Babalon is a UK feminist organisation with a membership numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Fronted by the charismatic Scarlett Woman, Babalon treads a careful line in an increasingly conservative UK, where a government coalition with a religiously conservative Irish party means that reproductive rights in England may be under threat.
Scarlett's organisation venerates Babalon, goddess of sex, blood and the destruction of patriarchy. It promotes witchcraft practices as a key method of political and spiritual resistance to its members via rallies, meetings, training, conferences and the BabalonApp, where those identifying as women can access various support services.
Told by three women - Maid (Trix, discovering her sexuality) Mother (Robyn, mother of two, finding herself after a broken marriage) and Crone (Scarlett Woman, the leader of Babalon) - this is a story of power and empowerment: where personal, sexual and political power comes from, where it intersects and how different women come into their power in different ways. It also considers the difficulties inherent in an organisation paying lip service to inclusivity, and the dynamics of power in an organisation run by a woman who considers herself the conduit for a goddess.
Trix leaves her small Irish village to come to University in London. Recruited into flatmate Szou's Riot Grrl-influenced band, she finds herself playing warmup gigs at Babalon rallies; raising the feral energy of the crowd before Scarlett Woman takes the stage. But Trix is running from the voices and visions that have plagued her since childhood. Yet when she meets Shefali, sex becomes more than she could have imagined, and it's Trix's sexual power that must flow freely if she is to fulfil her role in Scarlett Woman's inner circle.
Robyn is trapped in her marriage; at home with two young children with a distant, emotionally unavailable husband. Babalon gives her the strength to find a way back to herself, and an active role in MotherHood, Babalon's guerrilla fighting programme. But becoming a fighter means Robyn has to face a decision which will take all her strength.
Scarlett Woman, once the lover of an infamous occultist, is introduced to the goddess Babalon within his cult. Scarlett's journey to power embraces the goddess outside of Jack Crowley's misogyny and creates a formidable activist organisation with the terrible power of Babalon at its beating breast. What will happen when Scarlett and her group focus the power of Babalon on those who would hurt women and deny them their rights?
The character of Scarlett Woman is informed by (though fictionalised) the real story of Marjorie Cameron, an overlooked figure in modern history. Cameron is best known as having been the lover and muse for occultist Jack Parsons, an American rocket scientist and student of Aleister Crowley. Parsons and his friend, L Ron Hubbard supposedly invoked the goddess Babalon in the California desert in the 60s, intending to bring the goddess into incarnation. The working didn't achieve its aims, and Parsons famously died in a fire a year or so after.
Cameron's story is a fascinating one. She was a woman within a misogynist occult culture who came to be a highly respected artist and ing nue, but is still widely known only as Jack Parson's lover. What would have happened if someone like Marjorie Cameron decided that she was going to lash the liberating power of the goddess Babalon - the destroyer of worlds and protector of women's bodies - to a political and social activist organisation?
A powerful and topical book, THE BOOK OF BABALON mixes witchcraft and feminism into something new, original and absolutely of the moment.
Note: this book contains graphic sexual content, mentions of rape, physical and sexual abuse, abortion, miscarriage, occult ritual and content of an adult nature.
