I've been spending some thinking about my relationship to Babalon, both in relationship to the Elemental Love working I'm doing and also in where she fits or doesn't fit in the overall scheme of my life. And then this weekend I finished reading Think And Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and I realized where Babalon fits into my life, and I had a better appreciation of the lessons she's teaching me in this year's working. In Think and Grow Rich Napoleon Hill discusses the necessity of mastering sexual energy in order to direct your creativity and imagination to manifest your goals of wealth. He incorporates a number of "occult" principles into his writing, which as an aside, I'm surprised more magicians haven't realized. In anycase, I began to think about Babalon and desire and the Strength card. It's true that Babalon is the sacred whore and the great mother, but it occurs to me that's much more than that. She represents desire, but in the Strength card, she also represents the ability to find inner strength to harness those desires. She holds a cup up, but is it really a cup of abominations? Or is it a cup of wealth, a realization of success in managing the internal desires to manifest the desired result?
One of my own recent realizations has been that I have to be strong for myself. This means I have to choose to master my desires in order to manifest the reality I desire to live in. While giving into my desires can lead to pleasure in the short, in the long term mastering my desires can lead me to achieving my goals. Upon some meditation and reflection, I decided that Babalon is my wealth deity. She can and has inspired me to master my desires so that I can manifest my goals. I put the bottle of red wine and the Strength Candle on the wealth shrine altar. I placed the sacred blade of desire on the altar as well.
Wealth is really about mastering yourself enough to know what you want and how to use all of your resources to achieve it. It's about finding the necessary strength to focus yourself on what really matters to you as well as tempering yourself so that while you acknowledge and enjoy your desires, you also use them to propel you to greater heights. Babalon embodies this concept by riding and directing the beast of desire, while holding up the cup of wealth to show the results of mastering the beast. She also embodies success, in and of herself, because she shows that success does involve being prepared to make sacrifices right up to and including your ego, in order to be transformed in your understanding of what you are giving to her and receiving from her. The success that comes from that is an internal success in terms of knowing and mastering your desires and external success in channeling the resultant discipline into what you want to accomplish.
Following Napoleon Hill's advice, I've decided to create a council I'd meet in a meditative state. Naturally Babalon is one of people on the council, as is Napoleon Hill, my wife Lupa, and other people/entities that are useful for the wealth work I'm currently working on in my life.