I have decided to re-post a long piece, originally uploaded in Nov 2009, that is an appendix in my
Aleister Crowley and the Aeon of Horus due to the considerable controversy currently stirred by the recent airing in the USA of
Going Clear, the massively publicized Scientology-bashing documentary. For all of it's apparent attention to real facts and data, the portrayal of L Ron Hubbard's involvement with rocket-scientist occultist Jack Parsons and the magick of Aleister Crowley, although brief, is riddled with errors and misrepresentation.
My Crowley book deals at length with the legendary Babalon Working that involved Parsons, Hubbard, and Marjorie Cameron. Hubbard's role has long fascinated me and I believe that my speculations (and I am quite clear at the outset that they are speculations) suggest a
possible narrative that balances both sides of the story. Could Hubbard really have been on an intelligence mission and also have been an enthusiastic participant in occult rites at the same time? This topic deserved a separate treatment, hence the lengthy appendix. The difference between me and almost every occultist writer on this subject is that I'm not a rabid Ron hater and I feel that the general portrayal of him as some kind of pantomime villain hasn't helped our understanding of this extraordinary scenario.
I have known a few people over the years who spent a lot of time with Hubbard at close quarters. They were all emphatic that he was an astounding genius of boundless charisma. This coming in one case from a man who had eventually been declared a Suppressive Person and Fair Game and testified in court against Scientology. Film footage on You Tube doesn't really seem to bear this out but however much one might consider Xenu and suchlike to be a crock of shite, this basic fact about Hubbard should not be forgotten.
There are a few references to material earlier in the book but this piece can stand on its own.
Scientology accounts of L Ron Hubbard’s life leave blank the incredible
period from 1945-6 when he was involved with Jack Parsons and the
legendary magical Babalon Working. An extensive account of this episode
has already been given but LRH’s role is so contentious and mysterious
it is worth considering separately. I believe I have brought together
data that has not been thus arranged before and that it does at least a
little to unravel some of the calumny surrounding LRH in this context
and suggest that he might be a bit more interesting than his denigrators
would contend.
With each passing decade Jack Parsons becomes increasingly well known.
He may now be a candidate for the title of coolest man of the twentieth
century, being referred to by Richard Metzger as the ‘
James Dean of the occult’.
Whatever one might feel about the nature of the spiritual forces he
invoked, a quick perusal of his writings soon reveals a powerful and
passionate advocate for freedom. He was obviously a quite incredible
man.
 |
| Ron and Betty in the process of boat buying. |
The general feeling of Hubbard’s role has scarcely developed at all.
Occultist lovers of Parsons see Ron as a scoundrel who laid Jack low by
cheating him out of a large sum of money and running off with his former
partner. We will see how when confronted with the story of the Babalon
Working the Church of Scientology portrayed LRH as a man on a covert
Intelligence mission to infiltrate and undermine the Parsons scene.
With Peter Moon’s Montauk books the possibility of a wider perspective
began to present itself. As we have seen, Moon was able to offer unique
insights through having known both L Ron Hubbard and Marjorie Cameron.
She recalled how the two men had been like brothers and she herself was
not hostile to Ron. She even added a detail missing from other accounts
that Hubbard had actually contacted Parsons again, years after their
tumultuous parting, when
Dianetics had just appeared. He invited
Jack to invest in it! This might be seen as colossal nerve on his part
but it hints at a bigger picture of their interaction.
Is it possible to create a narrative that in some way allows the
different versions to all be essentially true? Beyond Moon’s beginnings
I’m not aware that anyone has ever really tried to do so. This is a
tentative speculative attempt that may well be an imaginative fiction.
I’m not asking anyone to necessarily endorse it. I would hope it might
be found interesting and show that when approached in the right spirit
this compelling topic still has some open doors.
