by John Carter
These 17 documents were said to be rough drafts of the proposal he was writing for Hughes, but they were mostly old JATO documents Parsons was using to pad his résumé. His “friend,” whom he said he had known for five years, turned him in, and on September 25 the FBI confiscated the documents. On September 26 at noon, they interviewed Parsons. His signed statement denies any wrongdoing, relating his claim that he was merely using excerpts from those documents, specifically the pricing data, to help complete his proposal to the Israelis, who had not seen any of the documents, or even the excerpts. In fact, the only person who had seen them was his “friend” the typist. Parsons said he knew that she and her husband both had confidential clearances, so he didn't see where any violation of security had occurred. This incident transpired before the more recent and restrictive “Need to Know” rules were in effect.
Parsons did admit that removing Hughes Aircraft property without permission was a “serious error of judgement,” but he had a property pass that he showed to the guard when he removed the papers, a common practice, Parsons told them. Displaying his characteristic trust and generosity of spirit, in his statement Parsons nobly absolved his “friend” of any complicity. He further said that he intended to check with the State Department when his proposal was complete, before sending it to Israel, where he only planned to work on projects that the U.S. had approved, and that the Technion Society had been set up to regulate such things.
Copies of Parsons’ statement were forwarded to the Air Force, the OSI, and the CIA. The Air Force replied that the incident was an Army matter. Subsequent statements were taken, and many acquaintances of Parsons and Cameron were interviewed. One referred to the couple as “characters and screwballs.” Another called Parsons a “crackpot.” References to earlier investigations of his “cult” at 1003 S. Orange Grove occupy much of the FBI file. One witness claimed to have gone to the house for a “weekend party” that turned into a rite wherein everybody removed their street clothes, put on ceremonial robes, and were subsequently drugged.
Another witness’ statement bears quoting in its entirety:
[T]he Parsons are an odd and unusual pair in that they do not live by the commonly accepted code of married life, and are both very fascinated by anything unusual or morbid such as voodooism, cults, homosexuality, and religious practices that are ‘different.’ Subject seems very much in love with his wife but she is not at all affectionate and does not appear to return his affection. [Two lines deleted.] She is the dominating personality of the two and controls the activities and thinking of subject to a very considerable degree. It is the opinion [deleted] if subject were to have been in any way willfully involved in any activities of an intentional espionage nature, it would probably have been on the instigation of his wife.
An FBI memorandum of January 27, 1951 shows Parsons was at that date still under investigation for “espionage,” stating that Parsons intended to turn the documents over to an individual who had offered him the promise of a position in Israel. It also describes him as a “former employee” of Hughes, meaning that he had been fired by then. Apparently he was fired immediately in September, when the breach of security was discovered. In the file is also a routing slip signed by J. Edgar Hoover.
In March 1951, Parsons moved from the house at 424 Arroyo Terrace in Pasadena to 1200 Esplanade in Redondo Beach, California, the address given by Jim Brandon but which does not appear in Parsons’ FBI file. Other addresses provided for Parsons and Cameron are 3416 Manhattan Avenue and 3212 Highland Avenue, both in Manhattan Beach, California.
On October 25, 1951, the Assistant United States Attorney decided not to prosecute the case, even though on December 15, 1950 seven additional classified papers were found to be in Parsons’ possession during the course of the investigation. These additional papers had highly technical titles such as “Ignition Studies of Restricted Burning Solid Propellant Jet Motors.” Curiously, the titles of the original 17 documents Parsons took (13 finished papers and four drafts) are still censored from the FBI file as of this writing. Although it is unverified, it has also been said that Parsons inadvertently employed jargon used by the Manhattan Project, the U.S. nuclear weapons program established in 1942 by Enrico Fermi.
