John Symonds (1914 - 2006) included in his biography of Aleister Crowley, a detailed account of L. Ron Hubbard’s involvement with Jack Parsons.

This excerpt plainly chronicles Hubbard’s rise to power, how he took over control of Jack Parsons, his participation and control of Parsons specifically during The Babalon Working. Crowley’s correspondence with Parsons show he personally intervened between Parsons and Hubbard, but was yet unable to maintain his magical authority over Parsons. Hubbard held Parsons to an oath of secrecy about their magical work, and to the extent Parsons was thereafter unable to speak of these things with Crowley, Hubbard clearly manifested his own authority. A series of unconscionable acts ensued.

Hubbard stole Parsons’ girlfriend Sara Northrup out from under him while living as a guest at Parsons’ house in Pasadena. Hubbard thereafter maintained a “friendly” relationship with Parsons, acting as his “Scribe” in the Babalon Working, and eventually scamming Parsons out of his life savings in a confidence trick.

Hubbard also succeeded in breaking Crowley’s bond of authority over Parsons, to the extent that Parsons became unable to talk to his mentor Aleister Crowley about the Working because Hubbard had sworn him to secrecy.

That Hubbard’s magical lineage and training is not revealed in the occult literature is not so strange; magical students guard their relationship with their mentors and often keep their training secret. (Ref. Eshelman, J. A. (2000). The Mystical & Magical System of the A…A… The Spiritual System of Aleister Crowley & George Cecil Jones Step-by-Step. Los Angeles, The College of Thelema.)

Symonds not only noted Hubbard’s “magical potential. By the end of his account, he noted Crowley’s dismissal of Parsons and others as his magical heir. Symonds also conferred Hubbard with the title of “Dr.”

In the spring of 1945, Parsons met a new aspirant to the Great Work, a young man called Ron Hubbard.¹ Hubbard’s magical potential was very great and he made a considerable impression upon the members of Agape Lodge, especially on Betty, the mistress of Dr Parsons; she soon found herself sleeping with him.

Frater 210 (Dr Parsons) was not unduly upset about this; for he had decided to follow even more closely in the Beast’s footsteps and find, by magical means, a Scarlet Woman, his own true Whore of the Stars. He proposed, in other words, to attract an elemental or familiar spirit:

About three months ago I met Ron Hubbard…[Parsons wrote in July 1945 to Crowley whom he addressed as ‘Most Beloved Father’] he is a writer and explorer…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. I cared for her rather deeply but I have no desire to control her emotions. Although Ron 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…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. Thy son, John. ²

How to attract an elemental (which one can turn into one’s familiar spirit) is set forth in the top secret O.T.O. treatise entitled De Nuptiis Secretis Deorum cum Hominibus,ⁱ a treatise rewritten by Crowley who added of course his own characteristic touches.³
Frater 210 set to work. He wrote to Crowley that he had followed the VIII° instruction carefully, with a talisman consecrated in the proper manner, the rite ending with the command to the spirit in question to appear visibly before him.

For this class of magic (VIII°), one needs no assistant for it is sexual magic of the solitary kind; but Parsons chose nevertheless to perform the rite in the presence of Ron Hubbard.⁴ He was wearing a black hooded robe, and Hubbard a white one. Thundering away in the background was one of Prokofiev’s piano concerto or Rachmaninov’s symphonic poem, Island of the Dead.

The ritual must have been one of Parson’s or Hubbard’s own making, for it went on for about eleven nights. Hubbard, it seems, partly instructed Parsons. The magical drivel which Parsons was screaming for most of the time (if not the puerility of his verses to Babalon, the Scarlet Woman) would have offended Crowley’s sense of magical propriety. Another letter to Crowley contained a further account of the operation. ‘For the last three days I have performed an operation of birth, using the air tablet, the cup, and a female figure, properly invoked by the wand, then sealed up in the altar. Last night I performed an operation of symbolic birth and delivery.’

The Air Tablet or Elemental Tablet of Enoch is one of the four Watch Towers of the Universe, the others being tablets of Fire, Earth and Water. In other words Parsons was working the magical system of John Dee and his scryer, Edward Kelly, which Crowley had successfully worked during 1909 in the North African desert with his chela, Victor Neuburg. The ‘wand’ was the penis; the talisman was placed in the altar, symbol of the womb.

The only immediate result of this operation was a violent and unnatural wind storm. ‘The wind storm is very interesting,’ wrote Parsons to his Most Beloved Father, ‘but that is not what I asked for.’

