Date: 12 Apr 2000 04:32:49 GMT
Message-ID: <8d0u9h$gq8$3@thingy.apana.org.au>
Is anyone collecting these little mentions of Hubbard in others' bios? They certainly should be.
This is from 'The Legacy of the Beast' by Gerald Suster, a biography of Aleister Crowley. It verges on hagiography and also reads in a lot of places like it's carefully dancing around the petty politics of the magickal world. But it's a nice read.
[It would have been a nicer one if some *fuckhead* hadn't ripped out several pages and one entire chapter. From a *library book*.] Excerpt below is from Part Four, "The Influence of the Beast", chapter 2, "Disciples". Suster's tone is *not* approving. This reads to me like it's heavily based on secondary sourcing, likely 'Bare-Faced Messiah'. But I could be wrong.
Excerpted from Gerald Suster: The Legacy of the Beast, W.H. Allen 1988, ISBN 0 491 03446 6, p214.
The history of the OTO is more complex. As early as the mid-1920s, Eugene Grosche, of the German Saturn-Gnosis Lodge, declined to accept Crowley as 'World Teacher' and went his own way, though he preserved cordial relations with the Prophet. Today, the Lodge grows steadily under the author and translator, Herr Ralph Tegtmeier, whose intelligence, years of magical experience and good humour impress all whom he encounters and who openly deplores the lack of a German critical tradition of debate as he tests his ably reasoned opinions in fair argument.
The remainder of the OTO Lodges went with Crowley as Outer Head. Some work was done in California during the 1930s by Wilfred T. Smith, but it was as uninspiring as its leader's name. However, things became more interesting in the 1940s with the advent of Jack Parsons, who came to run an active California Lodge and who by profession was a brilliant rocket-fuel scientist (a crater on the Moon is named after him). Parsons also wrote a few good poems, though it seems that some of his ideas were in excess of his ability to cope with them. He endeavoured to find a Scarlet Woman so as to produce a 'Moonchild', a praeter-human intelligence born within a human body.
'I get fairly frantic,' Crowley commented morosely, 'when I contemplate the idiocy of these louts.' In view of what transpired, one can hardly blame Baphomet for his scathing remarks. For a disciple came to Parsons, begged to assist him in the 'Moonchild' working, won Parsons' trust - and then robbed him of his woman and his money. This character, who went on to make sound practical use of all he had learned, was L. Ron Hubbard, the late Founder and Godfather of a highly successful movement which suppresses individual initiative, Scientology.
Jack Parsons finally made his exit by dropping a phial of fulminate of mercury and blowing himself up in his own laboratory in 1951, Those who believe in reincarnation will no doubt wish him better luck next life.
-- http://xenu.netizen.com.au/ http://www.caube.org.au/ "My energies are much better spent teaching people to eat pork than teaching pigs to be civilized." (Dr K. "Cortez" Legume)
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