Part 14: The Tyranny of the Black Brotherhood

I had gathered a few things through Renny. The Jack Parsons Memorial Society ran an archive and lending library out of an old mansion near South Orange Grove. It turned out that The Book of the Antichrist, a copy of which Sheri had faxed me at the Hilton, was followed by Parsons' The Manifesto of the Antichrist. I had collected a copy of this, and copies of some related O.T.O. materials.

It was late in the afternoon on a warm and smoggy Pasadena day, and I decided to take the copies with me, and head for the park over in San Marino. In the hotel closet, I found an extra quilt, and I carried it with me out to the car. When I arrived at the park, I found a relatively secluded space, and spread the quilt over the grass in the shade of a tree. Much better. Now I could concentrate again.

My thinking was this: if Parsons thought he was the Antichrist, then he would undertake actions consistent with whatever it was the Antichrist was supposed to do. These activities were sure to stir up antagonism, even fanaticism, considering we were talking about the Big Bad Antichrist here. And Parsons was no ordinary Antichrist. This Antichrist was an explosives expert.

True, one coworker had described Parsons as the kindest man he had known. And von Karman had called him "an excellent chemist, and a delightful screwball" and noted he loved to recite pagan poetry to the sky while stamping his feet. It seemed evident that Parsons was liked by colleagues as well as the ladies. But that wasn't the point. The point was that now Parsons was getting political. He was no longer content just to discuss "fortune telling"--as he had so quaintly described his occult activities to the Pasadena police- -in private. No. Now he was writing manifestos and declaring war. I wanted to get an idea who would have felt threatened by Parsons.

First, the Manifesto. I followed my standard practice: Read all the way through. Then go back and focus on details.
 

THE MANIFESTO OF THE ANTICHRIST
by Jack Parsons

I, BELARION, ANTICHRIST, in the year 1949 of the rule of the Black Brotherhood called Christianity, do make my Manifesto to all men. And I, THE ANTICHRIST, come among you, saying:

An end to the pretense, and lying hypocrisy of Christianity.

An end to the servile virtues, and superstitious restrictions. An end to the slave morality.

An end to prudery and shame, to guilt and sin, for these are of the only evil under the Sun, that is fear.

An end to all authority that is not based on courage and manhood, to the authority of lying priests, conniving judges, blackmailing police, and

An end to the servile flattery and cajolery of mobs, the coronations of mediocrities, the ascension of dolts.

An end to restriction and inhibition, for I, THE ANTICHRIST, am come among you preaching the Word of the BEAST 666, which is, "There is no Law beyond Do What Thou Wilt."

And I BELARION, ANTICHRIST, do lift up my voice and prophesy, and I say:

I shall bring all men to the Law of the BEAST 666, and in His Law I shall conquer the world.

And within seven years of this time, BABALON, THE SCARLET WOMAN HILARION will manifest among ye, and bring this my work to its fruition.

An end to conscription, compulsion, regimentation, and the tyranny of false laws.

And within nine years a nation shall accept the Law of the BEAST 666 in my name, and that nation will be the first nation of earth.

And all who accept me, the ANTICHRIST, and the Law of the BEAST 666, shall be accursed and their joy shall be a thousand fold greater than the false joys of the false saints.

In the name BELARION shall they work miracles, and confound our enemies, and none shall stand before us.

Therefore I, THE ANTICHRIST, call upon all the Chosen and elect and upon all men, come forth now in the name of

Liberty, that we may end for ever the tyranny of the Black Brotherhood.

Witness by my hand and seal on this day of 1949, that is the year of BABALON 4066.

What a couple of weird names: Belarion and Hilarion. It sounded like a vaudeville couple. Maybe Parsons was going mad, as John Symonds had alleged. All this making of pronouncements and proclamation of laws to be followed. However, it was hard not to like a lot of what Parsons was saying.

No matter what Parsons called himself, who wanted to be on the side of "lying priests, conniving judges, blackmailing police"? Who wanted to defend the "tyranny of false laws"? This was dangerous stuff. Parsons was attacking the established order, fraught as it was with corruption, and papered over as it was with fake religion.

How would the U.S. government react to all this? Not well, I suspected. I looked through some of the other papers and found a statement from a Agape Lodge member in 1940 that Parsons traveled "under sealed orders from the government". But in 1948 he temporarily lost his security clearance due to the charge that his membership in a "sex cult" was subversive. After a closed court hearing, the charges were dismissed in April 1949, and his security clearance reinstated.

But in September 1950 he lost his job at Hughes Aircraft because he was in possession of classified documents. Some of these, however, were ones from his Cal Tech days, papers of which he was a co-author. Parsons argued that he was in the process of trying to convince the Israeli government to build a jet- propulsion laboratory and factory, and was using the documents only for background information. The Justice Department decided there were insufficient grounds for prosecution. But the Appeals Board was not amused, and withdrew his security clearance in January 1952.

