Editing L. Ron Hubbard (section)

====After the war====
{{main|Scientology and the occult|Affirmations (L. Ron Hubbard)|L. Ron Hubbard and psychiatry}}
[[File:Jack Parsons (cropped).jpg|right|thumb|Parsons in 1943]]
After Hubbard chose to stay in California rather than return to his family in Washington state,{{sfn|Miller|1987|p=125}} he moved into the [[Pasadena, California|Pasadena]] mansion of [[Jack Parsons (rocket engineer)|John "Jack" Whiteside Parsons]], a rocket propulsion engineer and a leading follower of the English [[Occultism|occultist]] [[Aleister Crowley]].<ref name="Wright2011">{{Cite magazine |last=Wright |first=Lawrence |author-link=Lawrence Wright |date=February 14, 2011 |url=http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_wright?currentPage=all |title=The Apostate: Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology |magazine=The New Yorker |access-date=February 8, 2011}}</ref>{{sfn|Miller|1987|p=113}} Hubbard befriended Parsons and soon became sexually involved with Parsons's 21-year-old girlfriend, [[Sara Northrup Hollister|Sara "Betty" Northrup]].{{sfn|Miller|1987|p=117}}<ref>Parson letter to Crowley: "[Hubbard] is a gentleman; he has red hair, green eyes, is honest and intelligent, and we have become great friends. He moved in with me about two months ago, and although Betty and I are still friendly, she has transferred her sexual affection to Ron. 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 [[Holy Guardian Angel|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. He is the most [[Thelema|Thelemic]] person I have ever met and is in complete accord with our own principles." as quoted in Symonds, John. ''The Great Beast: the life and magick of Aleister Crowley'', p. 392. London: Macdonald and Co., 1971. {{ISBN|0-356-03631-6}}</ref> Hubbard and Parsons collaborated on "[[Babalon Working]]", a [[sex magic]] ritual intended to summon an incarnation of [[Babalon]], the supreme Goddess in Crowley's pantheon.<ref name="Urban">{{Cite book |last=Urban |first=Hugh B. |author-link=Hugh Urban |title=Magia sexualis: sex, magic, and liberation in modern Western esotericism |page=137 |publisher=University of California Press |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-520-24776-5}}</ref>

During this period, Hubbard authored a document which has been called the "[[Affirmations (L. Ron Hubbard)|Affirmations]]", a series of statements relating to various physical, sexual, psychological and social issues that he was encountering in his life. The Affirmations appear to have been intended to be used as a form of self-hypnosis with the intention of resolving the author's psychological problems and instilling a positive mental attitude.<ref>"Your eyes are getting progressively better. They became bad when you used them as an excuse to escape the naval academy. You have no reason to keep them bad.", "Your stomach trouble you used as an excuse to keep the Navy from punishing you. You are free of the Navy.", "You can tell all the romantic tales you wish. ... But you know which ones were lies ... You have enough real experience to make anecdotes forever. Stick to your true adventures.", "Masturbation does not injure or make insane. Your parents were in error. Everyone masturbates."  –  Hubbard's [[Affirmations (L. Ron Hubbard)|Affirmations]]</ref>{{sfn|Wright|2013|pp=53–54}}

{{multiple image|perrow = 2|total_width=250
| image1 = L Ron and Sara Hubbard June 1946.jpg
| image2 = Sara Northrup.jpg
| footer = Hubbard and Northrup aboard the schooner Blue Water II in June 1946 (left). The Church of Scientology has republished this photograph with Northrup (pictured right) airbrushed out.
}}

Parsons, Hubbard and Sara invested nearly their entire savings — the vast majority contributed by Parsons and Sara — in a plan for Hubbard and Sara to buy yachts on the East Coast and sail them to the West Coast to sell. Hubbard had a different idea, writing to the U.S. Navy requesting permission to undertake a world cruise.{{sfn|Pendle|2005|p=268}} Parsons attempted to recover his money by obtaining an injunction to prevent Hubbard and Sara leaving the country or disposing of the remnants of his assets, but ultimately only received a $2,900 promissory note from Hubbard. Parsons returned home "shattered" and was forced to sell his mansion.{{sfn|Pendle|2005|p=270}}{{sfn|Pendle|2005|p=269}}

