Strange Angel (31 page)

 

It seemed a strange question to ask of Crowley, a man who had in the past purposefully rejected every moral standard that Germer now invoked. Of more relevance was the fact that these debaucheries seemed to come at the expense, literally, of the Order—Crowley's monthly contributions were much lower than he wanted them to be, especially as he had embarked on a new and vital project. With the help of one of his British disciples, Crowley was designing a deck of tarot cards rich with astrological, numerological, and cabalistic symbolism. “This will I think rank as the most important thing I have done in my life,” he wrote. He looked to America and the Agape Lodge for the financial support to realize this project, but with Smith at the helm of Agape Lodge, such aid was not materializing.

In January 1943, Crowley ordered Smith to step down as head of Agape Lodge until Smith had undertaken “some definite personal action, conceived and executed by [himself] alone, to the advancement of the Work of the Order.” Parsons was confused by this demand. Smith had initiated him not only into a religion but also into a very enjoyable sexual lifestyle. What's more, Smith's charm and sagacity was keeping relations cordial between him and Helen. Parsons and Helen wrote a joint telegram to Crowley, insisting that he had been misinformed about Smith: “Remember we have hard job cannot long afford to lose Wilfred. Things have developed well... Do not believe everything you hear. Love and trust. Jack and Helen.” They needn't have bothered. Smith, the focus for all Crowley's disappointments in the failure of his order, was a lost cause.

Agape Lodge was divided between those who backed Smith and those who wanted change. Parsons vacillated. He had always been slightly naive and susceptible to forcefully made arguments. Whoever held his ear last had his support, at least until his enthusiasm wore off. The standoff between Smith and Crowley recalled the situation Parsons had found himself in ten years before at the University School, when he had been bullied into supporting his recalcitrant schoolteacher against the school's headmaster. Would he side with the rebel or the master?

Hoping to restore Smith to Crowley's favor, Parsons suggested that he and Smith found a weekly magazine. They would call it the
Oriflamme.
Filled with articles written largely by Parsons and Smith, it would show their devotion to the Great Work of spreading Crowley's gospel. Despite these good intentions, in Parsons' hands the
Oriflamme
expressed not Crowley's enthusiasms but his own. The first issue's centerpiece was an untitled poem written by Parsons, a rip-roaring hymn to debauchery that seemed to reveal the true reason for the order's existence:

 

I height Don Quixote, I live on Peyote
       
marihuana, morphine and cocaine.
I never knew sadness but only a madness
       
that burns at the heart and the brain,
I see each charwoman ecstatic, inhuman,
       
angelic, demonic, divine,
Each wagon a dragon, each beer mug a flagon
       
that brims with ambrosial wine....
The mountains are palaces, women are chalices
       
meant to be supped and not sold,
The desert a banquet hall set for a festival,
       
ripe for the free and the bold;
The wind and the sky are ours, heaven and all its stars,
       
waken, and do what you will;
Break with this demon spawn'd hell-inspired nightmare
       
bond—Magick lies over the hill.
They said I was crazy, ambiguous, lazy,
       
disgusting, fantastic, obscene;
So I hied for my sagebrush and cactus and corn mush,
       
To see if the air was still clean.
Oh, I height Don Quixote, I live on peyote,
       
marihuana, morphine and cocaine,
And may I be twice damned for a bank-clerk or store hand
       
if I visit the city again.

 

If Parsons thought that this poem would improve Crowley's view of Agape Lodge's operations, he was quite wrong. Upon receiving his copy, Crowley wrote angrily to Jane Wolfe, “What could have been better calculated to revive the ancient stories about drug-traffic and so on!”

Crowley could be devastatingly contrary at times; after all, his
Liber Oz
had recently urged the slaughter of those who would deny man his Thelemic rights. But to his followers he was as infallible as the Pope, and they had to accept his many contradictions without undue fuss. It was true that he wanted his disciples to be enflamed with passion, but this passion was to be focused on Crowley himself. “Jack's trouble is his weakness,” wrote Crowley; “and his romantic side—the poet—is at present a hindrance.” Crowley doubtless also resented the fact that while he was living in a small apartment in blitz-hit London, far away in the safety of California the residents of the luxurious 1003 Orange Grove enjoyed a Dionysian climate of excess.

