
HERE IS the second installment of the autobiographical interview with
the late Caliph Hymenaeus Alpha conducted by his close friend Soror
Lola DeWolfe.

   On the first anniversary of H.A.'s death, July |2, |986 EV, some
thirty-odd O.T.O. members and friends boarded a boat, sailed to the
waters off San Francisco, and distributed Grady's ashes at sea--such
was his oft-stated will. The event was organized by Sister Lola, Rusty
Sporer and GTG Bill Heidrick. By all reports it was a celebratory and
emotional affair, fitting for a great Thelemite who lived long and
desired death much.

   The following day many Bay Area Thelemites gathered at Thelema
Lodge for a banana split party in honor of the late Caliph's well-
known predisposition for such mood-altering substances. In
remembrance, we also reproduce one of Grady's poems (the recitation is
also from the interview tape) as a preface to the interview proper.--
H.B.

Hymenaeus Alpha:

Oh sweet adulterous harlot of the skies

   I yearn to thee with heart of burning fire
Pray that I might lie between thy thighs
   To find one mad all-consuming quire
   The passion promised in thy tender eyes.

That I might find, o sweet incestuous one
   The flame uniting heart to soul and mind
And having found this love of two and none
   Cast off the shell that maketh mankind blind
   Unto the glory of the dawning sun.

And having found my rapture in thy kiss
   O daughter of the evening's purple charms
To know the beauty, and the carnal bliss
   Of total dissolution in thine arms
   My Babalon, veiled by the dread abyss.

And then I penned a few sentences, the first two sentences come right
out of ``The City Of Dreadful Night'' which Crowley thought was the
greatest poem of the nineteenth century... the rest of it I added and
he didn't like it, but anyway...

O melancholy brothers

   Dark--dark--dark
Death is the way of thy birth,
   Pain is the curse of thy mirth,
   Sweet is the kiss of the earth.

(Continued...) I got acquainted with a bunch of Chicano kids in Selma,
and it turned out that they were involved with the Selma High School
band. And it also turned out that there was a guy in Pasadena by the
name of Aubrey Strong. And he happened to be dean of men at Pasadena
Junior College. He also happened to be the bandmaster for the
Tournament of Roses band. Which of course was the Pasadena Junior
College band during the year. And on New Year's day, it was the
Tournament of Roses Band.

   Therefore, he had incentive to take certain high schools in
California...the ones who had outstanding bands that any band member
that wanted to come to Pasadena Junior College would be damned sure
that all of their costs would be paid...it wasn't exactly a
scholarship, it was something like ``National Youth Authority.''
That's right, N.Y.A. There was like so much money available to
deserving students to help them in their program of trying to get an
education. And so he could guarantee that you would get one because he
was the Dean of Men.

   So anyway, now I had a problem...and this is one for the record,
folks! OK, you do with what you've got. So what happened was this! I








found out these kids were going to be going down to Pasadena to go to
school. Well, I wanted to go to college, too. But I didn't have a
prayer. But I could play the trombone. And they were all in the band.

   Now there's a custom, over in places in the agricultural district
of California, over in Central Valley, just like in Kansas. They have
a gazebo in the central park in the small town and on Friday night,
everybody comes in and they space out on the movies or the ice cream
cones or whatever, and the band plays in the park, and everybody sits
around and lets the air blow across them, because it's hot and you're
sweaty and everybody gets off on the band music and then everybody
goes home, right?

   Now, these three guys, they were all, like I said, Chicano. I can't
remember their names...Roy Lopez was one, I can't remember the
others...anyway, they were used to playing in the gazebo. So what they
said to me was this: ``O.K. Grady, bring your trombone this
Friday...and we'll get you in.'' And they did. And I sat there and I
played with them. And then, I got up and I left with them.

   And so then, like a number of weeks later, came time to report into
Pasadena Junior College and the four of us lined up before Aubrey
Strong, the Dean of Men, and he said, ``You're from Selma?'' ``Yes,
Sir!'' And he accepted us all, and they didn't snitch on me. And
that's how I got into college. Because my daddy got busted for being a
bank robber and learned to play the trombone.

Did you get along well with your father?
My father was always a puzzle to me. (Silence.) He had the cunning of
a streetwise animal. He was a medieval knight in the wrong age. When
we ran out of money, and him being a known ex-con, in Oklahoma in the
thirties, there was nothing to stop him from running out, but he
didn't.

