Sex and Rockets

by John Carter

The Priest's Call in the Gnostic Mass is a short recitation in Greek that the Priest makes when the Priestess is behind the veil. It apparently was a preliminary to the lengthy rites of the Babalon Working (24 complete invocations in 12 days!) and is a call to the creative power of the Priest as represented by his “lance” (i.e., phallus). The call is:

  IO IO IO IAO SABAO KYRIE ABRASAX KYRIE MEITHRAS KYRIE PHALLE. IO PAN, IO PAN PAN, IO ISCHYROCH, IO ATHANATON, IO ABROTON, IO IAO. CHAIRE PHALLE CHAIRE PANPHAGE CHAIRE PANGENETOR. AGIOS, AGIOS, AGIOS IAO, which is O, O, O, IAO, Sabao, Lord Abrasax, Lord Mithras, Lord Phallus. O Pan, O Pan Pan, O Strong One, O Immortal One, O Divine One, O IAO. Hail Phallus, Hail All-Devourer, Hail All-Begetter. Holy, Holy, Holy IAO.

  Iao, Sabao, and Abrasax are Greek deities with long histories: They are solar in nature, and the rising sun is the Phallus invoked in the call.

  Following the working, Parsons was at first despondent: “Nothing seems to have happened. The windstorm is very interesting, but that is not what I asked for,” he wrote Crowley. On January 18, Parsons and Hubbard went into the Mojave Desert to relax. At sunset the feeling of tension suddenly left Parsons, and he turned to Hubbard “in absolute certainty that the operation was accomplished” and said simply, “It is done,” echoing Jesus’ “It is finished” spoken on the cross.

  At this time, Grady McMurtry, whom Parsons met at a science fiction meeting, returned from England and moved to San Francisco with the intent of starting a lodge there. He spent the week of January 14th to the 20th at 1003 S. Orange Grove, interviewing the various members of the lodge to determine what was going on and what could be done about it. Crowley had sent him in to see if there was any way to fix the mess he had been hearing about. McMurtry's report is dated January 25 and includes signed statements from Parsons and several others. Parsons was surprised to see McMurtry, who had left as an inferior in the Order, return as his superior.

  McMurtry told Crowley that Parsons was “…a man of integrity and aspiration, all he lacks is an experienced instructor. He is easily the outstanding personality of the whole group.” He also mentioned a new female interest of Parsons’ named Helen Parker, but apparently nothing of note developed between the two.

  McMurtry's report found the lodge in a mess, as many of the members were bickering about almost everything, yet he saw hope for the future. Parsons, he said, was “shaking the debris of Agape from his shoulders and preparing to make a clean start with a more ambitious program than ever. A lesser man would have washed his hands of the whole affair.”

  McMurtry further outlined a program of advertising, initiation, training, and performance of the Gnostic Mass as the immediate needs of the lodge. Parsons wanted to incorporate the OTO, which McMurtry endorsed. Parsons would stay in Pasadena with the Agape Lodge, while McMurtry would return to San Francisco and open the Thelema Lodge. This plan did not materialize until 1977, long after Parsons’ death.

  Parsons wanted to pursue the advertising campaign as a “Synagogue of Satan”; McMurtry thought this angle was fine for some but not all-inclusive. He wanted to pursue a less sensationalistic campaign in San Francisco, modeled after the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu, Sicily.

  McMurtry closes by referring to Agape Lodge as “Hodge Podge Lodge,” which he says the residents of 1003 S. Orange Grove call “Ghastly Gables.” Neither title is flattering. Parsons’ attached statement says that he sold the big home to finance an explosives manufacturing plant, such that he evidently didn't own the house very long. Another member, Max Schneider, with whom Parsons seems to have been bickering the most, said Parsons was trying to “combine a Lodge, a profess house, and a rooming house for thrill seekers all under one roof.” The other statements speak well of Parsons, but say that the influence of Smith was still too strong.

  One interesting remark was made by Roy Leffingwell, who told McMurtry that Parsons was “impregnating statuettes with a vital force by invocation, and then selling the statuettes.” He further said that Parsons reminded him “of the young Crowley—he is so set on overturning the present system that he will stop at nothing.” No mention is made of the Babalon Working in any of McMurtry's reports.

