Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

pungent incense; Jack was draped in a black robe and stood with his back to us, his arms
outstretched, in the centre of a pentagram before some sort of altar affair on which several
indistinguishable items stood.
'His voice, which was actually not very loud, rose and fell in a rhythmic chant of gibberish which was
delivered with such passionate intensity that its meaning was frighteningly obvious. After this brief
and uninvited glimpse into the blackest and most secret center of a tortured man's soul, we quietly
withdrew and returned to our room, where we spent the balance of the night discussing in
whispers what we had just witnessed.'[13]
Rogers was convinced that Parsons was trying to invoke a demon in order to despatch his rival, or
harm him in some way. It clearly did not work, however, for Ron remained in the best of spirits.
Despite what Alva Rogers and his girlfriend had seen on that unforgettable December night, the
fragile three-cornered relationship continued. Parsons seemed determined to try and overcome
what he considered to be an unworthy emotion. 'I have been suffered to pass through an ordeal of
human love and jealousy,' he noted in his 'Magical Record', adding, 'I have found a staunch
companion and comrade in Ron . . . Ron and I are to continue with our plans for the Order.'[14]
Their plans were unprecedented. Parsons wanted to attempt an experiment in black magic that
would push back the frontiers of the occult world. With the assistance of his new friend, he intended
to try and create a 'moonchild' - the magical child 'mightier than all the kings of the earth', whose
birth had been prophesied in The Book of the Law more than forty years earlier.
Aleister Crowley professed 'the great idea of magicians of all times' was to bring into being an Anti-
Christ, 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 in the
manner of human generation, nor inhabited by a human soul'.[15] To find a mother for this new
Messiah, Parsons envisaged invoking an elemental spirit of the 'whore of Babylon', the scarlet
woman of St John's Revelation: '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 . . .'
On 4 January 1946, Jack Parsons began a series of elaborate mystic rituals, known as the
'Babalon Working', which he hoped would lead to the invocation of a scarlet woman whose destiny
was to be mother to the moonchild. For the benefit of future magicians, he kept a detailed, day-byday
account in a manuscript be called the 'Book of Babalon'.
Magical rites began in the temple at South Orange Grove at nine o'clock that evening, with
Prokofiev's Violin Concerto playing in the background. First Parsons prepared and consecrated
various magical weapons, tablets and talismans, then he carried out eleven separate rituals,
beginning with 'Invoking Pentagram of Air' and 'Invocation of Bornless One' and ending with
'License to Depart, Purification and Banishing'.
The nightly ritual of incantation and talisman-waving continued for eleven days, at first without much
effect. Parsons noted that a strong windstorm blew up on the second and third days, but he had
obviously been hoping for rather more startling results. 'Nothing seems to have happened,' he
wrote in a letter to Crowley. 'The wind storm is very interesting, but that is not what I asked for.'[16]
On the seventh day, Parsons was woken at midnight by seven loud knocks and he discovered that