Magickal Primitivism
Is primeval spirituality what seekers are really after?
In a world of excess and complexity, an experience of pure search and primal appeal may be exactly what you are looking for.
In that vein, the aim of much of my current writing and speaking — and of my search — is attempting, to the degree I am capable, to fulfill or at least take a step toward fulfilling, the wish expressed by visionary occultist and rocket scientist Jack Parsons before his tragically early death at age 37 in 1952.
In the years preceding a fatal explosion at Jack’s Pasadena garage-lab, which his widow Marjorie Cameron considered murder, the scientist-seeker experienced betrayal by pretended friends, including Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986), and fissure with his once-venerated mentor Aleister Crowley (1875–1947).
As a seeker, Jack was largely on his own. He believed that something was missing from modern ceremonial magick. (I use Crowley’s spelling, derived from early modern English, to distinguish occult magick from stagecraft. The term is rooted in the Greek-Persian magus, meaning hereditary priest.)
“Simplicity,” Jack wrote Cameron, “has been the key to victory in all the idea wars and, at present, Magick does not have it. There is a skeleton in the Rights of Man [Crowley’s brief…
