kaos

as he states in The Book of Babalon, began his Babalon Working on January 4, 1946,
which was designed to obtain the assistance of an elemental mate. Aiding him in this
operation at first as “Scribe” was L Ron Hubbard, who later absconded with Parsons’
fortune. After a daily sequence of Enochian operations and other invocations, on January
18, at sunset in the Mojave desert, after four days of tension the feeling suddenly snapped
and Parsons turned to Hubbard and said: “It is done.” He was absolutely certain that
the current phase of the operation had been accomplished. Returning home he found
Marjorie Cameron, a fiery redhead who was 23 at the time, waiting for him. They had
met before, and she had turned up to visit him at just this moment knowing nothing of
his Babalon Working.
Parsons recognised Cameron as fulfilling the intent of his magical operation and he
wrote to Aleister Crowley informing him that he had his elemental. Parsons records in
The Book of Babalon: “During the period of January 19 to February 27 I invoked the
goddess babalon with the aid of my magical partner.” This is the sentence that Michael
Staley inexplicably misinterpreted, for some reason he believed that Parsons’ “magical
partner”, despite Marjorie Cameron turning up, was still his “Scribe” L Ron Hubbard
and he emphasised this in no uncertain terms. Of course, it was actually Cameron, who,
according to Carter, said that the first two weeks of this period were spent in bed with
Jack, although Carter does not cite where this information may be found, presumably a
letter from Cameron to Jane Wolfe or an interview that he mentions in the back of the
book but does not specify clearly. Cameron apparently related that the two of them
talked incessantly during this period: “He educated me… that’s what he was supposed
to do.” He made her aware that she “had a mission in the world”. Even with Parsons’
sparse wording in The Book of Babalon, it’s hard to see how Staley could have so misread
the situation to have written: “It is notable that, even with the advent of Marjorie
Cameron, he continued to regard Hubbard as being his magical partner.” I no longer
have Starfire 3 to check, but the version of Staley’s essay on the web inserts Hubbard’s
name in parentheses in Parsons’ sentence after “magical partner”. Possibly this is Staley’s
insertion, giving the impression it appears in the original, or it reflects a mistaken
interpolation in the copy of The Book of Babalon that Staley was working from that he
simply passed on without thinking it through. It would be interesting to know whether
he still believes in this version of events, given that his essay has not been revised or
annotated for the web (http://www.mysunrise.ch/users/prkoenig/staley/staley11.htm).
Staley’s error is doubly hard to comprehend since Parsons states quite clearly in The
Book of Babalon, in the section headed “Birth”, dated March 2, 1946, that the Scribe
“knew nothing of my invocations of babalon, which I had kept entirely secret”.
Although Hubbard had a good idea of his activities, this sentence ought surely to have
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