kaos

Correspondence
“The Two Buttocks”
Hi Satyr—Babylon in Revelation may well be Rome, but John talks of two Babylons,
one the whore, two the city he compares to the whore. So the “Babylon is Rome” school
of interpretation isn’t particularly relevant to us because Babylon is still our Whore and
whatever her antecedence may be. Hmm, is Revelation the first mention of her? I had
assumed Babylonian texts mentioned her but just realize I don’t know.
Robert Graves and Raphael Patai note in Hebrew Myths that Asmodeus and other
demons were born of sexual union between Adam and Lilith and another like her
named Naamah, Tubal Cain’s sister. If so, a connection to Goetia? I suspect your
impression of Lilith has become hopelessly influenced by the Zohar. Understandable. I
think we need to look beyond Revelation for Babalon and beyond the Zohar for Lilith.
Saw today that the chief librarian of the Warburg, W F Ryan, whose specialty is
magic, has published a massive tome on magic in Russia—The Bathhouse at Midnight. I
once saw him interject in a discussion concerning the power of iron to inhibit magic, he
mentioned how Solomon’s temple was built by a rock-cutting worm because iron tools
could not be brought to what was essentially a magical building project. A rock-cutting
worm! I’d never heard that! Great lecture at the Warburg once on Arabic lunar mansion
astrology, I learnt they have a constellation named “The Two Buttocks”. I thought once
of doing an ma there in Renaissance magic, but a prerequisite was fluency in Latin.
Extremely attractive woman at a lecture doing a thesis on ancient images of women
with their legs chopped off or kneeling in submission and arms tied behind their backs,
she was the one who asked a question about iron in relation to magic. Ah, to be closeted
away writing books in the Warburg, a bit dusty, a bit high-brow, but I always enjoy my
trips there and feel this is a library arranged how I myself would arrange a library, and
the occult section is real Boris Balkan.
I am wondering what the large numbers in the Keys are supposed to be, and I also
find their translations unconvincing. Now I note a 2-digit number is represented by a
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