Scientology and the Occult
FACTNET REPORT:
HUBBARD AND THE OCCULT
*****
By Jon Atack
(Part Two of Four parts)
In his 1952 lectures, Hubbard also referred to the Tarot cards,
saying that they were not simply a system of divination but a
"philosophical machine". He gave particular mention to the Fool
card, saying "The Fool of course is the wisest of all. The Fool
who goes down the road with the alligators at his heels, and the
dogs yapping at him, blindfolded on his way, he knows all there
is and does nothing about it...nothing could touch him" (30).
The only Tarot pack which has a alligator on the Fool Card is
Crowley's (31). When I interviewed Gerald Armstrong, Hubbard's
archivist, in 1984, he told me of a Hubbard scale dating from the
1940's. At the base of the scale was the word "animals". It then
ascended through "labourers, farmers, financiers, fanatics" and
"the Fool" to "God". Hubbard seemed to have seen himself as the
Fool and was perhaps trying to create a trampoline of fanatics
through whom he could achieve divinity. Indeed, if Scientology
could live up to its claims, then Hubbard would be a "godmaker".
Of course, the Tarot pack also contains the Empress card and
knowing this it is finally possible to understand what Hubbard
believed his Guardian Angel to be.
Crowley examined the Tarot in The Book of Thoth (32). Of the
Empress card he said "She combines the highest spiritual with the
lowest material qualities" (33). Crowley identifies the Empress
as the "Great Mother" and indeed on her robe are bees (34), the
traditional symbol of Cybele. Crowley is not alone in the belief
that different cultures give different names to the same deities.
The worship of Cybele goes back to at least 3,000 B.C. She
entered Greek culture as Artemis and to the Romans was Diana, the
huntress. Crowley also identified the Empress with the Hindu
goddess Shakti (35), and the Egyptian goddess Isis and Hathor.
Crowley directly identified Isis with Diana (36). More usually,
Crowley called the Empress by the name Babalon (37).
Contemporary New Age groups see the Great Mother in the aspect
of Gaia the Earth Mother. This is far from Crowley's view. Diana,
the patroness of withcraft (38) was seen by Hubbard rather
through the eyes of Crowley than as a benevolent, loving mother.
Hubbard made no reference for example to Robert Graves' White
Goddess, but only to Crowley and peripherally to Frazer's Golden
Bough and Gibbon's Decline and Fall, both or which give reference
to the cult of Diana. To Crowley, the Great Mother, Babalon, is,
of course, also the antichrist.
While Crowley's path was submission to the Empress, Hubbard
seems to have tried to dominate the same force, bringing it into
being as a servile homunculus. Hubbard's eldest son, although a
questionable witness, was insistent that his father taught him
magic and privately referred to the goddess as Hathor. The Blood
Ritual confirms this assertion if nothing else.
Publicly, Hubbard was taken with the Roman name of the goddess,
Diana, giving it to one of his daughters and also to one of his
Scientology Sea Organization boats. Curiously this boat had been
renamed The Enchanter and before Scientology he had owned another
called The Magician. Hubbard had also used Jack Parsons' money
to buy a yacht called Diane (39). "Dianetics" may also be a
reference to Diana. Shortly before its inception, another former
US Navy Officer and practitioner of the VIIIth degree of the Ordo
Templi Orientis had formed a group called Dianism (40).
When The Blood Ritual was mentioned during the Armstrong trial
in 1984, Scientology's lawyer asserted that it was an invokation
of an Egyptian goddess of love (41). Hathor is indeed popularly
seen as a winged and spotted cow which feeds humanity. However,
there is an important lesson about Scientology in the practice of
magicians. The teachings of magic are considered by many
practitioners to be powerful and potentially dangerous and
therefore have to be kept secret. One of the easiest ways to
conceal the true meaning of a teaching is to reverse it. By
magicians Hathor is also seen as an aspect of Sekmet, the
avenging lioness. One authority on ritual magic has revealed the
identity of Hathor as "the destroyer of man" (42). The important
lesson is that Scientology has both a public and a hidden agenda.
