Sex Magick — Rocketry — Con Games — Espionage and More…
“So Jack became a loyal follower of Mr. Aleister Crowley/He took an oath to be a Magister Templi/His pretty house in Pasadena was notorious for the orgies…” — “Blood & Rockets: Movement I — Saga of Jack Parsons…” — The Claypool Lennon Delirium, South of Reality
He was a disciple of “the wickedest man alive” Aleister Crowley. Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard performed magick rituals with him, stole his girlfriend and conned him out of his life’s savings. And the rockets he helped develop eventually put us on the Moon.
He’s also the subject of “Blood & Rockets” from Les Claypool and Sean Lennon — The Claypool Lennon Delirium — on their latest release, South of Reality.
His legend and renown continue to grow. So why not a fresh look at the fascinating and enigmatic Jack Parsons? His life was as colorful as the glare of his rockets; his death in 1952 in an accidental explosion, still mysterious.
Parsons’ life path intersected with those of two Modern Holy Men, Crowley and Hubbard. He was a personal link incarnate between the two men, and, in some ways, between Crowley’s Thelema and Hubbard’s Scientology. The two men were instrumental in what Parsons viewed as his life’s major Magickal undertaking, The Babalon (sic) Working.
Parsons was already a high priest in Crowley’s religion of Thelema prior to meeting Hubbard. He corresponded with Crowley, addressing him as “Most Beloved Father” and signing his letters “Thy Beloved Son, Jack”.[i] He’s described as “Aleister Crowley’s hand-picked leader of the U.S. branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis, the Southern California-based Agape Lodge.” Lodge member Jane Wolfe said she saw Parsons “as the real successor to Therion (Crowley).”[ii]
Parsons was six foot two and charismatic — “The James Dean of the Occult,” according to occult writer Richard Metzger. As a rocket scientist and an occultist, he was also a friend to many of California’s science fiction writers. Some lived with him; Parsons’ home — later dubbed the “Parsonage” — was a sprawling old manse in Pasadena that he ran as a kind of cooperative, bohemian rooming house that advertised for artists, musicians, atheists, anarchists and other exotic types. In addition to the apartments, Parsons reserved two rooms for the conduct of the Gnostic Mass and other O.T.O. rituals.[iii]
Science Fiction fan and occasional Parsonage guest Alva Rogers said “Jack was the antithesis of the common image of the Black Magician… He bore little resemblance to his revered Master, Aleister Crowley, either in looks or in his personal conduct. He was a good looking man… urbane and sophisticated, and possessed a fine sense of humor. He never, as far as I saw, indulged in any of the public scatological crudities which characterized Crowley… I always found Jack’s insistence that he believed in and practiced magic hard to reconcile with his educational and cultural background.”[iv]
Through mutual friends — some reports say Robert A. Heinlein — he met L. Ron Hubbard. He was impressed. Parsons wrote Crowley:
“About 3 months ago I met Captain L Ron Hubbard, a writer and explorer of whom I had known for some time… He is a gentleman, red hair, green eyes, honest and intelligent and we have become great friends. He moved in with me about two months ago, and although Betty and I are still friendly, she has transferred her sexual affections to him. Although he has no formal training in Magick, he has an extraordinary amount of experience and understanding in the field. From some of his experiences I deduce he is in direct touch with some higher intelligence, possibly his Guardian Angel. He is the most Thelemic person I have ever met and is in complete accord with our own principles. He is also interested in establishing the New Aeon, but for cogent reasons I have not introduced him to the Lodge. We are pooling our resources in a partnership which will act as a parent company to control our business ventures. I think I have made a great gain, and as Betty and I are the best of friends, there is little loss… I need a magical partner. I have many experiments in mind. I hope my elemental gets off the dime [gets moving] — the next time I tie up with a woman it will be on [my] own terms.”[v]
“Betty” was Sara Northrup, both Jack’s mistress and sister-in-law, his estranged wife Helen’s sister. Hubbard won her affections; he would later claim he “rescued” her from the cult. Parsons acted blasé in his letter, but by most reports he was seething. Parsons and Betty “had been practicing an open marriage at Parsons’s insistence, as a matter of Thelemic liberty.” According to author Lawrence Sutin, “In fact, while Parsons was wracked with jealousy by this affair, he stood up rather nobly to the strain…”[vi]
