Wuhan Journal of Cultic Studies
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Volume 2: Issue 2, 2024
ARTICLE Stoddard Martin, the ‘Babalon Working’, and the Study of Scientology: Recognising a Scholarly Pioneer Carole M. Cusack University of Sydney Abstract Popular authors have typically taken greater risks than scholars writing about Scientology; for example, in the 1980s tell-all biographies of L. Ron Hubbard were published by British journalist Russell Miller (b. 1938) – Barefaced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard (1987) – and Danish-American journalist Bent Corydon (b. 1942) – L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman (1987) – co-written with Hubbard’s son Ronald De Wolf. Roy Wallis’ (1945-1990) The Road to Total Freedom (1976), the first academic monograph on Scientology only briefly mentioned Hubbard’s controversial 1946 association with rocket scientist and Thelemic occultist Jack Parsons; Harriet Whitehead reproduced and downplayed this reference in Renunciation and Reformulation: A Study of Conversion in an American Sect (1987). Popular writers revelled in Hubbard’s occult past; academic treatments of Parsons’ and Hubbard’s ‘Babalon Working’ were, in contrast, brief and noncommittal. Yet, a detailed scholarly account of Hubbard and Parson’s relationship was published in 1989. This article positions literary academic Stoddard ‘Chip’ Martin (b. 1948) as a pioneer in Scientology research and argues that the independence of his sources and his interpretation of both Hubbard and Scientology’s occult elements are of enduring value. Some possible reasons for the neglect of Martin’s work by scholars of religion are proposed. Keywords: Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, Jack Parsons, Aleister Crowley, Babalon Working, Stoddard Martin | ||