   One morning, we were living in this little run down shack down by
the railroad yard...the reason this is standing out is that every hour
on the hour a passenger or a freight train came charging along...swish
kuchuuung. I used to risk my life going over to pick up coals for my
mother so she could put them on the stove. So one morning I got up, I
was a curious kid, and my family was still in bed. So I go out onto
the back porch and there's mother...If you don't shut up I'm going to
throw you out {to meowing cat}...I go out onto the back porch and
here's several big boxes of groceries, and there is a great, big
Hershey's chocolate bar, you know what a sweet tooth I have! Well,
Joe, who was sitting in the front room with a couple of loaded German
Lugers {tape becomes unintellegible} they had the great big clips on
them, you know? I leaned right out the side of the car alongside a
delivery truck and popped a few caps over the windshield and he
stopped, and I stopped too...

How old were you?
Oh, god, I was born in '18, '28, '38 (unintellegible). In his own way
he was a very honest guy. How to get along with him I don't know
because I didn't know him that well. For example, he offered to teach
me all of the elements of criminal training. One night, we were
sitting there in his little room...and Dad says ``Come out into the
garage, there's something I'd like to show you.'' So we went out and
there's a nice Chevy Chevrolet, I think they called it, nice, and








painted black. I started to touch it, you know kids, and Dad said,
``No, Buck, never touch it like that, always pull your finger like
this'' and he showed me. In other words, if I had wanted to be a
criminal, I had a perfect teacher. But I didn't want to, I wanted to
go to school. Somebody was in Kansas and Dad was driving it to Texas.

You didn't mention that you're a double Libra.
Yes, well, for those, in terms of oral history, for those who would be
interested, the double Libra, sun conjunct rising sign in 26 degrees
of Libra with Mercury ascendant. I have {a Grand} trine in fire signs
and it goes like this: Moon in Aries 40 degrees trine Neptune in Leo
at nine degrees and trine Mars {in Sagittarius} twelve degrees. I have
Saturn in Leo at 25 degrees in opposition to Uranus and Aquarius 23
degrees (unintellegible).

We left off here, you're in college,
My career in college was shall we say spectacular, but not very. I
tried to go out for a career in engineering/physics, but I blew it
when I discovered I couldn't understand differential calculus. As a
consequence, I didn't quite make that.
   However, in the process, because I'd been into science fiction
since the mid-thirties, when I was a high school student, I had gotten
involved in the local Los Angeles science fiction club. Where I was
living back then. Paul Friables' habit and mine. Paul Friables was one
of those genius types, he was a student of chemistry at Cal-Tech. He
was to take his degree and die young because he had a bad heart. He
was putting out a fan mag called Polaris in which some of Ray
Bradbury's very earliest stories were printed.

   It was his habit and mine on Friday evening, to take the big red
car, the big red streetcar over from Pasadena to Los Angeles where we
would transfer over to a streetcar and we would wind up at a place
called the ``Cliff Cafeteria'' which is about five stories tall, and
as in any metropolitan area on Friday night, when everybody goes home,
it was empty from the top down, which meant that the top floor was
cheap for rent, and it had a room called ``The Little Brown Room''
with a big long conference table in it and outside the diners would
sit with all these containers of bug juice...free.

   And so we would line up in there around this table. And there were
two chicks in the whole group...Lona and Pogo and they had a
particular mission in life, to turn us all on to Esperanto because if
we all spoke the same language there wouldn't be any wars. Remember,
this was 1938 and War Two was just hanging over our heads...they were
sure preaching the doctrine.

   In any case, one evening I was sitting there and I saw this idiot
running up and down on the other side of the table. Well, there were
original paintings by artists for the covers of science fiction
magazines on the wall and so, this guy was running up and down with a
horrible Halloween rubber mask over his face trying to scare the
people, especially the girls and they wondered who the hell that idiot
was and he got tired of it and took his mask off and it was Ray
Bradbury, he was just getting really hot at the time. It was that kind
of an atmosphere.

   So anyway, one night we were standing around being happily bombed
and this little swirl of people comes moving through the crowd. I








might add, in those days, Cory Ackerman had one of the leading
collections of science fiction, this was thirty-eight, thirty-nine.
Well of course you can imagine what it's like now, but in any case, it
happened to be one of our particular little games to say, ``Hey,
everybody, let's go over to Cory's place and see his collection,'' and
we would.

