What's new

A letter from a guy with Hubbard in the beginning

Lermanet_com

Gold Meritorious Patron
A letter from an old timer with Hubbard in the beginning...(1952)

Dec. 28, 1993

According to your Advt. on p. 25 of the 1/3 Spotlight, you want to know something about Scientology. I can categorically state that seldom in the History of Mankind has something which is capable of such great good been used to create such havoc.

That statement needs explanation, which I shall be more than glad to furnish; I have no axes to grind, either pro or anti Scientology, but I lived through the very interesting times of its inception, and you simply cannot understand Scientology (hereafter referred to as Scn) without understanding what went on forty years and more ago.

Lafayette Ronald Hubbard was one of my favorite pulp fiction authors. To call him a "Science Fiction Writer" somewhat sneeringly as many people do, is to do an injustice to the man's eclectic abilities. He wrote Adventure fiction under his own name and that of Rene Lafayette; he wrote Western fiction under the name of Winchester Remington colt; he wrote True Confessions and love stories for the steamy women's magazines, and I hear that he wrote a lot of soft-core pornography for the "Spicy" rags, although I think he may have been a bit young for that. He was, quite simply, a very good pulp fiction author. There was a darker side to his nature. As a young man, he had studied with Aleister Crowley, and it is my understanding that he actually stole Crowley's yacht, although that may be apocryphal. He had also long been interested in what made people tick, and he formulated a bunch of theories about that. He finally took the plunge, publishing in the May, 1950, Analog Science Fact / Science Fiction, an article entitled "Dianetics." His then wife later claimed that the sole research he actually did for the development of the "Modern Science of Mental Health" was a half hour with a couple of dictionaries developing a name for it.

Be that as it may, he apparently created out of whole cloth a philosophy, theory, and therapy which not only worked, but - for the common run of neurotics (90% of the population) - worked far better than conventional psychotherapy, and was light-years ahead of the Psychiatry of its day! (It was not so red hot on real psychotics, Hubbard's claims to the contrary notwithstanding, but it was absolutely marvelous as psychosomatic medicine!) It could, and did, cure every nameable disease which was not genetic in origin, and relieved those, to some extent - but not always; that was the stumbling block. I solved that problem, to the satisfaction of the field and the annoyance of the zealots; in a paper I published, I had this to say; "In order for a psychosomatic disease to exist, there must, somewhere, be a real disease for it to imitate. While with Dianetic processes you can aid the pre-clear in eliminating or ameliorating the former, there is little that can be done about the latter." That statement, true though it may have been, did not increase my popularity among the "All disease is psychosomatic" set, but I didn't care; my point was that if ALL disease was psychosomatic, why did animals get sick?

Thus Hubbard got his first shock; something which had either been designed as a spoof or a con, (I believe the former; most everyone else of my acquaintances believes the latter), not only worked, but worked as he - the inventor - SAID it would work! So, whether he had intended it or not, he was stuck with writing "The Book." Again, his wife claimed it was entirely fiction; but fiction or not, it got a lot of people started, and a lot of people got a lot saner practically overnight. Neuroses vanished; people got well from an astounding array of diseases. A friend of ours whose back was completely ankylosed into a question mark, so that he had to walk with two canes, after fifteen hours with my father straightened up and went back to leading a dance band. An M.D. we knew lost his peripheral neuritis, endocarditis, and diabetes! (He gave himself a routine injection of Insulin, went into shock, and nearly died before he could eat a candy bar!) His hair, which had been snow white for over ten years, came back in as a honey blond. Speaking of hair, I worked with a man who was egg bald. After ten hours, he had a tonsure, and after thirty nearly a full head of hair. Harrison Angel had a mouth full of bad teeth, so he had them all pulled and grew a new set, using techniques he had developed from Dianetic theory; the new set came in crooked, so he had them pulled and grew another set, this time doing it right! A friend of my wife's had been born with a deformed toe. During one of her sessions, the crooked toe straightened out!

But Miracles, in the early days, were commonplace. Never in the History of Mankind had so many fine minds been allied in an effort to help others, with a believable framework on which to hang their efforts. It was all very chivalrous and idealistic in those days.

