Inside Tinsel TownBeyond what you see on the big and small screens, Los Angeles really is a lot of bright lights and red carpets, but also real people, real crimes, and even real ghosts.
Southern California is as far as you can get in the contiguous United States from the puritanical roots, restrictive social norms, and old money of cities like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Los Angeles is nearly 2,700 miles from Washington DC, and the watchful eyes of the federal government. California is the westernmost destination of the American frontier, a land rich in natural resources like oil. A place you go to reinvent yourself. An area with a long, sometimes sordid history of new religions, experimental spirituality, far-out cults, and psychedelic occult activity.
From the financial and cultural behemoth of Scientology to the psychotic folkies of the Mason gang and the sex-crazed, psychedelic vegetarians of the Source Family and their messianic leader Father Yod, the occult in Los Angeles wears a number of guises. Yet each of these groups, and the history, mythology, and dogma associated therewith, was born of countercultural tendencies. L. Ron Hubbard didn't want to pay taxes. Edith Maida Lessing, who founded the Mount Helios cult compound in Glassell Park, "declared free love would replace marriage, believed in communal ownership of property, and boasted that she had control over more than 1,000 men". Carlos Castaneda, an anthropologist at UCLA, claims to have met an indigenous Mexican shaman at a bus stop in the southwest who had the ability to manipulate time and space, and taught him, among other things, kung fu and how to take peyote.
Scientology has attracted so many members it's frequently described as a legitimate religion, not a cult. According to CNN, there are at least hundreds of thousands of practitioners. The Church of Scientology claims that number is in the millions, with 167 missions and more than 10,000 churches spread across the globe. However, many believe these stats to be vastly inflated. Whether any religion qualifies as an occult organization is a debate for another day. Merriam-Webster defines occult as "matters regarded as involving the action or influence of supernatural or supernormal powers or some secret knowledge of them", a definition that could very easily apply to any and all religious beliefs. So, potato potahto.
A native of Nebraska who also spent time in Montana as a child, Hubbard moved to California after service in World War Two. Scientology's beliefs are perhaps most succinctly described by a South Park (watch the clip above and click through to the playlist that appears in the upper right corner) episode in which the whole system of apes with alien souls and ancient volcanoes is explained . Hubbard, a science fiction writer, has a background rooted in California occult circles. Before his rise to power, Hubbard lived for a time with Jack Parsons in Pasadena. The pair took part in the “Babalon Working” ritual in the hopes of bringing forth a goddess through a creative combination of chanting, parchment paper, and semen. Their relationship imploded when Hubbard stole Parsons's mistress, his boat, and $20,000 of his savings.
Hubbard’s son accused his father of fraud, drug use, black magic, and Satanism, and talked of how the organization is a business that used religion as a way to evade taxes. According to Hubbard's wife, he once said: "The only way to make any real money was to have religion. That's essentially what he was trying to do with 'Dianetics.' Get a religion where he could have an income and the government wouldn't take it away from him in the form of taxes." In 1993, the Church of Scientology won a decades-long battle with the IRS to be fully tax exempt, and the case was extremely bizarre. For instance:
"Scientology's lawyers hired private investigators to dig into the private lives of I.R.S. officials and to conduct surveillance operations to uncover potential vulnerabilities, according to interviews and documents. One investigator said he had interviewed tenants in buildings owned by three I.R.S. officials, looking for housing code violations. He also said he had taken documents from an I.R.S. conference and sent them to church officials and created a phony news bureau in Washington to gather information on church critics. The church also financed an organization of I.R.S. whistle-blowers that attacked the agency publicly."
Rocket Scientist Jack Parsons Used His Mansion As A Hub For Occult Practice, Inviting Esoteric Orders, Witches, And L. Ron Hubbard To Take Up Residence
Jack Parsons was a rocket scientist whose pioneering work and role in the formation of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory were instrumental in the space race. Throughout the '30s and '40s, Parsons was also a devotee of the occult, performing sex magick rituals in his attempts to summon deities. When L. Ron Hubbard was living with Parsons before the founding of Scientology, Parsons had Hubbard sleep with his wife as part of one such ritual.
Parsons was taken with the occult as a young man, after witnessing a Gnosis Mass performed by Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), an occult society co-founded by an Austrian esotericist and a German tantric occultist. The ritual, described: "On a black and white stage stood an altar embossed with hieroglyphic patterns, a host of candles and an upright coffin covered with a gauze curtain out of which the group's caped leader would appear. Poetry was read, swords were drawn, breasts kissed, and lances stroked. It was a highly charged sexual atmosphere. Wine was drunk and cakes made out of menstrual blood were consumed."
