by John Carter
With the Babalon Working, it may also be that Parsons was trying to compete against Smith for Crowley's attention, even though Smith had been forced into exile. Indeed, the Babalon Working has parallels with Crowley's Liber 132, in which he exalted Smith in order to send him on a “retreat.”
* * *
16. The definitive version of “Isle of the Dead” (Op. 29) is conducated by Sergei Rachmaninov himself. Recorded April 20, 1929 with the Philadelphia Orchestra and released on 78, it lasts 18 minutes, which means Parsons let it run out during the invocation, or else the Scribe had to restart it several times. The recording is available on the Magic Talent label as CD48038, as well as on a CD entitled Rachmaninoff Conducts Rachmaninoff.
17. The Golden Dawn's spelling of “tarot”; as with INRI it has multiple meanings.
18. Possibly a reference to the seventh and third Enochian Calls.
19. 4063 dates the Year 1 to 2017 BC, the meaning of which is uncertain.
20. A statue of Pan was destroyed.
21. The “universal solvent” sought by the alchemists, an obvious reference to sexual fluids.
22. May scholars of Latin forgive my crude translations.
23. Crowley's original reads “Babylon.”
24. The “black box” is evidently the same as the scrying device used by Dee and Kelley. Karl Germer thought the sign “imprinted upon it” to be a small circle inside of which was inscribed an inverted triangle—the sign for water, but inside a circle. Cameron remembered otherwise.
25. Following this instruction, Parsons deliberately omitted recording one line of the message.
26. i.e., menstrual blood.
27. This verse is now lost.
28. i.e., the “elixir,” or sexual secretions.
29. The last word is often misquoted in secondary sources as “louts.”
nine
Parsons’ Final Years: 1946–1952
On February 20, 1946, in between the two parts of the Babalon Working, Parsons, Hubbard and Betty formed a company called “Allied Enterprises.” To Hubbard's $1,183.91, Parsons put up $20,970.80, which was his “laundromat money,” while young Betty contributed nothing. In this enterprise, they were to buy boats on the East Coast and sail them back to California for resale (or tow them by trailer, if cheaper). They also stated an interest in investments of a “varied and eclectic nature,” from which it may be inferred that they went beyond boats—perhaps into explosives. Some of the money, Parsons said, as did Rypinski, was used to buy the house at 1003 S. Orange Grove Ave. as well, which Parsons leased first.
In April 1946, after the second part of the Babalon Working, Ron left with Betty and $10,000 of the company's money. Later that month Parsons started to think that they had cheated him. He threatened to chase them, but a call to Hubbard soon calmed him down. Astrologer and initiate Louis Culling overheard the call and couldn't believe the formerly angry Parsons could be so easily swayed. Parsons ended the call with, “I hope we shall always be partners, Ron,” a comment that made Culling cringe.
Culling wrote to Karl Germer on May 12, “As you may know by this time, Brother Jack signed a partnership agreement with this Ron and Betty whereby all money earned by the three for life is equally divided between the three. As far as I can ascertain, Brother Jack has put in all of his money…meanwhile, Ron and Betty have bought a boat for themselves in Miami for about $10,000 and are living the life of Riley, while Brother Jack is living at rock bottom, and I mean rock bottom. It appears that originally they never secretly intended to bring this boat around to the California coast to sell at a profit, as they told Jack, but rather to have a good time on it on the east coast.” Indeed, Hubbard had written the Chief of Naval Personnel before he headed east, asking permission to sail to South America and China.
On May 22 Crowley wired to Germer, “Suspect Ron playing confidence trick—John Parsons weak fool—obvious victim—prowling swindlers.” Crowley again, in a follow-up to Germer dated May 31:
Thanks for yours of May 23rd enclosing one from Frater Achad [Charles Stansfeld Jones]. It is very good that he should come crawling back to the penitent's form after thirty years, but I do not quite see how it is going to make up for the time he has wasted on his insane vanity, and you might let him know this view.