Parsons seems to have seen it as a test of his Will, as he believed Hubbard to be essential for a ritual he was performing. According to most accounts, soon after meeting Parsons, Hubbard became a willing participant in a masturbatory magickal ritual undertaken by Parsons, 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… Parsons used his “magical 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.”[vii]
“The ritual took place over twelve consecutive nights in January 1946. To the strains of a Prokofiev violin concerto, Parsons made a series of eleven invocations, including the ‘Conjuration of Air’, the ‘Consecration of Air Dagger’ and the ‘Invocation of Wand with Material Basis on Talisman’. …Parsons performed rituals which led up to ‘an operation of symbolic birth.’ Then he settled down to wait. For four days he experienced ‘tension and unease… Then, on January 18, at sunset, while The Scribe [Hubbard] and I were on the Mojave Desert, the feeling of tension suddenly snapped… I returned home and found a young woman answering the requirements waiting for me.’ The woman was Marjorie Cameron. Parsons wrote to Crowley: ‘I seem to have my elemental… she has red hair and slant green eyes as specified’.”[viii]
Crowley wrote back with a caution to his young apprentice:
“I am particularly interested in what you have written to me about the Elemental, because for some little while past I have been endeavouring to intervene personally in this matter on your behalf. I would, however, have you recall (Eliphas) Levi’s aphorism, ‘the love of the Magus for such beings is insensate and may destroy him.’ It seems to me that there is a danger of your sensitiveness upsetting your balance. Any experience that comes your way you have a tendency to over-estimate… At the same time, your being as sensitive as you are, it behooves you to be more on your guard than would be the case with the majority of people.”[ix]
Despite his Master’s cautions, Parsons, Cameron and Hubbard continued The Babylon Working.
With the “elemental” — Cameron — obtained, Parsons progressed to the next O.T.O. Degree, the 9th, in his Working, sex magic with his “Scarlet Woman”. “In his novel, The Moonchild, Crowley described the creation of a ‘homunculus’, elsewhere described by him as ‘a living being in form resembling a man, and possessing those qualities of man which distinguish him from beasts, namely intellect and power of speech, but neither begotten and born in the matter of human generation, nor inhabited by a human soul.’ Crowley said this was ‘the great idea of magicians of all times: to obtain a Messiah by some adaptation of the sexual process’. …Jack Parsons was intent upon conjuring Babalon as a ‘Moonchild’. He wanted to incarnate the ‘Eternal Whore’ in human form using Crowley’s rituals.”[x]
But to turn the Moonchild into Babalon Incarnate, they needed more than what Crowley had to offer, and Parsons and The Scribe began to channel Babalon as she gave them new rituals and instructions; Parsons heard Babalon command him to write a new chapter of Crowley’s Book of The Law and received initial inspirations; Hubbard dictated instructions for the incarnation during some of their rituals, while Parsons wrote them down, and then followed them.
What, exactly, were Parsons and Hubbard trying to do here?
“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 angelic language of the Enochian Calls of Elizabethan magus John Dee and the attraction of the sex force of the duo’s copulation to this end… ‘The Bablon Working itself was preparation for what was to come: a Thelemic Messiah [Emphasis added]. 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…’ Without the Scarlet Woman, the Antichrist cannot make his manifestation; the eschatological formula must first be complete. In whiter words, with the magical rites of the Babalon Working, it was Parsons goal to bring on the Apocalypse.”[xi]
The Apocalypse. The End of the World? Not in a “wipe out all humanity” sense. Parsons saw it as the end of the current world order, the end of the hypocritical Western Christian worldview. Parsons, Crowley and even Hubbard were united in their contempt for what they saw as a corrupt and hypocritical political and religious ruling class in the West. Bringing on Babalon would end that world — correct the current madness of a dawning New Age, and bring on an age of Love. And bringing on Babalon would make Parsons the Antichrist — the ruler of the new world.
