Re: The Occult Establishment, by James Webb
Posted: Mon May 28, 2018 5:20 am
Part 2 of 2
J. W. Campbell and A. E. van Vogt both became involved in the cult founded by their fellow science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard (born 1911) wrote Westerns and sea stories before he published his first piece of science fiction in 1938 -- interestingly enough, the year in which he claims that he began his search for truth. This search culminated in an article, "Dianetics, the Evolution of a Science, " in the May 1950 number of Astounding Science Fiction. The magazine was edited by Campbell, who had been treated for sinus trouble by Hubbard according to the new system of mental healing he claimed to have discovered. The same year there appeared Hubbard's book Dianetics, which had an instant popular success. Dianetics expanded quickly among science fiction enthusiasts. Even the medical man who wrote the preface of Hubbard's book -- and whose sister Campbell later married -- had written science fiction. A. E. van Vogt became the head of Hubbard's Californian organization and in 1955 still believed in the value of the system. Campbell himself resigned after less th&n a year's allegiance. After a period of schism, Hubbard's dianetics evolved into a new system called Scientology, of which dianetics is now regarded as a preliminary formulation. Of this first stage of Scientology, Professor S. I. Hayakawa wrote: "It appears to me inevitable that anyone writing several million words of fantasy and science fiction should ultimately begin to internalize the assumptions underlying that verbiage. This appears to be what happened to Hubbard." [21] It is not recorded what A. E. van Vogt thought of this semantic analysis.
Scientology has proved no less popular than dianetics and has attracted support among fashionable rock groups and film stars. The cult possesses a headquarters at East Grinstead in Surrey. It has branches throughout the world and a fleet of three ships. On Hubbard's flagship (formerly the Glasgow-Belfast ferry) is based the "Sea Org, " the "most valuable and dedicated group of beings on this planet." The basic assumptions of Scientology are that an "auditor" (therapist), using a machine called an "E-meter" which is something like a lie detector, can clear away various blocks that prevent the "pre-clear" (patient) from achieving fun control of his abilities. The beginnings of this idea were incorporated in Hubbard's dianetics and are similar to the Freudian therapist's object of removing repressions through discovering traumatic experiences. Hubbard went further. In his "processing" he went back and back, first discovering that the most damaging experiences occurred in the womb before a child was born, and soon concluding that his patients had experienced previous incarnations. From recovering records of Scientologists' past lives, it was but a short step to declaring that the constant particle of this series of incarnations -- the so-called Theta being -- was trapped in a universe to which its nature was intrinsically superior. Hubbard's aim is to liberate these Thetans. There are lurid accounts of how Thetans have fought against the bodies in which they are entrapped with an assortment of weapons straight from the pages of a space opera. Hubbard apparently expects a battle to break out when ordinary humans discover the existence of a number of "liberated Thetans" and has warned his troops that they "need reinforcements" before they can "get spectacular." [22]
Hubbard's science-fictional Gnosticism has exactly suited the temper of the times. The scandals that have accumulated around Scientology [23] are less important than the pedigree of the cult. In an expanded version of his original article on dianetics, Hubbard has related his search through various paths of mysticism before evolving his own theories.
Presumably it was one of the "dabbles" which led to Hubbard's association with Jack Parsons. Parsons was a chemist who was one of the founders of the California Institute of Technology, and he had been a follower of Crowley since 1939. In 1946 Parsons and Hubbard attempted to conduct a magical operation on Crowleyan principles. The aim was to persuade a spirit to incarnate itself in a child, which Parsons was to father. Hubbard was to act during the operation as a clairvoyant reporter of proceedings. Parsons thought the experiment had been successful, but his friendship with Hubbard was shattered in the summer of the same year when Hubbard withdrew the bulk of the money from their joint account and bought a yacht. Parsons eventually secured the boat when Hubbard was forced to put into Miami by a storm, and (according to Francis King) this is the last recorded association of Hubbard with magic; and Hubbard claims that he entered an association with Parsons on the orders of the FBI. [25] If Hubbard's mystical adventures led him through such esoteric paths, it is unsurprising that the doctrine with which he emerged was, in essence, an amalgam of psychoanalysis and occult tradition packaged in a box complete with a novel machine like those so much in vogue among pseudoscientists and the fringes of the science fiction world.
Scientology was not the only example of old ideas in modern dress. A widely diffused belief, which had more than a little to do with occultism and science fiction and was certainly inspired by the same conditions of anxiety, concerned the sighting of flying saucers, which began in 1947 and continued through the mid-1950s. Because of their assumed nature, saucers were naturally allied to science fiction (although it is rare to find a story written about the sightings, as the writers of science fiction had moved on to greater marvels some considerable time before). Yet this vision in the skies attracted the most eminent irrationalists. Wilhelm Reich began to communicate with flying saucers through his "cloud-busting" machine and believed that he had taken part in "the first battle of the universe" in association with his celestial visitors. C. G. Jung made a brilliant comparison of the saucer epidemic with the visions of the Mons Angels and the apparitions of Fatima and argued that the cause of the rumors was "a situation of collective distress." At least one supporter of the saucers has since argued that the Fatima apparitions were saucer people. Whereas Jung's interest was critical and detached, Gerald Heard -- who has also written on the religious significance of science fiction -- became a saucerite who believed that the saucers were powered by some way of harnessing magnetic forces and were manipulated by tiny bee-like creatures from Mars. Heard specifically connected the arrival of the saucers with atomic explosions: "we put out a finger to beckon attention on any watching fellow-planet that we were out for trouble and able to give it!" [26]
Flying saucers were taken up immediately by adepts of various cults, particularly in California. The most celebrated is probably George Adamski, who claimed to have traveled in a spaceship. Adamski made a world tour in which he was granted an audience by Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. His books inveigh against the appropriation of his saucers by mystics; yet he himself runs very true to type. Adamski's anxiety about the human condition was evident as early as 1937 when he published a pamphlet called Satan, Man of the Hour, which declared that "the first perversion of the cosmic principle took place in Lemuria." In 1940 he established a colony near the Mount Palomar observatory, and one of the "witnesses" -- one is reminded of Joseph Smith and the angels -- to Adamski's meeting with the saucer people was a member of his cult. [27] A British equivalent that has transferred its activities to California is George King's Aetherius Society. King (born 1919) took up Yoga exercises in 1944, but it was not until ten years later that his mission began. The prophet was told by a voice: "Prepare yourself! You are to become the voice of Interplanetary Parliament." King's activities include the "charging" of mountains with power -- these include the magician-haunted Mount Shasta in California. His chief task is to act as a channel of communication for extraterrestrial intelligence. He visits the planets in his astral body -- an opportunity for several near-illiterate attempts at science fiction -- and his followers seem to have adopted millennarian expectations which would earlier have been couched in religious terms. Their hope is that they will be removed from earth by spaceship in the event of a nuclear catastrophe. [28]
