Julia plays Disney's now ubiquitous symbol for fairy tales alongside Robin Williams as the Green Fairy, Tinker Bell, in 1991's Hook. In Peter Pan Disney continued a long-honored tradition of slipping sex into animated children's films by bending little Tink over in a mini-skirt and having her stand on a mirror to check out her own backside (don't believe me? youtube). All in good fun...

She is the Key

Kylie Minogue, who crept into my last few blogs unintentionally, plays a symbolic Green Fairy in 2001's Moulin Rouge!, the film that displayed the turn-of-the-century french prostitution culture as a Broadway-style fairy tale. Moulin Rouge! brought burlesque culture into the new millenium with the Grammy-winning "Lady Marmalade", and paved the way for the postergirls for pop-prostitution, The Pussycat Dolls. In Moulin Rouge! the Green Fairy is an allegorical symbol for Absinthe, which makes me think twice about Tinker Bell's role in Peter Pan and the flight-inducing fairy dust. Think happy thoughts...

Kylie Minogue as Tinkerbell in Moulin Rouge


Absinthe, The Green Fairy


One foot on the green fairy

Britney's Fairy Tatt


Tink closes the wormhole on Porky in Who Framed Roger Rabbit

[Check out Jumpin Pigs from Jupiter over at The Sync Hole for more on the significance of Porky]

Then it hit me.

The Whore of Babylon is one of the most heavily debated allegorical symbols of the biblical Revelation story. On face value, the Whore is seen as the representation of the evil empire that will produce (give birth to) the Antichrist. While most biblical scholars agree that the Babylon-empire this Whore represents is first-century Rome (due to its goals of global control and persecution of early Christians), some scholars believe the new Babylon is actually the Catholic Church. Upon further research, I discovered these two beliefs are not mutually exclusive.

A quick history lesson: Christianity first gained foothold as a major world religion once it was forcibly accepted by Rome under Constantine I. Authors like Joseph Atwill make strong arguments for Rome's creation of [modern] Christianity as a pacifistic alternative to the more revolutionary Early Judaism, which prophesied the coming of a warrior messiah. This idea makes the sudden nationwide "acceptance" of Christianity and the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church by a staunchly polytheistic state a bit less preposterous (It's worth noting that Catholics believe themselves to be the true Christians, so for analytical purposes, the two become interchangeable).

"A lot of known scholars have speculated that Rome created Christianity just because its so historically logical... if you look at the history and see that there is a messianic movement that's militaristic, and in the midst of this hundred-year struggle there is this pacifistic version of Judaism with all these Hellenistic attributes that pops up at just the right time, it's very suspicious on its face..."

In this sense, Babylon can represent Rome and Christianity/Catholicism by extension. This connection between Babylon -personified as the Whore- and Catholicism gives some explanation to the walking contradiction that is the 20th century's biggest female pop star; Madonna.


Even as a young child, I remember being amazed at the great lengths Madonna('s handlers) went through to display herself as a sexual object. Being a product of the MTV generation, I learned that "The Madonna" was a title for Mary, Mother of Jesus (italian; mia donna, my lady) long after I knew about Madonna the pop star. I can even recall wondering why a pop singer who did magazine covers naked would share a title with the Virgin Mary. Though it's considered tongue-in-cheek to bring it up, Madonna (the pop star) is widely known around the world for flaunting her sexuality under the banner of female sexual liberation. Despite also being known for her creative originality and the ability to "re-invent" herself, she [still] is simply a ramped-up reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe, who was a ramped-up reincarnation of Mae West (actual name Mary Jane [MJ] West). In our time, we are witnessing Madonna's reincarnation as Britney Spears.




The seemingly negative view of hyper-sexuality as liberation becomes a bit clouded considering that Women's Liberation is a viable and positive movement, and is responsible for great strides made by women all over the world. Publicized hyper-sexuality appears on its face to be degrading to the women at the service of the male viewer, but, sexuality and the expression of it is a woman's right; is it hypocritical to call a woman slutty for doing what men have been doing all along? Maybe, but like so many things, the WHY is more important than the WHAT.


Women's Liberation was created as a counter-movement; a response to centuries of persecution and repression. Super-sexy starlets are seen as bucking the system, pushing the envelope. Despite demonization by feminist movements, Marilyn Monroe and Mae West were famously seen as powerful womanist figures through their sexuality to the common woman of the time, and Madonna spent most of her career in the same controversial light. Her blatant association with the church brings it all full circle. In the western world, this repression has a very recognizable face: the Catholic and Christian churches.


Taken at face value, analysis of the blatant increases in sexuality throughout the pop-star universe appears to be a clear and direct attack on the feminine masked as ironic liberation (or vice versa). Our pop princesses are associated with the sacred feminine while they are overtly demoted to the level of singing streetwalkers on (and sometimes off) stage. But all of this sounds a bit alarmist. I think we need to dig a bit deeper...

"‘To prostitute’ is derived from a composition of two Latin words: (preposition) pro and (verb) statuere. A literal translation therefore would be: ‘to expose’, ‘to place up front’."