Not long thereafter, Parsons became an adherent of Thelema, a religion created by English occultist Aleister Crowley (and which was practiced as scripture by the members of Ordo Templi Orientis). He bought a mansion in Pasadena and used it as a new hub or OTO operations in Los Angeles. Witches and fellow scientists moved in with him. He was known to answer the door with a snake wrapped around his shoulder, and brought secretaries from the laboratory back to his place for drug-fueled ritualistic debauchery. Eventually Hubbard moved in, and the pair tried summoning a goddess. As author George Pendle writes: "For weeks the two of them engaged in ritual chanting, drawing occult symbols in the air with swords, dripping animal blood on runes, and masturbating in order to 'impregnate' magical tablets."
Parsons died at 37, ripped apart by an explosion in his home laboratory.
Charles Manson Used Bizarre Occult Teachings To Turn The Hippy Dream Of A New World Into A Murder Spree
Charles Manson's troubled childhood is well-documented. In broad strokes: he never knew his father, his mother was 16 when he was born and landed herself in jail not long thereafter, he lived with an aunt and uncle for a few years before spending most of his adolescence and young adulthood in reform centers and jails for a slew of minor crimes. In 1967, at age 33, Manson was released from prison and moved to San Francisco, where he anointed himself a messianic figure and began his occult preachings, which foretold of a race war that would destroy America and leave Manson and his devotees, whom he referred to as the Family, in an advantageous position to rise ot power. The counterculture explosion that took place in the summer of '67 created just the right environment for Manson's message, and he attracted a following.
Around this time, Manson, who was also an aspiring musician, met Denis Wilson of the Beach Boys. He then relocated his Family to the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County, setting the scene for the Manson Family Murders. Between August 8 and 10, 1969, Manson's followers murdered seven people at his behest, including pregnant actress Sharon Tate, wife to filmmaker Roman Polanski. One of Manson's followers even tried to assassinate Gerald Ford, then President of the United States.
UCLA Anthropologist Carlos Castaneda Started The New Wave Movement After Experimenting With Psychedelics At The Behest Of A Shaman He Met At A Bus Stop
Los Angeles's reputation for new age religions and seeking truth and divinity through the use of psychedelic drugs can be more or less totally attributed to Carlos Castaneda. Castaneda was born in Peru, though he told people he was from Brazil. He arrived in Los Angeles in the early '50s to study anthropology at UCLA. He spent the 17 years living in obscurity. At some point during this time, according to Castaneda's account, while at a bus stop in the southwest, he met Don Juan Matus, a Yaqui (indigenous Mexican) mystic who claimed, among other things, the ability to manipulate time and space. Castaneda became a pupil of Don Juan, and in 1967 submitted a manuscript entitled The Teachings of Don Juan to the University of California Press in Los Angeles. The book was published in 1968, and became a bestseller around the world. Castaneda wrote a total of 10 books, which are attributed with starting the New Age movement and invigorating interest in using drugs like peyote to achieve religious experiences.
"Mr. Castaneda spun extraordinarily rich, hallucinogenic evocations of ancient paths to knowledge based on what he described as an extended apprenticeship with a Yaqui Indian shaman named Don Juan Matus. His 10 books, etched in layer upon layer of psychological nuance and intrigue, became international best sellers translated into 17 languages and were credited with helping to usher in the New Age sensibility and reviving interest in Indian and Southwestern cultures."
A typical passage from Castaneda's writing, quoted from Don Juan: "We men and all other luminous beings on earth are perceivers. That is our bubble, the bubble of perception. Our mistake is to believe that the only perception worthy of acknowledgment is what goes through our reason. Sorcerers believe that reason is only one center and that it shouldn't take so much for granted."
Castaneda was frequently accused of inventing Don Juan Matus, or at least of making up the shaman's teachings. Rather than defend himself or provide evidence, Castaneda lived in Los Angeles in total anonymity, refusing to be photographed and never making public appearances. By the end of his life, he was such a recluse his death wasn't public knowledge until two months after it happened.
Former Stuntman Father Yod Took 14 Wives, Started A Psychedelic Egalitarian Commune In The Hollywood Hills, And Ran A Very Successful Health Food Restaurant
Jim Baker was a retired marine and Hollywood stuntman who rechristened himself Father Yod, took 14 wives, fronted a fully improvised psychedelic band, and used a cocktail of occult philosophy to lead his disciples in the Source Family. The Family was entirely sustained by a health food restaurant on Sunset Boulevard also called The Source (which appears in Annie Hall), and from which Father Yod recruited for his family, in part using his music (his group was the restaurant's house band). The Source was frequented by everyone from dirty hippies and drugged out wayward youth to Andy Warhol and John Lennon (no word on whether Father Yod's music influenced Lennon).