Every conceivable occult theory has accumulated round the saucer cults. Thus a writer in the Flying Saucer Review in 1961 suggested: "Is it not plausible to suggest that Count St. Germain was a missionary from space, an avatar from Venus with remarkable powers ... ?" As recently as 1970 an article in the same magazine has declared that the Cabala can provide useful insights for saucer devotees. [29] Of course there are saucer theorists who disagree with all the claptrap talked by such occult sections of the saucer movement:
The universe in which flying saucers are real is not very far from the private worlds of some science-fiction enthusiasts. Hugo Gernsback (born 1884), the coiner of the word "scientifiction, " seems to have been profoundly influenced by an experience that occurred at the age of nine, when he developed a fever after reading a translation of Mars as the Abode of Life by Percival Lowell. Staggered by the implications, Gernsback became delirious and is described as "raving about strange creatures, fantastic cities and masterly engineered canals of Mars for two full days and nights." [31] It is worth remembering that one of the most famous cases of turn-of-the-century psychical research involved a reincarnation of the subject on Mars. Whereas Gernsback's dissociation from ordinary reality was an involuntary process, the editor of Amazing Stories, Raymond Palmer, used the susceptibility of some of his readers to build up a large circulation among the "lunatic fringe" in the period of anxiety just after the war. In 1944 Palmer received a letter entitled "A warning to Future Man" from Richard Shaver, a Pennsylvania welder. Palmer rewrote the letter under the title "I remember Lemuria" and collaborated with Shaver in a series of stories based on his correspondent's imaginings. Shaver accepted his fantasies as reality, and for a time Palmer cooperated with this belief. The editor even claimed to go in fear of the sinister beings called "deros, " who in Shaver's cosmology implanted evil thoughts in the mind of man. After the collapse of the hoax, Shaver took to writing straightforward science fiction. [32]
The hard-core followers of science fiction present several characteristics that remind the observer of a religious cult proper. They organize themselves in enthusiastic groups of "fans" and describe themselves as "addicts." C. S. Lewis suggested that the experience of reading Rider Haggard could provide a substitute for religion, and Gerald Heard has claimed that science fiction represents an extension of consciousness. [33] There are facets of fantasy and science fiction that go some way toward providing an explanation of the problems of an "illuminated viewpoint."
The Search for Otherness was the title which science fiction writer Henry Kuttner once gave to a collection of his stories. It is in the nature of "otherness" that the solution may lie. Fantastic fiction provides the most explicit rendering of "other realities." But because there are substantial grounds for believing that there is a correspondence between the science fiction world and that of the occultists whom we have used as an index of the "illuminated" attitude, it is possible to use the explicit creation of other realities to interpret private worlds whose "otherness" remains implicit.
The "search for otherness" necessarily applies also to social reformers. There is a particular genre of Utopian fantasy that is the natural vehicle of expression for plans for social reform. From Bacon's New Atlantis and More's Utopia itself, the pedigree of the imagined society is directly traceable down to modern science fiction. The Progressive Underground has frequently used fantasy as a means of communicating its ideas. For example, Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888) and Richard Jefferies's After London (1885) were powerful influences on the Progressive Underground of the l890s. Progressive causes, mysticism, and fantasy could be combined in the same person. For example, E. H. Visiak (E. H. Physick), the author of the fantastic novel Medusa (1929), once precipitated a mystical experience by dwelling obsessively on the evils of vivisection. Among modern inhabitants of the progressive Underground science fiction is immensely popular, as it embodies the aspirations both of the Utopian illuminates and of those concerned with an "expansion of consciousness." Ken Kesey was influenced both by Arthur Clarke's Childhood's End and by Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. It is from this latter book that the expression "grokking" comes. It probably transferred itself into the hippie world through Kesey and was at one time widely used in Underground circles to express a state of empathy or harmony with a person or a situation. Kesey's own use of the word "fantasy" to describe each latest far-fetched project is paralleled by Abbie Hoffman's proclamation about the exorcism of the Pentagon: "Fantasy is freedom!" The cult of J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord a/the Rings is too well-known to need any emphasis. There has even been published an Iowa underground newspaper called Middle Earth. whose political comments plunged its readers into the fantasy world of its presiding spirit.
The popularity of Tolkien -- and to a lesser extent, of his friends Charles Williams and C. S. Lewis -- emphasizes once more the religious or occult connections of fantasy. All three writers subscribe to a form of Christianity: Catholicism for Tolkien, for Williams an interesting personal mysticism which probably owed a lot to his early occult studies, and for Lewis a Neo-Platonic form of Christianity that was not above accepting some of Williams's unorthodox theories. The three formed a group they called "the Inklings, " which met regularly and included a leading Anthroposophist, Owen Barfield. [35] It is no coincidence that a circle of fantasy writers, which has associations both with mysticism and the attitudes of the English illuminated politicians, has become popular as part of the search for otherness conducted by today's idealistic revolutionaries.
Whether such would-be revolutionaries find inspiration in the symbols of the generally spiritual journeys portrayed by Tolkien or Lewis, or in the more obvious moral lessons in Stranger in a Strange Land, it is essentially the otherness that they seek. This argues that fantasy is not merely an unhealthy escape, that the otherness is in some fashion fruitful. The capacity to appreciate otherness -- and, more powerfully, to fashion for oneself an otherness -- is the process of imagination. Without such imagination, the capacity to envisage a state of affairs other than that obtaining, no change is possible. There is a distinct relationship between the private worlds that are constructed simply to exclude the abhorred present and those that are rooted in the wish to change the present altogether. Both subscribe to the wish to abolish that which is, to replace the old by a new reality. The problem is to know how to evaluate alternatives.
It is difficult to conceive that the universe of agreed discourse could have imposed upon it a supplementary vision that demands the existence of flying saucers. But it must be insisted that this is not at all impossible, and that in Nazi Germany ideas just as strange attained wide currency. The reality of Nazism is as much the result of the ability to imagine something other as the best intentioned Utopias of the most charitable social reformers. A tortured imagination may produce visions of great power. A case in point is that of the fantasy writer M. P. Shiel, who never quite recovered from being crowned "King of Redonda" on his fifteenth birthday in 1880. Redonda was an atoll covered in guano. But despite the small size of his childhood kingdom, Shiel admits that "the notion that I am somehow the King, King of kings and the Kaiser of imperial Caesar, was so inveterately suggested to me that I became incapable of expelling it." [36] Shiel's megalomaniac novels are remarkably successful in impressing their obsessive worlds on the reader; yet they are also riddled with an unpleasant anti-Semitism and authoritarian propaganda. His late novel, The Young Men are Coming (1937), contains a prophecy of the victory of a British neo-Fascist movement based on the Divine Law as revealed by an extraterrestrial Egg.