Publicly it is a Church, privately as the record of convictions
shows, it is an Intelligence agency. Many public Hubbard works
speak of helping people. In his largely secret Fair Game
teachings, however, Hubbard is outspoken in his attack upon
either critics of himself or his works. For example, in What is
Greatness? Hubbard says "The hardest task one can have is to
continue to love one's fellows despite all reasons he should not.
And the true sign of sanity and greatness is so to continue." In
one statement of the Fair Game Law, however, Hubbard said that
opponents "May be tricked, sued or lied or destroyed" (43). Of
practitioners unlicensed by him Hubbard said "Harass these
persons in any possible way" (44). Nor did he exclude the
possibility of murder against those who opposed him (45). The
harassment of critics, may explain the dearth of academic
research into Scientology. Hubbard's use of contradiction to
captivate and redirect his followers is worthy of a separate
study (46), but it has its roots in his study of magic. Perhaps
he related his "Dianetics" also to Janus, the two-faced god whose
name is sometimes called "Dianus".
While Hubbard was supposedly researching his Dianetics in the
late 1940s, he was in fact engaging in magical rituals, and
trying out hypnosis both on himself and others. During the 1984
Armstrong trial, extracts from Hubbard's voluminous self-hypnotic
affirmations were read into the record. The statements, hundreds
of pages of them, are written in red ink and Hubbard frequently
drew pictures of the male genitalia alongside the text (47).
Amongst his suggestions to himself we find" "Men are my slaves",
"Elemental Spirits are my slaves" and "You can be merciless
whenever your will is crossed and you have every right to be
merciless" (48).
Black magic is distinguished from white in the desire of the
practitioner to bring harm. "Maleficium" is the traditional word
for such magic. The "Suppressive Person declare" and the "Fair
Game Law" speak reams in terms of Hubbard's intent.
Scientology is a neo-gnostic system, which is to say that it
teaches the attainment of insight through a series of stages.
These stages are called by Scientologists "the Bridge to Total
Freedom". The Bridge currently consists of some 27 levels. These
levels might be compared to the initiations of magical systems.
While the stages appear dissimilar to those of Crowley's Ordo
Templi Orientis, it is worth noting that both systems consist of
stages, that both have secret levels and that both are numbered
with Roman numerals. Hubbard also shared with Crowley a numbering
system which begins at 0 rather than 1.
The Scientology Bridge has as its end the creation of an
"Operating Thetan". Hubbard used the word "thetan" to identify
the self, the spirit which is the person. He claimed that the
word derived from an earlier Greek usage of the letter theta for
"spirit" (49). I have been unable to find such a usage, but can
comment that the theta symbol is central to the Crowley system
where it is found as an aspect of the sign used for Babalon. To
Crowley, the theta sign represented the essential principles of
his system - thelema or the will. (50)
By "Operating Thetan", Hubbard meant and individual or "thetan"
able to "operate" freely from the physical body, able to cause
effects at a distance by will alone. In Hubbard's words "a
thetan exterior who can have but doesn't have to have a body in
order to control or operate thought, life, matter, energy, space
and time" (51). Hubbard used the term "intention" rather than
"will" (52), but the goal of Scientology is clearly the same as
that of the Crowley system. The Scientologist wishes to be able
to control events and the minds of others by intention. This
seems to be exactly what Crowley called "thelema". In a 1952
lecture, Hubbard recommended a book which he called "The Master
Therion" (53). This was in fact one of Crowley's "magical"
names. I have been advised by an officer of one of the Ordo
Templi Orientis groups that the reference is most likely to
Crowley's magnum opus Magick in Theory and Practice. In that
work, Crowley gave this definition "Magick is the Science and Art
of causing Change to occur in confirmity with Will" (54). So the
aim of both Crowley and Hubbard seems to have been the same.
