Demons of the Flesh

Beginning left-hand path sex magicians may be inspired by this book to form their own groups for the investigation and practice of erotic alchemy. We discuss some of the considerations that should inform the development of one's own sex-magical society in the last section of this study. But there could be no better illustrative preamble to some of the practical problems that can potentially arise in sex-magical groups than a brief overview of Jack Parsons' involvement with the O.T.O. Agape Lodge. Men and women of the sinister current may sincerely seek liberation from the limitations of societal and personal sexual politics. But once the organizational factor enters the picture, as the chronicle below makes clear, you must be prepared to encounter such pashu behaviors as possessiveness, power struggle, and the hypocritical pretense that every ordinary expression of lust is of a "spiritual" nature.

In March of 1941, Wilfred T. Smith, the expatriate Englishman authorized by Crowley to lead the Agape Lodge in Los Angeles, reported to the Great Beast concerning a new O.T.O. initiate. Of the 26-year-old, Smith wrote: "I think I have at long last a really excellent man, John Parsons. And starting next Tuesday he begins a course of talks with a view to enlarging our scope. He has an excellent mind and much better intellect than myself...John Parsons is going to be valuable." This was welcome news to Crowley, long dissatisfied with the work of his Californian disciples, who he dismissed as mere "fans." Only six years before his death, and in poor health, the Beast was anxious that a new generation of Thelemite leadership arise to carry on his mission.

Another member of the Agape Lodge, the silent film actress Jane Wolfe, who had studied with the Beast in Cefalu, was equally impressed by the newcomer, writing of Parsons in her magical diary that "I see him as the real successor of Therion [Crowley's magical name]."

Based on such enthusiastic reports, Crowley began to consider Parsons as the logical leader of the Agape Lodge, increasingly distancing himself from Wilfred Smith, whose abilities he had long held in question. Just as Parsons had showed an early brilliance in science, conversing authoritatively as a teenager via telephone with the great German rocket scientist Werner von Braun, so had magic been a life-long fascination for the prodigy. In 1927, at the age of 13, according to his The Book of Antichrist, Parsons attempted to evoke the Devil to visible appearance, an operation that he claimed was met with success, although he rebuked himself for "showing cowardice when He appeared." Parsons' apparently sincere acceptance of the Devil as a literal being with whom man can communicate differed sharply from Crowley's relative disinterest in the Satanic mythos. The modern reader, accustomed to the prevalence of superficial, trendy youthful Satanic posturing in our time must keep in mind how unspoken a thing Satanism was in the America of the 1920s. That the adolescent Parsons would have explored such arcane realms without the encouragement of the kind of mercantile occult subculture that exists today clarifies just how far from the norm he was, even at the beginning of his initiation.

The literary agent Forrest J Ackerman, who included L. Ron Hubbard among the many authors he represented, knew Parsons in the 1940s from their mutual membership in the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society. Ackerman described Parsons to us as "a Howard Hughes type, tall, slender, dark, good-looking." Along with his wife Helen, also an aspirant to the O.T.O, the young, attractive couple injected some gladly received new blood to the sex magickal circle.

With his vigorous intelligence, natural inclination for magic, and scientific approach to initiation, the rocketeer appeared to be the potential leader that Crowley and the failing O.T.O. had long sought. But from the first, Parsons showed an independent streak ill-suited to the hierarchical and doctrinaire structure of Crowley's O.T.O. Although he accepted Thelema unreservedly as the foundation of his religion, and admired Crowley as his "beloved father," Parsons took a far more creative, forward-looking view than his Lodge fellows, who went strictly by the book (of the Law).

