31 Mar 1950 – Church of Thelema status

31 March 50

Care Frater Saturnus

Greetings of the Vernal Equinox.

After considerable study, thought and actual investigation in accordance with your advice, I have decided to work with 132 (W.T. Smith T) for a probationary period of the next three months. In this connection I have prepared a course of lectures which will begin in two weeks, and have memorized the Gnostic Mass, which is now ready for public performance. I am not without reservations in the matter, but it seems to me perhaps the best effort I can make in the circumstances.

At present we will be operating as the Church of Thelema, which is incorporated in California. This seems a good idea, from the standpoint of religious freedom guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, and from the standpoint of the 15% gross income tax deduction allowed for religious donations.

Since there are so few of us, and the job is so big, I hope that we can all work together if not as members of one group, then at least in deserved mutual trust, respect and cooperation.

I called to see Jane (Wolfe. T) in regard to the Letters to Probationers, and she indicated that she is waiting to hear from you before she takes any action.
I believe that I owe you some thing for the copy of Khaled Khan and the reprints of the three sacred writings. I should also like to obtain a copy of the Book of Lies, if one is available. If you have not read it, I should like to recommend a most unusual and stimulating book by Joseph Campbell “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. Best regards and best wishes for you and Sascha

Love is the law, love under will. Fraternally

210

22 Jan 1950 –  The Roosevelt – On Gnosticism and Magick

22 Jan [1950]

The Roosevelt, Madison Ave. and 45th St., New York

Dear Candida,

Well, here is where I met you two years ago, and I wish that you were with me now, my dear, so that we could do New York together again.

It has been an interesting trip – I saw Haly of course, and Dan Kimball in Washington, then down to the grim heart of the coal region in Cumberland, then to Princeton, where I spent an afternoon with Martin Summerfield. I will see Hap and Germer, and try to find you a copy of the Goetia while I am here.
There is a Rocket Company starting in Paris, and I have an opening there which I am keeping an eye on if my plans at Hughes do not materialize. I should rather live in Paris, but am on to a big thing here which I had better stay with until it breaks. Is there anything you particularly need or would like for a post Christmas present?

If you are right in your choice of San Miguel as the place for your work, you will undoubtedly find means to complete it there. If not, I should be glad to help you get established there, if it looks like your finances would necessitate some such move.

As a rule no one is sure of his will until he has made a variety of experiments.
One thing about Magick, there is too much claptrap in the present method of presentation, too much indirection. It is all there, but overlaid, like Troy before Schlieman. The modern spirit requires an austere simplicity of approach, a burning passion to truth beyond all partiality and predilection.

Even two thousand years ago that was the reason for the victory of Christianity over gnosticism, because gnosticism, although true, was too complex, and Christianity, although false, was simple and direct. Simplicity has been the key to victory in all the idea wars, and, at present, Magick does not have it. There is the skeleton, in the Rights of Man and in the coverings in the main literature. But the true body has never been shown forth.

The difficulty with the truth is the subtle and pervasive nature of rationalization. Existentialism is just as much on one side as Christianity is on the other, science is as weighted as Shakerism. There can be no objectivity so long as there is preference.

We are not Aristotilean – not brains but fields – consciousness. The inside and the outside must speak, the guts and the blood and the skin; the penis and the vagina, as well as the brain. We must have it all out, the fear and the disgust, the hatred and cowardice, and the beauty, tenderness and courage as well, and balance all.

Then we can get at the truth. The mind is an instrument that measures itself with itself and as such a contradiction – an impossibility. But out of this abyss, as we know, we can make significance, but to be cogent it must be significance for the entire field.

In a world of partialities and pseudo-ideals, the truths on the other side open as horrors and we admit them with a sense of despair, of utter abnegation. But the conflict is real, and the solution cannot be “thought up” as such, it is as obviously ersatz as Esperanto. These continual things that we reach for are just obviously fake, and I must confess that much of Magick seems that way to me.

These “returns,” as though we, of a grown generation could go back to anything, are all off the track – we must go forward to what we are, and no one has ever been there. It’s no use pretending to be adults when you are children, or children when you are adults, and we, unfortunately, do both. The only thing is to find out what you are, and try to be it. Of course, if there is no faith (and there shouldn’t be, if we have thought through) then there must be an act of faith, but this should come after an experiment in truth that comes clean.

Something is moving now – in France, and England, and in Berlin – even moving a little in this benighted country, like the slow, shallow ripple, far out to sea, that hints of a great wave that will flood the land four thousand miles away; and strange as it may be – and brutal and savage as it could be, yet I sense a sort of searching sincerity in it, that has not been known in the world before.

We can sense it, partially predict it, perhaps even guide it a little, and those of us that do may be the makers of a new world. It is all strange and uncharted – nothing but truth will serve us here, and it must be the truth of dream and hallucination and frenzy equally with the truth of science and dialectics and economics. And that truth must be [hounded?] and hunted to its last resting place in the ultimate abyss.

