Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans, broadcasting to you live, although it won't
Speaker 1: be live when you listen to it from the parking
Speaker 1: lot behind a random arco in Reading, California, because like
Speaker 1: all professional podcasters, I am working out of a car
Speaker 1: right now, because I decided to funk off to the
Speaker 1: mountains for a week in the reception in the mountains
Speaker 1: is not ideal. Um, My guest today is the person
Speaker 1: who normally has to deal with my bizarre decisions that
Speaker 1: wildly impact the sound quality of this show. Um, but
Speaker 1: as instead the co host of today's episode, while Chris
Speaker 1: deals with my irresponsibility. Dania, Hello, Robert, how you doing, Buddy,
Speaker 1: I'm doing. I'm doing good, Daniel, how are you doing?
Speaker 1: I'm honestly great. I could not be more thrilled to
Speaker 1: be here, uh side saddle to you right now with
Speaker 1: Sophie on the podcast. I'm honored to be here, truly.
Speaker 1: I have my son, and my work husband and my
Speaker 1: dog dog. You can't you can't say that on the mic,
Speaker 1: that we can't have that be the meta. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to be in a relationship old That's right, You're
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I appreciate that though, so that again, Daniel. Yes, Robert,
Speaker 1: you and I have. You and I have been colleagues
Speaker 1: for for a while. Indeed, we've we've worked together. We
Speaker 1: we we enjoy each other's company very much. We've we've
Speaker 1: become friends over the course of many months in many
Speaker 1: recording sessions. And I don't know how things are done
Speaker 1: with friendship where you come from, Daniel, guy in a motorcycle.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know how things are done
Speaker 1: where you come from, Daniel. But back in my hometown,
Speaker 1: we have a saying. And that's saying is you weren't
Speaker 1: really friends with someone until you've spent an hour or
Speaker 1: so talking about that One time l Ron Hubbard and
Speaker 1: a rocket scientist tried to summon the Antichrist using sex magic.
Speaker 1: Do they have that expression where you come from, Daniel,
Speaker 1: It's it's yeah, totally, man. Absolutely, Me and all my
Speaker 1: friends we said down and talking about that thing. You
Speaker 1: totally just welcome to our friendship group. So go on, please.
Speaker 1: I did. I have done five episodes on Ron Hubbard
Speaker 1: because he was amazing in dis Yeah, there was just
Speaker 1: there's just so much about that guy's life that we
Speaker 1: have to talk about. And when I did my initial
Speaker 1: three partner with the wonderful Caitlin Duranti. Um. One thing
Speaker 1: we glossed over was the time l Ron Hubbard tried
Speaker 1: to summon the anti Christ via fucking his friend's girlfriend. Um,
Speaker 1: that's only a small part of it. Daniel, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I'm already in shock today. I felt like, in the
Speaker 1: midst of this year of political nonsense and uh coronaviry, Uh,
Speaker 1: we should talk about l Ron Hubbard and sex match
Speaker 1: and just just have a relaxing time. That sound good
Speaker 1: to you, Daniel, It sounds great, Robert, I'm in alright. Alright.
Speaker 1: So our story begins with one of the most fascinating
Speaker 1: and enigmatic men in the history of science, Jack Parsons. Now,
Speaker 1: depending on your perspective, Parsons was either the smartest idiot
Speaker 1: or the dumbest genius in human history. Uh. He was
Speaker 1: born in Pasadena, California, in nineteen fourteen to a wealthy
Speaker 1: family with a history of incredible names. His father was
Speaker 1: named Marvel Sr. And he abandoned the family when Jack
Speaker 1: was a small child so he can continue to have
Speaker 1: an affair with a young woman. Jack, then named Marvel Jr.
Speaker 1: Was thrust into the position of being the head of
Speaker 1: the family at a very young age. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm with it so far. That's you know, sucks, but alright,
Speaker 1: Marvel Junior's mom filed for divorce and to avoid unpleasant
Speaker 1: memories of her ex, began calling Marvel Jr. John. In
Speaker 1: eighth grade, John met a boy named Edward Foreman. Like him,
Speaker 1: Eddie was a big fan of Jules Verne and the
Speaker 1: Amazing Stories science fiction magazine that was then quite new.
Speaker 1: John Parsons grew up, Yeah, he grew up on he
Speaker 1: was he was a sci finerd you know, he was
Speaker 1: one of the first generation, the first generation of sci finers.
Speaker 1: Love it, I love it. Yeah. So he grows up
Speaker 1: on the steady diet of tales of magic and witchcraft
Speaker 1: and fantasy, along with you know, rockets and robots and aliens.
Speaker 1: And like most boys, he was fascinated by fireworks. Unlike
Speaker 1: most boys, he immediately started making his own in nine.
Speaker 1: At age fourteen, John and Eddie graduated from cutting up
Speaker 1: and modifying fireworks to trying to build their own solid
Speaker 1: fuel rockets, which did not exist at the at the time.
Speaker 1: That's that's extremely adventurous. Yeah, and there weren't kits and
Speaker 1: stuff like he were just making bombs basically. Oh, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: they were. They were the forefathers. They were the ones
Speaker 1: getting their fingers blown off for all of us. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: And uh, because it was the twenties and there were
Speaker 1: no rules at all. Everyone just let them make rockets,
Speaker 1: which which rules, honestly, Yeah, totally rules. So the Parson
Speaker 1: family neighbors reported bemusedly that the large backyard of their
Speaker 1: manner was filled with blackened craters and shackle from failed
Speaker 1: test launches. Yeah, what a report, and debrah's a lot
Speaker 1: of shrapnel coming from the neighbors. It's the twenties, though,
Speaker 1: So I guess we won't do anything about it, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: In an effort to build more efficient and reliable rockets,
Speaker 1: John began experimenting with using glue as a binding agent
Speaker 1: to keep the loose powder in his engines together at eighteen,
Speaker 1: while still in high school, John was hired by the
Speaker 1: Hercules Powder Company. When he graduated in nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 1: he enrolled in Pasadena Junior College with his friend Eddie Foreman.
Speaker 1: The two continued their experiments and began to correspond with
Speaker 1: luminaries in the nascent field of rock Katrie Robert Goddard,
Speaker 1: Herman O Berth, Konstantine Solkovsky. This proved to be mostly useless,
Speaker 1: since rocketry at this point was primitive enough that even
Speaker 1: the luminaries in the field weren't like all that good
Speaker 1: at it. People haven't really figured much out about rockets yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this, this seems like still completely fresh ground.
Speaker 1: Yeah freshly, Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we're still in the mostly
Speaker 1: exploding things territory. Neither Parsons nor Goodmen were able to
Speaker 1: divert their focus from mastering the art of shooting random
Speaker 1: shot into the sky long enough to focus on other studies.
Speaker 1: They both dropped out of college in the the nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties and got jobs at Halifax Explosives, a company in
Speaker 1: the Mojave Desert that did exactly what you'd guess. For
Speaker 1: a while, John Parsons looked to be on a relatively
Speaker 1: normal path. He married his high school sweetheart, Helen Northrop,
Speaker 1: and became increasingly influential in the developing science of rocketry.
Speaker 1: His new colleagues took to calling him Jack. In nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, Jack's interest in fantasy, kindled by those amazing
Speaker 1: story his comics he devoured as a child led him
Speaker 1: to pick up a book by Alistair Crowley. What do
Speaker 1: you know about Alistair Crowley? Oh, you know nothing. That
Speaker 1: name sounds familiar. Honestly, whenever I hear the name Crowley
Speaker 1: makes me think of that song Mr Crowley. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's about Crowley. Yeah, well that's what I know,
Speaker 1: the chorus of that song. Yeah. He is the inventor
Speaker 1: of a religion called Plemma. Um. Yeah, he's uh starting
Speaker 1: the late nineteen like by the time Jack sort of
Speaker 1: becomes aware of this guy. Crowley's name for himself is
Speaker 1: the Great Beast six six six. Yeah. He was regularly
Speaker 1: called the wickedest man in the world by the media
Speaker 1: of his native England, and considering the fact that Adolf
Speaker 1: Hitler was the dictator of Germany at the time, one
Speaker 1: might question the media's definition of the word wicket. Yeah. Wow, Okay,
Speaker 1: get your priority straight, media. So yeah, Crowley is yeah,
Speaker 1: known today as the founder of Thelemic religion and the
Speaker 1: originator of the phrase do what thou wilt shall be
Speaker 1: the whole of the law. So you've heard that. I'm
Speaker 1: sure that that one gets around. So he's like one
Speaker 1: of the founding fathers of like kind of the modern
Speaker 1: occult subculture community, whatever you wanna call him. So, Crowley
Speaker 1: had first reached prominence as a mountaineer, leading the first
Speaker 1: expedition to reach the foot of K two and almost
Speaker 1: scaling Catchin Junga, the second and third highest mountains on Earth, respectively.
