~Eye-Magi-Nations Creations~

...& The Infinite Exploration of Love, Life & Self

~*~An Exploration of.....

The Sacred Virgin/Sacred Whore~*~

The Sacred Feminine

 

 

     To me, The Sacred Femine is a Priestess of The Goddess. The Temple Goddess, as she channeled the Goddess energy and life force. She carries the sexual energy, wisdom and knowledge of the Goddess...the Mysteries within. She is a constant flowing source of energy of the Goddess.

     Through Her, others may obtain the touch of Enlightenment. Learn the joys of Life, Sensuality, Wisdom and Knowledge. Erotica, Sexuality and the Sacredness & Power of the Feminine.

     She speaks for the Goddess in many forms. Through the forms of dance...where each movement is sacred in and of itself, through her words...either spoken or written...for they hold much knowledge and wisdom from the labyrinth. Through her touch to spread the energy of the Goddess and bring forth the feminine energies needed to unite the Sacred masculine & feminine energies within...igniting the Sacred Flame that leads to Enlightenment of Ones Higher Self.

     She devotes her life first and foremost to the service of her God/dess, her Higher Power in which she stands. Her life follows that of where her Higher Power leads her, to whom the Higher Power brings to her, for she is always in service. This is her Path. This is also the energy of the Kundalini...the Kundalini Energy *is* the Life Force...the Higher Power...the Sexual Life Force that holds All and leads All to Enlightenment of Higher Self....OneSelf.

     This, she has earned...through her studying, devotion, self discipline and knowledge of self. Through her sacrifices, unselfish devotion to the Higher Purpose and good of all. She is no different than a Nun, Monk, or a Priest....for she is a Priestess, living a Spiritual Life in 24/7 devotion and service of the God/dess and spreading the Energy, Knowledge, Love and Wisdom.

Written by Sacryfice, 2006

 ~In Peace Love & Service of~

 

~

 

“For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother and the daughter.
I am the members of my mother.
I am the barren one and many are her sons.
I am she whose wedding is great, and I have not taken a husband.
I am the midwife and she who does not bear.
I am the solace of my labor pains.
I am the bride and the bridegroom,
and it is my husband who begot me.
I am the mother of my father and the sister of my husband,
 and he is my offspring.

I am the silence that is incomprehensible
and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.
I am the voice whose sound is manifold
 and the word whose appearance is multiple.
I am the utterance of my name.

For I am knowledge and ignorance.
I am shame and boldness.
I am shameless; I am ashamed.
I am strength and I am fear.
I am war and peace.
Give heed to me.
I am the one who is disgraced and the great one.

I am the one who is hated everywhere
 and who has been loved everywhere.
I am the one whom they call Life, and you have called Death.
I am the one whom they call Law,
and you have called Lawlessness.
I am the one whom you have pursued,
 and I am the one whom you have seized.
I am the one you have scattered,
 and you have gathered me together.
I am the one before whom you have been ashamed,
 and you have been shameless to me.
I am she who does not keep festival,
and I am she whose festivals are many.
I, I am godless, and I am one whose God is great.”

From: Thunder, Perfect Mind

By: George W. MacRae

The Psychological Significance of the Sacred Fem.

The Psychological Significance of
the Sacred Feminine

“It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward in counteraction to those other constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back.”
--Joseph Campbell,
The Hero with a Thousand Faces


When we speak of the sacred feminine, the stranger who comes to th temple of the Goddess of Love, or of the Goddess HerSelf, one may wonder what meaning these figures and the mythological material associated with them can hold for contemporary men and women.
Ordinarily we think of myths as traditional stories serving to explain phenomena of nature or religious beliefs. But we can also see myths as describing or explaining the phenomenological nature of the psyche itself.
Joseph Campbell, for instance, states that myths tell us in symbolic language about “powers of the psyche to be recognized and integrated in our lives., powers of the psyche to be recognized and integrated in our lives., powers that have been common to the human spirit forever, and which represent that wisdom of the species by which man has weathered the millenniums.”
Jung said that myths are first and foremost psychic phenomena which reveal the nature of the soul:
“All the mythological processes of nature, such as summer and winter, phases of the moon, the rainy seasons and so forth, are in no sense allegories [ie: a paraphrase of conscious contents[ of these objective occurances; rather they are symbolic expressions of the inner, unconscious drama of the psyche which becomes accessible to man's consciousness by way of projection—that is in the events to Nature”

