Babalon Working

An extended ritual sequence performed by Jack Parsons at his Pasadena home in early 1946 with L. Ron Hubbard as his magical partner, intended to bring into manifestation the figure of Babalon — the sacred-prostitute goddess of Thelemic cosmology — through a series of invocations and a sexually-magical operation. The primary documentary record is Parsons’s own ritual diary and his correspondence with Aleister Crowley. Crowley’s recorded reaction was sceptical of Parsons’s interpretation. The episode is the proximate moment at which the postwar Thelemic current and the emerging American technical-security demographic are documented as meeting in one biography.