Babalon is one of the names characters use for the Woman in Red and for the power surrounding her. The name enters the Department’s files through occult history, the Babalon Working, stories about Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard, Catholic interpretations of the Devil, Nazi reality research, and testimony that a red woman watches moments when the world changes.
The series does not establish that all of these traditions describe one stable being. Babalon may be the Woman in Red’s true identity, a role placed on an older entity, an occult story that helps a manifestation acquire form, or a competing interpretation used by institutions that cannot agree on what they have encountered.
Hawk says Babalon selected Cole Turner. Other accounts claim Lee summoned her or that earlier regimes attempted to use her. Each statement comes from a faction with reasons to turn an ambiguous presence into an ally, weapon, devil, or author of history.
The Babalon name appears in Department testimony and is repeatedly associated with the Woman in Red, occult investigation, and reality-changing events.
Characters claim Babalon can be summoned, can select people, or can open a route to another reality. No neutral account confirms a single identity or motive.
Babalon belongs to modern Thelemic and occult history. The comic’s literal entity, Department operations, and reality-changing powers are fictional.
The Babalon Working file
Issue #14 connects the Department’s investigation to the ritual work associated with Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard. A witness claims the operation opened a door to Babalon’s country and that a Scarlet Woman stands beyond it. The testimony links occult practice to rockets, flying saucers, and the Department’s attempt to understand the postwar sky.
The issue withholds an objective view of the ritual’s result. A doorway, a manifestation, a human participant, and later folklore may have been compressed into one story. The Department inherits that compression and treats it as an operational lead.
Names imposed on the Woman in Red
Black Hat’s account calls the eyeless red woman the form of the Devil sought by Nazis and Catholics, while Frank Capra suggests the figure may be metaphorical. Hawk uses Babalon as the name of the presence that chose Cole. These claims disagree about theology, agency, and purpose even when they point toward similar imagery.
The disagreement is evidence, not noise to be removed. In a world shaped by belief, each name may change what witnesses expect and therefore change what the figure can become. Calling her Babalon can connect an encounter to liberation and occult revelation; calling her the Devil can turn the same encounter into an enemy that justifies institutional violence.
An unresolved identity
The story repeatedly approaches a definitive answer and stops. The Woman in Red may move through traditions without belonging to any of them, or she may be assembled from the accumulation of those traditions. Her apparent interest in tipping points makes ambiguity useful: every faction can imagine that she has authorized its preferred future.
A complete account therefore preserves the distinction between the Babalon name, the historical occult tradition, the Woman in Red’s appearances, and character claims about selection or summoning. Treating them as automatically identical would resolve a question the series deliberately leaves open.
References
- The Department of Truth #13–#14Primary canon; Hawk’s identification and the Babalon Working investigation.
- The Department of Truth #20 and #23Primary canon; competing institutional accounts of the Woman in Red and Babalon.