Speaker 1: During the expedition up Canshon Junga in nineteen o five,
Speaker 1: and avalanche had buried the rest of Carly's team under snow.
Speaker 1: They begged him for help, but, as the story goes,
Speaker 1: he made himself a cup of tea and watched them
Speaker 1: die horribly. Instead, he claimed to have no sympathy for them,
Speaker 1: as they had attempted to make the descent after he'd
Speaker 1: advised them not to. That's such, That's just some ship
Speaker 1: you just cannot get away with anymore. I didn't tell
Speaker 1: you so, I told you this was a bad idea.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. That's wow, alright, cool Sick Crowley objectively is
Speaker 1: one of the most interesting dudes who ever lived, and
Speaker 1: I honestly don't know enough about the man to declare
Speaker 1: him a bastard or not um. He deliberately spread lies
Speaker 1: about horrible things he'd done that he hadn't really done.
Speaker 1: So he also did some really messed up stuff. So
Speaker 1: it's really hard to know. The cliffs notes of this
Speaker 1: guy's life is that in nineteen ten he joined a
Speaker 1: secret society called the Ordo Templi Orientis or O t O. Now,
Speaker 1: during the turn of the twentieth century, there were a
Speaker 1: lot of different similar occultic societies throughout Europe, and the
Speaker 1: O t OH can be seen in the same family
Speaker 1: of organizations as Theosophy Anthroposophy and the Toolist Society. Thanks
Speaker 1: to his charisma and his erotic poetry, Crowley rose to
Speaker 1: eventually command the English speaking sections of the O t What.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, don't talk about poetry. Just dropped that. You
Speaker 1: get to drop erotic poetry in the middle of the
Speaker 1: things that make him charismatic. Okay, so it is when
Speaker 1: does that come into play? How did the erotic poetry
Speaker 1: come about? He writes a lot of erotic poetry. I mean,
Speaker 1: so all of this that's the time outside of the
Speaker 1: occult ship is just like, yeah, I mean, I also
Speaker 1: love to talk about that kind of thing. So Crowley
Speaker 1: is doing magic and telling people other people to do magic,
Speaker 1: like that's like his whole thing, but like it's sex magic.
Speaker 1: A lot of it involves fucking um. A lot of
Speaker 1: it involves like tons of come um and like blood
Speaker 1: and fucking. He's a big free love advocate um and
Speaker 1: he's a big like A lot of this comes out
Speaker 1: of like this rejection of Christian morality, like this, this
Speaker 1: recognition from a lot of like free thinkers that like,
Speaker 1: oh wow, are Christian based society is completely fucked and immoral.
Speaker 1: We should just discard all of this and just bang
Speaker 1: each other all the time and maybe trying to summon
Speaker 1: the devil. Yeah yeah, Crowley, Yeah, he's Crowley, got the
Speaker 1: commies all right where it sounds good. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he loves he's fucking coming like you wouldn't believe. And
Speaker 1: like the fucking early nineteen hundreds, man, this guy is
Speaker 1: semen all over the place, a great so uh. In
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine, our man Jack Parsons comes across Crowley's
Speaker 1: writing and falls in love with it the whole due
Speaker 1: at that wilt thing is particularly exciting to him as
Speaker 1: a brilliant man. In the late nineteen thirties, he realizes
Speaker 1: that most of the moral restrictions in his very repressed
Speaker 1: society are rooted in bullshit. Jack likes the idea of
Speaker 1: a faith that encourages him to indulge in forbidden pleasures
Speaker 1: and gives him the power to affect his material reality.
Speaker 1: He and his wife Heaven joined the O. T O
Speaker 1: S Pasadena chapter known as the Agape Lodge. And I'll
Speaker 1: let you guess which what thing is agape? Alright, alright, alright, alright, yeah,
Speaker 1: literally nothing to the imagination a gape Lodge, like come on, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's all fucking So. Most of the ceremonies
Speaker 1: at the Agape Lodge focus around sex, magic, and the
Speaker 1: meetings take place in an attic properly equipped for secret
Speaker 1: and probably illegal sex, because a lot of sex was
Speaker 1: illegal back then. Yeah, meetings were run by a priestess
Speaker 1: wearing sheer gauze who rose out of a coffin to
Speaker 1: lead the worshippers and purposefully blasphemous writes. So that's cool.
Speaker 1: So Jack Parsons, Yeah, the theatrics wow, Okay. And Jack
Speaker 1: Parsons is one of the founding fathers of the Jet
Speaker 1: Propulsion Laboratory, So while he is starting the JPL, he's
Speaker 1: also super into magic, into the crazy sex magic and
Speaker 1: also advancing the sciences and also helping to invent rocketry.
Speaker 1: That's that's you know, we contain multitudes. It's cool as hell.
Speaker 1: It's this guy so far. Absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I got no problems with Jack Parsons. So well, maybe
Speaker 1: a couple, we'll get to those, I'm sure. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: Jack started corresponding with Crowley, and unlike the correspondence he'd
Speaker 1: had with early rocket scientists as a younger man, these
Speaker 1: letters actually went somewhere Before long, Parsons was addressing Alistair
Speaker 1: Crowley as my most beloved father and signing his letters
Speaker 1: to him as vice son John Jack. Quickly he rose
Speaker 1: to become Crowley's American representative for the O t O.
Speaker 1: In a few short years. Jack's chapter was responsible for
Speaker 1: the vast majority of the donations the O t O
Speaker 1: brought in. Carley's later years were largely funded by the
Speaker 1: fundraising skill of Jack Parsons. One of Jack's housemates later
Speaker 1: recalled he had a voluminous correspondence with Crowley in the libraries,
Speaker 1: some of which he showed me. I remember in particular
Speaker 1: one letter from Crowley which praised and encouraged him for
Speaker 1: the fine work he was doing in America, and also
Speaker 1: casually thanked him for his latest donation and intimated that
Speaker 1: more would shortly be needed. Jack admitted that he was
Speaker 1: one of Crowley's main sources of money in America. So
Speaker 1: Crowley really relies on this guy from money. Um, he's
Speaker 1: an old man at this point in the late thirties
Speaker 1: and um, early forties, and and that's kind of like
Speaker 1: Jack's main purpose in the O t O is raising
Speaker 1: money to keep Crowley alive. And sorry, can this is
Speaker 1: just like a little time check for me. I apologize.
Speaker 1: Can you give me how old is Crowley at this point?
Speaker 1: And how old is Jack Parsons at this point? Jesus
Speaker 1: Crowley is like sixties seventies something he dies in forty six,
Speaker 1: and Parsons is like in his twenties. Okay, cool, got it,
Speaker 1: got it? Got it? Definitely like relationship kind of ship
Speaker 1: exactly maybeties. Yeah. So raising money for the O t
Speaker 1: O was only a small part of Jack's focus as
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties turned into the forties. By this point,
Speaker 1: he was working as a rocket engineer for the California
Speaker 1: Institute of Technology, taking part in groundbreaking research and launching
Speaker 1: experimental rockets as well as experimenting with pagan sex magic
Speaker 1: at night. His two lives soon began to blend uh,
Speaker 1: and before long he was dancing and shouting Crowley's him
Speaker 1: to pan before rocket launches. Still bless the endeavors. Hell,
Speaker 1: here's how that him ended. By the way, So imagine
Speaker 1: this guy hanging out with like nineteen forties rocket scientists,
Speaker 1: chanting this ship as they prepared to launch a rocket.
Speaker 1: I am pan Yo pen eyeo pen pan Pan. I
Speaker 1: am thy mate, I am thy man, goat of thy flock,
Speaker 1: I am gold, I am God, flesh to thy bone,
Speaker 1: flower to thy rod. With hoofs of steel, I race
Speaker 1: on the rocks through solstice, stubborn to equinox, and I
Speaker 1: rave and I rape, and I ripped, and I rinned,
Speaker 1: everlasting world without end. Mannequin made and made it man
Speaker 1: in the mite of pan Yo Pan Yo Pan Pan
Speaker 1: pan Yo pan Wow. Wow. I'm just thinking about this
Speaker 1: the other scientists sitting around taking their super long drags
Speaker 1: of their cigarettes, being like, God, come on, man, we're
Speaker 1: just trying to launch this rocket. Come on, come on,
Speaker 1: Jack Christ. Jesus Christ is fantastic. Yeah, yeah, it rules.
Speaker 1: Good for him, good for him, good for you, for you.
Speaker 1: It's a testament to what a brilliant engineer Jack was.
