Will, the caretaker at Netherwood, Aleister Crowley’s last home, visits Jack Parsons in Pasadena.
Saturday, 7 June 1952
‘Anyone see you come in?’ demanded Jack Parsons fretfully.
They were on the first floor of the coach house of the old Cruikshank estate. The war had wrought great changes on Millionaire’s Row, as this wealthy part of Pasadena was known. The estate’s tall white mansion had been demolished like many in the area, the land subdivided and fenced in, and soulless condominiums erected. Even the sky had changed. Formerly an intense blue, it was now hazy with smog that obscured the San Gabriel Mountains on the skyline. Will told Jack he hadn’t noticed anyone loitering around the house or on the lawns of the French-style manor house across the street.
‘What is it you say you do?’
‘I’m a trainee flying boat engineer,’ explained Will. ‘I delayed national service to study music but…’
‘It caught up with you in the end. Things like that always do.’
‘It’s just 18 months, and I’ve been lucky. I’m on a six-month secondment to the U.S. Navy base at San Diego, learning all about Catalina PBY, the best flying boat ever built.’
‘Yeah, I’ve seen those beauties in the bay. They’re huge.’
‘They won’t be around for much longer. Before the war, it was far easier to land on water than on land, but thousands of runways were built during the conflict. Those, and the jet engine, will soon make flying boats a thing of the past.’
‘I’m an engineer myself. Rockets are my thing. Rockets are the future. That’s what you should get into.’
Beneath a tangle of black curly hair, Jack Parsons had the thin moustache and chiselled good looks of a movie star. Yet his face was transforming into florid, and his waist was thickening. His eyes had the same startled expression as Crowley’s. Just what had they witnessed, wondered Will? Jack had been easy to track down. He was in the phone book. It had only needed two words, ‘Crow’ and ‘Netherwood’, to elicit an enthusiastic invitation to visit when he was next on leave, as Will was this weekend.
‘I don’t think the British Navy’s got round to rockets yet.’
‘It was like that here when we started. Everybody thought we were crazy, but the war’s changed everything. You wouldn’t believe the crowds when they rolled a pair of captured V2s through Pasadena train station on an open flatbed railcar. In ’49, they mounted a WAC Corporal on the nose of one and launched it to a height of 244 miles. Next, destination moon! Werner Von Braun is working for us. We were pen pals before the war, but I’m not sure what to make of him now.’
‘I don’t think Will came all the way out here to talk rockets, honey. Besides, you won’t be able to play with your fuels and propellants when we’re in Mexico.’
Parsons’ wife, Cameron, had the husky voice of a chain smoker and slanting green eyes. Her cropped bronze-red hair was cut into a fringe and worn bunched over the ears, giving her the look of a satanic Joan of Arc.
Jack snorted. ‘That won’t matter. I’ll have all the grass, peyote, and tequila a man could want. I won’t be leaving San Miguel for a mighty long time.’
San Miguel de Allende was the current Mecca on the boho map, a magnet for artists as well as veterans, who found the army pensions of the G.I. Bill bought heaps of fiesta. Cameron had relished the town and was taking Jack back with her.
‘Now tell us all about the Beast,’ she said. ‘I was in Paris and planning on visiting him. Such a drag he passed.’
Will described Crowley’s life at Netherwood and the unlikely fortitude he had displayed in the face of infamy and decrepitude.
‘Sounds like the bug has bitten you,’ said Jack. ‘It’s a one-way street, son. Not sure I’d recommend it. You’d better stay for dinner.’
They ate ribs washed down with rosé, both of which were new to Will. He was dazzled by the plenty of America, the malls brimming with mega-sized cartons of breakfast cereal and mammoth jars of peanut butter; such a contrast to the frugal shores he had left behind. They ended with waffles and ice cream. Cameron produced a tightly rolled one-skin reefer. She took a few hits and offered it to Will.
‘Lesson number one,’ she said.
‘Aw, come on!’ said Jack, noting Will’s reluctance. ‘All that reefer madness stuff is bullshit. I can happily go without grass if it’s not around, but as it’s here…’ He lunged for the reefer, took a few deep puffs, held the smoke in his lungs, and insisted Will try it.
The harsh smoke burnt his throat and provoked a coughing fit. When this was spent, Cameron encouraged him to take another puff. The faces of his hosts became more complex, the man’s melding with Cameron’s portrait of him dominating the room: a dark angel exulting in the Fall. The artist herself resembled a witch, her mouth wide and scarlet as she announced, ‘It’s all about freedom.’
‘And poetry and vision, and the derangement of the senses, Io Pan! This calls for Lesson number two: a Khayyám Kontest!’