On October 5th 1969 the London
Times published a lengthy article
going into considerable detail on L Ron Hubbard’s involvement in the
Babalon Working. This information had never been disseminated before and
was known only to a few occultists. Given that Scientology was a topic
of some controversy at the time it was quite a story. Before long the
church responded with a threat of litigation unless the story was
withdrawn. The paper eventually agreed to print a statement from
Scientology in December which was written by Hubbard himself. All
subsequent enquiries to the church concerning the Parsons period in
LRH’s life are simply referred back to the original statement.
‘Hubbard broke up black magic in America: Dr Jack Parsons of
Pasadena, California, was America’s Number One solid fuel rocket expert.
He was involved with the infamous English black magician Aleister
Crowley who called himself “The Beast 666.”Crowley ran an organization
called the Order of Templars Orientalis over the world which had savage
and bestial rites. Dr Parsons was head of the American branch located at
100 Orange Grove Avenue, Pasadena California. This was a huge old house
which had paying guests who were the USA nuclear physicists working at
Cal Tech. Certain agencies objected to nuclear physicists being housed
under the same roof.
L Ron Hubbard was still an officer of the US
Navy because he was well known as a writer and philosopher and had
friends among the physicists, he was sent in to handle the situation. He
went to live at the house and investigated the black magic rites and
the general situation and found them very bad.
Parsons wrote to
Crowley in England about Hubbard. Crowley “the Beast 666” evidently
detected an enemy and warned Parsons. This was proven by the
correspondence unearthed by the Sunday Times. Hubbard's mission was
successful far beyond anyone's expectations. The house was torn down.
Hubbard rescued a girl they were using. The black magic group was
dispersed and destroyed and never recovered. The physicists included
many of the sixty-four top US scientists who were later declared
insecure and dismissed from government service with so much publicity.’
To begin with, it is important to set the statement in the wider context
of the time period it appeared in. Hubbard and his church were already
receiving a lot of flack and had black propaganda being flung at them. A
year before, in 1968, LRH had commissioned an investigation to try and
figure out where it was coming from and decided that a global cabal of
big-pharma psychiatrists were heavily involved.
Less than one week after the
Times article, on Crowley’s birthday
October 12th for those appreciative of such detail, Charles Manson was
arrested. It wasn’t long before he became the biggest story in America
and all aspects of his past were being investigated. Perhaps the biggest
issue was how he was able to “program” his followers? Where might he
have learnt mind control techniques? It soon surfaced that he had
received fairly extensive Dianetic auditing in prison and used a lot of
Scientology terminology. It appeared that he did check out the
organisation on his release. One of his followers took a somewhat
mysterious journey to England and some unexplained deaths and unsolved
murders cluster around it.
Scientology distanced itself from the Manson connection. They weren’t
exactly the only ones. Charlie had spent a lot of time at the
prestigious Esalen Institute, a place where some of the biggest names in
the Human Potential movement put on events. Manson was there very
shortly before the Tate murders but people weren’t exactly queuing up to
talk about it. The Hollywood set that Charlie and his girls provided a
rent-a-drug-orgy service to went a bit quiet too. Of course they did. I
consider it to be perfectly straightforward that Scientology would want
to play down any Manson connection. His major warp-outs derived from
other sources, primarily his own head.
Nonetheless there is material circulating on the internet that states
that Charles Manson was a Scientologist in a manner virtually suggesting
he was a fully paid up member and that somehow LRH is responsible for
his crimes or variants thereof. This is entirely untrue and
unreasonable. In fact those that know the Manson story in greater detail
will be aware that in the last crazy days of Helter Skelter one man
named Paul Crockett persistently stood his ground against Charlie and
even helped some of his followers break free from him by effectively
de-programming them. He was able to do this because of a strong
background in Scientology.
The OTO weren’t looking too good then either. Jean Brayton’s Solar Lodge
achieved notoriety through the decidedly unpleasant episode, mentioned
earlier in the
Strange Days section, of the child chained in a
box in the desert. The subsequent trial was widely reported at the end
of October 1969. The actions of one lodge were not representative of the
organization worldwide but try telling that to the media.
The Times
article showing some kind of Hubbard involvement with an OTO linked
scenario appeared just a few weeks before the Boy in the Box trial was
reported. It is again understandable that a damage-limitation exercise
would be deemed necessary. The
‘savage and bestial rites’ may be
reflective of that peculiar situation.
