Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

times through a sacred fire, but they made it so obvious that they considered the whole thing to be
a joke that Parsons had no difficulty convincing them he was a bona fide and respectable scientist,
and persuaded them to leave without conducting a search.
Among his other interests, Parsons was also a science-fiction fan and occasionally turned up at
meetings of the Los Angeles Fantasy and Science Fiction Society, where devoted fans gathered
every week to meet the top science fiction writers. Jack Williamson, a regular contributor to Science
Wonder Stories, encountered Parsons at a meeting in 1941 and was surprised to learn he was a
scientist. 'He had read my novel Darker Than You Think, which deals with the supernatural,'
Williamson recalled. 'I was astonished to discover he had a far less sceptical interest in such
things than I did.'[6]
To Parsons there was an attractive affinity between magic and science fiction and on Sunday
afternoons in the summer his science-fiction friends tended to congregate in his kitchen for
endless discussions about the relative merits of sci-fi writers, their ideas and stories. One of the
fans who regularly took the streetcar to South Orange Grove Avenue on Sunday afternoons was a
young man called Alva Rogers, who would eventually become a 'semi-permanent resident' - an
arrangement that was not in the least unusual. On an early visit be met and fell in love with a young
art student who was renting a room in the mansion and thereafter he would spend the night with
her whenever he could.
Rogers was fascinated by the house, its owner and the occupants. 'Mundane souls were
unceremoniously rejected as tenants,' he said. 'There was a professional fortune teller and seer
who always wore appropriate dresses and decorated her apartment with symbols and artefacts 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 of France. There was a man who
had been a renowned organist in the great movie palaces of the silent era. They were characters
all.'
According to Rogers, Parsons never made any secret of his interest in black magic or his
involvement with Aleister Crowley. 'He had a voluminous correspondence with Crowley in the
library, some of which he showed me. I remember in particular one letter from Crowley which
praised and encouraged him for the fine work he was doing in America, and also casually thanked
him for his latest donation and intimated that more would shortly be needed. Jack admitted that he
was one of Crowley's main sources of money in America.
'I always found Jack's insistence that he believed in, and practised, magic hard to reconcile with his
educational and cultural background. At first I thought it was all fun and games, a kick he was on for
its shock value to his respectable friends. But after seeing his correspondence with Crowley, and
the evidence of his frequent remittances to Crowley, I had to give him the benefit of the doubt.'[7]
In the summer of 1944, Helen Parsons left her husband and ran off with another member of the
lodge, by whom she was pregnant.
Parsons consoled himself by transferring his affections to Helen's younger sister, Sara Northrup,
who was then eighteen, a beautiful and vivacious student at the University of Southern California.
Within a few months, Sara dropped out of her course and moved in with Parsons, to the great
distress of her parents. At South Orange Grove Avenue she became known as Betty (hermiddle
name was Elizabeth). Completely under the spell of her lover, she was soon inculcated onto the
OTO and assisting in its ceremonies. In accordance with the teachings of 'the Beast', Parsons
encouraged Betty to enjoy sex with other members of the lodge, or indeed any man who took her