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 Numen 63 (2016) 12–32 brill.com/nu © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2�16 | doi 1�.1163/15685276-12341406 The Babalon Working 1946: L. Ron Hubbard, John Whiteside Parsons, and the Practice of Enochian Magic Henrik Bogdan University of Gothenburg, Department of Literature, History of Ideas, and Religion, Box 200, 40530 Gothenburg, Sweden henrik.bogdan@religion.gu.se Abstract In the spring of 1946 L. Ron Hubbard and John W. Parsons performed a series of magical rituals with the aim of incarnating the Thelemic goddess Babalon in a human being. Hubbard’s cooperation with Parsons, known as the Babalon Working, remains one of the most controversial events in Hubbard’s pre-Scientology days. This article sets out to describe the content of the magical rituals, as well as their purpose. It is argued that in order to fully understand these events, it is necessary to approach the Babalon Working from the study of Western esotericism in general, and the study of Enochian magic in particular. Keywor

  P-2 ABOUT: How it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter. What is a self, and how can a self come out of stuff that is selfless as a stone or puddle? GEB approaches these questions by slowly building up an analogy that likens inanimate molecules to meaningless symbols, and further likens selves (or "I"s or "souls" if you prefer--whatever it is that distinguishes animate from inanimate matter) to a certain special swirly, twisty, vortex-like, and  meaningful  patterns that arise only in a particular type of systems of meaningless symbols. It is these strange, twisty patterns that the book spends so much time on because they are little known, little appreciated, counterintuitive and quite filled with mystery. And for reasons that should not be too difficult to fathom, I call such strange, loopy patterns "strange loops" throughout the book, although in later chapters, I also use the phrase "tangled hierarchies" to describe basi