I am glad that his submission should have taken place at this moment, however, because his case serves as very useful to quote in discussing the business of Jack Parsons…
The question of Frater 210 [Parsons] seems to me very typical. He reminds me up to a point—though he is on a much lower plane than they—of two men who joined the Order shortly after I took it over [Jones and Victor Neuburg]: both cases seem to me to have certain significance if applied to the present position of Frater 210.
It seems to me on the information of our Brethren in California (if we may assume them to be accurate) Frater 210 has committed both these errors [i.e., those of Jones and Neuburg].
Both cases were alike in this—that after a very short period of training both had more than fulfilled their early promise; they could claim not only attainment, but achievement—and that in no small degree. I am sorry that there is no possibility of making any similar claim on behalf of Frater 210…
He has got a miraculous illumination which rimes [sic] with nothing, and he has apparently lost all his personal independence. From our brother's [Louis Culling] account he has given away both his girl and his money—apparently it is the ordinary confidence trick.
Of course, I must suspend judgement until I have heard his side of the story, but he promised me quite a long while ago to write me a full explanation, and to date I have received nothing from him…
By June, a sadder but wiser Parsons could wait no longer and went to Florida after Hubbard and Betty, discovering they had purchased three boats. He found two of the boats, but not Ron and Betty. One, the Harpoon, was anchored at Howard Bond's Yacht Harbor. Another, Blue Water II, was at the American Ship Building Company. Parsons then rented a room and waited. Two days later, someone from Bond's called Parsons to say that the Harpoon had just sailed. He was too late to catch them, so he returned to his room and consecrated a circle. Parsons wrote Crowley on July 5:
Here I am in Miami, pursuing the children of my folly…Hubbard attempted to escape me by sailing at 5 PM, and I performed a full invocation to Bartzabel [a form of Mars] within the Circle at 8 PM. At the same time, so far as I can check, his ship was struck by a sudden squall off the coast, which ripped off his sails and forced him back to port, where I took the boat in custody…I have them well tied up. They can not move without going to jail. However, I am afraid that most of the money has already been dissipated. I will be lucky to salvage three to five thousand dollars. In the interim I have been flat broke.
Bartzabel had a little help from the U.S. Coast Guard, who rescued and detained the pair. Betty later described her and Hubbard's situation during the storm as “desperate,” relating that the two were very scared that they would not make it back to shore.
On July 1, 1946, Parsons sued Allied Enterprises in Dade County, Florida Circuit Court, case number 101634. In an instance of remarkably swift justice, the court approved a settlement on July 10, and on July 11 the three partners signed an agreement dissolving the company. Parsons recovered two boats: Blue Water II (a schooner) and Diane (a yacht). Hubbard was allowed to retain possession of the Harpoon, a two-masted schooner, and use it as collateral against a promissory note in the amount of $2900. Hubbard was also ordered to pay Parsons’ legal fees. Parsons returned to Pasadena and never heard from either party again. Hubbard and Betty eventually married and had a daughter. Hubbard's career with Scientology is well-documented, in various versions, elsewhere.
The incident affected not just Parsons, as his bad luck now forced him to stop sending money to his ex-wife, Helen, and Wilfred Smith, who had married. The fact that he was sending money to them in the first place reveals how much he thought of Smith, as well as his generosity. Parsons’
regular contributions to Crowley, however, would continue until the latter's death the next year. At the time of the financial disaster, Smith wrote to Crowley:
It all seems to be folding up together. [Jack] can't send any more money. Grimaud's [Helen] is running out. These, and the fierce stab of Regina's [Kahl] death occurred all within a day or two. But above all I feel I have shot my bolt, such as it was, and missed the mark.
From the utterly desolate state in which I started out, which held for months, I am glad to say very recently the joy in some of the masterpieces has returned to me. I expected never to write to you again; hardly know why I do. But there is a feeling one owes a gentleman a letter when one fails to turn up at a dinner engagement. Besides, I don't think I could get Grimaud to write you this; she refuses steadily to accept my negative view of this Grand Magical Retirement. You must be so inured to disciples’ failures that just one more won't surprise you.
