Hubbard had no real friends

Veda

Well-known member
McMaster stole the spotlight form Hubbard, and was hailed, as "the first real Clear," traveled the world, as the "pope" of Scientology. He was very popular, and expanded Scientology,

Soon after, OT 2 was complied which was described as "another bank." This meant McMaster was not really the first Clear as there was another bank.

Hubbard demoted McMaster to a galley hand, and, eventually, declared him a Suppressive Person.

From Auditor newspaper, circa 1967

Did Hubbard have any real friend?
 

Xenu Xenu Xenu

Well-known member
Hubbard once said he could not have friends. He knew that a cult leader could not have friends. His family was all he had. He could either have a cult with admiring followers and money or no cult and friends but not both. I wonder what he was like as a child. I wonder who his friends were while he was in Helena, Montana and what they had to say about him. The books about him do go into that somewhat but I can not remember too much except for accounts from family members such as his aunts.
 

HelluvaHoax!

Well-known member
.

Did Hubbard have any real friend?

ANSWER: Yes. Ron stated on an audio lecture that Aleister Crowley was his "very good friend". Even though he never met Crowley personally. In a profound way this scientifically proved the miraculous level of postulate power that Hubbard wielded! lol

.
 

Karakorum

Ron is the source that will lead you to grief
Hubbard once said he could not have friends. He knew that a cult leader could not have friends. His family was all he had. He could either have a cult with admiring followers and money or no cult and friends but not both. I wonder what he was like as a child. I wonder who his friends were while he was in Helena, Montana and what they had to say about him. The books about him do go into that somewhat but I can not remember too much except for accounts from family members such as his aunts.
Hard to say when and if Hubbard had any friends. Jack Parsons was clearly not his friend - we all know how the "superior/subordinate" relationship in cults does not make for good friendships.

I guess my best bet is that the closest to "friends" that Hubbard ever had was the small circle of people who played Fletcher Pratt's naval wargame.

The group (among others) included Sprague de Camp, Heinlein, Jack Coggins, Hubbard, Isaac Asimov as well as Fletcher-Pratt himself.



From all I read about it, it was a very close-knit bunch of nerds, military buffs, ex-navy officers and science fiction writers. It included both men and women. You can read a bit more about it here: Simulating gunfire in naval wargames: Fred Jane and Fletcher Pratt

Generally it seems to be the exact quirky mix of naval, entertainment and gaming that Hubbard would have liked. So I guess if he had friends, it was people from that group like Heinlein and Sprague de Camp.
 

Veda

Well-known member
Hard to say when and if Hubbard had any friends. Jack Parsons was clearly not his friend - we all know how the "superior/subordinate" relationship in cults does not make for good friendships.
The evidence, from Parsons' letters, to the account of Alva Rogers who was there, indicate otherwise. Hubbard dominated, and was not a member of the O.T.O.

Quoting Alva Rogers:

______________Begin quote______________​


In ads placed in the local paper Jack specified that only bohemians, artists, musicians, atheists, anarchists, and other exotic types need apply for rooms - any mundane soul would be unceremoniously rejected. The ad, needless to say, caused quite a flap in Pasadena when it appeared...

Betty, [Elizabeth was Sara's middle name] who had been living with Jack for a number of years, complemented him admirably. She was young, blonde, very attractive, full of joie de vivre, thoughtful, humorous, generous... However this tranquil relationship was soon to be exposed to pressures, from a most surprising source, that would lead to its disintegration.

It all began on an otherwise undistinguished day in the late fall of '45 when we got word that L. Ron Hubbard was planning to wait his terminal leave from the Navy at 'The Parsonage'... Ron arrived on a Sunday, driving an old reddish Packard and hauling a house trailer...

I liked Ron from the first. He was of medium build, red headed, wore horned rim glasses, and had a tremendously engaging personalty. For several weeks he dominated the scene with his wit and his inexhaustible fund of anecdotes... Unfortunately, Ron's reputation for spinning tall tales (both off and on the printed page) made for a certain degree of skepticism in the minds of his audience. At any rate, he told one hell of a good story...

Ron was a persuasive and unscrupulous charmer... He was so persuasive and charmingly unscrupulous that within a matter of a few weeks he brought the entire house of Parsons down around poor Jack's ears...


___________End of quote__________

I guess my best bet is that the closest to "friends" that Hubbard ever had was the small circle of people who played Fletcher Pratt's naval wargame.

The group (among others) included Sprague de Camp, Heinlein, Jack Coggins, Hubbard, Isaac Asimov as well as Fletcher-Pratt himself.



From all I read about it, it was a very close-knit bunch of nerds, military buffs, ex-navy officers and science fiction writers. It included both men and women. You can read a bit more about it here: Simulating gunfire in naval wargames: Fred Jane and Fletcher Pratt

Generally it seems to be the exact quirky mix of naval, entertainment and gaming that Hubbard would have liked. So I guess if he had friends, it was people from that group like Heinlein and Sprague de Camp.
James Randi described his experience of Hubbard during the late 1940s.

"In my opinion, Hubbard was an evil man, and a willfully evil man. He knew what he was doing."


The first 60% of the video is a Scientologist trying to convert Randi.
The last 40% is a non-Scientologist asking Randi about Hubbard.

*

From what I've seen, there's no evidence that Hubbard was a submissive member of a cult, or a "cult survivor," although there is some slight indication - from his own statements - that he may have been sexually abused as a child or adolescent, but that's another topic.