  Parsons’ disappointment at the results of the working had been alleviated by the next month, when, on February 23, 1946, he triumphantly wrote to Crowley, “I have my elemental! She turned up one night after the conclusion of the Operation, and has been with me since, although she goes back to New York next week. She has red hair and slant green eyes as specified. She is an artist, strong-minded and determined, with strong masculine characteristics and a fanatical independence. If she returns she will be dedicated as I am dedicated!”

  The elemental was Marjorie Elizabeth Cameron, sprung from Parsons’ head like Sophia from the Godhead or Pallas Athena from Zeus. She actually arrived at the lodge before Parsons left for the desert with Hubbard. McMurtry had just left, and the Babalon Working was still in progress (but was not known to Cameron). Cameron came back two weeks later after some friends of Parsons tracked her down at the employment office. This time she came to stay.

  Parsons described Cameron as an “air of fire type with bronze red hair, fiery and subtle, determined and obstinate, sincere and perverse, with extraordinary personality, talent, and intelligence.” She remained in the dark about the Babalon Working until long after it was finished—even though she was to participate in its next phase. Parsons made her a protective talisman, which she wore around her neck for years until police took it away because it had a potent poison sealed inside.

  Parsons exultantly wrote in his notes that Cameron answered all the requirements of the elemental he had invoked. She adopted the magical name “Candida” (the Latin root of “candid”), calling herself “Candy” for short. He wrote that she “demonstrated the nature of woman to you [referring to himself] in such unequivocal terms that you [Parsons] should have no further room for illusion on the subject.” Parsons and Cameron would marry in October of that year, just eight months later. Shortly after they met, the ever-romantic Parsons composed a poem for her, “Witch Woman,” which opens his poetry collection Songs for the Witch Woman:

  I hear your voice low in the dusk

  Like the notes of the harp player

  That carve the still air

  Into a sensuous and subtle imagery of sound.

  And my senses are drowned

  By the scent of the oleander and the musk

  Of the datura dimly shining in the dark,

  While your voice troubles the still air,

  And I recall

  An ancient garden and a secret call

  And your slant eyes and your red hair

  Engender dreams of days beyond despair.

  And under your sorcery I fare forth

  To fabulous lands and meadows green with Spring

  And caught on the gossamer web of evening

  I behold incredible things no poet ever told.

  Marjorie Cameron was born on April 23, 1922 in Belle Plain, Iowa, which is located in Benton County in east central Iowa. Her parents were Hill Lislie Cameron, originally from Illinois, and Carrie V. Ridenour, a native of Iowa. Cameron actually grew up in northern Wisconsin, “a country of ferocious grandeur.” When she met Parsons, she was 5'5”, 126 pounds, fair-complected with freckles, red hair and blue (not green) eyes. An “air of fire type,” as Parsons called her, is typically a Leo in the Enochian system (on the Fire Tablet rather than the Air Tablet), and is associated with the Prince of Wands in the Tarot.

  Cameron had served in the WAVES during WWII, at which time she had been stationed in Washington, D.C. She had also served as an aide to the Joint Chiefs of Staff there, after entering the Navy as an Apprentice Seaman on December 9, 1942 at Chicago, Illinois. She was honorably discharged from Washington, D.C. as a photographer a on November 16, 1945, after which she moved to Los Angeles, where one of her Navy friends took her to the Agape Lodge. Interestingly, Cameron, Hubbard and Heinlein were all in the Navy. A Freedom of Information Act
request revealed that the FBI had no file on her.

  From January 19 (the very day Cameron arrived!) to February 27, Parsons daily recorded that he “invoked the Goddess BABALON with the aid of my magical partner, as was proper to one of my grade.” The magical partner was, of course, Cameron, though some writers have tried to make it Hubbard, who was in actuality not present. The grade Parsons referred to is the IX° of the OTO, a rite involving sexual intercourse in much the way that the VIII° involves masturbation. However, Parsons evidently never held this grade, nor was this a IX° working, based on the way Crowley ran the higher grades in the 1940s. At that time, Agape Lodge was the only operating lodge of the OTO. Members there could request the grade, as it were, and Crowley would confirm their right to work it despite the fact that they had not attained the intermediate grades. However, just because a few members were working with the IX° material does not mean they could demonstrate attainment, as there were no other legitimate IX° members present to guide them and confirm their results. The Babalon Working in particular was far too unorthodox to have been a part of this degree; it was specially designed by Parsons for this one purpose.

