kaos

decades. After his death Marjorie Cameron came to regard herself in some sense as the
avatar Jack had wished to produce and got into her own trip. I noticed in a letter Parsons
wrote to her on February 6, 1950, he mentions the book by Joseph Campbell The Hero
with a Thousand Faces, and he says he’ll get her a copy of Crowley’s Book of Lies. He’s
pointing her in directions, exciting her in things that he’s excited by. Shortly after reading
this letter I came across a letter from Joseph Campbell to Cameron, dated November
14, 1965. Fifteen years after Jack
turned her attention to Campbell’s
work Cameron sent a set of slides of
her paintings to him, and he was
delighted by her work. And I got a
sense of the cyclic working out of
different fates, just a glimpse but of
something much deeper than the
bare facts of a person’s life dredged
up from fbi files, newspaper reports,
employment records, and suchlike. It
is interesting to ponder whether in
later years Marjorie Cameron became
the Babalon that Jack would have
recognised. Had he lived maybe he
would have seen his crude 1946
objective distilled by time into something
of tangibly rich essence and
under his nose all the time. There is
a painting of Cameron’s called “Fossil
Angel” that is very beautiful (shown
here). It made me think when I saw
it, who is to say Parsons, had he lived,
may not have one day seen in a painting by Cameron “the sign delivered by Our Lady
Babalon Incarnate”. The Book of Babalon was intended to be a book of guidance for this
Incarnate Babalon—recounting her magical birth you might say—as indeed this book
became for Cameron in later years after his death. There is the sense here of a deeper
more real story, one that John Carter doesn’t come close to telling, but nonetheless Sex
and Rockets is still a valuable book so long as readers are aware that it contains some
shoddy workmanship in the biographer’s art and are prepared to go back to the original
sources for themselves.
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