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Hubbard and the Babalon Working

The Babalon Working was a series of magical rituals performed in 1946 by L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, and Jack Parsons, rocket scientist and Lodge Master of the Agapé Lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis. Read Alexander Mitchell’s shocking expose published on 5 October 1969: Revealed for the first time…the odd beginning of Ron Hubbard’s career.

From the magical record of Jack Parsons:

This book contains the record of a magical experiment relating to the invocation of an elemental, the thereafter of the Goddess or Force called BABALON, and the results thereof.

An appendix contains some details of the method, published for the first time. The contents should be clear enough to those who are prepared for understanding, and a little study and effort should make it so for those who desire understanding. For the rest, each will no doubt interpret it in accord with his own predilections.

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 counterbalance 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 understanding and love. The methods of this invocation are described in the text.

The background of this material may be found in the Book of the Law, the Comment thereon, and other writings of Aleister Crowley; also in various magical, anthropological, psychological, and philosophical texts. These are all necessary to an understanding and use of the material.

One further point. It should be remembered that all human activities, after the vital functions are fulfilled, arise from the need to love or to be loved. It is therfore quite literally true that in understanding (i.e. that which embraces all categories of love) is all power given. A grasp of the principle of bipolarity should make this clear.1

Parsons and Hubbard used a system of Enochian Magic, which included sex magic.

Enochian Magic is one of the most controversial aspects of Rosicrucian Magic. Israel Regardie warned that “It is a very powerful system, and if used carelessly or indiscriminately will bring about disaster and spiritual disintegration.” Paul Foster Case considered the Enochian system to be hopelessly tainted, and removed Enochian Magic entirely when he reformulated Golden Dawn material into his B. O. T. A. Donald Tyson has even suggested that Enochian Magic was revealed to John Dee as a means of setting in motion the destructive forces of the apocalypse, as described in the book of Revelation in the New Testament.2

Hugh Urban in Magia Sexualis, described Crowley’s use of sex magic as a powerful means to shatter the the limited rational mind and finite human ego.

However, the ultimate goal that Crowley sought through his sexual magic went far beyond the mundane desire for material wealth or mortal power. In his most exalted moments, Crowley believed that he could achieve a supreme spiritual power–the power to conceive a divine child, a godlike being, who would transcend the moral failings of the body born of mere woman. This goal of creating a divine fetus, Crowley suggests, lies at the heart of many esoteric traditions, from ancient Mesopotamia to India to the Arab world:

This is the great idea of magicians in all times–To obtain a Messiah by some adaptation of the sexual process. In Assyria they tried incest….Greeks and Syrians mostly bestiality…. The Mohammedans tried homosexuality; medieval philosophers tried to produce homunculi by making chemical experiments with semen. But the root idea is that any form of procreation other than normal is likely to produce results of a magical character.

Sex magic, particularly in its transgressive, nonreproductive forms, can thus unleash the supreme creative power: the power to create not an ordinary fetus, but a magical child of messianic potential.3

Crowley indeed suspected Parsons and Hubbard of attempting to create such a magical child or “Moonchild.” In a letter to Karl Germer, Crowley wrote:

Apparently he (Parsons), or Hubbard, or somebody, is producing a Moonchild. I get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these goats.4

Hermetic texts associated with Babalon:

Essays on Babalon and The Babalon Working:

Notes

  1. Parsons, J. (1946). Liber 49 The Book of Babalon. THE COLLECTED WRITINGS OF JACK PARSONS ↩
  2. Griffin, D. J. (1999). The ritual magic manual: A complete course in practical magic. Beverly Hills, Calif: Golden Dawn Pub. ↩
  3. Urban, H. B. (2006). Magia sexualis: Sex, magic, and liberation in modern Western esotericism. Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press. ↩
  4. Carter, John, (1999) Sex and Rockets, Feral House. ↩

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Blog article: ‘Scientology is Security for South Africa’: How L. Ron Hubbard sought to prop up apartheid (2019)