There may be able but perverse adepts of the imagination. The Theosophist Hubbe-Schleiden -- who was concerned with German expansionist propaganda -- also translated Brigadier Chesney's pioneer piece of science fiction The Battle of Dorking (1871) under the gloating title Englands Ende in der Schlacht bei Dorking. Hitler himself was an avid reader of imaginative literature. Like Madame Blavatsky he was enthusiastic about Fenimore Cooper, but after reading The Last of the Mohicans. he took up the German writer of Indian stories, Karl May. He read all of Karl May and recommended others to try Jules Verne. Symptoms of a search for "other realities" are completely in accordance with what we know of Hitler.
On the one hand, the attempt to make a private world part of ordinary reality may produce the nightmare of the concentration camps; on the other perhaps a garden of earthly delights. It may be wondered if the difference between such heavens and hells is not the same as that between "good" and "bad" art: a disparity in the quality of the creative imagination. Hitler wanted to become an architect; and, although his watercolors show some talent, his patronage of Albert Speer gives the lie to Hitler's estimate of himself as an artistic genius. Possibly this fact has something to do with the sort of political universe he created. Although he was a man of extraordinary abilities, his particular imagination played Germany false.
If there is truth in the idea that illuminates -- whether occultists or politicians -- have a special relationship with the imagination in their pursuit of other realities, we might expect to find an extraordinary amount of creative work accomplished by such people. This is in fact the case, not only with reference to the illuminated artists and psychologists we have already discussed but even in the realms of mechanical invention. Hugo Gernsback was an inventor (he coined the word "television"), Horbiger made his fortune with an invention, Arthur Kitson and Lanz von Liebenfels filed numerous patents, and Alfred William Lawson -- who has only appeared in this book peripherally -- built the world's first passenger airliner. Rudolf von Sebottendorff was concerned (like the 19th-century occultist J. M. Hoene-Wronski) in the development of a tank; and John Hargrave patented in 1938 the navigating device that forms part of the Concorde airplane. What can be said of such creative and imaginative capacities without straying too far into the province of the philosopher?
The occult has been used throughout this book as the index to "a certain type of man"; and there seems to be some evidence that this type of man has sometimes privy access to the springs of inspiration. Esotericists make much play with the phrase "creative imagination, " as originating in Paracelsus. The implications can best be described in the words of John Hargrave, an artist, an authority on Paracelsus, and -- according to the classification of this book -- an illuminated politician.
From this point of view, it is clear that the exercise of the creative imagination is different from the operation of its admittedly close relative, escapist fantasy. The creative mind makes forays out of the universe of accepted reality into private worlds of the imagination with the object of bringing back a portion of what is discovered there and using the treasure-trove to enlarge an established vision. The escapists -- of whom the anxiety-driven occult extremists form the best examples -- become trapped in their imagined worlds, even assuming that they once wished to return and fructify the commerce of their fellow-beings. According to Henry Corbin -- who, although he has written a book called Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, seems also to rely on Paracelsus for his treatment of the doctrine -- imagination "induces knowledge." [38] It would follow that a wrong imagination induces wrong knowledge. The observation of history appears to bear this out.
In 1924 the Surrealists proclaimed that the imagination had been enslaved; and in 1968 Situationist slogans echoed them. Has our creative imagination been as stultified as irrationalists of all kinds tell us? It may be necessary to the dynamics of our inspiration that the heavenly city is kept perpetually before us. They have been ringing in the age of Aquarius since the last century. It may never come, but it is essential to keep ringing; for without that distant angelus life would be a sad and dreary place. The hope for something better, something different; the prodding, nudging, shoving force that irritates man to change by inducing visions of a reality other than that of the present: this might -- in the imagination of this writer at least -- be the explanation of all art, all religion, all philosophy. In the same way that the occult provides an indicator to illuminated politics, it may provide an index to the mechanics of inspiration. But if a temporary departure from the universe of agreed discourse is necessary for change, for progress, for the fertilization of life with new possibilities, the departure should be temporary only. Let anyone try as he likes to attain a more objective consciousness, a mystical synthesis, a union with God. But let it be a personal striving for achievement -- as in the artist's search for inspiration -- rather than an attempt to define the truth for all men. If this book demonstrates anything, it shows that the mechanics of political inspiration can go horrifyingly wrong, and that it is possible to end up in the universe peopled with the demons of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as easily as in the realm of freedom after the withering away of the state.
This is no place to pronounce on the personal quests of the occultists. The impression remains that most become trapped in their private worlds and produce sadly little evidence of the power of imagination. There are too many attempts to destroy reason rather than to extend it. The historical development with which this book has been concerned contains the most inspiring and the most dangerous of visions. The flight from reason, by departing from certain fixed categories and opening the floodgates of the imagination, may contain within itself the potential for expanding the limits of human existence. It is more than likely that it will, instead -- as has happened in the past -- shipwreck man on a desert island separated from all that is humanly satisifying by an ocean of illusion. Unreason exists to be made reasonable, and reason to be extended by the discovery of possibilities initially outside its comprehension.
There may exist theories of the creative act that would throw light on the process of social imagination. There is one implied in the Book of Ecclasiasticus, where we are admonished to praise those who have found out musical tunes. Let us go consciously but cautiously in search of new possibilities. For every musical tune discovered, there are a hundred potential cacophanies. After all, it was the blast of trumpets that brought down the walls of Jericho.
_______________
Notes:
*Jane Gaskell has issued a trilogy of Atlantis novels based on Horbigerian premises.
1. See The Occult Underground for development of idea of crisis.
2. Wolfgang Treher, Hitler, Steiner, Schreber (Emmendingen-in-Breisgau, 1966). This is almost the only detailed discussion of the psychology of an occultist. I would not accept it all, but there is much of great interest (e.g., the passage on pp. 21 ff. on the significance of belief in the Cosmic Ice Theory).
3. Rees, Hess, p. 32.
4. Information from a former disciple of Crowley, based on a letter of Crowley. Note by Crowley in the front flyleaf of his copy of Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks -- annotations reproduced in the copy in the Warburg Institute Library.
5. From letter of Marthe Kunzel to Aleister Crowley, copied In the above.
6. Crowley, Liber L vel Legis, in The Equinox. vol. I, no. 10, pp. II ff. and commentary in no. 7, pp. 384 ff.
7. Crowley's copy of Rauschning, pp. 141, 166, 209.
8. See Edith Birkhead, The Tale of Terror (London, 1921); Dorothy Scarborough, The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction (New York and London, 1917), especially pp. 199 ff., 280-83. See pp. 251-52 for a perceptive comment on the birth of science fiction; despite its irritating style, this is a useful study; Anton (Antal) Szerb, Die Suche nach dem Wunder (Amsterdam and Leipzig, 1938), pp. 37 ff.
9. On Esquiros and Peladan, see The Occult Underground; for Machen's mystical experiences, see his Autobiography (London, 1952), pp. 269-74 and Aidan Reynolds and William Charlton, Arthur Machen (London, 1963), pp. 78-79.