The word prostitute in the hebrew bible appears in one of two forms; zonah and kedeshah. Zonah (zohan?) simply means loose woman or harlot, but kedeshah is a bit more complex. The word translates literally as "consecrated female" and is derived from a Semitic root, qedesh, meaning "sacred", "holy" or "set apart" . The word Quedeshu was used to describe both the high places of Canaan and the temple prostitutes of the Bamaat (BA-Maat = soul's balance). This purposeful muddling of the term "prostitute" allows us to view the "Whore" of Babylon from a different angle, and also points to the much-debated concept of sacred prostitution in antiquity. The ritual of temple prostitution has been documented most heavily in the Ancient Near East, known today as the Middle East, and has its earliest origins in the ancient civilization of -you guessed it- Babylon.


This sacred sex took place in the temple of Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of fertility, love, sex and war. Though she was known affectionately as "courtesan to the gods", her divine love was fatal, even for other gods. Ishtar's symbol was the eight-pointed star, and she was known as the divine representation of the planet Venus. In Neil Gaiman's epic Sandman graphic novel series, Ishtar exists in modern times as a stripper, who reminisces for the days when she fed on the power derived from the magic of her lust.

"...She finds herself thinking once more about the women in the temple courtyard. There is a magic generated by money given for lust. Once on a time, she could use that magic, draw it to her. Create an aspect, take the power to herself. Now, she uses a shadow of it to survive. Even a little worship is better than nothing..."

In pre-Abrahamic semitic pantheons, Ishtar appears in the form of Astarte, who was also a goddess of fertility, love, sex and war, and also had many temples in which Sacred Sex was required. Astarte shares titles with the Virgin Mary and Isis in some texts as the "Mother of Heaven", and is also seen by some scholars as a prototypical allegory for the biblical virgin birth story; Sumerian and Egyptian rituals celebrating Astarte's virgin [re]birth of a solar deity were performed on December 25th. Astarte's birth celebration -and her name- eventually became the Judeo-Christian holiday we call Easter; Astarte was born from a giant egg which descended from the sky into the sea. Her symbols include the sphinx and the encircled five-pointed star (the symbol of Venus). These goddess stories point, inexorably, to Aphrodite, the infamous Greek Venus Virgin, who takes the patternistic cake. Aphrodite was the patron goddess of prostitutes, and has been recorded as Aphrodite the Courtesan, Aphrodite of Brothels, even Aphrodite of Streetwalkers (really!), and sexual rituals occurred in dozens of her temples.

"There was no shame in such temple prostitution; on the contrary, it was a sacred means of attaining divine union between man and goddess. Indeed, in the epic of Gilgamesh (written around 2,000 BC) a Babylonian temple prostitute civilizes a wild man of the forest by sleeping with him. "

The inspiration for this post came from a YouTube comment thread on OrangeMoon's new Xtina Files Series, in which viewers discussed the "sinister symbolism" hidden in Aguilera's videos. The main symbol in question was the inverted pentagram. While I do think there is some credence to the idea that inversion can reflect the negative aspect of the symbol, most truth seekers immediately associate the pentagram with evil by way of its association with "the occult" and the horned Baphomet (who is also usually misrepresented). As I've touched on here, the pentagram was first the symbol for the planet Venus, and was meant to represent the feminine, as Fifth Element of Spirit or as the sigil of Isis.




Just like the Whore of Babylon, these images can be rejected as desecration, or seen as an up-front display of the Sacred Sex that has survived through the worship of different goddesses in countless mythologies into the modern age. And not only has it survived, but is experiencing immense over-saturation in pop culture. If the spirit of the sacred prostitute in our time is a veiled worship of the divine feminine, perhaps this increase speaks to a new union in our age between Man and the Goddess (The Whore of Babylon looks a bit different in that light).

Perhaps the puritanical image of sex most of us share is one of the barriers of Ego-I conditioning that must be shattered before we can attain higher level of cosmic consciousness. Not to presume that all sexuality is healthy, or that such sex-marketing should be targetted towards children, but a healthy, non-repressive perspective on sex could do wonders for gender relations. The idea alone even startles my sensibilities as I write... sexual freedom as a means to mystical enlightenment? Sounds a bit out-there, right? But who amongst us can deny the power of our own experiences with Sex Magic?

"...the magnetic induction produced by crossing the active and passive creative organs - namely the phallus and uterus - causes lunar, solar and akashic currents to flow through the Brahmanic cord [from hip to shoulder]... This current provides an active connection between the magnetic center at the root of the nose (pineal gland, Ajna chakra) and solar and lunar principles located within the seminal system at the muladhara chakra [pelvis]. The transmuted energy, through willpower, is populated by "billions christic atoms" that when rising meet the pure akasa of the triune Brahmanic cord, igniting it and through many years of work causing the ascent of the kundalini..."

One more pattern thread before I go; Through the pattern of mythological representations of the goddess suckling the child, Joseph Cambell associates Isis and Ishtar (and Mary) with the Hindu goddess Kali, the goddess of war, destruction and tantric sex. Tantric studies are supposed to be the wisdom of Shiva, Kali's male consort, but Kali is described as the true source and in some cases, the ultimate reality experienced above all other deities.


In one of her most famous stories, Kali becomes drunk off the blood of her battlefield victims and begins to dance. Shiva is one of the bodies she dances on, and she is famously represented standing on his fallen image holding a trident. Kali's name translates as "black" -she is shown darkly colored- but has come to mean "force of time"; she is known primarily as the goddess of death, time and change.