L. Ron Hubbard & Aleister Crowley: The Occult Roots of Scientology?

By on March 18, 2012 in News 11
The Rosy Cross, appropriated in a similar form by Crowley and OTO

The Rosy Cross, appropriated in a similar form by Crowley and OTO

Ohio State professor Hugh Urban is no stranger to esoteric religions, and The Village Voice blog Runnin’ Scared is no stranger either to the professor or to his other pet project: well-deserved exposés of that most modern of esoteric religions, Scientology.

Scientology's cross. See the similarity?

Regular Disinfo readers would be familiar with the following slightly paranoia-inducing fact, as the post puts it: “that after his involvement in WWII, Hubbard shacked up with Jet Propulsion Lab rocket scientist Jack Parsons, a man heavily into the occult, and in particular the teachings of The Great Beast, British occultist Aleister Crowley.”

Many a conspiracy theory has been launched from this outlier. However, blogger Tony Ortega latest Scientology post ‘paraphrases’ Urban’s new piece for the pay-walled journal Nova Religio, which is a thorough, academic study of the ways that Crowley’s “magick” found parallels in what would become Hubbard’s most famous creation, Scientology.

Disinfonauts everywhere should take a moment and thank both Urban and Ortega for putting historical flesh on those paranoid bones: Tony Ortega, ‘Scientology and the Occult: Hugh Urban’s New Exploration of L. Ron Hubbard and Aleister Crowley‘, The Village Voice Blogs Feb. 22 2012.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=696854497 Draken BlackKnight

    L. Ron stole all of Jack Parsons’ material for the OTO and ran off on his boat with Parsons’ then-girlfriend Sara Northrup. Two seconds on Google will tell anyone this (unless you’re behind a $cilon firewall). I’m pretty sure Operation Clambake also has material on this.

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001489604409 Stein Leirvik

       That’s right, DBK. Parsons was the original, Hubbard got greedy, other occult/freemason greedy critters, J.K. Smith, (Mormons), Charles Taze Russel (Watchtower). 

    • Jim

      Crowley ran off with the GD material. I read somewhere that Lron and Parsons were performing a Moon Child Rite at some point. I also read that there was some calamity in Parsons life after Lron left some say of BM flavour. Crowley warned Parsons about Lron.

      • Adamsshadow

        Yep; I read John Carter’s bio on Parsons, “Sex and Rockets,” and it detailed the LRon and Parsons relationship, especially the Babalon Working, fairly well. I can’t remember the exact words but Crowley basically said Parsons was being taken in by your average con, and of course, he was right.

  • DeepCough

    Hmmmm……cult leaders using occult, pagan symbols and esoteric philosophies to designate themselves as demigod prophets and win followers with a bogus religious cosmogony?

    That these allegations are in any way related to the Church of Scientology is not only outrageous, it is downright DISCRIMINATORY! We hereby order you to cease and desist these allegations or we are SO giong to sue you, Disinfo!

  • Jeebus_Says

     I learned maybe a decade or so ago that the origins of Scientology are found in Gnosticism from some research on the web.  Our story begins with Aleister Crowley’s Spermo-Gnostic Sect, the Ordo Templi Orientis [OTO].
    http://www.rotten.com/library/conspiracy/oto/

    The OTO expanded to America at LA’s ‘Agape Lodge.’  L. Ron Hubbard was a member of the LA ‘Agape Lodge’ and was mentored by its leader, Jack Parsons.
    http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/mad-science/jack-parsons/

    L. Ron Hubbard stole the Spermo-Gnostic OTO’s Thelemic teachings, and rewrote it into a bad science-fiction novel he later took from to found his Scientology religion. 
    http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/religion/cult/l-ron-hubbard/

    Watch “Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000″, and you’ll see Scientology is very much like the Christian Gnosticism mythology filled with clones, an evil fake god creator, age old aliens and tortured and endlessly reincarnated earth bound ‘souls’. What follows is just a summary of Old and New Testament Gnostic and Spermo-Gnostic beliefs.

    Synopsis of Gnostic Beliefs

    The Older Testament:

    The Gnostics taught that God was a mad scientist named “Yaldabaoth” who had been created by accident and built the earth as a prison for pre-existent human souls. He cloned Adam, raped Eve, and kicked them both out of Paradise when Christ came in the form of a serpent to liberate them. Yaldabaoth sent a “Flood” to wipe humanity’s memory out, but some humans were saved by angels from the dimension above “heaven” who told them what had happened. Yaldabaoth struck back by sending his demons to rape the earth women, smashing the tower of Babel, inventing money and selecting many false prophets.

