Sara Northrup
Encyclopedia
Sara Elizabeth Bruce Northrup Hollister (April 8, 1924 December 19, 1997) was the second wife of L. Ron Hubbard
, from 1946 to 1951, and wife of Miles Hollister from 1951 to her death in 1997. She had one daughter, Alexis Valerie, fathered by Hubbard in 1948.
Sara Northrup was a major figure in the Pasadena branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis
(OTO), a society founded by the English occult
ist Aleister Crowley
. From 1941 to 1945 she had a turbulent relationship with Jack Parsons
, the head of the Pasadena OTO, who was married to her sister Helen. Although she was a committed member of the OTO, to whom she was known as "Soror [Sister] Cassap", she acquired a reputation for disruptiveness that prompted Crowley to denounce her as a "vampire
".
She began a relationship with L. Ron Hubbard, whom she met through the OTO, in 1945. It led to the couple eloping with a substantial amount of Jack Parsons' life savings and marrying bigamously
a year later while Hubbard was still married to his first wife Margaret
. Sara played a significant role in the development of Dianetics
, Hubbard's "modern science of mental health", between 1948 and 1951, during which time she was Hubbard's personal auditor
and one of the seven members of the Dianetics Foundation's Board of Directors, alongside Hubbard himself. However, their marriage broke up in extremely acrimonious circumstances amid accusations of kidnapping and Communist plots, which prompted lurid headlines in the Los Angeles newspapers. She subsequently married one of Hubbard's former employees, Miles Hollister, and moved to Hawaii
and later Massachusetts
.
, Illinois
. After he died in 1920, her mother married Burton Northrup, a traveling salesman, and gave birth to Sara and another sister, Nancy. In 1923 the family moved to Pasadena, a destination said to have been chosen by Olga using a Oujia board. Although she later remembered her childhood with warmth, Sara's upbringing was marred by her sexually abusive father, who was imprisoned in 1928 for financial fraud. In 1933, at the age of 22, her sister Helen met the 18-year-old Jack Parsons, a brilliant chemist who went on to be a noted rocket scientist and an avid student and practitioner of the occult
. They were engaged in July 1934 and married in April 1935.
In June 1941, at the age of seventeen, she began a passionate affair with Parsons while her sister Helen was away on vacation. She made a striking impression on the other lodgers at 1003 South Orange Avenue; George Pendle
describes her as "feisty and untamed, proud and self-willed, she stood five foot nine, had a lithe body and blond hair, and was extremely candid – she often claimed to have lost her virginity at the age of ten." When Helen returned, she found Sara wearing Helen's own clothes and calling herself Parsons' "new wife." Not surprisingly this led to conflict, though such conduct was expressly permitted by the OTO, which followed Crowley's disdain of marriage as a "detestable institution" and accepted as commonplace the swapping of wives and partners between OTO members.
Although both were committed OTO members, the reactions of Parsons and Helen towards Sara were markedly different. Parsons told Helen to her face that he preferred Sara sexually: "This is a fact that I can do nothing about. I am better suited to her temperamentally – we get on well. Your character is superior. You are a greater person. I doubt that she would face what you have with me – or support me as well." Some years later, addressing himself as "You", Parsons told himself that his affair with Sara (whom he called Betty) marked a key step in his growth as a practitioner of magick: "Betty served to affect a transference from Helen at a critical period ... Your passion for Betty also gave you the magical force needed at the time, and the act of adultery tinged with incest, served as your magical confirmation in the law of Thelema
." Helen was far less sanguine, writing in her diary of "the sore spot I carried where my heart should be", and had furious – sometimes violent – rows with both Parsons and Sara. She began an affair with Wilfred Smith, Parsons' mentor in the OTO and had a son in 1943 who bore Parsons' surname but who was almost certainly fathered by Smith. Sara also became pregnant but had an (illegal) abortion on April 1, 1943, arranged by Parsons and carried out by Dr. Zachary Taylor Malaby, a prominent Pasadena doctor and Democratic politician.
Sara's hostility towards other members of the OTO caused further tensions in the house, which were communicated by others back to Aleister Crowley in England. He dubbed her "the alley-cat" after an unnamed mutual acquaintance told him that Jack's attraction to her was like "a yellow pup bumming around with his snout glued to the rump of an alley-cat." Concluding that she was a vampire
, which he defined as "an elemental or demon in the form of a woman" who sought to "lure the Candidate to his destruction," he warned that Sara was a grave danger to Jack and to the "Great Work" which the OTO was carrying out in California.
Similar concerns were expressed by other OTO members. The OTO's US head, Karl Germer
, labeled her "an ordeal sent by the gods". Her disruptive behavior appalled Fred Gwynn, a new OTO member living in the commune at 1003 South Orange Avenue: "Betty went to almost fantastical lengths to disrupt the meetings [of the OTO] that Jack did get together. If she could not break it up by making social engagements with key personnel she, and her gang, would go out to a bar and keep calling in asking for certain people to come to the telephone."
In August 1945, Sara met L. Ron Hubbard for the first time. He had visited 1003 South Orange Avenue at the behest of Lou Goldstone, a well-known science-fiction illustrator, while on leave from his service in the US Navy. Parsons took an immediate liking to Hubbard and invited him to stay in the house for the duration of his leave. To Parsons' dismay, Hubbard soon began an affair with Sara after beginning "affairs with one girl after another in the house." Parsons tried to put a brave face on it, informing Aleister Crowley:
Despite the tensions between them, Hubbard, Sara and Parsons agreed at the start of 1946 that they would go into business together, buying yachts on the East Coast and sailing them to California to sell at a profit. They set up a business partnership on January 15, 1946 under the name of "Allied Enterprises", with Parsons putting up $20,000 of capital, Hubbard adding $1,200 and Sara contributing nothing. Hubbard and Sara left for Florida
towards the end of April, taking with him $10,000 drawn from the Allied Enterprises account to fund the purchase of the partnership's first yacht. Weeks passed without word from Hubbard. Louis Culling, another OTO member, wrote to Karl Germer to explain the situation:
Germer informed Crowley, who wrote back to opine: "'It seems to me on the information of our brethren in California that Parsons has got an illumination in which he has lost all his personal independence. From our brother's account he has given away both his girl and his money. Apparently it is the ordinary confidence trick."
