Another good post from a very interesting website:
http://anolen.com/2015/07/12/elementals-...l-hacking/
If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll notice that my writing on systems of control' started with an interest in Aleister Crowley and his cult experiment at Cefalù, Italy. As far as I can tell, this was the first modern instance of a British intelligence asset using mind control' techniques, namely exploitation of social pressure, addiction and personality disorders'/character weaknesses to build a network of reliable agents. (For more on Crowley's intelligence work, please see Secret Agent 666 by Richard Spence.)
I believe that Crowley's goal was to control his followers in much the same way Kenneth Anger and William Colby sought to control their underlings, the difference being Anger and Colby had the benefit of a few more decades of technology. Despite this advantage, the basic toolkit remains the same that's why I'm writing about elementals' today. Identifying elementals' was a big part of Crowley's system of control, because elementals' were people whose psychological profile made them open to his domination. Prior to Crowley's identification of elementals', he wasted time trying to indoctrinate people who were not vulnerable enough to manipulation, such as the Earl of Tankerville. While Crowley's understanding of the psychological profile of elementals' was sophisticated, I think it developed over time and was not exhaustive.
In this post I'm going to elaborate on the type of person Crowley identified as an elemental' and the characteristics of three Crowley devotees who fit the elemental' description: John Whiteside Parsons, Marjorie Cameron and Wilfred Smith.
In Magick in Theory and Practice, under the chapter heading "OF OUR LADY BABALON AND OF THE BEAST WHEREON SHE RIDETH", Crowley explains the nature of what he calls "elemental" beings. Crowley wrote in an obscure, poetic fashion but it's worth slogging through to the end:
The Book of the Dead contains many chapters intended to enable the magical entity of a man who is dead, and so deprived (according to the theory of death then current) of the material vehicle for executing his will, to take on the form of certain animals, such as a golden hawk or a crocodile, and in such form to go about the earth "taking his pleasure among the living."
…
We need not, however, consider this question of death. It may often be convenient for the living to go about the world in some such incognito. Now, then, conceive of this magical body as creative force, seeking manifestation…
There are two ways by which this aim may be effected. The first method is to build up an appropriate body from its elements. This is, generally speaking, a very hard thing to do…
The second method sounds very easy and amusing. You take some organism already existing, which happens to be suitable to your purpose. You drive out the magical being which inhabits it, and take possession…
Yet it might happen that the Will of the other being was to invite the Magician to indwell its instrument.
Moreover, it is extremely difficult thus to expatriate another magical being; for though, unless it is a complete microcosm like a human being, it cannot be called a star, it is a little bit of a star, and part of the body of Nuit.
But there is no call for all this frightfulness. There is no need to knock the girl down, unless she refuses to do what you want, and she will always comply if you say a few nice things to her.
Especially on the subject of the Wand or the Disk.
You can always use the body inhabited by an elemental, such as an eagle, hare, wolf, or any convenient animal, by making a very simple compact. You take over the responsibility for the animal, thus building it up into your own magical hierarchy. This represents a tremendous gain to the animal...
It completely fulfills its ambition by an alliance of this extremely intimate sort with a Star. The magician, on the other hand, is able to transform and retransform himself in a thousand ways by accepting a retinue of such adherents. In this way the projection of the "astral" or Body of Light may be made absolutely tangible and practical. At the same time, the magician must realise that in undertaking the Karma of any elemental, he is assuming a very serious responsibility. The bond which unites him with that elemental is love; and, though it is only a small part of the outfit of a magician, it is the whole of the outfit of the elemental. He will, therefore, suffer intensely in case of any error or misfortune occurring to his protegee. This feeling is rather peculiar. It is quite instinctive with the best men. They hear of the destruction of a city of a few thousand inhabitants with entire callousness, but then they hear of a dog having hurt its paw, they feel Weltschmertz acutely.
It is not necessary to say much more than this concerning transformations. Those to whom the subject naturally appeals will readily understand the importance of what has been said. Those who are otherwise inclined may reflect that a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse.
What Crowley is saying is that men like himself, "magicians", can draw power from taking over' the "Will" of a "retinue" of "adherents". Crowley recognized that there are certain people who actually want to be controlled by a powerful master; such control is a " tremendous gain to the animal". Crowley labeled people who want to be controlled "elementals".