‘Scientology is Security for South Africa’
How L. Ron Hubbard sought to prop up apartheid

By Chris Owen | June 6, 20191

South Africa is a country of extraordinary contrasts: Fertile savannahs and teeming cities, immense wealth and terrible poverty, multiracial idealism and ethnic violence. It’s also a place of striking contrasts in Scientology’s history. In the past few weeks, I’ve been traveling in this vast country and consulting state archives to piece together the story of Scientology in South Africa before the end of apartheid in 1990. They reveal a picture of how Scientology enthusiastically supported South Africa’s apartheid regime while walking a fine line in opposing the government’s favourable views towards psychiatry.

The decades-long freedom struggle of South Africa’s non-white majority gained attention and support from across the world. It’s easy now to forget, though, that many in the West supported the apartheid government as an ally against communism, or – all too often – out of simple racism. Scientology was no exception.

Apartheid might have seemed like a challenge to Scientology’s ideology. After all, L. Ron Hubbard had posited that we are all “thetans” – immortal beings temporarily housed in physical bodies. Skin colour, race, gender and physical age should have been irrelevant considerations. Yet for South African Scientologists, and Hubbard himself, race and politics were defining issues.

Scientology had an early start in South Africa. Dianetics had spread there on a small scale in the early 1950s, likely transmitted by South Africans who had encountered it in the UK or America. Scientology was brought there in 1954 by Albert and Jean Low, a newly-married Canadian-British couple. They had decided to join Hubbard in London for a nine-month evening course in lieu of a conventional honeymoon. While there, they were invited to set up a Scientology training center in Johannesburg by two South Africans attending the course.

Hubbard was eager to sponsor the project. He sent the Lows to South Africa in March 1954 to establish a South African branch of the Hubbard Association of Scientologists International (HASI), later renamed the Hubbard Scientology Organisation in South Africa. It proved hugely profitable.

Scientology expanded rapidly across South Africa, establishing further orgs in Durban, Cape Town, and Port Elizabeth by 1962. Satellite Scientology orgs were also established across the border in white-ruled Rhodesia. Graduates of the South African Scientology orgs later played very senior roles in Scientology. Jane Kember, a Kenyan-born British citizen, performed outstandingly in the Durban org and was personally selected by Hubbard to head his newly-formed Guardian’s Office in 1966. A Rhodesian Scientologist, Charles Parselle, worked alongside Kember as Scientology’s head of legal affairs from 1966 to 1983.

Despite Hubbard’s ostensibly colour-blind teachings, racial domination lay at the heart of South African Scientology in the 1950s and 1960s. The HASI envisaged white Scientologists using Hubbard’s teachings to dominate the country’s oppressed black majority, as the only way of ensuring a stable future for South Africa. Indeed, Scientology promoted itself under the slogan, “Scientology is Security for South Africa.”

[…]

Notes

  1. Retrieved from https://tonyortega.org/2019/06/06/scientology-is-security-for-south-africa-how-l-ron-hubbard-sought-to-prop-up-apartheid/ ↩

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Hubbard: Biographical

Hubbard Biographical

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Factchecking: Mike Rinder on L. Ron Hubbard (Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath Season 3 Episode 9)

Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath: Buying A Town
Season 3, Episode 91

[00:09:18.553]

Mike Rinder: I was on board the Apollo with L. Ron Hubbard from 1973 until 1975. The ship had been thrown out of various countries. He tried to bring the Apollo to the United States in 1974. And he discovered that the FBI, IRS, DEA and various other government agencies were waiting on the dock. For the next year or so, we sailed around in ports in the Caribbean.