Hubbard started three "Foundations," one in Elizabeth, N.J., one in Los Angeles, and one in Honolulu. Some brilliant people came to work for him; people whose own lives had been materially aided by Dianetics, and who wanted to give something back. Miracles occurred daily. People went to the Foundations to be trained as "Auditors," but far more people read the book, rolled up their figurative sleeves, and went to work. These were referred to as "Book Auditors," with a sort of lofty condescension from the "Professional Auditors" who carried the seal of approval of the Hubbard Dianetic Foundation. Here was the first inkling we in the field had that the great man didn't quite have all his tiles fastened down. The "Degree" he granted was "HDA," which was short for "Hubbard Dianetic Auditor." Since there wasn't any other form of Dianetics around to compete with it, the "H" seemed to be a bit out of place, not to say redundant, smacking somewhat of self aggrandisement; but, as I said to someone who questioned it, "The man's got a lot to be arrogant about." The fact was that GOOD "Book Auditors," which I modestly admit we were, were every bit as good as, and in many cases better than, any Foundation-trained Auditors.

It was then that some strange things began to happen.

Continues HERE
 

gomorrhan

Gold Meritorious Patron
Yeah, well, sounds like someone believes the legend: cures any non-genetic disease?

My ass.

Nice story, though. It was that story that made me check in. It was the truth that made me check out.
 

Lermanet_com

Gold Meritorious Patron
hi lulu,

thanks, Im getting by, exciting times eh?

gomorrhan, the letter continues for 9 pages on the link..the ending is rather startling, and very revealing, theres a lot more to it than just this page I posted.. ex's that have read this one consider it a must-be-read.


a.
 

gomorrhan

Gold Meritorious Patron
hi lulu,

thanks, Im getting by, exciting times eh?

gomorrhan, the letter continues for 9 pages on the link..the ending is rather startling, and very revealing, theres a lot more to it than just this page I posted.. ex's that have read this one consider it a must-be-read.


a.

Definitely a good read. I agree with the conclusions, and think that scrapping of the damaging stuff and the preoccupation with money (or social control, which is the goal of many people who think the organizations are valuable) go a long way to cleaning up the subject. I'm a metapsychologist, which I think has accomplished that goal, while also reestablishing the real roots of the subject (Freud, Maslow, Pavlov, etc.), and correcting the theory behind the successful practices.
 

klidov

Silver Meritorious Patron
In 1945, Hubbard became involved with Crowley's acolyte, Jack Parsons. Parsons wrote to Crowley that Hubbard had "described his angel as a beautiful winged woman with red hair, whom he calls the Empress, and who has guided him through his life and saved him many times." In the Crowleyite system, adherents seek contact with their "Holy Guardian Angel".

John Whiteside Parsons, usually known as Jack, first met Hubbard at a party in August 1945. When his terminal leave from the US Navy began, on December 6th, 1945, Hubbard went straight to Parsons' house in Pasadena, and took up residence in a trailer in the yard. Parsons was a young chemist who had helped to set up Jet Propulsion Laboratories and was one of the innovators of solid fuel for rockets. Parsons was besotted with Crowley's Sex Magick, and had recently become head of the Agape Lodge of the Church of Thelema in Los Angeles. The Agape Lodge was an aspect of the Ordo Templi Orientis, the small international group headed by Aleister Crowley.

Parsons' girlfriend soon transferred her affections to Hubbard. With her, Hubbard and Parsons formed a business partnership, as a consequence of which Parsons lost most of his money to Hubbard. However, before Hubbard ran away with the loot, he and Parsons participated in magical rituals which have received great attention among contemporary practitioners.

Parsons and Hubbard together performed their own version of the secret eighth degree ritual (017) of the Ordo Templi Orientis in January 1946. The ritual is called "concerning the secret marriages of gods with men" or "the magical masturbation" and is usually a homosexual ritual. The purpose of this ritual was to attract a woman willing to participate in the next stage of Hubbard and Parsons' Sex Magick.

Hubbard and Parsons were attempting the most daring magical feat imaginable. They were trying to incarnate the Scarlet Woman described in the Book of Revelation as "Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth ... drunken with the blood of saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus." (018) During the rituals, Parsons described Babalon as "mother of anarchy and abominations". The woman who they believed had answered their call, Marjorie Cameron, joined in with their sexual rituals in March 1946.

Parsons used a recording machine to keep a record of his ceremonies. He also kept Crowley informed by letter.The correspondence still exists. Crowley wrote to his deputy in New York "I get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these louts".

Crowley was being disingenuous. His own novel The Moonchild describes a ritual with a similar purpose. Further, the secret IXth degree ritual of the Ordo Templi Orientis (019) contains "Of the Homunculus" in which the adept seeks to create a human embodiment of one of the energies of nature - a god or goddess. The ritual says "to it thou art Sole God and Lord, and it must serve thee."