Speaker 1: That it took his colleagues a while to make a
Speaker 1: fuss about his eccentricities. Um, he would eventually go on,
Speaker 1: they did. He got fired from the JPL for being
Speaker 1: a fucking weirdo. But not just that. It took a
Speaker 1: while that they're like, you know, but it's it's it's okay.
Speaker 1: He's such a good sign. He's such a good sign.
Speaker 1: He's an incredible science Yeah, I mean yeah, that's you know,
Speaker 1: suffw it goes his chief invention. He's like considered to
Speaker 1: be the main inventor of the solid fuel rocket, which
Speaker 1: is yeah, we don't have space travel without it. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: um no, less a mine than Werner. Von Brown considered
Speaker 1: him to be one of the founding fathers of rocketry.
Speaker 1: So he is hugely influential, and you do not ever
Speaker 1: hear about him. You don't hear about him much. This
Speaker 1: has started to change in recent years, but for a
Speaker 1: very long time you didn't hear about him when people
Speaker 1: would talk about the founding fathers of rocketry. Um. Because
Speaker 1: of the story we're about to talk about today. God.
Speaker 1: Hell yes. So in nineteen forty one, Jack Parsons and
Speaker 1: a group of his colleagues at Caltech. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: what is when they officially like start to found the
Speaker 1: jpl um. Yeah. They had done so much damage to
Speaker 1: the campus at Caltech. They'd been forced to relocate to
Speaker 1: a series of iron sheds in the Arroyo Seco Canyon
Speaker 1: and this became the Jet Propulsion Laboratory sheds. Yeah. Well
Speaker 1: but you on the bomb proof shelters. You guys can
Speaker 1: blow yourselves up and not hurt anything else. So to
Speaker 1: Jack Parsons, there was no disconnect between his love of
Speaker 1: the occult and his love of science. One of his
Speaker 1: biographers later noted Parsons had his rocketry as well as
Speaker 1: his normal life. He discovered other worlds by imagining going
Speaker 1: in a rocket to the moon. He wanted to explore
Speaker 1: the new frontier. He saw both space and magic as
Speaker 1: ways of exploring these new frontiers, one breaking free from
Speaker 1: Earth literally and metaphysically. And Jack's rocket ship for these
Speaker 1: metaphysical explorations was an enormous mansion on southern Orange Grove Avenue,
Speaker 1: which he had inherited upon his errant father's death. South
Speaker 1: Orange Grove was maybe the nicest neighborhood in Pasadena at
Speaker 1: that point, and the upright citizens who were Jack's neighbors
Speaker 1: were not happy when a black wizard moved in next
Speaker 1: door and turned his family home into a mystical funk
Speaker 1: cavern for a bunch of the strangest people in southern California. Yeah. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I guess I probably wouldn't be too happy either. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that sound like it would rule. But I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that that feels like. That feels like the kind
Speaker 1: of thing where the first couple of weeks you'd be like, hey,
Speaker 1: they're really having a rocket party over there, and then
Speaker 1: just a couple of extra you know, extremities are left
Speaker 1: in your yard and you're like, Okay, this has gone
Speaker 1: too far. This, yeah, this is I've had enough of
Speaker 1: these wacky people now. Yeah. So, Jack's dad hadn't left
Speaker 1: him with much money, and the only way Jack could
Speaker 1: afford to maintain the great manner that he now had
Speaker 1: was by renting it out. But he wasn't willing to
Speaker 1: compromise his lifestyle by lending out his space to Norman's.
Speaker 1: He put a notice in the local paper asking for
Speaker 1: tenants who were atheists and of a bohemian disposition, with
Speaker 1: no exceptions. This led to a colorful cast of characters
Speaker 1: who occupied his home and also when endless series of
Speaker 1: loud parties and orgies, one long term tenant, later recalled
Speaker 1: mundane Souls, were unceremoniously rejected as tenants. There was a
Speaker 1: professional fortune teller and a seer who always wore appropriate
Speaker 1: dresses and decorated her apartment with symbols and artifacts of
Speaker 1: arcane lore. There was a lady well past middle aged
Speaker 1: but still strikingly beautiful, who claimed at various times to
Speaker 1: have been the mistress of half the famous men in France.
Speaker 1: There was a man who had been a renowned organist,
Speaker 1: and the great movie palaces of the silent era. They
Speaker 1: were characters, all so pretty cool house. I mean it sounds,
Speaker 1: you know, sounds like a great crew, a motley crew
Speaker 1: as well, especially in the early fucking forties when everybody
Speaker 1: sucked even more than they do now. Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: police showed up semi regularly as a result of these
Speaker 1: loud parties, but they were always talked down to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were always um talked down by Jack Parsons, who
Speaker 1: was handsome, charming and a respectable rocket scientist. He was
Speaker 1: good at dealing with cops. On at least one occasion,
Speaker 1: the police were called in having been told by neighbors
Speaker 1: that they had witnessed a pregnant woman being ordered to
Speaker 1: jump nine times through a sacred fire. So, yeah, I
Speaker 1: gotta cleanse that baby. I mean, that's just basic obstetrics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fucking awesome, well done. Yeah, So two rooms in
Speaker 1: the manner had been turned into a temple for the
Speaker 1: o t oh Lodge. Jack's bedroom held the ceremonial altar,
Speaker 1: which was flanked by pyramids and covered with bizarre symbols.
Speaker 1: A massive signed portrait of Crowley hung over the fireplace.
Speaker 1: It wasn't short a pretty badass living situation. And then
Speaker 1: into this wonderful place and time stepped an actual demon,
Speaker 1: Lafayette Ron Hubbard. Wonderful. Yeah, with that lead in, do
Speaker 1: you know what time it is? It's time for something
Speaker 1: that's not l Ron Hubbard. The products and services that
Speaker 1: support this show, although we would take l Ron Hubbard
Speaker 1: as a sponsor absolutely not scientology, the church, but l
Speaker 1: Ron Hubbard himself. Yeah, we're back. So l Ron Hubbard
Speaker 1: is entering the story now Daniel L Ron Hubbard has
Speaker 1: l r H has entered play Oh Boys. In September
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five, after World War Two would drawn to
Speaker 1: a close, the future founder of Scientology had enrolled himself
Speaker 1: as a patient in Oak Noll Naval Hospital. There was
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing wrong with him, other than the fact that
Speaker 1: he was broke and would soon be mustered out of
Speaker 1: the navy. For three months, l r H dutifully wind
Speaker 1: and moaned and tried to convince doctors to diagnose him
Speaker 1: with something anything that might be vaguely defined as a
Speaker 1: service related injury. He complained about headaches, rheumatism, conjunctivitis, pain
Speaker 1: in his side, belly aches, shoulder pain, arthritis, and hemorrhoids.
Speaker 1: After weeks of looking, the only evidence of any sickness
Speaker 1: they found was an ulcer. L r H's injuries were
Speaker 1: described as minimal. In between days spent trying to convince
Speaker 1: doctors of his ailments, l r H spent some time
Speaker 1: trawling around Pasadena, and in August of ninety he stumbled
Speaker 1: into the house on South Orange Grove Avenue for a
Speaker 1: regular meeting of science fiction aficionados. Because you know, Jack
Speaker 1: Parsons is a big old nerd. So l Ron Hubbard
Speaker 1: instantly recognized the Jack Parsons circle as the ideal environment
Speaker 1: for an instinctive con man like himself to operate in.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to quote now from the book Bear
Speaker 1: Faced Messiah. Ron Ebulliant as always, was not in any
Speaker 1: way intimidated by the egregious company and surroundings. On the contrary,
Speaker 1: he felt instantly at home. Most evenings he could be
Speaker 1: found dominating the conversation at the big table in the kitchen,
Speaker 1: where the rumors tended to gather, telling outrageous stories about
Speaker 1: his adventures. One night, he unbuttoned his shirt to display
Speaker 1: the scars left by arrows hurled at him after he
Speaker 1: encountered a band of hostile aborigines in the South American Jungles.