So. The Antichrist wanted to build missiles for Israel. I tried to put this in perspective. Laying on my stomach on the quilt, I sketched out a brief chronology of Parsons' life, as I now understood it, in my notebook.

Oct 2, 1914: Parsons' birth.

1928: Jack Parsons, age 13, invokes "Satan" but reacts with "cowardice when He appear[s]."

1936: Parsons, age 21, shows up with his friend Ed Forman at Cal Tech wanting to build space rockets, something they have been working on for years. The GALCIT project is initiated under Theodore von Karman, with Frank Malina, Jack Parsons, and Ed Forman initially the key individuals. Money is always an issue, and Parsons and Forman later take jobs with the Halifax Powder Company in the Mojave desert.

1938: The Army Air Corps becomes interested in the research. Hap Arnold appears at the GALCIT laboratory in Pasadena wanting to know if rocket research could help him with the problem of air strips which were too short for takeoff of modern military planes.

1939: Parsons and his wife Helen (Northrup) join the Los Angeles (Pasadena) branch of Crowley's O.T.O. This group is known as the Agape Lodge, and is headed by Wilfred Smith. Smith and his wife have an innovative way of recruiting members via sexual seduction, according to member Louis T. Culling.

1940: The Army Air Corps takes over sponsorship of the GALCIT project. Parsons spends most of his time developing jet-assisted takeoff (JATO) units. Most of the JATO patents are in Parsons name. December: Jane Wolfe, a Crowley associate who is a member of the Agape Lodge, writes in her diary that Parsons travels "under sealed orders from the government." She also says she believes Parsons will be the future leader of the order.

March 1941: The head of the Agape Lodge, Wilfred Smith, writes Crowley that he had "at long last a really excellent man, John Parsons. And starting next Tuesday he begins a course of talks with a view to enlarging our scope."

1942: Parsons, von Karman, and others found Aerojet in order to build and sell JATO units to the Army Air Core. Parsons leaves his position as head of solid- fuel rocket research at the Army Air Core Jet Propulsion Research Project to take a similar position at Aerojet. March: Jane Wolfe writes Crowley: "I believe Jack Parsons--who is devoted to Wilfred--to be the coming leader." She goes on to note that he was "`sold on the Book of the Law' because it foretold Einstein, Heisenberg--whose work is not permitted in Russia--the quantum field folks, whose work is along the `factor infinite and unknown' lines, etc."

July 1943: Crowley wants to get rid of Smith and appoint Parsons head of the Lodge. But he has problems doing so, because there is a good bit of loyalty to Smith, including on the part of Parsons himself. Crowley writes an Agape Lodge member named Max Schneider: "As to Jack; I think he is perfectly alright at the bottom of everything; but he is very young . . ."

1944: Aleister Crowley expels Wilfred Smith from the OTO for turning the Agape Lodge into a "love cult". Smith leaves with Parsons' wife Helen, who had taken the place of Smith's previous mistress, Regina Kahl, as high priestess in weekly performances of the gnostic mass, in which Smith served as high priest. Crowley appoints Parsons as head of the California O.T.O. in Smith's place. Helen's sister "Betty" (as she is known around the house at 1003 S. Orange Grove) moves in with Parsons. Parsons, Theodore von Karman, and others found the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, near Devil's Gate Dam in the Arroyo Seco-- nearby the location of many of their early rocket tests.

August 1945: Parsons and Lafayette Ronald ("L. Ron") Hubbard are introduced by a science fiction illustrator named Lou Goldstone. Goldstone often visits at Parsons' place, and one day he brings Hubbard with him. Hiroshima and Nagasaki have just been devastated by atomic bombs. The world is amazed. Many people are elated. The social consequence, only seven years later, when every Pasadenan would be contemplating wearing a "colorimetric dosimeter," a chemical radiation detector, to tell who would live or die in an atomic raid, was the furthest thing from anyone's mind. Association with someone like Jack Parsons, conversant with JPL and Aerojet projects, is heady fare for Navy Lieutenant L. Ron Hubbard, on temporary leave, who is in any case eager to take up residence in a Bohemian house bustling with attractive women. After sleeping with as many of them as possible, Hubbard then creates turmoil by taking up with Betty, Parsons' own girlfriend. Parsons tolerates this (just as he had previously tolerated Smith's affair with his wife Helen) because, he says, he needs a magical partner, and he believes Hubbard can play that role.

Dec. 5, 1945: Hubbard is officially discharged from the Navy. He immediately applies for a pension, claiming various disabilities, and heads for Pasadena, where he moves in with Parsons. Betty (Sara Elizabeth Northrup) again devotes herself to Hubbard. Parsons, sans Betty, looks for a replacement, and decides to attract one through magic ritual. But Parsons has bigger things in mind also.