In fact, Hubbard and Parsons were committing sacrilege in Crowley's terms. Crowley respelled "Babylon" as he respelled "magic". His magick was entirely dedicated to Babalon, the Scarlet Woman. Crowley believed himself the servant and slave of Babalon, the antichrist, styling himself "the Beast, 666". For anyone to try to incarnate and control the goddess must have been an impossible blasphemy to him. Crowley, after all, called Babalon "Our Lady" (020).

Hubbard and Parsons attempts did not end with the conception of a human child. However, just as Crowley said that "Gods are but names for the forces of Nature themselves" (021), so it might be speculated that Hubbard embodied Babalon not in human form, but through his organization.

Parsons sued Hubbard in Florida in July 1946, managing to regain a little of his money. The record of their rituals was later transcribed and has since been published as The Babalon Working (022). Parsons made a return to Magick, writing The Book of the Antichrist in 1949 (023). Parsons pronounced himself the Antichrist. In a Scientology text, Hubbard spoke favourably of Parsons, making no mention of their magical liaison (024)


(Taken From L.Ron Hubbard & The Occult.)
 

klidov

Silver Meritorious Patron
It was Sara Northrup he "stole" along with the Parson's Yacht.


And she may have been Parson's wife.
 
Last edited:

Panda Termint

Cabal Of One
Thanks for the link, Arnie.
What a telling account of those particular early days, so different from the widely accepted "shore-story" fed to the faithful adherents of today.
Cheers, Panda
 

Leon

Gold Meritorious Patron
Nothing wrong with that.

I stole my wife from another guy along with his BMW. He got one dollar as the agreed upon settlement and he and I are still great friends.

Best wife I ever had. I'm planning to marry her for the next five lifetimes.
 

Veda

Sponsor
Sara Northrup met Jack Parsons when she was a teenager and became his girlfriend, not long after that, the "crippled and blinded" (see Hubbard bio) L. Ron Hubbard arrived in Pasadena, California (late 1945), and, using a variety of manipulative techniques, asserted his influence over the then youthful Sara.

They were married in 1946 and had a red headed daughter named Alexis.

In 1950/1951, Hubbard wrote numerous letters to the FBI asserting that Sara - and many others - were communists or communist sympathizers.

Sara was completely apolitical, but the idea was to have her discredited by having her "investigated" by the FBI.

Years later, naively, Alexis attempted to contact her biological father (Hubbard).

Sara wrote to author Paulette Cooper about this in letter that is now public record, thanks to it having been stolen from Paulette Cooper's apartment by a Scientology operative, and then found by the FBI during their 1977 "Snow White"-related legal actions.

http://www.forum.exscn.net/showpost.php?p=79110&postcount=23
 

theJB

Patron
While I might quibble with you over some of the details, your story was totally engrossing, but so intense I had to step away from it several times. In all it took me roughly three hours to read it from start to finish. In between concentrated reads I paused to take my dog for a walk, did some dishes, sorted some laundry... just to keep a more or less level head.
I was always an outsider to the organization, but a close observer none the less, as my brother met up with LRH around 1946. Brother dearest was immediately hooked. He was a high school dropout with a high IQ and a love of science and science fiction... he'd doubtless been reading LRH throughout his teen years without being aware of the fact. He had been in San Antonio at the time at I think it was Lackland AFB working with a group of scientists who were experimenting with electronic equipment captured from the Germans during WWII. He was in the Army Air Force, as it was still named in 1945.
It was after he finished his military commitment that he ran into LRH in New York City. I was only 11 at the time so am a bit vague about what happened next and when, but it has been confirmed by a relative that the two traveled together through the Chicago area and most probably ended up in California. Somewhere in that time span between 1946 and 1956 my brother (and of course LRH) ended up in DC which is where, as an adult, I was first exposed to bits and pieces of the church.
By that time brother was married and starting a family, some members of which I am still in contact. I had been led to believe and understand that it was my brother who developed the e-meter (one of the quibbles). To me it was pretty much stuff and nonsense, so I certainly agree with you there!
Scn as you folk call it, became like a rodeo bronc, something no sane person would try to tame and ride. I saw my brother have a number of psychotic breaks throughout his apparently lifelong attachment to the church. And I mean, literally witnessed, not unlike the discovery of LRH hiding under his bed in a motel after flipping out.
I was so affected by the difficulties caused within my own family that I still maintain reservation even regarding Dianetics, but I did discover on my own there are those among us who are natural auditors as I used those skills on that same brother during a visit to LA when I finally confronted him re our early incestual relationship... he was 7 years older than me and left home at 17 so you can see I was quite young at the time but he had told his then wife (#3) that I had seduced him. I guess he was a true scientologist to the core, although for years I simply saw him as pure evil.
I now realize the world is not black and white, as I believed when I was younger, but an amazing pallet of grays and every other color known to humans.
I'm a treckie at heart, so, dear friend, 'LIVE LONG AND PROSPER' for however many years left at your disposal.
 

