
I am currently giving considerable attention to completing my Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus and hope to have it available before christmas but felt I should acknowledge the season by posting a short piece from a section in the book on the rebirth of witchcraft. Some of this, particularly the Parsons quotes,was actually written on the night of Halloween last year when a loud party in the house next door kept me awake and I decided to make the most of it. In fact I deliberately began writing down the words from the Book of Babalon at exactly midnight. It is essential to enjoy and find spontaneous magick in the creative process.

Jack Parsons
‘And she shall wander in the witchwood under the Night of Pan, and know the mysteries of the Goat and the Serpent, and of the children that are hidden away.’ ‘Gather together in the covens as of old’. ‘Gather together in public, in song and dance and festival. Gather together in secret, be naked and shameless and rejoice in my name.’ ‘The work of the image, and the potion and the charm, the work of the spider and the snake, and the little ones that go in the dark, this is your work.’ ‘This is the way of it, star, star. Burning bright, moon, witch moon.’ ‘You the secret, the outcast, the accursed and despised, even you that gathered privily of old in my rites under the moon.’ ‘You the free, the wild, the untamed, that walk now alone and forlorn.’
Liber 49. The Book of Babalon.

‘We are the Witchcraft. We are the oldest organisation in the world. When man was born, we were. We sang the first cradle song. We healed the first wound, we comforted the first terror. We were the Guardians against the Darkness, the Helpers on the Left Hand Side.’
Jack Parsons. The Witchcraft.
The Book of Babalon dates from 1946. It is remarkable how much it carries a very strong feeling of what later became known as Wicca. The question is whether there are any direct connections or if it is a case of Jack Parsons being prophetically in tune with something that expressed itself similarly and all-but simultaneously through other people as well? Alongside his Gnostic leanings, Parsons had a passion for the idea of witchcraft. Towards the end of his life he was very keen to try and instigate a revival of the old paganism and set up a group he called “the witchcraft”. His basic policy statement from his writings on the subject has a familiar tone.
‘We are on the side of man, of life, and of the individual. Therefore we are against religion, morality and government. Therefore our name is Lucifer. We are on the side of freedom, of love, of joy and laughter and divine drunkenness. Therefore our name is Babalon.’
Although there is no direct evidence that Jack Parsons was familiar with Aradia a few motifs in his work are strongly suggestive of its influence. Firstly there is Lucifer as god of the witches. A number of contemporary Wiccans prefer to avoid this topic as it brings in the possibility of a Biblical ambiance that might not take too much development to bring in Satan and the whole Burning Times mythological package they are trying to erase. Others have eloquently defended what could be termed the Luciferian gnosis and affirmed it to be a thing of beauty that no fundamentalist Christian could ever understand. It is now more generally accepted as part of the greater Wiccan mythology that Luciferic covens have long been part of the scene.
Liber 49 also seems to echo Aradia with an instruction for the would-be witch to ‘Be naked and shameless’ .One of many excellent phrases that Gerald Gardner assembled and passed into general Wiccan use is sky clad, meaning nude. His groups assembled thus. Later critics have pointed to his predilection for Naturism as an indication that he used Aradia as justification for bringing his personal tastes into what was simply a cult of his own invention. Regardless of whether that point is fundamentally accurate or not the practice has a history that sits very well with what one could term Wiccan mythology.
Throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, groups of Christian heretics appeared who decided to emulate Adam and Eve before the fall and live naked. Across the planet numerous sects have done likewise or at least gathered temporarily in such a manner.
Their intentions have much in common if we can accept the theories of Mircea Eliade. All of these nudists were seeking a return to an imagined primordial paradisiacal state before a fall into history began. If we look at Gardner’s witches they were hoping to partake of something as old as the Stone Age, something from the very dawn of humanity, a time of a purity and oneness with nature that has since been lost. That state could be regained. Parsons may well have been similarly motivated.

German mystic nudists celebrate the 1926 summer solstice.
Modern Wicca has often tried to get away from the popular mythology of witches as practitioners of malevolent sorcery. This was what led to the murderous persecutions and it’s understandable that modern adherents want to rehabilitate the archetype. There’s no getting away from the basic theme of spells and magical battles and suchlike throughout witchlore. A big difference between Jack Parsons and the adherents of Murray and Gardner is that the Thelemic wildman was fascinated by phenomenon of manifestation that would scare the crap out of most people, and above all, the image of witch woman as being attractive in proportion to her potential dangerousness.

Parsons concept of Babalon was significantly advanced by his reading of Jack Williamson’s novel of lycanthropy and witchcraft, Darker Than You Think. The lead character is enthralled by a red-headed, green-eyed witch named April Bell who he soon discovers is guilty of sorcerous murder which does nothing to diminish her attraction. There is a memorable scene that was depicted with pulp-art finesse on the cover of early editions where the hero has transformed into a sabre-toothed tiger and the witch-woman rides naked on his back. This is very reminiscent of Crowley’s Babalon (with which the author was unfamiliar).

Gerald Gardner made his largely undocumented trip to America in 1947. He had just been initiated into the OTO and there was only really one functioning group there at the time. There is a possibility that he may have met with members of the Agape Lodge, even Parsons himself. A number of internet sources state this as if it was an established fact. It isn’t. Parsons had been expelled from the OTO and was out of favour with Crowley by then. He was still in contact with some of his old associates but wouldn’t have been an obvious person for Gardner to seek out.

The American occultist Allen Greenfield, who we will meet again in a UFOlogical context, took an interest in the Jack Parsons aspect of the mystery. He corresponded with Doreen Valiente who was well aware of Liber 49 and Parsons specific witchcraft writing. She acknowledged the striking similarities with what was brewing in Britain and wondered if there had been more direct connections. The problem is that we can find no clear quotes from Parsons in Gardner or indeed any mention of him in extant personal material. A direct meeting between Parsons and Gardner has to remain as no more than an excellent occult rumour. The nudity theme may well be another indication of powerful ideas that were in the airwaves then. Parsons deserves to be noted as a prophetic figure is this context and the rebirth of witchcraft to be a phenomenon influenced by tangential ripples from the Babalon Working.