Jack bustled off to the kitchen and returned with a tray of glasses and two bottles. One held Pernod, the other sweet French wine. He filled two small tumblers with the former and two wine glasses with the Sauternes, handing Will one of each.
‘You dig the Rubáiyát?’
Like many of his generation, Will’s father knew the Fitzgerald translation by heart and had used it to train his son’s voice.
‘Ok, the rules are simple. Drink the Pernod, recite a verse, chase with Sauternes!’
It was a heady mixture of two sugary alcohols. Will gave up after four verses, but Jack continued exuberantly until he correctly pronounced “Jamshyd” and “Kaikobád” in verse nine. All the while, Cameron was plying them with weed. She went to the window, pulled up the blind and peered outside.
‘Someone’s under that magnolia tree.’
‘Feds?’ said Jack, propelling himself onto his feet and going over and joining her. ‘Naw, trick of the light, sweetheart. I told you they’re done with me.’
A few minutes later, he was struck by an idea. ‘Know what a Joshua tree is, Will? Nope! Well, I’m going to show you.’
Jack’s battered open Packard was parked in the drive alongside the jeep Will had driven from San Diego. The door on the passenger side was held in place by wire, so Will had to clamber over. Jack slid into the driver’s seat.
‘We’ll just wait a little while,’ he said. ‘If there are any Feds around, that should flush them out. Nothing like taking them on a wild goose chase to the desert.’ He saw Will’s incomprehension. ‘FBI,’ he explained. ‘They see commies under every bed, ours included. They’ve wiretapped and tailed me more times than I care to remember. My security clearance has been revoked until the End of Days, meaning I can’t work with rockets no more. Cameron’s paranoid and thinks they’re still snooping. That’s why we’re going down Mexico way. Too much heat!’
He grinned, reversed, and backed out slowly, maintaining the same snail speed as he negotiated the serpentine lane. Such caution was out of character, but wise given his state. It stayed lush and warm, the stars scintillating through the haze. At the end of the lane, they turned onto Orange Grove Avenue.
‘That’s 1003, formerly the Agape Lodge.’ Jack indicated a cluster of featureless condominiums. ‘It was a beautiful, palatial mansion. They knocked it down as soon as I’d sold it. Millionaire’s Row? More like Poverty of the Imagination Gulch. I posted ads for artists, anarchists, dreamers, and crazies. I got a fortune teller, the newshound who broke the Black Dahlia case, a mad avant-garde German actor, and a woman who’d been mistress of all the famous men in France. Jane Wolfe was our earth mother. A star of silent movies, she was with A.C. at the Temple in Sicily. Bob Heinlein, the sci-fi writer, dropped by all the time. Hey, you should meet my galaxy!’
Arroyo Seco, the parched strip of land that buffered Pasadena from Los Angeles, hurtled towards them. Jack was driving faster now and more recklessly. There were few cars on the road, fewer houses.
‘Last time I came out here was with Hubbard, Lafayette Ron, you dig? Must have heard about him from A.C., right? He wangled the proceeds of the sale of 1003 out of me. Stole my girl Betty as well. But I’ve schooled myself not to nurse a grudge. Evil karma! Boy, is Ron minting it now! His book on Dianetics is a national bestseller. He’s invented an e-meter that audits you for 600 bucks. If you keep paying, you will go clear and be cured of bad eyesight and a stammer. Probably makes your pecker longer, too. Ron really has the gift of the gab.’
‘Crowley said he cheated you.’
‘Ah, you gotta hand it to him. His gig is perfect for our times. It’s as streamlined as computers, satellites, and science fiction. In fact, it is science fiction. With Crow, everything was positively medieval: all those weird gods and rituals. “Do what thou wilt!’ What a slogan! I mean, is that marketing speak? Who’s gonna follow someone calling themselves Baphomet? I tried telling him, but he just shot back about all the famous cats he’d hung out with.’
‘Sorry?’
Jack glanced at him; one eyebrow quizzically raised. ‘Wow, we really speak a different language. “Hanging out” means spending time with somebody. A.C. was the 1890s; that was always the trouble.’
Will felt obscurely hurt on the Beast’s behalf. ‘A biography came out last year. It’s been doing quite well.’
‘The Great Beast? Yeah, did you see the blurb? “No deed too hideous, no sin too evil…”: prime grade bullshit! Who’s gonna take him seriously now except total freaks, which I guess includes your driver, and possibly yourself?’
Will felt a wave of nausea rise from his stomach. He told Jack, who pulled over. He climbed out of the car and made for a clump of bushes. Before he got there, technicolour vomit spurted from his mouth and drenched the sandy ground. He was sick repeatedly. Illuminated by the neon light on the sidewalk, the vomit gushed out in rainbow hues. It seemed every gram of foreign matter in his system was being expelled.