In February 1946, the gestation period ended and the elemental in human form appeared. Frater 210 wrote exultingly to Crowley. ‘I have my elemental! She turned up one night after the conclusion of the Operation, and has been with me since, although she goes back to New York next week. She has red hair and slant green eyes as specified. If she returns she will be dedicated as I am dedicated!’ Her name was Marjorie Cameron.

Crowley replied, ‘I am particularly interested in what you have written to me about the elemental, because for some little time past I have been endeavoring to intervene personally in this matter on your behalf. I would however have you recall Lévi’s aphorism: “The love of the Magus for such things is insensate and may destroy him.” ‘

With his Scarlet Woman (Marjorie Cameron) and in the presence of Hubbard, Parsons began to perform IX° magic to produce another higher being.⁵ ‘I can hardly tell you,’ he wrote somewhat incoherently to the Beast:

I am under the command of extreme secrecy. I have had the most important—devastating experience of my life between February 2nd and March 4th. I believe it was the result of the IX° working with the girl who answered my elemental summons. I have been in direct touch with One who is most Holy and Beautiful as mentioned in The Book of the Law. I cannot write the name at present. First instructions were received directly through Ron the seer. I have followed them to the letter. There was a desire for incarnation. I do not yet know the vehicle, but it will come to me, bringing a secret sign. I am to act as instructor guardian for nine months; then it will be loosed on the world. That is all I can say now…⁶

Not the sort of letter to please the Beast, and he replied thus: ‘I thought I had a most morbid imagination, as good as any man’s but it seems I have not. I cannot form the slightest idea what you can possibly mean…’ And to Frater Saturnus [Karl Germer ] in New York, Crowley wrote, ‘Apparently Parsons or Hubbard or somebody is producing a Moonchild. I get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these louts.’⁷

But the ‘lout’ Hubbard, who had great business ability, later founded his celebrated Church of Scientology.

The two magicians in Pasadena quarrelled and Hubbard departed with Betty in Parsons’ yacht. Frater 210 put on his magic robe, seized his wand, entered the magic circle, and performed the Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, which is preliminary to all magical work, then a full invocation of Bartzabel, the spirit of Mars, whose aid he sought. Result: a squall blew the yacht to to the rocks. ‘I have them tied up; they cannot move without going to jail,’ he wrote gleefully.

Dr Hubbard said that he joined the Church of Thelema in California only to break up black magic in America. He ‘rescued a girl they were using. The black magic group was dispersed and destroyed and has never recovered.^{ii 8}

Crowley dismissed Parsons as a failure, as he had dismissed Neuburg, Mudd, Achad, and the rest; his final word on Dr Parsons (Frater 210) was: ‘He has got a miraculous illumination which rimes with nothing, and he has apparently lost all his personal independence.’

In 1949, Parsons, feeling that he was mature enough for a magical step forward, took the Oath of the Abyss, that is he attempted to unite his consciousness with the Universal Consciousness; and he gave himself the magical name of Belarion Armiluss A 1 Dajjal AntiChrist. He did not know it but he was in the grip of a psychosis. It is not surprising, therefore, that three years later he literally blew himself up in a so-called accident with fulminate of mercury in his experimental laboratory at Pasadena.⁹

__________
ⁱ ‘Concerning the Secret Marriages of the Gods with Men.’
ⁱⁱ The Church of Scientology: letter published in the Sunday Times 28 December 1969

— Symonds, J. (1997). “The Beast 666.”

__________

¹ February 14, 1945: Assigned to the Civil Affairs Staging Area at the Presidio in Monterey, CA.

On April 2, 1945, while stationed at the Presidio in Monterey, CA, [Hubbard] and his colleagues were assigned to duty with a civil affairs team outside the continental limits of the United States. (This would most probably have been on one of the conquered Pacific Islands. Okinawa had been invaded the previous day and would soon become the US Navy’s bloodiest ever battle, with 28 ships sunk, 131 damaged and 4,900 men killed and missing.) But just one week later Hubbard turned up at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital complaining of stomach pains. He was promptly hospitalised for examinations. — Chris Owen, Ron the War Hero

9 April 1945: Hubbard was detached to the US Navy Hospital, Oakland, CA.
http://www.lermanet.com/L_Ron_Hubbard/mr106.htm

11 April 1945: Hubbard reported to the Medical Officer in Command.
http://www.lermanet.com/L_Ron_Hubbard/mr477.htm

31 July 1945 - 30 August 1945: Hubbard was granted a convalescent leave to go to Garden Home, Oregon. According to John Carter, (Sex and Rockets, Feral House) science fiction illustrator Lou Goldstone brought Hubbard to the Agape Lodge to meet Jack Parsons in late August, 1945.
http://www.lermanet.com/L_Ron_Hubbard/mr355.htm

