistic goddess of the deep. This ancient understanding of the
Beast as a female force negates Crowley's self-definition of the Beast 666 as
the quintessence of solar-phallic power, but then mythological scholarship
was never the poetic romantic Crowley's strong suit. His do-it-yourself
mythology inexplicably presented Babalon as an aspect of the Egyptian
goddess of the night sky, Nuit, suggesting in The Book Of The Law that
Babalon is Nuit's "secret name." Babalon, as a being of sheer lust, was also
interpreted by Crowley as the feminine counterpart of Pan, the lascivious
goat-god of ancient Greece.
From henceforth, Crowley sought the Scarlet Woman in her human
incarnation, beginning a futile quest for a projected inner ideal, a neverattainable
anima that he found and then lost in hundreds of women. It would
be wrong, however, to think of Crowley's vision of the Scarlet Woman as a
soul mate – he was thoroughly uninterested in any woman's soul, and it is
questionable whether he even thought women possessed souls at all. Often,
to consecrate the ascension of these human women to Scarlet Womanhood
he would paint his phallic Mark of the Beast between their breasts as a
talisman of ownership which seems to contradict his own statement that
"there shall be no property in human flesh."
If Crowley were ever to have placed a lonely-hearts ad seeking a new
Scarlet Woman, his criteria were plainly outlined in The Book Of The Law:
"Let her work be the work of wickedness! ... Let her kill her heart! Let her be
loud and adulterous!" When it comes down to it, Crowley's vision of the
Scarlet Woman is the man-eating, ball-busting, femme fatale, the belle dame
sans merci that dominated European art, poetry and literature of the 1890s,
transformed into a magical idol. In fact, many Symbolist and Decadent artists
created images of the Whore of Babylon that foreshadow Crowley's cult of
the Scarlet Woman in their kitschy magnificence. Babalon can also be
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compared to the Gnostic Sophia, in that Crowley equated knowledge of the
Whore with "Understanding" – with a capital "C", to provide a distinction
from the mundane sense of the word – the wisdom that made the magician
into a Master. This interpretation of sexual union with the Shakti would be
understood by the Tantric Buddhist as well, who views his female partner as
Vidya, the embodiment of wisdom.
For a time, he would pluck some anonymous schoolteacher,
prostitute, actress, or unsatisfied housewife from her drab existence and
elevate her to the sacred Thelemic office of Scarlet Woman. Despite the
grandeur of the title they assumed, almost none of the women Crowley
selected to serve in this role were magicians in their own right. He much
preferred to be the sole magical authority in the spotlight where his dealings
with the opposite sex were concerned; only among his male disciples would
he countenance anything like parity of knowledge. Crowley neither
recognized nor desired spiritual or intellectual gifts in his mistresses – for
him, women were incapable of genius, or even original thought. The only
exception to this he would allow was among his few lesbian disciples, whose
masculine characteristics he theorized might permit for a reflection of male
mental prowess.
Consider Crowley's description of one of his Scarlet Women, Boddie
Minor, who he damns with faint praise by comparing her positive masculine
traits to her feminine defects: "She was physically a magnificent animal, with
a man's brain well stocked with general knowledge ... but despite every
effort, there was still one dark corner in which her femininity had taken
refuge and defied her to expel it." He frequently described his Scarlet Women
as animals; some of his more notable Whores of Babalon he nicknamed the
Cat, the Monkey, the Snake, and the Owl. These may seem like affectionate
pet names, but Crowley, an enthusiastic hunter, had as little empathy for the
animal kingdom as he did for the opposite sex. Whether quadruped or female