As a recovering Scientologist, I must raise an ethical
objection to the desire to control the minds of others without
their consent. This is the purpose of many Scientology procedures
(55), and can be seen either as deliberate "mind control" or as
the black magician's contempt of others. Scientology is a curious
hybrid of magic and psychology. After all, Hubbard boasted "we
can brainwash faster than the Russians - 20 seconds to total
amnesia" (56).
At the centre of Crowley's teaching is the notion that we can
control our own destiny: "Postulate: Any required Change may be
effected by the application of the proper kind and degree of
Force in the proper manner through the proper medium of the
proper object" (57), further "Every intentional act is a Magical
Act" (58), "Every failure proves that one or more requirements of
the postulate have not been fulfilled" (59). Hubbard taught that
everything is down to the intention of the individual. He called
such intentions "postulates". The victim of any negative event is
said to have "pulled it in". Hubbard taught a contempt for
"victims" and regarded sympathy as a low emotional condition
(60). As Crowley put it "Man is ignorant of the nature of his own
being and powers...he may thus subjugate the whole Universe of
which he is conscious to his individual Will" (61).
Hubbard was to employ or parallel so many of Crowley's ideas
and approaches that it is impossible, especially with Hubbard's
references to Crowley, to avoid comparison. For example, in his
Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health, Hubbard laid much
emphasis on the recollection of birth. Crowley had earlier
insisted that the magican must recall his birth (62). Crowley
spoke of "A equals" (63), where Hubbard, again in Dianetics
spoke of "A equals A equals A". Both men were noisy in their
contempt for pyschotherapists (64). Both Hubbard and Crowley
spoke of "past lives" rather than "reincarnation" (65). Indeed,
the notion of past lives and their recollection is essential to
both systems, as Crowley wrote "There is no more important task
than the exploration of one's previous incarnations" (66).
Scientology and Dianetics also rely upon the supposed
recollection of previous incarnations. Crowley called this the
"magical memory" (67).
Hubbard gave as the fundamental axiom of his system "Life is
basically a static. A Life static has no mass, no motion, no
wavelength, no location in space or in time." (68). Crowley was
more succinct, called the self "nothing" (69). Hubbard was to
say that even an "Operating Thetan" could not "operate" alone,
and Crowley said "Even in Magick we cannot get on without the
help of others" (70).
The first essential teaching of Scientology is that "reality is
basically agreement" (71) or "reality is the agreed-upon
apparency of existence" (72), which Crowley expressed as "The
universe is a projection of ourselves; an image as unreal as that
of our faces in the mirror...not to be altered save as we alter
ourselves" (73). The controlling power of thought, or will, is
evident in both systems, Crowley has it "we can never affect
anything outside ourselves save only as it is also within
us."(74).
Both men believed that truth is unobtainable in the material
world. Crowley expressed it thus "There is no such thing as
truth in the perceptible universe (75). Hubbard said "The
ultimate truth...has no mass, meaning, mobility, no wavelength,
no location in space, no space." (76)
Hubbard's concept of the "thetan exterior" - operating apart
from the body is found in Crowley"s "interior body of the
Magician" which can "pass through matter" (77). Both systems
seek to get the spirit "out of the body" (78).
Crowley said "Evil is only an appearance...like good" (79),
where Hubbard said that "goodness and badness...are
considerations, and no other basis than opinion" (80).
Each spoke of a personal "universe" (81). Hubbard also followed
in Crowley's footsteps with the insistence that the meaning of
words should be clarified or "cleared" (82).
Crowley announced that Christ was "concocted" (83) which
tallies with Hubbard's assertion that Christ was a hypnotic
"implant" (84). Here the major difference between Crowley and
Hubbard becomes apparent: Crowley was publicly outspoken about
his views, Hubbard was careful to keep negative material secret.