Young L. Ron and Commander "Snake" Thompson
 

Karakorum

Ron is the source that will lead you to grief
From what I've seen, there's no evidence that Hubbard was a submissive member of a cult, or a "cult survivor," although there is some slight indication - from his own statements - that he may have been sexually abused as a child or adolescent, but that's another topic.
Well, that's my interpretation. We can't ask Hubbard or Parsons, because they are both dead. My interpretation comes from Hubbard's admissions.

I do not think he was "submissive", but I am sure he did not get out of Crowley's cult with his mental processes intact. In fact, he retained the original Crowley/Blavatsky/New Age "magical thinking" apparently for his whole life and he infused Scientology with it.

I think he did de-program himself out of some parts of OTO, but not all of them.
 

Veda

Well-known member
Well, that's my interpretation. We can't ask Hubbard or Parsons, because they are both dead. My interpretation comes from Hubbard's admissions.
Hubbard's Admissions/Affirmations contain much more than Magical thinking:

"Your psychology is advanced and true and wonderful. It hypnotizes people.
It predicts their emotions, for you are their ruler."




I do not think he was "submissive", but I am sure he did not get out of Crowley's cult with his mental processes intact.
Crowley's cult? Do you mean the effect of having read books by Crowley?

What about his application of hypnosis on himself with the use of a sound recorder, played back while he was asleep or drugged? (That was the original Pain-drug Hypnosis. According to his 1950s book editor, John Sanborn, "PDH" originally meant the combination of a "pain-drug" + hypnosis. Hubbard was doing this to himself during the 1930s, and continued into the 1940s.)

And what about the inspiration he seems to have derived from books such as Bolitho's Twelve Against The Gods ?

Do you really think Hubbard's goal was "magical"?

To make other people into "Operating Thetans"?

Really?

Hubbard made SURVIVE! the central pillar of his proposed psychological-political movement in 1938. "Not for what but just to survive." Very Darwinian.

He also made himself the center of this proposed movement and was determined to "smash [his] name into history." According to him, that was his "real goal."

Years later he wrote in Axiom Ten that, "The highest purpose in the universe is the creation of effect."

Any effect was better than no effect.

This was reinforced by convincing people that their futures for the next "endless trillions" depended on him or his surrogates.

Hubbard's base motivations are woven into Scientology.



Author William Burroughs remained a proponent of many aspects of Scientology auditing, while recognizing that Hubbard had created Scientology, "fundamentally as an ersatz immorality" for himself. Burroughs' book, Naked Scientology, was published in the early 1970s.

Fourteen years later, David Mayo, who had lived with Hubbard, and been his counselor, described his motivation: "He told me he had an insatiable lust for power and money. He stated that very emphatically. He thought it wasn't possible to get enough. He didn't see it as if it was a fault, just that he couldn't get enough."

A few years after that, in an article published in an Independent auditor magazine, David Mayo, while still advocating "Clearing" (as a verb) through auditing, described Hubbard's reason for downgrading and redefining (the noun) "Clear" (in 1978) as "PR and marketing" motivated.

In 1938, Hubbard had written:

"I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it it will take a legendary form...
That goal is the real goal as far as I am concerned.
Things which stand too consistently in my way make me nervous.
It's a pretty big job.
In a hundred years Roosevelt will have been forgotten - which gives some idea of the magnitude of my attempt.

And all this boils and froths inside my head."


Scientologists give a standing ovation to the giant L. Ron Hubbard signature.




Happy Hubbard fan(atic) club members gather beneath the giant LRH monogram.


A while back I received a letter from Galaxy Press (Author Services) imploring me to buy a gold leatherette bound copy of Buckskin Brigades, a pulp fiction novel, first published in 1937:




The letter explained that, by purchasing and possessing a copy of Buckskin Brigades, I would be helping to ensure the popularity of L. Ron Hubbard, and thus the preservation and use of the tech, and thus the survival and well being of the human race.

Years earlier, in the Scientology Hotline newsletter, it was announced:

"...the PR positioning of L. Ron Hubbard has been established. 'One of the Most Acclaimed and Widely Read Authors of All Time.' For it is LRH's image on which all the rest of our expansion depends. To the degree that LRH is made the stable terminal in society, people will reach for his books and services and we can get them on the Bridge to Total Freedom."

_______________________



A little more from the 1938 Skipper letter:

_____________________Begin quote_____________________​

Living is a pretty grim joke but a joke just the same. The entire function of man is to survive. Not for 'what' but just to survive... I turned the thing up so it's up to me to survive in a big way. Personal immortality is is only to be gained through printed word, barred note or painted canvas or hard granite.

I seem to have a sort of personal awareness which only begins to come alive when I begin to believe in a destiny. And a strange force stirs in me and I seem to be completely aloof and invincible...

Psychiatrists, reaching the high of the dusty desk, tell us that Alexander and Genghis Khan and Napoleon were madmen. I know they're maligning some very intelligent gentlemen...

It's a big joke, this living. God was feeling sardonic the day He created the Universe. So it's rather up to at least one man every few centuries to pop up and come just as close to making him swallow his laughter as possible...


_________________________End quote________________________


In fact, he retained the original Crowley/Blavatsky/New Age "magical thinking" apparently for his whole life and he infused Scientology with it.
See above.

See also Hubbard's confidential 1973 Scientology (covert) Intelligence Tech issue, Intelligence, Its Role, where he ridiculed the idea of using psychic powers in spying.

