Y’all, the things you can learn digging around Wikipedia!
So, Jack Parsons (which, you must admit, is a name so perfect for an occultist one almost wants to run right out this very minute and write a story in which a Jack Parsons, occultist, is a character) is a central figure to our rocket program here in the U.S. and co-founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Crowley appointed him the head of the Agape Lodge in California.
Who should happen to be working magick with Parsons (and working some love magic on his girl)? L. Ron Hubbard.
I shit you not.
If wikipedia is to be believed, much of Hubbard’s ‘Dianetics’ is derived from Golden Dawn ideas, which, it would seem, probably came to him through his association with Parsons and Parsons’ connection to Crowley* (**).
There’s something so funny about this I almost don’t know where to place my biggest laugh. I keep thinking of that South Park episode where they talk about the fundamental beliefs of Scientology–all the thetans and the aliens and the levels of nonsense that only come to seems more nonsensical because the Scientologists take them so seriously.
And just when you thought it couldn’t get any more ridiculous than how Matt & Trey depicted it, you find Crowley back there as some spiritual grandfather to the movement.
Crowley has his issues, to put it lightly, but you have to give a man props for being such an enormous influence on the twin evils of heavy metal and Tom Cruise.
I’m sorry.
I just can’t get over that.
When we were young and allowed to wander off to church things unsupervised by my dad, I remember being told that Scientology was just a front for the Satanic Church. Of course, one gets older and comes to doubt that the Church of Satan could organize anything more complex than a backyard cook-out, but if one is calling something "Satanic" based on the long shadow cast by Crowley?
Then such accusations begin to make sense.
*I have got to find me a good book on the Golden Dawn.
**It always strikes me how short time is. Crowley was in college when Wilde was being persecuted for being gay. And Crowley lived long enough to see the middle of this century.
Tiny Cat Pants 