  According to Cameron, the rite consisted of her and Parsons spending two weeks in bed. Unfortunately, Parsons did not record the details of his daily invocations, or if he did they have not survived. Cameron said the two talked incessantly: “He educated me…that's what he was supposed to do.” She also related that he made her aware she “had a mission in the world.” Of course, she was ignorant of the entire Babalon Working, of which she was supposed to be the elemental invoked, until well past its completion.

  On February 27, Cameron went back to New York to visit her boyfriend, a photographer named Napoleon, spending two weeks there, during which time she dumped him. She later said she returned to Pasadena when she discovered she was pregnant by Parsons. The day after she left for New York, Parsons returned to the Mojave Desert without Hubbard, who had gone away for awhile, perhaps to the VA hospital in San Francisco. Parsons invoked Babalon in the desert, presumably through a solo sexual rite of some sort, though he does not say. What resulted was phenomenal: “The presence of the Goddess came upon me,” he wrote, “and I was commanded to write the following communication.”

  The communication Parsons was commanded to write was Liber 49, often mistakenly referred to as The Book of Babalon, of which it is only a part. Liber 49 is too long to reproduce here, but it has been reproduced widely in print and on the internet in unauthorized versions. The communication falls well outside the orthodoxy of the OTO's system, their test of its genuineness and spiritual coherence being its claim to be the fourth chapter of Liber AL—which is described internally as “threefold.”15

  Parsons took Liber 49 to be an affirmation of the need to produce a “magical child.” Liber 49 has 77 verses: The seven-pointed star is sacred to Babalon (which has seven letters), and 7 × 7 = 49, a number also sacred to Babalon. Besides being two sevens side-by-side, 77 is 7 × 11, and 11, as we have already seen, is the number of Crowley's magick.

  Parsons came to see Liber 49 as the fourth chapter of The Book of the Law. Parsons saw the four chapters as corresponding to the four letters of the ineffable name of God: YHWH, the Hebrew Yod Hé Vau Hé. He assigned one chapter to each letter and to what each letter represented: Father, Mother, Son, Daughter, or God, Holy Ghost, Christ, and the gnostic Sophia, the Puer, Vir, Puella, Mulier of Liber 36.

  Of the 77 original verses of Liber 49, 73 survive. Liber 49 begins:

  1. Yea, it is I, BABALON.

  2. And this is my book, that is the fourth chapter of the Book of the Law, Hé completing the Name, for I am out of NUIT by HORUS, the incestuous sister of RA-HOOR-KHUIT.

  Five of the surviving verses mention fire, flame or burning, which seems appropriate for a man working with rockets and explosives. Three mention the “Black Pilgrimage,” which we will also discuss later. Two mention the number 11, albeit one incorrectly: Verse 65 a calls it the number of a witches’ coven, but that number is 13. References to Crowley's work, especially The Book of the Law, abound, and those familiar with that work will find this one easy enough to interpret.

  Verses 28 and 29 refer to Crowley's Liber Astarte, with the statement that the working is of “nine moons.” Liber Astarte vel Berylli sub figura CLXXV is “The Book of Uniting Himself to a Particular Deity by Devotion” and is reproduced in Crowley's Magick, but not in Magick in Theory and Practice. The deity in Parsons’ case was Babalon. There is no timeframe specified in the book, but Babalon's purported message to Parsons regarding a nine-month working seems excessive, and there is certainly no surviving record to bear this out. Parsons may have interpreted this nine-month figure to mean that the working in this case involved a magical birth rather than a literal one.

  Verse 48 reads, “Now is the hour of birth at hand. Now shall my adept be crucified in the Basilisk abode,” a reference to Crowley's Magus initiation from 1916. One of the entries in Crowley's magical record for the period reads, “He hath crucified a toad in his basilisk abode,” reflecting the time Crowley christened a frog “Jesus,” crucified it, then ate its legs and burned the rest. This incident was a ritual affirmation of the supersession of what Crowley called “the slave-gods.”

  The “basilisk abode” refers to the womb, as tradition held that the basilisk, or “legendary reptile with fatal breath and glance,” was born of menstrual blood. In Greek, basileos means “king,” and the frog is a symbol of transition, living as it does in two worlds (water and dry land).