Crowley also recognized that the basis of this control was a twisted type of "love"; "love" that is everything to the elemental', and of very little consequence to the elemental's controller. This is the relationship between a narcissist and a co-dependent who seeks out an abusive relationship which makes them feel chosen'; it is the "simple compact" Crowley refers to. The co-dependent is narcissistic in their quest for the attention which they're addicted to (i.e. "say a few nice things to her"); the narcissist sees the co-dependent as nothing more than a tool to be used. Think Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and his coterie of gay followers. [1] It may be that what distinguishes a co-dependent from a narcissist is the position which they take in relation to each other.
On the subject of Kim Philby, readers will remember that he was very much like what Crowley describes as "the best of men". I point to Philby's ridiculous infatuation with his pet fox as an example. In that strange sentence about "the best of men" above, Crowley was describing a typical characteristic of the way narcissists relate to other people as opposed to animals. Animals are easier for the narcissist to project their own will onto because animals don't talk back or demand much. I'm sure that Philby was far more burdened by managing Burgess' love' than he was by meeting the spartan needs of a desert fox.
Exploiting unhealthy "love" relationships is at the heart of every abusive system of control, and it's something which the intelligence community' excels at, please see my post Great Users of People. Crowley was competent enough with his psychological tools to write about them as early as 1913, so we know that British Intelligence had a sophisticated understanding of this type of manipulation before WWI. Judging by how the Nazi and Fascist governments treated Crowley's henchman, these governments also had a good handle on what Thelema was about probably inherited from previous regimes' dealings with subversive cults like the Illuminati.
Crowley recognized that there is a psychological profile for people who are open to being used, he also recognized that the characteristics of people who want to be used mimic those of users, like himself. Crowley's insight was to understand the narcissistic traits amongst addicts, co-dependents and cult-followers. This brings me to my first elemental': Wilfred Smith. Smith was a devotee of Thelema who became too popular amongst Crowley's other followers, so Crowley banished him by manipulating Smith's narcissism through the essay: "Is Smith a God?"
Smith was a womanizer whose charismatic appeal rivaled Crowley's, according to John Carter' in Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons. Because Smith was involved in Crowley's inner circle, it's reasonable to assume that he used drugs regularly too, and so is likely to have been weakened by addiction. What separated Smith from Crowley was Smith's desire to be led, and when Crowley flattered Smith's narcissism by suggesting he was a godhead' rather than just another elemental', Crowley could send Smith outside the community on a never-ending pilgrimage of self-godhood-discovery. Problem solved!
Smith was influential in the last Thelema lodge to remain on good terms with Crowley, the Los Angeles Agape' chapter. In L.A. Smith recruited another elemental' to the fold, one John Jack' Whiteside Parsons of Cal Tech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the father of the American rocket program.
Crowley's Cefalù cult devotee Jane Wolfe, an actress who returned to the Agape Lodge when Mussolini closed down Crowley's operation, recorded her first meeting with Parsons in December 1940 inside her magical record' a diary which Crowley was at liberty to peruse:
Unknown to me, John Whitside Parsons, a newcomer, began astral travels…
Incidentally, I take Jack Parsons to be a child who "shall behold them all".
26 years of age, 6'2", vital, potentially bisexual at the very least, University of the State of California and Cal. Tech., now engaged in Cal Tech chemical laboratories developing "bigger and better" explosives for Uncle Sam. Travels under sealed orders from the government… Has had mystical experiences which gave him a sense of equality all round, although he is hierarchical in feeling and in the established order.
I wonder if John Gittinger could have developed a better psychological profile after one meeting; certainly Crowley put Wolfe's information to good use many in the Agape Lodge recognized Parsons' usefulness as a figurehead, according to Carter. Besides being attractive, Parsons had genuine creative intelligence and was able to practically apply technology when other Cal Tech academics were only able to regurgitate German research.
Although precocious in his scientific and magickal' working, and outwardly confident with women, Parsons' womanizing had something of overcompensation' about it: while he put forward the notion that his relationships were open' he was very hurt when one partner in particular, Betty, the 18-year old sister of his wife, left him for California new-comer L. Ron Hubbard.
L Ron Hubbard suffered from a variety of addictions, like most people in this post. Hubbard had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the psychological effects of different drugs.
