Book: L. Ron Hubbard, Messiah or Madman? (1987)

One definition of magic is, “Total commitment to get, to achieve, to win – with such totality that one’s life itself becomes the ritual of that commitment.” (It has been noted that, when that commitment “is malevolent, the magic is black.”)

For Hubbard, morality was a straitjacket worn by fools. Morality was utilized only when it aided him in reaching his objective. (He gave lip service to all sorts of noble humanitarian sentiments, but he also visibly, especially from the mid-sixties on, gave vent to base motives expressed in vindictive policies and writings.)

His WILL was the supreme consideration.

This philosophy has been described as “the ends justify the means.” This vaguely says it all, but it describes neither the intensity nor the total commitment which appears to have driven him.

His life was indeed a ritual of total commitment to the achievement of power. Power concentrated exclusively under his control.

Hubbard may have had this drive for power – this obsession – all his life. But the point at which it burst into a raging passion was, according to Ron Jr. sometime in his teens when Ron Hubbard and his mother visited the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. From that time on he was, more and more, able to support his obsession with a detailed, well-developed philosophy.

His mother was at the Library tracing back her family’s genealogy, while he was poking around trying to find something that interested him. He did.

It was a tiny volume called The Book of the Law. According to its writer, Aleister Crowley, The Book was “dictated” to him in Cairo, between noon and one P.M., on three successive days: April 8th, 9th, and 10th, in the year 1904. (p. 52)

[…]

Crowley’s The Book of the Law adds a new and fiery twist to the Law of Thelema as described by Rabelais.

In the words of The Book:

We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit: let them die in their misery. For they feel not. Compassion is the vice of Kings: stamp down the wretched and the weak: this is the law of the strong: this is our law and the joy of the world.

…I am of the snake that giveth Knowledge & Delight, and stir the hearts of men with drunkenness. To worship me take wine and strange drugs…They shall not harm ye at all. It is a lie, this folly against self …Be strong oh man! lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture… …the kings of the earth shall be kings forever: the slaves shall serve.

Them that seek to entrap thee, to overthrow thee, them attack without pity or quarter; and destroy them utterly.

I am unique and conqueror. I am not of the slaves that perish. Be they damned and dead! Amen. Pity not the fallen! I never knew them. I am not for them. I console not: I hate the consoled and the consoler!

(According to Ron Jr., his father never sincerely felt remorse or sympathy.) Did the young L. Ron Hubbard take special quote, when he read:

…in these runes [words and letters of The Book] are mysteries that no Beast [Crowley] shall devine [understand]. Let him not seek to try: But one cometh after him…who shall discover the key to it all? (Emphasis and bracketed words added)

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.*

*Many people interpret The Book of the Law and Crowley’s overall work in many ways. Here I am only attempting to illustrate what appears to have been Hubbard’s interpretation of The Book. (pp. 54, 55) ¹

Notes