On January 17, 1952, after one year and four months of investigation, the Board informed Parsons this they were pulling his clearance, which was never reinstated. The lack of reinstatement is curious, as officials at Wright-Patterson Field informed the investigators that the entire project had been declassified right after the war, even though some of the individual papers were still classified. Indeed, they recommended declassification of the papers in Parsons’ possession, as most of them were rather old. Regardless, his superiors just didn't trust him anymore. The combined effects of several investigations into the magical and sexual activities at the house on South Orange Grove Avenue, alleged communistic activities, previous loss of clearance, and two separate cases of taking classified documents all added up to mistrust. This tragedy hastened Parsons’ decline.
The investigation stressed Parsons, and sometime in late 1950 he turned to his chosen form of spirituality for relief, despite its troublesome implications. Expressing his discontent, Parsons wrote a short text addressed to the Moonchild who was yet to come. The text was to be a part of the Book of Babalon and read mournfully:
My daughter, it is now four years since I entered the infernal chapel, and partook of the sacrament of your incarnation. Since then, much that was prophesied at that time has come to pass. I have been stripped of wealth, of honor, and of love; and have participated not once but twice in my own betrayal, as it was foretold. But how else would I come to the understanding needful to make this your Book?
For thereby I have taken the Oath of the Abyss, and entered my rightful city of Chorazin, and seen therein the past lives whereby I came to this, the grossest of all my Workings. Now it would seem that the further matters of the prophecy are at work; events press on tumultuously, and ‘Time Is’ is write large across the sky [see Liber 49, vs. 3].
And against the time when ‘Time Has Been’ looms up in blood and fire to complete this labor, for your instruction and for the instruction and help of all men and women who shall survive that day.
God knows, there is much unsaid and badly said; obscurity, peevishness, haste and bad workmanship mar these pages, until sometimes I wonder if I do not do disservice to our cause. There is so much needful, so little available. Yet, since I have been chosen, I do my best.
Although I have had indications, they are not certain. I do not know who you are, nor where you are at this writing; nor have I ever sought to know. This I do know—that you are incarnate, that you will manifest at the appointed time, to carry on the work that is from the beginning: that shall be until we have all entered the City of the Pyramids. The links are certain—the Beast 666 [Crowley], the Pole Star 132 [Wilfred Smith], the dark passionate star Regina [Kahl], the bright deceitful star Cassup [Betty Northrup], the disastrous star of the White Scribe [Hubbard], and the wandering star, now nameless, in whom you were incarnated.
It is through them that this work is possible. To them, you are BABALON, and through you to all men it is dedicated.
Parsons didn't abandon demonic spirituality, or his love for women. He and Cameron reunited after a short separation, moving into the coach house of the F.G. Cruikshank mansion at 1071 S. Orange Grove Ave. Cruikshank still lived in the house, while Parsons and Cameron and several others rented rooms above the garage at 1071½ S. Orange Grove, just three doors down from the Parsonage. At this location, Parsons spent his nights painstakingly creating an exact duplicate of Dee's Enochian tablets, which have not survived.
Prior to the FBI investigation, Parsons had been planning to quit his job at Hughes Aircraft and finance a trip to Israel to pursue the proposal he had been trying to sell them for several years. Parsons and Cameron were now heading to Mexico to test an explosive “more powerful than anything yet invented,” to quote
filmmaker Renate Druks, who was an acquaintance of Cameron. Parsons was also still working on what he called “The Gnosis” and “The Witchcraft,” and reportedly had employment possibilities in Spain.
During this period, in one of his last letters to Karl Germer (Frater Saturnus), Parsons wrote:
No doubt you will be delighted to hear from an adept who has undertaken the operation of his H.G.A. [Holy Guardian Angel] in accord with our traditions.
The operation began auspiciously with a chromatic display of psychosomatic symptoms, and progressed rapidly to acute psychosis. The operator has alternated satisfactorily between manic hysteria and depressing melancholy stupor on approximately 40 cycles, and satisfactory progress has been maintained in social ostracism, economic collapses and mental disassociation.
These statements are mentioned not in any vainglorious spirit of conceit, but rather that they may serve as comfort and inspiration to other aspirants on the Path.
Now I'm off to the wilds of Mexico for a period, also in pursuit of the elusive H.G.A. before winding up in the guard finally via the booby hotels, the graveyard, or—? If the final, you can tell all the little Practicuses [3° = 8▫ in the A∴A∴] that I wouldn't have missed it for anything.
[Signed] No one. Once called 210.
Although he had intimately expressed to Germer some of the strain he was under, Parsons hated the German man he wrote, who succeeded Crowley as head of the OTO, and the letter was actually intended to sneer at Germer, as Parsons was leaving behind another job at a filling station for much greater things.
Expressing the glory of his life, Parsons wrote a poem, one of his last surviving, called “Star,” which closes the volume Songs for the Witch Woman:
I remember
When I was a star
In the night
A moving, burning ember
Amid the bright
Clouds of star fire
Going deathward
To the womb.
Oh moon
Red moon of my desire
My sisters’ and my brothers’ fire
Down the great hall of heroes
I the star seed
Wooed the incredible flower.
I alone
My need, my power
attained the dark house
and my bride.
I remember
When I was a god
In my hour
and like a god I died
By the deep waters,
Crucified.
And I dreamed
and the great powers
moved over me
And a voice cried
Go free, star, go free
Seek the dark home
On the wild sky
Good bye, star, good bye.
* * *
30. The Ship was published by Crowley in The Equinox.
31. Crowley claimed to have been Cagliostro as well. Presumably at least one of them is wrong.
32. The reference is to Crowley's Heart of the Master, which was written under the pseudonym Khaled Khan.
ten
Death and Beyond
By 1952, Parsons’ various appeals and endeavors seemed to have been working, as good fortune appeared to be shining upon him again at last. In fact, he was working for several different concerns, including one with JPL employee Charles Bartley, who had a pyrotechnics license and let Parsons store explosives at his Pacoima facility, at which the two worked as consultants doing special effects explosions for films. Parsons also was working at least part-time for the Bermite Powder Company in Saugus, California, where Cameron helped him mix explosives. And he had the job at the service station.
This seeming upturn was short-lived, however, as the ultimate catastrophe lay just around the corner. Six years earlier, on March 2, 1946, Hubbard had channeled an eerily prophetic message, after which, Parsons wrote, the ex-Navy man was “pale and sweaty”: “She [Babalon] is the flame of life, power of darkness, she destroys with a glance, she may take thy soul. She feeds upon the death of men. Beautiful—horrible…She shall absorb thee, and thou shalt become living flame before She incarnates.”
In addition, utilizing one of the two abilities Cameron claimed Parsons had taught her, i.e., to use her epileptic seizures to enter the astral plane (the other one being the tarot), Cameron claimed to have discovered a bottle of mercury beneath the floorboards in his laboratory, which, if Parsons had planted it there, was extremely careless for someone so experienced with dangerous chemicals. However, Parsons was indeed somewhat reckless with chemicals, which in the end may have been his doom.
On Tuesday, June 17, 1952 at 5:08 p.m. an explosion erupted in the lower level of 1071½ S. Orange Grove Ave. that was heard as far as a mile away. Tragically and horribly, Parsons was at the center of it. A second explosion occurred almost immediately, as if set off by the first. Flame consumed Parsons, as Babalon had predicted, and his right forearm was blown off so completely that only a few small pieces of it were found. The blast broke his other arm and both legs, left a “gaping hole” in his jaw, and shredded his shoes. Parsons was conscious when upstairs neighbors dragged him out from under an old-fashioned washtub, which can be seen in a photo reproduced in the Los Angeles Times on June 18.
The lower level of the coach house had been a stable, and the upper level had been servants’ quarters, which had been turned into apartments that Parsons, his mother, and Cameron occupied until June 1. At the time of the blast, Parsons’ mother, Ruth, had taken a summer position as caretaker for one Mrs. Carpenter, who was out of town with her husband, residing at 21 W. Glenarm St. with her friend Helen Rowan who was confined to a wheelchair.
The explosion blew the stable doors from their hinges, knocked over two walls, and tore a hole in the ceiling as well as a hole in the floor. Smaller doors and windows were blown from their frames, and two greenhouses 25 feet away were shattered. A grand piano upstairs shifted enough for one of its legs to break, and a chandelier fell. Windows were broken on the home next door. Artist Salvatore Ganci, one of the upstairs residents, was on the phone when the explosion occurred. “I was lifted off the couch by a violent blast,” he told the Pasadena Star-News reporter. The apartment was shared by 21-year-old Jo Ann Price, an actress and model, as well as actor Martin Foshaug, 31, and his mother Alta. No one upstairs was hurt.
Ganci and Mrs. Foshaug rushed downstairs and pulled Parsons from the wreckage, propping him up against a wall until paramedics could get there. Parsons was coherent enough to give them instructions as he was loaded into the ambulance and taken to Huntington Memorial Hospital at 100 Congress St. in Pasadena. The remarkable man died there at 5:45 p.m., some 37 minutes after the explosion. In March 1946, Parson had cryptically written, “And in that day [the manifestation of Babalon] my work will be accomplished, and I shall be blown away upon the breath of the father.” As Parsons lay dying, according to John Bluth, his last words are said to have been, “I wasn't done.” According to Jane Wolfe, Cameron related them as, “Who will take care of me now?” But it was not he who needed looking after, as he had passed on into the other side that he had so fervently tried to bring into this world.
From his birth, both Parsons and his mother shared a strong bond. After the sickening tragedy, Ruth Parsons and Helen Rowan went to a friend's home at 424 Arroyo Terrace, where her son and Cameron had been staying since June 1, which was described in a newspaper as a “two-story mansion.” Another friend, Mrs. Nedia Kibort, age 59, of 320 Waverly Drive, was in the house with them, where presumably they sought a little comfort after the dreadful news. Ruth was drinking heavily, and took two Nembutals from a prescription she received after the explosion. When she learned of her son's death she shouted, “I can't stand to live without him. I adored him.” She also said that she had a gun upstairs and then gulped the remainder of the sleeping pills—23 or 43, depending on the account—while Mrs. Rowan looked on helplessly. Another friend, a nurse named Nellie Smith, arrived soon after and found Ruth
slumped over in a living room chair. She phoned Dr. J.R. Huntsman of 65 N. Madison Ave., who pronounced Mrs. Parsons dead at 9:06 p.m. Her death was investigated by Lt. John C. Elliott, who had been at the scene of her son's death, and by Sgt. Woody Pollard.
Cameron was buying supplies for the Mexico trip at the corner grocery when the explosion occurred. The Pasadena Independent reported Cameron as being “stoic in the face of her double loss.” She told reporters and police that she and her husband were headed to Mexico for a vacation. Their luggage was sitting in the hallway at 424 Arroyo Terrace when Ruth committed suicide. Others told a different story.
Cameron's brother Robert, age 28, of 125 N. Rampart Blvd., stated that Parsons was headed to Mexico on business, “the nature of which was very secretive.” Presumably Robert would know, as he and Cameron's other brother, sister and father all worked at JPL. Someone else told the Independent that Parsons was going to set up his own business in Mexico, but Cameron insisted it was merely an extended trip. The amount of baggage, however, indicated a long-term stay. In fact, the couple were headed next to Israel, where they intended to raise a family.
Motorcycle officer Ernie Hovard was the first policeman on the scene of the explosion and was later joined by Donald M. Harding, a Pasadena police force criminologist. Harding found numerous containers of explosives, many of which had already been placed outside by Parsons, in preparation for the trip, which was obviously not for sightseeing. The legality of the explosives was questioned, and the 58th Army Ordnance Disposal Unit was called in from Fort MacArthur to help determine the cause of the explosion, as well as to inspect the immediate area and the house at 424 Arroyo Terrace for further explosives. As photographers took flash photos, Harding shielded certain of the remaining bottles, afraid that the light would set them off as well. The Disposal Unit removed the rest of the explosives from the premises, and the investigators and others began to speculate as to what caused the blast—nitroglycerin? Rocket fuels? Or the more exotic-sounding trinitrobenzene or PETN?33
