by Jon Atack

copyright © 2025

Published by Richard and Bonnie Woods

Introduction

Thirty years ago this summer, the first book I read about Scientology was Jon Atack’s essential history of the church, ‘A Piece of Blue Sky.’ I remember it being a surreal experience: As insane as L. Ron Hubbard and his creation obviously were, Atack’s deeply researched and calm telling of the story only made the barely believable truth of his story that much more indelible.
But even though that book provided a firm grasp on how Hubbard created such a mind-bending movement that, nearly 40 years after his death, remains dedicated to him as the only ‘Source’ of truth, it still left a great question unanswered.
Why? Why did Hubbard create Dianetics and then Scientology? What was Hubbard really getting at with his millions of words, thousands of bizarre policies, and his enslaving practices that are still “scripture” for thousands of people today?
Once again, it is Jon Atack who has put on his spelunking gear to dive deep into the dark recesses of occult history that informed Hubbard’s worldview, and the result is simply astonishing.
In his new book, ‘If Scientology Ruled the World: Nazi Occultism, Sex Magick, Space Aliens and the Second Coming,’ Atack begins with an alarming premise: What would this world be like if Scientology actually achieved its stated aims and “cleared” the planet Earth — and became its ruling class.
In order to answer that question, Atack takes us on a mesmerizing journey over a couple of centuries, following rivers of demented thought that meandered through various dubious human movements to show how misguided misinterpretations of contemporary science, mixed liberally with prejudice and fear, developed in strange and alarming ways.
Madame Blavatsky was a key conduit for much of the nonsense, of course, as was her acolyte Aleister Crowley. But Atack goes beyond these familiar figures to show how their ideas were inherited and carried away by other, less well-known synthesizers and crackpots of the late 19th and early 20th century.
The stunning result: Atack’s thoroughly researched chapters take us inexorably to the conclusion that the same basic ideas about race, domination, and pursuit of godlike powers came to inform both Hubbard and his bizarre Space Age church, but also the Aryan-obsessed fever dreams of Heinrich Himmler and his boss, Adolf Hitler.
The parallel with the Nazis is not a facile one. Atack’s exegesis of Himmler’s neo-pagan quasi-religion is stunning in its depth, and his comparisons to Hubbard’s own obsessions are beyond dispute. You will finish this book with a new understanding of Scientology and its true aims. And once again, it is Jon Atack’s calm, deeply researched prose that delivers this nearly incredible conclusion.

Tony Ortega, proprietor of the Underground Bunker, author of The Incredible Miss Lovely and former editor of The Village Voice.

1. Meet the Leader of the New World

‘The whole agonized future of this planet, every Man, Woman and Child on it, and your own destiny for the next endless trillions of years depend on what you do here and now with and in Scientology.’ L. Ron Hubbard.^[1]

The Total Freedom Party’s landslide victory was unprecedented. Everyone was exhausted by obedience to the political parties instead of the people, and the endless bickering between Democrats and Republicans: the constant name-calling, the pathetic media stunts, and the lurid scandals. The people voted to Make America Free Again!

‘By the People for the People,’ Total Freedom Party banners shouted. ‘On Day One, we’ll drain the swamp of corrupt politicians and yank the billionaires’ snouts from the trough. It’s time for payback!’

There were rumours that the US Senate fire four weeks after the inauguration was started by Party followers, but the new leader [delete David Miscavige] blamed the enemy within and immediately shut down every other political group. Critics were ‘anti-social personalities.’ A single word of dissent, and they were despatched to remote camps closed in by razor wire and patrolled by guards with orders to shoot complainers.

The Party gutted the bureaucracy, replacing thousands of civil servants with Scientology ‘Clears.’ Every cabinet member belonged to Scientology’s inner Sea Organization. Every school system had to convert to L. Ron Hubbard’s Study Technology. Volunteer Ministers flooded the hospitals giving ‘touch assists’ to the ill and hooking them up to ‘electropsychometers’ to undo the spiritual source of their illness. A healthy mind always has a healthy body. Only the unethical, the ‘degraded beings,’ suffer. Sickness always stems from the mind.

Through its new Congress, the Total Freedom Party outlawed voting in the United States. The people cheered. Just as they had in Germany and Austria in those heady days of Hitler’s Reich. The office of president was withdrawn, and Scientology’s leader became Chairman for Life. Martial law was declared. And still the people cheered.

Through the Internet, the Total Freedom Party quickly crossed national barriers, with stunning wins in countries around the world. The Party took hold like wildfire in Europe, Africa, Asia and Australasia. ‘Change! Change! Change!’ they chanted.

No one had expected the collapse of Chinese Communism, India’s Hindu Nationalists, or Putin’s United Russia party. The leader had unprecedented power: power on a global scale. World domination–the dream of Alexander, Genghis Khan and Hitler–was finally achieved. Stern-faced youngsters in gold-braided naval garb strutted shoulder to shoulder beside the leader on his whistlestop tour of the world.

‘Welcome to the New Era!’ he proclaimed at every stop. And the people cheered.

Media outlets that criticized the Leader or the Source–L. Ron Hubbard–were shut down; usually with collateral damage. Permitted media trumpeted the virtues of Scientology with Hubbard [delete Miscavige] portraits and quotations on every page. Schoolchildren waved flags at huge public rallies. They chanted, ‘Make it go right! Make it go right!’ or ‘The Way Out is the Way Through!’

Only the inner circle, the executives at the top of Scientology, had passed the Markabian Security Check. The Chairman made the announcement himself. It blanketed every media outlet on the planet:

Great news! Ron will return once every citizen of our New World has taken the Markabian Security Check. Markabians have infested our human race. We must eliminate them! Ron is waiting on the Mothership, eager to return and lead us into a bright new future. A world without insanity, crime or war. All hail L. Ron Hubbard, saviour of the universe!

You can wake up now, wipe the sweat from your brow. It was just a nightmare. Still, if you believe in God, this might be a good time to pray.

Could our world echo the perilously swift decline of Germany in 1933? Hitler published the Reichstag Fire Decree only four weeks after his inauguration as Chancellor. It forced the imprisonment of anyone unfriendly to the Nazi cause.^[2] Every murmur of political dissent was silenced. The concentration camps were soon crammed with communists, socialists, liberals, Jews, Romani, homosexuals and absolutely anyone who criticized Hitler or his minions.

Over the last decade, satisfaction with representative democracy has declined throughout the world. Ever more people believe that government by a ‘strongman’ is preferable–more than a quarter of survey subjects in 24 countries. A startling 58% believed in rule by ‘experts.’^[3] In neither case would our leaders be elected. Loss of faith in our elected representatives is further eroded by the deep urge for a parental figure when we no longer believe our own judgement. Adrift in the chaos, we long for certainty and accept the blandishments of tyrants.

With this decline in trust, we are prey to extremist authoritarian sects. Scientology has carefully courted celebrities, the rich, and the influential. It has members all around the world and billions of dollars. In the 1970s, its intelligence agency, the Guardian’s Office, infiltrated many western governments. It also made dossiers on influential people to bend them to its control. This intelligence agency still exists, reframed as the ‘Office of Special Affairs.’

Political change can happen very rapidly. France’s En Marche, founded in 2016, swept to power in both presidential and national assembly elections just fifteen months after its formation.^[4]

Using its billions, Scientology could fund a political strategy to take advantage of public disillusion with the existing political parties and the mounting sense of uncertainty and powerlessness as warfare and climate change escalate.

Absurd beliefs can lead to atrocious behaviours. If we stop believing in the value of human life, we can be misled into spilling it. Scientology sees opponents as ‘suppressive persons’ or ‘degraded beings,’ to use Hubbard’s terms; ‘life unworthy of life,’ to use the Nazis’ phrase.

The Nazis believed in their superiority through racial purity, which led directly to the deaths of more than fifty million people. Scientology believes that anyone who has not accepted the teachings of Lafayette Ronald Hubbard is ‘raw meat’ or ‘dead in the head.’ Hubbard taught that nonbelievers should have neither power nor authority in the world.

We should be tolerant of others’ beliefs, but we should not be silent where those beliefs might lead to catastrophe. Scientology itself probably won’t take over the world, but by understanding what a world run on Scientology’s rules would look like, we can understand why its followers should be given every opportunity to escape from its psychological slavery. And why extremist authoritarian sects with aspirations to world power must be taken seriously.

Scientology is not simply a belief system. In fact, most Scientologists cannot explain what they believe. Scientology is factually a devastating series of invasive and hypnotic techniques, carefully designed by Ron Hubbard to instil devotion and fervour. It is probably the most elaborate and invasive system of thought reform as yet developed.

No one studying the Nazi party in the 1920s could have predicted its sudden rise to power and the twelve years of devastation it caused. After the defeat of Nazism, few people would have predicted the twenty-first century rise of authoritarianism from its ashes.

Scientology has already generated more than 200 splinter groups. Its descendants in the large group awareness training movement have reached millions of people. Many of them have traded short-term elation for long-term collapse. Wrecked families, devastated livelihoods and broken health. The beliefs expounded by Ron Hubbard are dangerous to a free society. They are also both bizarre and fascinating.

Futurists use thought experiments to prepare for the future. This book is a thought experiment. It will show how the Nazis drew upon occult and pseudoscientific sources that closely parallel Scientology and other New Age authoritarian groups. It will also show that some of the strands of Nazism are also woven through Scientology. For the first time, the common origin of both Scientology and Nazi Aryan Race theory will be revealed.

Modern genetics has shown that the Nazis’ Aryan Race Theory is a complete nonsense, yet it led to a systematic programme of mass murder. Scientology’s current leader, David Miscavige, has promoted L. Ron Hubbard’s paranoid belief that aliens are taking over human bodies as part of a plan to control the world. If he came to power, millions of innocent people might be slaughtered in a vast witch-hunt. Anyone who questioned Scientology or its leadership would be a Markabian, and Markabians are enemies of all mankind and must be destroyed.

