Babalon

 

Leila Ida Nerissa Bathurst Waddell, also known as Laylah.
She was a voluptuous beauty and became a famed Scarlet Woman of Aleister Crowley.
She was familiarly addressed by Crowley as “Laylah,” and was immortalized in his 1912 volume The Book of Lies and his autobiography The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. Crowley referred to her variously as ‘Divine Whore’, ‘Mother of heaven’, ‘Sister Cybele’, ‘Scarlet Woman’, and most affectionately of all, ‘Whore of Babylon’. They studied the occult and took mescaline together.

Babalon — also known as The Scarlet Woman, The Great Mother, or the Mother of Abominations — is a
goddess found in the mystical system of Thelema, which was established in 1904 by Crowley’s writing of The
Book of the Law. In her most abstract form, she represents the female sexual impulse and the liberated woman;
although she can also be identified with Mother Earth in her most fertile sense. At the same time, Crowley
believed that Babalon had an earthly aspect in the form of a spiritual office, which could be filled by actual
women — usually as a counterpart to his own identification as “To Mega Thereon” (The Great Beast) — whose
duty was then to help manifest the energies of the current Aeon of Horus.

Her consort is Chaos, the “Father of Life” and the male form of the Creative Principle. Babalon is often
described as being girt with a sword and riding the Beast. She is often referred to as a sacred whore, and her
primary symbol is the Chalice or Grail.