Agape Lodge

Agape Lodge was the Los Angeles and Pasadena lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis under Wilfred Talbot Smith and, from 1943, Jack Parsons. From 1942 its profess house was at 1003 South Orange Grove Avenue, Pasadena, the home of Parsons, a Caltech research fellow and a founder of Aerojet.¹

Winona Boulevard

Smith, born in Tonbridge, England, stated in an affidavit of May 6, 1941 that he had lived in the United States for twenty years, that he had been employed by the Southern California Gas Company since April 21, 1922, and that 1746 Winona Boulevard, Hollywood, had been his home for ten years.² In May 1932 Smith, Regina Kahl and the actress Jane Wolfe decided to share quarters at that address.³ The first public Gnostic Mass in the house was presented on March 20, 1933, and a "Crowley Night on Winona Blvd." in 1934 drew about 150 people, among them the actor John Carradine, who read Crowley's "O Madonna of the Golden Eyes."⁴ On May 6, 1941 Smith also wrote to the Immigration and Naturalization Service of the Department of Justice in Los Angeles asking that Crowley be admitted to the United States, with an affidavit of support offering 1746 Winona Boulevard as Crowley's residence.²

On April 19, 1934 Smith filed articles of incorporation for the Church of Thelema in California and received the certificate soon afterward.⁵ On September 21, 1935 at 7:00 p.m., on the sands at Playa del Rey, Wolfe escorted seven aspirants into the desert, where Smith, Max Schneider, Oliver Jacobi and Kahl conducted the Minerval initiation; Smith then announced that the lodge would be named Agape Lodge.⁶ In 1936 Smith suspended all Agape Lodge activities; they did not resume for three years.⁷ In 1939 initiations were again administered by the lodge on the sands at Playa del Rey.⁸

Parsons and the move to South Orange Grove

Parsons and his wife Helen Parsons were initiated into the Minerval and First Degrees on February 15, 1941.⁹ Jane Wolfe's account to Karl Germer of April 20, 1941 describes him: "Education: University of Southern Cal., California Institute of Technology... He can talk with scientist, physicist, mathematician in their own language, all 3 of which W[ilfred Smith] lacks."¹⁰ On June 13, 1941 Grady McMurtry and Sara Northrup received the Minerval and First Degrees.¹¹ Smith wrote to Crowley on February 27, 1942 that the members around him included Ray Burlingame, who "has a money sense and business capacity," Frederic Mellinger, "with his knowledge of astrology and psychoanalysis," and Parsons, "outside activities, explosive engineer, if young yet it looks as if he may give us some real material support in the near future."¹²

On June 1, 1942 Jack and Helen Parsons took a two-year lease on the house at 1003 South Orange Grove Avenue.¹³ Smith wrote to Crowley on June 10, 1943 that he had put "better than $1200, which I collected on leaving the Gas Company," into the general exchequer "to start 1003."¹⁴ On June 22, 1943 the lodge held a solstice party for more than forty prospective initiates, with a candlelight procession led by Parsons through the grounds of 1003 South Orange Grove.¹⁵

Federal and local scrutiny

An FBI name check requested by Brigadier General Sherman Miles of Army G-2 on October 10, 1940 for Parsons, then living at 168 Terrace Drive, Pasadena, returned "NO RECORD WAS LOCATED."¹⁶ In March 1942 FBI agents searched Germer's New York home for almost four hours and read his and his wife's letters.¹⁷ Tobias Churton's biography of Crowley, as cited in the Crowley Timeline, records that on January 16, 1943 the lodge "is visited by the F.B.I. after they are told it is a house of subversive 'Sex Perversion'."¹⁸ On February 3, 1943 Smith wrote to Crowley: "I told two FBI men ten days ago after three hours questioning that they had my full permission to read all my letters" and "We have been harried by the FBI thrice lately."¹⁹ On March 27, 1943 Max Schneider wrote of "a lodge that has been so badly mismanaged and has acquired an undesirable reputation to the extent of inviting the repeated scrutinies of the local police as well as of the F.B.I.," and described the Winona Boulevard house as known as a "hangout" of homosexuals and lesbians.²⁰