Myths are to a collective culture what dreams are to the individual. From the symbolism of both myth and dreams we discern pyschic events. Thus we find that myths are not just delightful yet idle stories of gods and goddesses, heroes or demons, from a forgotten time; they speak of living psychological material and act as a repository of truths appropriate to an individuals inner life, as well as to the life of the community.
Jung referred to the deeper strata of the psyche as the collective unconscious (or objective psyche), distinguishing it from the personal unconsious. The latter contains psychic material unique to an individual, while the collective unconscious contains psychic components that are omnipresent, unchanging and common to everyone. These unconscious qualities are not individually acquired, but are inherited subtrates of the psyche per se (just as instincts are). At these deep 'layers' of the psyche energy,individual uniqueness gives way to autonomous functions, fields of psychic energy, which becomes increasingly collective; that is, they are inherent in humankind throughout history. Jung called this kind of psychic energy an archtype.
As psychic energy the archtypes have the ability to regulate, modify and color one's experience of oneself and the world; hence they may be thought of as patterns of behavior. Jung writes:
“What we mean by 'archtype' is in itself irrepresentable but has effects which make visualizations of it possible, namely, the archtypal images and ideas. We meet with a similar situation in physics; there the smallest particles are themselves irrepresentable but have effects from the nature of which we can build up a model. The archtypal image, the motif or mythologem, is a construction of this kind.”
Myths and dreams are born from this layer of the unconscious. They produce symbols whose form and movement tell a story which reveals a psychic element or attribute of an individual or culture.
We find archtypal motifs occurring in myths from all ages and locales, just as we find then in dreams the world over. Archtypal motifs are products of the unconscious manifesting in consciousness as images or symbols. A symbol is thus a “nucleus of meaning” and is charged with energy.
As a psychic product, a symbol carries similar energized contents across boundaries of time and space. The universality of the symbol can be seen, for example, in the uniquitous image of a Love Goddess. Homer writes of Aphrodite as the smiling Goddess, radiant and beautiful. This is identical to the image which Sumerian poets, millenniums before, described Inanna.
The symbolic image of a Love Goddess continues to carry a sense of feminine beauty coupled with sensuous desire. Marilyn Monroe, for example, was referred to as a Love Goddess. She was the “outer personification” of an “inner archetypal image” which relates to one aspect of the feminine nature. Charged with internal psychic energy, it is projected onto the external world where it finds its reflection in a living form; it may even be projected into an abstract form such as an ideal, something suprahuman, as was the Goddess. When we are in Love we do feel radiant and beautiful and we Love to laugh.
When the archtype breaks through to consciousness, a characteristic numinous effect is experienced. It is awe-inspiring, bigger than life, and Jung writes: “...may be said in the long run to mould the destinies of individuals by unconcsously influencing their thinking, feeling, and behaviour, even if this influence is not recognized until long afterward.”
Unaware of this inner psychic drama early man sought an external explanation for the powerful influences on his life and thus projected onto the gods that which was awesome and mysterious, calling it sacred and surrounding it with special rites. The tale he told to account for inner feelings of exaltation or suffering were not considered personal but were rather objectified and mythologized. Certain expressions in contemporary life are part of the same phenomenon. “The devil made me do it” we say, or, “Lady Luck was with me.” or in very fortunate circumstances, “she or he was kissed by an angel.” Such verbal expressions refer to a pattern of behavior and an archetypal image behind that pattern.
The archetypes at work in one's life reflect a process quite the opposite from 'myth making'., that is, from experiencing an inner force and projecting it onto something external. One can interpret a myth subjectively, including the images or symbols of which it is compromised, in order to describe the attributes of a particular psychic function within OurSelves. We can ask, for instance, “What part of me reflects the pattern of the Goddess or a Devil?” In this way myths, like dreams, offer a descriptive road map of unconscious realms on the path of individuation, the movement towards wholeness.
The particular psychic function with which we are here concerned is an aspect of the archetype of the feminine. Ann Ulanov writes that the feminine function in both men and women completes individuation, and is therefore vital to our psychic development:
“The highest phase of confrontation and individuation in both sexes is initiated by the feminine for the man, through the anima, which leads to the self: for the woman, through the feminine self, not through any contrasexual elements. The feminine, in this sense, is the completing element; It is the feminine which completes the individuation in “each” sex. The masculine initiates the emergence of the conscious from the primary unconscious; The feminine initiates the completion of consciousness by re-establishing contact with the unconscious.”
Ulanov goes on to explain the dual aspects of the feminine function. One aspect is the elementary or static aspect which we relate to the maternal. It is the unchanging and stable factor that fosters feelings of security, protection and acceptance. The other aspect of the feminine is transformative or dynamic.

