by Sister Georgia

“The Star represents Nuit, the starry heavens. ‘I am Infinite Space, and the Infinite Stars thereof.’ She is represented with two vases, one pouring water, a symbol of light, upon herself, the other upon the earth. This is a glyph of the economy of the Universe. It continually pours forth energy and continually re-absorbs it. It is the realisation of perpetual motion, which is never true of any part, but necessarily true of the whole. For, if it were not so, there would be something disappearing into nothing, which is mathematically absurd.” -Aleister Crowley

We cannot make ourselves complete, because we do not lack anything.

Let us begin with the hysterical question, the question which lurks at the basis of all fo our broken relationality: what does this other want from me? How do I appease her wrath? How can I predict her reaction? How can I avoid the brutal anxiety of undetermined reality?

We have built up this great Molochian social economy to protect our fragile individuation from this hysterical threat – but the patriarchal order of the socius is not the way to defeat this. We, fragile entities that we are, need only to recognise the ecstatic, sublime, mystical, religious, sublime and terrifying joy in the utterly unknown territory of the other. We need only to recognise that fantastic paradox – that the only thing I share with this other in front of me is that he, too, does not know what to make of me. Here is the nexus of power, of infinite power, for we are infinitely subjective beings. I do not need to know anything more than that the other, too, is scared; that this face with which I am confronted hides a mind which is powerless, as knowledgeless and I am. Know this, and the great mystic truth of ‘fake it til thee make it’. This alone is supreme power, that thing we call charisma, which is nothing more than confidence – not in any thing, and certainly not in this ‘I’, or ‘me’; confidence that the other is scared, too. Know the fear of the other and act first, always be the first to love. Thus we can destroy fear, and experience the exstasis of an-economical love, which is the lesson of babalon.

Such a confidence trick, taboo to our co-dependant way of being, appears madness, even psychosis. But worry not, for such words are of the old order, and strictly economical – they denote that which cannot be commodified, surrounding that which resists with such stigma that it has become a self-perpetuating war-machine. Sanity is our greatest prison.

And indeed it is near impossible to escape the reality tunnel (and why should we make this effort? For it is warm here, and dark, and there is the slither of worms for company): yet, with perverse simultaneity, this structure through which we seek to sort and circumscribe the chaotic otherness around us is extremely fragile. Kant likened it to a children’s game of sorting blocks in our brain. I tell thee it is far more like a web, like spider’s silk. Infinitely strong it can stretch, and recombine to fit, and we poor flies have no hope of escape; yet a simple brush of a human hand and the web disintegrates entirely.

Hear this: if it is the name-of-the-father which keeps this web intact, it will be the mother-without-a-name which will destroy it.

But here, amongst the shredded webs, we find a new truth – there is no use in destruction, without a plan to rebuild: revolution alone will never change, there must be something new to take its place. So simple, so often forgotten. There must be restriction, regularity, a new order. This is the key to magic without psychosis, to psychotic productivity – to the sustenance of the an-economy. This is the secret of the monastery.

With the web destroyed, we see the world as it really is, chaotic and terrible; yet, by the same note, unlimited and ecstatic. Kaos, yes – but what is so terrible about that?

With the corners of the web still extant, we see this lack-of-order as taboo. We must clear all the cobwebs, every last one, in order to discover this new tumultuous unpredictability, to see in the shadowy figures and the shining lights a new magical landscape of infinite potential. To find an order and restraint of a new kind, one born not of fear and necessity, shoring-up defences, but of love (not desire, which is eternally unfulfilled), and of pragmatism. For we are nothing but the worms, but gathering these scraps of spider-silk, we may fashion ourselves gossamer wings.

We will not be wholly mad, but we will not stick with sanity out of fear. There will be no more fear, for all is already here, and death means nothing to those who dwell in dirt.

These myths, this broken language which I speak – these are not defences against the chaos – they are the truth, which is contradiction, a bridge, our child-mind telling us of the constellation model of connection.

So let us then explore our most treasured house of myth: the divine prostitute, the mystery of the holy whore.

Dear whore, she who is the beginning, for it is she who draws our attention to the socio-libidinal economy; for it is she who turns the unspoken social contract of sex into an explicit, economic one.

Dear red-haired beast of a woman, the whore’s successor: it is she who takes this whore-logic and transforms it, refusing base gold to exchange sex for power, and for affect.

Dear Holy Whore, sublimated beast, who refuses this exchange entirely; she is the first to love, and seeks nothing in return: she needs nothing, for she is not a partial subject; she lacks nothing, and thus participates not in the false economy of desire. Such fancy is beneath her, for she is beyond devotion.

Dear Initiatrix, she who sees beyond this base horizon, refutes this exchange entirely, laughs in the face of reciprocity; she does not seek reparation in this impoverished human timeframe. She is part of a larger pattern, is repaying a debt left when she was still young; her victim, unable to repay Her now, is destitute: but he will make reparation with another, in another time. This is the secret of the Arthurian formula, the secret of right relationship, of flourishing and fertility. Such simple truth, so alien to the give-and-take cycle we have been taught we are necessarily a part.

This is our panopticon, more subtle than any tower; this fear that our love for the other will not be returned. If only we realised this truth, that are intuitions of this unknowable other are right – he will never repay me, my love will never be returned directly, not by that lover. The law of return is cosmic, not interpersonal. We are all necessarily vampires. Seek not equality, safety, or promise. Fidelity is the word of sin. Know that these cycles are beyond the simple ‘you’ or ‘I’; learn the truth of relationality in myth and fable. Know power, and find peace.

I say again: that dear initiatrix asks for nothing, for she is repaying a previous debt, a debt to another other. Thus she does not only destroy, for she reconstructs the libidinal economy into something transcendent, mythic.

Know this: by refusing to engage with these divine economics you are not doing something counter to the force of the norm, but are complicit in its propagation. Those who would live a religious life, of any denomination, must be conscious of the circles and economies of which they are a part. They choose, to be complicit, selfish and to make the best of a bad situation – or to refute, tear down and to rebuild.

Contemplate this: in a time that has long since past, in a land of fairy tale, the king entrusted the secession of this kingdom to his daughter’s choice of bridegroom. And how wise! For he who could win or seduce the wisest and fairest maiden could surely run a kingdom of men. And he who she who is wisest and best deemed suitable to be her lover, and bear her children – what higher recommendation than that? What credit to her, to have this choice and make it rightly. Thus it is not that there is no truth, but that the nature of truth is contradiction.

Men, they shored it up – they said, thou who art holy, thou shalt not allow another phallus passage to thy sacred place; for i will not raise another man’s child. I, however, being naught but sinful man, will do as i wish. When women sought equality, they cried No! Thou shalt be faithful too (full of faith, in what? In the libidinal economy, without end). Such fools! they should have rejected the very bonds of ownership and this perversification of faith. But they were trapped in this moloch economy. This was never what we were made to be.

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