4 September 1945: Order to continue treatment at the US Navy Hospital, Oakland. (Oak Knoll.) http://www.lermanet.com/L_Ron_Hubbard/mr360.htm

² Hubbard was a master at transference manipulation. He had a history of installing illnesses and psychoses with self-hypnosis. His Dianetics research included installing and uninstalling”psychosomatic” illnesses and psychoses with hypnosis, including posthypnotic suggestions with a time delay on their activation. (Ref.: The Admissions, lectures where he spoke of his “research” at Oak Knoll.)
See also: http://www.lermanet.com/exit/covert-hypnosis.htm

³ Hubbard’s affirmations:
Men are your slaves. Elemental spirits are your slaves. You are power among powers, light in the darkness, beauty in all. [Wikipedia: Familiar spirit ]

His Scientology recruitment tactics involve transference abuse. More: The Dissemination Drill

⁴ Hubbard’s covert agenda included manipulating and controlling Parsons. Afterwards, he gave himself Magus status with self-hypnosis. (See affirmations.)

⁵ Hubbard and Scientology claim to make “higher beings” called OTs, with Hubbard as “Source.” Was the Scientology organization actually supposed to be the Moonchild, the “vehicle” that would bring in the New Aeon?

⁶ Shows more evidence of Hubbard’s control over Parsons. It is undoubtedly Hubbard who swore Parsons to extreme secrecy and had him withhold information from his “Most Beloved Father.” Parsons resigned his position in the OTO by letter to Crowley dated August 20, 1946. Crowley’s diary entry of 1 October states:

Letter of resignation from puppy Jack [Parsons]: his snout glued to the rump of an alley-cat.
— John Symonds, The Beast 666

Hubbard gave instructions on how to gain control over other people. The first step or “Route” to control was the simple command: “Be three feet behind your head.”

Route 1

R1-4: Be three feet behind your head.The command “Be three feet back of your head” should be given casually, and if immediately obeyed the auditor with no further discussion should then go on to R1-5. If there is any argument after this command is given, or if the preclear cannot quite understand what is occurring and does not do so, then it is indicated that the auditor switch routes and without further argument on the subject of exteriorization continue the session with R2-16.*³

* Note: A thetan located in a space is less than theta itself, but a thetan located is greated than Homo sapiens. - LRH

— L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology: The Creation of Human Ability

⁷ The term “lout” is in question. Other occult writers have quoted Crowley as having written “goat” instead. E.g. Carter, John, Sex and Rockets.

⁸ See also Why Dr. of Divinity?

⁹ In his Parsons biography Sex and Rockets, John Carter quotes from a statement filmmaker Renate Druks made about Parsons and Marjorie Cameron to Nat Freedland for Freedland’s book The Occult Explosion:

[Cameron] stayed with me at my Malibu Beach house for six months, pulling herself together after Jack died.

I have every reason to believe that Jack Parsons was working on some very strange experiments, trying to create a homunculus, a tiny man with magical powers.
— John Carter, Sex and Rockets

Carter also writes:

Decades later Cameron spoke of the explosion as coming from under the floorboards, implying murder rather than an accident or suicide.” (Sex and Rockets pp. 184-185, Carter, Feral House.)

In 1952, Hubbard gave a series of lectures called the Philadelphia Doctorate Course. Several times, he instructed his preclears to “mock up” little men and get them to do things like jump through the ceiling.

In a lecture on 16 December 1952, Memory and Automaticity, he had the little man wearing a green jacket with pearl buttons and admiral’s epaulets.

And you see that in somebody who gets… oh, very rapid. I mean, he mocks up a little man – “Get a little man. Got a little man? That’s good. Get another little man. Fine. Got another little man?” Brrrrrr! “Oh, yeah! I got a lot of little men.” “What are they wearing?” “Oh, they’re all wearing little green jackets.” I’ll bet you something: I’ll bet you they’re not wearing ‘em behind their backs. It isn’t just the omission, it’s where did he get the pearl buttons. Where did he get the admirals’ epaullets that he mocks up. He takes a pattern from the MEST universe, so much experience, and then he covets this pattern and when he makes the mock-up he just recombines all these patterns – bong! – and he’s got the thing.

Is it his? Well, he’ll feel it’s enough his to be completely shocked by the fact that he actually owns something. He’s made this admiral stand on his head and he’s got the admiral wearing garlands of flowers in his belt buckle, or something – anything – his admiral. He’s as proud as punch of his admiral! He isn’t going to really take any pride in that admiral at all- or any real interest in that admiral at all. There’s too much automaticity in the admiral.
— L. Ron Hubbard Lecture 16 December 1952: Memory and Automaticity