The ritual was about Babalon, not an antichrist
In 1946, rocket engineer Jack Parsons and science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard took part in a series of occult rites in Pasadena known as the Babalon Working. Inspired by the writings of Aleister Crowley, the rites were intended to bring Babalon—a figure associated with freedom and sexuality in Crowley’s Thelema tradition—into the world. Calling the goal “summoning a dark magical antichrist” turns a complex, deliberately theatrical ritual into a simpler horror-story version.
From ritual partnership to a yacht venture
Hubbard and Parsons also pursued a business plan involving boats. Parsons supplied money, while Hubbard traveled to Florida to acquire vessels. The arrangement broke down when Hubbard left with a yacht and Parsons’s partner, Sara Northrup, who became Hubbard’s wife. Parsons pursued the matter legally, framing the loss as fraud; the episode is often retold as Hubbard simply stealing a boat and the investment.
That distinction matters: the story joins a documented financial and personal rupture to a sensational occult episode, but the ritual itself was not a plan to summon an antichrist. The boat scheme’s collapse also preceded Hubbard’s development of Dianetics, the self-help system he introduced several years later and that became the basis for Scientology.