theJB

Patron
While I might quibble with you over some of the details, your story was totally engrossing, but so intense I had to step away from it several times. In all it took me roughly three hours to read it from start to finish. In between concentrated reads I paused to take my dog for a walk, did some dishes, sorted some laundry... just to keep a more or less level head.
I was always an outsider to the organization, but a close observer none the less, as my brother met up with LRH around 1946. Brother dearest was immediately hooked. He was a high school dropout with a high IQ and a love of science and science fiction... he'd doubtless been reading LRH throughout his teen years without being aware of the fact. He had been in San Antonio at the time at I think it was Lackland AFB working with a group of scientists who were experimenting with electronic equipment captured from the Germans during WWII. He was in the Army Air Force, as it was still named in 1945.
It was after he finished his military commitment that he ran into LRH in New York City. I was only 11 at the time so am a bit vague about what happened next and when, but it has been confirmed by a relative that the two traveled together through the Chicago area and most probably ended up in California. Somewhere in that time span between 1946 and 1956 my brother (and of course LRH) ended up in DC which is where, as an adult, I was first exposed to bits and pieces of the church.
By that time brother was married and starting a family, some members of which I am still in contact. I had been led to believe and understand that it was my brother who developed the e-meter (one of the quibbles). To me it was pretty much stuff and nonsense, so I certainly agree with you there!
Scn as you folk call it, became like a rodeo bronc, something no sane person would try to tame and ride. I saw my brother have a number of psychotic breaks throughout his apparently lifelong attachment to the church. And I mean, literally witnessed, not unlike the discovery of LRH hiding under his bed in a motel after flipping out.
I was so affected by the difficulties caused within my own family that I still maintain reservation even regarding Dianetics, but I did discover on my own there are those among us who are natural auditors as I used those skills on that same brother during a visit to LA when I finally confronted him re our early incestual relationship... he was 7 years older than me and left home at 17 so you can see I was quite young at the time but he had told his then wife (#3) that I had seduced him. I guess he was a true scientologist to the core, although for years I simply saw him as pure evil.
I now realize the world is not black and white, as I believed when I was younger, but an amazing pallet of grays and every other color known to humans.
I'm a treckie at heart, so, dear friend, 'LIVE LONG AND PROSPER' for however many years left at your disposal.
 

DagwoodGum

Squirreling Dervish
A letter from an old timer with Hubbard in the beginning...(1952)

Dec. 28, 1993

According to your Advt. on p. 25 of the 1/3 Spotlight, you want to know something about Scientology. I can categorically state that seldom in the History of Mankind has something which is capable of such great good been used to create such havoc.

That statement needs explanation, which I shall be more than glad to furnish; I have no axes to grind, either pro or anti Scientology, but I lived through the very interesting times of its inception, and you simply cannot understand Scientology (hereafter referred to as Scn) without understanding what went on forty years and more ago.

Lafayette Ronald Hubbard was one of my favorite pulp fiction authors. To call him a "Science Fiction Writer" somewhat sneeringly as many people do, is to do an injustice to the man's eclectic abilities. He wrote Adventure fiction under his own name and that of Rene Lafayette; he wrote Western fiction under the name of Winchester Remington colt; he wrote True Confessions and love stories for the steamy women's magazines, and I hear that he wrote a lot of soft-core pornography for the "Spicy" rags, although I think he may have been a bit young for that. He was, quite simply, a very good pulp fiction author. There was a darker side to his nature. As a young man, he had studied with Aleister Crowley, and it is my understanding that he actually stole Crowley's yacht, although that may be apocryphal. He had also long been interested in what made people tick, and he formulated a bunch of theories about that. He finally took the plunge, publishing in the May, 1950, Analog Science Fact / Science Fiction, an article entitled "Dianetics." His then wife later claimed that the sole research he actually did for the development of the "Modern Science of Mental Health" was a half hour with a couple of dictionaries developing a name for it.