   It was like this great big cavern and that was only upstairs, I
don't know what he had downstairs, but we used to go on trips like
that. Anyway, so I went to this founding meeting of the California
Sci-Fi Society and we're standing around being happily bombed, the
rooms were just full of people in and out and this little swirl of
people comes moving through the crowd, and this very handsome
guy...looked a lot like me in a way and what we talked about most was
science fiction, magick and poetry. ``What kind of poetry are you
writing?'' And so the next thing I know, it turned out that his name
was Jack Parsons. And he said, ``By the way, where do you live?''
Was he already famous at that time?
No, he wasn't famous. Well, in the scientific community he was very
well known. And in the science of rocketry he was very well known. But
as far as the general public was concerned I doubt if the general
public even knew he existed. True they named a crater on the Moon
after him, but the people in the general public didn't know who Jack
Parsons was.

   But, so, I said ``Pasadena'' and he said he had a private home, so
that's how I wound up on Terrace Drive. And I became a part of the
menage on Terrace Drive. And I discovered beautiful things like
Wagner, and Debussy and music and fantastic illustrated books by Poe
and Aleister Crowley and fantastically wonderful times...I always knew
I'd been there.

And did Jack Parsons know Crowley?

He never did know him. He wrote letters. He never did meet him in
person. When Jack Parsons died, we were all rather shocked because we
looked at him as our coming genius. We expected him to do great
things. After all, he was the only member of the Order of the Temple
whose name had been perpetuated by having a crater on the moon named
for him. However, he did die, and the question rose as to why? Why
would he have chosen to have exited this world at that particular time
and that particular manner--and there was considerable speculation.

   One line of speculation was that it was an accident. Another line
of speculation was that it was suicide at the psychic level.
Personally, I hold to the second point of view. That is to say, my
personal opinion is that Jack Parsons came down, did his trip and went
home. And as far as I'm concerned, it's as simple as that. So that
when it comes to psychic suicide, or something like that, in other
words, had he fulfilled his mission, there wasn't any point in
sticking around.

   Now, what was the next point?

It seems like, in a way, he was the Antichrist?

Well, there's one way of looking at it, that Christ committed suicide.
Being the son of god, he didn't have to die, but he did. Well,








apparently, Jack Parsons saw something that the rest of us didn't see,
and that was this: that if we were going to put an end to the reign of
Christianity, you would have to have an antichrist to counterbalance
the effect of Christ. Like the Star Trek episode I was mentioning
earlier. In which these two guys, the only way to keep them from
tearing the universe apart was to lock them in a tunnel where they
will be in eternal combat...at least they won't tear this universe
apart. And that's what Parsons did if I'm correct. The point is, if
you didn't seal it off, it wouldn't do any good.

And how was it he created Magical children?

Oh, through his Babalon working.

In what year did he do that?

(answer unintellegible.) So, anyway, the other night at Solartron's
tarot reading...we had, by the way, by count, ten Thoth decks there
and I was part of a very beautiful...I had this very beautiful
communication. Each person did a different reading laying out cards in
their own pattern...whatever they wanted to do.

   But me, I had this little treasure chest with these very unique
reading cards. Thoth deck and the way I did, I took the reading from
zero right on up through until I came to the Universe card and it
wasn't there. And then I realized that when I had gone through picking
out the major arcana that I had somehow or other mixed them. So I
wondered what to do, but I needed a card to fill it, so I reached over
to the deck...I wasn't playing any games or anything...I just reached
over and pulled a card and it turned out to be the Prince of Cups.

   Now, my birthday happens to be October 18th, which if you check
your Tarot, you'll discover is the Prince of Cups. In other words, a
Libra going over into Scorpio, which, in the I Ching, is known as
``Kung Fu'' or ``Inner Truth'' as it says in the I Ching it is so
powerful that it moves even pigs and fishes.

And so then you drew three more cards after that?

Oh yes, then I drew three more cards just to see what was happening,
and what I found was the Eight of Wands which is like lightning
invocation and in the middle there was the Universe ard where it
should have been in the major Atu and on the other side of that, there
was the Ace of Disks which is called in the Thoth deck Aleister
Crowley's 666 and it says that right in the middle. It seemed like
somebody was trying to tell me something. It is on public record,
printed in a couple of places that Aleister Crowley wrote the
letter...he wrote several in fact, one was to me. The substance of it
was that having discovered that Jack Parsons was up to creating a
Moonchild and (unintelligible) those were the facts of these
(unintelligible) bondages or whatever, my apologies to
(unintelligible). I have no idea what they're talking about yet he
{Crowley} had published Moonchild (unintelligible) and all Jack
Parsons was trying to do as far as I can tell was someplace put into
effect was what the masters...and what you have here is a Babalon
operation. This was dated 22 February, 1946.

   One thing, I seem to have my elementals...{Grady here quotes from
Parsons}: ``She turned up on night after the conclusion of the







operation...before she goes back to New York next week. She has red
hair and green eyes as specified.''

END OF INTERVIEW