The embarrassed and frustrated Parsons quickly shelved the
Oriflamme.
It had done nothing to reduce the hostilities at 1003. No one dared to argue with Crowley himself, so they blamed Karl Germer and Max Schneider for fueling his hostility towards Smith. All agreed, however, that Parsons was the only alternative. Though he was young and Smith's protégé, he was intelligent and most of all a good advertisement for the OTO. And even he had begun to feel a little restless under Smith's leadership. He was by now champing at the bit to perform magick that could produce distinct psychic phenomena. But Smith urged him to slow down, to keep a “magical diary” documenting the more basic rituals he undertook, to hold to a steady progression through the degree system of the OTO. The impatient Parsons, though, had already started performing magical rituals far in advance of his actual grade in the order. As in his rocket work, he left theory behind in the wake of his will to experiment.

By early 1943 the internal feuding of the past months, not to mention the strain of the free sexual relations, had caused an exodus of 1003's original residents. Only five Thelemites now lived in the house—Parsons, Betty, Helen, Smith, and Jane Wolfe. Parsons began to invite friends from Pasadena and Caltech to fill the vacancies. Although Smith continued to protest his innocence, Parsons was granted temporary control of the lodge by Crowley, and Germer gave him some secret magick documents to ensure his allegiance. Although Parsons still supported Smith, he was growing increasingly interested in creating a direct relationship with Crowley, whom he sent $300 of his own money towards the publication of the tarot. Soon afterwards, he extended an olive branch of reconciliation to Max Schneider, Smith's greatest critic. Schneider was pleasantly surprised, and after sitting in on a lodge meeting, he reflected that “Jack is doing very well as Master, he has poise and dignity.”

With Smith relegated to the sidelines, Parsons began organizing frantically. He started a tarot study class, a Crowley study class, even a bridge class, in order to attract new faces to the fold. Magical attainment would be all important, though the bacchanalian lodge parties would continue. The minutes for the weekly lodge meetings, meticulously kept by scrupulous Jane Wolfe, offer a snapshot of the OTO's activities at this time:

 

Sister Forman [Ed Forman's second wife, Phyllis] asked about the Second Yearly Party. Saladin [Parsons, who had assumed Smith's previous Lodge name] designated June 22nd for a Solstice Party, saying it should be small & select, only possible candidates invited ... Brother Canright proposed stressing the fraternal side of the Order, benefits, sports, a Club House, rather than the philosophical side. Saladin suggested Badminton, Fencing. Also that the Second Degree should be pushed through that there might be a special group who would push on to the Third Degree.

 

The 1943 summer solstice party attracted more than forty people, and certainly gave a taste of the benefits of lodge life. Parsons gave a short talk on the OTO, but the dancing and refreshments really got things underway. At around midnight a candlelight procession led by Parsons and accompanied by beating tom-toms wound through the grounds and finally stopped at the pergola. Here couples leapt over a fire hand in hand. Fire dancing was a traditional pagan fertility ritual, and during 1943 five female members of the Agape Lodge had children. Helen was one of them. She gave birth to a boy, Kwen, in April of that year. Although the child bore Parsons' name, no one was in any doubt that Smith was the father.

 

Parsons had asked Crowley not to take any further action against Smith until Helen had given birth to his child. Once Crowley heard news of the birth, however, he initiated an ingenious scheme to rid Agape Lodge of the troublesome Smith forever.

Not long after Kwen was born, Crowley sent Smith a twelve-page letter entitled “Liber 132,” after Smith's magical number. It was a work of byzantine complexity, presenting the most abstruse mixture of cabbalistic calculation, omen telling, and oracle reading Crowley could muster, and including Smith's horoscope, drawn up and cross-referenced with some broad readings from
The Book of the Law.
At its end Crowley declared that his computations could only point to one thing: “
WILFRED T. SMITH is not a man at all: he is the Incarnation of some God.
“

With a fanged smile of satisfaction peeking out from behind the solemn deadpan intonations, Crowley declared that Smith's mission was to find out which god he was the incarnation of. In order to do so, he would have to leave 1003, have his forehead tattooed with the number 666, and journey into the desert to contemplate his task. Most importantly, however, he was to have no contact with other members of the Lodge because “the divine nature must never be contaminated or cheapened by human associations.”