The kind of cultic milieu that Manson arose from and was later so well portrayed by Ed Sanders in
The Family seemed
to be very interdependent. One part of the equation was the Process
Church which had undoubtedly been founded by two former Scientologists
even though the end result was a long way away from its source.
As for Crowley, after his
Sgt Pepper appearance, 1969 was the year that he really began to re-emerge with the reissue of the
Confessions.
We have seen that the legend of infamy hasn’t gone away and isn’t
likely to. In many minds Crowley equals black magic equals evil. Is it
that much of a surprise that at the end of ’69, an OTO Crowley Manson
association was the kind of thing Scientology could do without. The
Crowley connection is there though. It does rather seem that the
interest continued after his break with Jack Parsons and this will be
investigated shortly.
Beyond that, what about the basic story that LRH was sent in as part of
an Intelligence operation to infiltrate the Parsonage? It makes sense
that considering the circles Parsons moved in he would be thought of as a
potential huge security risk. Hubbard, who, regardless of controversies
around his biography, definitely did have a military background, would
have been absolutely the perfect person to send in on such a mission.
It’s also fairly obvious that the chances of finding corroborating
information in any government documents are virtually zero. If such a
mission ever existed no paper trail would ever lead to it.
One of the biggest realms of contention in Hubbard’s biography concerns
his military career during the Second World War. Dedicated Ron haters
have spent considerable time going through an enormous number of
Scientology publications comparing details given of that period of time.
There are undoubtedly inconsistencies. Ron spoke of medals and wounds
and some interesting exploits. Russell Miller in
Bare Faced Messiah attacked
these stories armed with other documents that paint a picture of Ron as
incompetent or problematical and leave the impression he was an out and
out liar.
In today’s conspiratorial climate it’s rather interesting to find
someone who has published extensively on CIA black-ops, the Kennedy
assassination, and a whole other bunch of controversial topics coming
out with a startling extended defence of Ron and his military career.
The man in question was no stranger to controversy himself and has been
harangued as an unreliable fantasist but the fact that his take on LRH
even exists is notable.
Fletcher Prouty
Fletcher Prouty may be best known for being an advisor on Oliver Stone’s
JFK movie. The character designated only as X played by Donald Sutherland was based on him.
The man does seem to have had a most intriguing military career. After
joining up in 1941, within a month of LRH, he had a distinguished war in
the air force and worked in the mid-fifties from US Air force HQ for a
decade creating a system of “Military Support of the Clandestine
Operations of the CIA”. He moved in the highest circles and retired with
quite a collection of medals. His knowledge and experience led to his
authoring of a number of contentious works, primarily
The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World, and
JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy.
Prouty spoke of a global elite behind international events and believed
that the CIA manipulated the notorious Jonestown cult mass
suicide/murder.
Considering LRH and Scientology are so often on the receiving end of
paranoid conspiracism it’s rather intriguing that Prouty spoke out at
length in their defense. Although never a member, he was hired out by
the Church to investigate and hit back at what they considered to be
black propaganda against themselves and in particular their founder.
When
Bare Faced Messiah was published Prouty wrote a long letter
to the publisher protesting in the strongest terms about the general
tone of the work and what he took to be its selective abuse through
omission and distortion of source material. This letter is readily
available on a number of internet sites. Inevitably it has in turn
likewise been denigrated but its contents are rather intriguing and
provide the source for some of Peter Moon’s material on Ron in the
Montauk books.
Prouty seizes on Russell Millers playing down of what he considers to be
crucial data, mentioning only in passing that in 1941 Hubbard was
posted for training as an Intelligence Officer. This is the information
that changes ones awareness of all the rest. He further runs through
Miller’s data highlighting areas that show to someone with Prouty’s
background that,
'Almost all of Hubbard's military record is replete with markings
that signify deep intelligence service at the highest levels. Many of
his records, copies of official records, revealed that even the
originals had been fabricated in the manner peculiar to the intelligence
community in a process that we call "Sheep Dip”. I myself have
supervised a lot of that function in the offices I managed during
1955-1964.