Odd though it may seem considering Crowley's own unrestrained sexual appetite, the reportedly charismatic Smith's tendency to seduce almost every willing female member of the Lodge particularly rankled the Beast. One of the sisters of the Lodge whom Smith took as his mistress was Helen Parsons. This affair, true to the Thelemic injunction that "there shall be no property in human flesh" was engaged in with John Parsons' knowledge and agreement. The younger man viewed Smith as a paternal mentor — even as the "Avatar of a God" — and was loath to interfere with his True Will, even if his own marriage were to suffer as a consequence. This cultivated overcoming of societally conditioned sexual jealousy was part of Parsons' effort to liberate himself with the mores of his time and upbringing, and remained a central aspect of his approach to sex magic. But his tendency to be vulnerable to exploitation in this regard would prove to be a perilous theme in his abbreviated life. In any event, Parsons turned his amorous attentions to his wife's younger sister, Sara Northrup, known as Betty, who also joined the O.T.O.

Parsons later interpreted this incident as a turning point in his erotic initiation, writing of himself in Analysis by a Master from the distance of the third person: "Betty served to effect a transference from Helen at a critical period. Had this not occurred your repressed homosexual element could have caused a serious disorder. Your passion for Betty also gave you the magical force you needed at the time, and the act of adultery tinged with incest, served as your magical confirmation in the Law of Thelema."

Crowley, struggling for survival in dire wartime London, was less forgiving when he heard of these far away Californications, which he felt reduced the ideal of sexual initiation to a banal soap opera. In one of many scolding letters to Smith, Crowley accused him of providing the O.T.O with "the reputation of being that slimy abomination, a 'love cult.'" Since Crowley had been accused of much the same thing for the past twenty years, we must imagine that this sudden outbreak of puritanism in his old age was merely a ploy to depose Smith, whose increasingly authoritarian guidance of the Lodge was inspiring sedition among the already feud-riven brothers and sisters of Agape.

Crowley installed Parsons as the acting master of the Lodge, despite the Beast's accurate observation that he was "very young and easily swayed by passing influences." Complicating this accession to power over the Lodge was Parsons' tenacious devotion to his excommunicated predecessor Smith, whom Crowley had pronounced persona non grata. Parsons's young wife Betty apparently despised Smith, which must have exacerbated the already existing tensions considerably.

Parsons' early interest in Satanism and the darker expressions of the divine had always separated him from the more conventionally benevolent magicians in the Lodge. Now he began to develop an ominous reputation, enhanced by his fascination with the evocation of demonic entities via Voodoo and the more malevolent manifestations of witchcraft, practices almost entirely unknown to Americans in the 1940s. Agape Lodge members wrote to Crowley in England to complain that their new leader's experiments were creating a sinister atmosphere in the communal house where meetings were held. Parsons seemed uninterested in undertaking the duties of the Lodge, as his focus shifted away increasingly from the performance of orthodox Crowleyan rituals in favor of more personal sex-magical adventures.

He even dared to reprimand Crowley himself, complaining that the Beast's rather sadistic treatment of the disgraced Wilfred Smith was unfair. As protest, Parsons resigned from the O.T.O. in 1943, an event Crowley recorded in his diary, with a typically misogynist snipe at Parsons's wife: "Letter of resignation from puppy Jack; his snout glued to the rump of an alley- cat." Despite his anger at this insubordination, the Beast persuaded Parsons to remain in the fold, which tells us something of the admiration he must have held for his promising if refractory student, who many still considered a likely successor to the Thelemic throne. Although he remained the nominal head of the Lodge until as late as 1946, Parsons' growing fascination — one might even say obsession — with the seductive feminine mystery of Babalon was to lead him to a heresy that would finally cause him to characterize the O.T.O. as "an excellent training school for Adepts, but hardly an appropriate order for the manifestation of Thelema." As must happen with any true magician, Parsons graduated from apprenticeship in a dogmatic school to remanifestation as his own independent entity.

And as is the mark of the left-hand path initiate, it was the fascination exerted upon him by a woman who led him gloriously astray. Not just any woman, but Inanna, the Great Whore of Babylon, her ancient allure risen again in a desert far from the sands of Iraq.

© Nikolas and Zeena Schreck