The Eloquent Blood focuses on the changing construction of femininity and feminine sexuality in interpretations of the goddess Babalon. A central deity in Thelema, the religion founded by the notorious British occultist Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), Babalon is based on Crowley's favorable reinterpretation of the biblical Whore of Babylon, and is associated with liberated female sexuality and the spiritual ideal of passionate union with existence. Combiningresearch on historical and contemporary Western esotericism with feminist and queer theory, the book sheds light on the ways in which esoteric movements and systems of thought have developed over time in relation to political movements.

• 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.