Speaker 1: Like almost anyone in the house, Alva Rodgers, a long
Speaker 1: term resident at the parsonage, thought Hubbard was an enormously
Speaker 1: engaging and entertaining personality. Rogers also had red hair, and
Speaker 1: Ron confided to him his belief, confirmed by extensive research
Speaker 1: he had undertaken at the Royal Museum in London, that
Speaker 1: all redheads were related, being descended from the same line
Speaker 1: of Neanderthal men a classic that yeah, we're all that's
Speaker 1: a classic. Good times, good times. So Hubbard started crashing
Speaker 1: at the Parsons Manor, and, in true l Ron Hubbard form,
Speaker 1: he paid as little as possible by sharing a bedroom
Speaker 1: with a broke reporter named Nisson Himmel. As a journalist,
Speaker 1: Neeson was instantly skeptical of his roommate, telling an interviewer later,
Speaker 1: I can't stand phonies, and to me he was so
Speaker 1: obviously a phony, a real con man. But he was
Speaker 1: certainly not a dummy. He was very sharp and quick,
Speaker 1: a fascinating storyteller, and he could charm the ship out
Speaker 1: of anybody. He talked interminably about his war experiences and
Speaker 1: seemed to have been everywhere. Once he said he was
Speaker 1: on Admiral Halsey staff. I called a friend who had
Speaker 1: worked with Halsey, and my friend said, shit, I've never
Speaker 1: heard of him. I was not one of his favoritest people,
Speaker 1: because I like to try and trip him up. One
Speaker 1: time he told a story about how he was walking
Speaker 1: down a corridor in the British Museum when he was
Speaker 1: suddenly grabbed by three scientists who dragged him into an
Speaker 1: office and began measuring his skull because it was such
Speaker 1: a perfect shape. I said, g Ron, that's a great story,
Speaker 1: didn't I read it? And George Bernard Shaw Another time
Speaker 1: he said he was in the Allusions in command of
Speaker 1: a destroyer, and a polar bear jumped from an ice
Speaker 1: flow onto his ship and chased everyone around. I realized
Speaker 1: it as an old, old folklore story that goes way back.
Speaker 1: He was always broken trying to borrow money. That was
Speaker 1: another reason he didn't like me. I would never lend
Speaker 1: him a cent. Whenever he was talking about being hard up,
Speaker 1: he often used to say that he thought the easiest
Speaker 1: way to make money would be to start of religion.
Speaker 1: My favorite. That's my favorite aleron Harvard line right there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people think he just said that
Speaker 1: to the one guy. I think it's like usually um
Speaker 1: nine who reports it. But you know, he said that.
Speaker 1: He said that a lot. He said that over and over.
Speaker 1: He was extremely clear about that, not not off handed,
Speaker 1: even a little bit wasn't wasn't It wasn't a gotcha moment.
Speaker 1: It was it was I'm a genius and I shall
Speaker 1: make my money this way. Mmmmmmm. Also, I love that
Speaker 1: I love to think about that time when it would
Speaker 1: take someone extremely wise to be able to call you
Speaker 1: on your own bullshit like that you could tell stories
Speaker 1: like yeah, and if there wasn't someone around who knew
Speaker 1: George or was like at least aware of authors and
Speaker 1: stories and everything in history, you could just get away
Speaker 1: with that ship. Yeah. It's just a matter of like,
Speaker 1: have you read more ship than other beings? And if so,
Speaker 1: you could probably convince them of anything. Yeah. I once
Speaker 1: convinced a friend of mine that the band Hanson had
Speaker 1: died in a bush crash. And you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: shockingly it's what we're saying. They're okay, by the way,
Speaker 1: they're not dead. On December five, l Ron Hubbard was
Speaker 1: mustered out of the Navy. The very next day, he
Speaker 1: applied for a pension due to his sprained left knee,
Speaker 1: conjunctive isis, chronic tatnal ulcer arthritis, recurrent malaria, and a
Speaker 1: weird pain on his left side that wouldn't go away
Speaker 1: and had no cause, but that he was pretty sure
Speaker 1: was service related. Now separated from me, Now separated from
Speaker 1: the Navy, he devoted all his time to applying to
Speaker 1: for more disability ignoring his wife and child and trying
Speaker 1: to get in closer with Jack Parsons. Now by ninety six,
Speaker 1: Danial Jack and his first wife, Helen had separated. Being
Speaker 1: a cool and totally emotionally mature dude, Jack did the
Speaker 1: healthy thing and instantly started dating Helen's younger sister, Sarah Northrop,
Speaker 1: when she was seventeen years old. Bro, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: what most psychologists will recommend, so oh man. Shortly after
Speaker 1: they get together, Sarah drops out of usc uh and yeah,
Speaker 1: moves in with her brother in law Jack and his
Speaker 1: collection of weirdos and wizards. She starts going by the
Speaker 1: name Betty, after her middle name, and she gets drawn
Speaker 1: into the O T O and into sex magic. Now,
Speaker 1: in keeping with Carley's teachings, Jack urged his new girlfriend
Speaker 1: to have lots and lots of transgressive sex with other
Speaker 1: members of the lodge. Jealousy was an emotion of unenlightened beings,
Speaker 1: something powerful wizards like Jack, attuned to the greater mysteries
Speaker 1: of the cosmos, did not suffer from. Jack took great
Speaker 1: joy in explaining to strangers how jealousy was for losers,
Speaker 1: and he and Betty were better than normal people. Because
Speaker 1: they did not feel it. And when you type it
Speaker 1: out that way, the whole situation sounds like a fucking
Speaker 1: time bomb. I mean it absolutely was. I mean we
Speaker 1: we stand a sex positive king, but like that, yeah,
Speaker 1: it has its limits most certainly. Yeah, and especially like
Speaker 1: if you're the guy bragging about that and having her
Speaker 1: have sex with strangers to test. Yeah, that's not that's
Speaker 1: not they're healthy ways to do non monogamy. This is
Speaker 1: not one of It doesn't really sound like yeah, um
Speaker 1: so yeah, everyone who now I should know that. Everyone
Speaker 1: who knew Betty and Jack at the time emphasized later
Speaker 1: how deeply in love the couple appeared to be, and
Speaker 1: for several months this seemed like it was something that
Speaker 1: was actually going to last. Um. L Ron Hubbard would finally,
Speaker 1: you know, break up this relationship. See being gullible and
Speaker 1: sort of dumb for a trailblazing rocket scientist. Jack Parsons
Speaker 1: had immediately been taken in by L. R. H's charm.
Speaker 1: He'd written Alistair Crowley his master at the start of
Speaker 1: nineteen forty six. He Hubbard is a gentleman, red hair,
Speaker 1: green eyes, honest and intelligent, and we have become great friends.
Speaker 1: Although he has no formal training in magic, he has
Speaker 1: an extraordinary amount of experience and understanding in the field.
Speaker 1: Ron appears to have some sort of highly developed astro vision.
Speaker 1: He describes his angel as a beautiful winged woman with
Speaker 1: red hair, whom he calls the Empress, and who has
Speaker 1: guided him through his life and saved him many times.
Speaker 1: He's in complete accord with our own principles. I have
Speaker 1: found a staunch companion in comrade in Ron. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just but he loves his guys, his buddy, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he's got his but Ron's Scott. Yeah. I gotta of course,
Speaker 1: I've got a I've got a guardian angel. She's called
Speaker 1: the Empress. Oh my god. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: debate to this day as to how much of the
Speaker 1: magic stuff l Ron Hubbard actually believed. Some people argue,
Speaker 1: and there's a decent amount of evidence for this that
Speaker 1: a lot of scientology wound up just being a rip
Speaker 1: off of Thallemma um, and that basically Hubbard was just
Speaker 1: sort of laundering a lot of Crowley's ideas but making
Speaker 1: them less tied to like the devil and stuff, and
Speaker 1: so that you could kind of sell it to a
Speaker 1: bunch of people in the fifties. That's an art. That's
Speaker 1: an argument people will make. Others will say that that's
Speaker 1: going too far. Um And you know, it seems in
Speaker 1: either case true that l Ron Hubbard was primarily interested
Speaker 1: in the Parsons Circle because he wanted to have a
Speaker 1: lot of weird sex, cheap room and board in a
Speaker 1: chance at conning a bunch of money out of a
Speaker 1: dummy with too much of it enhanced. Yeah, it sounds
Speaker 1: like Ron Hubbard. Yeah, yeah, So when Hubbard heard that
Speaker 1: Parsons was actively encouraging other members of the circle to
Speaker 1: fund his girlfriend, he jumped right on that train and
Speaker 1: wrote it to pound town. Those. Yeah, those of you
Speaker 1: who listened to our first three partner on l Ron
Speaker 1: Hubbard will recall that the man did, in fact to fuck,
Speaker 1: and in this instance, his fucking proved good enough that
Speaker 1: Betty was soon completely in love with him. This was
Speaker 1: tremendously painful for Jack Parsons, but he'd spent so much
Speaker 1: time bragging to everyone about how he was immune to
Speaker 1: jealousy that there was nothing for him to do but
Speaker 1: smile and pretend everything was awesome. You have to stand
Speaker 1: by your word at that point. If you're going to
Speaker 1: be jealousy is an emotion of the week. Oh, it's Hubbard.