Although I don’t believe Scientology will take over the world, at least not in its present form, it has created the basis for hundreds of manipulative groups, one of which could grab political power. Over the decades, Scientology has sponsored many business training groups as part of the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises (WISE). Werner Erhard’s Scientology spinoffs est or Landmark are among the many groups to have exported Scientology ‘technology’ into business and academia. Indeed, ‘team-building’ exercises have been markedly influenced by Scientology concepts.

Scientology has made willing slaves out of strong, successful, formerly independent people. It has financially ruined thousands, wrecked marriages, broken up families and driven followers to suicide. Scientology has a ‘technology’ that erodes compassion and self-determination and makes its adherents self-righteous and smug while doing so. This is exactly what happened in the Nazi Reich.

If we do not understand Scientology’s ‘technology’ as it really is–not as its creator pretended it to be–then we or our children may well fall prey to that ‘technology.’ Scientology would make a totalitarian state–a total authoritarian state–at the drop of a hat. Inside Sea Organization compounds all around the world, it already has.

Scientology’s Sea Organization–or Sea Org–has about four thousand members. They sign a billion-year contract, promising to return life after life until the galaxy is Cleared of ‘aberration.’ They work a ninety-hour week for pocket money. Pregnant members usually accept termination rather than being exiled to an ‘outer’ organization with a newborn. Scientology is most certainly not pro-life, but nor is it pro-choice.

Sea Org members are forced to ‘comply’ with orders without hesitation and snitch on their fellows in ‘ethics reports’–an echo of the Gestapo system. They must also confess to their most embarrassing sexual indiscretions and stay silent while those indiscretions are exposed at public meetings.

Sea Org members are subjected to bouts of in-the-face yelling called ‘severe reality adjustments.’ Their food and their lodgings are basic. Most have lost their sex-drive or any appreciation of life through sheer exhaustion.

A Sea Org member can be reduced to a few hours’ sleep a night, every night. Often, they work through a Wednesday night, because their weekly production statistics are gathered the following afternoon. They have no medical or dental insurance. When they are too old to work, they are abandoned on the street. There is no such thing as a pension from Scientology. Staff are kept at a frenzy with the ominous idea that World War Three will start if they fail to spread Scientology to everyone on the planet.

Sea Org members sign a billion-year contract to liberate humanity but end up enslaved in an international paramilitary organization directed by a single, relentless leader [remove David Miscavige]. Total freedom is the stated objective of Scientology, as it brings ‘man to Total Freedom.’ But as L. Ron Hubbard also admitted total freedom ‘is a perfect trap.’^[5]

What if Scientology or one of its many offspring did gain political power? We’ll compare the occult beliefs of the Nazi party’s founders and the sex magick that was the foundation of Hubbard’s own extremely secret personal belief system. Let us begin with a look at Hitler’s most powerful deputy: Heinrich Himmler.

1. 
   

   HCOPL Keeping Scientology Working, 7 February 1965 – Technical Bulletins of Dianetics and Scientology, vol.6, p.4. ↑

   
   
2. 
   

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_Fire_Decree accessed 12 October 2024. ↑

   
   
3. 
   

   https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/02/28/representative-democracy-remains-a-popular-ideal-but-people-around-the-world-are-critical-of-how-its-working/ accessed 12 October 2024. ↑

   
   
4. 
   

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_(French_political_party) accessed 13 October 2024. ↑

   
   
5. 
   

   L. Ron Hubbard, Religious Philosophy and Religious Practice, 21 June 1960; and L. Ron Hubbard, The Reason Why, 15 May 1956. ↑

   
   

2. Himmler’s lust for superpowers

‘We live in an era of the ultimate conflict with Christianity. It is part of the mission of the SS to give the German people … the non-Christian ideological foundations on which to lead and shape their lives.’ Heinrich Himmler, 1937.^[1]

Hitler was the figurehead of the Nazis. He ranted at public rallies and his grimace scowled out from posters throughout the Third Reich and its many dominion states. The troops of the Wehrmacht swore an oath of loyalty directly to him. But Hitler didn’t manage the Third Reich. A small group of fanatics ran the gruesome business of war and devastation. Among them a failed chicken farmer called Heinrich Himmler.

Himmler was the Minister for the Interior, and head of both the Gestapo and of the fearsome SS. He commanded the military Waffen-SS whose Einsatzgruppen waged an extermination campaign throughout the expanding Reich. He commanded the Death Camps, where millions were murdered. After Hitler, he was the most powerful man in the whole Reich. He was also a fervent believer in magic and superpowers.

Himmler believed he was a reincarnation of the medieval King Heinrich the Fowler (Heinrich die Vogler). At his castle at Wewelsburg, Himmler recreated a Round Table in anticipation of the return of the court of the fictional King Arthur. SS leaders were given lectures about reincarnation and the ancient Aryan identity, and learned eastern meditation and yoga at Wewelsburg.

As soon as the Nazis were established in government, Himmler began an immense project to prove that before the Roman invasion in the first century CE, Aryans had ruled a German empire. They were descendants of the gods themselves and had come to Earth from space, encased in ice. Himmler was determined to restore the ‘electron powers’ of these imaginary ancestors by hybridizing SS men with blond, blue-eyed women. Thousands of children were born in the hostels of the Lebensborn.

In 1935, to prove his fantasy, Himmler created the Ahnenerbe for research into ‘ancient heritage.’ This government ministry had 50 departments and ‘researched’ a roster of occult practices including astrology, palmistry and dowsing. It sent missions to Iceland, Finland, France, Romania, Syria and Saudi Arabia, Antarctica, Poland, Crimea, Sweden and Tibet, and sponsored hugely expensive archaeological digs.^[2]

Himmler’s beliefs were shared by many senior Nazis including Deputy Führer Rudolph Hess, Nazi ideologue and government minister Alfred Rosenburg,^[3] and Hans Frank the governor of Poland.^[4] Without belief in the German Aryans, there would have been no Nazi regime and no Second World War. Fifty million lives would not have been wasted.

The occult ideology of the Nazis has common origins with the occult ideology of Scientology. Before exploring the bizarre beliefs of the Nazis, let us look at Scientology’s relationship to Aleister Crowley’s ‘sex magick.’

1. 
   

   Josef Ackerman, Heinrich Himmler als Ideologe, Göttingen, 1970, cited by Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler, p.270. ↑

   
   
2. 
   

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahnenerbe accessed 27 March 2025. ↑

   
   
3. 
   

   see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Rosenberg accessed 8 November 2024. ↑

   
   
4. 
   

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Frank accessed 8 November 2024. ↑

   
   

3. L. Ron Hubbard as the Antichrist

‘Religion is always different than the truth,’ Ron Hubbard.^[1]

Scientology’s biggest secret was safely locked away until 1988, two years after its founder’s death. Then only a handful of the truest believers were made privy to this astonishing disclosure. Only those who had ascended the existing 27 levels of L. Ron Hubbard’s Bridge to Total Freedom–and had paid $28,000 for the newly released final instalment–only that wealthy and extraordinarily dedicated group were given access to the true meaning of Scientology.^[2] They were allowed to share Ron Hubbard’s most precious secret, kept hidden by him for decades.

Everyone in this tiny group had dedicated years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to Scientology. Only tens had made the cut. They had willingly ‘disconnected’ from anyone who might be a ‘potential trouble source’ to Scientology: anyone who criticized Hubbard or revealed any of the mountain of negative information about his organization. Their behaviour had been monitored by Scientology’s ‘Ethics Officers’ from the day they first walked through the door of an ‘Org’ or ‘Mission’ years before. They had complied with every demand to walk Hubbard’s ‘white-taped route’ to ‘total freedom.’

These true believers had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to reach this, the ultimate level of Scientology. The promise was alluring. On completion of Section VIII of the Operating Thetan Course the recipient would be ‘AT CAUSE KNOWINGLY AND AT WILL OVER THOUGHT, LIFE, FORM, MATTER, ENERGY, SPACE AND TIME, SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE.’^[3] This was printed in the capital letters it deserves.

At last, the faithful would realize the promised superpowers that Hubbard had tantalised audiences with for decades: they would be able to leave their bodies at will and travel through the galaxies; to make matter appear and disappear; to explode planets and create stars if that was their whim. They would not simply be magicians: they would be gods.

Of course, none of these devout believers actually achieved even the slightest supernatural powers. To the horror of the leadership, despite years of devotion, some of them bolted from Scientology after reading the shocking content of Hubbard’s introduction to Section VIII of the Operating Thetan Course, where he revealed his mission to destroy Christianity.

Hubbard confessed that his intention from the very beginning was to assist Lucifer in bringing the Antichrist to Earth to thwart the Second Coming of Christ, which, according to Hubbard, will actually be a ‘mass landing’ of aliens from the Markabian planetary system.

Just a few days after its release, the Hubbard declaration was removed from OT VIII, the peak and pinnacle of Scientology’s ‘spiritual technology.’ Those who boarded the Freewinds–Scientology’s Caribbean cruise liner–were no longer shown Hubbard’s avowed determination to undo Christianity. The true purpose of Scientology was quickly concealed, even from its most loyal followers.

This bizarre document is authentic: Scientology’s lead attorney Kendrick Moxon verified its authenticity by filing suit for copyright infringement when it was published.^[4]

I first saw it before it was released by Scientology. I knew that the content was accurate, but I it seemed impossible that Hubbard would so brazenly admit to his true intentions. It exposed his absolutely secret, private and personal core beliefs. Something he kept rigorously shielded for the last forty years of his life.

But, as he said, ‘If you become too incredible, you become invisible.’ As we shall see, Hubbard often hinted at his role as a confidence trickster, but Scientologists want to avoid the cognitive dissonance these confessions would bring them. As a believer, I spent nine years downplaying the red flags in Scientology. No one wants to have their world turned upside down. We ignore our heroes’ feet of clay.

