Mother of Abominations
by Georgia van Raalte
Babalon is all. Anything else we say of Her must begin with, and reflect, this fundamental concept. Babalon is the mother of all and the mother of Abominations. In Her Cup of Fornications, which is the Grail, is collected the Blood of the Saints. Babalon is All. Which is to say, She is beyond good and evil, beyond the distinctions of dirty and clean. We must start with this fundamental contradiction, and we must end there too...but along the way there are palaces of imagery to explore, and each palace brings us closer to understanding of Her.
Babalon is the Mother of All. There are many Mother Gods. Babalon is Mother of Abominations. As such she is a divine representation of all the negative aspects of parenthood. For me, in my practice, life and devotion, She is the forge of the molten transformation that is motherhood, a transformation which is as vicious, relentless and painful as it is full of joy.
There are plenty of beneficient, fertile Goddesses: but Babalon is the Goddess for all the negative aspects of parenthood. She is All: all encompassing, she does not hide the ever-entwining of life and death. Babalon is Goddess of infanticide, of infant death. Of miscarriage, abortion. Of stillbirth, prematurity. Babalon is Goddess of aching, bloody breasts and the strange confusions of pleasures entangled in lactation. Of muscles severed, puckered skin and scars. Babalon is the Goddess I turn to when I chafe against the role in which I find myself. When I don’t want to be a mother. When I resent my children, society, the world, the vast accumulation of sign and signifier that means I can’t just run away. When I want to book a flight somewhere impossible, when I want to pretend like the world doesn’t exist, I think of Babalon.
I think of Babalon when I think of Breeders and anti-reproduction-ers, and when I think of victims of rape and victims of circumstance. I ask myself how many mothers of the world wanted children, and how many mothers regret their children, and I think of Babalon. I think of Babalon when I think about unpaid labor and childcare inequality, and sex work and domestic work and fitting my career into 30-minute naps. I think of Babalon when I think about bitter herbs and elm sticks and the way we are all so reliant on the government now. And when my first period came back, and my breasts were leaking and my knickers were bloody and the baby was crying in her crib and I had no time to shower and I could smell it, that musky, minerally scent; when I emptied my menstrual cup into the toilet I thought of Her, and Her bloody sacrament.
Parenthood, as we have created it in this nuclear wasteland, is a soul-destroying torment. We are like mole-rats now, birthing our babies underground and staying there with them, in these subterranean nurseries, until our psychic tunnels can do naught but explode. And when I drink my morning coffee and turn my face to face another day with no friends, no family, no elders, no village, no community, when I face another of these endless days of me and this tiny piece of me, giggling and shitting and sprawling like some abyssmal beast, when I think of the infinity of mothers like this, like a concertina paper chain of pain, I think of Babalon.
Parenthood is often joyful, but it is also often unpleasant. We have lost our death gods and our angry gods, our gods of filth and fury. Babalon reminds me that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are largely a matter of perspective. Babalon reminds me that one doesn’t need to enjoy something to find divinity in it. This is the nature of service.
This matter is a particularly personal one for me, for it is in the context of the negative aspects of parenthood that I first came to know Our Lady. She first came to me after the birth of my first son. I was scared and alone and I was so very, very angry. With her voice in my ear I channeled all my fury into the whip of Her will, and brought the graven king unto his knees. As a parent of young children, there is no time for sacred things; but in Her womb, Her cup, everything becomes sacred. Hers is he laughing and screaming, keening and begging and praying.
Motherhood is an Initiation, and like all Initiations, it is neither pleasant nor easy. When I picture Her, I see Her squatting, and from the gaping maw of her vagina she pushes put her fetid spawn. She is mother of millions, and mother of none, and when I feel as though I have lost myself in a maze of toys and tantrums I think of Her, and the maze becomes a mandala as she reminds me, that it is only when we are trapped that we can be free.