I. VAMA MARGA Foundations Of The Left-Hand Path - staticfly.net

to the Parsonage, wrote in a 1962 memoir of his eccentric host that
"Mundane souls were unceremoniously rejected as tenants. There was a
professional fortune teller and seer who always wore appropriate dresses and
decorated her apartment with symbols and artifacts of arcane lore. There was
a lady, well past middle age but still strikingly beautiful, who claimed to have
been at various times the mistress of half the famous men in France. There
was a man who had been a renowned organist in the great movie palaces of
the silent era. They were characters all."
Parsons' wealthy neighbors did not take kindly to the rambunctious
parties that now rocked their once quiet neighborhood, and rumors of "black
magic orgies" eventually brought the police to investigate one particularly
raucous celebration. When a naked woman was observed jumping over a fire
in imitation of pagan festivities, Parsons cut short an official inquiry only by
presenting his credentials as a scientist working on top secret weapons work
for the U.S. government. Parsons' FBI file makes it clear that the scientist's
sex-magical pursuits and unconventional living arrangements kept him
within official radar; Uncle Sam was made nervous by the idea of a war-time
researcher keeping company with atheists and bohemians, anti-social types
which sounded suspiciously like Communists. One of the largest rooms in
the house – in sight of an imposing portrait of Crowley – was reserved as a
temple for the increasingly irregular Agape Lodge meetings. Parsons' lodgers
became accustomed to the mediaeval sight of robed Thelemites wending their
way to the incense-laden ritual chamber with candles in their hands.
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This provocative convocation of potentially explosive forces was
brought to a head by a new arrival on the scene in the late fall of 1945 – a 34-
year old pulp fiction writer on leave from his service as an officer in the
United States Navy. Parsons, who devoured the numerous sci-fi magazines
for which Lafayette Ron Hubbard (1911—1986) wrote, was delighted to
welcome a known author among the bohemian enclave assembled at the
Parsonage. Hubbard was described by his fellow Parsonage roommate Alva
Rogers, as "a persuasive and unscrupulous charmer, not only in a social
group, but with the ladies. He was so persuasive and charmingly
unscrupulous that within a matter of a few weeks he brought the entire house
of Parsons down around poor Jack's ears. He did this by the simple expedient
of taking over Jack's girl for extended period of time." Just as Wilfred Smith
had enthralled Parsons' first sex-magickal partner, his wife Helen, away from
him in the Agape Lodge, the scenario was repeating itself with Hubbard and
Betty. Arthur Jean Cox, who knew the young Hubbard of this period, recalled
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to us that L. Ron already had a reputation in science fiction circles for
"cuckolding other men's wives with his sexual magnetism."
Parsons, at first, chose to see things in a more optimistic light, as this
1945 letter to Crowley reveals: "About three months ago 1 met Ron ... a
writer and explorer of whom I had known for some time ... He is a gentleman
... is honest and intelligent, and we have become great friends. He moved in
with me about two months ago, and although Maggy [a nickname for Betty]
and I are still friendly, she has transferred her sexual affections to Ron."
Parsons praised Hubbard's untrained but innate gift for magic, suggesting that
as "the most Thelemic person I have ever met" he would be an ideal magical
partner for the "experiments" he had in mind. Of Betty, Parsons wrote to the
Beast: "I cared for her rather deeply, but I have no desire to control her
emotions, and I can, I hope, control my own." Parsons also noted that his
charismatic guest claimed to be in touch with a Feminine Daemonic being, "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." This may or
may not have been Hubbard telling his impressionable host what he wanted
to hear, but the symbolism of a woman with red hair makes for an interesting