Esotericism, Extraterrestrials, and Southern California New Religions

This paper focuses on how members of the magical order Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) build and maintained their religion in the greater Los Angeles area in the wake of scandal. Focusing on the events in the late forties surrounding the Agape Lodge and Jack Parsons as well as those related to the Solar Lodge of the late sixties, this work relies on both correspondence of past leadership and field work with current members of the Star Sapphire Lodge, the OTO’s current LA home. This material reveals the creative work needed to maintain a new religious movement while accepting the scandal that is native to the city they call home and inevitable in an order intent on changing the world through magical means.

This qualitative analysis examines the influence of race, religion, and politics in constructing alien abduction narratives. In the 1961 case of Betty and Barney Hill, I argue both the structured retelling of and shifting motifs in the narrative are inextricably linked to the developmental shift in their personal worldviews and social locations—racial, religious, and political. In addition, my research examines the influence of the Hills’ narrative on modern media and contemporary Ufology. I argue that the sensationalization and popularization by media coverage cemented the Hills’ narrative as the model structure for contemporary alien abduction narratives and mythology. Through my analysis, I will demonstrate that despite changing motifs within each retelling and their fluctuating public credibility, the subsequent literary and media adaptations have canonized the Hills’ narrative as the contemporary model for alien abduction narratives.

Scott Cunningham, native son of San Diego is one of, if not the most, prolific contemporary Pagan writer. At the age of thirty-three when he died, he had already published thirty-three books on magic and Wicca. Although not the first to share information about Wiccan initiation and rituals, he was the first to advocate solitary practice. His books helped to usher in the growth of solitary practice and the popularity of eclectic Paganism that are prevalent today in the movement. This paper will both exam the impact of his work on contemporary Paganism and place his writings within the larger framework of the occult in San Diego in the 1970s and 80s.

G.I. Gurdjieff, founder of the esoteric movement known as “The Fourth Way,” has long confounded his observers, pupils, and scholars of his life and work. This paper explores how Gurdjieff’s performative ambiguity in public self-presentations has contributed to the sense of mystery surrounding his identity and motivations as a spiritual teacher. To examine Gurdjieff’s performativity in the context of one of its most formative historical cases, this paper considers his often-overlooked visit to America in 1924, when he and twenty-three of his pupils arrived from France to perform “demonstrations” of sacred dances, music, and “tricks, half-tricks, and real supernatural phenomena” for audiences in New York City, Boston, and Chicago. Revisiting primary sources from the 1924 tour alongside historical studies on religion, Orientalism, popular science, and stage magic in early twentieth-century America suggests that Gurdjieff’s mysterious persona was a product of his own self-fashioning, an identity that he developed as a means of inviting skepticism and debate. This analysis suggests we may reconceive Gurdjieff’s public performativity as ritualized mystery-making, constituting a provocative invitation to engage in Fourth Way praxis.