Scientology claims to be eclectic and non-denominational. Only
in secret teachings is Hubbard's contempt for Christianity
apparent (85).
The long series of lectures in which Hubbard called Crowley his
"very good friend" and recommended his writings, centres on a
technique called "creative processing" by Hubbard. It is
unsurprising that this technique is common to magicians. Nowadays
it is more usually known as "visualisation."
***** By Jon Atack (Part Two of Four parts) In his 1952 lectures, Hubbard also referred to the Tarot cards, saying that they were not simply a system of divination but a "philosophical machine". He gave particular mention to the Fool card, saying "The Fool of course is the wisest of all. The Fool who goes down the road with the alligators at his heels, and the dogs yapping at him, blindfolded on his way, he knows all there is and does nothing about it...nothing could touch him" (30). The only Tarot pack which has a alligator on the Fool Card is Crowley's (31). When I interviewed Gerald Armstrong, Hubbard's archivist, in 1984, he told me of a Hubbard scale dating from the 1940's. At the base of the scale was the word "animals". It then ascended through "labourers, farmers, financiers, fanatics" and "the Fool" to "God". Hubbard seemed to have seen himself as the Fool and was perhaps trying to create a trampoline of fanatics through whom he could achieve divinity. Indeed, if Scientology could live up to its claims, then Hubbard would be a "godmaker". Of course, the Tarot pack also contains the Empress card and knowing this it is finally possible to understand what Hubbard believed his Guardian Angel to be. Crowley examined the Tarot in The Book of Thoth (32). Of the Empress card he said "She combines the highest spiritual with the lowest material qualities" (33). Crowley identifies the Empress as the "Great Mother" and indeed on her robe are bees (34), the traditional symbol of Cybele. Crowley is not alone in the belief that different cultures give different names to the same deities. The worship of Cybele goes back to at least 3,000 B.C. She entered Greek culture as Artemis and to the Romans was Diana, the huntress. Crowley also identified the Empress with the Hindu goddess Shakti (35), and the Egyptian goddess Isis and Hathor. Crowley directly identified Isis with Diana (36). More usually, Crowley called the Empress by the name Babalon (37). Contemporary New Age groups see the Great Mother in the aspect of Gaia the Earth Mother. This is far from Crowley's view. Diana, the patroness of withcraft (38) was seen by Hubbard rather through the eyes of Crowley than as a benevolent, loving mother. Hubbard made no reference for example to Robert Graves' White Goddess, but only to Crowley and peripherally to Frazer's Golden Bough and Gibbon's Decline and Fall, both or which give reference to the cult of Diana. To Crowley, the Great Mother, Babalon, is, of course, also the antichrist. While Crowley's path was submission to the Empress, Hubbard seems to have tried to dominate the same force, bringing it into being as a servile homunculus. Hubbard's eldest son, although a questionable witness, was insistent that his father taught him magic and privately referred to the goddess as Hathor. The Blood Ritual confirms this assertion if nothing else. Publicly, Hubbard was taken with the Roman name of the goddess, Diana, giving it to one of his daughters and also to one of his Scientology Sea Organization boats. Curiously this boat had been renamed The Enchanter and before Scientology he had owned another called The Magician. Hubbard had also used Jack Parsons' money to buy a yacht called Diane (39). "Dianetics" may also be a reference to Diana. Shortly before its inception, another former US Navy Officer and practitioner of the VIIIth degree of the Ordo Templi Orientis had formed a group called Dianism (40). When The Blood Ritual was mentioned during the Armstrong trial in 1984, Scientology's lawyer asserted that it was an invokation of an Egyptian goddess of love (41). Hathor is indeed popularly seen as a winged and spotted cow which feeds humanity. However, there is an important lesson about Scientology in the practice of magicians. The teachings of magic are considered by many practitioners to be powerful and potentially dangerous and therefore have to be kept secret. One of the easiest ways to conceal the true meaning of a teaching is to reverse it. By magicians Hathor is also seen as an aspect of Sekmet, the avenging lioness. One authority on ritual magic has revealed the identity of Hathor as "the destroyer