A Rebirth for Babylon, for Me

We have been lied to, and I will set it right with my unholiness. Join me.

Mini Article Drop!

Yes, this is a promo for my birthday party (in less than one month!), but it’s also a declaration! 

I’m defending my girls, Babylon and her Daughter. 

I grew up to be what they warned about on sin-worn church pews of rigid, wooden hypocrisy. 

I am the fearless lover of all. 

I am the liminal, genderless monster.

I write in defense of demons. 

I am 

Unholy

Cunty is a Philadelphia party started by DJ Love (@lovesowitchy) that centers queer people of color, particularly Black queer and trans folks. This is DJ Love’s Bandcamp and Soundcloud.

Love has graciously allowed me to collaborate with them to make their last event for a while my 30th birthday party! This is the last Cunty because DJ Love is going back to school, and you should contribute to their school fund here ~ Venmo: @djlove-sowitchy or Cashapp: $djlovesowitchy. They have been an instrumental creator of Philly nightlife for years and have not gotten their flowers, in my opinion!!!!

Cunty Unholy

9/21/24 (My actual bday!)

9pm-2am

Underground Arts

$10 online. $15 at door. NTAFLOF for Black folks

Money is paid to the artists and covers the rent for the space.

Snag Your Tickets Here

This party is significant, not just because it’s my 30th birthday or Love’s going away party, but because it’s MY LAST EVENT EVER.

This doesn’t mean much to all of my new friends here, but for those who knew me in the Before-Times, I was known for curating and event planning. If not for the pandemic, I would have been actively pursuing a career as a curator. I was starting to receive fellowships and local notoriety for my skills, but there was a constant voice of the spirit in the back of my mind telling me to stop and risk it all for my strange, little stories—my original dream.

This was difficult because events were exciting and brought immediate funds, whereas the slow burn of an authorial career is, well, s l o w and scary and not lucrative (yet??).

There was no closure for this era of my life…until now! Unholy is my FINALE, and all of my skills, now backed by the power of medication, are pouring EVERYTHING into it. You do not want to miss it.

But why the theme Unholy?

To talk about that, I will speak of Babylon.

In Defense of Babylon

In Defense of the Divine Feminine

“Hyacinthus and the Daughter of Babylon” by Malachi Lily. Ink, cut paper, graphite, acrylic paint, collage, risograph print, 2021. An amphibious anthropomorphization of the Daughter of Babylon lifts her skirts to show frog legs and a cunt made of a pomegranate with tendrils extending out. The Mama serpent wraps around her legs. She looks directly in your eye with mischief in hers. She wears garb reminiscent of ancient Babylon or Mesopotamia. To her right is the crying transmasc figure from Greek myth, Hyacinthus, who has just been struck in the head by Apollo’s discus and is turning into hyacinth flowers with a sunset in the background. The Daughter of Babylon is stepping on hyacinths and water—two hybrid creatures at the top look at Hyacinthus with pity and awe.

Babylon has become synonymous with a corrupt city. You know this from reggae songs and protest chants like “Babylon must fall. Tear down the walls.” It’s in the collective zeitgeist.

But is anyone questioning WHO is calling the city corrupt? Who is calling to tear down her walls and strike “disaster,” “calamity,” “catastrophe,” and “fire” upon her and why (NIV Bible, Isaiah 47)?

I think the Bible reference may give it away. It is the patriarchal sun God of Abraham who is calling for the destruction of Babylon, a city defined exclusively with feminine attributes and she/her pronouns. This city is defined as a mother, for the Daughter of Babylon is called out by their venom. Why does HE want to destroy HER?

12 “Keep on, then, with your magic spells and with your many sorceries,    
which you have labored at since childhood. Perhaps you will succeed, perhaps you will cause terror.
13 All the counsel you have received has only worn you out!    
Let your astrologers come forward,
those stargazers who make predictions month by month,    
let them save you from what is coming upon you.

(NIV Bible Isaiah 47: 12-13)

Ah, so Babylon is full of witches. Babylon is full of people, likely feminine leaders since we are defining her as such, who have worked since childhood to learn the language of the stars, listen to the soil and heal with its secrets, divine truths from the mundane, and manifest what they want in the world through spellcraft.

47 “Go down, sit in the dust,    
Virgin Daughter Babylon;
sit on the ground without a throne,    
queen city of the Babylonians.
No more will you be called    
tender or delicate.
2 Take millstones and grind flour;    
take off your veil.
Lift up your skirts, bare your legs,    
and wade through the streams.
3 Your nakedness will be exposed    
and your shame uncovered. I will take vengeance;    
I will spare no one.”

(NIV Bible, Isaiah 47: 1-3)

And

17 One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, 
“Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute [Babylon], 
who sits by many waters.

(NIV Bible, Revelations 17: 1)

Oh, my girl Babylon/her Daughter are sex workers. My girl Babylon is a proud slut, unafraid of the magic in the labor of sex. My girl Babylon wades in the water. She is connected to the fluid elements and dances through the streams. She is an ancestral Mami Wata.

