Agape Lodge

And Jack and Helen are there, and that's right up their alley, right? So they get introduced to this, and it's basically...

It's a Gnostic mass held by something called the Agape Lodge, which would be like, I went to Catholic Church at St. John's.

It's not

Agape?

we'll see where we land.

All right.

But saying you're going to a Gnostic Mass at the Agape Lodge would be like saying I'm going to a Catholic Mass at St. Louis or whatever.

Same concept.

So back in around 1946, Jack Parsons, in addition to being one of the early pioneers of rocketry, was also deeply involved in the occult.

And he had actually become the leader of the California-based Agape Lodge, which was a branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis.

That involved, of course, the teachings of Aleister Crowley, known as Thelema, and the occult rituals that it consisted of.

Well, anyway, back in 1946, Parsons met a young aspiring science fiction writer named none other than L. Ron Hubbard, the very same one who would go on to become a founder of the Church of Scientology.

And according to Parsons, he believed this moon child, if they could bring one into existence, was destined to transform humanity.

And so Parsons and Hubbard famously, or maybe I should say infamously in this case, they trudge off into the Mojave Desert together and they begin this series of rituals to try and bring into their reality a so-called Scarlet Woman.

They get back to Pasadena, and within a few days, a woman shows up at Parsons' home, which also happens to be the center for the Agape Lodge that he was now the head of.

They called this the Parsonage.

And Jack Parsons believed it with full sincerity.

So he led the Agape Lodge, which was the Pasadena branch of the Thelemic organization called Ordo Templi Orientis, or OTO.

And he actually corresponded directly with Alistair Crowley in England, who said this charismatic, young, smart American is one of the most promising figures in the entire New Age spiritual movement.

This is what you have to remember as we go through the episode.

[laughs]

So Strange Angel was, I wanna say, Paramount, um, TV series that was about Jack Parsons, and it doesn't talk about L. Ron, but it does get into all of the occul- like, like, um, Agape Lodge and, like, the Lima stuff.

So you get part of that.

But yeah, there, there still remains, um, a bridge where we need to see the Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard story and, like, them going out into the desert and summoning the Scarlet Woman that ends up being Marjorie Cameron and this whole thing.

Well, gi- given the, the way all of this Crowleyism is bifurcated and all these splintered off and splintered groups, right? Even the process coming off of Scientology.

So they're, you know, OTO, Agape Lodge, then Scientology, then the process, right? And then all these neo-process offshoots, whether it's Vectorianism, which was run by the National Security Advisor's assistant, JJ Bryan, you know, the Mormon National Security Advisor, General Brent Scowcroft, uh, Henry Kissinger's right-hand man, literally.

Yeah.

So we see kind of the epicenter of this occultism and national security there as well, and it's seemingly all around the, these ancient alien cardio cults, be it the Mormons or, or Scientology, and/or both.

But no, I think, I mean, sure, some people are probably destined for greatness in one way or another, but...

Yeah, what I mean by that is obviously her time at the Agape Lodge and really the introduction of Thelema and Alistair Crowley into her life does go on to heavily inspire her.

Until the end of her days, really, she considered herself a high-ranking Thelemite.

um but i think that her her creativity um her her ability to get around in the bohemian uh california scene and i i mean obviously kenneth anger latched onto her because of this lore right and and I think, admittedly, in her own life, it's interesting because she would have rejected all of that stuff that Parsons had put on her in early days.

But she's kind of one of the people who came away from that with a positive experience.

I think she was kind of cured of alcoholism through that experience.

And she... founded the Agape Lodge in California the American branch of the OTO which Jack Parsons would later be the head of but she continued in the OTO for the rest of her life and she was the one who maintained a correspondence with Marjorie Cameron throughout the whole thing which is pretty cool I'd love to read some of those letters

yeah Right.