    The Newer Testament:

    Christ was a light-being above “God” [Jehovah or Yaldabaoth] who came here to possess Jesus, using him like a ventriloquist’s dummy to teach humanity the truth: there is no “Hell” – the earth is the lowest plane, and we’re just being reincarnated over and over. Christ taught humans how to free themselves from Yaldabaoth through sex magic, self-knowledge and secret passwords. Yaldabaoth tried to kill him, but Christ switched bodies with an innocent bystander named Simon and flew away laughing while the Romans crucified the wrong guy. He reappeared once on Easter to the world, but he never stopped appearing to the Gnostics, continually reminding them that matter is an illusion and the apocalypse is now.

    Gnostic Beliefs:

    Christian Gnostic sects believed semen and menses to be potential living humans in liquid form; flowing souls that could be intercepted on route to imprisonment here in this dimensional universe of multiverse, and underworld on earth created by “Yaldabaoth” (the arrogant bumbling creator-god “Jehovah” of the Old Testament) . The Gnostics were proposing a belief a few thousand years ago that today’s quantum physicists theorize in a ‘multi-verse’. They also believed human souls have been trapped here by “Yaldabaoth,” [Jehovah] to continually return fragmented in a cycle of reincarnation somewhat akin to what Scientologists also believe.

    For the Gnostics, sperm and menses are unborn human souls in ‘liquid form’ that can never ascend to the pleroma, or the secret gnostic light heavens outside space and time. The Gnostic practice of ingesting seminal fluids and menses as sacraments is referred to as syllexis. The purpose of Syllexis was to stop human souls in ‘liquid form’ from a cycle of never ending reincarnation in this evil universe that was created as a copy by the mad scientist skygod Yaldaboth, who created it. Syllexis transports these ingested unborn ‘souls’ to the pleroma, or secret gnostic light heavens outside time and space, provided of course they had the ‘secret gnostic password’.

    To thwart this “imprisonment” and re-cycling of human souls here on earth by the bumbling malevolent “Yaldabaoth”, the creator god (or Jehovah), most Christian Gnostic sects believed that reproduction was evil. The Spermo-Gnostic sects sought to transcend this underworld dimension on earth through a Tantric use of sexual fluids and ritualistic means of liberating the “light” locked within human sexual fluids. Sex Rituals in worship quite similar to traditions found in Hindu and Buddhist sex mysticism. In sex magic rituals and “agape sexual orgies,” gnostic men and women ‘gathered’ sperm (menses also in some sects) in ‘communion’ with it by ingesting it. Swallowing the sperm was the Spermo-Gnostic way to collect potential souls for transport to the pleroma outside dimensional space and time. The ‘plemora’ believed by Gnostics to be the ‘secret gnostic light heavens’ outside this dimensional universe created by “Yaldabaoth” as a bad copy.

    Read Sacred Semen for more on the hilarious Christian Gnostic origins of L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology Sci Fi Story.
    http://sacredsemen.com/#10

    Note the early Latin definition of ‘mas’, very similar to the Catholic Church’s Latin name for the Eucharistic meal Mass, translates as “male seed”, leaving little doubt to what the original Christian Eucharist was for these early Catholics called Gnostics…

  • Hank Hill

    I’m reasonably sure that when Crowley writes to the friend about Parsons and Hubbard he calls them louts, not goats.

    • Tuna Ghost

      I’m also pretty sure that Crowley did not have a very high opinion of either Parsons or Hubbard, if letters to his friends are any indication.  I hate to say it, because Parsons is something of a inspiration to me, but I’m pretty sure them’s the facts.

  • Ted

    Michael Aquino, mentor to former disinfo  editor Alex Burns is on the record as eating semen and menses according to Neville Drury.

    He didn’t come right out and say “I eat loads mixed with used tampons” but that’s basically what he said. “manipulating the forces of birth” to gain immortality.

  • Namelesswon

    Like most cults for profit they need tricks to make them believable, L Ron new this and so stole the basic stuff from OTO etc.. This is common knowledge along with the story that L Ron wrote where a protagonist sets up a fake religion to “take the suckers for all they’ve got.”

  • Rkatalin93

    That is very interesting, because Crowley influenced a lot of Occult and Religious personalities.Also one of them was Gerald Gardner a founder of Wicca.
    http://www.magick4life.com/aleister-crowley/
    http://www.magick4life.com/wicca/