"Sheep Dip” is a process that provides, customarily,
three files. One is the true civilian record of the agent. One is his
agency or military true record. The third is his "cover” personality and
all that it takes to support it.
Thus when one researches these
files, in a routine manner, he may get copies from any one of
three...or of various kindred files that are maintained for special
reasons. Some of Hubbard's records are kept in from 8 to 18 files as is
clearly noted in codes on the records.’
Prouty also noted that a Washington Congressman named Magnuson had
written to President Roosevelt urging him to personally ensure Hubbard's
request for active duty was processed quickly, a procedure that was
‘most unusual’.
‘Miller
failed to note that Hubbard's first Active Duty Orders were signed by
none other than Chester Nimitz, later the famous five-star Admiral and
hero of Pacific campaigns. A small code number on those same orders
identifies Hubbard as being placed on duty with Naval Intelligence’.
Miller mentioned in passing that Hubbard went
‘on a four-month course in 'Military Government' at the Naval Training School, Princeton,’ and was later
‘transferred to the Naval Civil Affairs Staging Area in Monterey, California for further training’. Prouty asserts that these were important high grade establishments.
‘Unlike MI-5's Peter Wright, Ron Hubbard was of the old school. He never revealed important intelligence sources and methods.’
The inconsistent tales of where he was and when and what he was doing
were partly to fulfill old obligations. He nonetheless felt it acceptable
to let it be known he had a somewhat colourful war.
Prouty also stated that Ron was very familiar with the dark mind control
direction that the newly formed Nazi infiltrated CIA was taking that
would lead to MKULTRA. A lot of the source material they would abuse is
there in the background of his own research prior to
Dianetics. In this
version of events he chose to break ranks and use the ideas for good. Of
course there are plenty of people who would never endorse this idea but
it needs to be stated for the sake of balance and the possibility that
it might actually be true.
The official Church statement on breaking up black magic in America
might just be Ron being ironic about some of the original intentions of
his mission as he was given it. In 1969 it was obviously not true in any
literal sense.
LRH has been portrayed as virtually a dribbling deranged nutcase. I’ve
already noted that he started taking flack from the Feds round about the
same time as Wilhelm Reich and for broadly similar reasons. The
difference is that he handled it and not only survived but thrived.
Indeed, over a period of decades when assorted governments and
intelligence agencies were on his case he managed to create his own
departments within Scientology to deal with such hassle. This side of
the church has always been controversial and likely to attract bad
publicity but it has held its own, fought fire with fire, and generally
played the spooks at their own game. The name of the game was set out by
LRH in minute detail. Quite clearly it was a subject he knew about. He
was in fact bloody good at it. No other self-help guru, mystic or
occultist in history comes anywhere near it. Pathological dysfunctionals
won’t last very long in such scenarios. Hubbard was together enough to
play it whilst formulating all of the Operating Thetan material for
which Scientology is now so well-known and misunderstood for: Xenu etc.
Some might look askance at a spiritual movement that involved such
activities. The same people might be captivated by the legend of the
Knights Templar, a fabulously wealthy organisation that protected and
served its esoteric interests through money, espionage and warfare. The
devil-worship accusations thrown against them tend to be seen as vulgar
and stupid. Those guys are generally considered to be pretty cool. Reich
died in prison. Gnostics and heretics down through the ages have been
massacred for want of the knowledge of how to survive and protect
themselves. It is perhaps useful to look at Scientology activity in that
light.
I don’t think it is at all unlikely that Hubbard could have been working
on some kind of covert mission when he got to know Jack Parsons. That
brings us to the next problem. It is clear that LRH was a full-on
participant in the proceedings. In fact his visionary material
considerably shaped the details of the magick rites. There must have
been something occurring in the scenario that served his own mystical
process. Most accounts are hampered by a predisposition on the part of
the writer to view Ron with hostility. This is often coupled with a
tabloid mentality towards Crowley. Such a combination is unlikely to
produce any new insights even when the source material has been used.