Indeed my personal and interior experience, however hallucinated, must be at least equally valid with the things I have been taught to call “objective” and “real.” But these are also my truths – they are part of me – part of the equipment of my cosmic laboratory wherein I can begin an experiment in truth.

Somewhere I must get interior and personal experience – I am shut off from it and starved for it, as we all are in the West. I can think of no better starting point than “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” – no better equipment than the magical, scientific, and psychological techniques I have inherited. But all these boil down to will, experiment, and honesty in regard to data.

Love, Jack

LETTERS TO MARJORIE CAMERON

 

Note: The transcripts of these letters were sourced from the now-defunct babalon.net (viewable via webarchive.org) and contain the citation:

CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN JACK PARSONS
and His “Elemental”, Marjorie Cameron
Edited by Cameron and Hymenaeus Beta (Fra. Superior, OTO)                    ©1989 Marjorie Cameron Parsons Kimmel                                                          Revision 2

The typed manuscript notes are given a title page:

Letters of Jack Parsons to his wife Marjorie Cameron Parsons                  5 Oct 1949  to  12 Feb 1950                                                                                            (Typed by Jane Wolfe (Soror Estai) from the holographs in the possession of M C Parsons in 1954 and recopied from the typescript here in 1954)

Handwritten notations: “Letter #2 Admirable” ( 22 Jan 1950 assumed – Ed.) and below, “Are Extremely good

5 Oct 1949  – Extract Only – On the Babalon Working

15, 16 Jan (1950, presumed) – Hotel Raleigh – Methods for Invoking

22 Jan 1950 –  The Roosevelt – On Gnosticism and Magick

27 Jan 1950 – On Disaster and Tragedy

29 Jan 1950 – Dee’s Skrying, Hubbard Mention

1 Feb 1950 – Advice on Astral work

6 Feb 1950 – On spiritual mythology

8 Feb 1950 – The nature of Magick

9 Feb 1950 – On gods, and spiritual independence and growth

12 Feb 1950 – On gods, cont.

 

 

 

THE GNOSTIC CHURCH

THE GNOSTIC CHURCH

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THE GNOSTIC DOCTRINE

THE GNOSTIC DOCTRINE

    1. The Holy Ghost is the feminine counterpart of Christ – the Sophia
    2. God is manifest in the union of Christ and Sophia. This is the Trinity – both in the Universe and in man.
    3. The golden rule supersedes all other commandments and laws. It teaches love as a way of life and this love includes sexual love.
    4. In the teachings of Christ there are no prohibitions of the enjoyment of life and the world, of eating, drinking, merrymaking and sexual love.
    5. Christ wanted against undue attachment to material things, against selfishness, avarice, and against prostitution of the body and spirit.
    6. He taught the immanence of God and the Kingdom of Heaven.
    7. The consciousness of immortality and the state of blessedness is attained by the union of the Christ in man the Sophia in woman.
    8. Brotherhood in Christ is attained by the practice of unattached love in all human relations.
    9. All worldly attachment is futile save in this, that it leads to redemption through suffering.
    10. Virtue does not consist in self-sacrifice, chastity and renunciation of the world, it consists in the sacrifices of the infantile self, of purity in love and friendship, and in the renunciation of undue attachment to worldly possessions and inordinate desires.
    11. Therefore attainment does not consist in the denial of desire and avoidance of temptation; but in the whole hearted acceptance of all experience and all changes as initiations in the way of love.
    12. Formal Christianity has distorted, perverted and misinterpreted the teachings of Christ. Mankind can only find happiness by rejecting the false doctrines of sin, guilt, hatred and intolerance; and in accepting the gospels of Love.

THE GNOSTIC CREED

The Gnostic Creed

There is no god but love, and his ways are love, and there is no way to God but love. The way to God is not alone in the love of God, but also in the love of man, and in the love of all created things, and in the love of friends and of the beloved, and in the love of the self, and the body that God made, and the mind that God made, and the spirit that God made, and of all their ways and thoughts and desires, for in the love of all these is the way to God.

For God abides forever in the union of love, in the love of Christ that is the Son of God and of Sophia that is the Daughter of God, and Their union, that is God.
And these our bodies are the temple of God, and therefore we may put on eternity in the love of one another, and celebrate the union of God, that is forever.

Therefore, let us celebrate our love for God and for one another; let us celebrate the seasons and the changes, the sowing and the harvest, the coming and the going, the beginning and the end, for all these is love.

Let us worship in the seed and the blossom and fruit, in the bridal chamber and the banquet, in the marketplaces and in secret, that we may partake if the sacrament of love, that is forever.

Let us celebrate in singing and in dancing, in friendship and lovemaking, and in all manner of joyous and bountiful and beautiful things that are fitting to the love in the worship of God who made all things.

Let is put away fear and envy and hatred and intolerance and all thought of guilt and sin out of our hearts, that we may worthily celebrate our brotherhood in joy and in love.

In the name of Christ, that is the Son of God, and of Sophia that is the Daughter of God, and of their union, that is God – Amen.