Cameron and Thelema

Cameron was first introduced to Thelema – a religious philosophy created by occultist Aleister Crowley and centered on the premise “do what thou wilt” – by her husband Jack Parsons who himself became interested in the religion after attending a performance of the Gnostic Mass in Hollywood in 1939. Parsons was initiated into the Church of Thelema – then known as the Agape Lodge – in 1941 and became the head of the Lodge a year later. 

In the wake of Parson’s death in a laboratory explosion, Cameron’s grief intensified her commitment to Thelemic practice. Turning inward, she withdrew to the desert near Beaumont, California, where she undertook a series of rituals aimed at reestablishing contact with him. In correspondence with a fellow Thelemite, she described a ritual conducted during this period through which she conceived a psychic child with Parsons – a so-called “Wormwood Star.” In 1953, she returned to Los Angeles, just as the city was beginning to emerge as a hub of countercultural activity. 

In the subsequent decades, Cameron devoted herself to artmaking while sustaining her magical practice, which became increasingly intertwined. Works such as Holy Guardian Angel According to Aleister Crowley engage with the Thelemic concept of the guardian angel as the guiding intelligence that expresses the individual’s True Will. In Crowley’s system, achieving Knowledge and intimate conversation with this being marks a decisive moment of alignment between the practitioner and their ultimate purpose. Cameron visualizes this encounter through a hieratic figure who stands with arms outstretched in a cruciform gesture radiating rays of light. In one hand she holds a chalice – a primary symbol of the Thelemic goddess Babalon and associated with the womb and the divine feminine. In the other hand she holds three, golden leaves an allusion to recurring tripartite motifs in Thelema, such as the three pillars of Thelema and the Feast of Three Days which commemorates the three days it took Crowley to write the Book of Law.