Marjorie Cameron
Marjorie Cameron (April 23, 1922 – July 24, 1995), who professionally used the mononym Cameron, was an American artist, poet, actress and occultist. A follower of Thelema, the new religious movement established by the English occultist Aleister Crowley, she was married to rocket pioneer and fellow Thelemite Jack Parsons.
Early life
Cameron was born in Belle Plaine, Iowa, on April 23, 1922. Her father, railway worker Hill Leslie Cameron, was the adopted child of a Scots-Irish family; her mother, Carrie Cameron (née Ridenour), was of Dutch ancestry. Cameron attended Whittier Elementary School and Belle Plaine High School, where she did well at art, English, and drama but failed algebra, Latin, and civics lessons. She also participated in athletics, glee club, and chorus. She had sexual relationships with various men; after Cameron became pregnant, her mother performed an illegal home abortion.
In 1940, the Cameron family relocated to Davenport so Hill could work at the Rock Island Arsenal munitions factory. Cameron completed her final year of high school education at Davenport High School. After leaving school, she worked as a display artist in a local department store.
Following the United States' entry into the Second World War, Cameron signed up for the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, a part of the United States Navy, in February 1943. Initially sent to a training camp at Iowa State Teachers College in Cedar Falls, she was subsequently posted to Washington, D.C., where she served as a cartographer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In the course of these duties, she met U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill in May 1943.
She was reassigned to the Naval Photographic Unit in Anacostia, where she worked as a wardrobe mistress for propaganda documentaries, and during this period met various Hollywood stars. When her brother James returned to the U.S. injured from service overseas, she went AWOL and returned to Iowa to see him, as a result of which she was court–martialed and confined to barracks for the rest of the war.
For reasons unknown to her, she received an honorable discharge from the military in 1945. To join her family, she traveled to Pasadena, California, where her father and brothers had found work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
Relationship with Jack Parsons
In Pasadena, Cameron ran into a former colleague, who invited her to visit the large American Craftsman-style house where he was currently lodging, 1003 Orange Grove Avenue, also known as "The Parsonage." The house was so-called because its lease was owned by Jack Parsons, a rocket scientist who had been a founding member of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and who was also a devout follower of Thelema, a new religious movement founded by English occultist Aleister Crowley in 1904. Parsons was the head of the Agape Lodge, a branch of the Thelemite Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.).
Unbeknownst to Cameron, Parsons had just finished a series of rituals using Enochian magic with his friend and lodger L. Ron Hubbard, all with the intent of attracting an "elemental" woman to be his lover. Upon encountering Cameron with her distinctive red hair and blue eyes, Parsons considered her to be the individual whom he had invoked. After they met at The Parsonage on January 18, 1946, they were instantly attracted to each other and spent the next two weeks in Parsons' bedroom together. Although Cameron was unaware of it, Parsons saw this as a form of sex magic that constituted part of the Babalon Working, a rite to invoke the birth of Thelemite goddess Babalon onto Earth in human form.
During a brief visit to New York City to see a friend, Cameron discovered that she was pregnant and decided to have an abortion. Parsons meanwhile had founded a company with Hubbard and Hubbard's girlfriend Sara Northrup, Allied Enterprises, into which he invested his life savings. It became apparent that Hubbard was a confidence trickster, who tried to flee with Parsons' money, resulting in the end of their friendship. Returning to Pasadena, Cameron consoled Parsons, painting a picture of Northrup with her legs severed below the knee. Parsons decided to sell The Parsonage, which was then demolished for redevelopment, and the couple moved to Manhattan Beach.
On October 19, 1946, he and Cameron married at the San Juan Capistrano courthouse in Orange County, in a service witnessed by his best friend Edward Forman. Having an aversion to all religion, Cameron initially took no interest in Parsons' Thelemite beliefs and occult practices, although he maintained that she had an important destiny, giving her the magical name of "Candida," often shortened to "Candy," which became her nickname.
Parsons' death
Parsons' and Cameron's relationship was deteriorating and they contemplated divorce. By March 1951, Parsons and Cameron had moved to the coach house at 1071 South Orange Grove, while he began work at the Bermite Powder Company, constructing explosives for the film industry. Parsons and Cameron had decided to travel to Mexico for a few months.
On the day before they planned to leave (June 17, 1952) he received a rush order of explosives for a film set, and began work on the order at his house. In the midst of this project, an explosion destroyed the building, fatally wounding Parsons. He was rushed to hospital, but was declared dead. Cameron did not want to see his body and retreated to San Miguel, asking her friend George Frey to oversee the cremation.
After Parsons' death
While in Mexico, Cameron began performing blood rituals in the hope of communicating with Parsons' spirit; during these, she cut her own wrists. As part of these rituals, she claimed to have received a new magical identity, Hilarion. When she heard that an unidentified flying object had allegedly been seen over Washington D.C.'s Capitol Building, she considered it a response to Parsons' death. After two months, she returned to California and attempted suicide.