Speaker 1: Absolutely knows what he's doing. Um, yeah and uh. Parsons
Speaker 1: later wrote to Crowley, she has transferred her sexual affection
Speaker 1: to Ron. I cared for her rather deeply, but I
Speaker 1: have no desire to control her emotions now. Bron's roommate
Speaker 1: him All later recalled Betty was beautiful, the most gorgeous, intelligent, sweet,
Speaker 1: wonderful girl. I was so much in love with her,
Speaker 1: and I knew she was a woman I could never have.
Speaker 1: Then Hubbard comes along and starts having affairs with one
Speaker 1: girl after another in the house and finally fastens on
Speaker 1: to Betty. I couldn't believe it was happening there. He
Speaker 1: was living off of parsons largesse and making out with
Speaker 1: his girlfriend right in front of him. Sometimes when the
Speaker 1: two of them were sitting at the table together, the
Speaker 1: hostility was almost tangible. Wow, I mean yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: can certainly imagine. Mm hmm. It seems like a less
Speaker 1: fun house at this point. Definitely a less fun house
Speaker 1: at this point. Yeah. And then again, to be a
Speaker 1: fly on the wall for those scenarios had absolutely it
Speaker 1: sounds incredible, seriously, so Jack seemed to need to feel
Speaker 1: the need to really prove that he was super okay
Speaker 1: with everything by starting a business with Ron and Betty.
Speaker 1: Allied Enterprises was never much more than a vague plan
Speaker 1: to buy yachts on the East Coast and seldom in
Speaker 1: California at a profit. The whole idea has the distinctive
Speaker 1: reek of an L R H scheme to it, and
Speaker 1: my suspicion is that Hubbard recognized that Parsons had a
Speaker 1: deep need to prove how cool he was with Hubbard
Speaker 1: and Betty fucking and that doing something as mundanely normal
Speaker 1: as going into business with them allowed him to really
Speaker 1: present this image that he was like fine with everything.
Speaker 1: I kind of think that's what Hubbard how he Hubbard
Speaker 1: gets him to sign onto this um. So on January
Speaker 1: fifty six, the three partners sign onto an agreement to
Speaker 1: start this business. Jack puts in the majority of his
Speaker 1: savings twenty thousand dollars. Ron puts in all of his
Speaker 1: savings too, but this only comes to and Betty puts
Speaker 1: in nothing. For a while, the business went nowhere and
Speaker 1: the money sat in an account while Jack and Hubbard
Speaker 1: set to work engaging in more magical endeavors. So at
Speaker 1: the same time as they're starting this business, Jack Parsons,
Speaker 1: who still hurt from the loss of Betty, had started
Speaker 1: engaging in a nightly incantation ritual what he called the
Speaker 1: conjuration of Air, invocation of Wand, and consecration of Air Dagger.
Speaker 1: The goal of these increasingly elaborate rituals was to summon
Speaker 1: a new girlfriend for Jack Parsons. Jack, It's okay, well,
Speaker 1: summon you a new girlfriend. Yeah, we'll summon you a girlfriend, Jack, So, yeah,
Speaker 1: an elemental mate as Jack Calner. Now I want to
Speaker 1: be clear here, Daniel, Jack didn't just want a girlfriend.
Speaker 1: He wanted to summon the incarnate form of the Horror
Speaker 1: of Babylon so that he could impregnate her with a
Speaker 1: moon child. It just gets so much deeper. It's just
Speaker 1: like he keeps going when like, yeah, just the I
Speaker 1: will remind you all this is one of the founding
Speaker 1: fathers of rocketry. Oh my gosh, it's incredible. That is
Speaker 1: that is uh, that is truly beyond. But now at
Speaker 1: this point is no surprise. So I'm ready. I'm ready.
Speaker 1: Let's keep it going, baby. So I'm not an expert
Speaker 1: in the cold Daniel. I've only participated in one demon
Speaker 1: summoning and it was a goetic ritual. Um. But I'm
Speaker 1: so I'm not an expert on this, and I tend
Speaker 1: to think it's all kind of nonsense anyways. So I
Speaker 1: hope my O t O and Satanist and Thella my
Speaker 1: friends will forgive me if I get some details wrong
Speaker 1: about what precisely Jack Parsons and l Ron Hubbard we're
Speaker 1: trying to do, because it's recomplicated, But feel feel free
Speaker 1: to sound off in the comments because I would like
Speaker 1: to read how it's supposed to go down, because this
Speaker 1: sounds fascinating. Go off. The short of it is that
Speaker 1: Hubbard started working as a scribe and basically taking notes
Speaker 1: and watching the music ly well. Jack Parsons masturbated in
Speaker 1: a variety of elaborate ways a short stroke today. Yeah wow,
Speaker 1: I found him. Yeah, it's it's awesome. I found a
Speaker 1: medium article written by someone who's a lot more ac
Speaker 1: cultically trained than I am, and he explained the rituals
Speaker 1: this way. Quote. The method employed was that of the
Speaker 1: solo eighth degree working of the O t O. Parsons
Speaker 1: used his magic wand his penis to whip abo vortex
Speaker 1: of energy so the elemental would be summoned. Translated into
Speaker 1: plain English, Parsons jerked off in the name of a
Speaker 1: spiritual advancement, while Hubbard, referred to as the Scribe in
Speaker 1: the diary of the event, scanned the astral plane for
Speaker 1: signs and visions so that, you know, just hanging out
Speaker 1: with my friend masturbates perfect. That that does sound like
Speaker 1: a good saturday. Me and me and a buddy, him
Speaker 1: coming me, looking at the astro plane, taking notes. Times,
Speaker 1: just good, just good times. Life was really a lot
Speaker 1: better before the Internet. Taking notes and note and strokes.
Speaker 1: That's what we're doing. That's what we're doing out here.
Speaker 1: Sophie just shook her head disappointedly, which is frankly, exactly
Speaker 1: what I was going for. Yeah, it's the only way
Speaker 1: this could go. So after the first few nights of
Speaker 1: these masturbation adventures, Pasadena was hit by a series of
Speaker 1: powerful windstorms, one of which knocked out the power. Now,
Speaker 1: if you've spent any amount of time in Pasadena, you'll
Speaker 1: know that heavy winds are not a rarity there. Jack
Speaker 1: took this note. They're constantly But Jack took this as
Speaker 1: a sign that his magical ritual was working and now
Speaker 1: one On Hubbard played along, claiming on January fourteen that
Speaker 1: some form of celestial force had hit him on the
Speaker 1: right shoulder and knocked a candle out of his hand.
Speaker 1: Parsons Leader wrote, he called me and we observed a
Speaker 1: brownish yellow light about seven feet high. I brandished a
Speaker 1: magical sword and it disappeared. Roun's right arm was paralyzed
Speaker 1: for the rest of the night. These two gentlemen are
Speaker 1: both so up each other's asses. Brandished it so time out.
Speaker 1: Real question, is the magical sword just his penis? I
Speaker 1: it has to be right, and it has to be
Speaker 1: his penis. Okay, okay, cool, I love that brandish a
Speaker 1: magical sword. I'll be sure too. It's the best. I'm
Speaker 1: sure to bust that one out next time. Yeah. Everything
Speaker 1: that's happening here rules, and I'm fine with it. Amazing now.
Speaker 1: The very next night, they began their rituals again, with
Speaker 1: Jack masturbating furiously while l Ron Hubbard took notes on
Speaker 1: his furious masturbation. Midway through the celestial wank session, oh
Speaker 1: Ron Hubbard claimed to have some sort of astro vision
Speaker 1: and see one of parsons enemies standing behind him, wearing
Speaker 1: a black robe and bearing an evil, pasty face. According
Speaker 1: to Parsons, Hubbard quote attacked the figure and pinned it
Speaker 1: to the door with four big throwing knives with which
Speaker 1: he is expert. So l Ron Hubbard is a master
Speaker 1: of throwing knife. This is this is some sci fi
Speaker 1: for sure. So I used my throwing knives. Wow, okay,
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. It seems like this
Speaker 1: is like this is like it's an anime plot right here.
Speaker 1: For the next four days, Parsons and Hubbard grew increasingly
Speaker 1: nervous and jumping. This may have something to do with
Speaker 1: the unspoken reality that both men were on literal buckets
Speaker 1: of uppers throughout this entire process. This does not get
Speaker 1: emphasized enough in any discussions of even l Ron Hubbard specifically.
Speaker 1: But like these guys and Hubbard for decades, these guys
Speaker 1: are on so much fucking speed. That's like, however much
Speaker 1: fucking speed, Like they're on enough speed that if like,
Speaker 1: if they've been parting with or Thompson, he would have
Speaker 1: been like, guys, you are doing way too much speech.