L. Ron Hubbard was one of the most incredible people who has ever lived. I mean ‘incredible’ literally: it is almost impossible to believe that he wasn’t jailed for life given the magnitude of the criminal activities he directed all around the globe. Yet, he died with $648 million in unspent assets and only two minor criminal convictions, both before he became, in his own words, the only significant investigator in the field of the human mind:

In fifty thousand years of history on this planet alone, Man never evolved a workable system. It is doubtful if, in foreseeable history, he will ever evolve another … It has taken me a third of a century in this lifetime to tape this route out … It has been proven that efforts by Man to find different routes came to nothing.^[5]

Hubbard had a dizzyingly high opinion of himself, but unknown to any of his thousands of followers, he believed he was guided by a pagan goddess, and he was fixated on Aleister Crowley’s sleazy Sex Magick. But what other evidence supports Hubbard’s belief that he was the agent of Lucifer and the Antichrist? Was his essential purpose really the overthrow of Christianity? It seems fanciful, but the evidence is overwhelming. If we can overcome the cognitive dissonance it causes and accept that sometimes what seems too incredible is in fact true.

In his last message, Hubbard replayed his belief that the alien Markabians had already arrived on Earth and were causing, ‘progressive genetic “evolution” that gives the subject population greater and greater susceptibility to’ their ‘telepathic impingement and direction…’.

If Scientology does take power, it is very possible that they will seek out the Markabians Hubbard believed are among us. Any critic of Hubbard or his often-bizarre Scientology ideas will be executed, because only a Markabian would try to stop Scientology.

The Markabians are ‘degraded beings.’ They are sub-human. In Nazi terms, they are ‘life unworthy of life.’ This is how the Nazis classified the tens of millions they sterilized or murdered. That is how anyone who speaks out will be treated.

In his secret directive, speaking about the need to stop the Second Coming of Christ, Hubbard said, ‘I had an inkling, but only that, of the insidiousness of this material as far back as 1945.’ To understand this, we must explore Hubbard’s relationship with Aleister Crowley’s Sex Magick.

1. 
   

   L. Ron Hubbard, ‘Incidents on the Track: Before Earth, Technique 88, Lectures’. ‘Overt Acts, Motivators and DEDs’, lecture, 25 June 1952. Transcript p.185. ↑

   
   
2. 
   

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OT_VIII accessed 10 October 2024. ↑

   
   
3. 
   

   L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology 8.80: The Book of Basics. ↑

   
   
4. 
   

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OT_VIII accessed 10 October 2024. ↑

   
   
5. 
   

   L. Ron Hubbard, HCOPL ‘Safeguarding Technology’ 14 FEBRUARY 1965 (Reissued on 7 June 1967). ↑

   
   

4. The Empress – Hubbard’s Holy Guardian Angel

‘Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.’ Aleister Crowley.^[1]

‘If you intend something to happen it happens if you intend it to happen.’ Ron Hubbard.^[2]

 

I agree with very little in the philosophies of either Crowley or Hubbard, but I do agree with them both that it is important to define and understand the words we use. The word ‘occult’ literally means ‘concealed.’ It has come to mean, ‘magical,’ or more exactly, practices that ‘involve knowledge or use of the supernatural.’ The Oxford English Dictionary specifically lists magic, alchemy, astrology and theosophy as ‘occult.’ Crowley and Hubbard both developed occult systems.*

Who on earth was the Empress? The question had puzzled Jo for thirty years. In 1954, when she was Ron Hubbard’s personal assistant, over his usual noontime breakfast, Ron Hubbard casually told her that his breakthrough book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health was ‘automatic writing’ dictated by ‘the Empress.’ Four hundred pages written and readied for publication in just six weeks. Quite something, even for a man whose typewriter had a ‘the’ key.

I knew enough to satisfy Jo’s curiosity, but it took years to piece the whole story together; and a very strange story it is. The first lead was an article in Astounding Science Fiction magazine, printed immediately before Dianetics, where Hubbard openly admitted to using ‘automatic writing, speaking and clairvoyance’ in his ‘research.’^[3] Strange admissions for the creator of a ‘modern science.’

But who had dictated this ‘automatic writing’ to him? In the 1930s, Hubbard befriended fellow adventure-writer Major Arthur J. Burks. Burks later described an encounter with ‘the Redhead.’ Hubbard signed letters to his first wife ‘The Redhead,’^[4] and Burks’ description is clearly him. Hubbard told Burks that he was kept safe when flying by a ‘smiling woman’ in a green gown with red hair who appeared on his glider’s wing.^[5] Burks, himself a minor mystic, suggested that she was Hubbard’s ‘monitor’ or guardian angel.

Although Hubbard was barely the ‘barnstorming’ pilot he claimed to be, he did fly gliders at college at the beginning of the 1930s. And as a twenty-year-old, he was already seeing things.

Privately, very privately, Hubbard admitted to his son Nibs that his bible was Aleister Crowley’s Book of the Law.^[6] He told Nibs he’d first read it at the age of sixteen. In the Book of the Law, we find Hubbard’s guiding ethos:

We have nothing with the outcast and the unfit; let them die in their misery. Compassion is the vice of Kings; stamp down the wretched and the weak; this is the law of the strong; this is our law and the joy of the world. I am of the snake that giveth Knowledge and Delight, and stir the hearts of men with drunkenness. To worship me take wine and strange drugs…. They shall not harm ye at all. It is a lie, this folly against self…. Be strong, Oh man! Lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture … the kings of the earth shall be kings forever; the slaves shall serve.

Them that seek to entrap thee, to overthrow thee, them attack without pity or quarter, and destroy them utterly.^[7]

The essential Crowleyite concept is thelema or the will. Crowley sought to hone his will so that he could command the minds of others and affect events in the physical world: the central purpose of both magic and Scientology. Hubbard simply replaced the word ‘will’ with ‘intention.’ Indeed, Scientology is a rewording of traditional magic cloaked in the pretence of scientific research. At its heart is the promise that devotees will learn how to impose their will on others without their knowledge or consent. This is the core desire of magicians throughout history.

Crowley expressed his philosophy in the maxim, ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.’ The statement comes from the great comic writer Rabelais and his ‘temple of thelema’. It is completed by ‘Love is the law, love under will.’ Neither Hubbard nor Crowley were especially loving, but both used their will to control and dominate followers, many of whom came to grief. Morality was of little interest to either man. They lusted after power through complete dominion over the souls of their followers. Indeed, in the ‘axioms’ on which Scientology is based, Hubbard dismissed morality: ‘Goodness and badness, beautifulness and ugliness are alike considerations and have no other basis than opinion.’^[8]

Hubbard’s fascination with the occult led him in 1940, at the age of 28, to membership in the Ancient and Mystical Order of the Rosicrucians (AMORC). He completed the first two ‘neophyte’ degrees.^[9] The founder of AMORC had been acknowledged as an adept by the founder of the Ordo Templi Orientis^[10]–which Crowley would soon afterwards head–and had absorbed ideas from Theosophy (which influenced Crowley, Hubbard and the Nazis, as we shall see).

Hubbard probably picked up the idea of levels of initiation for his Scientology Bridge from his studies with the Rosicrucians. Reincarnation–not a common notion in the West until the 1960s–is a core belief of both the Rosicrucians and the Crowleyites. In 1984, a high-level Rosicrucian told me that Hubbard had incorporated into Scientology AMORC teachings he had vowed to keep secret.^[11]

*As he said in his 1980 OT VIII declaration, 1945 marked Hubbard’s first ‘inkling’ of his anti-Christian mission. That August is when John Whiteside Parsons, usually known as Jack, met Ron Hubbard at a party. In December, Hubbard checked out of the navy hospital where he’d spent the final year of World War Two nursing a supposed ulcer. Contrary to his tall tales, he was neither ‘crippled’ nor ‘blinded’ at the end of the war.^[12] Hubbard drove the 370 miles from Oakland to Pasadena, to Parsons’ home on South Orange Grove. He took up residence in the yard in his trailer.

Parsons was a young chemist and the founder of Jet Propulsion Laboratories at the California Institute of Technology. He was an innovator of solid fuel for rockets, without which the moon landings and indeed space travel would not have been possible. Jet Propulsion Laboratories would later become NASA, though by that time Parsons had been dismissed.

Parsons was a scientific genius. He was also a devout follower of Aleister Crowley – the ‘wickedest man in the world’ according to the newspapers. Crowley had proclaimed himself ‘the Beast 666’ to usher in the reign of the Antichrist and Armageddon, the war to end all wars. His rituals were distributed to a tiny band of acolytes under the title ‘Master Therion.’

Parsons was besotted with Crowley’s ‘Sex Magick’ and had just become head of the Agape Lodge of Crowley’s Church of Thelema in Los Angeles. The Agape Lodge was part of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), the small international group headed by Crowley. The OTO originated in Germany alongside the occult group that founded the Nazi party. We will unpick their common origin later.

Parsons lived in a rambling house full of fellow eccentrics and known as the Parsonage. When Hubbard moved in, Parsons was bedding his own wife’s 21-year-old sister, Sara, who soon transferred her affections to Hubbard.

Just a couple of weeks after moving in, Hubbard, Sara and Parsons formed Allied Enterprises a venture to buy and sell yachts. Hubbard’s stake was $1,183.91, Sara added nothing of monetary value, and Parsons handed over his entire savings–$20,970.80.^[13]

Parsons wrote to Crowley that Hubbard had ‘described his angel as a beautiful, winged woman with red hair, whom he calls the Empress, and who has guided him through his life and saved him many times.’

In the Crowleyite system, adherents subject themselves to their ‘Holy Guardian Angel’ their guide to magical power, to dominion over earthly things and the minds of earthly beings. This is the answer to Jo’s question about the spirit Hubbard said had dictated Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health to him: the Empress was Hubbard’s Holy Guardian Angel.

It is important to take a breath and note that this Empress was also seen as the destroyer of mankind. Of the Empress, Crowley said, ‘She combines the highest spiritual with the lowest material qualities.’^[14]

Shortly before Hubbard ran away with Parsons’s loot and his girlfriend, he participated with him in magical rituals which have received much attention among subsequent practitioners of Sex Magick.

Western Sex Magick has its origins in Buddhist and Hindu Tantra where adepts have sex with hired women in the attempt to achieve magical power or spiritual illumination. There is nothing in the Buddha’s teaching to support the practice.