Instead of hating L. Ron, L. Ron's mastery of Betty seems to have drawn Parsons closer too him. Parsons wrote this in a letter to Crowley:
About three months ago I met Capt. L. Ron Hubbard, a writer and explorer of whom I had known for some time… He is a gentleman; he has red hair, green eyes, is honest and intelligent, and we have become great friends. He moved in with me about two months ago, and although Betty and I are still friendly, she has transferred her sexual affections to him.
Although Ron has no formal training in Magick, he has an extraordinary amount of experience and understanding in the field. From some of his experiences I deduce he is in direct touch with some higher intelligence, possibly his Guardian Angel. He describes his Angel as a beautiful winged woman with red hair whom he calls the Empress…
We are pooling our resources in a partnership that will act as a limited company to control our business ventures. I think I have made a great gain, and as Betty and I are the best of friends there is little loss. I cared for her deeply but I have no desire to control her emotions, and I can, I hope, control my own.
I need a magical partner. I have many experiments in mind… The next time I tie up with a woman it will be on my own terms.
Thy son, John.
In Sex and Rockets, John Carter describes Parsons as "immature", "quite impressionable and vulnerable". Parsons was also deeply enmeshed with his mother, who immediately committed suicide on hearing of her son's untimely demise in 1952. John Parsons was not an emotionally healthy man, but prone to extremes and when L. Ron Hubbard entered Parsons' life he brought additional destabilizing influences. Hubbard was present at Parsons' fevered Babalon Working', a two-month, drug-fueled ritual designed to conjure Betty's replacement, the Lady of Babylon', otherwise known as Parsons' sex-partner "elemental", who would help him reach greater magickal' heights. Hubbard was omnipresent during this Babalon Working' Carter describes the affair as a "Dee-Kelley operation" and the founder of Scientology channeled the spirits over the course of Parsons' seances. According to Cater, Parsons' "elemental" magically appeared two months later:
The elemental was Marjorie Elizabeth Cameron, sprung from Parsons' head like Sophia from the Godhead or Pallas Athena from Zeus. She actually arrived at the lodge before Parsons left for the desert with Hubbard…Cameron came back two weeks later after some friends of Parsons tracked her down at the employment office. This time she came to stay.
Parsons described Cameron as an "air of fire type with bronze red hair…"
What really happened, readers, probably has something to do with Naval Intelligence officer L. Ron Hubbard's and Marjorie Cameron's connection to St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington D.C. prior to their both relocating to Los Angeles. Cameron had been posted to the hospital in the early 1940s, around the same time she was working as a honey-trap for FDR's critics via the Joint Chiefs of Staff; while Hubbard's connection began in the 1930s when William Alanson White was superintendent. St. Elizabeth's superintendent during the 1940s, Winfred Overholser, was an old OSS man who helped FDR's crew test out new drugs. (Overholser was also Ezra Pound's warden during the poet's 12 years of political imprisonment in Washington.) L. Ron Hubbard claims Overholser's predecessor, William A. White, as one of his mentors but Hubbard's relationship to Overholser himself was rocky, according to sources from Scientology critic Caroline Letkeman. One big twisted family.
Parsons displayed some of the same characteristics as Guy Burgess: outwardly confident, promiscuous, self-absorbed but essentially looking for a more domineering figure to guide him Parsons was a "beta" Crowley like Burgess was a "beta" Philby. (The cult follower has some of the narcissistic traits of the cult leader.)
Crowley and L. Ron Hubbard both recognized Parsons' value as a tool. L. Ron ran off with the bacon, so to speak, when he inserted Cameron and Crowley was not pleased that his pet project had been co-opted under his nose. Crowley wrote this to Parsons on April 19th 1946:
"You have got me completely puzzled by your remarks about the elemental… I thought I had a most morbid imagination, as good as any man's, but it seems I have not. I cannot form the slightest idea what you can possible mean."
As you might expect, Parsons was not the one in control of his relationship with Cameron: the Lady of Babalon' who he summoned certainly wore the pants. When Parsons died Cameron's first concern was how she would support herself; hours later when his mom committed suicide Cameron's first concern was saving the pot she'd stashed at her in-law's.
