The Gospel of Babalon

according to Ilaktra Drugvant

translated by Alison Rockbrand
Behold, to those who would appease with transference the beasts and offer worshipful sacrifice to us, the words within are not dictated: we understand the rites to be of utmost personal pleasure and self dedication. Essence we have not, blood is to be drunk and contained within, without the merest influence of disdain. We are those whose sacrifice is the unanswerable, the lie and the abomination placed upon the land in which our houses are raised, destroyed, and raised again. Avail us, Mother of these Aberrations of the birth which gives way to the lie, the untold and the fanciful: for we are not the dismal followers of the path of righteousness but rather of the wayward way, of the unsanctified ritual and the ungrateful fulfilment. We know and can remember the word of untruth that you spoke to us in the dry lands and then again in the rain, while you fed us and satiated us with fine intoxicants and the flesh. Of the flesh, the blood and the death of beauty you have taught us: this and more we know and we will speak. Become do we the eye, the one that sees, and then who understands the dance of intoxication that she has presented to us. She has said that the dance is to become the music and the music is not a different dancer than she. She has said this in the rain while moving on the body of a man, while eating cake and wine, while sitting with us in her gardens filled with the rose. We have known that the shift of her time is the shift of the instrument of sound, and with this knowledge we also dance, move upon the body of a man and sit in our gardens filled with the rose and other fragrance. We have ourselves opened the void of pleasure and felt the continuum of the beast and the mother of lies as they gaze in each others eyes to behold the death of beauty and the awakening of the immortal flesh. The oscillation of the living body while engaged with the dying essence is the meaning and reason for the discovery of music: she who orders order out of the silent void of the all that is, is the one who dies and in death has taken on life, and yet also a dream of life. We who know can, as we will it, become unto a song that has played and will reside always in the great arena of the planets. Yet for us this means more than it does to a song or to a whisper, for to us the intoxicated dance is the first glimpse of the fleshs continuity. For we do not understand the immortal gods to be without the body but within and have consecrated our bodies as though they were the sacred talismans of the later gods we are to become. Death to beauty and to the essence of desire that beauty resides within, for we are the abominations, the dark desire and the unrepentant savages of your kingdoms. For we are not subject to that we would be not, and all we are, none will be subject to those save that will become like us. Beyond the enigma is the land of the lovely and the virtuous yet these are the ones who design to destroy our gospels of mystery. She who is called the mystery and the fulfilment of the endless riddle had spoken with the tongue of the serpent, and has said the truth is the lie once become undone. Speak then of the lie first and the truth after, for once born the truth is used by those who would have essence and live from it. From the lie we might gain the everlasting mystery of change and the chaos of the void. We are those whose answers change as the flesh dissolves into the godflesh and lasts as long as mystery lasts. We then are the ones who know that all is immortality and all is continuance once the hours as darkened kings of truth have fallen at our feet and granted us the soulless life. When the enigma becomes fulfilled into itself the hours of