10. Eddison deserves a better critical press. His present popularity will no doubt produce some commentary. See Eddison's letters prefacing A Fish Dinner in Memison (New York, paperback ed., 1968) and The Mezentian Gate (London, 1965), pp. 127 ff. and "The Prose of E. R. Eddison" in English Studies (1949).
11. See Jane Harrison, Reminiscences of a Student's Life (London, 1925), Alpha and Omega (London, 1915), Themis (reprinted London, 1963).
12. Hope Mirrlees has remained elusive, and the American publisher of Lud-in-the-Mist was unable to trace her.
13. L. Sprague de Camp, Science Fiction Handbook (New York, 1953), p. 66. Even the improbable Dr. Hanish wrote an "Atlantean" fantasy -- see his illiterate Aetalonia. the Land of Lords (n.p., 1937).
14. See The Occult Underground, pp. 83-84 and notes; De Camp, S.F. Handbook, p. 50. Ballard's publications are elusive in Europe; see Kohler for an account of the I AM doctrine in France.
15. Patrick Moore, Science and Fiction (London, 1957), pp. 168-70; de Camp, S. F. Handbook, pp. 15 ff. for the effect of the Welles broadcast on science fiction.
16. De Camp, S. F. Handbook, pp. 17-19.
17. Elizabeth Donvan and Stephen Willey, "Some Attitudinal Consequences of Atomic Energy, " in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (November 1953), pp. 108 ff. A useful summary: Sylvia Eberhart, "How the American People feel about the Atomic Bomb, " in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (June 1947), pp. 146 ff.
18. See de Camp, S. F. Handbook, p. 129; John W. Campbell, "The Place of Science in Fiction, " in Reginald Bretnor (ed.), Modern Science Fiction (New York, 1953), pp. 212 ff. and Kingsley Amis, New Maps of Hell (paperback ed., London, 1963), pp. 50-51.
19. See the foreword to A. E. van Vogt, The World of Null-A (London, 1970).
20. James Harvey Young, "Device Quackery in America, " in Bulletin of the History of Medicine (March-April 1965), p. 159; Martin Gardner, Fads and Fallacies, pp. 346-47; on the Dean device, see Campbell's articles in Analog (British edition), October 1960, January and April 1961, and February 1962.
21. On the origins of Scientology, see de Camp, S. F. Handbook, pp. 93 ff. and Gardner, Fads and Fallacies, pp. 263 ff.; S. I. Hayakawa, "From Science Fiction to Fiction Science, " in ETC (1951), p. 280.
22. L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology, a History of Man (London, 1954). There is a booklet describing the gadget, The Book Introducing the E-Meter (East Grinstead, 1966).
23. The primary "inside source" for Scientological activities is Cyril Vosper, The Mind Benders (London, 1971), which was recently the subject of a prolonged action in the British High Court. See also Hansard (6 March 1967) for a Parliamentary debate on the cult, and Donovan Bess, "Total Freedom and Beyond" in The Nation (29 September 1969).
24. Hubbard, Dianetics: the Evolution of a Science (Edinburgh, (968), pp. 16-17.
25. King, Ritual Magic, pp. 162-65.
26. The science fiction camp maintained its distance from the saucer cults. See the entertaining picture of saucer fanatics in Fritz Leiber, The Wanderer (London, 1964); I. O. Reich, Wi/helm Reich (London, 1969), pp. 119 ff., 151; C. G. Jung, Flying Saucers (London, 1959), and B. le Poer Trench, The Flying Saucer Story (London, 1968), pp. 75 ff.; Gerald Heard, The Riddle of the Flying Saucers (London, 1950), p. 143.
27. See Adamski and Leslie Adams, Flying Saucers have Landed (London, 1953) and Flying Saucer Farewell (New York and London, 1962), for "Satan, Man of the Hour, " pp. 175 ff.
28. See George King, You are Responsible (London, and L. A., 1961) and Life on the Planets (London, 1959); Patrick Moore, Science and Fiction, p. 132.
29. See W. R. Drake, "Count St. Germain, " in Flying Saucer Review (March-April 1961) and Ivor Mackay, UFOs and the Occult in vol. XVI, no. 5.
30. Harold T. Wilkins, Flying Saucers on the Moon (London, 1954), p. 69.
31. Sam Moskowitz, Explorers of the Infinite (New York, 1963), p. 229.
32. De Camp. S. F. Handbook, pp. 92-93.
33. C. S. Lewis "On Stories, " in Of Other Worlds (London, 1966), p. 16. Gerald Heard, "Science Fiction, Morals and Religion, " in Bretnor, S. F., pp. 244 ff.
34. See I. H. Visiak, Life's Morning Hour (London, 1968), pp. 211-12; Tom Wolfe, Acid Test, pp. 123, 147; Abbie Hoffman, Revolution for the Hell of It, p. 47; quote in Middle Earth (Iowa City, 2 October 1967), p. 2. 35. On the Inklings, see Jocelyn Gibb (ed.) Light on C. S. Lewis (London, 1965). On Charles Williams, see Mary Hadfield, A n Introduction to Charles Williams (London, 1959); Anne Ridler (ed.), Charles Williams, The Image of the City (London, (958). Barfield's approach is best seen in his Romanticism Comes of Age (London, 1944). Whereas the religious or occult attitude of the others is not in doubt, Tolkien's is less obvious. But see F. Leand, "L'Epopee religieuse de J. R. R. Tolkien" in Etudes Anglaises (July-September 1967).
36. Hitler, Table Talk, pp. 316-17.
37. Hargrave, The Life and Soul of Paracelsus (London, 1951), pp. 14-15.
38. Henri Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi (London, 1970), especially pp. 3, 179-82.
J. W. Campbell and A. E. van Vogt both became involved in the cult founded by their fellow science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard (born 1911) wrote Westerns and sea stories before he published his first piece of science fiction in 1938 -- interestingly enough, the year in which he claims that he began his search for truth. This search culminated in an article, "Dianetics, the Evolution of a Science, " in the May 1950 number of Astounding Science Fiction. The magazine was edited by Campbell, who had been treated for sinus trouble by Hubbard according to the new system of mental healing he claimed to have discovered. The same year there appeared Hubbard's book Dianetics, which had an instant popular success. Dianetics expanded quickly among science fiction enthusiasts. Even the medical man who wrote the preface of Hubbard's book -- and whose sister Campbell later married -- had written science fiction. A. E. van Vogt became the head of Hubbard's Californian organization and in 1955 still believed in the value of the system. Campbell himself resigned after less th&n a year's allegiance. After a period of schism, Hubbard's dianetics evolved into a new system called Scientology, of which dianetics is now regarded as a preliminary formulation. Of this first stage of Scientology, Professor S. I. Hayakawa wrote: "It appears to me inevitable that anyone writing several million words of fantasy and science fiction should ultimately begin to internalize the assumptions underlying that verbiage. This appears to be what happened to Hubbard." [21] It is not recorded what A. E. van Vogt thought of this semantic analysis.