Speaker 1: Doctor called down. That is an important and I will
Speaker 1: say when I had my occult face, I was also
Speaker 1: doing a lot of sucking speeds. So you know, it
Speaker 1: comes with the territory. You know, it comes with the territory.
Speaker 1: So the ritual masturbation. It continued until January eighth, when
Speaker 1: Jack Parsons and L. R. H headed out to the
Speaker 1: Mojave Desert to conduct some new ritual that probably involved
Speaker 1: Parsons coming on a rock. Desert magic inspired another vision
Speaker 1: in Parsons as he felt and he felt his anxiety
Speaker 1: fade away. He turned to Hubbard and said, it is done.
Speaker 1: They returned home drains of magical energies and bodily fluids.
Speaker 1: It is done. It is done. They returned. They returned home,
Speaker 1: drained of magical energies and bob Lee fluids to find
Speaker 1: a young red haired woman matching Jack's requirements waiting at
Speaker 1: the parsonage, which is what he called his house for them.
Speaker 1: Now her name. The reality of the situation, Daniel, is
Speaker 1: that Jack Parsons was a really handsome genius with a
Speaker 1: fuck mansion and young women were always showing up to fuck.
Speaker 1: It was like that it was a place where you
Speaker 1: go to fucking do drugs. And this happened a lot.
Speaker 1: But in this particular case, this woman, uh, Marjorie Cameron,
Speaker 1: came to the house the night after they went out
Speaker 1: to go masturbait in the Mahave together, so they thought
Speaker 1: that she had been summoned by the ritual um. As
Speaker 1: far as they know, she was okay. So Parsons convinced
Speaker 1: himself that Marjorie was an elemental spirit, the scarlet woman,
Speaker 1: capable of bearing the incarnate at essence of the whole
Speaker 1: of the Beast of Babylon and bringing it back into
Speaker 1: the world. Jack and Marjorie quickly started fucking, and Jack
Speaker 1: wrote excitedly back to his master Alistair Crowley, I have
Speaker 1: my elemental She turned up one night after the conclusion
Speaker 1: of the operation and she has been with me since.
Speaker 1: She has red hair and slant green eyes. Is specified.
Speaker 1: She's an artist, strong minded and determined, with strong masculine
Speaker 1: characteristics and a fanatical independence. So we love an independent woman. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Crowley replied with a vague statement that he'd been trying
Speaker 1: to intervene personally to help Jack in his magical quest
Speaker 1: to find a girlfriend. I can't be certain, but it
Speaker 1: sounds to me like Crowley was just saying what he
Speaker 1: thought would Butter Parsons up the most because he needed
Speaker 1: more money from Parsons. That's it. I mean, you're probably right,
Speaker 1: and you know who needs more money from you, dear listeners,
Speaker 1: the products and services. Yeah, let's support this podcast. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I feel confident saying all of our sponsors will follow
Speaker 1: you into the desert to masturbate on a rock, so
Speaker 1: you too can sumn the horror of Babylon, that hor Yeah.
Speaker 1: We we have that clause in our in our our our,
Speaker 1: our our agreements with the advertisers, right, Sophie, that they'll
Speaker 1: help you summon the horror Babylon. Okay, cool, yep, here
Speaker 1: you go. We're back, and we're talking about l Ron
Speaker 1: Hubbard and Jack Parsons and sex magic and jerking off
Speaker 1: on rocks. Jerking off on rocks. So in late February
Speaker 1: l R. H flew down to the East Coast to
Speaker 1: look at yachts he might buy with Jack's money, while
Speaker 1: Parsons drove alone again into the Mojave to perform an
Speaker 1: invocation of the Goddess Babylon, probably by masturbating in the
Speaker 1: desert again. He claims he was visited by the goddess
Speaker 1: who started reading out a series of seventy seven clauses
Speaker 1: that he wrote down in a notebook, the Book of Babylon.
Speaker 1: He believed these were instructions for how he could impregnate
Speaker 1: his elemental girlfriend with a moon child. Just all right,
Speaker 1: you got I don't even keep going. I don't even know.
Speaker 1: Quote from the goddess that he met after coming on
Speaker 1: a rock in the desert. Now was the hour of
Speaker 1: birth at hand? Now shall my adept be crucified in
Speaker 1: the basiliskabode thy tears, I sweat, thy blood, thy seamen,
Speaker 1: thy love, thy faith shall provide. So we aren't we all? Oh?
Speaker 1: This podcast? A lot of comers on this episode Birth
Speaker 1: to the moon Child for short after that, so, Parsons
Speaker 1: and Hubbard both wound up back in Pasadena by early March,
Speaker 1: and Jack told his best buddy what he'd seen out
Speaker 1: in the desert, essentially playing yes. And Hubbard then informed
Speaker 1: Jack that he too had experienced a magical vision of
Speaker 1: a savage and beautiful woman writing naked on a great
Speaker 1: catlike beast. I imagine that whenever l Ron Hubbard closed
Speaker 1: his eyes, he just saw scenes from the movie Heavy Metal. Yes, Yes,
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. His inner monologue was illustrated by Ralph Baksh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it so um yeah. So
Speaker 1: he tells her, Yeah, he's seen this vision of a
Speaker 1: woman rending a cat, and this beautiful naked cat lady
Speaker 1: had a message to deliver. And so the two magical
Speaker 1: masturbaders prepared a new ritual so that they could receive
Speaker 1: this message. And I'm gonna quote again from Bare Faced Messiah.
Speaker 1: Candles were lit, incense burned, and a magical altar was
Speaker 1: laid with flowers and wine. Hubbard describe wore a white
Speaker 1: hooded robe and carried a lamp parsons. The High Priest
Speaker 1: wore a black robe and carried a cup and dagger.
Speaker 1: An automatic tape recorder was set up, and at a
Speaker 1: Hubbard's suggestion, Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead was played as
Speaker 1: background music. At eight o'clock, began to intone Yeah. At
Speaker 1: eight o'clock, Hubbard began to intone his message from the
Speaker 1: astral world. These are the preparations, green gold cloth, food
Speaker 1: for the beast upon a hidden platter. Back of the
Speaker 1: altar disclosed only when the dolls are bolted. Transgression is death.
Speaker 1: Back of the main altar prepare instantly at the first
Speaker 1: flame at ten p m. March sCOD. The year of
Speaker 1: Babylon is forty sixty three. After a few minutes, Parsons
Speaker 1: noticed that his scribe was pale and sweating profusely. Hubbard
Speaker 1: rested for a few minutes, and then continued, Make a
Speaker 1: box of blackness at ten o'clock, Smear the vessel which
Speaker 1: contains flame with fine own blood, Destroy at the altar
Speaker 1: a thing of value. Remain in perfect silence, and heed
Speaker 1: the voice of our lady. Speak not of this ritual
Speaker 1: or of her coming to any person. And Hubbard said
Speaker 1: a bunch more stuff like this. While the scarlet woman
Speaker 1: Marjorie Cameron lay naked under a red robe. When Hubbard
Speaker 1: prompted her, she read outlines that had been written for
Speaker 1: her by Parsons when he was on his masturbation quest
Speaker 1: in the desert. To love me is better than all things,
Speaker 1: she chanted. Put on the wings and arouse the coiled
Speaker 1: splendor within. You come unto me, to me, sing the
Speaker 1: rapturous love songs under me, burned to me the perfume.
Speaker 1: Drink to me, for I love you. I am the
Speaker 1: blue lidded daughter of Sunset. I am the naked brilliance
Speaker 1: of the voluptuous night sky. So throughout this whole process,
Speaker 1: Jack and Marjorie, and probably l Ron Hubbard too, we're
Speaker 1: all getting a hornier and hornier together. They read out together,
Speaker 1: They read out a chorus Glory into the Scarlet Woman Babylon,
Speaker 1: the mother of abominations, that writeth upon the beast, for
Speaker 1: she hath split their blood in every corner of the earth.
Speaker 1: And yo, she hath mingled in the cup of her Hordem. Wow,
Speaker 1: her Hubbard, her Hordem. Yeah. Hubbard describe stood at the altar,
Speaker 1: ranting about what was supposedly happening on the astral plane. Well,
Speaker 1: Jack Parsons whipped out his magic wand and entered the
Speaker 1: horror of Babylon. The two fucked like metht out hyenas
Speaker 1: while l Ron Hubbard narrated, And this sort of thing
Speaker 1: continued for three more days, three days, three days, Jesus,
Speaker 1: three days they're doing this ship. I found I found
Speaker 1: a report on this whole ritual written by the Sunday
Speaker 1: Times in nineteen sixty nine, and I'm fucking shocked. This
Speaker 1: was published in a mainstream newspaper in the sixties. It
Speaker 1: notes quote on the third day. The ritual began four
Speaker 1: hours before or dawn. Ron tells his companion lay out
Speaker 1: a white sheet, place upon it blood of birth. Envision
Speaker 1: her approaching the think upon the lewd lascivious things thou
Speaker 1: couldst do. All is good to Babylon. All preserve the
Speaker 1: material basis. Thus lust is hers, the passion yours. Consider
Speaker 1: thou the beast. Raping these invocations along with other passages
Speaker 1: and the ritual indicates that Parsons had collected specimens of
Speaker 1: his own sperm and the girl's menstrual blood. Oh they
Speaker 1: got samples, all right, Yeah. Well. Climax of the ceremony
Speaker 1: occurred the following day, with Ron at the altar working
Speaker 1: his two subjects into a sexual frenzy. Were Rock Modinov.