After the court ordered release of thousands of secret Scientology cloak & dagger documents during late 1979, I had access to those documents and read them. There was lots of spying, but no use of "OTs" for spying.

None.

Mmmmmm....


Hubbard definitely seems to have believed some of the things he told his followers, but not all.

He believed in the "R6 bank" and secretly ordered (1968) that book covers be designed with imagery to trigger the effects of the "R6 (implanted) bank."

He believed he was infested with invisible crawling things.

He knew he was surrounded by people who believed his tall tales, and never around people who didn't.

I think he did de-program himself out of some parts of OTO, but not all of them.
There's no evidence that Hubbard was ever "mind controlled" or "brainwashed," except, perhaps, by his own Pain-drug + Hypnosis.

:)
 

Riddick

I clap to no man
The evidence, from Parsons' letters, to the account of Alva Rogers who was there, indicate otherwise. Hubbard dominated, and was not a member of the O.T.O.

Quoting Alva Rogers:

______________Begin quote______________​


In ads placed in the local paper Jack specified that only bohemians, artists, musicians, atheists, anarchists, and other exotic types need apply for rooms - any mundane soul would be unceremoniously rejected. The ad, needless to say, caused quite a flap in Pasadena when it appeared...

Betty, [Elizabeth was Sara's middle name] who had been living with Jack for a number of years, complemented him admirably. She was young, blonde, very attractive, full of joie de vivre, thoughtful, humorous, generous... However this tranquil relationship was soon to be exposed to pressures, from a most surprising source, that would lead to its disintegration.

It all began on an otherwise undistinguished day in the late fall of '45 when we got word that L. Ron Hubbard was planning to wait his terminal leave from the Navy at 'The Parsonage'... Ron arrived on a Sunday, driving an old reddish Packard and hauling a house trailer...

I liked Ron from the first. He was of medium build, red headed, wore horned rim glasses, and had a tremendously engaging personalty. For several weeks he dominated the scene with his wit and his inexhaustible fund of anecdotes... Unfortunately, Ron's reputation for spinning tall tales (both off and on the printed page) made for a certain degree of skepticism in the minds of his audience. At any rate, he told one hell of a good story...

Ron was a persuasive and unscrupulous charmer... He was so persuasive and charmingly unscrupulous that within a matter of a few weeks he brought the entire house of Parsons down around poor Jack's ears...


___________End of quote__________




James Randi described his experience of Hubbard during the late 1940s.

"In my opinion, Hubbard was an evil man, and a willfully evil man. He knew what he was doing."


The first 60% of the video is a Scientologist trying to convert Randi.
The last 40% is a non-Scientologist asking Randi about Hubbard.

*

From what I've seen, there's no evidence that Hubbard was a submissive member of a cult, or a "cult survivor," although there is some slight indication - from his own statements - that he may have been sexually abused as a child or adolescent, but that's another topic.

Young L. Ron and Commander "Snake" Thompson
"Ron was a persuasive and unscrupulous charmer... He was so persuasive and charmingly unscrupulous that within a matter of a few weeks he brought the entire house of Parsons down around poor Jack's ears... "

Rhetoric = persuasion. I don't know why some of you people don't connect dots that dianetics and scientology is rhetoric by Hubbard.

Anyways, Heinlein was a good friend of Hubbard. An interesting read is the Heinlein letters. I posted it as Gib on ESMB.

Here's another take on it all:

The Heinlein - Hubbard Wager Myth - Everything2.com

Here's another take on it all:

Robert A Heinlein – A Real Science Fiction Author’s Experience with L Ron Hubbard | Scientology Books and Media (wordpress.com)
 

Riddick

I clap to no man
Well, being "mankind's greatest friend" how could you possibly think Ron had no friends! All of mankind was his friend. (Excepting for a few disgruntled SPs like us.)
isn't that also the rhetoric of it all? That somehow he persuaded us to believe that he was mankind's greatest friend? I fell for it. We didn't know the background history of it all, if we knew, we would have probably not gotten involved.
 

Karakorum

Ron is the source that will lead you to grief
Do you really think Hubbard's goal was "magical"?

To make other people into "Operating Thetans"?
I think he was a firm believer in the validity of "magical thinking" and he believed that he can use that to attain his goals. Certainly in the 40s and 50s, later on this gets integrated with his own notions and those from Jung and others. But the Blavatsky/Crowley "magical; thinking" is still alive and well in the CoS today.

I believe that Hubbard was indoctrinated into Thelema while he was living with Parsons and that he did in fact become a cultie and adopted the groups core beliefs. There are clearly many pieces of that 'philosophy' that are destructive, absurd or plain unhelpful that got stuck in Hubbard's mind. The "magical thinking" belief that we can warp the world around us with our sheer willpower is just the most vivid example for me at least. Not only did this stick with Hubbard, but he transmitted it into Scientology. So over 10 years after Hubbard was dead, I myself was 'beaten over the head' with all that magical thinking nonsense in the form of: "you pulled it in!", "be at cause!", "make it go right!". That's still a core scientology belief really: that you can do everything given the right altitude and enough willpower, if something doesn't work that means you are guilty of not wanting it to make it work.

There are more of these Teosophy/Thelema/Western Esoteric elements that Hubbard never de-programmed himself out of, the "magical thinking" is just the one I had particularly bad personal experiences with, hence I tend to bring it up as the first example.

