This Article Originally Ran On Blumhouse.com
The world is filled with weird moments that, if we saw them in a movie and didn’t know that they were historically accurate, we may roll our eyes at them. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson dying on the same day. Halley’s Comet streaking past Earth on the day Mark Twain was born, then coming back the day he died. Morgan Robertson's novel FUTILITY being an almost exact explanation of the wreck Titanic, even though the book was printed fourteen years before man’s hubris took a blow from an iceberg (but we sure taught those icebergs something now huh? Climate Change for the win!)
This is one of those stories, a story so weird, filled with such well known names, that if it were written, no studio would ever make it. This is the story of L. Ron Hubbard’s attempt to summon the Thelemite goddess Babalon, Mother of Abominations with a whole lotta sex.
Jack Parsons was brilliant, outgoing, and handsome; the epitome of a pulp hero. Even his origin smells of action hero - he was born rich, but his family lost everything in the Great Depression. With the family fortune gone, Jack worked to pay for schooling, graduating from college and becoming a rocket scientist. Remember how I said he was brilliant? Told you.
In 1939, after attending a mass at the Church of Thelema, Parsons became more and more interested in the occult. He believed that the Thelemic magik could be explained through quantum physics, and used his nerd knowledge to test his theories. Jack became a member of the cult, bringing in his wife Helen and her sister Sara. Before long, Parsons took over the Agape Lodge, the California branch of the Thelemite Ordo Templi Orientis, at the behest of the cult’s leader, Aleister Crowley.
Parsons and Crowley became friends, communicating through letters to one another. To Parsons, Crowley was the spiritual leader he had always been searching for, and for the aging Crowley, Parsons was the protégé he needed to carry on his work. Together, the two would work to bring the O.T.O to new heights.
Parsons tried to bring in new members, focusing on other smarties who worked on crazy science stuff like Robert Cornog, a physicist on the Manhattan Project, and science fiction writers like Jack Williamson, but couldn’t seem to convince them that the O.T.O was the way to go. He put the majority of his salary into covering costs for the mansion at 1003 South Orange Grove Avenue that housed the Californian members of Thelema and their livestock that was used both for eating and blood rituals. Along with the upkeep of the mansion, Parsons paid for Crowley’s living expenses. The costs were high, so Parsons decided to rent the empty bedrooms of the mansion, now lovingly called Parsonage, to people who weren’t members of the O.T.O. As long as the person looking for a room was not a “mundane soul” as Parsons put it in the want ad, they could live in his mansion.
Despite what he would later claim, L. Ron Hubbard’s time in the Navy was not that fantastic. His two memorable moments would be when, as the commander of two anti-sub ships, Hubbard spent two and a half days firing 35 depth charges at what he believed to be Japanese subs 12 miles off the coast of Oregon, and almost starting a war with Mexico when he fired on the Coronado Islands, believing them to be uninhabited.
Home from the war, Hubbard left his wife and children in Washington and headed to California looking for writing jobs. Needing a room to rent, Hubbard found himself knocking on the door of Parsonage.
Before long, Hubbard and Jack Parsons became good friends. Hubbard, who was charismatic and filled with amazing (and mostly false) stories, was intrigued by Parsons’ rocket work and the O.T.O. They both shared interests in science fiction, the occult, and Jack’s wife’s sister Sara. Jack and Sara had already started their affair before Hubbard showed up, leading to the end of Jack and Helen’s marriage (though they remained friends), but now L. Ron wanted to get some of that sugar, and both Jack and Sara were all for it.
Crowley preached free love, and as members of the O.T.O, Jack and Sara practiced it, but with Hubbard in the picture, Sara was no longer interested in having sex with Jack. Still, Jack was real into L. Ron, writing to Crowley:
[Hubbard] is a gentleman; he has red hair, green eyes, is 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 affection to Ron. 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 deduced that he is in direct touch with some higher intelligence, possibly his Guardian Angel. He describes his Angel as a beautiful winged woman with red hair whom he calls the Empress and who has guided him through his life and saved him many times. He is the most Thelemic person I have ever met and is in complete accord with our own principles.
-Taken from THE GREAT BEAST: THE LIFE AND MAGICK OF ALEISTER CROWLEY by John Symonds
Parsons had longed to try a ritual that he wasn’t sure he could pull off, but with the help of L. Ron, he was sure it could be done. Together, the two men would summon the spirit of Babalon, the mother of abominations, and place her into a living woman. After Babalon had taken over the body of the woman, Parsons would be able to impregnate Babalon, who would then give birth to the Anti-Christ. Parsons wasn’t looking to end the world, he wanted to bring the Anti-Christ into existence to shatter the boundaries of space and time (which I suppose would destroy all of existence, but in a more scientific way).
The ritual, which Parsons named “Babalon Working” began in January of 1946 with Parsons practicing black magik in the mansion. The sessions, if you’re interested in trying them yourselves, were based on Enochian magic and consisted of Parsons masturbating onto magic tablets while listening to Sergei Prokofiev's “Second Violin Concerto”.
While Parsons worked his magic wand for eleven days in a series of rituals he called “Conjuration of Air”, “Invocation of Wand” and “Consecration of Air Dagger”, L. Ron kept his attention on the astral plane looking for signs that an “elemental mate” was on the way. On January 14, according to Parsons, L. Ron had a candle knocked out of his hand and they both saw a “brownish yellow light about seven feet high”. Parsons shooed the light away with a magic sword.
In February 1946, Parsons and Hubbard went to the Mojave Desert where, unless they changed things around and forgot to write it down, Parsons masturbated while Hubbard looked at the stars. When they returned to Parsonage, the found Marjorie Cameron waiting for them.
With red hair and deep blue eyes, Marjorie Cameron was a striking woman, and Jack Parsons was taken with her the second he saw her at Parsonage. While Cameron didn’t know it at the time, everyone at Parsonage believed that she was the “Scarlet Woman” that Parsons had been calling for. When she told Parsons about the time she saw and UFO, the masturbating magician was certain that what Cameron had actually seen was Babalon herself.
In what had to be a weird conversation, Parsons convinced Cameron to join him and Hubbard for the next section of the rituals; the getting it on section. On March 1, Hubbard, dressed in a white robe and carrying a lamp, acted as the High Priest while Parsons and Cameron had sex on an altar and Rachmaninoff's “Isle of the Dead” played. The ritual went on for four days; Hubbard spouting random crap while Parsons and Cameron screwed on a table, as shown in this recreation from TheBrickCult.com
Did the ritual work? While Cameron never gave birth to the Anti-Christ, that may have been because, while in New York not long after the ritual, she had an abortion. For all we know, Marjorie Cameron saved us all.
The friendship between Parsons and Hubbard ended after they went into business together and Hubbard, along with Sara, ripped Parsons off for $20,970 - every penny Parsons had.
Jack and Marjorie married in October of 1946. L. Ron and Sara were married on August of the same year, even though L. Ron was still married to his first wife. On May 9, 1950, DIANETICS was published.
On On June 17, 1952, Jack Parsons was working in Mexico when his home lab exploded. Along with breaking both his legs and his left arm, the explosion tore Jack’s right arm off and ripped open the right side of his face. He was found conscious, but would die from his injuries less than an hour later. In December of that year, the Hubbard Dianetic Foundation filed for bankruptcy and L.Ron Hubbard lost the trademark to his book.
On On February 18, 1954 the first Church of Scientology opened its doors in California.