Speaker 1: He intones such gyms as her mouth is bread, and
Speaker 1: her breasts are fair, and her loins are full of fire,
Speaker 1: and her lust is strong as a man is strong
Speaker 1: in the heat of her desire. Wow, real, real words
Speaker 1: worth right there, Yeah, and exalted, Parsons wrote the next day,
Speaker 1: Babylon is incarnate upon the earth today, awaiting the proper
Speaker 1: hour of her manifestation, and in that day my work
Speaker 1: will be accomplished, and I shall be blown away upon
Speaker 1: the breath of the Father, even as it is prophesied.
Speaker 1: And it's probably at this point that we should discuss
Speaker 1: what precisely Jack Parsons thought he was doing other than
Speaker 1: having a bunch of kinky sex while his best friend,
Speaker 1: the founder of scientology, watched him and quoted from what
Speaker 1: was basically a D and D source book. Ye, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: what what was going on the old noodle up there? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well what was he think? What did he think he
Speaker 1: was doing? So this moon child that he wanted to
Speaker 1: impregnate Marjorie with was a homunculous which he described as
Speaker 1: a living being inform, resembling a man and possessing those
Speaker 1: qualities of man which distinguished him from beasts, namely intellect
Speaker 1: and power of speech, but neither be gotten, nor born
Speaker 1: in the manner of human generation, nor inhabited by a
Speaker 1: human soul. So he wants to birth this soulless monster, um,
Speaker 1: so that he can, Yeah, so that he can. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Crowley had written a lot a lot about this
Speaker 1: idea and felt that the goal of all great magicians
Speaker 1: was to create a messiah vious sex magic, and Jack's
Speaker 1: goal was basically to to fuck Matt into Marjorie, a
Speaker 1: living soul was being that he could then summon the
Speaker 1: spirit of the horror of Babylon into so the Okay,
Speaker 1: but and then what and then what is that? Just
Speaker 1: like his his beast of his beast of control? Is
Speaker 1: he like? What what is that? What is this homunculous?
Speaker 1: Then achieve I will tell you, Daniel, I will tell you.
Speaker 1: This is what Jack Parsons wrote. The operation was formulated
Speaker 1: to open an interdimensional doorway, rolling out the red carpet
Speaker 1: for the appearance of the Goddess Babylon in human form,
Speaker 1: employing the angelic language of the Enochian cause of Elizabethan
Speaker 1: magus John d In the attraction of the sex force
Speaker 1: of the duo's copulation. To this end, the Babylon working
Speaker 1: itself was a preparation for what was to come, a
Speaker 1: thelemic Messiah to wit Babylon incarnate as a living female,
Speaker 1: the Scarlet Woman, his consort to the Antichrist, bride to
Speaker 1: the Beast six six six and affect. Parsons also claimed
Speaker 1: the mantle of Antichrist for himself. Without the Scarlet Woman,
Speaker 1: the Antichrist cannot make his man of festation, the eschatological
Speaker 1: formula must first be complete and wider words, the magical
Speaker 1: rights of the Babylon working. It was parsons goal to
Speaker 1: bring on the apocalypse. Sorry, this is from that medium
Speaker 1: of past analyzing all this occultically, so of course, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's trying to bring on the apocalypse. Now, it's important
Speaker 1: to understand what Jack Parsons conceived of as the apocalypse.
Speaker 1: He was not trying to bring about the end of
Speaker 1: the human race um. Rather, he was trying to bring
Speaker 1: about the end of the Western Christian world order. He
Speaker 1: felt that the ruling class and the United States and
Speaker 1: most of the rest of the world was corrupt and hypocritical,
Speaker 1: and this was definitely true of Christian religious leaders. The
Speaker 1: invocation of Babylon was meant to end to that world
Speaker 1: and bring about a new age of free love. Upon
Speaker 1: completion of his multi day funk ritual with his new
Speaker 1: girlfriend and his buddy l Run Hubbard, Parsons was a
Speaker 1: static that he had started the process that would end
Speaker 1: with the breaking of the world order. He wrote yet
Speaker 1: another letter to Crowley on March six. I can hardly
Speaker 1: tell you or decide how much to write. I am
Speaker 1: under command of extreme secrecy. I have had the most important,
Speaker 1: devastating experience of my life, and he meant that in
Speaker 1: a good way. He outlined the ritual he performed to
Speaker 1: his master, who, rather than being excited, responded with utter shock.
Speaker 1: You have me completely puzzled by your remarks. I thought
Speaker 1: I had the most morbid imagination, but it seems I
Speaker 1: have not. I cannot form the slightest idea of what
Speaker 1: you can possibly mean. The same day, Crowley sent a
Speaker 1: letter to the head of the American branch of the
Speaker 1: O t O. Apparently Parsons are Hubbard or somebody is
Speaker 1: producing a moon child. I get fairly frantic when I
Speaker 1: contemplate the idiocy of these lauds. So just shading your
Speaker 1: boy right there. Wow. So Alistair Crowley knew a con
Speaker 1: artist when he saw and he suspected that Hubbard was
Speaker 1: playing along with this whole caper, both for the sex,
Speaker 1: which he got in plentiful quantity, and because doing these
Speaker 1: rituals would help him build up trust with Jack Parsons,
Speaker 1: so we could then rob the High priest blind. And
Speaker 1: this is exactly what happened. In May, l R. H.
Speaker 1: Betty Northrop fled California with something like ten to twenty
Speaker 1: dollars of Jack parsons money, ostensibly to buy a yacht
Speaker 1: to resell on the West coast, but instead they stayed
Speaker 1: on the Eastern seaboard, living off Jack's savings. Uh and yeah,
Speaker 1: just just stole all of his savings. So after this happened,
Speaker 1: you did absolutely damn no. No, didn't even get the
Speaker 1: moon child. Maybe he did. We'll talk about that at
Speaker 1: the end. Okay. One O t O cult member wrote
Speaker 1: to the head of the American branch of the church
Speaker 1: after l Ron Hubbard stole of Jack's money. Ron and
Speaker 1: Betty have their boat at Miami, Florida and are living
Speaker 1: the life of Riley, while brother John Parsons is living
Speaker 1: at rock bottom, and I mean rock bottom. So Crowley
Speaker 1: cabled his U S office on this message, suspect Ron
Speaker 1: playing a confidence trick, Jack Parsons weak fool, obvious victim,
Speaker 1: prowling swindlers. In a letter a few days later, he said,
Speaker 1: it seems to me, on the information of our brethren
Speaker 1: in California, that Parsons has got an illumination in which
Speaker 1: he lost all his personal independence. From our brother's account.
Speaker 1: He has given away both his girl and his money.
Speaker 1: Apparently it is the ordinary confidence trick, and to his
Speaker 1: intellectual credit, Jack Parsons did eventually realize what was going on.
Speaker 1: By July five, he had traveled to the East coast and,
Speaker 1: in the words of a letter to his master, pursued
Speaker 1: the children of my folly. He succeeded in salvaging about
Speaker 1: three thousand dollars of the money Hubbard had escaped with.