Jack Parsons and Marjorie Cameron
A good example is
Bare-Faced Messiah. The author detests his
subject and goes out of his way to portray Ron as liar, madman, etc.
There’s a whole chapter dealing with the Babalon Working. Firstly,
Crowley is referred to as a
‘sorcerer and Satanist’. Jack Parsons was
‘worshipping the Devil’. His home had become the
‘headquarters of a black magic group which practised deviant sexual rites’.
It’s clear that Russell Miller hadn’t got much of a handle on the
western mystery tradition. To describe the OTO Gnostic Mass regularly
performed at the Parsonage as a deviant sexual rite is to allow one’s
critical faculties to descend to the level of a fundamentalist
Christian. There are written accounts from other residents who likewise
had no real understanding of Thelema and Parsons passionate libertarian
mysticism and simply thought in terms of “people in robes chanting
equals black magic”. Miller is happy to set his scene with such
material. Add to that a number of skewed facts concerning Parsons its
clear that the mystery of Hubbard’s involvement will not be solved
through Miller.
A pivotal event in Hubbard’s life that may shed some light on his
involvement in the Babalon Working was recalled on various occasions by
his onetime literary agent and major sci-fi aficionado, Forrest
Ackerman. Interviewed by Russell Miller he spoke of an occasion in 1947
when Ron told him how he had died on an operating theatre during the war
and
“rose in spirit form, and looked back on the body that he had
formerly inhabited. Over yonder he saw a fantastic great gate,
elaborately carved like something you’d see in Bagdhad or ancient China.
As he wafted towards it, the gate opened and just beyond he could see a
kind of intellectual smorgasbord on which was outlined everything that
had ever puzzled the mind of man. All the questions that had concerned
philosophers through the ages -When did the world begin? Was there a
God? Whither goest we? – were there answered. All this information came
flooding into him and while he was absorbing it, there was a kind of
flustering in the air and he felt something like a long umbilical cord
pulling him back. He was saying “No, no, not yet!”, but he was pulled
back anyway. After the gates had closed he realised he had re-entered
his body.”
After establishing with a worried nurse that he had effectively died he
jumped up from the operating theatre and dashed home to get
“ two reams of paper and a gallon of scalding black coffee” and within two days produced a manuscript he was calling
Excalibur or
The Dark Sword.
This legendary work is the cornerstone of the official Hubbard
biographies. It is said to contain the very foundations of everything
that came afterwards. It is a legend because it was never published. Ron
liked to tell how those he showed it to were immediately overwhelmed
with suicides and madness resulting.
Ackerman has a date and context for this episode that is at variance
with the usual timeline. A modest preface from Excalibur has been
published and bears a date of New Years Day 1938. The near-death
experience happened under the influence of gas anaesthetic at Dr Elbert E
Cone’s dental office in Bremerton, Washington. There is no mention of
the gate and the great download of knowledge but in this version he
returns agitated with the feeling of still being in contact with
something that if he could remember would give him the secret of life.
This state endured for days until one morning he awoke with enough
recall to start on the great manuscript. We shall return to the gate and
Babalon after noting another tale from Ron’s early days.
The young Hubbard was a daredevil glider pilot. Nobody doubts this. He
told a rather interesting story in the thirties to fellow writer Arthur J
Burks. On occasions when he ran into trouble a red-haired smiling woman
would appear on a wing and all would be well. Burks speculated on her
as a possible guardian angel. Hubbard would name this being the Empress
by the time he met Jack Parsons who mentioned in a letter to Crowley
that he believed Ron to possibly be in contact with a higher
intelligence of some kind that may have been his guardian angel. There
is an incredibly evocative fragment concerning the early days of
Dianetics when he was asked by an associate how he had managed to write
the work so quickly and he hinted that it was in certain respects a kind
of automatic writing dictated by the Empress.
