The Babalon Working

A documented ritual series, and the exact line between what was done and what was claimed to have happened.¹²³

Documented connection

Between January and March 1946, at the Parsonage in Pasadena, Jack Parsons conducted a series of rituals with L. Ron Hubbard as scribe and seer, drawing on Crowley’s sex magick and the “moonchild” concept from Crowley’s 1917 novel. Parsons’s own Book of Babalon (Liber 49) is the primary record; the received text declares, “Yea, it is I, BABALON. And this is my book, that is the fourth chapter of the Book of the Law,” and Parsons declared himself the Antichrist “Belarion.” Crowley, watching by correspondence from London, was contemptuous — he wrote to Karl Germer that he was “fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these louts!”

Asserted intent — firewalled

Whether the working did anything — summoned Babalon, produced consequences — is Parsons’s own belief, recorded in his own text, not a documented fact. Parsons read the arrival of the artist Marjorie Cameron as the elemental the ritual had called; that reading is his interpretation. The event is documented; its efficacy is a claim its own author makes.

Held-open

• The reception date of Liber 49 is given as February 27, 28, and 29 across sources; all recorded, none picked.
• Verses 5–8 of Liber 49 are “missing and presumed lost.”

Role in the thesis

The rail’s clearest specimen of the connection/intent split held inside a single event: the ritual is documented to the letter from its author’s own hand, while everything it claims to have accomplished stays exactly where the evidence leaves it — an assertion, not a result.

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1. Jack Parsons, 'The Book of Babalon' (Liber 49) — the primary record of the working; opening: 'In January 1946 I had been engaged in the study and practice of Magick for seven years'; the received text 'Yea, it is I, BABALON. And this is my book, that is the fourth chapter of the Book of the Law' — https://hermetic.com/parsons/the-book-of-babalon ↩︎

2. Crowley to Karl Germer (1946), contemporaneous disdain: 'fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these louts!' ↩︎

3. Wikipedia, 'Babalon' / 'Babalon Working' — the Jan–Mar 1946 ritual series, Parsons with Hubbard as scribe/seer, drawing on Crowley's sex magick and the 'moonchild' concept; Marjorie Cameron's arrival read by Parsons as the elemental ↩︎

Referenced by. Where this entry is cited in the reading — hover any to read it in place.

• The Links Hold — “Ron Hubbard](../data/nodes/people/hubbard-lron.md) moved into Parsons's house; the two formed a company, and Hubbard served as scribe for the Babalon Working of 1946 — a ritual series aimed, by Parsons's own account in his Book of Babalon, at producing a moonchild, the engineered divine child of Crowley's 1917 novel.”