L. Ron Hubbard, Sorcery, and Flying Saucers
I love urban legends and conspiracy theories. I'm not saying I believe them. I'm just saying that I find them amusing. In fact, the bigger the amount of bullshit contained in a conspiracy theory/urban legend, the more amusing it is to me.
And that leads me to my latest entry. It concerns an amusingly bullshit story about Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, Jet Propulsion Laboratory wunderkind Jack Parsons, and the infamous Aleister Crowley. They were all connected by a magic(k)al operation known as The Babalon Working:
In its initial stages, The Babalon Working was intended to attract an elemental to serve as a partner for Parsons elaborate sex magick rituals. The method employed was that of the solo VIII Degree working of the O.T.O, the quasi-Masonic organization reformulated by Crowley in the earlier part of the century in accordance with his Do What Thou Wilt mythos of Thelema. Parsons used his magickal wand to whip up a vortex of energy so the elemental would be summoned. Translated into plain English, Parsons jerked off in the name of spiritual advancement whilst Hubbard (referred to as The Scribe in the diary of the event) scanned the astral plane for signs and visions.
Apparently, it worked. In a letter to Crowley dated February 23, 1946, Parsons exclaimed, "I have my elemental! She turned up one night after the conclusion of the Operation, and has been with me since."
The elemental was a green-eyed, flaming redhead named Marjorie Cameron, (later of Kenneth Anger's Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome film, an artist of some reknown and a primary force in the New Age Goddess movement). Cameron was only too happy to participate in Parsons' sex magick and now Parsons could get down to the real business of the Babalon Working: the birthing of a moonchild or homunculus. The operation was formulated to open an interdimensional doorway, rolling out the red carpet for the appearance of the goddess Babalon in human form, employing the Enochian Calls [angelic language] of Elizabethan magus John Dee and the attraction of the sex force of the duo's copulation to this end.
As Paul Rydeen points out in his extended essay Jack Parsons and the Fall of Babalon: "The purpose of Parsons' operation has been underemphasized. He sought to produce a magickal child who would be a product of her environment rather than of her heredity. Crowley himself describes the Moonchild in just these terms. The Babalon Working itself was preparation for what was to come: a Thelemic messiah. To wit: Babalon incarnate as a living female, the Scarlet Woman as consort to the Antichrist, bride of the Beast 666. In effect, Parsons also claimed the mantle of Antichrist for himself, as the magickal heir of Crowley prophesied in Liber AL: 'The child of thy bowels, he shall behold them [the mysteries of the Apocalypse]. Expect him not from the East, nor from the West, for from no expected house cometh that child.'"
Without the Scarlet Woman, the Antichrist cannot make his manifestation, the eschatological formula must first be complete. In whiter words, with the magickal rites of the Babalon Working, it was Parsons' goal to bring on the Apocalypse.
I have no doubt that they actually attempted this "Babalon Working" ritual even if I doubt that it actually produced a "Moonchild". But one thing is clear: Hubbard and his cohorts were trying to summon an extradimensional entity to this plane of existence and were using the occult teachings of Aleister Crowley as their template.
These events were probably the basis for a completely bullshit legend: The legend that Hubbard and Parsons used a sorcerous ritual to summon up the UFOs that people report seeing from time to time.
The story goes that Hubbard and Parsons went out into the Southwestern Desert at the behest of the JPL. Their goal was to perform a series of incantations that would open up a nexus to another dimension. Supposedly the incantations worked and a "dimensional portal" opened up in mid air before them. Something flew through. In some versions of the legend, the thing that entered our world was "The Third Book of the Law" or some such nonsense. In other versions, it was a flying saucer. The beings within cut a deal with the JPL. In exchange for liscence to come an go within our dimension and do whatever they wished, they would share vital technological and esoteric secrets with the U.S. government. Those who believe this legend also tend to believe that many technological advances from the internet to Tang were handed down by metaterrestrial sorceror-scientists to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and from there to the rest of the world.
Some even expand the legend further. They say that the extradimensional beings worked with another government before they worked with the United States: Nazi Germany. They hold that the Thule Society had used magic(k)al riuals to contact the metaterrestrials in a similar manner to the way Hubbard and Parsons would a few short years later. However, the aliens abandoned the Nazis at some point for unguessable reasons precipitating the downfall of the Third Reich.
