Strange Angel (21 page)

Perhaps no other book shaped Parsons' interest in myth, magic, and alternative beliefs more than Sir James George Frazer's
The Golden Bough.
Parsons would refer to it in his letters throughout his life, and he often recommended it to those newly interested in the occult—that is, the supernatural world and its manifestations in magic, alchemy, astrology, and other secret or mysterious arts.

Frazer was an anthropologist and fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He wrote
The Golden Bough,
first published in 1890, after studying the mythologies and belief systems of the world's cultures. In the thirteen volumes which make up the work (a condensed one-volume edition was also issued), Frazer juxtaposes African tribal rites with the practices of Egyptian cults, Greek mythology with rural British folklore. His startling and controversial hypothesis was that the history of human culture demonstrated an evolutionary development of thought—from magic to religion and finally to science. Frazer became one of the first scholars to treat magic not as blasphemy or heresy but as a legitimate (if flawed) system of thought. Frazer's book highlighted the parallels between the rites, superstitions, and magic of primitive and pagan cultures and those of Christianity and orthodox religion. He suggested, for example, that the biblical story of Christ's resurrection recreated the pagan celebrations of spring. His work made a vast range of primitive customs suddenly intelligible to a Western audience.
The Golden Bough
was popular with both scholars and laymen, and it dramatically influenced the work of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung—Frazer's depiction of tales of myth and romance as echoes of ancient rituals chimed with Jung's description of archetypes that exist within the collective unconscious—as well as of writers such as T. S. Eliot, whose poem
The Waste Land
resounds with its ideas. Frazer's suggestion that powerful manifest forces, more primal than Christianity, linked mankind through time and space must have been highly seductive for a man like Parsons, who was already a keen searcher for the mystical in everyday life.

While Frazer doubted magic's efficacy, calling it “a mistaken association of ideas,” he saw that in its fundamental conception, ritual magic was strikingly similar to science. Magic, like science, was an attempt to control events by performing technical acts. Although Frazer believed that the reasoning behind magic was faulty, its basic methodology was not. He wrote with interest of Scottish witches who beat a “wind-stone” to create storms and of Papuans who believed that a man's sweat could be used by his enemies to cast an enchantment over him. To Frazer these acts of magic were the logical precursors to scientific experiment, for as with science “the succession of events is assumed to be perfectly regular and certain, being determined by immutable laws, the operation of which can be foreseen and calculated precisely.” Both magic and science, he wrote, “open up a seemingly boundless vista of possibilities to him who knows the causes of things and can touch the secret springs that set in motion the vast and intricate mechanism of the world.” Magic, with its unshakeable belief in cause and effect, made it “the bastard sister of science.” Parsons would always treat magic as such, seeing it as a strictly literal branch of learning, one that could be mastered by concentrated scientific application.

 

Despite his unconventional character, Aleister Crowley had not taken to the wild variety of Los Angeles. He had visited it only once while on a tour of the United States and Canada in 1915–16, when he had described it, without a hint of insincerity, as populated by “the cinema crowd of cocaine-crazed, sexual lunatics, and the swarming maggots of near-occultists.” It was while visiting the Vancouver branch of the OTO on this same tour that he had met Wilfred T. Smith, the man Parsons recently encountered at the mass on Winona Boulevard. A correspondence had resulted, with Smith sending Crowley money and Crowley advising him on magick and advancing Smith through the ranks of the OTO. When Smith announced that he was moving to Los Angeles, he asked Crowley's permission to form a branch of the OTO, under the name Agape Lodge (agape being the Greek for “brotherly love”). Crowley acceded with glee. He was all too aware of the success of Aimee Semple McPherson and the huge audience and fortune she had gained for herself. Despite his personal dislike for the city, he hoped that there Smith might be able to capture a most valuable commodity, an “RMW”—Rich Man from the West—to bankroll his future projects. “Start an entirely new
habit of life,
“ he advised Smith in 1928. “Ingratiate yourself with sane people, people of importance. Put over the Law of Thelema as a spiritual, social and political movement. Get men interested in its economic advantages first of all—and so on ... The money's right under your nose, and you need only to get in with the right people to have it handed to you on a tray.”