January 1946 to January 4: Parsons and Hubbard begin work on a magic ritual to attract a Scarlet Woman, through which Parsons will conceive a Moonchild. January 15: Parsons, Betty, and Hubbard start a company called Allied Enterprises. Parsons puts up most of the money, which he has from the sale of his Aerojet stock to General Tire. January 18: Parsons and Hubbard are in the Mojave desert, when Parsons realizes the experiment has succeeded, and tells Hubbard: "It is done." He returns home and finds the artist Marjorie Cameron, on visit from New York, waiting for him. "She is describable as an air of fire type with bronze red hair, fiery and subtle, determined and obstinate, sincere and perverse, with extraordinary personality, talent and energy," Parsons wrote.

January 4 to March 4, 1946: Parsons writes an account, called The Book of Babalon, of the whole magick working. Jan 19-Feb 27: Parsons continues to invoke Babalon with the help of Hubbard. Feb 28: With Hubbard gone on a trip, Parsons, invoking Babalon by himself in the Mojave desert, receives a revelation of 77 clauses, which he calls Liber 49. He claimed it was the fourth part of the heretofore three-part Book of the Law (Crowley's revelation). This claim upsets many Agape Lodge members. March 1-3: Following the instructions in Liber 49, Parsons and Marjorie Cameron spend three days in ritual sex, with Hubbard in attendance, in an attempt to conceive a moonchild.

March 6, 1946: Parsons writes Crowley: "I am under command of extreme secrecy. I have had the most important, devastating experience of my life." He goes on to say: "I believe it was the result of the IXth degree working with the girl [Cameron] who answered my elemental summons. I have been in direct touch with One who is most holy and Beautiful as mentioned in The Book of The Law. I cannot write the name at present. First instructions were received direct through Ron the seer. I have followed them to the letter. There was a desire for incarnation. I do not know the vehicle, but it will come to me bringing a secret sign. I am to act as instructor guardian for nine months; then it will be loosed on the world. That is all I can say now . . ." Crowley was annoyed with Parsons' secrecy, and wrote back he had no idea what Parsons was talking about.

April 1946: Hubbard and Betty head to Florida with Allied Enterprise money to purchase a boat on the East Coast, to be sold on the West Coast. Parsons doesn't hear from them subsequently, because they are in fact taking a luxury vacation with Parsons' money.

July 1946: Parsons tracks Hubbard and Betty to Miami, where he discovers they have purchased three boats. He files suit in Dade County court and gets possession of two of the boats, and part of the third. Parsons then dissolves Allied Enterprises, and Parsons and Hubbard part ways. But the first boat Hubbard had acquired with Allied Enterprise money had been the Diane. Hubbard would afterward combine Diane (which may have been another name for Babalon) with the then popular term cybernetics (Gk. "steersman") to form "Dianetics", the label Hubbard gave the philosophy and system of mind control which he created by combining his own science fiction concepts with the magick he learned from Jack Parsons as well from as the writings of Parsons' mentor Aleister Crowley. Later, mostly for tax reasons, Dianetics was renamed "Scientology."

August 1946: Hubbard, age 37, marries Betty (Sara Northrup), age 21. Hubbard is still married to his first wife at the time.

October 1946: Parsons, age 32, marries Marjorie Cameron, age 24. Crowley thinks Parsons has gone off the deep end with the Babalon working. Crowley writes Louis T. Culling: "About J.W.P.--all I can say is that I am very sorry--I felt sure that he had fine ideas, but he was led astray firstly by Smith, then he was robbed of his last penny by a confidence man named Hubbard." Sometime during 1946 Crowley suspends Parsons as OTO head.

December 1946: Crowley further writes: "I have no further interest in Jack and his adventures; he is just a weak-minded fool, and must go to the devil in his own way. Requiescat in pace."

1947: Parsons becomes involved in arms for Israel, according to von Karman.

Dec. 1, 1947: Aleister Crowley dies.

1948: Parsons loses his security clearance for doing classified government work, because "of his membership in a religious cult . . . believed to advocate sexual perversion . . . organized at subject's home . . . which had been reported subversive." He also breaks up with Marjorie Cameron. This break-up lasts until late 1949 or early 1950.

Oct. 31, 1948: The events recorded in The Book of the Antichrist begin. He has put away magick for two years, when Babalon calls.

March 1949: Parsons successfully defends himself against the subversion charges in closed court, and the Appeals Board reinstates his security clearance.

1949: Parsons writes The Manifesto of the Antichrist.

September 1950: Parsons loses his job at Hughes Aircraft for being in possession of classified documents, which he was using to persuade the Israeli government to build a jet-propulsion laboratory and manufacturing plant.

January 1952: The Appeals Board again revokes Parsons' security clearance.