“The transformative, active side of the feminine principle accents the dynamic elements of the psyche that urge change and transformation. This active side of the feminine is similar to that divine madness of the soul described in Plato's Phaedrus, which invokes primeval forces that take us out of limitations and conventions of social norms and the reasonable life. Eros in this sense produces ecstasy, a liberation from the conventions of the group...Ecstasy may range from momentary being taken out of oneself to a profound enlargement of personality.”

It is this moving, changing, transformative aspect of the feminine that is associated with the Goddess of Love and with which the Sacred Feminine is identified. When it is active, we view the world and OurSelves in a different Light. Creative juices are stimulated, and rational boundaries or limitations push into the realm of the unconventional and irrational. New attitudes usher in a certain excitement and life itself takes on new meaning. Welcome change proceeds hand-in-hand with creative risk taking. We may also experience these feelings when we are in Love, for no matter what their cause, they arise from the transformative aspect of the feminine., that which is related to the Goddess of Love.
As we have seen, the principle elements in the scenario of the acts of the sacred whore are the Goddess., the stranger who comes to the Temple, the sacred marriage itself and the sacred whore. These archetypal images ar still alive in the Collective Unconscious. They are in part, the psychic powers which motivate and modify our conscious understanding of OurSelves and the World. Emotions, attitudes and ideas arise from this psychic energy. By appreciating the attributes of the Goddess, the stranger and the sacred whore, and the significance of the sacred marriage, we are able to draw parallels between mythology and psychological material, thereby deepening our understanding of feminine nature in the lives of women and men.

from:
The Sacred Prostitute
By Nancy Qualls-Corbett

The Sacred Virgins/Whores

 

Sacred Whores in Ancient times were known as the Holy Virgins of Goddesses. The famous Vestal Virgins were thought to have practiced secret sexual and magical rites in honor of the Roman Goddess Vesta, the same as the Greek goddess Hestia -- Goddess of the Hearth, or "center of the world."

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    The titale of "Virgin" did not mean possessing an intact hymen. A virgin was simply an unmarried woman, a woman who belonged to no one man. Think of Athena, the maiden goddess who jumped off a cliff to avoid being forced into marriage. There is a similar story in the Hebraic tradition where Lilith exiled herself from paradise in exchange for her own sovereignty.

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     Holy Whores were not man-haters. Their role was to carry the grace of the God/Goddess through sexual worship by sharing their bodies & energies with those seeking and with each other.

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     Priestesses devoted their lives and their bodies to the Goddess. Spending time as a Holy Whore Blessed the Maiden. The profession also became a refuge for women who wished to keep claim of themselves and their rights.

