Whore of Babylon
Her full title is stated in Revelation 17:5 as "Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth" (Greek: μυστήριον, Βαβυλὼν ἡ μεγάλη, ἡ μήτηρ τῶν πορνῶν καὶ τῶν βδελυγμάτων τῆς γῆς, romanized: mystḗrion, Babylṑn hē megálē, hē mḗtēr tôn pornôn kaì tôn bdelygmátōn tês gês).
[2] The Whore's apocalyptic downfall is prophesied to take place in the hands of the image of the beast with seven heads and ten horns.
[3][4][5][6] Caroline Vander Stichele demonstrated that the narrative of the Whore of Babylon follows many of the same patterns of the personification of capital cities as women who commit "prostitution / whoredom" and/or "adultery" in the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible.
These capital cities, representing the states they govern, are alleged to have committed various sins that have rendered them sexually promiscuous, and therefore they will eventually be annihilated through various well-deserved violent punishments sent by the Israelite God Yahweh.
[8][9][10] Many Biblical scholars[11][12] believe that "Babylon" is a metaphor for the pagan Roman Empire at the time it persecuted Christians, before the Edict of Milan in 313.
"[28] Biblical scholars such as Alan James Beagley, David Chilton, J. Massyngberde Ford, Peter Gaskell, Kenneth Gentry, Edmondo Lupieri, Bruce Malina, Iain Provan, J. Stuart Russell, Milton S. Terry[29] point out that although Rome was the prevailing pagan power in the 1st century, when the Book of Revelation was written, the symbolism of the whore of Babylon refers not to an invading infidel or foreign power.
[33] Several Old Testament prophets referred to Jerusalem as being a spiritual harlot and a mother of such harlotry (Isaiah 1:21; Jeremiah 2:20; 3:1–11; Ezekiel 16:1–43; 23, as well as Epistle to the Galatians 4:25).
[34] For example, in Matthew 23:34–37 and Luke 11:47–51, Jesus himself assigned all of the bloodguilt for the killing of the prophets and of the saints (of all time) to the Pharisees of Jerusalem.
In the most common medieval (Catholic) view, deriving from Augustine of Hippo's The City of God (early 5th century), Babylon and Jerusalem referred to two spiritual cities which were spiritually at war with one another, throughout all of history:Babylon [from Babel] is interpreted confusion, Jerusalem vision of peace.
[37]They also represented two principles at war with one another, inside each individual person, even inside seemingly worldly Christian monarchs; thus Augustine could boast approvingly, "...believing [Christian] monarchs of this world came to the city of Rome, as to the head of Babylon: they went not to the temple of the Emperor, but to the tomb of the Fisherman.
[53][54] Jehovah's Witnesses, whose early teachings were strongly influenced by Adventism but have since diverged,[55] believe that the Whore of Babylon represents "the world empire of false religion",[56] referring to all other religious groups including, but not limited to, Christendom.
[59] Babalon (also known as the "Scarlet Woman" or "Mother of Abominations") is a goddess found in Thelema, a religious system which was established in 1904 with the writing of The Book of the Law by English writer Aleister Crowley.
This office, first identified in The Book of the Law is usually described as a counterpart to his own identification as "To Mega Therion" (The Great Beast).
Babalon's consort is Chaos, called the "Father of Life" in the Gnostic Mass, being the male form of the creative principle.
As Crowley wrote in his The Book of Thoth, "she rides astride the Beast; in her left hand she holds the reins, representing the passion which unites them.