Hubbard at one point had a heart attack in Curacao. The treatment wasn’t the like advanced medical ah treatment available and he decided, okay the time has come to move the operations to the United States.2

Notes

  1. Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath: Buying A Town IMDB ↩
  2. As of June 10, 1975, Hubbard was under treatment for bilateral pulmonary embolism by a lung specialist in Willemstad, Curacao, Dr. T. A. J. Kroon. He was hospitalized in Curacao between August 13-29, 1975. Ref. Hubbard’s medical records. PDF format: Hubbard (St. Elisabeth Hospital)(1975-06) ↩

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Hubbard’s “Allied Scientists of the World” Scam (1951-1952)

More information has surfaced recently about Hubbard’s “Allied Scientists of the World” scam, which he ran in 1951-52. 1, 2 [Read more…] about Hubbard’s “Allied Scientists of the World” Scam (1951-1952)

  1. (Refs. Miller, R. (1987). Barefaced Messiah. p 198; Atack, J. (1990). A Piece of Blue Sky, ch. 3.) ↩
  2. See also: All About Radiation: The Revolt of the American Nuclear Physicists ↩

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Encyclopedia: Joseph Cressman [Cheesman] Thompson (n.d.)

Joseph Cheesman “Snake” Thompson

Joseph Cressman “Snake” Thompson, M. D., (1874-1943) was a career medical officer in the United States Navy and attained the rank of commander before retirement in 1929. His nickname, ‘Snake’ derived from his expertise in the field of herpetology. He was also a cat breeder who helped develop the Burmese breed of cat. “In 1930 Dr. Joseph C. Thompson took a brown cat named Wong Mau from Burma to America. She herself was a hybrid from Siamese and a dark-coated breed named Burmese. Mated to a Siamese, she produced hybrids and Siamese. When the Burmese/Siamese hybrids were mated together, the darker coated Burmese were produced. These bred true, and in 1936 the Burmese was officially recognized in the United States of America as a new show breed.” (per The World Encyclopedia of Cats)

In the early 1920s Dr. Thompson became interested in Freudian psychoanalysis and he underwent analysis with Dr. Henry Grovens in 1923. In 1924 Dr. Thompson became vice-president of the Washington Psychoanalytic Association, but by 1936, after criticizing the American psychoanalytic establishment for straying too far from Freud, he was no longer listed as a member of the association. It was Thompson’s contention that lay analysts should be given as much importance in the psychoanalytic field as physicians.

According to Silas L. Warner, M.D., when Dr. Thompson was stationed in Guam he befriended young L. Ron Hubbard, whose father was also stationed there. They first met in 1923 on board a navy transport going from Guam to Washington, D. C. Hubbard later reported in a lecture how true he found one of Commander Thompson’s oft-repeated aphorisms, “If it’s not true for you, it’s not true.” It aligned with his own personal philosophy, according to Hubbard.

In the early 1930s Dr. Thompson moved to San Francisco, where he was one of very few psychoanalysts. Previous to the move he had published papers on psychoanalysis, including; Psychoanalytic Literature,Desertion,Observations of a Psychoanalyst,Tropical Neurasthenia,The Psychoanalyst and his Work, and Deprivation Psychoneurosis.

Joseph Cressman Thompson died of a heart attack in San Francisco on March 7, 1943, at the age of 68. His obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle mentioned his widow, Mrs. Hilda Thompson, and a very special Siamese cat, known as Pak Kwai Mau, or ‘White Devil Cat.’ A serious cat breeder, Thompson had at one time 45 cats. He left $10,000 in the bank in Pak Kwai Mau’s name.

In addition to contributing to the fields of cat fancy and psychoanalysis, Dr. Thompson wrote papers on reptiles and fish.1

References
  • The Psychoanalytic Roots of Scientology, by Silas L. Warner, M. D., a paper presented at the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, New York City, December 12, 1993
  • Joseph “G.” Thompson was born July 6, 1874, at Quarantine Station, Long Island, New York per US Naval records.

Notes

  1. Nationmasters.com. (n.d.) Biographical sketch of Dr. Joseph Cressman (sic) Thompson. Retrieved from http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Joseph-Cressman-Thompson ↩