of man" (42). The important lesson is that Scientology has both a public and a hidden agenda. Publicly it is a Church, privately as the record of convictions shows, it is an Intelligence agency. Many public Hubbard works speak of helping people. In his largely secret Fair Game teachings, however, Hubbard is outspoken in his attack upon either critics of himself or his works. For example, in What is Greatness? Hubbard says "The hardest task one can have is to continue to love one's fellows despite all reasons he should not. And the true sign of sanity and greatness is so to continue." In one statement of the Fair Game Law, however, Hubbard said that opponents "May be tricked, sued or lied or destroyed" (43). Of practitioners unlicensed by him Hubbard said "Harass these persons in any possible way" (44). Nor did he exclude the possibility of murder against those who opposed him (45). The harassment of critics, may explain the dearth of academic research into Scientology. Hubbard's use of contradiction to captivate and redirect his followers is worthy of a separate study (46), but it has its roots in his study of magic. Perhaps he related his "Dianetics" also to Janus, the two-faced god whose name is sometimes called "Dianus". While Hubbard was supposedly researching his Dianetics in the late 1940s, he was in fact engaging in magical rituals, and trying out hypnosis both on himself and others. During the 1984 Armstrong trial, extracts from Hubbard's voluminous self-hypnotic affirmations were read into the record. The statements, hundreds of pages of them, are written in red ink and Hubbard frequently drew pictures of the male genitalia alongside the text (47). Amongst his suggestions to himself we find" "Men are my slaves", "Elemental Spirits are my slaves" and "You can be merciless whenever your will is crossed and you have every right to be merciless" (48). Black magic is distinguished from white in the desire of the practitioner to bring harm. "Maleficium" is the traditional word for such magic. The "Suppressive Person declare" and the "Fair Game Law" speak reams in terms of Hubbard's intent. Scientology is a neo-gnostic system, which is to say that it teaches the attainment of insight through a series of stages. These stages are called by Scientologists "the Bridge to Total Freedom". The Bridge currently consists of some 27 levels. These levels might be compared to the initiations of magical systems. While the stages appear dissimilar to those of Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis, it is worth noting that both systems consist of stages, that both have secret levels and that both are numbered with Roman numerals. Hubbard also shared with Crowley a numbering system which begins at 0 rather than 1. The Scientology Bridge has as its end the creation of an "Operating Thetan". Hubbard used the word "thetan" to identify the self, the spirit which is the person. He claimed that the word derived from an earlier Greek usage of the letter theta for "spirit" (49). I have been unable to find such a usage, but can comment that the theta symbol is central to the Crowley system where it is found as an aspect of the sign used for Babalon. To Crowley, the theta sign represented the essential principles of his system - thelema or the will. (50) By "Operating Thetan", Hubbard meant and individual or "thetan" able to "operate" freely from the physical body, able to cause effects at a distance by will alone. In Hubbard's words "a thetan exterior who can have but doesn't have to have a body in order to control or operate thought, life, matter, energy, space and time" (51). Hubbard used the term "intention" rather than "will" (52), but the goal of Scientology is clearly the same as that of the Crowley system. The Scientologist wishes to be able to control events and the minds of others by intention. This seems to be exactly what Crowley called "thelema". In a 1952 lecture, Hubbard recommended a book which he called "The Master Therion" (53). This was in fact one of Crowley's "magical" names. I have been advised by an officer of one of the Ordo Templi Orientis groups that the reference is most likely to Crowley's magnum opus Magick in Theory and Practice. In that work, Crowley gave this definition "Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in confirmity with Will" (54). So the aim of both Crowley and Hubbard seems to have been the same. As a recovering Scientologist, I must raise an ethical objection to the desire to control the minds of others without their consent. This is the purpose of many Scientology