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
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.
"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
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