In
The Montauk Book of the Dead Peter Moon discusses the LRH 1938
“Gate” experience and notes how Babalon is taken to mean gate and
therefore the two things hang together. I believe the links can be
established in some detail through the Qabalistic framework of Crowley
and Parsons’ magick.
Tree of Life from Kenneth Grant's Magical Revival.
The Qabalistic Tree of Life is depicted with three vertical columns
linked by twenty two paths. The middle pillar is taller, connecting
upwards to the point of white light (known as Kether) whence the
formless breaks through into the realms where it will become form. The
tops of the left and right hand pillars are joined by a path that passes
between them beneath the level of Kether. This path lies just above the
veil of the abyss which we have given so much attention to.
The abyss contains the controversial zone named Daath where Crowley
encountered Choronzon. It is known as Knowledge. Spheres called
Understanding and Wisdom top the left and right hand pillars.
The assorted paths have attributions with the tarot trumps and Hebrew
letters which are ideograms, meaning they are taken to broadly resemble
artefacts in the world such as a hook, house, or camel. The letter
associated with the path just above the abyss that runs between the two
pillars is Daleth. It means door. In the Golden Dawn/Crowley tradition,
its tarot card is the Empress with a planetary association of Venus.
Empress from Haindl tarot.One of the better depictions of the daleth doorway.
Whether or not he knew this before entering the Parsonage, LRH would
more than likely have become aware of this magical data during the
initial brainstorming before the Babalon Working. It doesn’t seem
unlikely that he might have recalled his experience with the great gate
and his ongoing connection with the Empress and found a lot of things
starting to make sense. Babalon, residing across the abyss, primarily in
the sphere of Binah partook of many of the qualities of Hubbard’s
red-haired Empress.
It would be easy enough to interpret the near-death experience in
magical Qabalistic terms. LRH was briefly catapulted across the abyss to
the Daleth doorway where Knowledge, Understanding, and Wisdom were
downloaded. The Daath side of it is covered by the fact that he had to
virtually die to get there and faced the struggle of bringing back what
he had found. Being a writer already who was famous for his prodigious
fast output was a major bonus here. The experience fits the framework
very well and the level of energy, power, and influence he went on to
wield were entirely uncommon.
So Hubbard may have gone in to undermine the scene but would soon have
experienced a conflict of interest. The forces invoked were extremely
powerful. We have noted the resonance with the saga of Dee and Kelly.
Ron took action that did indeed detonate the scene when he went off with
a large sum of Parsons’ money and his former partner, the girl
‘rescued’ in the 1969 statement.
There are indications that Hubbard’s interest in a Crowley-flavoured
magick continued. This means that the official Scientology line only
covers some of the story. It does not address whether LRH actually found
any interesting lines of enquiry when he came into contact with
Crowley’s work and is therefore incomplete but also worded in such a way
that it cannot be said to be untrue.
A controversial court case in 1984, the details of which do not concern
us here, made visible some documentation relating to the period after
the Babalon Working. The details were covered in the anti-scientology
work
A Piece of Blue Sky by Jon Atack. Similar problems are faced to dealing with Russell Miller’s Babalon chapter.
The waters have also been considerably muddied by the fact that L Ron
Hubbard Jr, generally known by his childhood nickname “Nibs”
spectacularly fell out with his father and has sounded forth for
decades, most notably with a
Penthouse interview in June 1983,
with the most outlandish accounts imaginable of his experience of dad as
a drug crazed, woman beating, baby aborting, megalomaniac, sexual
tyrannosaurus, black magician. Those temperamentally predisposed to be
Ron haters have completely accepted this material and rehash it
uncritically.
Blue Sky is no exception.
In
Penthouse Nibs told how when Crowley died dad
‘decided that
he should wear the cloak of the beast and become the most powerful
being in the universe.’ ‘I believed in Satanism. There was no other
religion in the house! Scientology and black magic. What a lot of people
don't realize is that Scientology is black magic that is just spread
out over a long time period. To perform black magic generally takes a
few hours or, at most, a few weeks. But in Scientology it's stretched
out over a lifetime, and so you don't see it. Black magic is the inner
core of Scientology --and it is probably the only part of Scientology
that really works. Also, you've got to realize that my father did not
worship Satan. He thought he was Satan. He was one with Satan. He had a
direct pipeline of communication and power with him. My father wouldn't
have worshiped anything. I mean, when you think you're the most powerful
being in the universe, you have no respect for anything, let alone
worship.’