The Church of Thelema at 1746 North Winona Boulevard was registered and incorporated by Smith in 1934. Its neighborhood was poor but already religious: the house was located near both the Vedanta Institute and a nunnery. Following the incorporation Smith made a renewed push for publicity, taking advantage of Crowley's infamy in Los Angeles: A book of his erotic poems,
White Stains,
had been found at the murder site of the film producer William Desmond Taylor in 1922. Smith wrote to Crowley breathlessly: “Twenty seven attended
(the Mass)
last Sunday ... The Crowley Night was most successful, and an enthusiastic crowd of 150 came. 137 signed the guest book. We are gradually building up a mailing list.”

The actor John Carradine visited the house, although it is difficult to say whether he came because of sincere belief or merely for research purposes: He was soon to play the organist of a satanic cult in the film
The Black Cat.
His fame was the exception. Crowley wanted the Los Angeles branch of the OTO to be attracting “great bankers and captains of industry,” but the somewhat modest and self-conscious Smith could never clinch a substantial benefactor to bankroll Crowley's work and lifestyle. Instead, he attracted “communists and pacifists, or both.”

One of these was Harry Hay, a young actor and communist who had been performing in Clifford Odets' play on unionization,
Waiting for Lefty,
at the Hollywood Guild Theatre. Hay would later become father of the gay rights movement in America, but he was hired to play the organ for the OTO's Gnostic Mass, having been drawn to the temple through his friendship with Regina Kahl. Crowley was known to have created homosexual sex magick rituals, a risqué idea at a time when homosexuality was illegal. The OTO also offered a safe meeting place when Los Angeles' gay bars were being ruthlessly targeted by the police, who had plenty of time on their hands since the end of Prohibition in 1933. Thus, many gay men were attracted to the OTO, with even Wilfred Smith, who often performed “exorcisms” on attractive male aspirants, joining in at times.

The OTO was as appealing for the rare sexual freedom it offered as for its role as a religious organization. While Los Angeles may have had one of the America's highest divorce rates, the general mood, fostered by the powerful antivice movements of the evangelical churches, made any organized challenges to the traditional family unit a rare phenomenon. The OTO's rituals contained a stronger sexual component than anything else being practiced in the city, and at times the high jinks threatened to overpower the main purpose of the group—the study of Crowley's work. Certainly, the mass was not always given the respect Crowley would have desired. Harry Hay would himself undermine the seriousness of the atmosphere by mischievously slipping such ditties as “Barnacle Bill the Sailor” and “Yes, We Have No Bananas!” (slowed to dirgelike tempo) into the contrapuntal themes he was asked to play.

After the initial successes about which Smith had bragged to Crowley, attendance at the masses fell. While the social parties continued to draw many people to the house, largely thanks to Regina Kahl's contacts in the acting world, the practicing membership of the OTO was reduced to a hardcore following of around ten people, some of whom lived within the house on Winona itself and shared the maintenance and costs of communal living. They were an unusual group. Louis Culling was a veteran of the First World War and a former cinema organist with a longtime interest in the occult. Max Schneider was a Prussian-born jeweler and astrologer. Oliver Jacobi was an employee of the gas company that Smith worked for. Carrie Dinsmore was a convert from the New Thought movement and inventor of the “slip-knot garment hanger” (30 percent of the royalties of which she donated to Crowley). Dr. George Liebling, who stayed in the house for a brief period, had been a protégé of the composer Franz Liszt and was a famed concert pianist. Perhaps the most well known of the OTO's members in local circles was Roy Leffingwell, a pianist and composer who was also known as “Pasadena's Greatest Booster” from his role as the official announcer of the city's annual Tournament of Roses.

 

On February 26, 1939, little over a month after Parsons' first visit to the OTO, a former Zeigfeld Follies dancer attending drama classes at Los Angeles City College was attacked on campus and died from her wounds. Her tutor had been Regina Kahl, the priestess at Agape Lodge. It did not take long for police investigators to discover the link between the murdered student and the meetings of the OTO at Winona Boulevard. The chief of police himself turned up to grill Smith, Kahl, and Wolfe about the suspicious goings-on in their house.