There's no evidence that Hubbard was ever "mind controlled" or "brainwashed," except, perhaps, by his own Pain-drug + Hypnosis.
To me the admissions are evidence that he was indoctrinated into Thelema and that his thinking process and beliefs weren't exactly healthy after the experience. I strongly doubt that it was just him reading Crowley's books (though that was likely a part of it), I feel like the experience of living with Parsons and participating in the rituals was key.

Also we need to be mindful of the fact that after ww2 Hubbard's life was in pieces: The navy didn't want him and didn't want to pay him, he couldn't find any decent job, nobody wanted to publish his stuff, his marriage to Polly fell apart, he had no friends and his health wasn't good.
He found Parsons exactly at the moment when he was desperate and his life was at an al time low. Which is typical for cult recruits. It wasn't hard for Parsons to find his "ruin", it was plain to see.

The admissions/affirmations read like something clearly written by a dazed and confused ex-cult member. Remind me of things written by independent scientologists fresh out of the church.

Which in no way justifies the things Hubbard did later on.

Years later he wrote in Axiom Ten that, "The highest purpose in the universe is the creation of effect."

Any effect was better than no effect.
That's very true. But even that is interwoven with the Blavatsky/Crowley/New Age "magical thinking" notion that you can make real things happen in the real world with your will power (aka "postulates") and that you can make everything "go right" by that.

"The supreme test of a thetan is his ability to make things go right." - That's a decent summary of Blavatsky & Crowley's ideas about the mind and "magical thinking" causality.


I'm not saying Scientology is just Blavatsky/Crowley's philosophy, because Hubbard clearly added a lot of his own stuff or stuff from other people. But there are parts of Thelema still present in Scientology.


Fourteen years later, David Mayo, who had lived with Hubbard, and been his counselor, described his motivation: "He told me he had an insatiable lust for power and money. He stated that very emphatically. He thought it wasn't possible to get enough. He didn't see it as if it was a fault, just that he couldn't get enough."
I'm not disputing that part at all. In the 1940s Hubbard was a cultie trying to de-program himself. But he clearly had an ambition to become a cult guru himself. That's not taht unusual for cult survivors - the same thing happened with Avatar and the Landmark Forum. Ex-scientology members going on to become gurus of their own cults.
 

Veda

Well-known member
I think he was a firm believer in the validity of "magical thinking"
Yet, in Scientology, he was very practical and down-to-earth, and used practical psychology, and such things as fraud, deception, threats, degradation, humiliation, sleep deprivation, high pressure sales, private detectives, lock picks, electronic eavesdropping, secret foreign bank accounts, etc,

He had the largest private spying network in the world (according to some gov't officials) yet did not use his "OTs" in spying, and, not only did he not use them in spying, he also didn't use them in Support (attack) Intelligence.

But he did try using psychology at times, such as trying to "re-stimulate" others, but that was psychological, not Magical.

He believed the Tone Scale was real, or at least could be used to manipulate others. He believed the "Dynamic principal of existence: SURVIVE! was real. And other things in Scientology, but Magical thinking?

He had Scientologists believing in Magical thinking (when it served his purposes), but where did he rely on it for anything important? (Other than convincing people to hand over their minds, money, and sometimes children, to him and his organization, in exchange for becoming "Operating Thetans.")

Over fifty years ago, the "blueprint" of Scientology was spotted by the Anderson Board of Inquiry, and there was nothing about it that was Magical.

It was as down-to-earth as a billy club.

and he believed that he can use that to attain his goals.
And what do you think were his goals?

Certainly in the 40s and 50s, later on this gets integrated with his own notions and those from Jung and others. But the Blavatsky/Crowley "magical; thinking" is still alive and well in the CoS today.

I believe that Hubbard was indoctrinated into Thelema while he was living with Parsons and that he did in fact become a cultie and adopted the groups core beliefs. There are clearly many pieces of that 'philosophy' that are destructive, absurd or plain unhelpful that got stuck in Hubbard's mind. The "magical thinking" belief that we can warp the world around us with our sheer willpower is just the most vivid example for me at least. Not only did this stick with Hubbard, but he transmitted it into Scientology. So over 10 years after Hubbard was dead, I myself was 'beaten over the head' with all that magical thinking nonsense in the form of: "you pulled it in!", "be at cause!", "make it go right!". That's still a core scientology belief really: that you can do everything given the right altitude and enough willpower, if something doesn't work that means you are guilty of not wanting it to make it work.

There are more of these Teosophy/Thelema/Western Esoteric elements that Hubbard never de-programmed himself out of, the "magical thinking" is just the one I had particularly bad personal experiences with, hence I tend to bring it up as the first example.

To me the admissions are evidence that he was indoctrinated into Thelema and that his thinking process and beliefs weren't exactly healthy after the experience. I strongly doubt that it was just him reading Crowley's books (though that was likely a part of it), I feel like the experience of living with Parsons and participating in the rituals was key.
And yet Crowley, responding to Parsons' letter to him, in a cable to Karl Germer, regarded Hubbard as a con man, a confidence trickster, and a swindler.

Parsons was regarded as having fallen under Hubbard's influence.


Also we need to be mindful of the fact that after ww2 Hubbard's life was in pieces: The navy didn't want him and didn't want to pay him, he couldn't find any decent job, nobody wanted to publish his stuff, his marriage to Polly fell apart, he had no friends and his health wasn't good.
He found Parsons exactly at the moment when he was desperate and his life was at an al time low. Which is typical for cult recruits. It wasn't hard for Parsons to find his "ruin", it was plain to see.