A superficial version of Tantra has long been promoted by Sting. The Beatles put Crowley on the cover of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as one of the ‘people we like.’ Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page also openly admired Crowley–and bought his Scottish house–it is possible that he also practised Crowley’s version of tantra. It was never a stairway to heaven. Parsons and Hubbard used Sex Magick as a stairway to the depths of hell in their attempt to incarnate the forces of the Antichrist.

To Aleister Crowley the personification of the feminine was ‘Babalon,’ his capricious respelling of Babylon.^[15] Chapter seventeen of St. John’s Revelation tells of ‘Babylon the Great,’ the ‘Scarlet Woman’:

With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication … I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.

Crowley’s black magic centred upon Babalon, and he identified himself with the ‘Beast’ upon which Babalon is to ride in her conquest of the Earth. In his novel, The Moonchild, Crowley described the creation of an ‘homunculus,’ elsewhere described by him as ‘a living being in form resembling man, and possessing those qualities of man which distinguish him from beasts, namely intellect and power of speech, but neither begotten and born in the manner of human generation, nor inhabited by a human soul.’^[16] Crowley said this was ‘the great idea of magicians of all times: to obtain a Messiah by some adaptation of the sexual process.’^[17] Crowley’s ‘Messiah’ was the Antichrist who would overthrow Christianity: a child or incarnation of Babalon the Great.

The secret rituals of Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis were made public by Francis King in 1973. They lay out the strict sequence of mystic rites and initiations that the adept is to follow as a series of ‘degrees.’ Jack Parsons was intent upon conjuring Babalon’s offspring as a ‘Moonchild.’ He wanted to incarnate the ‘Eternal Whore’ in human form using Crowley’s Rituals. The ceremonies, which Parsons originally recorded in audio form, are known as ‘The Babalon Working’. Parsons’ transcription was later typed and given very limited distribution as ‘The Book of Babalon.’

In January 1946, Parsons performed the VIIIth degree of the OTO, with Hubbard’s assistance. The ritual is called ‘Concerning the Secret Marriages of Gods with Men,’ or the ‘Magic Masturbation.’^[18] After a lengthy preamble to the ritual we find the following, under the title ‘Of Great Marriages’:

On every occasion before sleep let the Adept figure his goddess before him, wooing her ardently in imagination and exalting himself with all intensity toward her.

Therefore, with or without an assistant, let him purge himself freely and fully, at the end of restraint trained and ordered unto exhaustion, concentrating ever ardently upon the Body of the Great Goddess, and let the Offering be preserved in Her consecrated temple or in a talisman especially prepared for this practice. And let no desire for any other enter the heart. Then shall it be in the end that the Great Goddess will descend and clothe Her beauty in veils of flesh, surrendering her chaste fortress of Olympus to that assault of thee, O Titan, Son of Earth!

It does not take much imagination to understand what Hubbard was watching Parsons do. The ritual was masturbation and the ‘Offering’ was semen.

These performances took place over twelve consecutive nights in January 1946.^[19] To the strains of a Prokofiev violin concerto, Parsons made a series of eleven invocations, including the ‘Conjuration of Air,’ the ‘Consecration of Air Dagger’ and the ‘Invocation of Wand With Material Basis on Talisman.’ Crowley’s executor John Symonds, in his book The Great Beast, explains that ‘wand’ is a Crowleyism for ‘penis.’^[20] Even after all of these exertions, a disappointed Parsons wrote to Crowley ‘nothing seems to have happened.’

One night, there was a power failure, but nothing more eventful, until January 14, when a candle was knocked from Hubbard’s hand. Parsons said, Hubbard ‘called me, and we observed a brownish yellow light about seven feet high in the kitchen. I banished with a magical sword, and it disappeared. His [Hubbard’s] right arm was paralyzed for the rest of the night.’

The next night, Hubbard saw a vision of one of Parsons’ enemies. Parsons described this in a letter to Crowley, adding: ‘He attacked this figure and pinned it to the door with four throwing knives, with which he is expert.’

In the same letter, Parsons again spoke of Hubbard’s guardian angel: ‘Ron appears to have some sort of highly developed astral vision. He described his angel as a beautiful winged woman with red hair, whom he calls the Empress, and who has guided him through his life and saved him many times … Recently, he says, because of some danger, she has called the Archangel Michael to guard us … Last night after invoking, I called him in, and he described Isis nude on the left, and a faint figure of past, partly mistaken operations on the right, and a rose wood box with a string of green beads, a string of pearls with a black cross suspended, and a rose.’

Parsons performed rituals which led up to ‘an operation of symbolic birth.’ Then he settled down to wait. For four days he experienced ‘tension and unease … Then, on January 18, at sunset, while the Scribe [Hubbard] and I were on the Mojave Desert, the feeling of tension suddenly snapped … I returned home, and found a young woman answering the requirements waiting for me.’

The woman was Marjorie Cameron. Parsons wrote to Crowley: ‘I seem to have my elemental. She turned up one night after the conclusion of the operation and has been with me since … She has red hair and slant green eyes as specified.’ An ‘elemental’ is a spirit of nature.

Parsons continued to invoke Babalon. On February 28, he went out to the Mojave on his own, and ‘was commanded to write’ a ‘communication’ from Babalon, supposedly an additional chapter for Crowley’s Book of the Law. This rambling ‘communication,’ similar in style to Crowley’s ‘inspired’ writings, describes Babalon, and the tribute she seeks to exact. Further, it describes the ritual which Parsons is to perform. Babalon is to provide a daughter, and Parsons is charged with a significant task:

In My Name shall she have all power, and all men and excellent things, and kings and captains and the secret ones at her command … My voice in thee shall judge nations … All is in thy hands, all power, all hope, all future … Thy tears, thy sweat, thy blood, thy semen, thy love, thy faith shall provide. Ah, I shall drain thee like the cup that is of me, BABALON … Let me behold thee naked and lusting after me, calling upon my name … Let me receive all thy manhood within my Cup, climax upon climax, joy upon joy.

During the first two days of March 1946, Parsons prepared an altar and ceremonial equipment according to the instructions he had just received. Hubbard had been away for a week, but: ‘On March 2 he returned, and described a vision he had that evening of a savage and beautiful woman riding naked on a great cat like beast.’

Hubbard and Parsons set to work immediately. As Parsons described it, ‘He was robed in white, carrying the lamp, and I in black, hooded, with the cup and dagger. At his suggestion we played Rachmaninoff’s “Isle of the Dead” as background music, and set an automatic recorder to transcribe any audible occurrences. At approximately 8 PM he began to dictate, I transcribing directly as I received.’

Hubbard launched into a stream of suitably mystical outpourings, for example: ‘She is 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.’ Hubbard continued, instructing Parsons:

Display thyself to our lady; dedicate thy organs to Her, dedicate thy heart to Her, dedicate thy mind to her, dedicate thy soul to Her, for She shall absorb thee, and thou shalt become living flame before She incarnates. For it shall be through you alone, and no one else can help in this endeavor.

… Retire from human contact until noon tomorrow. Clear all profane documents on the morrow, before receiving further instructions. Consult no book but thine own mind. Thou art a god. Behave at this altar as one god before another…

Thou art the guardian and thou art the guide, thou art the worker and the mechanic. So conduct thyself. Discuss nothing of this matter until thou art certain that thine understanding embraces it all.

Using a mixture of his earlier desert inspiration, Hubbard’s instructions, and a large helping of Crowley, Parsons began the rituals to incarnate the daughter of Babalon: the Antichrist.

The next day, Hubbard once more acted as Babalon’s medium, and gave instructions for the second and third rituals. During the second ritual Parsons was to gaze into an empty black box for an hour when a ‘sacred design’ would become apparent which he was to reproduce in wood. Then, robed in scarlet (‘symbolic of birth’) with a black sash, Parsons was to invoke Babalon yet again.

The third ritual was to start four hours before dawn. Parsons was to wear black, and to ‘lay out a white sheet.’ Hubbard’s instructions continued:

Place upon it blood of birth, since she is born of thy flesh, and by thy mortal power upon earth … Envision thyself as a cloaked radiance desirable to the Goddess, beloved. Envision her approaching thee. Embrace her, cover her with kisses. Think upon the lewd lascivious things thou couldst do. All is good to Babalon. ALL … Thou as a man and as a god hast strewn about the earth and in the heavens many loves, these recall, concentrate, consecrate each woman thou hast raped. Remember her, think upon her, move her into BABALON, bring her into BABALON, each, one by one until the flame of lust is high.

Preserve the material basis … The lust is hers, the passion yours. Consider thou the Beast raping.

A commentator has noted that the ‘material basis’ was probably an admixture of semen and menstrual blood. On March 6, Parsons sent an excited letter to Crowley:

I am under the command of extreme secrecy. I have had the most important – devastating experience of my life between February 2 and March 4. I believe it was the result of the 9th [degree] working with the girl who answered my elemental summons.

I have been in direct touch with One who is most Holy and Beautiful 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 was the agency chosen to assist the birth which is now accomplished. I do not yet know the vehicle, but it will come to me, bringing a secret sign I know. Forgetfulness was the price. I am to act as instructor guardian guide for nine months; then it will be loosed on the world. That is all I can say now. There must be extreme secrecy. I cannot tell you the depth of reality, the poignancy, terror and beauty I have known. Now I am back in the world weak with reaction … It is not a question of keeping anything from you, it is a question of not dwelling or even thinking unduly on the matter until the time is right. Premature discussion or revelation would cause an abortion.

Parsons obviously thought the Antichrist was gestating in Marjorie Cameron’s womb. It all smacks of horror tales like The Omen and Rosemary’s Baby. Crowley thought so too and said as much to Parsons: ‘You have me completely puzzled by your remarks about the elemental–the danger of discussing or copying anything. I thought I had the most morbid imagination, as good as any man’s, but it seems I have not. I cannot form the slightest idea who you can possibly mean.’ A curious admission from the author of The Moonchild, and the ‘IXth degree magic,’ of which ‘Of the Homunculus,’ is a major part.