Be that as it may, he apparently created out of whole cloth a philosophy, theory, and therapy which not only worked, but - for the common run of neurotics (90% of the population) - worked far better than conventional psychotherapy, and was light-years ahead of the Psychiatry of its day! (It was not so red hot on real psychotics, Hubbard's claims to the contrary notwithstanding, but it was absolutely marvelous as psychosomatic medicine!) It could, and did, cure every nameable disease which was not genetic in origin, and relieved those, to some extent - but not always; that was the stumbling block. I solved that problem, to the satisfaction of the field and the annoyance of the zealots; in a paper I published, I had this to say; "In order for a psychosomatic disease to exist, there must, somewhere, be a real disease for it to imitate. While with Dianetic processes you can aid the pre-clear in eliminating or ameliorating the former, there is little that can be done about the latter." That statement, true though it may have been, did not increase my popularity among the "All disease is psychosomatic" set, but I didn't care; my point was that if ALL disease was psychosomatic, why did animals get sick?

Thus Hubbard got his first shock; something which had either been designed as a spoof or a con, (I believe the former; most everyone else of my acquaintances believes the latter), not only worked, but worked as he - the inventor - SAID it would work! So, whether he had intended it or not, he was stuck with writing "The Book." Again, his wife claimed it was entirely fiction; but fiction or not, it got a lot of people started, and a lot of people got a lot saner practically overnight. Neuroses vanished; people got well from an astounding array of diseases. A friend of ours whose back was completely ankylosed into a question mark, so that he had to walk with two canes, after fifteen hours with my father straightened up and went back to leading a dance band. An M.D. we knew lost his peripheral neuritis, endocarditis, and diabetes! (He gave himself a routine injection of Insulin, went into shock, and nearly died before he could eat a candy bar!) His hair, which had been snow white for over ten years, came back in as a honey blond. Speaking of hair, I worked with a man who was egg bald. After ten hours, he had a tonsure, and after thirty nearly a full head of hair. Harrison Angel had a mouth full of bad teeth, so he had them all pulled and grew a new set, using techniques he had developed from Dianetic theory; the new set came in crooked, so he had them pulled and grew another set, this time doing it right! A friend of my wife's had been born with a deformed toe. During one of her sessions, the crooked toe straightened out!

But Miracles, in the early days, were commonplace. Never in the History of Mankind had so many fine minds been allied in an effort to help others, with a believable framework on which to hang their efforts. It was all very chivalrous and idealistic in those days.

Hubbard started three "Foundations," one in Elizabeth, N.J., one in Los Angeles, and one in Honolulu. Some brilliant people came to work for him; people whose own lives had been materially aided by Dianetics, and who wanted to give something back. Miracles occurred daily. People went to the Foundations to be trained as "Auditors," but far more people read the book, rolled up their figurative sleeves, and went to work. These were referred to as "Book Auditors," with a sort of lofty condescension from the "Professional Auditors" who carried the seal of approval of the Hubbard Dianetic Foundation. Here was the first inkling we in the field had that the great man didn't quite have all his tiles fastened down. The "Degree" he granted was "HDA," which was short for "Hubbard Dianetic Auditor." Since there wasn't any other form of Dianetics around to compete with it, the "H" seemed to be a bit out of place, not to say redundant, smacking somewhat of self aggrandisement; but, as I said to someone who questioned it, "The man's got a lot to be arrogant about." The fact was that GOOD "Book Auditors," which I modestly admit we were, were every bit as good as, and in many cases better than, any Foundation-trained Auditors.

It was then that some strange things began to happen.

Continues HERE
Arnie, you come up with the best information. PLEASE KEEP IT COMING1 MUCH THANX
 
A letter from an old timer with Hubbard in the beginning...(1952)
...

Good read. Thanks for posting it Arnie. :clap:

After all this time, is there any chance of putting a full name to the letter for historical purposes? I assume, not necessarily correctly, that the individual in question has died in the interim as it is 60 years on since his initial involvement as well as 25 years after hubbard's death. If so, it would be good to have his name associated with this letter for purposes of the historical record. Quite likely one of the old timers know who he was from the initials & details included in the letter. It would be good to resolve the ambiguity if the man is deceased or even now willing to be fully identified.


Mark A. Baker
 

RogerB

Crusader
Arnie,

WOW! This really reveals to the fullest, what a mad dog Hubbard really was.

Veda will LUV this . . . . I can see him quoting this forever! :biggrin::happydance:

Rog
 
Top