The admissions/affirmations read like something clearly written by a dazed and confused ex-cult member. Remind me of things written by independent scientologists fresh out of the church.

Which in no way justifies the things Hubbard did later on.


That's very true. But even that is interwoven with the Blavatsky/Crowley/New Age "magical thinking" notion that you can make real things happen in the real world with your will power (aka "postulates") and that you can make everything "go right" by that.

"The supreme test of a thetan is his ability to make things go right." - That's a decent summary of Blavatsky & Crowley's ideas about the mind and "magical thinking" causality.

I'm not saying Scientology is just Blavatsky/Crowley's philosophy, because Hubbard clearly added a lot of his own stuff or stuff from other people. But there are parts of Thelema still present in Scientology.


I'm not disputing that part at all. In the 1940s Hubbard was a cultie trying to de-program himself. But he clearly had an ambition to become a cult guru himself. That's not taht unusual for cult survivors - the same thing happened with Avatar and the Landmark Forum. Ex-scientology members going on to become gurus of their own cults.
Sorry, can't buy Hubbard as a cult victim. But he certainly was in miserable shape by late 1947.

Link to L. Ron Hubbard, Special Officer thread.

But, soon after, re-created himself as an engineer and atomic physicist who was the premier expert on the modern science of mental health.
 

Karakorum

Ron is the source that will lead you to grief
Yet, in Scientology, he was very practical and down-to-earth, and used practical psychology, and such things as fraud, deception, threats, degradation, humiliation, sleep deprivation, high pressure sales, private detectives, lock picks, electronic eavesdropping, secret foreign bank accounts, etc,
That's the 'beauty' of the cult. We used hidden cameras and microphones with real world interrogation techniques. But whenever something went wrong and there was some technical glitch with the equipment, we would still get hit with the "just make it go right!" magical thinking bs.

High tech and magical thinking blended nicely into one. That's SO for you.

But he did try using psychology at times, such as trying to "re-stimulate" others, but that was psychological, not Magical.
Again, same story with my own experience. I mentioned this guy a few times here on the forums: but there was a scientologists who used to work for a federal agency as a psychological profiler and had a background in psychology. We actually had him do a psychological profile of some of the more important accountable units. I'm sure OSA also used his skills.

Psychological profiling existed right alongside e-meter interrogations, postulates and other such stuff. Frankly speaking, nobody at inv had any faith in postulates or touch assists. But we sill had to act as if we did.

He had Scientologists believing in Magical thinking (when it served his purposes), but where did he rely on it for anything important?
And here might be the kicker: At the time he wrote the admissions he seems to have been a 100% true believer in magical thinking, trying to use it on himself to cure his physical issues among other things. But was he still a true believer when he built the Sea Org? Or by that time was he using "magical thinking" and "postulates" only as tools for victim-blaming?

Frankly, I'm not sure.

And yet Crowley, responding to Parsons' letter to him, in a cable to Karl Germer, regarded Hubbard as a con man, a confidence trickster, and a swindler.
Because Crowley appeared to have more "social skills" than Parsons and was able to more quickly see things about people that Jack was. Also correct me if I'm wrong, but by the time of that cable Hubbard already had bucked the system. So in a sense we can consider that cable as part of "Thelema fair gaming" as well.

I'm not defending Hubbard's integrity here, merely putting Crowley's integrity into question as well. Crowley was a guru of a high-control destructive group. Parsons was his officer and enforcer. There were not innocent kid people just playing make-believe-magic.

This doesn't justify Hubbard's actions, but I am convinced that scientology would have never happen if Hubbard didn't go through the Thelema cult himself. He learned how to use cult tactics partially by watching Parsons.

And what do you think were his goals?
First and foremost control over other people and admiration. Money, sex and a comfy life were distant secondary goals imho.

But he would sacrifice his secondary goals to achieve more control and admiration. Scientology would have been more profitable and widespread if he would have cut back on control, decentralize, not create the SO and instead grow the mission network as it was originally designed. But he preferred more control at the expense of income and expansion. That was clear.

Control, control and more control. SO, CMO, OSA, INV, GO, FOLO and the rest of the alphabet soup? All are tools to get more control. Davey is the same.

Sorry, can't buy Hubbard as a cult victim. But he certainly was in miserable shape by late 1947.
Guess we need to agree to disagree. I think he was both a victim and victimizer at the same time.

Though I have to hand it to him: leaving with the leader's money and his main squeeze... that's one hell of a way to defect from a cult. I wish my defection had as much flare ;)

Hubbard definitely seems to have believed some of the things he told his followers, but not all.
Oh for sure. We are in 100% agreement here.

Scientology has parts that Hubbard really believed were true, then parts that were obvious lies to bolster his ego or denigrate opponents and some parts that were neither true nor false, but merely useful to retain control.
 
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Veda

Well-known member
Bolding and enlarged font added for clarity. :scratch:


That's the 'beauty' of the cult. We used hidden cameras and microphones with real world interrogation techniques. But whenever something went wrong and there was some technical glitch with the equipment, we would still get hit with the "just make it go right!" magical thinking bs.

High tech and magical thinking blended nicely into one. That's SO for you.


Again, same story with my own experience. I mentioned this guy a few times here on the forums: but there was a scientologists who used to work for a federal agency as a psychological profiler and had a background in psychology. We actually had him do a psychological profile of some of the more important accountable units. I'm sure OSA also used his skills.

Psychological profiling existed right alongside e-meter interrogations, postulates and other such stuff. Frankly speaking, nobody at inv had any faith in postulates or touch assists. But we sill had to act as if we did.