Scientology has proved no less popular than dianetics and has attracted support among fashionable rock groups and film stars. The cult possesses a headquarters at East Grinstead in Surrey. It has branches throughout the world and a fleet of three ships. On Hubbard's flagship (formerly the Glasgow-Belfast ferry) is based the "Sea Org, " the "most valuable and dedicated group of beings on this planet." The basic assumptions of Scientology are that an "auditor" (therapist), using a machine called an "E-meter" which is something like a lie detector, can clear away various blocks that prevent the "pre-clear" (patient) from achieving fun control of his abilities. The beginnings of this idea were incorporated in Hubbard's dianetics and are similar to the Freudian therapist's object of removing repressions through discovering traumatic experiences. Hubbard went further. In his "processing" he went back and back, first discovering that the most damaging experiences occurred in the womb before a child was born, and soon concluding that his patients had experienced previous incarnations. From recovering records of Scientologists' past lives, it was but a short step to declaring that the constant particle of this series of incarnations -- the so-called Theta being -- was trapped in a universe to which its nature was intrinsically superior. Hubbard's aim is to liberate these Thetans. There are lurid accounts of how Thetans have fought against the bodies in which they are entrapped with an assortment of weapons straight from the pages of a space opera. Hubbard apparently expects a battle to break out when ordinary humans discover the existence of a number of "liberated Thetans" and has warned his troops that they "need reinforcements" before they can "get spectacular." [22]
Hubbard's science-fictional Gnosticism has exactly suited the temper of the times. The scandals that have accumulated around Scientology [23] are less important than the pedigree of the cult. In an expanded version of his original article on dianetics, Hubbard has related his search through various paths of mysticism before evolving his own theories.
In a lifetime of wandering around many strange things had been observed. The medicine man of the Goldi people of Manchuria, the shamans of North Borneo, Sioux medicine men, the cults of Los Angeles and modern psychology. Amongst the people questioned about existence were a magician whose ancestors served in the court of Kublai Khan and a Hindu who could hypnotize cats. Dabbles had been made in mysticism, data had been studied from mythology to spiritualism. Odds and ends like these, countless odds and ends. [24]
Presumably it was one of the "dabbles" which led to Hubbard's association with Jack Parsons. Parsons was a chemist who was one of the founders of the California Institute of Technology, and he had been a follower of Crowley since 1939. In 1946 Parsons and Hubbard attempted to conduct a magical operation on Crowleyan principles. The aim was to persuade a spirit to incarnate itself in a child, which Parsons was to father. Hubbard was to act during the operation as a clairvoyant reporter of proceedings. Parsons thought the experiment had been successful, but his friendship with Hubbard was shattered in the summer of the same year when Hubbard withdrew the bulk of the money from their joint account and bought a yacht. Parsons eventually secured the boat when Hubbard was forced to put into Miami by a storm, and (according to Francis King) this is the last recorded association of Hubbard with magic; and Hubbard claims that he entered an association with Parsons on the orders of the FBI. [25] If Hubbard's mystical adventures led him through such esoteric paths, it is unsurprising that the doctrine with which he emerged was, in essence, an amalgam of psychoanalysis and occult tradition packaged in a box complete with a novel machine like those so much in vogue among pseudoscientists and the fringes of the science fiction world.
Scientology was not the only example of old ideas in modern dress. A widely diffused belief, which had more than a little to do with occultism and science fiction and was certainly inspired by the same conditions of anxiety, concerned the sighting of flying saucers, which began in 1947 and continued through the mid-1950s. Because of their assumed nature, saucers were naturally allied to science fiction (although it is rare to find a story written about the sightings, as the writers of science fiction had moved on to greater marvels some considerable time before). Yet this vision in the skies attracted the most eminent irrationalists. Wilhelm Reich began to communicate with flying saucers through his "cloud-busting" machine and believed that he had taken part in "the first battle of the universe" in association with his celestial visitors. C. G. Jung made a brilliant comparison of the saucer epidemic with the visions of the Mons Angels and the apparitions of Fatima and argued that the cause of the rumors was "a situation of collective distress." At least one supporter of the saucers has since argued that the Fatima apparitions were saucer people. Whereas Jung's interest was critical and detached, Gerald Heard -- who has also written on the religious significance of science fiction -- became a saucerite who believed that the saucers were powered by some way of harnessing magnetic forces and were manipulated by tiny bee-like creatures from Mars. Heard specifically connected the arrival of the saucers with atomic explosions: "we put out a finger to beckon attention on any watching fellow-planet that we were out for trouble and able to give it!" [26]
Flying saucers were taken up immediately by adepts of various cults, particularly in California. The most celebrated is probably George Adamski, who claimed to have traveled in a spaceship. Adamski made a world tour in which he was granted an audience by Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. His books inveigh against the appropriation of his saucers by mystics; yet he himself runs very true to type. Adamski's anxiety about the human condition was evident as early as 1937 when he published a pamphlet called Satan, Man of the Hour, which declared that "the first perversion of the cosmic principle took place in Lemuria." In 1940 he established a colony near the Mount Palomar observatory, and one of the "witnesses" -- one is reminded of Joseph Smith and the angels -- to Adamski's meeting with the saucer people was a member of his cult. [27] A British equivalent that has transferred its activities to California is George King's Aetherius Society. King (born 1919) took up Yoga exercises in 1944, but it was not until ten years later that his mission began. The prophet was told by a voice: "Prepare yourself! You are to become the voice of Interplanetary Parliament." King's activities include the "charging" of mountains with power -- these include the magician-haunted Mount Shasta in California. His chief task is to act as a channel of communication for extraterrestrial intelligence. He visits the planets in his astral body -- an opportunity for several near-illiterate attempts at science fiction -- and his followers seem to have adopted millennarian expectations which would earlier have been couched in religious terms. Their hope is that they will be removed from earth by spaceship in the event of a nuclear catastrophe. [28]
Every conceivable occult theory has accumulated round the saucer cults. Thus a writer in the Flying Saucer Review in 1961 suggested: "Is it not plausible to suggest that Count St. Germain was a missionary from space, an avatar from Venus with remarkable powers ... ?" As recently as 1970 an article in the same magazine has declared that the Cabala can provide useful insights for saucer devotees. [29] Of course there are saucer theorists who disagree with all the claptrap talked by such occult sections of the saucer movement:
In certain mystical and pseudo-mystical circles, both in the USA and Canada, to a lesser extent in Great Britain, there is being foolishly propagated an illusion that all the mysterious and elusive entities of the flying saucers are benevolent superbeings, radiating an unearthly love and understanding ....