‘That’ll teach you to mess with Omar!’ Jack said, then slapped himself on the forehead. ‘Jeez, I’ve just remembered. Cameron crushed up some peyote buttons from San Miguel and put them in the Pernod.’
It was the crown of the Mexican cactus that Crowley had spiked Hess with.
‘What will happen to me?’ croaked Will in alarm.
‘Oh, you’ll feel a little rough for an hour or so. But when it kicks in, you’ll find lesson number three a humdinger. Enjoy the ride!’
The nausea passed, replaced by a lingering headache and drowsiness. Only a growing dread of the inscrutable man racing the Packard kept Will alert. Jack expertly tapped an unfiltered Camel out of its soft pack, scooped it up with his lips, then fired it up with a Zippo he took from the dashboard. Ominous speculations about their destination inflamed Will’s imagination.
After passing the last dwelling on their route - a rundown shack - miles of featureless dunes whizzed past until a turning came up ahead on their left. Jack veered off, and they rattled down a dirt track. He braked to a stop at a spot marked by the intersection of two massive power lines. Jack got out of the car, went round to the boot, and took out two robes, one of which he tossed to Will. Overhead, the sagging cables droned like Buddhist monks.
Jack grinned. ‘It was made for Hubbard. Probably a little large for you,’
‘You came out here with him?’
‘Yeah, plenty. It was here I summoned an elemental, and, lo and behold, Cameron showed up the next day. I make rockets, but I know there are enough megatons to blow up the planet. We need to radically alter our outlook if we’re gonna survive. That’s why I raised Babalon: to bring on the New Aeon.’
‘There’s debris on those boulders over there.’
‘In my previous life, this was our firing range. That’s what’s left of the rockets we launched. That rusted metal hulk was our viewing platform. Come on, we gotta scale that dune!’
There was a twisted tree at the foot of it, its tilting branches terminating in spiky crowns of vegetation. Jack’s smile was full-frontal, displaying all his teeth. ‘This is the Joshua tree. Aptly named, considering we’re here to speak the language of Enoch, another patriarch. Hey, what’s up with you? You seem riveted.’
‘I’ve never seen stars like this.’
‘The desert sky is the darkest on Earth. When it’s this spangled, man, you can hear the music of the spheres. Somewhere up there, Doctor Dee is plucking his celestial monochord. Where do you reckon that is? Betelgeuse? Sirius? Wow, man, you’re really gone! Hang out here and stargaze. Join me when you’re ready.’
Jack scrambled nimbly up a dune and disappeared over the crest. Will stayed below transfixed. He was in the belly of the universe. A lung filled with cosmic wind bounded Ursa Major. Another billowed like a sail south of Cassiopeia. At the centre of the triangle of Camelopardalis, the heart thumped. Everything was linked. Everything was sentient. The stars were huge reasoning machines, messaging fire. Each grain of sand beneath his feet contained worlds without limit. It was this he had been hunting since childhood: the ecstatic breath filling him to bursting. This was the philosopher’s stone, the grail, the miraculous; they were all in search of. There was a boulder beside him. It straightened and stood up. It was Crowley, cowled like a monk in red robes.
‘The Khabs is in the Khu, not the Khu in the Khabs,’ he wheezed.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Why must you always badger me? Jack will explain everything. He will give you what you seek.’
Will started running up the dune, his feet slipping on the grains of displaced sand. Jack was at the top, hieratically holding a black circular obsidian mirror out before him. Will repeated the phrase he had heard; the ‘Khabs’ and ‘Khu’ felt like solids, hovering in the desert air.
‘In ancient Egyptian, “Khabs” signifies star and “Khu” spirit. It means light infuses the spirit, not the other way round.’
Will was so glad he had met this man, who now freed one hand to trace a pentagram in the air, while mouthing an invocation in Enochian. Four watchtowers appeared upon the desert, each with an angel shining on its battlements. A windstorm blew up, refashioning the dunes and propelling stinging sand that made them shield their eyes.
‘That was the trouble with the Beast,’ said the crazed man next to him, ‘he did not go far enough. In his deepest heart, he was an old reactionary, hidebound by the very conventions he loved to break. Witchcraft, voodoo, even Satanism are all tools there to be used.’
‘What if there really is a soul, and that soul can be damned?’
‘Whoa! Where are you coming from?’
‘My mother died giving birth to me. She was a Catholic. My father had me raised as one to honour her. It made sense for a while. I was even going to become a priest. That’s why I was studying Latin with Crow.’