  Two chapters survive of Parsons’ original The Book of Babalon. One, “The Star of Babalon,” is in Freedom Is A Two-Edged Sword. It consists of directions from Babalon to the expected Magical Child, and is not to be confused with Parsons’ record of the Babalon Working. The other chapter consists of quotes from a secret OTO document of the VIII°.

  * * *

  11. See Crowley's Liber A vel ARMORUM in Magick for instructions for constructing each weapon as well as other magical accessories.

  12. Some versions read XARP—the final E is added to denote the element of Air.

  13. The concerto used by Parsons was Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 2 in G Minor (Op. 63), which was the only recording available at the time. Recorded on December 20, 1937, it was performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and conducted by Serge Koussevitzsky, while Jascha Heifetz played violin. Prokofiev (1891–1953) was still alive at the time. Lasting just over 34 minutes, it is a haunting recording, though sentimental in places. It is unclear whether the Scribe restarted the record when it finished, or if the participants just allowed it to run until it stopped. The original was a 78-rpm phonograph record, and its CD is available on Biddulph from England. It is also available as item number 9167 in the Pearl-Koch catalog, entitled Jacha (sic) Heifetz Concerto Recordings Vol. II-Brahms et al., a version released October 13, 1995 as part of a two-disc set.

  14. This occurrence is curiously similar to the nine regular knocks that Whitley Strieber felt confirmed the existence of his otherworldly Visitors in his “non-fiction” book Communion. Strieber later said that these nine knocks signified his readiness to move to the next evolutionary level, just as three knocks signify a Master Mason is ready to enter the Lodge for initiation.

  15. UFO researcher Jacques Vallee says Parsons claimed to have met a Venusian in the Mojave desert during the course of 1946. The Venusian apparently was the implied source of Liber 49.

  eight

  The Babalon Working, Part 2: March 1946

  In March 1946, the red-haired elemental Cameron returned from New York and moved in with Parsons. She was to be an integral part of the Babalon Working, though did not know it at the time. She did feel like she was in the middle of something, so much so that she felt as if she were “spying.” Parsons wrote that he knew not in whom Babalon was incarnate, but Cameron said he had been warned in the desert not to tell her it was she. To prove herself to him, Cameron would provide a sign, which she claimed was
her sighting of a silver, cigar-shaped UFO. This incident was the only time the two ever discussed UFOs, she said. She actually derided his magick at the time, but later proved to herself that it worked.

  On March 1, Parsons again prepared the altar and the various magical weapons, this time “in accordance with the instructions in Liber 49.” What changed? In verses 18 through 22, Babalon specifies sandalwood incense, a green and gold cloth to cover the altar, her book (Liber 49) and the other magical implements, including a three-inch copper disk with the sevenfold Star of Babalon painted in gold on a blue background, which was to be the new talisman, replacing the parchment talisman of the original Enochian rite. The talisman was to be anointed in much the same way, although this time with the sexual secretions of both partners—Parsons and Cameron.

  The operation began as directed on March 2, when Hubbard, who had been away since the 27th or 28th of February, returned with a description of “a vision he had that evening of a savage and beautiful woman riding naked on a great cat-like beast,” Parsons wrote. “He [Hubbard] was impressed with the urgent necessity of giving me [Parsons] some message or communication. We prepared magically for this communication, constructing a temple at the altar with the analysis of the key word [INRI]. He was robed in white, carrying the lamp, and I in black, hooded, with the cup and dagger [two of the magical weapons]. 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 p.m. he began to dictate, I transcribing directly as I received.”16

  After Parsons’ initial contact with the astral plane during this second working, Hubbard began acting as seer, although Parsons continued to call him “Scribe” in his notes, and it was actually he who was “scrying in the Aethyr” while Parsons took notes. In regard to Hubbard's vision of the catlike beast and naked woman, it should be recalled that Crowley repeatedly referred to the Beast and his Scarlet Woman in the Book of Revelation, which Crowley identified as himself and his current consort, corresponding also to the Gnostic-Christian heresiarch Simon Magus and his Helen. The woman was Sophia incarnate, and Hubbard's vision was once again seen as the cover picture for the first edition of Williamson's Darker Than You Think (from 1948).