There is a dangerous illusion! a Californian pipe or opium dream!
There are saucers, not manned by "little men" or captained by women, but by entities no one knows or has ever seen, whose irresponsible behavior takes the form of arson on quite a large and dangerous scale. They seem to have heat-ray projectors recalling those of H. G. Wells' "Men from Mars, " all brain and no bowels. [30]
The universe in which flying saucers are real is not very far from the private worlds of some science-fiction enthusiasts. Hugo Gernsback (born 1884), the coiner of the word "scientifiction, " seems to have been profoundly influenced by an experience that occurred at the age of nine, when he developed a fever after reading a translation of Mars as the Abode of Life by Percival Lowell. Staggered by the implications, Gernsback became delirious and is described as "raving about strange creatures, fantastic cities and masterly engineered canals of Mars for two full days and nights." [31] It is worth remembering that one of the most famous cases of turn-of-the-century psychical research involved a reincarnation of the subject on Mars. Whereas Gernsback's dissociation from ordinary reality was an involuntary process, the editor of Amazing Stories, Raymond Palmer, used the susceptibility of some of his readers to build up a large circulation among the "lunatic fringe" in the period of anxiety just after the war. In 1944 Palmer received a letter entitled "A warning to Future Man" from Richard Shaver, a Pennsylvania welder. Palmer rewrote the letter under the title "I remember Lemuria" and collaborated with Shaver in a series of stories based on his correspondent's imaginings. Shaver accepted his fantasies as reality, and for a time Palmer cooperated with this belief. The editor even claimed to go in fear of the sinister beings called "deros, " who in Shaver's cosmology implanted evil thoughts in the mind of man. After the collapse of the hoax, Shaver took to writing straightforward science fiction. [32]
The hard-core followers of science fiction present several characteristics that remind the observer of a religious cult proper. They organize themselves in enthusiastic groups of "fans" and describe themselves as "addicts." C. S. Lewis suggested that the experience of reading Rider Haggard could provide a substitute for religion, and Gerald Heard has claimed that science fiction represents an extension of consciousness. [33] There are facets of fantasy and science fiction that go some way toward providing an explanation of the problems of an "illuminated viewpoint."
The Search for Otherness was the title which science fiction writer Henry Kuttner once gave to a collection of his stories. It is in the nature of "otherness" that the solution may lie. Fantastic fiction provides the most explicit rendering of "other realities." But because there are substantial grounds for believing that there is a correspondence between the science fiction world and that of the occultists whom we have used as an index of the "illuminated" attitude, it is possible to use the explicit creation of other realities to interpret private worlds whose "otherness" remains implicit.
The "search for otherness" necessarily applies also to social reformers. There is a particular genre of Utopian fantasy that is the natural vehicle of expression for plans for social reform. From Bacon's New Atlantis and More's Utopia itself, the pedigree of the imagined society is directly traceable down to modern science fiction. The Progressive Underground has frequently used fantasy as a means of communicating its ideas. For example, Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888) and Richard Jefferies's After London (1885) were powerful influences on the Progressive Underground of the l890s. Progressive causes, mysticism, and fantasy could be combined in the same person. For example, E. H. Visiak (E. H. Physick), the author of the fantastic novel Medusa (1929), once precipitated a mystical experience by dwelling obsessively on the evils of vivisection. Among modern inhabitants of the progressive Underground science fiction is immensely popular, as it embodies the aspirations both of the Utopian illuminates and of those concerned with an "expansion of consciousness." Ken Kesey was influenced both by Arthur Clarke's Childhood's End and by Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. It is from this latter book that the expression "grokking" comes. It probably transferred itself into the hippie world through Kesey and was at one time widely used in Underground circles to express a state of empathy or harmony with a person or a situation. Kesey's own use of the word "fantasy" to describe each latest far-fetched project is paralleled by Abbie Hoffman's proclamation about the exorcism of the Pentagon: "Fantasy is freedom!" The cult of J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord a/the Rings is too well-known to need any emphasis. There has even been published an Iowa underground newspaper called Middle Earth. whose political comments plunged its readers into the fantasy world of its presiding spirit.
The skirmish on Madison, on the edge of Mirkwood led to a temporary setback and numerous after-the-fact strategy sessions, but larger lessons were learned by the expedition to the Pentagon (magic figure of black sorcerers) which lies in Mordor, realm of the Dark Lord, whose name is unspeakable. [34]
The popularity of Tolkien -- and to a lesser extent, of his friends Charles Williams and C. S. Lewis -- emphasizes once more the religious or occult connections of fantasy. All three writers subscribe to a form of Christianity: Catholicism for Tolkien, for Williams an interesting personal mysticism which probably owed a lot to his early occult studies, and for Lewis a Neo-Platonic form of Christianity that was not above accepting some of Williams's unorthodox theories. The three formed a group they called "the Inklings, " which met regularly and included a leading Anthroposophist, Owen Barfield. [35] It is no coincidence that a circle of fantasy writers, which has associations both with mysticism and the attitudes of the English illuminated politicians, has become popular as part of the search for otherness conducted by today's idealistic revolutionaries.
Whether such would-be revolutionaries find inspiration in the symbols of the generally spiritual journeys portrayed by Tolkien or Lewis, or in the more obvious moral lessons in Stranger in a Strange Land, it is essentially the otherness that they seek. This argues that fantasy is not merely an unhealthy escape, that the otherness is in some fashion fruitful. The capacity to appreciate otherness -- and, more powerfully, to fashion for oneself an otherness -- is the process of imagination. Without such imagination, the capacity to envisage a state of affairs other than that obtaining, no change is possible. There is a distinct relationship between the private worlds that are constructed simply to exclude the abhorred present and those that are rooted in the wish to change the present altogether. Both subscribe to the wish to abolish that which is, to replace the old by a new reality. The problem is to know how to evaluate alternatives.
It is difficult to conceive that the universe of agreed discourse could have imposed upon it a supplementary vision that demands the existence of flying saucers. But it must be insisted that this is not at all impossible, and that in Nazi Germany ideas just as strange attained wide currency. The reality of Nazism is as much the result of the ability to imagine something other as the best intentioned Utopias of the most charitable social reformers. A tortured imagination may produce visions of great power. A case in point is that of the fantasy writer M. P. Shiel, who never quite recovered from being crowned "King of Redonda" on his fifteenth birthday in 1880. Redonda was an atoll covered in guano. But despite the small size of his childhood kingdom, Shiel admits that "the notion that I am somehow the King, King of kings and the Kaiser of imperial Caesar, was so inveterately suggested to me that I became incapable of expelling it." [36] Shiel's megalomaniac novels are remarkably successful in impressing their obsessive worlds on the reader; yet they are also riddled with an unpleasant anti-Semitism and authoritarian propaganda. His late novel, The Young Men are Coming (1937), contains a prophecy of the victory of a British neo-Fascist movement based on the Divine Law as revealed by an extraterrestrial Egg.