On August 20, Parsons sent a formal letter of resignation from the OTO to Crowley. Instead of the usual “Thrice Illuminated, Thrice Illustrious, and Very Dear Brother” salutation, he began it “Dear Aleister.” He gave no explanation but merely said the resignation was his will, although it certainly may have been a reflection of his disillusionment in the face of such misfortunes. He expressed his continued sympathy to the Crowley's “Rights of Man” (Liber OZ), quoted below, but finished by saying, “I do not believe that the OTO, as an autocratic organization, constitutes a true and proper medium for the expression and attainment of these principles [the Rights of Man].” Many resigning members have made similar remarks.
Regarding Parsons’ source of extra income, Louis Culling remarked that Parsons was “bootlegging nitroglycerine,” presumably meaning he was selling it illegally. But to whom? Cameron apparently was bold enough to help him in this enterprise, whatever it was. She and Parsons were married in San Juan Capistrano on October 19, 1946 by a Justice of the Peace named Marco F. Forster, with Ed Forman and his wife Jeanne witnessing the event. Recorded in the Orange County Recorder's Office, the marriage took place just before Parsons’ JPL partner Frank Malina was invited by Julian Huxley to go to France and work for UNESCO. Rypinski opined that Malina left the country to distance himself from the scandal revolving around Parsons, as there apparently was an investigation into the house and possibly some newspaper exposure. But Malina himself says he was just looking for something different to do, which rings closer to the truth.
In late 1946, Parsons and Cameron left 1003 S. Orange Grove Ave., and the lodge, which met at several different places after this. The big house was later torn down to make way for apartments. Parsons also left his job with the Vulcan Powder Company, having been offered employment with the North American Aviation Corporation in nearby Inglewood, California, where he worked until 1948, when Hughes Aircraft in Culver City hired him.
In addition, Parsons engaged in consulting work. As such, he was often called on by the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office, the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles Superior Court, Northrup Aircraft Company, General Chemical Company, the National Defense Research Council, and the Office of Scientific Research and Development. Parsons was also a member of several technical societies, including the American Chemical Society, the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences, the American Institute for the Advancement of Science, the Society of Sigma Xi, and the Army Ordnance Association. His obituary said he had refused several honorary degrees, but there is no further evidence to support this claim. A membership in Sigma Xi seems unlikely due to his lack of a degree but is reported by two different sources, such that it is possible his reputation was enough to gain him entrance.
Disillusioned by the incident with Hubbard and Betty, Parsons drifted away from magick and focused his will on his technical career, although the two aspects of his life could never be completely separated. Unfortunately, his misfortune continued, and he had little success, nothing to equal the glory of his World War II efforts. On May 17, 1948, his two worlds collided, as he lost his government security clearance “because of his membership in a religious cult…believed to advocate sexual perversion…organized at subject's home…which had been reported subversive.” Elsewhere the FBI describes it as a “mythic love cult,” despite Parsons’ insistence it was “dedicated to the freedom and liberty of the individual.” The same old plagues were still haunting him.
In a letter to Karl Germer dated June 19, 1949, Parsons said he lost the clearance for membership in the OTO and for publicly circulating Liber OZ, a statement of “the rights of man.” Known also as Liber LXXVII, certain elements of the statement are understandably disturbing to different factions of society and, although Parsons may have viewed himself a teacher destined to affect the powers that be, the latter, according him, evidently perceived him and his ideas as a security risk. Liber OZ reads in full as follows:
The law of the strong: this is our law and the joy of the world.
—AL II:2
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
—AL I:40
Thou hast no right but to do thy will. Do that, and no other shall say nay.
—AL I:42-3
Every man and every woman is a star. —AL I:3
There is no god but man.
1. Man has the right to live by his own law—
to live in the way that he wills to do:
to work as he will:
to play as he will:
to rest as he will:
to die when and how he will.
2. Man has the right to eat what he will:
to drink what he will:
to dwell where he will:
to move as he will upon the face of the earth.