Increasingly interested in occultism, she read through her husband's papers. Embracing his Thelemic beliefs, she came to understand his purpose in carrying out the Babalon Working and also came to believe that the spirit of Babalon had been incarnated into herself. She came to believe that Parsons had been murdered by the police or anti-Zionists, and continued her attempts at astral projection to commune with his spirit. Her mental stability was deteriorating, and she became convinced that a nuclear test on Eniwetok Atoll would result in the destruction of the California coast.
After using the Chinese divination text the I Ching, Cameron returned to Los Angeles and was arrested for illegal drug possession. Through common friends, Cameron met Sheridan "Sherry" Kimmel, and the two entered a relationship. A veteran of the Second World War from Florida, Kimmel suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder, often causing him severe mood swings. He developed an interest in occultism and became intensely jealous of Parsons' continuing influence over Cameron, destroying Parsons' notes on the Babalon Working that she had kept. Cameron again became pregnant, although she was unsure who the father was. She gave birth to a daughter, Crystal Eve Kimmel, on Christmas Eve 1955. She allowed her daughter to behave how she pleased, believing that this was the best way for her to learn.
Art career
In autumn 1956, Cameron's first exhibition was held, at Walter Hopps's studio in Brentwood; several paintings were destroyed when the gallery caught fire. Around this time, Cameron was introduced to the actor Dean Stockwell at a public recital of her poetry; he then introduced her to his friend and fellow actor Dennis Hopper. She was also an associate of the artist Wallace Berman, who used a photograph of her on the front of the first volume of his art journal, Semina. The volume also included Cameron's drawing, Peyote Vision. This artwork was featured in Berman's 1957 exhibition at Los Angeles' Feris Gallery, which was raided and shut down by the police. Investigating officers claimed that Peyote Vision, which featured two copulating figures, was pornographic and indecent, thus legitimizing their actions.
In 1960, Cameron appeared alongside Hopper in Harrington's first full-length film, Night Tide. The film was a critical success and—despite not receiving a wide distribution—became a cult classic. In October 1964, the Cinema Theatre in Los Angeles held an event known as The Transcendental Art of Cameron, which displayed her art and poetry and screened some of her films; Kenneth Anger arrived and disrupted the event by objecting to the screening of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome without his permission. He then launched a poster campaign, The Cameron File, against his former friend, labelling her "Typhoid Mary of the Occult World." The pair later reconciled, Cameron visiting Anger in San Francisco, where he introduced her to Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan. LaVey was delighted to meet her, having been a fan of Night Tide.
Later life
Returning to California, by 1969 she was living in the Pioneertown sector of Joshua Tree. From there she and her daughter moved to a small bungalow on North Genesee Avenue in the West Hollywood area of Los Angeles, which at the time had become impoverished and associated with crime, sex stores, and adult movie theatres; she remained there for the rest of her life. Cameron became a regular practitioner of Tai chi, took part in group sessions in Bronson Park under the tutelage of Marshall Ho'o, and earned a teaching certificate in the subject.
As well as entertaining old friends who came to visit her in her home, Cameron also met with younger occultists, such as the Thelemite William Breeze and the industrial musician Genesis P-Orridge. Cameron aided Breeze in co-editing a collection of Parsons' occult and libertarian writings, which were published as Freedom is a Two-Edged Sword in 1989. Cameron was acquainted with the experimental film-maker Chick Strand and appeared in the latter's 1979 project Loose Ends, during which she narrated the story of an exorcism.
In 1989, an exhibition of her work titled The Pearl of Reprisal was held at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery.
Death
In the mid-1990s, Cameron was diagnosed with a brain tumor and underwent radiotherapy treatment, which she supplemented with alternative medicines. The tumor was cancerous and metastasized to her lungs. She died at the age of 73 in the VA Medical Center on July 24, 1995, and underwent the Thelemic last rites, carried out by a high priestess of Ordo Templi Orientis.
Her body was cremated and her ashes were scattered in the Mojave Desert. A memorial event was held at Venice's Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in August.
Legacy
Cameron's reputation as an artist grew after her death. In 1995, her painting Peyote Vision was included as part of an exhibition on "Beat Culture and the New American" held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. In 2006, her friend Scott Hobbs established the Cameron–Parsons Foundation to serve as an archive storing and promoting her work.
In 2007 a retrospective of Cameron's work was held at the Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York City's Chelsea district, while that same year some of her works appeared in the traveling exhibition "Semina Culture", which was devoted to all of the artists who contributed to Wallace Berman's journal.
Cameron's life was brought to wider attention through the publication of two biographies about Parsons: John Carter's Sex and Rockets and George Pendle's Strange Angel. Her aesthetic also influenced the fashion world, designers Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor acknowledging Cameron as a partial inspiration for their Skaist-Taylor label.