Display thyself to Our Lady
dedicate thy organs to Her
dedicate thy heart to Her
dedicate thy mind to Her
dedicate thy soul to Her
for She shall absorb thee
and thou shalt become living flame
before She incarnates
For it shall be through you alone
and no one else can help
in this endeavour
It is lonely, it is awful
from “Liber 49: The book of Babalon”
(received by Jack Parsons)
Marjorie Cameron Parsons Kimmel (23 April 1922 – 24 June 1995) was an artist, occultist, actress, and wife of rocket pioneer and occultist Jack Parsons. Cameron played a major role in the 1946 Babalon Working ritual. Cameron moved to Pasadena where she became a fashion illustrator. Disillusioned with mainstream culture, she became an enthusiastic supporter of jazz, frequenting the black clubs on Central Avenue.
Her life was forever changed, however, when an old Navy friend took her to the home of John Whiteside Parsons, better known as Jack Parsons. Instantly struck by Cameron’s dramatic red hair and intriguing looks, Parsons was convinced she was his Scarlet Woman, the entity he and L. Ron Hubbard had conjured during their sexual magick experiment called the Babalon Working, an occult rite to manifest the Goddess potential in society and throughout the human race. Cameron identified herself with the Scarlet Woman, as did those around her.
Cameron appeared as the Scarlet Woman and as Kali in Kenneth Anger’s Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954). In 1957 she won an obscenity trial when one of her drawings caused a raid on the art gallery. She was a friend of Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell, and appeared with Hopper as the Water Witch in Night Tide (1963). She died in 1995, at age 73.
Parsons, a science fiction fan, had read in the fantasy pulp magazine Unknown the 1940 original version of Jack Williamson “Darker Than You Think”. Parsons identified the redheaded female love interest of the protagonist with Babalon or the “Scarlet Woman”, whom Crowley had prophesied would usher in and help fulfill the Aeon of Horus and end the Aeon of Osiris represented by Christianity, other patriarchal religions, and male-dominated social institutions. In 1946, Parsons and Hubbard (whose works Fear and Typewriter in the Sky, among others, had appeared in Unknown) participated in a work of ceremonial magic known as the Babalon Working. In simple terms, the Babalon Working was a ritual to summon this Scarlet Woman.
Aleister Crowley, who lived in England at this time and had little say over the matter, disagreed strenuously, but almost immediately, Parsons met Marjorie Cameron right in his own home and regarded her as the Scarlet Woman and the fulfillment of the ritual. Parsons, Hubbard, and Cameron then proceeded to the next stage of the Babalon Working in which Cameron acted as Parsons’ magical sexual partner with whom he could sire a Moonchild. The creation of this Moonchild had been previously covered in fictional form in Crowley’s novel Moonchild. Parsons ended the ritual by declaring it successful. A physical child was not conceived, but this did not affect the results of the ritual. Parsons and Cameron soon married.
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