procedures (55), and can be seen either as deliberate "mind control" or as the black magician's contempt of others. Scientology is a curious hybrid of magic and psychology. After all, Hubbard boasted "we can brainwash faster than the Russians - 20 seconds to total amnesia" (56). At the centre of Crowley's teaching is the notion that we can control our own destiny: "Postulate: Any required Change may be effected by the application of the proper kind and degree of Force in the proper manner through the proper medium of the proper object" (57), further "Every intentional act is a Magical Act" (58), "Every failure proves that one or more requirements of the postulate have not been fulfilled" (59). Hubbard taught that everything is down to the intention of the individual. He called such intentions "postulates". The victim of any negative event is said to have "pulled it in". Hubbard taught a contempt for "victims" and regarded sympathy as a low emotional condition (60). As Crowley put it "Man is ignorant of the nature of his own being and powers...he may thus subjugate the whole Universe of which he is conscious to his individual Will" (61). Hubbard was to employ or parallel so many of Crowley's ideas and approaches that it is impossible, especially with Hubbard's references to Crowley, to avoid comparison. For example, in his Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health, Hubbard laid much emphasis on the recollection of birth. Crowley had earlier insisted that the magican must recall his birth (62). Crowley spoke of "A equals" (63), where Hubbard, again in Dianetics spoke of "A equals A equals A". Both men were noisy in their contempt for pyschotherapists (64). Both Hubbard and Crowley spoke of "past lives" rather than "reincarnation" (65). Indeed, the notion of past lives and their recollection is essential to both systems, as Crowley wrote "There is no more important task than the exploration of one's previous incarnations" (66). Scientology and Dianetics also rely upon the supposed recollection of previous incarnations. Crowley called this the "magical memory" (67). Hubbard gave as the fundamental axiom of his system "Life is basically a static. A Life static has no mass, no motion, no wavelength, no location in space or in time." (68). Crowley was more succinct, called the self "nothing" (69). Hubbard was to say that even an "Operating Thetan" could not "operate" alone, and Crowley said "Even in Magick we cannot get on without the help of others" (70). The first essential teaching of Scientology is that "reality is basically agreement" (71) or "reality is the agreed-upon apparency of existence" (72), which Crowley expressed as "The universe is a projection of ourselves; an image as unreal as that of our faces in the mirror...not to be altered save as we alter ourselves" (73). The controlling power of thought, or will, is evident in both systems, Crowley has it "we can never affect anything outside ourselves save only as it is also within us."(74). Both men believed that truth is unobtainable in the material world. Crowley expressed it thus "There is no such thing as truth in the perceptible universe (75). Hubbard said "The ultimate truth...has no mass, meaning, mobility, no wavelength, no location in space, no space." (76) Hubbard's concept of the "thetan exterior" - operating apart from the body is found in Crowley"s "interior body of the Magician" which can "pass through matter" (77). Both systems seek to get the spirit "out of the body" (78). Crowley said "Evil is only an appearance...like good" (79), where Hubbard said that "goodness and badness...are considerations, and no other basis than opinion" (80). Each spoke of a personal "universe" (81). Hubbard also followed in Crowley's footsteps with the insistence that the meaning of words should be clarified or "cleared" (82). Crowley announced that Christ was "concocted" (83) which tallies with Hubbard's assertion that Christ was a hypnotic "implant" (84). Here the major difference between Crowley and Hubbard becomes apparent: Crowley was publicly outspoken about his views, Hubbard was careful to keep negative material secret. Scientology claims to be eclectic and non-denominational. Only in secret teachings is Hubbard's contempt for Christianity apparent (85). The long series of lectures in which Hubbard called Crowley his "very good friend" and recommended his writings, centres on a technique called "creative processing" by Hubbard. It is unsurprising that this technique is common to magicians. Nowadays it is more usually known as "visualisation."
