Barbelith

Barbelith is an online forum, named after an element in the comic book series The Invisibles by Grant Morrison, initially conceived of as a space for the discussion of Morrison's works.

In The Invisibles, Barbelith is the name of the "placenta" for humanity; a satellite-like object located on the dark side of the moon. It recurs throughout the story as a supernatural moon seeming both intelligent and benign. Barbelith's role is like that of a placenta in that it connects the hologram of our subjective reality to the realm outside of our space-time, the domain of the magic mirror, and helps humans to realize their true nature beyond the subjective concept of "self".

Prior to contact with Barbelith, most characters undergo some sort of trauma or intensity- an alien abduction or shamanic initiation, for example. A sort of cosmic "stoplight" is also present in some instances, though also seems to precede any sort of contact with the "healthy" dimension of The Invisibles binary-based paradigm; the realm of the Invisible College.

The word first appeared on a sign post in House of Heart's Desire, a short story published in 1989 within the pages of A1, with art by Dom Regan. It has also cropped up in other comics Morrison has written. Doom Patrol #54 in particular goes into more detail.

Grant Morrison describes its origins as follows: "The word 'BARBELiTH' is derived from a dream I had when I was about 20 or 21 and coincided with my first structured 'magical' experiences and a minor nervous breakdown (in the dream, BARBELiTH was the name of some higher dimension or alternate reality)."

Barbelith is inspired by the Philip K. Dick novel VALIS in which the titular satellite, VALIS, appears as a sort of Gnostic information-satellite for humanity.

The forum was originally named The Nexus, created in 1998 as a part of The Invisibles annotation site The Bomb. Over time, topics of discussion moved beyond the comic book, especially after the series came to an end in 2000. As the forum's subject matter expanded, it was renamed Barbelith Underground and eventually moved to the front page of the barbelith.com domain. It is run by Tom Coates and its code was written by Cal Henderson.

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