Parsons wrote in The Book of BABALON at the time:
“A note on the underlying philosophy. The present age is under the influence of the force called, in magical terminology, Horus. This force relates to fire, Mars, and the sun, that is, to power, violence, and energy. It also relates to a child, being innocent (i.e. undifferentiated). Its manifestations may be noted in the destruction of old institutions and ideas, the discovery and liberation of new energies, and the trend towards power governments, war, homosexuality, infantilism, and schizophrenia. This force is completely blind, depending upon the men and women in whom it manifests and who guide it. Obviously, its guidance now tends towards catastrophy. The catastrophic trend is due to our lack of understanding of our own natures. The hidden lusts, fears, and hatreds resulting from the warping of the love urge, which underly the natures of all Western peoples, have taken a homicidal and suicidal direction. This impasse is broken by the incarnation of another sort of force, called BABALON. The nature of this force relates to love, understanding, and dionysian freedom, and is the necessary coun- terbalance or correspondence to the manifestation of Horus. It is indicated that this force is actually incarnate in some living woman, as the result of the described magical operation. A more basic matter, however, is the indication that this force is incarnate in all men and women, and needs only to be invoked to free the spirit from the debris of the old aeon, and to direct the blind force of Horus into constructive channels of under- standing and love.”[xii]
Though he employs magical terms, this doesn’t sound evil, once Parsons details which world he wants to see an end to. He’s writing about Love. In fact, for a privileged white man in 1940’s America, Parsons comes across as enlightened, if anti-Christian (unsurprisingly) in his later writing The Book of ANTICHRIST:
“An end to the pretence, and lying hypocrisy of Christianity. An end to the servile virtues, and superstitious restrictions. An end to the slave morality. An end to prudery and shame, to guild and sin, for these are of the only evil the sun, that is fear. An end to all authority that is not based on courage and manhood, to the authority of lying priests, conniving judges, blackmailing police, and An end to the servile flattery and cajolery of mods, the corona- tions of mediocraties, the ascension of dolts. An end to restriction and inhibition… “There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.” …Love is the law, love under will.”[xiii]
By March 1946, Parsons seemed convinced the Babalon Working was… well, working, and wrote Crowley:
“I have had the most important — devastating experience of my life between February 2 and March 4. I believe it was the result of the 9th [degree] working with the girl who answered my elemental summons. I have been in direct touch with One who is most Holy and Beautiful mentioned in The Book of the Law. I cannot write the name at present. First instructions were received direct through Ron — the seer. I have followed them to the letter. There was a desire for incarnation. I was the agency chosen to assist the birth which is now accomplished.”[xiv]
Parsons was impressed. But Crowley was not. For one thing, Parsons had “divulged to Hubbard the knowledge of certain O.T.O. rituals which should have, by the vows Parsons had taken, remained secret.”[xv] Crowley wrote back, “You have me completely puzzled by your remarks about the elemental.” Then, “Crowley wrote to his deputy in New York: ‘Apparently he [Parsons] or Ron or Somebody is producing a Moonchild. I get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these louts’.”[xvi]
Crowley and others in the O.T.O. began to suspect the only spell working was the one Hubbard had Parsons under. One member went on record suggesting Parsons needed to be salvaged from “the undue influence of another”. Crowley cabled his deputy Karl Germer in New York in May blowing it open: “Suspect Ron playing confidence trick, Jack evidently weak fool obvious victim prowling swindlers.”
By the end of the month, Crowley wrote, “It seems to me on the information of our Brethren in California that (if we may assume them to be accurate) Frater 210 [Parsons] has committed… errors. He has got a miraculous illumination that rhymes with nothing, and he has apparently lost all of his personal independence. From our brother’s account he has given away both his girl and his money — apparently it is an ordinary confidence trick.”[xvii]
As Parsons had earlier informed Crowley, he, “Betty” and Ron had gone into business together. Accounts say Parsons invested his life savings of near $21,000, Hubbard put in just over $1k, and Northrup, nothing. In May, Hubbard and Northrup left for Florida and began buying boats. The supposed plan was to buy yachts, sail them around to California, and sell them at a profit.
But who truly betrayed whom? Hubbard, while defensive and secretive, was off buying boats. And by some controversial accounts, Hubbard never abandoned Crowley’s teachings. More on that in a bit. Parsons at this stage seems to have been easily manipulated. Could the O.T.O and Crowley have feared Hubbard would lure away their money maker — Parsons — and ginned up Parsons’ suspicions against Hubbard? For as often noted, Parsons “was the head of the O.T.O. Lodge whose donations kept the elderly Beast alive.”[xviii] And Hubbard had just proven capable of diverting Parsons’ money toward himself.