And so that's the way the legend goes. Complete and utter bullshit? Of course. Amusing and fascinating in an odd way nontheless? Absolutely.
And that leads me to my latest entry. It concerns an amusingly bullshit story about Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, Jet Propulsion Laboratory wunderkind Jack Parsons, and the infamous Aleister Crowley. They were all connected by a magic(k)al operation known as The Babalon Working:
In its initial stages, The Babalon Working was intended to attract an elemental to serve as a partner for Parsons elaborate sex magick rituals. The method employed was that of the solo VIII Degree working of the O.T.O, the quasi-Masonic organization reformulated by Crowley in the earlier part of the century in accordance with his Do What Thou Wilt mythos of Thelema. Parsons used his magickal wand to whip up a vortex of energy so the elemental would be summoned. Translated into plain English, Parsons jerked off in the name of spiritual advancement whilst Hubbard (referred to as The Scribe in the diary of the event) scanned the astral plane for signs and visions.
Apparently, it worked. In a letter to Crowley dated February 23, 1946, Parsons exclaimed, "I have my elemental! She turned up one night after the conclusion of the Operation, and has been with me since."
The elemental was a green-eyed, flaming redhead named Marjorie Cameron, (later of Kenneth Anger's Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome film, an artist of some reknown and a primary force in the New Age Goddess movement). Cameron was only too happy to participate in Parsons' sex magick and now Parsons could get down to the real business of the Babalon Working: the birthing of a moonchild or homunculus. The operation was formulated to open an interdimensional doorway, rolling out the red carpet for the appearance of the goddess Babalon in human form, employing the Enochian Calls [angelic language] of Elizabethan magus John Dee and the attraction of the sex force of the duo's copulation to this end.
As Paul Rydeen points out in his extended essay Jack Parsons and the Fall of Babalon: "The purpose of Parsons' operation has been underemphasized. He sought to produce a magickal child who would be a product of her environment rather than of her heredity. Crowley himself describes the Moonchild in just these terms. The Babalon Working itself was preparation for what was to come: a Thelemic messiah. To wit: Babalon incarnate as a living female, the Scarlet Woman as consort to the Antichrist, bride of the Beast 666. In effect, Parsons also claimed the mantle of Antichrist for himself, as the magickal heir of Crowley prophesied in Liber AL: 'The child of thy bowels, he shall behold them [the mysteries of the Apocalypse]. Expect him not from the East, nor from the West, for from no expected house cometh that child.'"
Without the Scarlet Woman, the Antichrist cannot make his manifestation, the eschatological formula must first be complete. In whiter words, with the magickal rites of the Babalon Working, it was Parsons' goal to bring on the Apocalypse.
I have no doubt that they actually attempted this "Babalon Working" ritual even if I doubt that it actually produced a "Moonchild". But one thing is clear: Hubbard and his cohorts were trying to summon an extradimensional entity to this plane of existence and were using the occult teachings of Aleister Crowley as their template.
These events were probably the basis for a completely bullshit legend: The legend that Hubbard and Parsons used a sorcerous ritual to summon up the UFOs that people report seeing from time to time.
The story goes that Hubbard and Parsons went out into the Southwestern Desert at the behest of the JPL. Their goal was to perform a series of incantations that would open up a nexus to another dimension. Supposedly the incantations worked and a "dimensional portal" opened up in mid air before them. Something flew through. In some versions of the legend, the thing that entered our world was "The Third Book of the Law" or some such nonsense. In other versions, it was a flying saucer. The beings within cut a deal with the JPL. In exchange for liscence to come an go within our dimension and do whatever they wished, they would share vital technological and esoteric secrets with the U.S. government. Those who believe this legend also tend to believe that many technological advances from the internet to Tang were handed down by metaterrestrial sorceror-scientists to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and from there to the rest of the world.
Some even expand the legend further. They say that the extradimensional beings worked with another government before they worked with the United States: Nazi Germany. They hold that the Thule Society had used magic(k)al riuals to contact the metaterrestrials in a similar manner to the way Hubbard and Parsons would a few short years later. However, the aliens abandoned the Nazis at some point for unguessable reasons precipitating the downfall of the Third Reich.
And so that's the way the legend goes. Complete and utter bullshit? Of course. Amusing and fascinating in an odd way nontheless? Absolutely.