day and night are to come into one, into one hour and this is the hour of our mothers great pleasure, her orgasm and her lie told. We are also there with her and when the riddle is open, when the unknown and the twilight are engaged in copulations we are the receivers of their fluids. We drink of the mystery and of the hourly kings and we are become wise in what we yet have not known. Our knowledge is thus what we can see with our eyes that traverse time and the limitation of answers. Our art is not of limitation, it is not done to look us back in the eye and tell us what we are: to us this is the abomination of art. Our art is what is continuitous, what is dying and yet what is given to you to live beyond yourself. We are the ones who look back at you, we are the art and we have not been created but have become what we are out of mystery and the formidable enigma. She whose knowledge is the knowledge of all, since all is changeable, has told us this. She is the untruth come into truth and to be used in the form of the dream, the fantasy, the desire. She who uses truth to divide the lies into dreams has told us this My continuity is the continuity of the landscapes found in dreams. Will you dream and find that the daylight has lied to you with its insidious hourly truths? You must dream your way to the land of the gods and there remain, lost in the lie of your concoction. We are the dreamers and the ones who bring temptations unto all who would have them. She was the first who brought temptation to us and to others who have faltered in their fantasy. For those who accomplish and manifest their fantasy are those fit for the immortal pleasure, but those who cannot and who falter and live instead according to the laws of men will die like men, and live again not. Accord we with strength, for as She has told us that the strong are the companions of the beast. Those who tend to the beast, feed him and ride him must have strength enough also to equal him. The beast who to you is the chaos, the barretter of men and killer of the righteous, is to us the model of our ethic. For he who is animalistic and strong enough to kill at his pleasure, kills not only the citizen, but also the slave. He sees not what he kills, save that its flesh is his desire. He will kill us as well as you if we also cannot combat with him. He kills and eats what flesh he will need to satiate himself, and in this he gives himself pleasure. He thinks not that he should do what men do, since he is not of men. He knows not guilt nor compassion, he knows not song, not dance and not beauty. He cannot be trapped therefore, by the hourly kings because no king can keep him, nor combat him save those who have his strength, his trust, or both. For to us the beast is what we watch and what we emulate in our worldly ethics, and in this he has become our partner and our mate. When we love the beast, when we mate with him and include him in our intoxications, we are then become like unto him. When we drink of his essence and devour his blood as though it were our own, we are to gain his stature, strength, and virility. And this eating of blood and drinking of essential fluid of the beast, is done between us as well, that we may not be stopped ethically by species. For to eat of the intercourse of man and to devour his blood is to us the practice of the eye seeing life turned inside out. In the flesh exposed and the blood gushing out we can see the essence of life also gushing away and we know that life is meant to be lived as though death were near and the flesh transformable. We have seen this and She has told us to do these things Keep the beast and love him, for he is your partner whose blood you will see turning life around and around. Look at him, and love the flesh as it lives, and as it dies and as it transforms. We with her have this as our idea of what is to be thought of as beauty: it is the living flesh and the promise of its death and transformation into enigma. The beast then is our emblem of the strength with which we will accomplish our immortality. He is our vehicle of pleasure and in his blood we find knowledge of the paths of entropy. Mate we then with the great beast, who kills all for pleasure, and turn we the flesh inside out to watch life change from death

to godflesh, for the Mother has taught us this. Lust do we after our divinities for these have been seen by us, and we have knowledge of our selves as the gods that inhabit heaven. We are these, and these are us ,as we do end all division and all totality. For to us the greatest union is that of unities. The unity, the total one, is divided from all that is not composite with him. The whole one, the non one, the empty or complete one, are all formations of the unit. He is the isolate one, who needs of no other one. He is either complete or he is empty of all that does not divide him. He stands like a god alone, and his power is of one who creates his paradise according to his complete desire. To us he is to be united with another unity, and to thus become and encompass the unitary power of one who both is and is not something complete. Yet by this he becomes more complete, and his power vast. For who can trap him now, who has gained the power to act the paradox? She has said: I have come to bring about the union of unities! Be not satisfied to live in your desire alone, for to have a desire beyond your own, to have your lovers desire, is to become at once your lover and yourself. This is the knowledge of the power of love and power of the paradox. These are inseparable, for to love beyond yourself, you must love as yourself. Thus if you love beyond and through, yourself and the other, you are come to share two minds, and two divinities. To this we accord much power and much pleasure, for in this our pleasures inform each other and we are come to greater knowledge through this act. We unite the unities beyond ourselves, when we reach for the image of our godselves in the heaven of our creating. Here we will create together this paradise with our selves both in time and without, with our lovers and without, with the Mother and without until we have the art so that it cannot be made out of our limitation any longer. The art is to be made now our of our continuing knowledge and the knowledge of our lovers, so that we cannot limit our selves but fly freely into the immortal heaven when we are making our transformation into gods with flesh. By uniting with unities, our paths come to be vast and varied, so that in all the days of our flesh, we will never cease to learn and to know and to be pleasured. For this knowledge once gained, though it increases, dies not, but lives as we do. On to the rules of men do we tread and desire to break. For upon us these laws are given, though we do not receive. The men who we watch and who we designate as the hourly kings or followers of kings, are men of the direst poverty and ignorance. These are the makers of truths that destroy the dreams of all living beings. For dreams to kings are dangerous things. The dream once dreamed has within it the power to manifest. The dream will undaunted seek its reality and its realization. It will traverse the land of day and the land of night and will pass right before the eyes of men as it seeks its continuity. And the kings will observe the dreams in the form of lies and will know that they are dangerous. He will know that if enough dreams are allowed to manifest his own dream will be weakened and struggle for actualisation. The kings dream will always be too weak and the longer he spends on slaughtering the dreams of his followers the weaker his dream will become. His laws are written to stop the dreaming at its origin, to end the reckless thinking and knowing of his subjects. Since dreams and lies are created in the darkness and silence of experience, he disfavors the dark and he calls it by the name of Evil. But to us and to the Mother, evil is all that creates individuality. The first lie was the first thought by the first man who had his private desire. The dream is an intricate lie which proves by its artfulness the quality of our identity. Dream what dreams you will, followers of the lie. The laws of men are not for us, and crush them you must, if they design to crush your sleep. For it is these men who have labeled me the abomination and who have spoken of me as of a savage beast. Trust not

