I am thrilled to return to Astro Magia this year to give a keynote presentation. The theme of the conference is Astral Sensibilities & Sensualities: Corporeal, Material, Erotic; the aim to highlight practical and embodied aspects of astral magic.
Stars of Babalon
Celestial theophanies and the poietics of flesh
The re-emergence of the figure of the Harlot of Revelation as the goddess Babalon in Aleister Crowley’s visions of the Enochian Aethyrs is arguably the first appearance of the heretical erotic divine feminine in the modern era. Crowley placed Her at the heart of his (sex) magick. Though radical in its time, his is a closed system and fundamentally misunderstands the sexual dynamic and human sexuality. In pursuing the ‘mystery of mysteries,’ that of Babalon, I have developed a personal magical and spiritual praxis rooted in the carnal body, independent of the solar-phallic doctrine of Thelema. In conjunction with my somatic practice, I’ve made extensive investigations into the Babylon of Revelation as the archetype and source of Crowley’s Babalon, tracing John’s Harlot to her origin in Inana-Ishtar and the corpus of poetic, mythic and stellar lore associated with her. I propose that this corpus can be understood as a prehistory of Babalon, that the stellar theophanies of the hierodule Inana-Ishtar are celestial bodies of the whore Babalon.
In this lecture – which develops further the thesis of my ‘Transgressing Angels, Entangled Bodies’ (Astro Magia, 2019) – I will speak about my experiments incorporating astral magic with the body-techniques that underlie my artistic and magical practice. Such methods, in their affective, creative and visionary potentials, can allow us to move beyond the impasse of an exhausted, unspirited culture and enflesh our visions of the future.
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About the conference
‘The practice and study of astrological magic has been on the rise in recent decades. As part of the contemporary western-astrological tradition, its practice has often inhabited the fringe. This, however, is shifting as more are starting to see astrological magic as the “missing piece” within the tradition: that of the participatory. Just as observational astrology moves us out from charts and into the living sky, astral magic offers the opportunity to move beyond concept and onto encounter. Astro Magia seeks to gather the many voices and actors who engage with the content and context of astral magic.’