Crowley wrote to his deputy in New York: ‘Apparently he [Parsons] or Ron or somebody is producing a Moonchild. I get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these louts.’^[21]

Crowley’s ‘IXth degree’ ritual, which was performed by Parsons, Hubbard and Cameron, says this of the homunculus: ‘Now then thou hast a being of perfect human form, with all powers and privileges of humanity, but with the essence of a particular chosen force, and with all the knowledge and might of its sphere; and this being is thy creation and dependent; to it thou art Sole God and Lord, and it must serve thee.’^[22]

Accounts of The Babalon Working, performed by Parsons and Hubbard, do not explain the phrase ‘the essence of a particular chosen force.’ Crowley viewed the gods not as distinct individuals, but as representations of specific energies, which could be tapped. In his own words: ‘Gods are but names for the forces of Nature themselves.’ The ‘IXth degree’ magic is concerned with embodying such an energy or force.

In May, OTO member Louis T. Culling wrote to Crowley’s deputy Karl Germer, suggesting that Parsons should be ‘salvaged from the undue influence of another.’ He spoke of the partnership agreement signed by Parsons, Hubbard and Sara Northrup ‘whereby all money earned by the three, for life, is equally divided.’

There was disquiet in the Ordo Templi Orientis. In a cable to his US deputy, dated May 22, Crowley said, ‘Suspect Ron playing confidence trick Jack evidently weak fool obvious victim prowling swindlers.’ On May 31, he added, ‘It seems to me on the information of our Brethren in California that (if we may assume them to be accurate) Frater 210 [Parsons] has committed … errors. He has got a miraculous illumination which rimes with nothing, and he has apparently lost all of his personal independence. From our brother’s account he has given away both his girl and his money–apparently it is an ordinary confidence trick.’

Marjorie Cameron married Jack Parsons. The spiritual pantomime to incarnate the Antichrist failed as they remained childless. Hubbard and Parsons’ Sex Magick extravaganza did not give birth to the ‘mother of anarchy and abominations,’ in Parsons’ words, or unleash Armageddon and initiate the reign of the Antichrist. ‘Cameron,’ as she came to be known, later starred in the eccentric films of Kenneth Anger, another Crowley devotee.

Hubbard and Parsons had committed sacrilege even in Crowley’s terms. Crowley’s magick was entirely dedicated to Babalon, the Scarlet Woman. Any attempt to control the goddess was blasphemy to him. Crowley, after all, called The Whore of Babalon (or ‘Babylon’) ‘Our Lady’ and styled himself her servant and slave, ‘The Beast 666.’^[23] Crowley prayed, ‘O Babylon, Babylon, thou mighty Mother, that ridest upon the crowned beast, let me be drunk upon the wine of thy fornications; let thy kisses wanton me unto death … she will not rest from her adulteries until the blood of everything that liveth is gathered…’^[24]

Hubbard, Parsons and Cameron’s attempts did not end with the conception of a child, either human or demonic. However, as we have seen, Crowley said, ‘Gods are but names for the forces of Nature themselves,’^[25] so perhaps Hubbard embodied the Child of Babalon through his organization: the Church of Scientology. He made tens of thousands of slaves in a self-perpetuating, all-devouring machine financed by the super-rich and staffed by slaves reduced to poverty.

Parsons sued Hubbard in Florida in July 1946, managing to regain a little of his money and a lien on the yachts Hubbard had bought with it. The record of their rituals was transcribed and published as The Babalon Working.^[26] Parsons made a return to Magick, writing The Book of the Antichrist in 1949.^[27]

A decade after their demonic partnership, Hubbard said in a Scientology text that Parsons, ‘gave us solid fuel, rockets and assist take-offs … on aircraft carriers and all the rest of this rocketry panorama … Jack Parsons … became quite a man,’ making no criticism of Parsons, nor any mention of their magical liaison.^[28]

1. 
   

   Aleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice, p.xii. ↑

   
   
2. 
   

   L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary, definition of ‘intention’, taken from Ability magazine 279. ↑

   
   
3. 
   

   L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science, 1972, quotation from p.56, see also p.59. ↑

   
   
4. 
   

   E.g, the ‘Skipper’ letter of August 1938. ↑

   
   
5. 
   

   Arthur J Burks, Monitors, 1967. ↑

   
   
6. 
   

   https://www.oto-uk.org/liber220.html accessed 7 October 2024. ↑

   
   
7. 
   

   Many authors share this poor imitation of the English of the King James Bible. ↑

   
   
8. 
   

   L. Ron Hubbard, The Axioms of Scientology, axiom 31, Scientology 0.8, the book of basics, p.33. ↑

   
   
9. 
   

   President of AMORC letter to Jon Atack: 13 Jun 1984. ↑

   
   
10. 
    

    https://www.oto-uk.org/history.html accessed 7 October 2024. ↑

    
    
11. 
    

    Author’s interview with 15th degree Rosicrucian, 1984. ↑

    
    
12. 
    

    L. Ron Hubbard, HCOPL, My Philosophy, January 1965. ↑

    
    
13. 
    

    Parsons v Hubbard & Northrup, Miami, Florida, 1 July 1946. ↑

    
    
14. 
    

    Crowley, The Book of Thoth (Egyptian Tarot), p.75. ↑

    
    
15. 
    

    Francis X. King, The Magical World of Aleister Crowley. ↑

    
    
16. 
    

    Francis X. King, The Secret Rituals of the OTO, Of the Homunculus, Capitulum Primum, part 1, p.233. ↑

    
    
17. 
    

    See Kenneth Grant’s introduction to Crowley’s Moonchild, p.16; ↑

    
    
18. 
    

    King, Secret Rituals, pp.187ff, and The Magical World of Aleister Crowley, pp.112-3. ↑

    
    
19. 
    

    Jack Parsons, The Book of Babalon. See also the Yorke transcript of The Book of Babalon. ↑

    
    
20. 
    

    John Symonds, The Great Beast: The Life and Magick of Aleister Crowley, p.447. ↑

    
    
21. 
    

    The Parsons and Crowley letters come from the OTO New York Parsons’ file. Others have read ‘goats’ where I read ‘louts’ in Crowley’s letter. ↑

    
    
22. 
    

    King, Secret Rituals, p.238. ↑

    
    
23. 
    

    Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice, p.88. ↑

    
    
24. 
    

    Crowley, Book of Thoth, pp.137-8. ↑

    
    
25. 
    

    Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice, p.120. ↑

    
    
26. 
    

    There is contention between the various OTO groups about the Book of Babalon. Its existence is sometimes denied, and the OTO New York have claimed that only a fragment exists (published in Parsons, Freedom is a Two-Edged Sword, Falcon, Las Vegas, 1989). I have read three versions of the manuscript, one is the Yorke transcript, another is not named. The third was published in vol.1, issue 3 of Starfire, London, 1989. ↑

    
    
27. 
    

    Jack Parsons, The Book of the Antichrist. ↑

    
    
28. 
    

    L. Ron Hubbard, Professional Auditors Bulletin no.110, ‘Education’, 15 April 1957. Reprinted in the Technical Bulletins of Dianetics and Scientology, vol III, p.31 ↑

    
    

5. The Blood Ritual and The Fool

‘All mankind shall grovel at my feet and not know why!’ – Hubbard self-hypnotic affirmation.^[1]

Having stolen Parsons’ girl and his money in 1946, Hubbard carried on with magical practices of his own devising. In 1984, the Scientology organization tried to reclaim documents that recorded these practices in a legal case against former Hubbard archivist Gerry Armstrong.

Omar Garrison was paid $280,000 not to publish his authorised biography based upon Armstrong’s vast Hubbard Archive. However, Garrison retained copies of thousands of Hubbard documents and showed this author one that was referred to in the Armstrong case. Its authenticity was never questioned by Scientology’s lawyers who were suing for its return and insisted it be sealed from public view.

‘The Blood Ritual’ is a handwritten invocation of the Egyptian goddess Hathor, performed by Hubbard in the late 1940s. As the name suggests, the ritual involved the use of blood. Hubbard mingled his own blood with that of his then wife (Sara Northrup, the girlfriend stolen from Parsons with whom Hubbard contracted a bigamous marriage). Hathor is yet another name for Hubbard’s Holy Guardian Angel, the Empress. One of many names.

In a 1952 Scientology lecture, Hubbard called Aleister Crowley ‘my very good friend.’^[2] In reality, the two magicians never met, and Crowley gives no hint of friendship with Hubbard. Indeed, as we have seen, Crowley dismissed Ron Hubbard as a confidence trickster.^[3]

Even so, Hubbard had a very positive regard for Crowley, calling his work ‘fascinating’ and recommending a Crowley book to all Scientologists.^[4] Having referred to Crowley as ‘The Beast 666,’ Hubbard said that he had ‘picked a level of religious worship which is very interesting.’^[5] He also made it clear that he had read the fundamental text of the Crowley teaching, The Book of the Law.^[6]

In these 1952 Scientology ‘Doctorate’ lectures, Hubbard also referred to the Tarot cards, saying that they were not simply a system of divination but a ‘philosophical machine.’ He later used the same words to describe Scientology. In the Tarot, he made particular mention of the Fool card, saying, ‘The Fool of course is the wisest of all.’ Hubbard certainly considered himself to be ‘the wisest of all.’ Just as the Empress represents his Holy Guardian Angel, so the Fool represents Hubbard himself. He continued: ‘The Fool who goes down the road with the alligators barking at his heels, and the dogs yapping at him, blindfolded on his way, he knows all there is to know and does nothing about it … nothing could touch him.’^[7]

In Crowley’s interpretation, nothing can touch the Fool, because the Fool has become nothing, a vacuum, and is represented by the number zero which Hubbard would later use to represent the ‘thetan’ or spiritual self.^[8] To Crowley, the Fool ‘is the boundless air, the wandering Ghost…’^[9]

Hubbard is describing the archetype of the ‘holy fool’ which runs through mystical literature. Outwardly, the mystic behaves as a fool while cultivating spiritual power.^[10]

Crowley’s is one of the few Tarot packs with an alligator on the Fool card.^[11] In the Hubbard Archive collected by Gerry Armstrong (and kept secret by Scientology ever since) there is a Hubbard ‘scale’ dating from the 1940s. At the base of the scale is the word ‘animals.’ It then ascends through ‘laborers, farmers, financiers, and fanatics’ on to ‘the Fool’ and above the Fool there is only ‘God’.