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     The idea that a man needed a woman in order to attain Enlightenment & Wisdom, or to "give birth" to the potential God/Goddess within Self. There is The Scarlet Woman, The Mage has his whore, and Jesus has Mary Magdalene. In fact, Magdalene means "she of the the temple-tower."

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     The patriarchal entity is a tyrant who feeds on control, or "power over." The Holy Whore is a manifestation of "power with, power shared, and power for All."

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Babalon & The Scarlet Woman

 

There are many myths, perceptions and views on Babalon/Babylon & The Scarlet Woman. Like any other belief, it's all in the Eye of the beholder. To me, Babalon/The Scarlet Woman...are One in the same. Babalon/The Scarlet Woman, represent the Temple Within Our Hearts...The worship of the Divine Feminine and Her Wisdoms unfolding as The Unity and Dance begin. Babalon, The Whore....She with many names.

     The Scarlet Woman Whom "Rides The Beast"....brings chaos and sexuality and all that represents "sin & evil doing"! That is just one of the misconceptions of The Scarlet Woman. Stepping outside the box here, out of the 3D and taking a look at this from a Higher Perspective...The Scarlet Woman, The Goddess in Her many forms, The Divine Female, The Great Mother, Mother Earth.  She takes us through the Labrynth of Self, walking us through our shadows, egos and desires. She ignites our "Inner Fire" and enables us to "FEEL" with every fibre of our Being. This...is the "sin & evil". She leads us to re-memberance of All We Once Were...and All We Still Are...Enabling Us to OurSelf Be One with Divinity. She teaches Us how to "Make Love"...with Self, in turn with All That Is....Sacred Sex...Immaculate Conception of Self...Leading Us to The Birth of All That Is WithIn...to Self...ONESELF.
     Through communion with the Scarlet Woman and The Beast with which She rides upon....The Beast of The Kundalini....The Beast of the Sacred Flame....The Beast of Ones Inner Shadows...We Become. We can UNITE with that with which We have been denied....OURSELF...Our DIVINE SELF.
 
Written by: *Sacryfice*
                         6-2007

 

"Axis, earthmen, is not one idea, or even one place... it is a thousand million ideas and places... it is an apocalyptic magnet... a dazzling jewel that none can possess... a brilliant candle consuming wandering butterflies... a fantastic spider's web strewn with the remains of a billion dreams...
... but perhaps most of all, Axis is the eternal erotic chimera, an extraordinary creature possessed of an unnatural, terrifying beauty, which is more than the eye of man can withstand, a terrifying beauty which violently destroys all that surrounds it while concealing deep within… a heart of... fathomless... mysterious silence...
... the erotic chimera, she who is a living embodiment of the sublime paradox, which is a complete mystery not only to the world... but to itself, also... "


- So Beautiful And So Dangerous, Angus McKie

Babalon Throughout

 

As with any Spiritual subject, there are many beliefs, stories & myths surrounding Babalon and One must listen "WithIn Self" to find what resonates with you. One needs to look beyond the written word, look beyond the physical realm and look into Ones Own Heart to find Your Own Truth. I am going to put on this page some of what I have found written on the subject...Both Sides. Take what resonates WithIn Self...and Leave the Rest.

 

**From Wilkipedia:**

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 with Aleister 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 Therion (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, with whom Crowley personally identified. She is often referred to as a sacred whore, and her primary symbol is the Chalice or Graal. As Crowley wrote, “She rides astride the Beast; in her left hand she holds the reins, representing the passion which unites them. In her right she holds aloft the cup, the Holy Grail aflame with love and death. In this cup are mingled the elements of the sacrament of the Aeon” (Crowley 1981, p. 94).

 

The Three Aspects of Babalon

Babalon is a complex figure, although within Thelemic literature, she has three essential aspects: she is the Gateway to the City of the Pyramids, the ScarletWoman, and the Great Mother.

