Anthony Testa - The Key of the Abyss.pdf

than any god of the classical pagans, never mind Gnosticism or other
more philosophically oriented systems. For example, Yea, we shall
conquer death and Hell together. And the earth is mine. 174 reads like
nothing so much as a less poetic version of That is not dead which can
eternal lie,
And with strange eons even death may die. 175 This insight, in fact leads
us to the concluding section of Liber 49.
Wandering in the Witchwood (Verses 65-77)
Gather together in the covens as of old, whose number is eleven, that
is also my number. Gather together in public, in song and dance and
festival. Gather together in secret, be naked and shameless and rejoice
in my name.
--Liber 49, Verse 65
This verse, which, as we will see is numbered 65 which is the value of
Babalon in the New Aeon English Kabbalah, is perhaps the most
important for our analysis of the book. First, the command (certainly
not only to Parsons) to Gather together in the covens as of old
identifies, I believe at long last, the key to Babalon’s identity; the
Dianic spirit or Goddess of Witchcraft. The statement is problematic
insofar as the Coven seems to have been a feature of the medieval
witch trials (Witches before then being believed to be less
organized 176 ) but there is no reason why the changing idea of the
Witches and their tutelary spirit 177 should compel us to regard later
developments as less authentic. We shall address this more in later
chapters.
Second and even more important is what immediately follows; whose
number is eleven, that is also my number. As we will see, the number
11 is the Key to the entire book. It is also worth pointing out that the
exhortation in this verse anticipates the modern “Witchcraft revival”
174
Liber 49, Verses 56-57
175
The famous couplet from Call of Cthulhu – and more to the point, as well, since the rising
of Cthulhu is the herald of the end of man’s rule of the world and the return of the “true” rulers
of the Earth.
176
For instance in Lucius Apuleius, The Golden Asse at
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1666/1666.txt
177
See Hekate, Evolution of a God in Cycles of the Aeons I for more detail on this line of
enquiry.
124