As Crowley says, ‘in order to understand any given card, one must identify with it completely…’.^[12] If Hubbard saw himself as the Fool, perhaps he was trying to create a trampoline of fanatics through whom he could vault to divinity. Indeed, if Scientology lived up to its claims, Hubbard was not simply a god but a ‘god-maker’.

Of course, the Tarot pack also contains the Empress card–representing Hubbard’s Holy Guardian Angel. Crowley explored the Tarot in his Book of Thoth. The original Egyptian Book of Thoth is the holy grail of magicians, alleged to date back millennia and to contain the secrets of magic. It is long lost–if it ever existed–but Crowley believed he had reconstructed it from the Tarot.

Crowley’s book was originally published in an edition of only 200 copies. It seems highly likely that Jack Parsons had a copy, and just as likely that Hubbard stole it.

As we have seen, Crowley said of the Empress card, ‘She combines the highest spiritual with the lowest material qualities.’^[13] She is Crowley’s Babalon, the ‘mother of abominations.’ Crowley identifies the Empress as the ‘Great Mother’, and indeed on her robe are bees,^[14] the traditional symbol of the Mother Goddess Cybele.

Crowley is not alone in the belief that different cultures give different names to the same deities. It can be dated to the Roman era where the initiate of Isis, Apuleius, listed the personifications of the Mother Goddess throughout the Empire.^[15] This practice of conflating deities at the meeting point of separate cultures was common in ancient times.^[16]

The worship of Cybele goes back to at least 3,000 BCE. She entered Greek culture as Artemis and to the Romans was Diana, the huntress. Crowley also identified the Empress with the Hindu goddess Shakti.^[17] Cybele can also be conflated with the Egyptian goddesses Isis and Hathor (also called ‘Ahathoor’ by Crowley).^[18] Crowley directly identified Isis with Diana.^[19] More usually, Crowley called the Empress by the name Babalon, his ‘holy mother.’^[20] She was Hubbard’s ‘holy mother’ too.

Contemporary New Age groups see the Great Mother in the aspect of Gaia the caring Earth Mother. This is far from Crowley’s view. Diana, the patroness of witchcraft^[21] was seen by Hubbard through the eyes of Crowley rather than as a benevolent, loving mother. Hubbard made no reference for example to Robert Graves’ White Goddess, but only to Crowley and peripherally to Frazer’s Golden Bough and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, both of which refer to the cult of Diana. To Crowley the Great Mother, Babalon, is, of course, also the Antichrist. The force that intends to destroy Christianity and overthrow the Christian God.

While Crowley’s path was submission to the Empress, Hubbard’s ritual with Parsons tried to enslave the same force, bringing it into human form as a servile homunculus.

Hubbard’s eldest son, Nibs, was insistent that his father taught him magic and privately referred to his personal goddess as Hathor.^[22] The Blood Ritual confirms this claim. It is unlikely that Scientology will ever reveal it, but I have seen it with my own eyes.

Publicly, Hubbard was taken with the Roman name of the goddess, Diana, giving it to a daughter by his third wife, and to one of his Scientology Sea Organization boats. Curiously, this boat was formerly The Enchanter, and, before Scientology, he had sailed another called The Magician. Hubbard also used Jack Parsons’s money to buy a yacht called Diane.^[23]

‘Dianetics’ may also be a reference to Diana. Shortly before its inception, another former US Navy officer and practitioner of the VIIIth degree of the Ordo Templi Orientis had formed a group called Dianism.^[24]

This all seems fanciful, until the ritual significance of names as used by believers in magic becomes clear. Magicians seek to insert their invocations into the everyday world without any explanation of their meaning. By persuading others to repeat the name ‘Diana,’ Hubbard probably believed he was amplifying his own magical power.

When the Blood Ritual was mentioned during the Armstrong trial in 1984, Scientology’s lawyer asserted that it was an invocation of an Egyptian goddess of love.^[25] Hathor is indeed popularly seen as a winged and spotted cow that feeds humanity. However, there is an important lesson about Scientology in the practice of magicians. The teachings of magic are considered by many practitioners to be so powerful and potentially dangerous, that they must be kept secret. They are often hidden in plain sight.

One of the easiest ways to conceal the true meaning of a teaching is to reverse it. In The Masks of God, Joseph Campbell argued persuasively that deities frequently contain their own polar opposite.^[26] In Greek mythology, the twins Artemis and Apollo exemplify this principle.^[27] For Hubbard as for Crowley, Artemis is both Diana and Hathor. She represents the night and darkness just as Apollo represents the day and light.

By Crowleyite magicians, Hathor is also seen as an aspect of Sekhmet, the avenging lioness. One authority on ritual magic has revealed the identity of Hathor as ‘the destroyer of man.’^[28] Like the Roman god Janus or ‘Dianus’, Hathor is two-faced.

The same is true of Scientology which has both a public and a hidden agenda. Publicly, it represents itself as a benevolent church while privately, as the long record of both civil and criminal legal convictions shows, it preys upon the very people it claims to serve and harasses anyone who speaks against it.

Hubbard often spoke of his humanitarian aims. In his largely secret ‘Fair Game’ harassment teachings, however, Hubbard is outspoken in his attack upon critics of either himself or his work. For example, in ‘What is Greatness?’ Hubbard says ‘The hardest task one can have is to continue to love one’s fellows despite all reasons he should not. And the true sign of sanity and greatness is so to continue.’^[29] Just days before this broadly distributed public statement, in a top-secret directive to his harassment department, Hubbard had said, ‘Don’t ever submit tamely to an investigation of us. Make it rough, rough on the attackers all the way.’^[30]

In one statement of the Fair Game Law, Hubbard said that opponents could be lied to, tricked, sued or destroyed without punishment by Scientology.^[31] Of practitioners unlicensed by him Hubbard said, ‘Harass these persons in any possible way.’^[32]

Nor did Hubbard exclude the possibility of murder against those who opposed him.^[33] Hubbard used the code term ‘R2-45’ for the use of a Colt 45 placed against an opponent’s temple, calling it a ‘method of exteriorization [from the body] frowned upon in our time.’^[34] He issued several ‘R2-45’ orders, naming as targets members of government inquiries and Scientology defectors.^[35] Fortunately, these orders seem to have been ignored, though Hubbard did insist, ‘There are men dead because they attacked us.’^[36]

The in-your-face harassment of critics may explain the dearth of academic research into Scientology–apart from a few freelances paid or duped to defend it while ignoring the testimony of the thousands harmed by the organization. Only a few brave scholars have risked exploring Scientology honestly.^[37]

Hubbard’s use of contradiction to captivate and redirect his followers deserves a separate examination beyond the remit of this book,^[38] but it has its roots in his study of magic. Everything is the opposite of what it seems, as we have seen with Hathor, and Janus or Dianus. Scientology takes its adherents through the looking glass. Alice Through the Looking Glass is found in every Scientology Course Room.^[39]

While Hubbard was supposedly researching his Dianetics in the late 1940s, he was in fact engaging in magical rituals and immersing himself in the practice of hypnosis both on himself and many others. In 1950, in Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, Hubbard claimed to have treated 273 people. The treatment was solely and only deep trance hypnotism. When the book was commissioned, he switched to light trance or ‘reverie’, because he knew that deep trance was unpopular.^[40]

Hubbard’s main subject was himself, however. During the 1984 Armstrong case, extracts from Hubbard’s voluminous self-hypnotic affirmations were read into the record. The statements, hundreds of pages of them, are written in red ink and Hubbard frequently drew pictures of the male genitalia alongside the text.^[41] Among his suggestions to himself we find: ‘You can be merciless whenever your will is crossed and you have every right to be merciless,’ ‘Men are my slaves’, and ‘Elemental Spirits are my slaves.’^[42] It is important that Scientology made no objection as to the authenticity of these statements when they were read into the court record. Indeed, Armstrong was sued to force the return of these documents in order to hide them from public view.

Black magic is distinguished from white in the determination of the practitioner to bring harm. ‘Maleficium’ is the traditional word for this vindictive magic. The ‘Suppressive Person declare’ and the ‘Fair Game Law’ speak reams in terms of Hubbard’s fundamental intent. He wanted to control his followers and destroy his critics.

Scientology is a neo-gnostic system, which is to say that it teaches the attainment of insight through a series of levels. Hubbard labelled these levels ‘the Bridge to Total Freedom.’ It differs from other bridges, in that it is climbed. You go ‘up’ the Bridge which currently consists of some 28 levels. These levels might be compared to the initiations of magical systems, including Masonic and Rosicrucian systems. Degrees of initiation reach back to at least 1500 BCE in the Eleusinian Mysteries. Adherents were called ‘mystes’, which gives us the word ‘mystical.’^[43]

While the stages appear dissimilar to those of Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis, it is worth noting that both systems consist of stages that have secret levels and use Roman numerals for those levels. Hubbard’s system peaks at OT VIII. Hubbard’s attempt to summon the Antichrist was Crowley’s OTO VIII ritual.^[44] Such childish coincidences delight the magician. Hubbard also shared with Crowley a numbering system which begins at ‘0’ rather than ‘1’.

The Scientology Bridge has as its end the creation of an ‘Operating Thetan’. Hubbard used the word ‘thetan’ to identify the self, the spirit, which is the person, the unique indivisible ‘I’ distinct from both the body and the mind. He claimed that the word derived from an earlier Greek usage of the letter theta–θ–for ‘spirit.’^[45] I have been unable to confirm this use. However, on Roman mosaics, the letter theta indicates the departed spirit of a gladiator killed in the arena: exteriorized from the body, in Hubbard’s terms.