Whether worried for Parsons personally, or protecting their own interests, Crowley and the O.T.O. brought enormous pressure on Parsons to break with Hubbard and Northrup, and then to legally go after the two to get his money back. Parsons headed to Miami and found Hubbard had purchased three boats, but was unwilling to show Parsons any financial records. Parsons wrote to Crowley from there in June detailing his progress against the “children of my folly” — and mentioning he had not gotten back anything yet. In July, Parsons took Hubbard and Northrup to court, got their partnership dissolved, and gained custody of two of the three boats while Hubbard and Northrup got the third, agreeing to owe Parsons money in a promissory note secured by the third boat. But most of the money was gone.
Parsons later referred to this in The Book of Antichrist, writing of being stripped of his fortune, and wrote to himself that “The final experience with Hubbard and Betty, and the O.T.O. was necessary to overcome your false and infantile reliance on oth- ers, although this was only partially accomplished at the time.”[xix]
Hubbard and Northrup went their own way, getting married later that year. Hubbard and Scientology later claimed Hubbard infiltrated Parsons’ group for Naval Intelligence on undercover assignment through Robert Heinlein, but this has been disproven.[xx] On the flipside, there are controversial accounts that assert Hubbard never abandoned Crowley’s teachings, but “perfected” them into Scientology.
Hubbard’s estranged son Ron Jr. claimed that his father thought he was Crowley’s successor, not Parsons. There is a notable recording of a Hubbard Scientology lecture from 1952 where Hubbard states “Our whole activity tends to make an individual completely independent of any limitation.” This closely echoes Magick: In Theory and Practice, where Crowley states, “the whole and sole object of all true Magickal training is to become free from every kind of limitation.”
Ron Jr. details his father’s devotion to Crowley in a 1985 piece entitled “Philadelphia”, writing of Hubbard’s love for Crowley and his artifacts, his collection of many of his books, and said that in ’52 his father claimed, “I’ve made the Magick really work… No more foolish rituals. I’ve stripped the Magick to basics — access without liability.”[xxi]
In his Book of the Law, Crowley alluded to one coming after him who would discover the “key to it all,” leading Parsons, Hubbard and others to believe they were Crowley’s successor. How often is the passing of a guru followed by schisms amongst their followers as some vie to become the successor, the New guru? This reference by Crowley merely added fuel to that fire. And “According to Ron Jr. his father considered himself to be the one ‘who came after’; that he was Crowley’s successor; that he had taken on the mantle of the ‘Great Beast’. He told him that Scientology actually began on December the 1st, 1947. This was the day Aleister Crowley died.”[xxii]
Former Scientologists and critics of Hubbard have outlined many parallels and paraphrases of Crowley’s work which appear in early Scientology materials, pointing out that the early “lectures and writings by Hubbard, which Scientologists read and listen to with appreciative awe, are simply rehashings of data and techniques from the writings of Aleister Crowley… The parallels between Hubbard’s work and those of Crowley could fill an entire book. These include basic concepts and practical ‘technology’ to a myriad of little things. Even the ‘Scientology Symbol’, the S with the Double Triangle, is but an embodiment of Crowley’s motto: Love is the Law. Love Under Will.”[xxiii]
The Church of Scientology denies all of this, of course.
At any rate, after that summer, Hubbard and Northrup were out of Jack Parsons’ life. Parsons would go on to leave the O.T.O. as well. Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Parsons and Marjorie Cameron would continue together, however, on and off.
Marjorie Cameron said she had no idea, at first, that Parsons had made her a part of his rituals, though she became intimate with Parsons and moved in with him: “Unknowingly, she had become Parsons’ sex magick partner in a ritual designed to incarnate the force of Babalon. Although Cameron was initially uninterested in Aleister Crowley or magick, Jack proceeded to instruct Cameron in the occult arts and told her of her destiny in the world. According to Jack, she was to become the vehicle for the goddess or force called Babalon to manifest on Earth. Years later, Cameron came to believe that she was in fact Babalon incarnate.”[xxiv] One might think having sex on an altar would be a giveaway that one was participating in a ritual, but perhaps not.
As Crowley and the O.T.O. remained skeptical of his Working, Parsons decided to send Cameron to visit Crowley in person in late 1947. He thought if Crowley met her in person, his opinions would change. Unfortunately, Cameron’s route led through Paris, where she delayed and partied as the “Red Witch” until it was too late. On the day she announced she was ready to go to see the Beast, she was informed Crowley had died. Parsons and Cameron separated a short time after.
