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night of January 14th, 1946, the electric power failed as they were mumbling incantations, and Hubbard was struck by something on the right shoulder, knocking a candle from his hand, *He called me,* Parsons wrote, 'and we observed a brownish-yellow light about seven-feet high. I brandished a magical sword, and it disappeared. Ron's right arm was paralysed for the rest of the tae night.* During one of their rites, Parsons was given this prophecy: "Bab-alon [the whore of Babylon] is incarnate upon the earth today, awaiting the proper hour of her manifestation. And in that day my work will be accomplished, and I shall be blown away upon the breath of the father...' Lafayette Ronald Hubbard went on to bigger and better things. Born in Tilden, Nebraska in 1911, he served in the Marines, studied engineering, and became a prolific science fiction writer. Sometime around 1948 he began to develop a form of pseudopsychiatry which he labelled Dianetics. John Campbell, Jr., editor of Astounding Science Fiction, served as one of his first patients and was so imi pressed by Hubbard's concept that he persuaded him to write an article about it for Ms magazine. The article caused such a stir among the science fiction fans that Hubbard quickly churned out a full-length book, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Healing. It became an instant bestseller, and a new movement was born. Teed's neologisms (such as 'planets are spheres of substance aggregated through the impact of afferent and efferent fluxions of essence*) were nothing compared to Hubbard's new vision oi the human mind and soul. All our troubles, he decided, were caused by 'engrams': traumas stored in the unconscious or reactive mind. Patients were guided by auditors - people who have already undergone the process, unearthed their own engrains, and reached the exalted state of ‘clear’. The American Medical Association, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other authorities took a dim view of Dianetics, and Hubbard's career had many ups and downs throughout the 1950s. At one point he publicly claimed that he had even visited Venus, Apparently the friendly Venusians were 100 per cent behind Dianetics. But even with their support, Mr Hubbard suffered many setbacks and his movement went into limbo for a, few years, reappearing in the late 1950s as the Church of Scientology. Inside newsletters and publications distributed to the operators of the Scientology offices or "org" (short for organization) are written in Hubbaid's own unique jargon with emphasis on the magic word sell. In 1962, the Food and Drug Administration raided the Founding Church of Scientology in Washington, D.C., and seized literature and a number of E-meters. The E-meters are a simple electrical device similar to a lie detector and are used by auditors in counselling sessions. On August 30th, 1971, Federal District Court Judge Gerhard A. Gesell in Washington ruled in favour of Scientology and ordered the return of the confiscated materials because the FDA failed to prove that the E-meters were being sold as healing devices. A rocket fuel explosion at a laboratory in Pasadena in 1952 did blow away the ill-fated Parsons.