Written by She rides a beast with seven heads across a crimson sea. She holds a golden cup – and the cup is full. She is drunk on the blood of saints and the wine of fornication, robed in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold and precious stones, and on her forehead is written a name: Mystery. Babylon the Great. The Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth.
The Book of Revelation meant her as a horror. A warning. The ultimate symbol of spiritual corruption, worldly excess, and the empire that devoured the faithful.
It did not work out quite as intended.
Because the magicians got hold of her. The visionaries. The rebels and the heretics and the poets who understood that the things the church called most abominable were often the things it feared most .