And here might be the kicker: At the time he wrote the admissions he seems to have been a 100% true believer in magical thinking, trying to use it on himself to cure his physical issues among other things. But was he still a true believer when he built the Sea Org? Or by that time was he using "magical thinking" and "postulates" only as tools for victim-blaming?

Frankly, I'm not sure.


Because Crowley appeared to have more "social skills" than Parsons and was able to more quickly see things about people that Jack was. Also correct me if I'm wrong, but by the time of that cable Hubbard already had bucked the system. So in a sense we can consider that cable as part of "Thelema fair gaming" as well.

I'm not defending Hubbard's integrity here, merely putting Crowley's integrity into question as well. Crowley was a guru of a high-control destructive group. Parsons was his officer and enforcer. There were not innocent kid people just playing make-believe-magic.
Where are you getting this? Perhaps there are some details you could provide.

From what I've seen, Crowley was primarily an eccentric occultist and literary figure who traveled a lot, and, after his inheritance dissipated, mostly lived off a small number of enthusiasts and benefactors. His Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu, Sicily lasted for three years during the early 1920s.

Parsons joined the O.T.O. around 1940 and resigned in 1946. He ran Crowley's Agape Lodge out of his rooming house in Pasadena. Parsons and a small number of other people seem to have constituted the membership in Pasadena, with most of the residents of the rooming house looking on bemusedly. Crowley was an old man by then, living frugally in England, and addicted to opiates.

Jack Parsons, an "enforcer"? That I would like to know more about.

In any event, Hubbard was never a member. One might say he was a dilettante.

This doesn't justify Hubbard's actions, but I am convinced that scientology would have never happen if Hubbard didn't go through the Thelema cult himself. He learned how to use cult tactics partially by watching Parsons.


First and foremost control over other people and admiration. Money, sex and a comfy life were distant secondary goals imho.

But he would sacrifice his secondary goals to achieve more control and admiration. Scientology would have been more profitable and widespread if he would have cut back on control, decentralize, not create the SO and instead grow the mission network as it was originally designed. But he preferred more control at the expense of income and expansion. That was clear.

Control, control and more control. SO, CMO, OSA, INV, GO, FOLO and the rest of the alphabet soup? All are tools to get more control. Davey is the same.


Guess we need to agree to disagree. I think he was both a victim and victimizer at the same time.

Though I have to hand it to him: leaving with the leader's money and his main squeeze... that's one hell of a way to defect from a cult. I wish my defection had as much flare ;)


Oh for sure. We are in 100% agreement here.

Scientology has parts that Hubbard really believed were true, then parts that were obvious lies to bolster his ego or denigrate opponents and some parts that were neither true nor false, but merely useful to retain control.
 

Karakorum

Ron is the source that will lead you to grief
Bolding and enlarged font added for clarity. :scratch:




Where are you getting this? Perhaps there are some details you could provide.

From what I've seen, Crowley was primarily an eccentric occultist and literary figure who traveled a lot, and, after his inheritance dissipated, mostly lived off a small number of enthusiasts and benefactors. His Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu, Sicily lasted for three years during the early 1920s.

Parsons joined the O.T.O. around 1940 and resigned in 1946. He ran Crowley's Agape Lodge out of his rooming house in Pasadena. Parsons and a small number of other people seem to have constituted the membership in Pasadena, with most of the residents of the rooming house looking on bemusedly. Crowley was an old man by then, living frugally in England, and addicted to opiates.

Jack Parsons, an "enforcer"? That I would like to know more about.

In any event, Hubbard was never a member. One might say he was a dilettante.
Sure. the more you will read about Thelema and the OTO, the more cult symptoms you will see.

One good source: https://www.parareligion.ch/early.htm

That website doesn't really allow copy-pasting, so I can't quote from it directly. I will post a fair use snippet of text that could illustrate some of the issues discussed:

The website is really messy, you need to scroll down and click on the relevant links. Here's one about Crowley and the more totalitarian aspects including flirts with the Nazi party:
https://parareligion.ch/2006/pro/pene.htm

Then you can go for testimonies of ex-members of OTO. Chris Shelton had an interview with one:

He has a website here:
marcovisconti.org

His writings on the nature of OTO and his experiences are here:
Marco Visconti – Medium

Let me quote a part of his story that indicates the modern OTO and its derivatives are still high-control destructive groups:
"what prompted me to leave was the systemic abuse (both sexual and otherwise) and misconduct I unearthed, and the fact the people running UKGL, especially one person in the Electoral College (Soror Agape, but more on her later throughout this diary) worked to constantly silence the victims and to sweep under the rug every proof of it. "

There's more out there, but these two websites and the Chris Shelton interview should be a good start. Its easy to make the same mistake that many Scientology-watchers do and say: "Yeah, they are just disgruntled former members with an axe to grind". It's also easy to write off the OTO as harmless eccentrics and nutjobs - same as people wrote off scientology before the internet.

Don't do it. Treat ex-OTO members testimonies as you would treat ex-scn testimonies.


My own opinion? The OTO then and now is less organized and less efficient than scientology and they have much less money. But it is an high-control destructive group that messes with its members minds. Just like scientology.
 
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Veda

Well-known member
Sure. the more you will read about Thelema and the OTO, the more cult symptoms you will see.