Gateway to the City of Pyramids

The Seal of Babalon
The Seal of Babalon

Within the mystical system of Thelema, after the adept has attained the Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel, he then might reach the next and last great milestone—the crossing of the Abyss, that great spiritual wilderness of nothingness and dissolution. Choronzon is the dweller there, and his job is to trap the traveler in his meaningless world of illusion.

However, Babalon is on just the other side, beckoning. If the adept gives himself totally to her—the symbol of this act being the pouring of the adept’s blood into her graal—he becomes impregnated in her, then to be reborn as a Master of the Temple and a saint that dwells in the City of the Pyramids.

[S]he guardeth the Abyss. And in her is a perfect purity of that which is above, yet she is sent as the Redeemer to them that are below. For there is no other way into the Supernal mystery but through her and the Beast on which she rideth.

and from The Vision and the Voice (12th Aethyr):

Let him look upon the cup whose blood is mingled therein, for the wine of the cup is the blood of the saints. Glory unto the Scarlet Woman, Babalon the Mother of Abominations, that rideth upon the Beast, for she hath spilt their blood in every corner of the earth and lo! she hath mingled it in the cup of her whoredom.

She is considered to be a sacred whore because she denies no one, and yet she extracts a great price—the very blood of the adept and his ego-identity as an earthly individual. This aspect of Babalon is described further from the 12th Aethyr:

This is the Mystery of Babylon, the Mother of Abominations, and this is the mystery of her adulteries, for she hath yielded up herself to everything that liveth, and hath become a partaker in its mystery. And because she hath made her self the servant of each, therefore is she become the mistress of all. Not as yet canst thou comprehend her glory.
Beautiful art thou, O Babylon, and desirable, for thou hast given thyself to everything that liveth, and thy weakness hath subdued their strength. For in that union thou didst understand. Therefore art thou called Understanding, O Babylon, Lady of the Night!

The concept contained within this aspect of Babalon is that of the mystical ideal, the quest to become one with All through the annihilation of the earthly ego ("For as thy blood is mingled in the cup of BABALON, so is thine heart the universal heart."). The blood spilling into the graal of Babalon is then used by her to "flood the world with Life and Beauty" (meaning to create Masters of the Temple that are "released" back into the world of men), symbolized by the Crimson Rose of 49 Pedals

In sex magic, the mixture of menstrual blood and semen produced in the sexual act with the Scarlet Woman or Babalon is called the Elixir Rubeus (abbreviated as El. Rub. by Crowley in his magical diaries), and is referred to as the "effluvium of Babalon, the Scarlet Woman, which is the menstruum of the lunar current" by Kenneth Grant.

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The Great Mother

Within the Gnostic Mass, Babalon is mentioned in the Gnostic Creed:

And I believe in one Earth, the Mother of us all, and in one Womb wherein all men are begotten, and wherein they shall rest, Mystery of Mystery, in Her name BABALON.

Here, Babalon is identified with Binah on the Tree of Life, the sphere that represents the Great Sea and such mother-goddesses as Isis, Bhavani, and Ma'at. Moreover, she represents all physical mothers. Sabazius and Helena (1998) write:

BABALON, as the Great Mother, represents MATTER, a word which is derived from the Latin word for Mother. She is the physical mother of each of us, the one who provided us with material flesh to clothe our naked spirits; She is the Archetypal Mother, the Great Yoni, the Womb of all that lives through the flowing of Blood; She is the Great Sea, the Divine Blood itself which cloaks the World and which courses through our veins; and She is Mother Earth, the Womb of All Life that we know.

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Babylon and Ishtar

Perhaps the earliest origin is the ancient city of Babylon, a major metropolis in Mesopotamia (modern Al Hillah in Iraq). Babylon is the Greek variant of Akkadian Babilu (bāb-ilû), meaning "Gateway of the god". It was the "holy city" of Babylonia from around 2300 BC, and the seat of the Neo-Babylonian empire from 612 BC.