Given Hubbard’s rampant pilfering from Crowley, it is worth emphasising that the theta symbol is central to Crowleyism where it is found as an aspect of the sign used for ‘Babalon and the Beast conjoined.’^[46] To Crowley, the theta sign represented the essential principle of his system–thelema or the will.^[47] As ‘intention’, thelema is also central to Scientology.

In a 1952 lecture, Hubbard recommended a book which he called The Master Therion.^[48] This was in fact one of Crowley’s ‘magical’ names. I am advised by an officer of one of the Ordo Templi Orientis groups that the reference is most likely to Crowley’s magnum opus Magick in Theory and Practice. In that work, Crowley gave this definition: ‘Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.’^[49]

Hubbard’s definition of an ‘Operating Thetan’ meets that of a magician. Hubbard meant an individual–a ‘thetan’–able to ‘operate’ freely from the physical body; able to cause effects at any distance by will alone. In Hubbard’s words ‘a thetan exterior who can have but doesn’t have to have a body in order to control or operate thought, life, matter, energy, space and time.’^[50]

Hubbard used the term ‘intention’ rather than ‘will,’^[51] but Crowley and Hubbard offered the same godly powers to their followers–though Hubbard didn’t publicly claim to be the Beast 666.

The Scientologist wishes to be able to control events and the minds of others by intention, by sheer willpower; by Crowley’s ‘thelema.’ The desire to control the minds of others without their consent is of itself reprehensible, but this is the purpose of many Scientology procedures.^[52] It can be seen either as deliberate ‘mind control’ or as the black magician’s domineering contempt for others. Scientologists are supposed to achieve ‘Tone 40’ intention: ‘giving a command and just knowing that it will be executed despite any contrary appearances.’^[53]

Scientology is a bizarre hybrid of magic and psychology. After all, Hubbard boasted: ‘We can brainwash faster than the Russians (20 seconds to total amnesia against three years to slightly confused loyalty).’^[54]

And how do we know if we are brainwashed?

1. 
   

   L. Ron Hubbard, The Affirmations or Admissions, https://gerryarmstrong.ca/the-affirmations-what-was-l-ron-hubbard-thinking/ accessed 12 April 2025. ↑

   
   
2. 
   

   L. Ron Hubbard, Philadelphia Doctorate Course, lecture 18 ‘Conditions of Space-Time-Energy.’ ↑

   
   
3. 
   

   Aleister Crowley, 22 May 1946. Cited by Atack, Let’s Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky, pp.103-4 ↑

   
   
4. 
   

   Hubbard, Philadelphia Doctorate Course, lecture 18, op.cit. ↑

   
   
5. 
   

   ibid, lecture 35. ↑

   
   
6. 
   

   ibid, lecture 40. ↑

   
   
7. 
   

   ibid, lecture 1, ‘Opening: What is to be done in the Course.’ ↑

   
   
8. 
   

   Crowley, The Book of Thoth, p.53. ↑

   
   
9. 
   

   Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice, p.336. ↑

   
   
10. 
    

    See for instance https://academic.oup.com/book/1703/chapter-abstract/141298837?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false accessed 10 October 2024. ↑

    
    
11. 
    

    Thoth Tarot Deck, US Games Systems, NY, ISBN 0-913866-15-6. ↑

    
    
12. 
    

    Crowley, Book of Thoth, p.44. ↑

    
    
13. 
    

    ibid, p.75. ↑

    
    
14. 
    

    ibid, p.76. ↑

    
    
15. 
    

    Joseph Campbell, Occidental Mythology, pp.42-43. ↑

    
    
16. 
    

    Campbell, Occidental Mythology, p.240. ↑

    
    
17. 
    

    Francis King, The Magical World of Aleister Crowley, p.56. ↑

    
    
18. 
    

    https://www.tarotforum.net/threads/ancient-egyptian-study-group-111-the-empress.41478/ accessed 25 June 2025 for the conflation of Isis and Hathor by tarot students. ↑

    
    
19. 
    

    Aleister Crowley, Confessions, p.693. ↑

    
    
20. 
    

    e.g., Book of Thoth, pp.136ff. ↑

    
    
21. 
    

    Richard Cavendish, The Magical Arts, p.304. ↑

    
    
22. 
    

    L. Ron De Wolf, aka Nibs, aka L. Ron Hubbard, jnr., The Telling of Me by Me, unpublished manuscript. ↑

    
    
23. 
    

    Atack, Let’s Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky, p.104. ↑

    
    
24. 
    

    Francis X. King, Ritual Magic in England, p.161. ↑

    
    
25. 
    

    Litt, in Church of Scientology v Armstrong, vol.26, p.4607. ↑

    
    
26. 
    

    E.g. Joseph Campbell – An Excerpt on Transcendence and Dualization : r/JungianTypology accessed 17 April 2025. ↑

    
    
27. 
    

    https://www.thecollector.com/apollo-and-artemis-greek-mythology/ accessed 19 October 2024. ↑

    
    
28. 
    

    Murry Hope, Practical Egyptian Magic, pp.39 & 47. ↑

    
    
29. 
    

    L. Ron Hubbard, ‘What is Greatness?’, March 1966, Certainty, vol.13, no.3. ↑

    
    
30. 
    

    L. Ron Hubbard, HCO PL 25 February 1966 – Attacks on Scientology. ↑

    
    
31. 
    

    L. Ron Hubbard, HCO PL, Penalties for Lower Conditions, 18 October 1967, issue IV. ↑

    
    
32. 
    

    L. Ron Hubbard, HCO Executive Letter, Amprinistics, 27 September 1965. ↑

    
    
33. 
    

    e.g. HCO Policy Letter, Ethics, Suppressive Acts, Suppression of Scientology and Scientologists, The Fair Game Law, 1 March 1965. The offending part of the text was read into an English court judgment (Hubbard v Vosper, November 1971, Court of Appeal). In USA v. Jane Kember & Morris Budlong, in 1980, Scientology lawyers admitted that despite public representations Fair Game had never truly been “abrogated” (sentencing memorandum, District Court, Washington DC, criminal no. 78.401 (2) & (3), p.16, footnote). The Policy Letter which did eventually cancel it, of 22 July 1980, was itself withdrawn on 8 September 1983. Unknown to most of its adherents, Fair Game is still an inviolable scripture, and according to Hubbard’s Standard Tech principle binding upon all Scientologists. ↑

    
    
34. 
    

    L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology: The Creation of Human Ability: A Handbook for Scientologists, Route 2-45, p.120. ↑

    
    
35. 
    

    L. Ron Hubbard, The Auditor magazine 35, 1968, ‘Racket Exposed’ http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/auditor/auditor_35.pdf accessed 17 April 2025. ↑

    
    
36. 
    

    L. Ron Hubbard, HCO Manual of Justice, 1959. ↑

    
    
37. 
    

    Professor Roy Wallis began the academic enquiry, resulting in his PhD thesis and Road to Total Freedom; Professor Stephen Kent has shown exemplary courage for three decades, along with his graduate student Susan Raine; Professor Hugh Urban has also made important contributions, as have George Shaw, Professor Dave Touretzky, Tony Ortega, Chris Owen, Jonny Jacobsen, Stefano Bigliardi and Chris Shelton. ↑

    
    
38. 
    

    At the heart of the ‘implanting’ that established the ‘Reactive Mind’ or ‘R6 bank’ some 75 million years ago are contradictions – the ‘end words’ of the ‘goals, problems masses’ which paralyse the victim into indecision and withdrawal. Hubbard used such double binds throughout Scientology. ↑

    
    
39. 
    

    The Alice books are used for Training Routines 1 and 2. ↑

    
    
40. 
    

    Confirmed to this author in 1984 by Hubbard’s assistant Don Rogers, who was present both before and during the writing of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. ↑

    
    
41. 
    

    Interview with Robert Vaughn Young, former Hubbard archivist, Corona del Mar, April 1993. ↑

    
    
42. 
    

    Affirmations, exhibits 500-4D, E, F & G. See Church of Scientology v Armstrong, transcript volume 11, p.1886. ↑

    
    
43. 
    

    Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas: from the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries, pp.290ff; Joseph Campbell, Occidental Mythology, p.50. ↑

    
    
44. 
    

    King, Secret Rituals, pp.185ff, see especially p.198. ↑

    
    
45. 
    

    L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology Dictionary, 1975, “theta”, definition 6. ↑

    
    
46. 
    

    Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice, p.43. ↑

    
    
47. 
    

    The Babalon sign with a theta at the centre of a 7-pointed star is found in many of Crowley’s works, e.g. The Book of Thoth. The winged sign of the OTO and the use of the theta sign can be found in various places, e.g. Equinox – Sex and Religion, Thelema Publishing Co, Nashville, 1981. ↑

    
    
48. 
    

    L. Ron Hubbard, Philadelphia Doctorate Course, lecture 18. ↑

    
    
49. 
    

    Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice, p.xii. ↑

    
    
50. 
    

    L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary, definition of ‘Operating Thetan.’ ↑

    
    
51. 
    

    e.g., L. Ron Hubbard, Professional Auditor’s Bulletin 91, The Anatomy of Failure, 3 July 1956. ↑

    
    
52. 
    

    e.g., Dissemination Drill, CCHs, Opening Procedure by Duplication, Mood TRs & Tone Scale drills, TRs 6-8, TR-8Q, and the FSM TR ‘How to control a conversation.’ On the OTVII (‘old OT VII’) practised up to 1982, the student was expected to telepathically implant thoughts into others. ↑

    
    
53. 
    

    L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary, definition of ‘Tone 40.’ ↑

    
    
54. 
    