3. Man has the right to think what he will:
to speak what he will:
to write what he will:
to draw, paint, carve, etch, mould, build as he will:
to dress as he will.
4. Man has the right to love as he will: —
Take your fill and will of love as ye will,
when, where, and with whom ye will.—AL I:51
5. Man has the right to kill those who would thwart these rights.
The slaves shall serve.—AL II:58
Love is the law, love under will.—AL I:57
According to Parsons’ FBI file, however, the investigation was actually caused by his association with known Communists, a problem shared by his JPL/GALCIT comrades Frank Malina, Hsue-shen Tsien and Martin Summerfield. As early as 1938, the self-described anti-war, anti-capitalist Parsons had subscribed to the Daily People's World, a Communist paper, and had attended a few meetings of different groups during the subsequent years, joining the “subversive” American Civil Liberties Union in 1946. One of the early victims of what would become the McCarthy witchhunts, Parsons later testified in closed court that his interest was merely an intellectual one. He told them that thelema, the “will” aspect of Crowley's work, was definitely anti-communist and anti-fascist, which it is, and his clearance was finally reinstated on March 7, 1949. Nonetheless, Cameron left him soon after.
Humorously, Parsons’ FBI file is full of references to the “Church of Thelma.” There is also an unclear reference to Parsons doing something on September 21, 1948 to bring the attention of government officials upon him once more, but apparently nothing came of it. Parsons then spent two years on the staff of the University of Southern California's Pharmacology Department starting in 1948.
Despite his occupational troubles based in part on his occult activities—or possibly because of them—Parsons was unable to avoid the exotic lure. On Halloween of 1948, Babalon called on Parsons in some unspecified manner and urged him to resume his magick. Like so many who suffer the ills of the physical world, Parsons would turn once more to religion in his time of need, beginning a 17-day “working of the wand” (17 is a masculine number because of its association with Mars), the climax of which was Babalon's manifestation in a dream. He had Smith christen h
im “Belarion Armiluss Al Dajjal, AntiChrist” as he took the Oath of the Abyss. Oddly enough, considering the friction between them, Parsons remained close to Smith, the man who had married Parsons’ wife and who was also his superior in the A∴A∴. Their relationship was probably more formal than personal by this time.
At the conclusion of his 17-day working, Babalon instructed Parsons on an “astral working,” i.e., an out-of-body experience. Parsons had, by his own accounts, a “well-developed body of light,” so apparently this travel was an easy task for him. Indeed, he claimed success with a vision wherein he “went into the sunset with Her sign and into the night past accursed and desolate places and cyclopean ruins, and so came at last to the City of Chorazin. And there a great tower of Black Basalt was raised, that was part of a castle whose further battlements ruled over the gulf of stars.”
Chorazin was a small town on the Sea of Galilee that, according to the gospel story, Jesus cursed when the citizens would not repent (Mt. 11:21; Lk. 10:13). Later legends claimed that the Antichrist would be born in Chorazin, whose modern name is Kerazeh. The black basalt ruins of the city's old synagogue to which Parsons refers are still standing.
Regarding the title with which Parsons had himself christened by Smith, Belarion is an alternate spelling (presumably from the Greek) of “Belial,” a demon named in the Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Jewish apocrypha (hidden texts of dubious authenticity) whose name means “Without God,” as “Bel” or “Ba'al” means “God” or “Lord.” Belarion is often identified by Christian writers with the Beast in Revelation, with whom Aleister Crowley in turn identified himself. Rather than emulating his mentor, however, Parsons may have acquired the moniker from a fantasy novel which featured a character by that name.
The term Armiluss is the Jewish equivalent of the Antichrist. As the end approaches, Jewish eschatology states, the Messiah ben Ephraim (“born of Ephraim” or Israel, the northern kingdom) will come first, following by Armiluss who will lead the armies of Gog and Magog against the armies of the Messiah at the battle of Armageddon, murdering him. Ben Ephraim's corpse will be left for the scavengers, but the Messiah ben David (whom the Christians believe was Jesus) will appear and resurrect him.