There may be able but perverse adepts of the imagination. The Theosophist Hubbe-Schleiden -- who was concerned with German expansionist propaganda -- also translated Brigadier Chesney's pioneer piece of science fiction The Battle of Dorking (1871) under the gloating title Englands Ende in der Schlacht bei Dorking. Hitler himself was an avid reader of imaginative literature. Like Madame Blavatsky he was enthusiastic about Fenimore Cooper, but after reading The Last of the Mohicans. he took up the German writer of Indian stories, Karl May. He read all of Karl May and recommended others to try Jules Verne. Symptoms of a search for "other realities" are completely in accordance with what we know of Hitler.
On the one hand, the attempt to make a private world part of ordinary reality may produce the nightmare of the concentration camps; on the other perhaps a garden of earthly delights. It may be wondered if the difference between such heavens and hells is not the same as that between "good" and "bad" art: a disparity in the quality of the creative imagination. Hitler wanted to become an architect; and, although his watercolors show some talent, his patronage of Albert Speer gives the lie to Hitler's estimate of himself as an artistic genius. Possibly this fact has something to do with the sort of political universe he created. Although he was a man of extraordinary abilities, his particular imagination played Germany false.
If there is truth in the idea that illuminates -- whether occultists or politicians -- have a special relationship with the imagination in their pursuit of other realities, we might expect to find an extraordinary amount of creative work accomplished by such people. This is in fact the case, not only with reference to the illuminated artists and psychologists we have already discussed but even in the realms of mechanical invention. Hugo Gernsback was an inventor (he coined the word "television"), Horbiger made his fortune with an invention, Arthur Kitson and Lanz von Liebenfels filed numerous patents, and Alfred William Lawson -- who has only appeared in this book peripherally -- built the world's first passenger airliner. Rudolf von Sebottendorff was concerned (like the 19th-century occultist J. M. Hoene-Wronski) in the development of a tank; and John Hargrave patented in 1938 the navigating device that forms part of the Concorde airplane. What can be said of such creative and imaginative capacities without straying too far into the province of the philosopher?
The occult has been used throughout this book as the index to "a certain type of man"; and there seems to be some evidence that this type of man has sometimes privy access to the springs of inspiration. Esotericists make much play with the phrase "creative imagination, " as originating in Paracelsus. The implications can best be described in the words of John Hargrave, an artist, an authority on Paracelsus, and -- according to the classification of this book -- an illuminated politician.
It is obvious to anyone (or ought to be) that, but for the few freaks, cranks, originals, and odd-men-out, mankind in the mass would still be without fire, without the lever, the wheel, the club, throwing-stick, bow, bolas, cat's cradle, net, plait, loom, dug-out, paddle, spade, and all the other discoveries, inventions and devices that have enabled man to enslave metals, plants, animals, and finally -- himself. This final enslavement he calls "civilization" and today it is a worldwide, semi-mechanized serfdom dominated by the fear of atomic catastrophe on the one hand and the fear of manmade poverty on the other.
We stand on the threshold of an Age of Abundance and Leisure, and the failure to pass through the doorway into the New Solar Civilization, the coming Sun-Power Age, is a failure of man's imaginative faculty.
This bears directly upon our subject, for the entire structure of the Paracelsian teaching and practice is founded upon one reason-shattering statement: that by his god-like faculty of imagination, and by means of Resolute Imagination, man can accomplish all things. [37]
From this point of view, it is clear that the exercise of the creative imagination is different from the operation of its admittedly close relative, escapist fantasy. The creative mind makes forays out of the universe of accepted reality into private worlds of the imagination with the object of bringing back a portion of what is discovered there and using the treasure-trove to enlarge an established vision. The escapists -- of whom the anxiety-driven occult extremists form the best examples -- become trapped in their imagined worlds, even assuming that they once wished to return and fructify the commerce of their fellow-beings. According to Henry Corbin -- who, although he has written a book called Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, seems also to rely on Paracelsus for his treatment of the doctrine -- imagination "induces knowledge." [38] It would follow that a wrong imagination induces wrong knowledge. The observation of history appears to bear this out.
In 1924 the Surrealists proclaimed that the imagination had been enslaved; and in 1968 Situationist slogans echoed them. Has our creative imagination been as stultified as irrationalists of all kinds tell us? It may be necessary to the dynamics of our inspiration that the heavenly city is kept perpetually before us. They have been ringing in the age of Aquarius since the last century. It may never come, but it is essential to keep ringing; for without that distant angelus life would be a sad and dreary place. The hope for something better, something different; the prodding, nudging, shoving force that irritates man to change by inducing visions of a reality other than that of the present: this might -- in the imagination of this writer at least -- be the explanation of all art, all religion, all philosophy. In the same way that the occult provides an indicator to illuminated politics, it may provide an index to the mechanics of inspiration. But if a temporary departure from the universe of agreed discourse is necessary for change, for progress, for the fertilization of life with new possibilities, the departure should be temporary only. Let anyone try as he likes to attain a more objective consciousness, a mystical synthesis, a union with God. But let it be a personal striving for achievement -- as in the artist's search for inspiration -- rather than an attempt to define the truth for all men. If this book demonstrates anything, it shows that the mechanics of political inspiration can go horrifyingly wrong, and that it is possible to end up in the universe peopled with the demons of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as easily as in the realm of freedom after the withering away of the state.
This is no place to pronounce on the personal quests of the occultists. The impression remains that most become trapped in their private worlds and produce sadly little evidence of the power of imagination. There are too many attempts to destroy reason rather than to extend it. The historical development with which this book has been concerned contains the most inspiring and the most dangerous of visions. The flight from reason, by departing from certain fixed categories and opening the floodgates of the imagination, may contain within itself the potential for expanding the limits of human existence. It is more than likely that it will, instead -- as has happened in the past -- shipwreck man on a desert island separated from all that is humanly satisifying by an ocean of illusion. Unreason exists to be made reasonable, and reason to be extended by the discovery of possibilities initially outside its comprehension.
There may exist theories of the creative act that would throw light on the process of social imagination. There is one implied in the Book of Ecclasiasticus, where we are admonished to praise those who have found out musical tunes. Let us go consciously but cautiously in search of new possibilities. For every musical tune discovered, there are a hundred potential cacophanies. After all, it was the blast of trumpets that brought down the walls of Jericho.
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Notes:
*Jane Gaskell has issued a trilogy of Atlantis novels based on Horbigerian premises.
1. See The Occult Underground for development of idea of crisis.
2. Wolfgang Treher, Hitler, Steiner, Schreber (Emmendingen-in-Breisgau, 1966). This is almost the only detailed discussion of the psychology of an occultist. I would not accept it all, but there is much of great interest (e.g., the passage on pp. 21 ff. on the significance of belief in the Cosmic Ice Theory).