She returned to Parsons a couple of years later when he was working for Hughes Aircraft and negotiating to build an armament plant for Israel. At the end of 1950 their home was raided, and Parsons “was accused of removing confidential documents from Hughes and was fired. An FBI investigation began, one that would last for over a year… Although Parsons was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing, on January 17, 1952 he lost his security clearance.”[xxv]
Parsons admitted to removing the documents, “but explained that he only wanted to copy the documents to include in an application for a new job with the American Technicon Society, an affiliate of the Israeli Institute of Technology.” However, “The IIT in turn had links to Israeli intelligence, the Mossad.”[xxvi]
In the United States in the early nineteen-fifties, a rocket scientist without security clearance didn’t have many employment opportunities, and so Parsons began to make plans to move to Israel, reportedly to begin a new magickal school. He and Cameron moved out of the big Parsonage into its smaller carriage house, and began to plan to leave the country — first stop, Mexico.
On June 17th, 1952, the night before they were supposed to leave for Mexico, Parsons “was killed in an explosion when he dropped a vial of mercury fulminate in his private laboratory. Cameron was down the street fueling the car when she heard the blast. Jack’s death was ruled an accident by authorities but Cameron always believed Howard Hughes was somehow behind it.”[xxvii]
In actuality, Cameron’s coincidental appearances in Parsons’ life — especially this later one — suggest her as a better candidate for an intelligence infiltrator than Hubbard — and she was ex-Navy. It then follows that Cameron herself could also have been behind the blast that killed Parsons, preventing him from going over to Israel. This is, perhaps, farfetched, but in this story, nothing seems entirely out of the question. An examination of these possibilities is well beyond the scope of this article, but suspicious coincidences abound.
Though officially considered an accident, death by misadventure, Parsons’ death remains mysterious. “Skeptics… doubted that Parsons (who was after all a rocket scientist) would have been so careless as to be hoist by his own petard; some hinted at supernatural causes, and others at murderous conspiracies.”[xxviii] And now The Claypool Lennon Delirium sing in their song, “…there was a chemical magical ceremony/They found his body in an pile of blood and debris…” and remind us of it all once again.
Parsons’ contributions to rocket science have been positively reappraised a few times since his death. In fact, a crater on the Dark Side of the Moon was named in his honor, in recognition of his contributions.
One could argue that not since Sir Isaac Newton had an alchemist so effectively straddled the worlds of science and magic — were one to grant the reality of magic. Did Jack Parsons do magic? He certainly performed Magick rituals. To what end? Did the Babalon Working work?
Perhaps it did, for a while. The 1960s counterculture’s Free Love, Peace, even its embrace of Crowley (“Hey, who’s that bald guy on Sgt. Peppers’ cover?”) could be seen as that incarnation of Babalon inside of individuals which Parsons described engaged in the proper channeling of the force of the Aeon of Horus, which Crowley called the age of the “crowned and conquering child.” The flowering of the New Age movement could even be argued to be caused by the Working.
Occultist Metzger argued the Working had been successful, that, although he had died, “perhaps Parsons was an Antichrist and his particular mission was to pry open the Apocalyptic gateway and activate the occult forces necessary for the upheaval of consciousness… But this will not happen without a struggle between the forces of control, black magick, and oppressive boredom on one hand and the Luciferian agents of wisdom, unleashed creativity and anarchic rebellion on the other. What we have been brainwashed to believe is good: patriotism, so-called free enterprise, private property, Christianity (not the teachings of Christ, but the hateful travesty that the religion bearing his name has become thanks to the like of Pat Robertson and his filthy ilk), is now beginning to be seen by the emerging generation of the crowned and conquering child to be the death trip bullshit it truly is. A whole culture is collapsing and a new one is about to be born. Jack Parsons would be pleased.”[xxix]
Though if one grants Parsons this power, perhaps one must also grant it to others, and perhaps counter efforts of other occultists — traditionalist Julius Evola and his followers spring to mind — have altered the outcome of Parsons’ Working, and messed with the flow of the Horus Energy. For, admittedly, one cannot say “crowned and conquering child” in 2019 without a certain President coming to mind. But that, as they say, is a whole different story.[xxx]
How can one assess the impact of a magickal working on a rational world which denies its existence? It might be impossible, at least by conventional means. Or is it? Science bestows some acknowledgement of impact on its field in the naming of things. Parsons has been honored with his crater. Perhaps we see acknowledgement of Parsons’ magickal impact in the naming of things in our popular culture. For now, he reappears — in the new song from The Claypool Lennon Delerium; on television — CBS All Access just renewed Strange Angel, a new series based on Parsons’ life; in long-form articles — like this one.
