Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

I. Encountering the Scarlet Goddess
II. Divine Women, Femmes, and Whores: The Theorization of Multiple Femininities
III. The Scarlet Goddess and the Wine of Her Fornications: Crowley, Babalon, and the Femme Fatale 1898-1909
IV. Yielding Peaches and Women with Whips: Babalon, Crowley, and Magical Systematization 1911-1947
V. Her Banner is Unfolded: Babalon and Scarlet Femininities in the Writings of Jack Parsons
VI. Kundalini, Kalas, and Qadeshim: Babalon and Femininity as Other in the Writings of Kenneth Grant
VII. Intermezzo: Contemporary Occultism and Thelema
VIII. "It All Goes in the Cup": Receptivity and Unstable Polarities in the Contemporary Babalon Discourse
IX. Feminist Difference: Babalon and the Hope of an Alternative Femininity
X. Inhabiting the Uninhibited: Babalon, Sexual Politics, and the Liberation of the Desiring Feminine Subject
XI. Possession and Dispossession: Embodiment, Ecstasy, and Erotic Destruction
XII. "Like Fire and Powder": Erotic Destruction and the Eloquent Blood
XIII. Bibliography

About the Author

Manon Hedenborg White holds a PhD in the History of Religions from Uppsala University (Sweden). Awarded an international postdoctoral grant from the Swedish Research Council, she is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Södertörn University (Sweden). She is currently a guest researcher at the Center for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents at the University of Amsterdam. Her research explores issues of gender and sexuality in
modern Western esotericism, occultism, and new religious movements.

Reviews

"This is one of the more important monographs to appear from the study of modern occultism in the past decade and warrants wide reading among scholars researching this area. It certainly has things to interest others too, especially those exploring the interplay of gender and religion...Not only does it deepen understandings of...important characters in the twentieth-century occult milieu, but it also provides one of the first published studies to draw on
ethnographic research among contemporary Thelemites DL something we need to see far more of." -- Ethan Doyle White, Nova Religio
"Combining rigorous textual analysis with pioneering field work, Hedenborg White reveals the significance of the goddess Babalon within Thelemic history, thought, and practice. Beyond this single-deity focus, she also offers keen, urgent, and provocative insights into the stakes of feminism, femininities, and queer identity within contemporary Western esotericism more broadly. The Eloquent Blood is the most important work of gender and esotericism
studies since Alex Owen's The Darkened Room (1989)." -- Christine Ferguson, author of Determined Spirits: Eugenics, Heredity, and Racial Regeneration in Anglo-American Spiritualist Writing, 1848-1930
"A transgressive goddess, erotic rituals, a notorious occultist with countless male and female lovers-- the Thelemic religion is perfect fodder for sensational clichés about sex and the occult. Here, we finally have a book that approaches the subject equipped with meticulous primary-source research and the cutting edge of gender and sexuality studies. Anyone with an interest in the complex gender configurations of modern occultism needs to read this
book." -- Egil Asprem, Associate Professor in the History of Religions, Stockholm University
"This work is notably original, a pioneering comparative historical and ethnographic study of Babalon as a discursive construct, a lived reality among Crowleyite circles, and a challenge to the general concept of esoteric female deities, who are usually not so challenging, violent, or transgressive. There is nothing of comparable quality or depth in existence." -- Carole Cusack, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Sydney