3. Rees, Hess, p. 32.
4. Information from a former disciple of Crowley, based on a letter of Crowley. Note by Crowley in the front flyleaf of his copy of Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks -- annotations reproduced in the copy in the Warburg Institute Library.
5. From letter of Marthe Kunzel to Aleister Crowley, copied In the above.
6. Crowley, Liber L vel Legis, in The Equinox. vol. I, no. 10, pp. II ff. and commentary in no. 7, pp. 384 ff.
7. Crowley's copy of Rauschning, pp. 141, 166, 209.
8. See Edith Birkhead, The Tale of Terror (London, 1921); Dorothy Scarborough, The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction (New York and London, 1917), especially pp. 199 ff., 280-83. See pp. 251-52 for a perceptive comment on the birth of science fiction; despite its irritating style, this is a useful study; Anton (Antal) Szerb, Die Suche nach dem Wunder (Amsterdam and Leipzig, 1938), pp. 37 ff.
9. On Esquiros and Peladan, see The Occult Underground; for Machen's mystical experiences, see his Autobiography (London, 1952), pp. 269-74 and Aidan Reynolds and William Charlton, Arthur Machen (London, 1963), pp. 78-79.
10. Eddison deserves a better critical press. His present popularity will no doubt produce some commentary. See Eddison's letters prefacing A Fish Dinner in Memison (New York, paperback ed., 1968) and The Mezentian Gate (London, 1965), pp. 127 ff. and "The Prose of E. R. Eddison" in English Studies (1949).
11. See Jane Harrison, Reminiscences of a Student's Life (London, 1925), Alpha and Omega (London, 1915), Themis (reprinted London, 1963).
12. Hope Mirrlees has remained elusive, and the American publisher of Lud-in-the-Mist was unable to trace her.
13. L. Sprague de Camp, Science Fiction Handbook (New York, 1953), p. 66. Even the improbable Dr. Hanish wrote an "Atlantean" fantasy -- see his illiterate Aetalonia. the Land of Lords (n.p., 1937).
14. See The Occult Underground, pp. 83-84 and notes; De Camp, S.F. Handbook, p. 50. Ballard's publications are elusive in Europe; see Kohler for an account of the I AM doctrine in France.
15. Patrick Moore, Science and Fiction (London, 1957), pp. 168-70; de Camp, S. F. Handbook, pp. 15 ff. for the effect of the Welles broadcast on science fiction.
16. De Camp, S. F. Handbook, pp. 17-19.
17. Elizabeth Donvan and Stephen Willey, "Some Attitudinal Consequences of Atomic Energy, " in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (November 1953), pp. 108 ff. A useful summary: Sylvia Eberhart, "How the American People feel about the Atomic Bomb, " in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (June 1947), pp. 146 ff.
18. See de Camp, S. F. Handbook, p. 129; John W. Campbell, "The Place of Science in Fiction, " in Reginald Bretnor (ed.), Modern Science Fiction (New York, 1953), pp. 212 ff. and Kingsley Amis, New Maps of Hell (paperback ed., London, 1963), pp. 50-51.
19. See the foreword to A. E. van Vogt, The World of Null-A (London, 1970).
20. James Harvey Young, "Device Quackery in America, " in Bulletin of the History of Medicine (March-April 1965), p. 159; Martin Gardner, Fads and Fallacies, pp. 346-47; on the Dean device, see Campbell's articles in Analog (British edition), October 1960, January and April 1961, and February 1962.
21. On the origins of Scientology, see de Camp, S. F. Handbook, pp. 93 ff. and Gardner, Fads and Fallacies, pp. 263 ff.; S. I. Hayakawa, "From Science Fiction to Fiction Science, " in ETC (1951), p. 280.
22. L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology, a History of Man (London, 1954). There is a booklet describing the gadget, The Book Introducing the E-Meter (East Grinstead, 1966).
23. The primary "inside source" for Scientological activities is Cyril Vosper, The Mind Benders (London, 1971), which was recently the subject of a prolonged action in the British High Court. See also Hansard (6 March 1967) for a Parliamentary debate on the cult, and Donovan Bess, "Total Freedom and Beyond" in The Nation (29 September 1969).
24. Hubbard, Dianetics: the Evolution of a Science (Edinburgh, (968), pp. 16-17.
25. King, Ritual Magic, pp. 162-65.
26. The science fiction camp maintained its distance from the saucer cults. See the entertaining picture of saucer fanatics in Fritz Leiber, The Wanderer (London, 1964); I. O. Reich, Wi/helm Reich (London, 1969), pp. 119 ff., 151; C. G. Jung, Flying Saucers (London, 1959), and B. le Poer Trench, The Flying Saucer Story (London, 1968), pp. 75 ff.; Gerald Heard, The Riddle of the Flying Saucers (London, 1950), p. 143.
27. See Adamski and Leslie Adams, Flying Saucers have Landed (London, 1953) and Flying Saucer Farewell (New York and London, 1962), for "Satan, Man of the Hour, " pp. 175 ff.
28. See George King, You are Responsible (London, and L. A., 1961) and Life on the Planets (London, 1959); Patrick Moore, Science and Fiction, p. 132.
29. See W. R. Drake, "Count St. Germain, " in Flying Saucer Review (March-April 1961) and Ivor Mackay, UFOs and the Occult in vol. XVI, no. 5.
30. Harold T. Wilkins, Flying Saucers on the Moon (London, 1954), p. 69.
31. Sam Moskowitz, Explorers of the Infinite (New York, 1963), p. 229.
32. De Camp. S. F. Handbook, pp. 92-93.
33. C. S. Lewis "On Stories, " in Of Other Worlds (London, 1966), p. 16. Gerald Heard, "Science Fiction, Morals and Religion, " in Bretnor, S. F., pp. 244 ff.
34. See I. H. Visiak, Life's Morning Hour (London, 1968), pp. 211-12; Tom Wolfe, Acid Test, pp. 123, 147; Abbie Hoffman, Revolution for the Hell of It, p. 47; quote in Middle Earth (Iowa City, 2 October 1967), p. 2. 35. On the Inklings, see Jocelyn Gibb (ed.) Light on C. S. Lewis (London, 1965). On Charles Williams, see Mary Hadfield, A n Introduction to Charles Williams (London, 1959); Anne Ridler (ed.), Charles Williams, The Image of the City (London, (958). Barfield's approach is best seen in his Romanticism Comes of Age (London, 1944). Whereas the religious or occult attitude of the others is not in doubt, Tolkien's is less obvious. But see F. Leand, "L'Epopee religieuse de J. R. R. Tolkien" in Etudes Anglaises (July-September 1967).
36. Hitler, Table Talk, pp. 316-17.
37. Hargrave, The Life and Soul of Paracelsus (London, 1951), pp. 14-15.
38. Henri Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi (London, 1970), especially pp. 3, 179-82.