Anthony Testa - The Key of the Abyss.pdf

The authors writing about Scientology tend to view Hubbard as
genuine practitioner of magick, invariably described as ‘black magic’
which implies the magicians goals were “evil (whatever that may
mean) though most occultists would define Black Magic as nefarious,
materialistic and self-centered in nature. While this does not prove that
Hubbard held a belief in the (supernatural) efficacy of magic, he was
no bystander. A strong case, in fact, can be made that Scientology is
simply magic stripped of its trappings and dressed up as science (or at
least sharing many of the same underlying theories); there is a good
deal of occult theory in the writing of Hubbard, though presented with
a veneer of modernity. The Scientology focused works tend to have an
outsider view of occult practices, which is to say, the perspective of all
but the tiniest fraction of the population. This seems to inspire a lot of
erroneous detail. For example, In 1939, Parsons … joined the O.T.O.,
Ordo Templi Orientis, an international organization founded by
Crowley to practice sexual magic.
In fact, the O.T.O. originated in Germany and Crowley was the head
of the order only in Great Britain. The O.T.O., like most secret
societies, was suppressed by the Nazis, leaving the only surviving
lodges in England under Crowley
Atack continues; A lodge had been set up in Los Angeles and met in a
suitably sequestered attic. Meetings were conducted by a priestess
swathed in diaphanous gauze, who climbed out of a coffin to perform
mystic, and painstakingly blasphemous, rites 13 . Here, the author is
probably talking about the Gnostic Mass devised by Crowley, which is
led by a Priest and Priestess, has no coffin (nor does any other
Thelemic ritual I am aware of) in it and is in no way blasphemous, at
least in the sense that it was parody of Christian (or other) rites. In fact,
Crowley patterned his ‘Mass’ after the Catholic rite, though his respect
for the ritual does not mean he respected the religion itself. This is
typical of such work and is not important to the main point of their
individual books, but is a warning as to the accuracy of certain details,
at least insofar as accepting conclusions without corroboration.
13 Atack, 70, ibid.
13