their words of truth, for there in you will meet your demise. The Babalon has spoken to us thus. The hourly kings call us by the names of savages and beasts, and yet we will proclaim that we are so, and therefore not to be made part of their kingdoms. They have hunted us like beasts, and come into our society to murder and defame us, for no other reason than to remain in ignorance of what great pleasure, and what knowledge and what power we offer. For they are lost, in worlds vastly inaccessible to us, and believe that power is already theirs. Yet they are deluded by aspects of truth held onto and become belief, and will not relinquish their small amounts of hourly power for greater pleasure in the unfolding of the lie. These mens laws and traditions we cannot abide by, since to us the law is limitation on our power and tradition a limitation on our knowledge. For though we might seem to abide by the hourly truths when we are seen by the eyes of kings and followers of kings, in these truths we hold no belief but continue to dream and know and seek pleasure in the secret ways of the Babalon. For she is the mother of the lie and the dreamer of the inbetween. She is the first temptation and the last which does not end. She is all continuity and all ipseity, for all is become to Babalon, all may behold Babalon, all may become Babalon. Naught will we do and naught will be save that which gives us what we seek. We are not the ones who will not allow pleasure to be awoken and taken. Not will Babalon say, nor will we say that the way is straight or narrow, for it is not. Nor is it the way up, nor the way down, but it is the way across, sideways and through. Not to us, must one give oblations, not to Babalon, not to any god. Worship not the gods, but learn from them. Not to end up in the void of pleasure, the absence of pain, for this is not our teaching either. For our teaching is naught but what is found in the inside of the Babalon, in the bleeding Babalon, whose death cries when we kill her and devour her are the cries of one reaching greater power. Naught is she but who has taught us to make love to her, and to watch her blood as it fills the great void of pleasure the planet over and becomes human pain. Be not afraid then to drink of her pain, the blood of Hers that we have spilt in love and duty to her, but drink full of pain all the way to her flesh and come upon her great bloody and devoured body lying over the void of pleasure. Not the path this is, not any path, but the immediate way. Not the pleasure of the Babalon, but the pain of the Babalon makes this your infinite elixir. For we are not the ones who live eternally by one flesh, but by the creation of the flesh, and by the turning of it inside out to we live eternal. Not from pleasure or from pain take the only gnosis, but always the unities will unite themselves upon you, and in the immortal flesh you will continue to create and destroy. For in this cycle is your eternity, and to become it never die without being reborn. Behold! Always she cries out, Babalon! My self! Away from me turn Lies within my mouth On my naked body lies Nobody.