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Aloha,

On 8/30/2010 11:46 AM, Samuel Wagar wrote:
And in "Sex and Rockets ; The Occult World of Jack Parsons" (a great little biography ) by John Carter, Heinlein's friendship with Jack Parsons, the head of the OTO branch, Agape Lodge, is mentioned. With the amount of science fiction authors in and around the OTO at the time (notably L. Ron Hubbard) this is not surprising.
 
So Leslyn Heinlein might have been involved as well.
Interestingly (but sorta pointing away from the O.T.O.),
the Heinlein bio makes it pretty clear that the Heinleins
were not active occultists with lodge or organization
affiliations. The book does mention, more or less incidentally,
that Robert had attended _one_ Gnostic Mass celebrated
by Parsons and his O.T.O. lodge (I assume at Parsons'
Pasadena house).

Besides, the timing is off. The puzzling passage about
Leslyn Heinlein doing witchcraft refers to the mid-to-late
1930s. Parsons did not get the O.T.O. Pasadena Lodge
(and do those infamous workings) until 1942 and after.

But the Heinleins spent WWII working for the Navy in
Philadelphia.

Robert Heinlein was an "intellectual" occultist,
who enjoyed reading and ruminating on the occult, but
nowhere is there any indication that he did much occultism.

So far as I have got in the book, it seems that Leslyn
was the more active occultist, so far as the two did
occultism.

And, except for Hubbard and Parsons, it doesn't appear
that any other of the Southern California SF writers
were much involved with O.T.O. style occultism.

Musing Rocket Scientists Who Invoke & Seek To Beget
The Moonchild! Rose,

Pitch