‘Hitler was involved in the same black magic and the same occult
practices that my father was. The identical ones. Which, as I have said,
stem clear back to before Egyptian times. It's a very secret thing.
Very powerful and very workable and very dangerous. Brainwashing is
nothing compared to it. The proper term would be “soul cracking.” It's
like cracking open the soul, which then opens various doors to the power
that exists, the satanic and demonic powers.’
In a 1984 taped interview Nibs went on to say that
“the same
individual that transmitted the various Magick tech to Adolf Hitler as a
young man also transmitted them to Dad. And like Dad, Hitler, when he
came to power, promptly had his teachers and the occult field in general
wiped out”. This is classic material that will run forever in
cyberspace getting more and more distorted as dark forces paranoid types
with progressively less knowledge make use of it.
The Empress called in the Archangel Michael in guardian capacity at one
point in the Babalon Working. Bearing in mind his role in the
Revelation
War in Heaven as God’s bouncer when it comes to rebel angels it seems a
tad odd that the supposed Satan worshipping badass portrayed by Ron Jr
would want his help.
Some kind of extensive Hubbard diary full of “affirmations” came to
light and had brief quotations aired in the court case referred to in
Blue Sky where it is stated that
‘Hubbard hypnotized himself to believe that all of humanity and all discarnate beings were bound to him in slavery.’ This detail has been pumped-up to giant proportions in the Ron as black magician mythology.
The fabled document is not available for inspection but I am inclined to
feel it may be part of an experiment by Ron to follow or create his own
version of Crowley’s Holy Guardian Angel ritual
Liber Samekh, presented in
Magick
as the distillation of his experience with the Abramelin procedure. The
ritual is intended to be performed daily by anyone engaging in a
serious HGA intensive. The four elements and Spirit are invoked with
assorted visualisations that we have already noted with Jung. At the end
of each section this “affirmation” is recited:
‘Hear me, and make
all Spirits subject unto Me; so that every Spirit of the Firmament and
of the Ether: upon the Earth and under the Earth, on dry land and in the
water; of Whirling Air, and of rushing Fire, and every Spell and
Scourge of God may be obedient unto Me.’ It may appear a tad full-on
to a tabloid mentality but it’s really about profound balance as much
as power and the one can’t happen without the other. It’s not proof of a
Ming the Merciless mentality.
Another document that got a brief court airing was described by LRH himself as
“The Blood Ritual”. Those
with their minds conditioned by Dennis Wheatley novels, horror movies,
and Fundamentalist Christian fulminations will start twitching at the
mere sight of the words. Only a few details were revealed. Ron and his
“rescued” woman mingled some of their blood together to become one in
the context of an invocation to Hathor, an Egyptian goddess of love
quite similar to Isis. Nibs mentioned that dad also knew his Empress as
Hathor. Maybe we can actually go along with him there.
Blue Sky manages to find a way to make this seem like more malevolent sorcery.
Hathor
Hathor was an Egyptian goddess of Love and Beauty whose myth cycle links
her with lion-headed Sekhmet who on one occasion, which started as a
mission of justice, went on a destructive blood-drinking rampage that
threatened to destroy the human race. We have here a definite sense of
Babalon and that ancient unity of the divine feminine that was
fragmented by Christianity whereby seemingly contradictory aspects can
exist together.
Jon Atack focuses on Sekhmet as
“destroyer of man” and produces
an interpretation of the Blood Ritual that is surely transparent in its
desperate desire to paint as black a picture as possible.