Crowley wrote to Smith on April 1, 1943 that Smith's "attitude to the F.B.I." showed his "complete unfitness for your position": he "should have welcomed the investigators in the warmest way" and told them that the world's only hope was to accept the Law of Thelema officially. Smith replied on June 10, 1943: "You judge my fitness for a position by the way I handled the two F.B.I. men. Really, that is not sound!"²¹ On November 3, 1943 Crowley wrote to Smith that Smith's conduct had made "the F.B.I. wonder what is going on."²² Smith, for his part, wrote to Crowley on September 14, 1943 that Crowley's letters were ones "the F.B.I. seem to take seriously."²³

The informant's account in the FBI Oklahoma City letter of March 31, 1944 (file 100-189320-2) concerns a weekend visit to 1003 South Orange Grove in June or July of 1940, where he was initiated and met about forty or fifty members; the house "is said to be occupied by one Jack Parsons who is a chemist and supposedly working in a defense plant in Pasadena during the day and doing some work in his own lab. at this address at night," Parsons "is said to be connected with the U. in Pasadena," and Smith "is said to be the head of the organization in Calif." The informant also stated that Smith had written him while he was in the Army "requesting some military info," and that another member in naval officer training in Albuquerque wrote that "as members of the Order they must keep quiet at the present time but that a time would come when they would be able to speak up."²⁴ A report of the 115th Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment, Sixth Army, dated May 17, 1946, recorded that the cult at Parsons's home "had been reported subversive," that he had been questioned twice, and that "nothing of a subversive nature" was found.²⁵ The Air Force Provost Marshal at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base told the FBI in 1950 of that report and of the denial of Parsons's clearance by the Army, Navy, Air Force Personnel Security Board on September 29, 1948.²⁵

Parsons told FBI agents that the Church of Thelema was a lodge and fraternity "modeled very much on the order of Oriental Templars, an English society," that it was too small to be an official branch, and that it was "anti-Communistic and anti-Fascist" and "100% in accord with the war effort."²⁶ The FBI summary of those interviews records the Church as incorporated in California in April 1934 by Smith, "who styles himself as the high priest of the society," with about twenty active members.²⁶

Leadership

Crowley wrote on October 19, 1943 that Smith had been "ignominiously kicked out" and that he had asked Parsons to take the leadership in California.²⁷ Crowley's letter of October 19, 1943 answers a letter in which Parsons, on September 14, had tendered his resignation; on September 13, 1943, according to Jerry Cornelius's biography of McMurtry as cited in the Crowley Timeline, the lodge under Parsons "temporarily suspends all activities and closes its doors."²⁸ Schneider wrote to Germer on March 27, 1943 that Germer was "probably right about Jack Parson's unripeness" as leader.²⁰ Smith began a "Great Magical Retirement" at Louis Culling's ranch in 1944 that ran until February 12, 1945.²⁹ Parsons resigned from the Order on August 20, 1946.³⁰

Wolfe wrote to Germer on April 8, 1945 about the officers of a degree ceremony: "Dick Canright, Barbara [Canright] and Paul Seckler officiated, with Jack as orator," adding that Canright's "Cal-Tech training will not permit him to admit things as yet."³¹ On September 7, 1953 Germer officially closed the lodge. Smith died of prostate cancer at Malibu on April 27, 1957.³²

Members in defense work

The wartime record places the following in defense or military technical work: Parsons, a research fellow in aeronautics at the California Institute of Technology from 1939 who worked on the Army Air Corps GALCIT rocket project;¹⁶³³ Richard Canright, whom Wolfe identified by his Caltech training;³¹ and McMurtry, a second lieutenant of Ordnance with the 1803rd Ordnance Supply and Maintenance Company (Aviation), 68th Service Group, in 1943.³⁴