The Source Family flourished from 1972 until 1977, and moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco and Hawaii. In Los Angeles, the Family lived in a mansion in the Hollywood Hills, where they donned flowing robes, partook in sex magick, and lived by ancient mystic traditions. Members of the Family shared everything, and each was allowed to participate in Father Yod's band. They didn't drink, and referred to marijuana as "the sacred herb". A typical day-in-the-life of a Source Family member, according to Isis Aquarian, one of Father Yod's wives, went something like this:
"We would get up, and do some yoga stretches and some breathing. We usually had a pool wherever we would live, so we would just kind of dip into the cold water, which was very refreshing, and get dressed, have a cup of coffee and wait for morning meditation, which was our morning class. We always greeted the sun wherever we were. We would go outside and watch the sunrise and then we would start our day. People would either go and work at the Source or we would do our duties around the house, or whatever business energies were happening. The band would go into the band room and try different things—you know, make a few more albums. We had artists. We all were a thread that made up that tapestry, and everybody had their part that they did."
Sex was sacred, and seen as the creative force of the universe. It was governed by strict rules, there were never orgies, and no one was ever expected to do something with which they were uncomfortable. As for Father Yod's teachings, Isis Aquarian explains:
"We took from everything. We took from every religion. We took from past lives. We took from the mystery teachings. We took from the yogis. We took from the Buddha. We took from whatever made sense and worked to us and distilled it into our own uniqueness. There is one concept that I do want to tell you about because many people do say, Well, how did you see him as god? That’s very confusing to a lot of people, but to us it was not confusing because we saw each other as god. We saw the god and goddess in each of us at a time when that concept wasn't really popular, or it was misunderstood. That’s how we saw Father, and that’s how he tried to get us to see each other, and that was our evolution from being just a human to a spiritual being."
"[T]hey gave so much to the community of Los Angeles. In the early 1970s we had some of the greatest culture on the planet being produced here: films, music, art, and literature. And many of the people responsible for it hung out at the Source Family restaurant. Frank Zappa and all of those Laurel Canyon musicians who lived close by came into the restaurant all the time. To me, the Source Family represents a time in Los Angeles when the city was at its very coolest. Not since the 1910s and the 1920s had spiritualism and esotericism been so prevalent in this city."
Avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger was born in Santa Monica in 1927, when there was basically no downtown Los Angeles skyline, Grauman's Chinese Theatre had vacant lots on either side of it, Inglewood looked like a small town in the Midwest, and you could park your Model T on Santa Monica Pier. He in essence grew up with the city. Given the esoteric and occult nature of his films, it's no surprise Anger was involved with some of LA's most well-known eccentrics.
Anger directed a number of short films staring Marjorie Cameron, wife to occultist and rocket scientist Jack Parsons, who, along with Parsons, was involved with the The Gnostic Mass at the Church of Thelema, participated in sex magic rituals, and knew L. Ron Hubbard in the pre-Scientology days. Cameron was also a painter and, allegedly, a witch. An interview with Anger in the Guardian reads:
"'She was extraordinary – a genuine witch,' Anger says matter-of-factly. 'She had powers. Unusual powers. Extra powers. She kind-of knew things before they happened. She loved a full moon.'
During their time living together, Anger was able to observe Cameron at work; she painted Anger as Saint Sebastian nailed to the ground with swords. 'She considered them talismans. In her lifetime she never sold anything. She didn’t want to be a commercial artist. She had a couple of gallery shows but insisted they were not for sale.'
Mysteriously, Cameron destroyed much of her work. 'If she destroyed some of them, it was for magical reasons that [she] consigned them to the flames. Of course, this sounds insane. If I’d been there I’d have tried to stop her. But it was her business she wanted to do that.'"
In the 1960s, Anger met fellow Aleister Crowley obsessive Jimmy Page, of Led Zeppelin, and asked him to contribute music for Anger's Crowley-inspired cult classic Lucifer Rising. Page agreed but never finished the music, which led to Anger putting a curse on him. Anger also worked with Rosaleen Miriam Norton, known as the Witch of Kings Cross. His 1954 short film The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome starred, and was partially shot at the home, of part time actor and full time eccentric and self-described warlock Samson DeBrier, who hosted sensual salons at his Georgian house in Hollywood, where regular guests included Jack Nicholson, Stanley Kubrick, James Dean, Jane Fonda, and even Igor Stravinsky. Anger was also friends with a member of the Manson Family at the time of the murders.
