SMOOCHES from baby..and I even took my cig out of my mouth..

This is what I want to see – informed dissent! I think that the Rosy Cross looks more like the Cross of Glory than the Scn cross does. My digression, however, would be about the Empress (Flavia Julia – the Guardian of the Affirmations) and the Fool, which were essential to Hub’s personal and secret belief system. The Empress was his ‘genius’ (or tutelary divinity) and the Fool was his own ideal self. As he says in the PDC, nothing touches the Fool (again the Affirmations). As to the cross, Hub shows that he knew the Thoth tarot pack by referring to the alligator on the Fool card (other packs have a dog), so he knew the image. He refers to a Crowley book, which he calls, mistakenly ‘The Master Therion’. Early editions of Magick in Theory and Practice have the word Magick and The Master Therion on the front cover. Have a look at my Possible Origins for Dianetics and Scientology, where I gather some of the links between Hub and this text. Magick in Theory and Practice conveniently puts the significant passages in bold, which would have suited a lazy man like Hub.

I’ll agree with you that Crowley was more of a scholar than Hub (not much of an achievement!), but he was no Mircia Eliade and his scholarship is pretty weak in many places (for instance his deplorable version of the Tao Te Ching) and no more reliable than the Hermetic nonsense of Cagliostro (one of the heroes in Hub’s favourite book, Twelve Against the Gods).

Hub determinedly created symbols that have more than a passing reference to occult and even nazi material. The ‘thetan’ ‘satan’ comparison is evidence of our slow wits – it took me over 30 years to get that one. But then, as he says in the PDC, we all lived on Arslycus in our past lives. So, as far as he was concerned, we are all Arslyckers…

You are so right, Jon. I sometimes forget that they are victims. I was caught on a day where I lost a bit of my empathy…I am a never-in and am very cynical by nature so it is sometimes difficult for me to understand how LRH could be so manipulative and charismatic as to rope in so many people who were only trying to do the right thing, and for the most part believed that they were truly helping people.

My pleasure. ‘Thank you for listening’ as an evil old tyrant once said.

But the ‘Tech’ is hypnosis, no matter who tries to apply it, and it makes people euphoric and suggestible. Which may feel nice, but it ain’t any kind of therapy.

I think DM managed to alienate almost all of the survivors from the early days. Many – like John Sanborn, who ran pubs from 1954-1978 – just couldn’t take any more and had to leave.

I eventually gave up on Scn when I realized that Hubbard was an enraged tyrant, a multiple drug abuser, a failed husband and parent (he abandoned all three of his wives), an egomaniac and a pathological liar. It seemed foolish to me to try and model myself on a man who was in a far worse condition than me. So I stopped, but cognitive dissonance is a powerful element of human behaviour. Inertia makes it very hard to stop a course of action, no matter how foolish – Cialdini’s consistency principle. How on earth did anyone take OT III seriously? ‘Never evaluate for the preclear’ But I did take it seriously, and I have to remember that, whenever I start feeling supercilious about current victims.

Maybe there is something missing from the end of the sentence ‘where everybody wins the right to be hypnotised and enslaved’ perhaps.

Thanks for bringing my attention back to this essential explanation of the Game of Scientology…

Thank you!! Once again, the cult manages to screw up a neighborhood while professing to doing good. Liers. Liers.

smart cookie. good on ya.