Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

Chapter 7
Black Magic and Betty
'Hubbard broke up black magic in America . . . because he was well known as a writer and
philosopher and had friends among the physicists, he was sent in to handle the situation [of black
magic being practised in a house in Pasadena occupied by nuclear physicists]. He went to live at
the house and investigated the black magic rites and the general situation and found them very bad
. . . Hubbard's mission was successful far beyond anyone's expectations. The house was torn
down. Hubbard rescued a girl they were using. The black magic group was dispersed and never
recovered.' (Statement by the Church of Scientology, December 1969)
• • • • •
Hubbard was a patient at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital for three months after the war, although the
doctors were undecided as to precisely what was wrong with him. He was certainly neither blind
nor crippled, but seemed to be suffering from endless minor aches and pains. His medical record
shows that he was examined exhaustively, almost every week, complaining of headaches,
rheumatism, conjunctivitis, pains in his side, stomach aches, pains in his shoulder, arthritis,
haemorrhoids . . . there seemed to be no end to his suffering. Sometimes the doctors could find
symptoms, sometimes they could not. In September, for example, he was declared 'unfit for
service' because of an ulcer, but in November his ailments were described as 'minimal'.
It may be, of course, that Ron was simply preparing the ground to claim a veteran's disability
pension, for he certainly wasted no time putting in his application. Lieutenant Hubbard was
'mustered out' of the US Navy on 5 December 1945, and on the following day he applied for a
pension on the basis of a sprained left knee, conjunctivitis, a chronic duodenal ulcer, arthritis in his
right hip and shoulder, recurrent malaria and sporadic undiagnosed pain in his left side and
back.[1]
On the claim form, Ron said his wife and children were living with his parents at 1212 Gregory Way,
Bremerton, until he was able to get a house of his own. He described himself as a freelance writer
with a monthly income of $0.00; before he joined the Navy he claimed his average earnings had
been $650 a month.
Satisfied he had presented a convincing case for a pension, Ron drove out of the Officer Separation
Center in San Francisco at the wheel of an old Packard with a small trailer in tow, both of which he
had recently acquired. Home and the family were to the north, up in Washington State. But Ron
headed south, towards Los Angeles, to a rendezvous with a magician in a bizarre Victorian
mansion in Pasadena.
John Whiteside Parsons, known to his friend as Jack, was an urbane, darkly handsome man, not
unlike Errol Flynn in looks, and the scion of a well-connected Los Angeles family. Then thirty-one
years old, he was a brilliant scientist and chemist and one of America's foremost explosives
experts. He had spent much of the war at the California Institute of Technology working with a team
developing jet engines and experimental rocket fuels and was, perhaps, the last man anyone
would have suspected of worshipping the Devil.
For Jack Parsons led an extraordinary double life: respected scientist by day, dedicated occultist by