One good source: https://www.parareligion.ch/early.htm

That website doesn't really allow copy-pasting, so I can't quote from it directly. I will post a fair use snippet of text that could illustrate some of the issues discussed:

The website is really messy, you need to scroll down and click on the relevant links. Here's one about Crowley and the more totalitarian aspects including flirts with the Nazi party:
https://parareligion.ch/2006/pro/pene.htm

Then you can go for testimonies of ex-members of OTO. Chris Shelton had an interview with one:

He has a website here:
marcovisconti.org

His writings on the nature of OTO and his experiences are here:
Marco Visconti – Medium

Let me quote a part of his story that indicates the modern OTO and its derivatives are still high-control destructive groups:
"what prompted me to leave was the systemic abuse (both sexual and otherwise) and misconduct I unearthed, and the fact the people running UKGL, especially one person in the Electoral College (Soror Agape, but more on her later throughout this diary) worked to constantly silence the victims and to sweep under the rug every proof of it. "

There's more out there, but these two websites and the Chris Shelton interview should be a good start. Its easy to make the same mistake that many Scientology-watchers do and say: "Yeah, they are just disgruntled former members with an axe to grind". It's also easy to write off the OTO as harmless eccentrics and nutjobs - same as people wrote off scientology before the internet.

Don't do it. Treat ex-OTO members testimonies as you would treat ex-scn testimonies.


My own opinion? The OTO then and now is less organized and less efficient than scientology and they have much less money. But it is an high-control destructive group that messes with its members minds. Just like scientology.
Thanks for the information-packed video and links.

I did a pretty thorough examination of Crowley-ism a long time ago, with regard to both its interesting and its destructive components.

My focus, here, was on your idea that Hubbard was in a cult, and damaged by a cult and, specifically, that he was damaged by Parsons who was Crowley's "enforcer."

:)
 

Karakorum

Ron is the source that will lead you to grief
Thanks for the information-packed video and links.

I did a pretty thorough examination of Crowley-ism a long time ago, with regard to both its interesting and its destructive components.

My focus, here, was on your idea that Hubbard was in a cult, and damaged by a cult and, specifically, that he was damaged by Parsons who was Crowley's "enforcer."

:)
Well, Crowley was a narcissist and a guru of a high control destructive group. Parsons was his 'subordinate' and the cult's most important guy in California.

Granted, OTO did not have telexes nor any form of the CMO etc. It was far more decentralized and Crowley had far less hands-on control than Hubbard would later have in scientology. But the signs are there is you look for them: Crowley would send letters to Parsons telling him how to run things and he obviously got upset once he decided Jack and Ron went "off the reservation" with the whole moonchild thing. It seems he treated it as a challenge to his spiritual authority.

As for Jack himself - I understand that the sources are scant. Jack is dead, Ron is dead, Sara is dead and none of the other cult members from that time seems to have written a cult-survivor memoir. But the cult signs are still there: Jack would use his house and his wealth to draw in people who were "down on their luck", out of a job, young women who weren't able to have a stable career in Hollywood etc. He was going for people who are easy targets for cult recruitment, people who had "ruins" or who were at a bad moment in their lives. He then used them for sex.

Let's take the Northrup sisters. They were poor and they grew up with their father, who was a sexually abusive, violent man and a convicted fraudster. Again: this made them vulnerable people "with ruins" and Jack went for them. He initially married the older Helen, but both sisters moved in with him and pretty son Jack was having sex with both. He also had both of them join OTO and gave them ranks, but he was still the top guy in the cult in California. He was their cult boss.

To me that's a clear sign of an abuse of power to get sex from vulnerable, emotionally hurt young women. I saw my share of this sort of behavior from scientology EDs in my day. Also similar to what Keith Raniere of Nxivm did, as well as similar to Charles Manson.

To me all of this shows that Jack was using the cult's methods and his status within the cult to lure vulnerable people and then use them for sex (probably also for admiration and help). With Hubbard he got more what he bargained for though :D
 

Veda

Well-known member
....

Let's take the Northrup sisters. They were poor and they grew up with their father, who was a sexually abusive, violent man and a convicted fraudster.
Where are you getting this?

Sara does not appear to have been traumatized before, or during, her time with Jack Parsons.

While it's reasonable to assume that there would have been a lack of strict parental supervision in her life, I'd want to see some evidence to support your assertions.

From Hubbard's Public Relations Series 18:

"Statements one makes can be curved, 'She had a birthday party', becomes 'The delinquents inner circle gathered yesterday for a sex orgy and pretended to the police that it was a birthday party. No one was jailed."

Here are pages 1,2, and 5 of the confidential Scientology Intelligence issue, Intelligence Actions, Covert Intelligence Data Collection. It was written shorty after an article appeared in the Times of London exposing Hubbard's involvement with Parsons in Pasadena in December 1945 and early 1946. Hubbard wrote this for his inner circle Intel people.

Link to the complete document.

For the general public, who might have been "enturbulated" by the Times of London article, the story was circulated that Hubbard (as a prestigious Naval officer) "had been sent in by Naval Intelligence to break up a black magic group."

The tenth paragraph down, on page two - a big paragraph - beginning with "The enemy objective is to discredit," is pertinent to this discussion. Hubbard insists that Sara's real name is "Sara Komkovadamanov (alias Northrup)."

That would mean her father was a Russian. Hubbard doesn't mention her father being a sex pervert, violent, and a criminal too, but the implication is that her father, at least, was a Russian communist, and that Sara was a Russian communist agent.

One would have thought that Hubbard would have known about Sara's father as you described him, but he didn't mention it.