His legend lives on. Maybe even emerges a bit from the shadow of those two outrageous forces of personality he was buffeted by, two of the 20th century’s most unbridled egos, Aleister Crowley and L. Ron Hubbard. Maybe now, we see some small measure of immortality for the “James Dean of the Occult”, the Antichrist of Love — Jack Parsons.
(Author’s Note: As the persons and subjects covered in this piece are often controversial, sometimes unbelievable, and occasionally contested, I have used direct, notated quotations of sources throughout instead of a more fluid blending of source material and my own narrative. Endquotes are provided. Hopefully the references within the Notes are acceptable in lieu of an additional bibliography — Mike Luoma)
[i] Lachman, Gary, Aleister Crowley: Magick, Rock and Roll, and the Wickedest Man in the World (Tarcher/Penguin 2014), p. 304.
[ii] Metzger, Richard; “The Crying of LIBER 49: Jack Parsons, Antichrist Superstar”. Book of Lies: The Disinformation Guide to Magick and the Occult (Disinformation 2003), pp. 198–199.
[iii] Sutin, Lawrence, Do What Thou Wilt — A Life of Aleister Crowley (St. Martin’s Griffin 2000), p. 412.
[iv] Atack, John, A Piece of Blue Sky: Scientology, Dianetics and L. Ron Hubbard Exposed (Lyle Stuart/Carol 1990), p. 92.
[v] Ibid, pp. 91–92.
[vi] Sutin, p. 412.
[vii] Metzger, pp.199–200.
[viii] Atack, pp.94–95.
[ix] Crowley quoted in Sutin, p. 414.
[x] Ibid, pp. 93–94.
[xi] Metzger, p. 200.
[xii] Parsons, John “Jack” Whiteside The Book of Babylon. Sacred Texts of Thelema: http://www.sacred-texts.com/oto/lib49.htm
[xiii] Ibid, The Book of Antichrist.
[xiv] Atack, p. 97.
[xv] Sutin, p.412.
[xvi] Atack, p. 98.
[xvii] Crowley quoted in Atack, p.98.
[xviii] Lachman, p. 7.
[xix] Parsons, Analysis By A Master of the Temple, Sacred Texts.
[xx] Wright, Lawrence, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief (Alfred A. Knopf 2013): Wright, towards the end of his book, is detailing a sit-down with Tommy Davis, a representative of Scientology, attempting to debunk many if not most of Wright’s sources: “Davis brought up Jack Parsons’ black magic society, which he asserted Hubbard had infiltrated. ‘He was sent in there by Robert Heinlein, who was running off-book intelligence operations for naval intelligence at the time.’ Davis said the Church had been looking for additional documentation to support its claim, ‘A biography that just came out three weeks ago on Bob Heinlein actually confirmed it at a level that we’d never been able to before, because of something his biographer had found.’ The book Davis was referring to is the first volume of an authorized Heinlein biography, by William H. Patterson, Jr. There is no mention there of Heinlein sending Hubbard to break up the Parsons ring. I wrote Patterson, asking if his research supported the church’s assertion. He responded that Scientologists had been the source of the claim in the first place, and that they provided him with a set of documents that supposedly backed it up. Patterson said that the material did not support the factual assertions the church was making. ‘I was unable to make any direct connection of the facts of Heinlein’s life at the time to that narrative or any of its supporting documents.’ Patterson wrote.” P. 347.
[xxi] Corydon, Bent, L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman? (Barricade Books 1992), p. 325.
[xxii] Ibid, pp. 53, 55.
[xxiii] Ibid, p.382.
[xxiv] Butler, Brian; “Cameron — The Wormwood Star”. Book of Lies: The Disinformation Guide to Magick and the Occult (Disinformation 2003), p. 204.
[xxv] Ibid, p.207.
[xxvi] Spence, Richard B., Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence and the Occult (Feral House 2008), p. 261.
[xxvii] Butler, p. 207.
[xxviii] Spence, p. 261.
[xxix] Metzger, p.201.
[xxx] A story expertly told in Gary Lachman’s recent book Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump (Tarcher/Perigee 2018) — recommended reading if you’re interested in the influence of the occult on the Alt-Right.