Another contemporary example:

In “Babylon System,” Bob Marley refers to Babylon as a “vampire” that “sucks the children by day,” which connects to the image of a Lamia. I will try to be brief, as I could write forever because feminine monstrosity is a passion of mine. Lamia was the name of a Greek maiden who killed children and the name of a monster that eats children, who note, is also described as “hermaphroditic” as transness and intersex experience are also abhorrent to the sun god. This monster is said to be what the first wife of Adam, Lilith, turned into as punishment for being an independent spirit that disobeyed her husband. Patriarchial mythology deems a woman who does not want children to be the most horrid beast of all. The feminine monster of Babylon is in a long line of mythological figures of feminine energy that refused to conform to patriarchal rigidity and was demonized for it.

My favorite medieval etching of a lamia from my personal Bestiary depicts the lamia as a scaled four-legged beast with clawed paws as the front feet and hooves as the back feet. She has a textured, feminine face and long, straight hair. She has exposed human-like breasts as well as a phallus. She is me, and I am her.

It’s like this: To call for the destruction of Babylon as a symbol,

IS TO CALL FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF THE DIVINE FEMININE.

I’ll say it again—The imbalances of this world can be set right by pursuing the objective truth: we are not free until all Black transwomen are free.

The labor required for this means healing our relationship to the Divine Feminine. Humans’ matriarchal past worshipped goddesses indistinguishable from the natural world, representing an embrace of death, darkness, the unconscious, and emotion. These collective, symbolic principles are also an accurate summary of where colonialization and capitalism’s estrangement, violences, and oppression most manifest.

The killing of our emotional, unconscious world becomes a suppressed society that extracts intimacy and exploits our lack to promote material consumption. Darkness is a global target as our literal skin. Our media and stories banish respect for darkness. It’s in the worship of the modern “sun gods” of lights, camera, action, technological advancement, and the glittering of success. We see the extraction of our Mother, of Earth, daily. The fear of death is weaponized, and the taking of life is synonymous with making a profit.

The “corruption” of Babylon, according to the Bible, is a city full of sex magic/work practitioners who are witches, sorcerers, healers, and people who play—they are not in the fields. They are dancing in the waters.

Context. Context. Context people! It’s so important! Our words have power! Our words manifest spellwork no matter who we are. A witch is just a person who studies that truth.

BABYLON IS UNHOLY. And so am I.

My theme for my party is Unholy as a reclamation and a snarl.

My theme is for all of us queer/trans/intersex, magical, pagan and ancestral, feminine-energy, sexually deviant, and/or scientific heretics that are deemed unholy by the mainstream pulses of Abrahamic religions, especially Christianity, because that is the main pulse of the U.S. and the religion I was raised in.

I was devoted to Christianity into my mid-twenties, so this theme feels like a vital release and atonement of these past decades. Being a Christian is not innately evil, as there are fractal truths in all things, and I don’t believe in evil. What I trust is balance, and the influence of Christianity on this world is imbalanced. I did many loving things in the name of my Christian gods, but I also held a consistent hum of judgment and fear in my heart that every person I came into contact with was going to Hell. I also did cruel and cold things in the name of my Christian gods. I also did foolish, naive, and colonizing things in the name of my Christian gods.

I will participate in a ritual performance on the night of my birthday that will atone for these harms. I would be honored if you would witness it.

If you feel fear in the aesthetics of my event, take a moment to pause. Is blood evil? Is darkness evil? Is anger evil? Is passion evil? Are monsters evil? And who taught you all of these things?

I am a very intentional practitioner, and I know that some entities would love to twist, corrupt, and feed on the energy I am cultivating in this place. I will set protections over my party and engage in a ritual that night to call in energy to support what we WANT to manifest. Again, it’s not that these entities are evil either; they’re just hungry, but they are not invited to my cookout because they’re greedy. Their feeding will exacerbate emotions we do not want in the space. It’s simply a matter of intention; they are not part of mine.

What is my intention is liberation. I center what is most harmed to be uplifted, celebrated, and given pleasure on this day of my birth. On my birthday, what is deemed unholy will be holy. On my birthday, Babylon, lamia, Medea, Lilith, Isis, Mary, Mami Wata, and all those named and unnamed lovers and healers of the human spirit who were banished and diminished by the sun god will be adored in this space.

Here, I off the entire song I included in the video is a musical outro to entice you: “Banye” by AKWAEKE. Yes, it will be in my DJ set. Yes, it is Akwaeke Emezi, the author of “Freshwater” and “Pet!” They now make music, and we are ever so blessed.

Fun fact: Akwaeke Emezi is one of those souls I feel intrinsically connected to on this earth. I hope one day we might meet, point at each other in recognition, and laugh in remembrance. I have been listening to this song all spring and summer, BUT I did not know it was their music until a couple of days ago, as Akwaeke is not an uncommon name. I have been immersing myself in the rhythms of a soul I feel unconsciously familiar with for weeks and weeks. This only affirms my instincts.

May you answer the call and join us in the divine debauchery and ritual revelry.

we thank you.

we thank you.

we thank you.

In Love & Abundance,

Malachi Lily

they/them

Happy Tropical Cusp of Exposure, the Cusp of Leo and Virgo. Go figure out your costume!