"A family of criminals" would have had a nice ring to it. I guess Hubbard thought the "Commie angle" would "work" better.

Go figure.

Anyway, here are pages 1,2, and 5:




Page 2:




Page 5:



When reading this, keep in mind that Hubbard's confidential instructions "to use enemy tactics"
also apply here. Scientologists, "in the know," would understand that instruction on how to protect from the bad guys - instruction that explained their tactics - was also instruction on how to use those same tactics.

There is the additional detail that Hubbard "used enemy tactics," not just on the bad guys, but on loyal Scientologists too. For example, he'd tell them about how the bad guys used "black propaganda" to manipulate, then he'd turn around and use "black propaganda" to manipulate them.

No one suspected because it was RON, their "greatest friend," doing it, and they were all together fighting the enemy to save the planet, etc.

Very covert, very sneaky, very mirror maze, very "through the looking glass."



Sara and her sister were Bohemians. They were proto-hippy girls.

To refresh our memories, here's Alva Rogers account from the beginning of this thread:


______________Begin quote______________​


In ads placed in the local paper Jack specified that only bohemians, artists, musicians, atheists, anarchists, and other exotic types need apply for rooms - any mundane soul would be unceremoniously rejected. The ad, needless to say, caused quite a flap in Pasadena when it appeared...

Betty, [Elizabeth was Sara's middle name] who had been living with Jack for a number of years, complemented him admirably. She was young, blonde, very attractive, full of joie de vivre, thoughtful, humorous, generous... However this tranquil relationship was soon to be exposed to pressures, from a most surprising source, that would lead to its disintegration.

It all began on an otherwise undistinguished day in the late fall of '45 when we got word that L. Ron Hubbard was planning to wait his terminal leave from the Navy at 'The Parsonage'... Ron arrived on a Sunday, driving an old reddish Packard and hauling a house trailer...

I liked Ron from the first. He was of medium build, red headed, wore horned rim glasses, and had a tremendously engaging personalty. For several weeks he dominated the scene with his wit and his inexhaustible fund of anecdotes... Unfortunately, Ron's reputation for spinning tall tales (both off and on the printed page) made for a certain degree of skepticism in the minds of his audience. At any rate, he told one hell of a good story...

Ron was a persuasive and unscrupulous charmer... He was so persuasive and charmingly unscrupulous that within a matter of a few weeks he brought the entire house of Parsons down around poor Jack's ears...


___________End of quote_________​


Again: this made them vulnerable people "with ruins" and Jack went for them. He initially married the older Helen, but both sisters moved in with him and pretty son Jack was having sex with both. He also had both of them join OTO and gave them ranks, but he was still the top guy in the cult in California. He was their cult boss.

To me that's a clear sign of an abuse of power to get sex from vulnerable, emotionally hurt young women. I saw my share of this sort of behavior from scientology EDs in my day. Also similar to what Keith Raniere of Nxivm did, as well as similar to Charles Manson.

To me all of this shows that Jack was using the cult's methods and his status within the cult to lure vulnerable people and then use them for sex (probably also for admiration and help). With Hubbard he got more what he bargained for though :D


Sara's granddaughter and great granddaughter
 

Karakorum

Ron is the source that will lead you to grief
Where are you getting this?

Sara does not appear to have been traumatized before, or during, her time with Jack Parsons.
I thought this was common knowledge. Old man Northrup was an abusive parent. This is mentioned in probably every single publication I ever read about Parsons and Hubbard. Its also mentioned online:

Quote:
"Northrup’s life was already filled with sexual abuse. She’d been molested by her father from a young age, a trauma that likely explains why she was already sleeping with Jack Parsons by age 13. "
Source: 10 Tragic Facts About Sara Northrup, L. Ron Hubbard's Wife - Listverse

Quote:
Olga (Sara's mother) had remarried to a man named Burton Northrup. Though her three daughters from her first marriage had taken Northrup’s name their marriage had been far from happy. He was reportedly abusive towards the girls, including his own two daughters with Olga, and was imprisoned for financial fraud in 1928.
Source: https://headstuff.org/culture/history/jack-parsons-occult-rocketman/

Now from a book "Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons". Fair use quote:


Hubbard insists that Sara's real name is "Sara Komkovadamanov (alias Northrup)."

That would mean her father was a Russian. Hubbard doesn't mention her father being a sex pervert, violent, and a criminal too, but the implication is that her father, at least, was a Russian communist, and that Sara was a Russian communist agent.
Hubbard lied. Not least because "Komkovadamanov" isn't even a valid Russian surname. It might sound Russian to someone not familiar with the language, but it is not. Trust me, I'm a Russian speaker.

My best bet is that Hubbard assumed that the feds back in the day couldn't care less about an abusive parent, but they would be interested in a Russian communist spy. So he did what he would usually do: he tried to lie to them and make up fantastic tales of spies and intrigue.

Sara and her sister were Bohemians. They were proto-hippy girls.
They were also survivors of parental sexual abuse. Women who went through sexual abuse once frequently end up with partners who also abuse or take advantage of them.
So the fact that Sara ended up with Jack and then Hubbard isn't surprising. Jack took advantage of her and user her for sex (just like he did before with her sister), Hubbard did the same and also allegedly was physically violent with her.

I'm not saying Hubbard was a decent, kind and gentle man. But neither was Crowley or Parsons. The OTO was a destructive group where the leaders used their followers for sex and money, through "mystical manipulation". Common cult tactic.
 
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