One of the goddesses associated with Babylonia was Ishtar, the most popular female deity of the Assyro-Babylonian pantheon and patron of the famous Ishtar Gate. She is the Akkadian counterpart to the Sumerian Inanna and to the cognate northwest Semitic goddess Astarte. The Greeks associated her with Aphrodite (Latin Venus), and sometimes Hera. Ishtar was worshipped as a Great Goddess of fertility and sexuality, but also of war and death, and the guardian of prostitutes. She was also called the Great Whore and sacred prostitution formed part of her cult or those of cognate goddesses. Many have associated Ishtar with the figure in the Book of Revelation of Babylon the Great, Mother of Harlots and Abominations.

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The Book of Revelation

Babylon is referred to in several places in St. John's Book of Revelation in the Bible.

She is described in Chapter 17:3-6:

So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.

Babylon is also addressed as a city, usually as an image of a once-glorious paradise that has fallen into ruin, a warning against the evils of decadence:

And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

 

Babalon in Various Cultures

Greek

The Greek name Babylon is derived from the Semitic Bab-El (or AL) meaning "Gate of God", specifically that of On, which was a city of the Sun God. It appears in the Bible as the Tower of Babel, and opens up a whole complex of symbols: of the holy city at the center of the world, or in The Vision & The Voice as the city of the pyramids which links Babalon to the sphere of Binah the Great Mother; of the Gate as a metaphor for the yoni, and the chalice, cauldron, grail or womb which contains the Solar force of the Sacred Child; and of the wild Goddess who rides upon the Beast, an archetypical form found in countless mythologies.

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Middle East

In the Middle East we have various Deities of Passion, magick and war often linked to Lions, such as Astarte, Qatesh, Anath, Lilith, Inanna and Ishtar; and the whole interlocked complex of Egyptian Goddesses whose aspects ceaselessly flow into one another: Sekhmet and Isis and Maat, Hathor and Tefnut and Bast, all may share a Leonine form.<script language="javascript"> postamble();</script>

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The Goddess & Divine Feminine Figures

 

The goddess is often seen as the giver of sovereignty to the king, the physical manifestation of the realm or city he rules. In early times it was the rite of sacred marriage repeated at yearly intervals in the Holy Temple that empowered or legitimated all rulership. Later the rites of "Sacred Prostitution" gave every man the chance of communion with the Goddess through the Priestesses who represented Her. On a very deep level many once realized that it was the female force, whether seen as woman or deity, who gave life and dealt death to all. She was fate, power, wisdom, beauty, and magick, and to link with Her was to know the Divine.


     It has proven impossible to remove the influence of the Lady, The Mother, The Divine Feminine.  Even in orthodox Christianity the cult of the Virgin Mary constantly resurfaced, and in the heretic sects of the Gnostics we find Her even more clearly. There Sophia, or Wisdom, is the female face of God, exiled and defiled, fallen from grace, but ultimately inseparable from the primordial glory. Another of her divine names is Barbelo, clearly cognate to Babalon; and the Hebrew concept of the Shekinah is yet another.

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     In Tantra it is often proclaimed that: "Shiva without Shakti is a corpse". The classical magician Simon Magus apparently believed that his consort Helen was in fact Sophia, the Gnostic personification of the female side of God, separated by the act of the original creation of the world, cast down through the spheres of the tree of life represented by the archons, lost to forgetfulness, incarnate through myriad forms, until the final time of reuniting. Many mages throughout history have sought partnership with women of power who could initiate them into the mysteries; in Tibetan Buddhism the Dakinis or 'wisdom-holders' have the power to transfigure the devotee, and in Hindu Tantra the Suvasini or 'sweet-smelling woman' bestows union with the Goddess herself. This powerful female role of the enchantress or seductress is an ancient archetype, descended from primordial wise women and shamans; consider Medea, Circe or Calypso in Homer's Odyssey.

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~In Peace, Love & Service Of~