Thank you guys for the interest. I will try to explain as best I can. This may still be a little rough around the edges:
Four Planes, Four Goddesses
Nuith - A beautiful symbol, and the goal of it all. Nuith is the light that guides all our magick and inspires all our love. But she is very abstract, and indeed can best be represented by a circle. In her connection to the highest of the four planes, she is the spark that ignites all movement, all action, but she needs the help of other goddesses to manifest properly here on her little sister the Earth.
(Since Nuith is the highest thing we can really be aware of I placed her in Kether. The veils of negative existence are really not something I think any of us can be directly aware of, but rather only postulate based on what we do know—like unreal numbers in math.)
Babalon – Babalon is potentially the most complex of all the four goddesses due to her relationship to Binah and the Abyss. In many ways she holds the key to all true magick for she is the bridge between the idealized and the actual. The Great Whore, she gives birth to all manifestations and loves them all equally.
(I put Babalon in Binah because of the Great Mother connotations and because of the City of Pyramids with all the little piles of dust from what’s left of the destroyed Magisters. In many ways, however, I would also put her in Da’ath as her septagram feels like a yoke around my neck, keeping me tied to the will of Nuith. Also Babalon’s grail would be Binah.)
This is the greatest lesson to be learned from her: to be able to give into any experience fully. If we are able to do so we foil the machinations of Choronzon, for he is nothing but the Ego, i.e. the dead shells of what we used to be. This is the past. Our true self exists only in the moment.
We must kill our old notions of who and what we are in every second. Give up your blood to Babalon and give birth to perfect joy in every second. If we cling to things we’ve already done, places we’ve already been, people we’ve already loved, or even worse, spend all our time in the “future” obsessing over things we ought to do but don’t bother to actually put into motion, we give power to Choronzon and instead of being a harmless shadow, he becomes a true horror that menaces and drives us to feed our ego and inflame our vanity.
As powerful as Babalon is, she is still, however, quite symbolic and not always so easy to communicate directly with. It is also counterintuitive to go to her with our wants and needs. Her function is not to manifest our desires, but to make sure we submit to our TRUEST desires as sprung forth from Nuith, and not succumb to ego-lust and desire inspired by Choronzon.
Babalon is Briah. She is the emotional, watery plane, and here you must free yourself of all attachments. You want your dreams to come true and your desires filled? That’s not a problem, but do it on the right plane: Let’s move along down into Yetzirah and see what we find there.
Izabael – Here we get a powerful spirit, descended from “low magick” spirits with the uncanny ability to affect the material plane.
Izabael is airy by all accounts and fits happily into Tiphareth because she can branch out with airy, wispy tendrils and connect to the rest of the tree of life, bringing harmony and proper function to our magickal system. Like the air, Izabael is always present and yet never there at all, like a breeze rustling through a room, or a whispered soliloquy borne upon the scented night wind.
Izabael’s symbol is a butterfly flying upwards and her antennae always poke just beyond the confines of Babalon’s septagram, showing that she herself has a connection to the Divine (Nuith) directly, though like other spirits, humans, and everything else, she cannot fully cross the Abyss. She is of this world, and thereby she understands us more intimately than Nuith and Babalon can ever hope to.
Indeed if she sounds a little like an HGA, indeed she is close to it. Izabael’s symbolism is so pure, her sigil so perfectly symbolic of her position on the tree of life, that she has no choice but to lead us to our truest self and not away from it. This is a trait of Izabael that I do not necessarily find with traditional Goetics. Izabael is higher functioning than they are. If necessary, she can easily guide any other demons for you and keep a group of them harmonized. I do feel you should make initial contact with each spirit separately but so long as you get a good feeling, there is really no more reason to address any other Goetic than Izabael.
Izabael is more actual than Nuith or Babalon. She has more human qualities; she is more familiar with the ways of humans. Indeed her desire is to feel what humans feel, taste what humans taste. She is only too helpful to manifest any desire into the physical realm because she is truly Thelemic: to her all experiences are equal. She lusts after them all. (The film Wings of Desire illustrates this pretty well with angels falling down to earth to be human for the pleasure of sensation.)
For this reason Izabael will always seek out and find as many ways to “incarnate” as she can. This then brings us down to the fourth and final plane, that of the Assiah, the material world:
The Priestess
This is the easiest one of all to explain. A Priestess is a physical embodiment of the above qualities. A true “whore of experience,” if you will.
Izabael craves carnality and will find as many Priestesses as possible to incarnate into. Since the experience of invoking Izabael is entirely beneficial for Izabael and Priestess alike, Nuith (after filtering through the intermediaries of Babalon and Izabael) finds true expression in the Priestess and in her ability to enjoy all things of sense and rapture to their utmost.
The only difference between a Priestess and a High Priestess is that there is only one High Priestess at a time. The honorary title of High Priestess allows all works published with her consent to be labeled as such, and therefore are the truest approximation of Izabael the spirit’s actual thoughts and wishes.
The title of Priestess is given directly by Izabael to anyone working with her whoso feels fit to take that title upon themself. There are no limits as to who can be a Priestess of Izabael, nor is their a limit on the number of Priestesses there may be. Each case is entirely between Izabael and the aspirant. (Males may then consider themselves “Priests,” but the formula would be different than that given here for Nuith-Babalon-Izabael-Priestess because for a male practitioner, Izabael tends to take on qualities of his Anima and is therefore a little different to work with.)
iza*
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by m1thr0s