Parsons initially attempted to obtain redress through magical means, carrying out a "Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram" to curse Hubbard and Sara. He credited it with causing the couple to abort an attempt to evade him:
Parsons subsequently resorted to more conventional means of obtaining redress and sued them on July 1 in the Circuit Court for Dade County
. His lawsuit accused Ron and Sara of breaking the terms of their partnership, dissipating the assets and attempting to abscond. The case was settled out of court eleven days later, with Hubbard and Sara agreeing to refund some of Parsons' money while keeping a yacht, the Harpoon, for themselves. Sara was able to dissuade Parsons from pressing his case by threatening to expose their past relationship, which had begun when she was under the legal age of consent.
The boat was soon sold to ease the couple's shortage of cash and in August 1946, Hubbard proposed marriage to Sara. They were married on August 10, 1946 at Chestertown, Maryland
. It was not until several years later that Sara discovered that Hubbard had never been divorced from his first wife, Margaret "Polly" Grubb
; the marriage was bigamous
. Ironically, the wedding took place only 30 miles from the town where Hubbard had married his first wife thirteen years previously.
The couple moved repeatedly over the following year - first to Laguna Beach, California
, then to Santa Catalina Island, California
, New York City
, Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania
and ultimately to Hubbard's first wife's home at South Colby, Washington
. Polly Hubbard had filed for divorce on the grounds of desertion and non-support, and was not even aware that Hubbard was living with Sara, let alone that he had married her. The arrival of Hubbard and Sara three weeks after the divorce was filed scandalized Hubbard's family, who deeply disapproved of his treatment of Polly. The couple moved to a rented trailer in a seedy part of North Hollywood in July 1947, where Hubbard dedicated himself to writing science-fiction stories for pulp magazine
s.
After Hubbard was convicted of petty theft in San Luis Obispo in August 1948, the couple moved again to Savannah, Georgia
. Hubbard told his friend Forrest J. Ackerman that he had acquired a Dictaphone
machine which Sara was "beating out her wits on" transcribing not only fiction but his book on the "cause and cure of nervous tension". This eventually became the first draft of Hubbard's book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health
, which marked the foundation of Dianetics
and ultimately of Scientology
.
in a cottage which the science fiction editor John W. Campbell
had found for the Hubbards. Sara, who was beginning a pregnancy, was said to have been delighted with the location. In three years of marriage to Hubbard, she had set up home in seven different states and had never stayed in one place for more than a few months. She gave birth on March 8, 1950 to a daughter, Alexis Valerie. A month later Sara was made a director of the newly established Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation in Elizabeth, New Jersey
, an organization founded to disseminate knowledge of Dianetics. The Hubbards moved to a new house in Elizabeth to be near the Foundation. Sara became Hubbard's personal auditor
(Dianetic counselor) and was hailed by him as one of the first Dianetic "Clears
".
Dianetics became an immediate bestseller when it was published in May 1950. Only two months later, over 55,000 copies had been sold and 500 Dianetics groups had been set up across the United States. The Dianetics Foundation was making a huge amount of money, but problems were already evident: money was pouring out as fast as it was coming in, due to lax financial management. By October, the Foundation's financial affairs had reached a crisis point. According to his public relations assistant, Barbara Kaye, Hubbard became increasingly paranoid and authoritarian due to "political and organizational problems with people grabbing for power." He began an affair with the twenty-year-old Kaye, much to the annoyance of Sara, who was clearly aware of the liaison. One evening he arranged a double-date with his wife and Kaye, who was accompanied by Miles Hollister, an instructor in the Los Angeles Dianetic Foundation. The dinner party backfired drastically; Sara began an affair with Hollister, a handsome 22-year-old who was college-educated and a noted sportsman.
The marriage broke down rapidly in the following months. Sara and Hubbard had violent rows, sending Hubbard into a depression. Kaye recalled later that "he was very down in the dumps about his wife. He told me how he had met Sara. He said he went to a party and got drunk and when he woke up in the morning he found Sara was in bed with him. He was having a lot of problems with her. I remember he said to me I was the only person he knew who would set up a white silk tent for him. I was rather surprised when we were driving back to LA on Sunday evening, he stopped at a florist to buy some flowers for his wife." In November 1950, Sara attempted suicide by taking sleeping pills. He blamed Kaye for the suicide bid and summarily dismissed her from the Foundation.
Hubbard attempted to patch up the marriage in January 1951 by inviting Sara and baby Alexis to Palm Springs, California
where he had rented a house. The situation soon became tense again; Richard de Mille, son of the famous director Cecil B. de Mille, recalled that "there was a lot of turmoil and dissension in the Foundation at the time; he kept accusing Communists of trying to take control and he was having difficulties with Sara. It was clear their marriage was breaking up – she was very critical of him and he told me she was fooling around with Hollister and he didn't trust her." She left Palm Springs on February 3, leaving Hubbard to complain that Sara "had hypnotized him in his sleep and commanded him not to write."
Three weeks later, Hubbard abducted both Sara and Alexis with the aid of two of his Dianetics Foundation staff. In the early hours of February 25, Sara was bundled into the back of a car and driven to San Bernardino, California
, where Hubbard attempted to find a doctor to examine his wife and declare her insane. His search was unsuccessful and he released her at Yuma Airport
across the state line in Arizona
. He promised that he would tell her where Alexis was if she signed a piece of paper saying that she had gone with him voluntarily. Sara agreed but Hubbard instead flew to Chicago, where he found a psychologist who wrote a favorable report about his mental condition to refute Sara's accusations. He subsequently returned to the Foundation in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There he wrote a letter informing the FBI that Sara and her lover Miles Hollister – whom he had fired from the Foundation's staff and, according to Hollister, had threatened with death – were among fifteen "known or suspected Communists" in his organization. He listed them as:
In another letter sent in March, Hubbard told the FBI that Sara was a Communist and a drug addict, and offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could resolve Sara's problems through the application of Dianetics techniques.
Sara filed a kidnapping complaint with the Los Angeles Police Department
on her return home but was rebuffed by the police, who dismissed the affair as a mere domestic dispute. She finally filed suit at the Los Angeles Superior Court in April 1951, demanding the return of Alexis. The dispute immediately became front-page news: the newspapers ran headlines such as "Cult Founder Accused of Tot Kidnap", "'Dianetic' Hubbard Accused of Plot to Kidnap Wife", "Hiding of Baby Charged to Dianetics Author". Hubbard fled to Havana
, Cuba
, where he wrote a letter to Sara:
In reality, the very much un-paralyzed Hubbard had made an unsuccessful request for assistance from the US military attaché to Havana. The attaché did not act on the request; having asked the FBI for background information, he was told that Hubbard had been interviewed but the "agent conducting interview considered Hubbard to be [a] mental case."
Sara filed for divorce on April 23, charging Hubbard with causing her "extreme cruelty, great mental anguish and physical suffering". Her allegations produced more lurid headlines: not only was Hubbard accused of bigamy and kidnapping, but she had been subjected to "systematic torture, including loss of sleep, beatings, and strangulations and scientific experiments". Because of his "crazy misconduct" she was in "hourly fear of both the life of herself and of her infant daughter, who she has not seen for two months". She had consulted doctors who "concluded that said Hubbard was hopelessly insane, and, crazy, and that there was no hope for said Hubbard, or any reason for her to endure further; that competent medical advisers recommended that said Hubbard be committed to a private sanitarium for psychiatric observation and treatment of a mental ailment known as paranoid schizophrenia."
In May 1951, Sara filed a further complaint against Hubbard, accusing him of having fled to Cuba to evade the divorce papers that she was seeking to serve. By that time, however, he had moved to Wichita, Kansas
. Sara's attorney filed another petition asking for Hubbard's assets to be frozen as he had been found "hiding" in Wichita "but that he would probably leave town upon being detected". Hubbard, for his part, wrote to the FBI to further denounce Sara as a Communist secret agent. He accused Communists of destroying his business, ruining his health and withholding material of interest to the US Government. His misfortunes had been caused by "a woman known as Sara Elizabeth Northrup . . . whom I believed to be my wife, having married her and then, after some mix-up about a divorce, believed to be my wife in common law." He accused Sara of having conspired in a bid to assassinate him and described how he had found love letters to his wife from Miles Hollister, a "member of the Young Communists." Her real motive in filing for divorce, he claimed, was to seize control of Dianetics. He urged the FBI to start a "round-up" of "vermin Communists or ex-Communists", starting with Sara, and declared:
Fortunately for Sara – as it was the peak of the McCarthyite
"Red Scare" – Hubbard's allegations were apparently ignored by the FBI, which filed his letter but took no further action. In June 1951, she finally secured the return of Alexis by agreeing to cancel her receivership action and divorce suit in California in return for a divorce 'guaranteed by L. Ron Hubbard'. In return, she signed a statement, evidently written by Hubbard himself, retracting the allegations that she had made against him:
Interviewed more than 35 years later, Sara stated that she had signed the statement because "I thought by doing so he would leave me and Alexis alone. It was horrible. I just wanted to be free of him!"
On June 12, Hubbard was awarded a divorce in the County Court of Sedgwick County, Kansas
on the basis of Sara's "gross neglect of duty and extreme cruelty", which had caused him "nervous breakdown and impairment to health." She did not give evidence but left Wichita as soon as Alexis was returned to her. Speaking to Scientologists around this time, Hubbard blamed shadowy outside forces for the bad publicity: "We have just been through the saw mill, through the public presses. Every effort was made to butcher my personal reputation. A young girl is nearly dead because of this effort. My wife Sara."
Many years later, one of his followers, Virginia Downsborough, recalled that during the mid-1960s he "talked a lot about Sara Northrup and seemed to want to make sure that I knew he had never married her. I didn't know why it was so important to him; I'd never met Sara and I couldn't have cared less, but he wanted to persuade me that the marriage had never taken place. When he talked about his first wife, the picture he put out of himself was of this poor wounded fellow coming home from the war and being abandoned by his wife and family because he would be a drain on them." His desire to write Sara out of his life story was evident in a 1968 interview with the British broadcaster Granada Television
, in which he denied that he had had a second wife in between his first, Margaret, and the present one, Mary Sue
:
Granada's reporter commented: "What Hubbard said happens to be untrue. It's an unimportant detail but he's had three wives... What is important is that his followers were there as he lied, but no matter what the evidence they don't believe it." To this day, Church of Scientology
biographies of Hubbard's life do not mention either of his first two wives.
Hubbard also rewrote the account of why he had been involved with Jack Parsons and the OTO in the first place. After the British Sunday Times newspaper published an exposé of Hubbard's membership of the OTO in October 1969, the newspaper printed a statement by the Church of Scientology that asserted:
By 1970, Sara and Hollister had moved to Maui
, Hawaii
. Sara's daughter Alexis, who was by now twenty-one years old, attempted to contact her father but was rebuffed in a handwritten statement in which Hubbard denied that he was her father: "Your mother was with me as a secretary in Savannah in late 1948 . . . In July 1949 I was in Elizabeth, New Jersey, writing a movie. She turned up destitute and pregnant." He claimed that Sara had been a Nazi spy during the war and accused her and Hollister of using the divorce case to seize control of Dianetics: "They obtained considerable newspaper publicity, none of it true, and employed the highest priced divorce attorney in the US to sue me for divorce and get the foundation in Los Angeles in settlement. This proved a puzzle since where there is no legal marriage, there can't be any divorce."
Neither Sara nor Alexis made any further attempt to contact Hubbard. Sara broke her silence briefly in 1972 to write to Paulette Cooper
, the author of The Scandal of Scientology
. She told Cooper that Hubbard was a dangerous lunatic, and that although her own life had been transformed when she left him, she was still afraid both of him and of his followers whom she later described as looking "like Mormons
, but with bad complexions."
In June 1986, following Hubbard's death, the Church of Scientology and Alexis agreed a financial settlement under which she was compelled not to write or speak on the subject of L. Ron Hubbard and her relationship to him. An attempt was made to have her sign an affidavit stating that she was in fact the daughter of L. Ron Hubbard's first son, L. Ron Hubbard, Jr.
Sara herself did not comment publicly on her former husband until she was interviewed in July 1986 by ex-Scientologist Bent Corydon several months after Hubbard's death, which had reduced her fear of retaliation. Excerpts from the interview were published in Corydon's 1987 book, L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman?
.
L. Ron Hubbard
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard , better known as L. Ron Hubbard , was an American pulp fiction author and religious leader who founded the Church of Scientology...
, from 1946 to 1951, and wife of Miles Hollister from 1951 to her death in 1997. She had one daughter, Alexis Valerie, fathered by Hubbard in 1948.
Sara Northrup was a major figure in the Pasadena branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis
Ordo Templi Orientis is an international fraternal and religious organization founded at the beginning of the 20th century...
(OTO), a society founded by the English occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
ist Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
. From 1941 to 1945 she had a turbulent relationship with Jack Parsons
Jack Parsons
John Whiteside Parsons , better known as Jack Parsons, was an American rocket propulsion researcher at the California Institute of Technology. He was one of the principal founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Aerojet Corp...
, the head of the Pasadena OTO, who was married to her sister Helen. Although she was a committed member of the OTO, to whom she was known as "Soror [Sister] Cassap", she acquired a reputation for disruptiveness that prompted Crowley to denounce her as a "vampire
Vampire
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...
".
She began a relationship with L. Ron Hubbard, whom she met through the OTO, in 1945. It led to the couple eloping with a substantial amount of Jack Parsons' life savings and marrying bigamously
Bigamy
In cultures that practice marital monogamy, bigamy is the act of entering into a marriage with one person while still legally married to another. Bigamy is a crime in most western countries, and when it occurs in this context often neither the first nor second spouse is aware of the other...
a year later while Hubbard was still married to his first wife Margaret
Margaret Grubb
Margaret Louise Grubb was the first wife of pulp fiction author and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, to whom she was married between 1933 and 1947. She was also the mother of Hubbard's first son, L. Ron Hubbard, Jr...
. Sara played a significant role in the development of Dianetics
Dianetics
Dianetics is a set of ideas and practices regarding the metaphysical relationship between the mind and body that was invented by the science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard and is practiced by followers of Scientology...
, Hubbard's "modern science of mental health", between 1948 and 1951, during which time she was Hubbard's personal auditor
Auditing (Scientology)
Auditing was developed by L. Ron Hubbard, and is described by the Church of Scientology as "spiritual counseling which is the central practice of Dianetics and Scientology".-Description:...
and one of the seven members of the Dianetics Foundation's Board of Directors, alongside Hubbard himself. However, their marriage broke up in extremely acrimonious circumstances amid accusations of kidnapping and Communist plots, which prompted lurid headlines in the Los Angeles newspapers. She subsequently married one of Hubbard's former employees, Miles Hollister, and moved to Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
and later Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
.
Early life
She was one of five children born to Olga Nelson, the daughter of a Swedish immigrant to the United States. Her older sister Helen and two other sisters were fathered by Thomas Cowley, an Englishman working for the Standard Oil Company in ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
. After he died in 1920, her mother married Burton Northrup, a traveling salesman, and gave birth to Sara and another sister, Nancy. In 1923 the family moved to Pasadena, a destination said to have been chosen by Olga using a Oujia board. Although she later remembered her childhood with warmth, Sara's upbringing was marred by her sexually abusive father, who was imprisoned in 1928 for financial fraud. In 1933, at the age of 22, her sister Helen met the 18-year-old Jack Parsons, a brilliant chemist who went on to be a noted rocket scientist and an avid student and practitioner of the occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
. They were engaged in July 1934 and married in April 1935.
Relationship with Jack Parsons
Parsons' interest in the occult led in 1939 to him and Helen joining the Pasadena branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO). When Parsons' father died, the couple moved into his old home at 1003 South Orange Avenue, Pasadena, with the sixteen-year-old Sara moving in with them while she finished high school. Sara also joined the OTO in 1941, at Parsons' urging, and was given the title of Soror [Sister] Cassap. She soon rose to the rank of a second degree member, or "Magician", of the OTO.In June 1941, at the age of seventeen, she began a passionate affair with Parsons while her sister Helen was away on vacation. She made a striking impression on the other lodgers at 1003 South Orange Avenue; George Pendle
George Pendle
George Pendle is a British author and journalist. He was educated at Stowe School and St Peter's College, Oxford.After working at The Times from 1997 to 2001, Pendle wrote his first book, Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist Jack Parsons .Pendle’s second book – The Remarkable...
describes her as "feisty and untamed, proud and self-willed, she stood five foot nine, had a lithe body and blond hair, and was extremely candid – she often claimed to have lost her virginity at the age of ten." When Helen returned, she found Sara wearing Helen's own clothes and calling herself Parsons' "new wife." Not surprisingly this led to conflict, though such conduct was expressly permitted by the OTO, which followed Crowley's disdain of marriage as a "detestable institution" and accepted as commonplace the swapping of wives and partners between OTO members.
Although both were committed OTO members, the reactions of Parsons and Helen towards Sara were markedly different. Parsons told Helen to her face that he preferred Sara sexually: "This is a fact that I can do nothing about. I am better suited to her temperamentally – we get on well. Your character is superior. You are a greater person. I doubt that she would face what you have with me – or support me as well." Some years later, addressing himself as "You", Parsons told himself that his affair with Sara (whom he called Betty) marked a key step in his growth as a practitioner of magick: "Betty served to affect a transference from Helen at a critical period ... Your passion for Betty also gave you the magical force needed at the time, and the act of adultery tinged with incest, served as your magical confirmation in the law of Thelema
Thelema
Thelema is a religious philosophy that was established, defined and developed by the early 20th century British writer and ceremonial magician, Aleister Crowley. He believed himself to be the prophet of a new age, the Æon of Horus, based upon a religious experience that he had in Egypt in 1904...
." Helen was far less sanguine, writing in her diary of "the sore spot I carried where my heart should be", and had furious – sometimes violent – rows with both Parsons and Sara. She began an affair with Wilfred Smith, Parsons' mentor in the OTO and had a son in 1943 who bore Parsons' surname but who was almost certainly fathered by Smith. Sara also became pregnant but had an (illegal) abortion on April 1, 1943, arranged by Parsons and carried out by Dr. Zachary Taylor Malaby, a prominent Pasadena doctor and Democratic politician.
Sara's hostility towards other members of the OTO caused further tensions in the house, which were communicated by others back to Aleister Crowley in England. He dubbed her "the alley-cat" after an unnamed mutual acquaintance told him that Jack's attraction to her was like "a yellow pup bumming around with his snout glued to the rump of an alley-cat." Concluding that she was a vampire
Vampire
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...
, which he defined as "an elemental or demon in the form of a woman" who sought to "lure the Candidate to his destruction," he warned that Sara was a grave danger to Jack and to the "Great Work" which the OTO was carrying out in California.
Similar concerns were expressed by other OTO members. The OTO's US head, Karl Germer
Karl Germer
Karl Germer was the Outer Head of the Order of Ordo Templi Orientis from 1947 until his death in 1962...
, labeled her "an ordeal sent by the gods". Her disruptive behavior appalled Fred Gwynn, a new OTO member living in the commune at 1003 South Orange Avenue: "Betty went to almost fantastical lengths to disrupt the meetings [of the OTO] that Jack did get together. If she could not break it up by making social engagements with key personnel she, and her gang, would go out to a bar and keep calling in asking for certain people to come to the telephone."
Relationship with L. Ron Hubbard
Despite the tensions between them, Hubbard, Sara and Parsons agreed at the start of 1946 that they would go into business together, buying yachts on the East Coast and sailing them to California to sell at a profit. They set up a business partnership on January 15, 1946 under the name of "Allied Enterprises", with Parsons putting up $20,000 of capital, Hubbard adding $1,200 and Sara contributing nothing. Hubbard and Sara left for Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
towards the end of April, taking with him $10,000 drawn from the Allied Enterprises account to fund the purchase of the partnership's first yacht. Weeks passed without word from Hubbard. Louis Culling, another OTO member, wrote to Karl Germer to explain the situation:
Germer informed Crowley, who wrote back to opine: "'It seems to me on the information of our brethren in California that Parsons has got an illumination in which he has lost all his personal independence. From our brother's account he has given away both his girl and his money. Apparently it is the ordinary confidence trick."
Parsons initially attempted to obtain redress through magical means, carrying out a "Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram" to curse Hubbard and Sara. He credited it with causing the couple to abort an attempt to evade him:
Parsons subsequently resorted to more conventional means of obtaining redress and sued them on July 1 in the Circuit Court for Dade County
Miami-Dade County, Florida
Miami-Dade County is a county located in the southeastern part of the state of Florida. As of 2010 U.S. Census, the county had a population of 2,496,435, making it the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States...
. His lawsuit accused Ron and Sara of breaking the terms of their partnership, dissipating the assets and attempting to abscond. The case was settled out of court eleven days later, with Hubbard and Sara agreeing to refund some of Parsons' money while keeping a yacht, the Harpoon, for themselves. Sara was able to dissuade Parsons from pressing his case by threatening to expose their past relationship, which had begun when she was under the legal age of consent.
The boat was soon sold to ease the couple's shortage of cash and in August 1946, Hubbard proposed marriage to Sara. They were married on August 10, 1946 at Chestertown, Maryland
Chestertown, Maryland
Chestertown is a town in Kent County, Maryland, United States. The population was 4,746 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Kent County. The ZIP code is 21620 and the area codes are 410 and 443...
. It was not until several years later that Sara discovered that Hubbard had never been divorced from his first wife, Margaret "Polly" Grubb
Margaret Grubb
Margaret Louise Grubb was the first wife of pulp fiction author and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, to whom she was married between 1933 and 1947. She was also the mother of Hubbard's first son, L. Ron Hubbard, Jr...
; the marriage was bigamous
Bigamy
In cultures that practice marital monogamy, bigamy is the act of entering into a marriage with one person while still legally married to another. Bigamy is a crime in most western countries, and when it occurs in this context often neither the first nor second spouse is aware of the other...
. Ironically, the wedding took place only 30 miles from the town where Hubbard had married his first wife thirteen years previously.
The couple moved repeatedly over the following year - first to Laguna Beach, California
Laguna Beach, California
Laguna Beach is a seaside resort city and artist community located in southern Orange County, California, United States, approximately southwest of the county seat of Santa Ana...
, then to Santa Catalina Island, California
Santa Catalina Island, California
Santa Catalina Island, often called Catalina Island, or just Catalina, is a rocky island off the coast of the U.S. state of California. The island is long and across at its greatest width. The island is located about south-southwest of Los Angeles, California. The highest point on the island is...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania
Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania
Stroudsburg is a borough in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located in the Poconos region of the state, approximately five miles from the Delaware Water Gap, at the confluence of the Brodhead and Pocono Creeks. It is the county seat of Monroe County. Stroudsburg is part of the...
and ultimately to Hubbard's first wife's home at South Colby, Washington
South Colby, Washington
South Colby is an unincorporated community in Kitsap County, Washington, United States. It is located on Yukon Harbor, not far from the Southworth Ferry Dock. From there, a ferry is available to Fauntleroy in the West Seattle neighborhood of Seattle....
. Polly Hubbard had filed for divorce on the grounds of desertion and non-support, and was not even aware that Hubbard was living with Sara, let alone that he had married her. The arrival of Hubbard and Sara three weeks after the divorce was filed scandalized Hubbard's family, who deeply disapproved of his treatment of Polly. The couple moved to a rented trailer in a seedy part of North Hollywood in July 1947, where Hubbard dedicated himself to writing science-fiction stories for pulp magazine
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
s.
After Hubbard was convicted of petty theft in San Luis Obispo in August 1948, the couple moved again to Savannah, Georgia
Savannah, Georgia
Savannah is the largest city and the county seat of Chatham County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. Established in 1733, the city of Savannah was the colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. Today Savannah is an industrial center and an important...
. Hubbard told his friend Forrest J. Ackerman that he had acquired a Dictaphone
Dictaphone
Dictaphone was an American company, a producer of dictation machines—sound recording devices most commonly used to record speech for later playback or to be typed into print. The name "Dictaphone" is a trademark, but in some places it has also become a common way to refer to all such devices, and...
machine which Sara was "beating out her wits on" transcribing not only fiction but his book on the "cause and cure of nervous tension". This eventually became the first draft of Hubbard's book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health
Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health
Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health is a book by L. Ron Hubbard which sets out self-improvement techniques he developed, called Dianetics. The book is also one of the canonical texts of Scientology. It is colloquially referred to as Book One...
, which marked the foundation of Dianetics
Dianetics
Dianetics is a set of ideas and practices regarding the metaphysical relationship between the mind and body that was invented by the science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard and is practiced by followers of Scientology...
and ultimately of Scientology
Scientology
Scientology is a body of beliefs and related practices created by science fiction and fantasy author L. Ron Hubbard , starting in 1952, as a successor to his earlier self-help system, Dianetics...
.
The Dianetics years
The final version of Dianetics was written at Bay Head, New JerseyBay Head, New Jersey
Bay Head is a Borough in Ocean County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough population was 968. Bay Head is situated on the Barnegat Peninsula, a long, narrow barrier peninsula that separates Barnegat Bay from the Atlantic Ocean...
in a cottage which the science fiction editor John W. Campbell
John W. Campbell
John Wood Campbell, Jr. was an influential figure in American science fiction. As editor of Astounding Science Fiction , from late 1937 until his death, he is generally credited with shaping the so-called Golden Age of Science Fiction.Isaac Asimov called Campbell "the most powerful force in...
had found for the Hubbards. Sara, who was beginning a pregnancy, was said to have been delighted with the location. In three years of marriage to Hubbard, she had set up home in seven different states and had never stayed in one place for more than a few months. She gave birth on March 8, 1950 to a daughter, Alexis Valerie. A month later Sara was made a director of the newly established Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation in Elizabeth, New Jersey
Elizabeth, New Jersey
Elizabeth is a city in Union County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city had a total population of 124,969, retaining its ranking as New Jersey's fourth largest city with an increase of 4,401 residents from its 2000 Census population of 120,568...
, an organization founded to disseminate knowledge of Dianetics. The Hubbards moved to a new house in Elizabeth to be near the Foundation. Sara became Hubbard's personal auditor
Auditing (Scientology)
Auditing was developed by L. Ron Hubbard, and is described by the Church of Scientology as "spiritual counseling which is the central practice of Dianetics and Scientology".-Description:...
(Dianetic counselor) and was hailed by him as one of the first Dianetic "Clears
Clear (Scientology)
Clear in Dianetics and Scientology is one of two levels a practitioner can achieve on the way to personal salvation. A state of Clear is reached when a person becomes free of the influence of engrams, unwanted emotions or painful traumas not readily available to the conscious mind...
".
Dianetics became an immediate bestseller when it was published in May 1950. Only two months later, over 55,000 copies had been sold and 500 Dianetics groups had been set up across the United States. The Dianetics Foundation was making a huge amount of money, but problems were already evident: money was pouring out as fast as it was coming in, due to lax financial management. By October, the Foundation's financial affairs had reached a crisis point. According to his public relations assistant, Barbara Kaye, Hubbard became increasingly paranoid and authoritarian due to "political and organizational problems with people grabbing for power." He began an affair with the twenty-year-old Kaye, much to the annoyance of Sara, who was clearly aware of the liaison. One evening he arranged a double-date with his wife and Kaye, who was accompanied by Miles Hollister, an instructor in the Los Angeles Dianetic Foundation. The dinner party backfired drastically; Sara began an affair with Hollister, a handsome 22-year-old who was college-educated and a noted sportsman.
The marriage broke down rapidly in the following months. Sara and Hubbard had violent rows, sending Hubbard into a depression. Kaye recalled later that "he was very down in the dumps about his wife. He told me how he had met Sara. He said he went to a party and got drunk and when he woke up in the morning he found Sara was in bed with him. He was having a lot of problems with her. I remember he said to me I was the only person he knew who would set up a white silk tent for him. I was rather surprised when we were driving back to LA on Sunday evening, he stopped at a florist to buy some flowers for his wife." In November 1950, Sara attempted suicide by taking sleeping pills. He blamed Kaye for the suicide bid and summarily dismissed her from the Foundation.
Hubbard attempted to patch up the marriage in January 1951 by inviting Sara and baby Alexis to Palm Springs, California
Palm Springs, California
Palm Springs is a desert city in Riverside County, California, within the Coachella Valley. It is located approximately 37 miles east of San Bernardino, 111 miles east of Los Angeles and 136 miles northeast of San Diego...
where he had rented a house. The situation soon became tense again; Richard de Mille, son of the famous director Cecil B. de Mille, recalled that "there was a lot of turmoil and dissension in the Foundation at the time; he kept accusing Communists of trying to take control and he was having difficulties with Sara. It was clear their marriage was breaking up – she was very critical of him and he told me she was fooling around with Hollister and he didn't trust her." She left Palm Springs on February 3, leaving Hubbard to complain that Sara "had hypnotized him in his sleep and commanded him not to write."
San Bernardino, California
San Bernardino is a city located in the Riverside-San Bernardino metropolitan area , and serves as the county seat of San Bernardino County, California, United States...
, where Hubbard attempted to find a doctor to examine his wife and declare her insane. His search was unsuccessful and he released her at Yuma Airport
Yuma International Airport
Yuma International Airport , a shared-use airport together with Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, is located three nautical miles south of the central business district of Yuma, a city in Yuma County, Arizona, United States...
across the state line in Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
. He promised that he would tell her where Alexis was if she signed a piece of paper saying that she had gone with him voluntarily. Sara agreed but Hubbard instead flew to Chicago, where he found a psychologist who wrote a favorable report about his mental condition to refute Sara's accusations. He subsequently returned to the Foundation in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There he wrote a letter informing the FBI that Sara and her lover Miles Hollister – whom he had fired from the Foundation's staff and, according to Hollister, had threatened with death – were among fifteen "known or suspected Communists" in his organization. He listed them as:
In another letter sent in March, Hubbard told the FBI that Sara was a Communist and a drug addict, and offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could resolve Sara's problems through the application of Dianetics techniques.
Sara filed a kidnapping complaint with the Los Angeles Police Department
Los Angeles Police Department
The Los Angeles Police Department is the police department of the city of Los Angeles, California. With just under 10,000 officers and more than 3,000 civilian staff, covering an area of with a population of more than 4.1 million people, it is the third largest local law enforcement agency in...
on her return home but was rebuffed by the police, who dismissed the affair as a mere domestic dispute. She finally filed suit at the Los Angeles Superior Court in April 1951, demanding the return of Alexis. The dispute immediately became front-page news: the newspapers ran headlines such as "Cult Founder Accused of Tot Kidnap", "'Dianetic' Hubbard Accused of Plot to Kidnap Wife", "Hiding of Baby Charged to Dianetics Author". Hubbard fled to Havana
Havana
Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...
, Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
, where he wrote a letter to Sara:
In reality, the very much un-paralyzed Hubbard had made an unsuccessful request for assistance from the US military attaché to Havana. The attaché did not act on the request; having asked the FBI for background information, he was told that Hubbard had been interviewed but the "agent conducting interview considered Hubbard to be [a] mental case."
Sara filed for divorce on April 23, charging Hubbard with causing her "extreme cruelty, great mental anguish and physical suffering". Her allegations produced more lurid headlines: not only was Hubbard accused of bigamy and kidnapping, but she had been subjected to "systematic torture, including loss of sleep, beatings, and strangulations and scientific experiments". Because of his "crazy misconduct" she was in "hourly fear of both the life of herself and of her infant daughter, who she has not seen for two months". She had consulted doctors who "concluded that said Hubbard was hopelessly insane, and, crazy, and that there was no hope for said Hubbard, or any reason for her to endure further; that competent medical advisers recommended that said Hubbard be committed to a private sanitarium for psychiatric observation and treatment of a mental ailment known as paranoid schizophrenia."
In May 1951, Sara filed a further complaint against Hubbard, accusing him of having fled to Cuba to evade the divorce papers that she was seeking to serve. By that time, however, he had moved to Wichita, Kansas
Wichita, Kansas
Wichita is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kansas.As of the 2010 census, the city population was 382,368. Located in south-central Kansas on the Arkansas River, Wichita is the county seat of Sedgwick County and the principal city of the Wichita metropolitan area...
. Sara's attorney filed another petition asking for Hubbard's assets to be frozen as he had been found "hiding" in Wichita "but that he would probably leave town upon being detected". Hubbard, for his part, wrote to the FBI to further denounce Sara as a Communist secret agent. He accused Communists of destroying his business, ruining his health and withholding material of interest to the US Government. His misfortunes had been caused by "a woman known as Sara Elizabeth Northrup . . . whom I believed to be my wife, having married her and then, after some mix-up about a divorce, believed to be my wife in common law." He accused Sara of having conspired in a bid to assassinate him and described how he had found love letters to his wife from Miles Hollister, a "member of the Young Communists." Her real motive in filing for divorce, he claimed, was to seize control of Dianetics. He urged the FBI to start a "round-up" of "vermin Communists or ex-Communists", starting with Sara, and declared:
Fortunately for Sara – as it was the peak of the McCarthyite
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
"Red Scare" – Hubbard's allegations were apparently ignored by the FBI, which filed his letter but took no further action. In June 1951, she finally secured the return of Alexis by agreeing to cancel her receivership action and divorce suit in California in return for a divorce 'guaranteed by L. Ron Hubbard'. In return, she signed a statement, evidently written by Hubbard himself, retracting the allegations that she had made against him:
Interviewed more than 35 years later, Sara stated that she had signed the statement because "I thought by doing so he would leave me and Alexis alone. It was horrible. I just wanted to be free of him!"
On June 12, Hubbard was awarded a divorce in the County Court of Sedgwick County, Kansas
Sedgwick County, Kansas
Sedgwick County is a county located in the U.S. state of Kansas. The county's population was 498,365 for the 2010 census. The largest city and county seat is Wichita. The county was named after General John Sedgwick...
on the basis of Sara's "gross neglect of duty and extreme cruelty", which had caused him "nervous breakdown and impairment to health." She did not give evidence but left Wichita as soon as Alexis was returned to her. Speaking to Scientologists around this time, Hubbard blamed shadowy outside forces for the bad publicity: "We have just been through the saw mill, through the public presses. Every effort was made to butcher my personal reputation. A young girl is nearly dead because of this effort. My wife Sara."
Life after Hubbard
After divorcing Hubbard, Sara married Miles Hollister and bought a house in Malibu, California. For his part, Hubbard sought to disavow Sara. In his October 1951 work The Dianetics Axioms, he explained his marital problems as being entirely the fault of Sara:Granada Television
Granada Television is the ITV contractor for North West England. Based in Manchester since its inception, it is the only surviving original ITA franchisee from 1954 and is ITV's most successful....
, in which he denied that he had had a second wife in between his first, Margaret, and the present one, Mary Sue
Mary Sue Hubbard
Mary Sue Hubbard was the third wife of L. Ron Hubbard, from 1952 to his death in 1986, and was a leading figure in Scientology for much of her life...
:
Granada's reporter commented: "What Hubbard said happens to be untrue. It's an unimportant detail but he's had three wives... What is important is that his followers were there as he lied, but no matter what the evidence they don't believe it." To this day, Church of Scientology
Church of Scientology
The Church of Scientology is an organization devoted to the practice and the promotion of the Scientology belief system. The Church of Scientology International is the Church of Scientology's parent organization, and is responsible for the overall ecclesiastical management, dissemination and...
biographies of Hubbard's life do not mention either of his first two wives.
Hubbard also rewrote the account of why he had been involved with Jack Parsons and the OTO in the first place. After the British Sunday Times newspaper published an exposé of Hubbard's membership of the OTO in October 1969, the newspaper printed a statement by the Church of Scientology that asserted:
By 1970, Sara and Hollister had moved to Maui
Maui
The island of Maui is the second-largest of the Hawaiian Islands at and is the 17th largest island in the United States. Maui is part of the state of Hawaii and is the largest of Maui County's four islands, bigger than Lānai, Kahoolawe, and Molokai. In 2010, Maui had a population of 144,444,...
, Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
. Sara's daughter Alexis, who was by now twenty-one years old, attempted to contact her father but was rebuffed in a handwritten statement in which Hubbard denied that he was her father: "Your mother was with me as a secretary in Savannah in late 1948 . . . In July 1949 I was in Elizabeth, New Jersey, writing a movie. She turned up destitute and pregnant." He claimed that Sara had been a Nazi spy during the war and accused her and Hollister of using the divorce case to seize control of Dianetics: "They obtained considerable newspaper publicity, none of it true, and employed the highest priced divorce attorney in the US to sue me for divorce and get the foundation in Los Angeles in settlement. This proved a puzzle since where there is no legal marriage, there can't be any divorce."
Neither Sara nor Alexis made any further attempt to contact Hubbard. Sara broke her silence briefly in 1972 to write to Paulette Cooper
Paulette Cooper
Paulette Marcia Cooper is an American author who is best known for activism against the Church of Scientology and the harassment she suffered as a result. Cooper's books have sold close to a half a million copies.-Early life:...
, the author of The Scandal of Scientology
The Scandal of Scientology
The Scandal of Scientology is a critical exposé book about the Church of Scientology, written by Paulette Cooper and published by Tower Publications, in 1971....
. She told Cooper that Hubbard was a dangerous lunatic, and that although her own life had been transformed when she left him, she was still afraid both of him and of his followers whom she later described as looking "like Mormons
Mormons
The Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, a religion started by Joseph Smith during the American Second Great Awakening. A vast majority of Mormons are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints while a minority are members of other independent churches....
, but with bad complexions."
In June 1986, following Hubbard's death, the Church of Scientology and Alexis agreed a financial settlement under which she was compelled not to write or speak on the subject of L. Ron Hubbard and her relationship to him. An attempt was made to have her sign an affidavit stating that she was in fact the daughter of L. Ron Hubbard's first son, L. Ron Hubbard, Jr.
Ronald DeWolf
Ronald Edward DeWolf , born Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, Jr., also known as "Nibs" Hubbard, was the eldest child of Scientology founder L...
Sara herself did not comment publicly on her former husband until she was interviewed in July 1986 by ex-Scientologist Bent Corydon several months after Hubbard's death, which had reduced her fear of retaliation. Excerpts from the interview were published in Corydon's 1987 book, L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman?
L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman?
L. Ron Hubbard, Messiah or Madman?, first published in 1987 by Lyle Stuart Inc., is a posthumous biography of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard written primarily by author Bent Corydon, which makes extensive use of interviews he conducted with Hubbard's son, who had by that time taken to calling...
.