In classical literature the witch either helps or endangers the hero’s fate, playing the role of everything that is untamed in the hero’s nature, or, if conquered, the role of revealed mystery and insight. On children’s books she is meant to personify fear, fear of everything that may escape their dominion – all the powers beyond the children’s conscious self are, therefore, not lost but living on the witch, and this is what’s most important for the attentive esoteric. Romanticism did turn the witch into a martyr. The hero becomes the poet, the romantic poet no longer meets the occult with a fight or a quest, but with an act of sacrifice and love-making, the quest becomes introverted and almost unnamable, the love of the burned witch for her sinister craft was a comfortable banner. The barrier between good and evil blurs. Thus, modernism, concerned with sales and the new morality of the sales-men, turns it into business, the witch is now one of the many anti-heroes (but really, there can’t be such thing as an anti-hero), the good, cool and brave woman with power and lovely spells. All that was hated shall now be loved and all that was loved shall be loved still, as progress tries to sell as much as possible for the advancement of science and technology. All shall be worshiped. Wasn’t that the motto of Babalon? There is no evil, only sickness, but sickness can be cured or taken care of with worth devotion and profit can be made, new ideas can be inserted into the major societies as subcultures and then profit can be made out of it. But as we open, I hear the world closing. What shall be of the true witch when all doors have vanished?
Babalith