Speaker 1: In true form, credited this with his magical abilities, summoning
Speaker 1: a squall to stop their boat from leaving port. He
Speaker 1: also went to the police for help, which maybe had
Speaker 1: more of an impact, so my squaw. Yeah. After recovering
Speaker 1: the last of his money, Jack Parsons left l Ron
Speaker 1: Hubbard and Betty Northrope, both of whom wound up bigamously
Speaker 1: married later before splitting up violently in the early nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: Parsons never saw either of them again, but he remained
Speaker 1: with Marjorie, still dedicated to summoning a moon child and
Speaker 1: becoming the Antichrist. In fact, he took the oath of
Speaker 1: the Antichrist at ninety eight and changed his name to
Speaker 1: Balerian Armylists. I'll dig all Antichrist. What say that? Again
Speaker 1: Balerian armilists. I'll die, I'll die. Anti Christ is like
Speaker 1: the Islamic name for saying okay, cool, Just anti Christ
Speaker 1: thrown in there at the end, just in case it
Speaker 1: wasn't clear enough. Yeah, great cool, Yeah, yeah for sure dog. Sadly,
Speaker 1: all this monkeying around with the occult had a negative
Speaker 1: impact on Jack's career as a rocket scientist. He'd been
Speaker 1: forced out of the JPL. Yeah, because of his growing
Speaker 1: weirdness and experimentation. Keep jerking off on the rockets. You
Speaker 1: gotta stop coming on the rockets, Jack. As the Cold
Speaker 1: War settled in during the late nineteen forties and early
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, Jack was caught up in the dragnet of
Speaker 1: suspicion over communist sympathizers in the Defense Research establishment. His
Speaker 1: security clearance was pulled. And the irony here is that
Speaker 1: Jack was very fucking far from being a communist. He
Speaker 1: was more of a libertarian than anything else, and described
Speaker 1: himself as both anti fascist and anti communist. But the
Speaker 1: FBI saw weirdo, free love magic person and assumed that
Speaker 1: made him a dirty comic. Jack went through a series
Speaker 1: of jobs after this, including some work for an Israeli
Speaker 1: company that brought him under suspicion of being a spy.
Speaker 1: He wound up destitute making pyrotechnics for the film industry
Speaker 1: in order to make ends meet. In nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: at the age of thirty seven, he was working on
Speaker 1: a large order when he dropped a vial of nitroglycer
Speaker 1: and blew himself into the astral plane. Yeah, yeah, sad story.
Speaker 1: Oh I wasn't aware of that part of the story.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, he blew himself up. Depending on who you ask,
Speaker 1: this was either a horrible accident or a targeted assassination
Speaker 1: ordered by the US government. And it's entirely possible he
Speaker 1: was assassinated because, like he was working with these Israeli companies,
Speaker 1: and there were a lot of people who thought, like,
Speaker 1: this guy's just got is too smart, has too much
Speaker 1: dangerous knowledge to be allowed to like funk around and
Speaker 1: be desperate for money, and like, if we can't use
Speaker 1: him because he's such a whack job, then we're going
Speaker 1: to have to kill him. Maybe it did happen, Who knows.
Speaker 1: There are even those who suspect Marjorie, the infamous Scarlet Woman,
Speaker 1: of being his assassin. She'd been in the Navy before
Speaker 1: so like I don't know. L Ron Hubbard had no
Speaker 1: more dealings with the O T O after this, but
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine, his newfound Church of Scientology began
Speaker 1: to spin the story of L. R. H's days as
Speaker 1: an occult sex scribe to claim that he'd really been
Speaker 1: a secret government agent task with destroying the U S
Speaker 1: black magic scene. They issued this statement. Hubbard broke up
Speaker 1: black magic in America because he was well known as
Speaker 1: a writer and philosopher and had friends among the physicists.
Speaker 1: He was sent in to handle the situation of black
Speaker 1: magic being practiced in a house in Pasadena occupied by
Speaker 1: nuclear physicists. He went to live at the house and
Speaker 1: investigated the black magic rights in the general situation and
Speaker 1: found them very bad. Hubbard's mission was successful, far beyond
Speaker 1: anyone's expectations. The house was torn down. Hubbard rescued a
Speaker 1: girl they were using the black magic group was dispersed
Speaker 1: and never recovered. He've rescued a girl. That's that fucking
Speaker 1: mainstream media for you. Narative rescued a girl by ah
Speaker 1: leaping with her and then stealing her baby. Several years later,
Speaker 1: my hero modern occultists are heavily split over the legacy
Speaker 1: of Jack Parsons and the Babylon Working as it is called.
Speaker 1: A number of occultists will argue that the ritual that
Speaker 1: Jack Parsons carried out may have actually worked, just not
Speaker 1: in the way Parsons had anticipated. As one of them,
Speaker 1: a fellow named Metzker, noted, perhaps Parsons was an antichrist,
Speaker 1: and his particular mission was to pry open the apocalyptic
Speaker 1: gateway and activate the occult forces necessary for the upheaval
Speaker 1: of consciousness. But this will not happen without a struggle
Speaker 1: between the forces of control, black magic, and oppressive boredom
Speaker 1: on one hand, and the Luciferian agents of wisdom, unleashed creativity,
Speaker 1: and anarchic rebellion on the other. We have been brainwashed
Speaker 1: to believe is good patriotism, so called free enterprise, private property, Christianity,
Speaker 1: not the teachings of Christ, but the hateful travesty that
Speaker 1: the religion bearing his name has become thanks to the
Speaker 1: likes of Pat Robertson and his filthy ilk. Is now
Speaker 1: beginning to be seen by the emerging generation of the
Speaker 1: crowned and conquering child to be the death trap bullshit
Speaker 1: it truly is a whole culture is collapsing and a
Speaker 1: new one is about to be born. Jack Parsons would
Speaker 1: be pleased. Wow, so there's an optimistic way to end it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I suppose so, Yes, how you feeling
Speaker 1: about L. R. H. Jack Parsons and the moon Child?
Speaker 1: If I'm being completely real with you, I just see
Speaker 1: this like a movie where it's like you have a
Speaker 1: shot that's like thirty meters away, it's a steady shot,
Speaker 1: and you just see l Ron Hubbard sitting on the
Speaker 1: ground with his notepad, and then Jack Parsons just hunched over,
Speaker 1: just jerking off as fast as he possibly can, and
Speaker 1: just like, yes, yes we must summon. And I just
Speaker 1: the ghosts I never needed. Oh my god, I just
Speaker 1: can't get it out of my head. And that is
Speaker 1: just too funny to me. Um, it's amazing. I feel
Speaker 1: I feel a little I feel for Mr. Parsons. Will
Speaker 1: be honest with you, that's no, it sucks it over.
Speaker 1: He totally got sucked over that poor that poor moon
Speaker 1: child wanting ma'am, that poor moon child wanting antichrist Man. Well, yes, Robert,
Speaker 1: this was a fun tale, it really was. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. For having me. I'm honored to be to
Speaker 1: to be receiving this incredible story. M hm. Well, Daniel,
Speaker 1: keep this in mind, because one day I may call
Speaker 1: upon you to follow me out to the desert and
Speaker 1: take notes on what ghosts do while I masturbate. Robert.
Speaker 1: I would follow you to the ends of the earth,
Speaker 1: and I'd be happy doing it. It's okay, Can you
Speaker 1: can be just you and me, Robert. We'll just tell
Speaker 1: Sophi about it afterwards. Hell yeah, we will. I would
Speaker 1: like just Daniel and Robert jacking off in the mohave.
Speaker 1: There we go. Stay tuned, okay, Um, listen to all
Speaker 1: the shows on the network. Listen to Worst Year Ever.
Speaker 1: If you didn't get a chance to listen to it
Speaker 1: could happen here. Please do. It's an incredible piece of
Speaker 1: work done by this incredible man, Robert Evans here. Um,
Speaker 1: get ready for more shows. Support all the show few shows.
Speaker 1: Support the shows on the network. If you want to
Speaker 1: follow me for my bad takes and come these jokes,
Speaker 1: you can follow me at DJ Underscore Daniel d A
Speaker 1: n L on Twitter uh and also shout out to
Speaker 1: the behind the Bastards sub credit and behind the Bastards
Speaker 1: out of context. You make me laugh every day. So
Speaker 1: thank you all for being so funny on the internet.
Speaker 1: And Robert, thank you for having me. This has been
Speaker 1: such a pleasure. Thank you for being on Daniel, and
Speaker 1: thank all of you for listening to this story, which
Speaker 1: I think has involved the use of the word and
Speaker 1: variations of the word come more than any other episode
Speaker 1: of this show. Could not be more thrilled to be
Speaker 1: part of that. Wait, you would have thought Cody Johnson
Speaker 1: was in the room. You would have thought Cody Johnston
Speaker 1: was in the room. Um, but he was here. He
Speaker 1: was here in spirit, was masturbating in the moha. So
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Cody. Can. You can find this podcast on
Speaker 1: the internet behind the Bastards dot com, including the book
Speaker 1: Bare Face Messiah, which is all available in its entirety
Speaker 1: for free online. It's a great read and it's an
Speaker 1: amazing story of the life of l Ron Hubbard. Um.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Twitter at I right, okay.
Speaker 1: You can find this podcast on Twitter and Instagram at
Speaker 1: at Bastards pod uh. And you can find a moon
Speaker 1: child of your own if you just find a couple
Speaker 1: of good friends to come with. Rocks On and talk
Speaker 1: about ghosts to new merch item moon Child. Great, that's
Speaker 1: the episode. Love it.