‘To
Crowley, Babalon was a manifestation of the Hindu goddess Shakti, who in
one of her aspects is also called the 'destroyer of man'. It seems that
to Hubbard, Babalon, Hathor, and the Empress were synonymous, and he
was trying to conjure his 'Guardian Angel' in the form of a servile
homunculus so he could control the “destroyer of man”.’ “Guardian
Angel” and “servile homunculus” don’t really blend together that easily.
They are somewhat disparate concepts. Homunculus relates back to the
moonchild idea in the Babalon Working whereby a conception is
manipulated to embody a non-human force. And there’s no indication that
Hathor was intended to bring forth Sekhmet. If that was what he wanted
then Hubbard would have mentioned her by name. A group of other deities
including Nuit, Re, and Osiris got a mention as well but no Sekhmet.
Perhaps the best clue comes from the inclusion of Mammon in the forces
invoked. This is a Biblical concept for extravagant wealth, sometimes
considered to be a demon by those who needed to control people through
selective poverty consciousness. In modern terms it sounds like Ron was
using the Secret to put in a cosmic order for mega-bucks. He’s not alone
in such activities. If you want to bring abundance and money into your
life you don’t stir up the destroyer of man!
In his epic 1952
Philadelphia Doctorate Course lectures, one of the most important foundations of Scientology, Ron did have a few things to say about Crowley.
“The
magic cults of the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th centuries in the Middle
East were fascinating. The only work that has anything to do with them
is a trifle wild in spots, but it's fascinating work... written by
Aleister Crowley, the late Aleister Crowley, my very good friend ....
It's very interesting reading to get hold of a copy of a book, quite
rare, but it can be obtained, The Master Therion . . . by Aleister
Crowley.” And also,
“One fellow, Aleister Crowley, picked up a
level of religious worship which is very interesting - oh boy! The Press
played hockey with his head for his whole life-time. The Great Beast -
666. He just had another level of religious worship. Yes, sir, you're
free to worship everything under the Constitution so long as it's
Christian.” The
“good friend” designation is certainly interesting as the two never met. The book referred to as
The Master Therion is
Magick, where
Liber Samekh can be found.
Whilst it was only moderately controversial and potentially
problematical to mention Crowley in 1952, by 1969 things had got a lot
worse and this was before Nibs got involved.
The Philadelphia Doctorate Crowley
quotes, taken from original recordings, can be found all over the
internet in video exposes by Christians, cult bashers and suchlike in
the usual manner. In the Nibs mythology dad was going home every night
during the lecture series and reading
Magick to get ideas for the next day.
There are always going to be people who warp-out on Crowley and Hubbard.
Put the two together and there is very little chance of any rational
discussion. We can begin to see why the 1969 statement was made and why
it has remained as essentially the only Scientology statement on the
subject. It really wouldn’t matter what else they might ever say, occult
gossip will have its way.
Just supposing Hubbard had come out and admitted to a big interest in
Crowley and significant experimentation with his work on the basis of
the Beast’s remarkable knowledge and experience of the world’s magical
and mystical traditions and how nobody interested in such topics could
afford to ignore him, that checking him out constituted an essential
part of a general education in the mysteries of consciousness. Would the
results have been any more inspiring? Of course not. The same level of
negativity would still circulate.
A lot of comparisons between Scientology material and bits of Crowley
and the Golden Dawn have been made with the implication being that this
reveals the secret core of the Church. I’m not going to examine that
here. It’s possible to find all kinds of other big influences as well
such as Freud and Korzybski. Hubbard was always looking for what worked
and he wouldn’t necessarily keep it in its original context.
A student of comparative religion could probably place Scientology in
with the Gnostic revival. There are many common themes. We are immortal
beings trapped in a prison world by a lapse in our awareness often
caused by external agencies whose purpose is served by keeping us that
way. It is possible to awaken, become free, and regain the full power of
our divine potential. In this Ron possibly absorbed some Thelemic
Gnostic nuances via Parsons but was maybe also affected by what Jung
experienced with Abraxas and what Phillip K Dick experienced as the Nag
Hammadi plasmate generally in the airwaves. Nonetheless, coming to birth
in the UFO Cold War fifties, his creation was unique.