‘Heaven and hell are just cyphers for realms of the imagination. It’s all within yourself. You can live any narrative you want. Look into the slate!’
There was just blackness on the smooth surface. This morphed to grey that cleared like mist to reveal an angel standing beside a slanted marble table on which the 21 letters of the Enochian alphabet were inscribed within a square.
‘I wish to interrogate the spirit of my father,’ entreated Jack.
The angel, who had a solemn face and colossal wings, began tapping letters with a wand. Jack mouthed the words they formed.
‘We must go down. He is waiting for us there.’
They retraced their steps until they reached the boulder. Apart from clumps of cacti and the skull of an antelope, there was nothing. Jack kept chanting, but without result. The wind began to subside.
‘I’ve already seen him,’ said Will, explaining how the boulder had transformed into the dead mage.
Jack was cut up about this. He had lost his own father early on. Crowley was the closest surrogate he’d found. Both were raised to be spoilt, wealthy, and bored, which might account for their shared predilection for the dark.
‘He won’t appear again tonight,’ groaned Jack. ‘Why you, not me?’
‘He said you would give me what I seek.’
‘If it’s Cameron, take her. She gives freely. Fidelity is slavery. Love cannot be owned. Jealousy is an abomination.’
It was the party line.
‘Crow sent you a file a few years back.’
‘Oh, that old thing. There was no magick in it, just stuff about the war. I wondered what I was supposed to do with it. It’s yours if you want it.’
They made it back to the coach house a little after dawn. Will was due back at the San Diego base that evening. He needed rest before the two-hour drive, but his mind was still dazzled by peyote. Contrasted with the intricate greens of the surrounding vegetation and the vivid blues of the sky, the grey and black of drills and duties seemed ludicrous. He wished he could just “hang out” here in Pasadena. In no mood to sleep, Jack put Charlie Parker on the turntable. This roused Cameron, who, clad in a loose purple robe, joined them, lounging on the sofa as she skinned up.
‘Get far, hon?’
‘Further than is permitted,’ smirked Jack. ‘We made it to the desert and Will saw A.C.!’
‘Wow, and you didn’t?’
Jack looked sheepish. ‘I guess the old boy is hiding from me.’
‘Or you from him. You may still get your chance. Folks are saying there’s a shaven-headed cat in Little Venice who’s the spitting image of the Beast. What did he say to you, Will?’
‘That Jack would give me what I seek.’
Cameron’s top lip brushed the lower. She flashed the tip of her tongue.
‘Will wants some old file A.C. sent me a while back,’ said her husband. ‘Hey, I never asked what you needed it for?’
It was the transcript of Crowley’s interrogation of Hess, but Will couldn’t tell them that.
‘A memento,’ he said.
‘Yeah, I understand. Sometimes I reread his letters. You look like you’re gonna collapse. Spare room’s through there if you need to crash.’
There was a stack of Cameron’s canvases in one corner and a single bed. The colours eddying round the room showed little sign of dwindling; nor did the new sense of self. The world was too vital and magical for sleep, but he drifted off when he was sure he wouldn’t and dreamt Cameron was straddling him. One pear-shaped breast projected from her robe, swaying back and forth with her gyrations. Her over-ripe lips stayed shut, but he could hear her voice, coming from the sitting room where she and Jack were bickering.
It was early afternoon when he rejoined them. Jack fried three eggs, bacon, and pancakes for Will, and he drank a lot of coffee.
‘Any more leave coming up?’ asked Cameron.
‘Yes, the week after next.’
‘We’re leaving for San Miguel on the eighteenth. You could come for supper the night before. Stay over if you like and see us off.’
‘Yeah, you can meet our galaxy. I’ll invite Jane and Bob. It will really be a send-off.’
Will reminded Jack about the file.
‘I had a look but drew a blank. It must be below.’
Will glanced at his watch as they went downstairs: it was three twenty-seven. If he reached base a minute after six, he would be put on a charge. On the ground floor, he was disheartened to see papers, books, and magazines heaped on almost every surface as well as on the floor. Jack began rummaging, flinging objects to one side, so new mounds even messier than the ones before started rising like anthills. The ground floor was formerly a laundry. There was a boiler in one corner and a large cast-iron wash tub in front of it. Phials and Bunsen burners lined the work benches. Jack used these for his temporary job at the Bermite Powder Company, developing pyrotechnics and explosives for the motion picture industry. It was almost five to four.
‘Jeez, I’m sorry,’ sighed Jack. ‘I’ll have it for you next time. That’s a definite! We must respect the Beast’s undying wish.’
From Aleister Crowley MI6: The Hess Solution. Parsons’s story continues in the next chapter, ‘Jack Blows It.’