July 17, 1952: Parsons, while making preparations for a trip to Mexico, where he will build an explosives factory for the Mexican government (he tells von Karman), is killed by an explosion at his garage laboratory at 1071 South Orange Grove at 5.08 p.m. He is pronounced dead an hour later at Huntington Memorial Hospital. His mother commits suicide after hearing of the death.

So. If Parsons had been involved in arms for Israel in 1947, as von Karman said, this would have been just prior to the founding of the state in 1948. This would probably imply continuing relationships afterward, hence leading to his 1950 proposal for an Israeli jet propulsion lab. Parsons was undoutedly contemplating building solid-fuel missiles as one of the by-products of the jet propulsion work. That was, after all, his specialty.

This had to be the key. Parsons' beliefs about the Antichrist, and similar beliefs--say concerning the Knights Templar--would have led Parsons to focus his attention on Jerusalem. Combine this with Parsons' need to make a living.

Who would Parsons have upset?

Parsons calling himself the Antichrist was powerful stuff. It would upset Christians concerned with the same matrix: namely, the notion of an end-time clash of Christ and Antichrist around Jerusalem.

And where would that lead? The image of Oral Jerry Swagger whom I had seen on TV in the room at the Hilton, talking about the final battle on the Plain of Esdraelon by Mount Megiddo (Armageddon) came to mind. To someone like Oral Jerry Swagger, I thought. Someone who is into beliefs as equally apocalyptic as those of Parsons himself. Given the right incentive, I thought, someone like that might want to kill the Antichrist. The Antichrist Jack Parsons.

Where was Oral Jerry Swagger based? I wondered. At the moment, I decided, he seemed as likely a possibility as any to look into. I wrote his name down in my notebook, and drew a box around it.

I closed my notebook, rolled over on my back and closed my eyes. Even though the lead might be tenuous, I felt strongly confident I was on the right track. The world was at peace. Perhaps I dosed for a moment.

When I opened my eyes again, the light had turned pinkish. I turned on my side and looked through the tree at the sky to the west. The sun had just set, the sky glowed with a reddish hue. One star was visible: the evening star, Venus.

It was time to go, I thought. I lay back for a moment. Then I saw the man staring at me. He was only a few feet from the quilt, short, rotund fellow, black hair, slicked back, perhaps olive skin--hard to tell in the light--and something in his hand. He raised his right arm as he lunged at me, and I saw it was a hand ax.

Instinctively, like a thousand times on the school playground or the wrestling mat, I swung my right leg up and caught him in mid-abdomen, simultaneously rolling to the left, sweeping my arm trying to catch his and deflect the ax from my face. His momentum and the pivot of my leg carried him completely over and to the side. I scrambled up and saw that he had dropped the ax as he had come down hard on the ground. I started to reach for it, but then a blur in the corner of my eye caused me to leap to one side. This one was taller, dressed in black, but with a pasty face. In shock, I realized it was the ghoul I had met at the Palladium, in Philadelphia. The ghoul picked up the ax. I turned and ran through an opening in a hedge, then turned again and ran parallel to the hedge. I glanced back to see if anyone had come through the opening. No one. I did a couple more turns. Where was I going? Was it safe to try for the car? I decided that sounded more attractive than wanderning around on foot in a strange part of town. I was a little disoriented, and it took me a minute to locate where I had parked. When I saw the car, I stopped a moment, looked around. Then I raced for the car and hopped in. Had the car been rigged? I turned the key. The engine started and I pulled out. I looked in the mirror and through the windows as I departed. There was no sign of either of them.

I thought about going back to the hotel. I passed a shopping center. There was a hardware store open. I went in and purchased a full size ax, and a large chef's knife. The blade on the latter was sturdy and razor sharp. There was a sporting goods store nearby. I bought a baseball bat, a nice Louisville slugger.

When I got back to the Hilton, I parked in the garage. I decided to leave the ax in the trunk. I kept the knife in my right hand, but pulled a shopping bag over the blade, wrapped the bag around my hand, and held the end along with the knife handle. People would be able to see I was carrying something rolled up, but not what exactly. I picked up the bat in my left hand and went into the Hilton.

"Any messages for me?" I asked at the desk. There weren't any. The woman at the desk looked at me strangely, with hostility. Maybe she was just reacting to my body posture, I thought. But maybe not.

At the door to my room I leaned the bat against the wall, and slipped in the card with my left hand. As the door lock clicked, I shoved open the door with my foot and picked up the bat. The room was partially lighted. The maid had turned down the covers, and left the bedside lamp on. I put the bat down on the bed, dropped the paper bag from the knife in order to get a better grip, and checked the bathroom and the closet. Everything seemed normal.

Normal. I turned on the TV, trying to return to a normal frame of mind. Maybe I would call Sheri and chat for a while.

Only then did I realized I had left my notebook back in the park with the two ghouls.