    L. Ron Hubbard, Technical Bulletin of 22 July 1956. ↑

    
    

6. Hubbard the godmaker

‘Only when a master magician invokes a “God” and has won the form can the deity enter into life and gain power over the largest complexes of individuals’ – Dr Ernst Schertl, Magic–history–theory–practice, copy found in Hitler’s library.^[1]

The attempt to obtain magical powers is certainly not unique to Hubbard and Crowley. Every culture on every continent seems to have had its own approach.^[2]

One element common to most cultures is the belief in disembodied or discarnate spirits. In the Gospels, Christ casts out demons into the Gadarene swine,^[3] but disembodied spirits can be found in the teachings of every major religion including Islamic djinn, Tibetan gDons, Jewish dybbuks and many, many others.^[4] Crowley held the belief typical to magicians that such spirits can be used to fulfil spells.^[5] In a 1954 lecture, Hubbard said, ‘the actual mission of a magician is to … control and bend to his will spirits, who then go forth and do his bidding. And that is the basic practice called magic.’^[6]

The goal of Scientology is to become an ‘operating thetan’–a being able to act independently from the human ‘meat body.’ Most of the secret ‘OT’ level teachings of Scientology concern spirit exorcism. Shortly before launching his science of the mind, Hubbard used a self-hypnotic affirmation to the effect that ‘elemental beings’ were his slaves.

Towards the end of his life, Hubbard wrote some chirpy pop songs which were recorded under his direction.^[7] One of these songs, The Evil Purpose, begins ‘In olden days the populace was much afraid of demons/And paid an awful sky high price to buy some priestly begones’. The song goes on to explain that there are no demons, ‘just the easily erased evil purpose’. In fact, the Operating Thetan levels (from III-VII) are concerned almost entirely with ‘body thetans,’ indwelling spirits, ‘elementals’ or demons.

Hubbard initially floated the idea of ‘entities’ and ‘theta beings’ to his adherents in spring 1952, during his very first Scientology lectures.^[8] He spoke of ‘theta’ as the life-force and went on to describe ‘theta beings’ and ‘theta bodies.’ Mention was made again that June in the book What to Audit–still in print (minus a chapter) as Scientology: A History of Man. Here, Hubbard said that we are all inhabited by seven foreign spirits, the leader of which he called the ‘crew chief’. The idea was not popular, and it was abandoned for almost fifteen years.

In January 1967, in Morocco, Hubbard ‘researched’ an incident which he claimed had occurred 75 million years ago. He continued his ‘research’ on the island of Gran Canaria. In a recorded lecture in September 1967, Hubbard announced his revelation to Scientologists. He had broken through the ‘wall of fire’ that inhibits our superpowers and keeps us overwhelmed by the world around us. During the research, he had become ‘very ill’ and ‘almost lost the body.’^[9]

Gerry Armstrong, Hubbard’s former archivist, has said that the Hubbard archive contains letters written to Mary Sue Hubbard while he was creating Section Three of the Operating Thetan Course (OT III). In these letters, Hubbard spoke about taking drugs as an aspect of his ‘research,’ specifically ‘pinks and greys’–most likely the opiate Demerol. Crowley was also a multiple drug abuser, hopelessly addicted to heroin by the time of his death.

In his 1967 lecture, Hubbard claimed to have broken his back while researching. Armstrong told me that Hubbard had indeed fallen in the gutter while very drunk. A doctor had been called out to him to deal with a sprain.

From Gran Canaria, in a panic Hubbard summoned Scientologist Virginia Downsborough. When I interviewed her, she told me he was rambling and sick, terrified that his indwelling spirits or ‘body thetans’ would take him over completely. He was no longer eating or drinking and was taking an enormous quantity of drugs. Virginia helped him to round up the swath of notes that would become Section Three of the Operating Thetan Course.

The result of Hubbard’s ‘research’ was a mixture of science-fiction and old-fashioned magic. Hubbard declared that 75 million years ago Xenu, the overlord of 76 planets, rounded up most of the people of his empire–some 178 billion per planet–and brought them to Earth. Here they were exploded in volcanoes using hydrogen bombs and the spirits or thetans collected on ‘electronic ribbons.’

Disorientated from the massacre, the disembodied ‘thetans’ were subjected to some 36 days of hypnotic ‘implanting’ and clustered together. From seven indwelling spirits per person in 1952, Hubbard’s 1967 estimate ran into the thousands, possibly millions. The ‘implants’ supposedly contained the blueprint for future civilizations, including the Christian teaching, 75 million years before Christ.

Operating Thetan Level Three (OT III) must be kept secret, according to Hubbard, because the unprepared will die within two days of discovering its contents. In fact, since the story was leaked in Robert Kaufman’s 1972 Inside Scientology: or how I became a superman, the story has been published frequently without noticeable loss of life. Since it first aired in 2005, South Park’s Trapped in the Closet, which includes the OT III story, has been seen by millions.

Hubbard was so taken with his greatest science-fantasy creation, that he wrote a screenplay called Revolt in the Stars about the OT III incident, putting aside his earlier concerns about mass extermination. Scientologist John Travolta has spent decades trying to fund the movie.

It is often the case with Hubbard’s work that he simply took other ideas and dressed them up in new expressions. For instance, careful study shows that Dianetics is largely a reworking of Josef Breuer’s nineteenth century approach. Breuer was Sigmund Freud’s mentor and Freud began his psychotherapy career by adopting this approach (which he quickly rejected as harmful).^[10]

The original language of Dianetics included such words as ‘operator’, ‘reverie’ and ‘regression’ common to hypnotic practitioners at the time. On leaving Scientology, most people cannot see that the ‘body thetans’ of the Operating Thetan levels are in fact the demons of Christian belief; the same is true of his other borrowings and reframing of existing ideas.

The OT levels are factually the most expensive form of exorcism ever devised. To reach the final level of Scientology can easily take half a million dollars. One former member told me she had spent a million pounds with one level yet to go.

Unfortunately, these beliefs and practices can severely affect adherents, who take Hubbard’s warnings to heart and come to believe themselves to be multiple personalities. I have seen this at first hand. When I spoke to fourteen staff at the psychiatric institute nearest to Scientology’s UK headquarters, I was told that every year they treated several victims of the OT levels.

Hubbard called his hypnotic methods ‘auditing,’ which can easily be seen as an update of magical ritual. Scientology is a mixture of occult ceremony, science-fiction and 1950s hypnotherapy. The adherents travel through increasingly expensive initiations with the hope of attaining supernatural powers. There are badges, symbols and titles for every stage of the way. This is the ‘blue sky’ promised by Hubbard at the outset of his Dianetic career.

Other links with ritual magic have emerged. A peculiar event occurred aboard Hubbard’s flagship, the Apollo, in 1973. The senior management of Scientology practised the Kali ceremony, named after the Hindu goddess of destruction–yet another version of Hubbard’s guardian Hathor/Diana. The ceremony was staged very seriously, and the executives were led into a dimly lit hold of the ship and ordered to destroy models of their Scientology organizations.

A few years before this, Otto Roos, a senior Sea Organization officer, claimed he was ordered to Los Angeles by Hubbard where he was meant to mount an armed attack on a magicians’ secret sabbat. He decided not to mount an attack, but watched the meeting from a hiding place. It happened exactly where Hubbard had said it would.^[11] It seems that Hubbard still had links with magical groups twenty years after launching his pseudo-science.

Another former Sea Organization member, Ann Bailey, affidavited an encounter in the 1970s with an old man she believed to be Hubbard. She claimed to have been taken to the top floor of a Scientology building by high-ranking officials and left there with this man, who performed the sexual act with her, but very slowly.^[12] Indeed, in the way advocated by Crowley and called karezza.

In 1976, Hubbard ordered a secret research project into the teachings of early Christian Gnostic groups. He had already carried out a project to determine which of his ship’s crew members were ‘soldiers of light’ and which ‘soldiers of darkness’. The latter group were apparently promoted.

In his paper, The Hubbard is Bare, Jeff Jacobsen provided insight into a possible connection between Hubbard’s OT levels and Gnostic teachings. Jacobsen quotes from the early Christian Gnostic Valentinus: ‘For many spirits dwell in it [the body] and do not permit it to be pure; each of them brings to fruition its own works, and they treat it abusively by means of unseemly desires.’

Jacobsen goes on to cite the Gnostic Basilides, who said, man ‘preserves the appearance of a wooden horse, according to the poetic myth, embracing as he does in one body a host of such different spirits.’ Jacobsen points out that multiple possession seems to have been considered normal by these Gnostics.

Possession equates to madness in Christianity, though examples of multiple possession are rare. Jacobsen draws other interesting parallels between Gnosticism and Scientology. Like the Gnostics, Hubbard taught that we live imprisoned in the flesh and must escape–his concept of ‘exteriorization.’ Hopefully, scholars will investigate this comparison further.

There is an abundance of evidence–as we have seen–to show that Ron Hubbard was not only an admirer of Aleister Crowley, but also to show that Crowley was his guru–his ‘very good friend’–and that Scientology is a reworking of Crowleyite ideas. Magical powers have become ‘OT abilities,’ spells or initiations have become ‘processes’ or ‘auditing procedures,’ and bewitchment has become brainwashing.

1. 
   

   Ernst Schertel, ed. J.H. Kelley, Magic History/Theory/Practice, p.130. ↑

   
   
2. 
   

   Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, volumes 1-4. ↑

   
   
3. 
   

   Mark 5:1-20, Luke 8:26-39. ↑

   
   
4. 
   

   Francoise Strachan, Casting out the Devils, Aquarian Press, London, 1972. See also Alexandra David-Neel Initiates and Initiations in Tibet, pp.168-169. ↑

   
   
5. 
   

   e.g., Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice, p.16. ↑

   
   
6. 
   

   Hubbard, L. Ron, Dianetics 1955!, 29 December 1954, The Unification Congress, transcript p.122. ↑

   
   
7. 
   

   The Road To Freedom, BPI records, L.A., 1986. ↑

   
   
8. 
   

   The Hubbard College Lectures. ↑

   
   
9. 
   

   L. Ron Hubbard, Ron’s Journal ’67. ↑

   
   
10. 
    

    Sigmund Freud, Two Short Accounts of Psychoanalysis, Middlesex, Penguin, 1974. ↑

    
    
11. 
    

    Author interview with Otto Roos, 1984. ↑

    
    
12. 
    

    Affidavit of Ann Bailey, p.34. ↑

    
    

Published by Richard and Bonnie Woods