[[File:Two Complete Science-Adventure Books Winter 1950.jpg|thumb|right|Hubbard's novella "[[The Kingslayer]]" was reprinted in ''[[Two Complete Science-Adventure Books]]'' in 1950 after its original publication in a 1949 Hubbard collection.]]
On August 10, 1946, Hubbard married Sara, though he was still married to his first wife Polly.{{sfn|Miller|1987|p=134}} Hubbard resumed his fiction writing to supplement his small disability allowance.{{sfn|Streeter|2008|p=210}} In August 1947, Hubbard returned to the pages of ''Astounding'' with a serialized novel "The End is Not Yet", about a young nuclear physicist who tries to stop a world takeover by building a new philosophical system.<ref>Miller, 134</ref> In October 1947, the magazine began serializing ''[[Ole Doc Methuselah]]'', the first in a series about the "Soldiers of Light", supremely skilled, extremely long-lived physicians. In February and March 1950, Campbell's ''Astounding'' serialized the Hubbard novel ''[[To the Stars (novel)|To the Stars]]'' about a young engineer on an interstellar trading starship who learns that months aboard ship amounts to centuries on Earth, making the ship his only remaining home after his first voyage.<ref name="Stableford" /> During his time in California, Hubbard began acting as a sort of amateur stage hypnotist or "[[Orientalism|swami]]".<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://tonyortega.org/2015/01/30/another-secret-lives-leak-l-ron-hubbard-enjoyed-humiliating-people-under-hypnosis/ |title=Another Secret Lives leak: L. Ron Hubbard enjoyed humiliating people under hypnosis |first=Tony |last=Ortega |date=January 30, 2015}}</ref>{{sfn|Miller|1987|p=231}}

Hubbard repeatedly wrote to the [[United States Department of Veterans Affairs|Veterans Administration]] (VA) asking for an increase in his war pension.{{sfn|Miller|1987|pp=125, 128, 131}} Finally, in October 1947, he wrote to request psychiatric treatment:

{{blockquote|After trying and failing for two years to regain my equilibrium in civil life, I am utterly unable to approach anything like my own competence. My last physician informed me that it might be very helpful if I were to be examined and perhaps treated psychiatrically or even by a psychoanalyst. Toward the end of my service I avoided out of pride any mental examinations, hoping that time would balance a mind which I had every reason to suppose was seriously affected. I cannot account for nor rise above long periods of moroseness and suicidal inclinations, and have newly come to realize that I must first triumph above this before I can hope to rehabilitate myself at all. ... I cannot, myself, afford such treatment.<br /> Would you please help me?<ref>Hubbard, L. Ron, letter to Veterans Administration, October 15, 1947; quoted in [[#CITEREFMiller1987|Miller 1987]], p. 137</ref>}}

The VA eventually did increase his pension,{{sfn|Miller|1987|p=139}} but his money problems continued. In the summer of 1948, Hubbard was arrested by the San Luis Obispo sheriff on a charge of petty theft for passing a fraudulent check.{{sfn|Miller|1987|page=142}} Beginning in June 1948, the nationally-syndicated wire service [[United Press International|United Press]] ran a story on an American Legion-sponsored psychiatric ward in Savannah, Georgia, which sought to keep mentally-ill war veterans out of jail.<ref>e.g. The Herald-News (Passaic, New Jersey) June 10, 1948, Ventura County Star-Free Press June 23, 1948, Spokane Chronicle (Spokane, Washington) September 29, 1948</ref><ref>{{multiref2
| 1 = {{Cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-atlanta-journal-dont-put-the-insane/130026022/ |title=Don't put the Insane in Jail, part 1 of 2 |first=Ash |last=Gerecht |newspaper=The Atlanta Journal |date=May 23, 1948}}
| 2 = {{Cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-atlanta-journal-dont-put-the-insane/130027904/ |title=Don't put the Insane in Jail, part 2 of 2 |first=Ash |last=Gerecht |newspaper=The Atlanta Journal |date=May 23, 1948}}
}}</ref> In late 1948, Hubbard and his second wife Sara moved from California to Savannah, Georgia, where he would later claim to have worked as a volunteer in a psychiatric clinic.{{sfn|Miller|1987|page=143}} Hubbard claimed he had "processed an awful lot of Negroes"<ref>PDC43</ref> and wrote of having observed a psychiatrist using the threat of institutionalization in a state hospital to solicit funds from a patient's husband.<ref>{{Cite web | url=http://carolineletkeman.org/dsp/2010/04/28/article-todays-terrorism/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171008130619/http://carolineletkeman.org/dsp/2010/04/28/article-todays-terrorism/ |archive-date=October 8, 2017 |title = Article: Today's Terrorism – Decoding Scientology Propaganda|quote="I well recall a conversation I had with a Dr. [Abraham Hyrman] Center in Savannah, Georgia, in 1949. It well expresses the arrogance and complete contempt for law and order of the psychiatrist. A man had just called to inquire after his wife who was "under treatment" in Center's hospital. Center asked him, "Do you have the money...? That's right, thirty thousand... well you better get it or I'll have to send your dear wife to the state institution and you know what will happen then!" I was there doing work on charity patients the local psychiatrists wouldn't touch. Center had forgotten I was in the room."}}</ref><ref>Abraham Hyman Center per [https://books.google.com/books?id=0F0ZAAAAIAAJ&dq=abraham+center+savannah Biographical Directory of Fellows & Members of the American Psychiatric Association, 1950]</ref> In letters to friends sent from Savannah, Hubbard began to make the first public mentions of what was to become Dianetics.{{sfn|Miller|1987|p=143}}