Although there was no connection between the girl's murder and the OTO, an avalanche of newspapermen soon descended on the house, keen to get the scoop on what had been termed the “Purple Cult.” Headlines such as
HIGH PRIESTESS IS COLLEGE TEACHER
and
PURPLE CULT RITES BARED
sprawled across the newspapers. Smith and Kahl did their best to make the most of the publicity, inviting reporters to watch the mass and allowing pictures to be taken.

The house's guest registrar shows Parsons visiting only once more that year, for a party celebrating Smith's birthday. His interest in Thelema and Crowley, however, was growing. Smith judiciously began to sell him copies of Crowley's books, which he would study at home. Seeing her husband's mounting interest in Crowley, Helen also began to read the books. Although she was initially shocked by Crowley's sexist attitudes, she, too, was gradually drawn to what she read. By the end of 1939 Parsons owned a respectable collection of Crowley's work. The age of Horus, the wink of the grandeur of the past, even if it was wearing a robe made out of old theater curtain, seemed to be infinitely more in tune with his romantic leanings than Communism or even science fiction.

His enthusiasm was evident when he talked or corresponded with the other members of the OTO. He told them he was fascinated by Crowley's talk of hidden dimensions and access to forbidden planes. As a scientist he found that Crowley's magick teachings seemed to correlate with the work of “the ‘quantum' field folks.” The illogical nature of the newly coined quantum physics, in which the simple act of observation seemed to affect the physical world, and in which changes performed on one physical system could have an immediate effect on another quite unlinked system (the theory of nonlocality), would have seemed to Parsons to endorse the improbable possibilities of magic and especially the transformative powers of the magician himself.

Wilfred Smith wanted to initiate Parsons into the OTO as soon as possible, although Parsons' rocket work and Helen's initial reluctance meant the initiation would have to be delayed for a while. Nevertheless, Parsons' scientific learning, his natural aristocratic manner and his wealthy countenance all gave Smith hope that Parsons could be the “Rich Man of the West” he had been looking for all these years.

The profession of magician, is one of the most perilous and
arduous specialisations of the imagination. On the one hand
there is the hostility of God and the police to be guarded
against; on the other it is as difficult as music, as deep as
poetry, as ingenious as stage-craft, as nervous as the
manufacture of high explosives, and as delicate as the
trade in narcotics.

 

—W
ILLIAM
B
OLITHO,
Twelve Against the Gods

 

After ten long years of the depression, a new world was unveiled in April 1939 far from the blight of the past decade. “Building the World of Tomorrow” was the theme for the New York World's Fair, and even its location, on land that had previously been an ash dump, seemed to speak of phoenix-like beginnings. Towering over the fair were the Trylon and the Perisphere, a seven hundred-foot-high spire and an orb as wide as a city block. In their shade such astounding inventions as television, FM radio, fluorescent lighting, fax machines, Lucite, nylon, and 3-D movies were exhibited for the first time in public. Mile-long lines stretched out of the Futurama exhibition hall, a testament to the public's fascination with Westinghouse's walking, talking robot, Elektro. The fair promised a future of comfort, convenience and, above all, change. The concept of “suburbs” was introduced, as well as interstate highways, sleek new motorcars, and jet airplane travel. Sandwiched between the poverty of the depression and the imminent horrors of the Second World War, the fair was one of the greatest visionary exhibitions of the century.

The fair also proved the perfect backdrop for another gathering—the first World Science Fiction Convention. Around two hundred fans from across the country made the trip to New York, among them Forrest Ackerman and Ray Bradbury of the LASFL, both of whom had traveled 3,000 miles by train to be there. The convention featured some of the most famous science fiction writers of the day, including Jack Williamson and L. Sprague de Camp, as well as Frank R. Paul the preeminent science fiction illustrator of the time, who had drawn the first cover of Hugo Gernsback's
Amazing Stories
back in 1926. When Paul gave the keynote speech, entitled “Science Fiction: The Spirit of Youth,” he took some well-aimed swipes at the old guard of scientific inquiry, including Caltech's head: