Free Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright Page A

sufficient power to solve these problems and effect the necessary changes, and that is the force of a new religion.”
    TWENTY-ONE-YEAR-OLD SARA ELIZABETH “ BETTY ” NORTHRUP , Parsons’s feisty mistress, was the younger sister of his wife, who had run off with another man. Sara was tall, blond, buxom, and wild, often claiming to have lost her virginityat the age of ten. “Her chief interestin life is amusement,” one of the boarders observed. But she was alsoquick and intelligent and full of joy, delighting everyone around her. She had become involved with Parsons, who was ten years older, when she was fifteen. Her parents tolerated the relationship; in fact, her indulgent father helped bankroll theParsonage, which Sara purchased jointly with Parsons while she was still a teenager. One evening RobertHeinlein appeared at the house, bringing along his friend L. Ron Hubbard, who was wearing dark glasses and carrying a silver-handled cane. “He was not only a writerbut he was a captain of a ship that had been downed in the Pacific and he was weeks on a raft and had been blinded by the sun and his back had been broken,” Sara later recalled. “I believed everything he said.”
    A few months later, Hubbard moved in. He made an immediate, vivid impression on the other boarders. “He dominated the scenewith his wit and inexhaustible fund of anecdotes,” one of the boarders,Alva Rogers, later recalled. “Unfortunately, Ron’s reputation for spinningtall tales (both off and on the printed page) made for a certain degree of skepticism in the minds of his audience. At any rate, he told one hell of a good story.” Like Hubbard, Rogers had red hair, and he was intrigued by Hubbard’s theory that redheads are the living remnant of the Neanderthals.
    Hubbard invited one of his paramours from New York,Vida Jameson, to join him at the Parsonage, with the ostensible task of keeping the books. It’s a testimony to his allure that she came all the way across America to be with him, although soon after she arrived, she discovered that she had been displaced.
    The other boarders watched in astonishment as Hubbard worked his charms on the available women in the household, before setting his sights on “the most gorgeous, intelligent, sweet, wonderful girl,” as another envious suitor described Sara Northrup. “There he was, living off Parsons’ largesse and making out with his girlfriend right in front of him. Sometimes when the two of them were sitting at the table together, the hostility was almost tangible.” Enlivened, no doubt, by their rivalry over Sara, Parsons and Hubbard quickly developed a highly competitive relationship. They liked to begin their mornings with a bout of fencing in the living room.
    Parsons struggled with his feelings of jealousy, which were at war with his philosophy of free love. He could understand Northrup’s attraction to the new boarder, describing Hubbard in a letter to Crowley in 1946 as “a gentleman, red hair, green eyes, honest and intelligent.…He moved in with me about two months ago.” Then Parsons admits, “Although Betty and I are still friendly, she has transferred her sexual affections to Ron.” He went on to admireHubbard’s supernatural abilities. “Although he has no formal training in Magick, he has an extraordinary amount of experience and understanding in the field. From some of his experiences I deduced that he is in direct touch with some higher intelligence, possibly his Guardian Angel. He describes his Angel as a beautiful winged woman with red hair whom he calls the Empress and who has guided him through his life and saved him many times.”
    The extent to which Scientology was influenced by Hubbard’s involvement with the OTO has long been a matter of angry debate. There is little trace in Hubbard’s life of organized religion or spiritual philosophy. In the Parsonage, he was drawn into an obscure and stigmatized creed, based on the writings and practice