John Bear's revelations about L. Ron Hubbard reminded me of this related story involving a bomb of a rather different sort: When L. Ron Hubbard got out of the Navy after World War II, he moved into an old victorian house in Pasadena California occupied by a group of Cal Tech rocket scientists. The house was owned by one of the scientists named Jack Parsons. This guy was even stranger than Hubbard. The Amazon blurb for the book 'Sex and Rockets' sums it up: Jack Parsons was a brilliant scientist whose innovations in solid rocket fuel were responsible for Allied air victories in WWII as well as early advances in space flight. A cofounder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, he was honored by NASA for his accomplishments when they named a moon crater after him. But outside the laboratory, Parsons immersed himself in a shadowy world unknown to his professional colleagues -- a world where Parsons practiced occult rituals with his mentor, Aleister Crowley, a self-professed Antichrist. When Parsons befriended L. Ron Hubbard, who later ran off with Parsons's money and his wife, his life became even more peculiar. Ultimately, his increasingly obsessive experiments -- he aimed to create a creature with magical powers -- sparked a chemical explosion that killed him. A more detailed account can be found here: http://www.babalon.net/articles/chapman.html In one of the most celebrated feats in magickal history, Parsons and pre-Dianetics L. Ron Hubbard (whose role is too complicated to describe in this short essay) performed The Babalon Working, a daring attempt to shatter the boundaries of time and space... Apparently the idea was to conjure up an elemental succubus, and then to engage in sex magic in order to open a portal between dimensions in order to attract an Kali-like sex goddess named Babalon. Don't try to figure it out. (But if you must, a description of the magical theory is here) http://www.babalon.net/articles/metzger.html **Don't read it if you are easily offended.** (But our newsgroup theologians might appreciate it.) Somehow during the course of all this, a young woman named Betty stumbled into their weird world. While she may not have been quite a succubus, she *was* the daughter of the Northrop of 'Northrop/Grumman' fame. She became Jack's babe, but she eventually ended up running off with Hubbard, breaking up the Parsons/Hubbard partnership. (And later appearing in Kenneth Anger films.) Science fiction writer L.Sprague DeCamp tells of the Pasadena police being called to Parson's house because of all the naked women running around his front lawn. But Jack explained to the police that he knew precisely what he was doing because he was a scientist... Is California great, or what?? The two teams working to create the American space program were the Nazis in Huntsville Alabama, and the black magicians out in Pasadena California. Out of their combined efforts grew NASA, and eventually men on the Moon. NASA's space probes are controlled from out of JPL to this very day. When you saw all those crew-cut NASA guys in short sleeved white shirts and pocket protectors on TV, you never knew, did you?
Hey it is religion It is no stranger then believing a man can be nailed to cross for three days, die and return to life then fly into the realm of milk and honey laden with golden roads. "black magicians" Actually Aleister (Edward Alexander) Crowley was a Thelemic "white" magician. The media needs to get things right. Kane