The members of Agape Lodge were struck dumb. No one could tell if the letter was a blessing or a curse. The calculations were precise, but one had to wonder whether the systems had been somewhat abused. Nevertheless, Crowley's word was gospel. As for Crowley, he would insist that “Liber 132” was a most serious and genuine scripture—at least when it suited his purposes. In his more generous moments, he even claimed to believe that Smith could be redeemed. Writing to Max Schneider shortly after the event, however, he was quite open about his plan. “No doubt by this time you will have got my solution of his [Smith's] problem,” he commented. “His departure should clear things up considerably, although it will take a little time to get rid of the old influence.” Smith hadn't been deified; he had been framed. Writing to Crowley, the defeated Smith seemed to accept his fate. “Many times these many years I have speculated as to how and when my turn would come as it has so many others, and now it is here.”

Smith did not go quickly. He had an infant son and Helen to look after. To follow through with Crowley's orders would have meant literally becoming a hermit and being exiled from the comforts of 1003 forever. But the more he procrastinated the more tensions in the house rose. Betty and Helen were feuding more than ever, with Betty telling her half sister, “Why in hell don't you get out of here? This is no place for indigent mothers and bastard children.” Parsons was himself confused and angry at this dual pull on his emotions. After innumerable false starts, Smith, Helen, and their son eventually left and traveled to OTO member Roy Leffingwell's turkey farm in the desert to begin his magical retirement.

Crowley's cunning plan almost left him without a new leader. Parsons, feeling cut adrift from Smith and fatigued by his unrelenting rocketry work, tendered his resignation to Crowley almost immediately after Smith had offered his. He had had enough of the infighting, of Crowley's “appalling egotism, bad taste, bad judgement, and pedanticism,” and he declared himself content to go it alone for a while. It took all of Crowley's serpentine skill, paternal charm, and out-and-out bullying to tempt him back. Telling “Dear Jack” that he was writing to him “as an elder brother and true friend,” he refused to accept Parsons' resignation. “I hope that you will think everything over very carefully and make up your mind to continue to bear the great responsibility and deserve the great honour which is yours,” he wrote, playing up to the self-aggrandizing element in Parsons' character.

Parsons was not blind to Crowley's tricks, but he was still besotted with the man's philosophy and magick. He withdrew his resignation. For a long time, Crowley had been a remote figure, his presence diluted and fractured through the anti-Smith scheming of Schneider and Germer. Now Parsons gained a much closer relationship with the man whom he would begin to call “father.” For the twenty-eight-year old Parsons, Crowley was the latest in a long line of father figures, not to mention the greatest exponent of magic of the age, while Crowley needed the Pasadena lodge to keep funding him and saw in Parsons both a wealthy benefactor and an enthusiastic novice. Maybe this disciple, young and intelligent, would succeed where so many others, most recently Smith, had failed.

 

While Parsons spent his evenings trying to restore order to the OTO, he was spending his days at Aerojet's new premises with Forman and Summerfield, assisting in the transition from experimental to full-scale production of solid- and liquid-propellant rocket engines. This was not easy, for their equipment was basic at best. Creating Parsons' asphalt-based fuel was a labor-intensive job; the asphalt had to be sliced with an axe before it was added to the melting pots, where it required constant stirring by hand with large wooden paddles.

Aerojet was very much a hand-to-mouth concern. The company had plenty of orders but was struggling to fill them. Profits from one order paid for work on the next order. New contracts were desperately sought for the embryonic business, and all the members of the old Suicide Squad now found themselves, like Parsons before them, as unlikely ambassadors, traveling the country to persuade aeronautic companies and the military of the usefulness of their product. They experienced a few upsets along the way. Parsons arranged a demonstration of their JATOs aboard the aircraft carrier USS
Charger
in Norfolk, Virginia. Representatives from the navy took their seats along the side of the deck as a Grumman fighter plane fitted with solid-fuel JATOs was prepared for takeoff. When Parsons gave the order to fire the rockets, the Grumman left the deck with a roar. Then, in Kármán's words, “Something happened that we had not considered. The rockets discharged a billow of smoke right on the assembled Navy officers and turned their neat blue uniforms into a dusty yellow. One man rose and blustered that the device was impossible. Most of them, however, took it good-naturedly, but said that we should see them again when we had found a way of getting rid of the smoke.”