In 1947 Cameron had attempted to assume the role as intermediary between Parsons and Crowley, but The Beast died shortly before she could meet him in Europe. Later Kenneth Anger would help promote Cameron as an heiress to Crowley's retinue of adherents, but with very limited success. Cameron would also squabble with L Ron Hubbard for a share of the adherent' market, according to Kenneth Anger in this 2014 Esquire interview:
In 1946, Parsons and Cameron practiced a magic ritual known as the "Babalon Working" to conceive a "moonchild" as the Thelemic "messiah".
The "scribe" for this ceremony was a man Parsons had met only a few months earlier, but who so Parsons told Crowley displayed distinctly promising occult possibilities. He was a science-fiction writer named L Ron Hubbard. The Babalon Working failed: Cameron did not conceive. Hubbard ran off with Parsons' former mistress, a substantial amount of Parsons' money and a yacht both men owned in a business arrangement.
The official Scientology version of Hubbard's occult activities is he was working undercover to expose and destroy a "black magic cult". But Hubbard, Anger says, was "a pathological liar, you can't believe anything he said". What Hubbard took from meeting Parsons, Anger says, was the blueprint of a hermetic brotherhood in which the acquisition of one layer of knowledge leads to the next. "The difference is, Scientology makes everybody pay. Hubbard told Parsons that inventing a religion was a good way to make money. But Scientology is a cult. The whole thing is what I call a racket."
I've written quite a bit about Marjorie Cameron already, suffice it to say that she was an emotionally distant woman with a penchant for casual sex and drug-addiction problems so severe that she neglected her young daughter, exposing the child to abuse from pedophiles. I'm not sure that Cameron should be classified as a functioning addict, but since her chief duty seemed to be lying down, she cleared the bar for FDR's anti-democratic espionage team. To be fair, as she aged Cameron developed some understanding of her place in the world, according to her spooky-smelling biographer Spencer Kansa in Wormwood Star:
Back in 1969, the British Sunday Times ran an expose on Hubbard's participation with Jack in The Babalon Working and cited Aleister Crowley as a catalytic influence on Hubbard's teachings. To counter this claim, Hubbard issued a cover story in which he painted himself as a cloak-and dagger intelligence agent, sent in to the Fleming mansion on South Orange Grove, to rescue his future wife Betty from the evil clutches of Jack Parsons' black magic ring. This dubious scenario played hard and fast with the facts, yet in the subsequent radio broadcast Cameron, surprisingly, gave credence to this line, musing how Hubbard, "may have been an agent as he claims."
In discussions with [the OTO's] William Breeze she also reconsidered the circumstances surrounding her own initial involvement with Jack: "She would space-out and say, Maybe I was sent in there' (to Jack's house on Orange Grove) maybe I was an intelligence drone.'"
It was clear that over recent years there'd been a sea change in Cameron's view of L. Ron Hubbard, as Breeze explains: "She may have reached some sort of accord with the Scientologists. She was approached by them and knew some people in LA that's how she got Jack's FBI file. She wasn't down on them and she wasn't down on Hubbard anymore. She actually liked Ron. She thought he was charming."
Over the decades, The Church of Scientology had grown into a multimillion dollar empire, boasting movie star converts, but one person whose low opinion of Hubbard had decidedly not wavered, and had only grown more virulent over time, was Kenneth Anger.
Marjorie Cameron was a user and a person who was used; I doubt if any of her convictions ran deep other than convictions about her own specialness and entitlement. For a more full examination of her life in the intelligence community, please see my post Wormwood Star. For an explanation of how she got noticed by the intelligence community, please see my post Eisenhower's Money Plates. It's likely that Cameron was used in US-targeted counter-culture' psy-ops well after Parsons' death and she *probably* had ties to the Mormon cabal inside the intelligence community'.
To wrap this up, I admit that when I first started researching Crowley I was disgusted with the way he wrapped himself up in imagery from Jewish mysticism, Old-Testament trappings and cryptic references from the Book of Revelations. Crowley seemed like the worst type of medieval throwback. However, as I learn about mind control' I find Crowley's poetry less dishonest. There are potions which can turn people into monsters. There are magic words'; there are golem and succubae. These things don't work through Harry-Potter-like bolts of lighting, they seem to have a psychological basis though I believe psychologists are no better at explaining Crowley's magick' than alchemists were.
“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.â€
― Leo Tolstoy,
