01 May The Scarlet Woman
A retrospective of the artwork of Marjorie Cameron (April 23, 1922 – June 24, 1995) entitled “Cameron: Songs for the Witch Woman” was held at LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art in 2014. Although she had been established within the artistic and avant-garde communities for decades, it was only after her death that her reputation grew.
Before that time, Cameron, as she chose to be called, was perhaps most well-known as the wife of Jack Parsons, the infamous rocket scientist and occultist. When she visited Parson’s home in Pasadena after he and L. Ron Hubbard had been performing the Babalon Working, her red hair made Parsons believe she was the Scarlet Woman, prophesized by Aleister Crowley as one of the beacons of the new age. They married in 1946, and although they were frequently separated, were together until he died in the freakish explosion in their home in 1952.
Cameron had been born and raised in the Midwest where she her rebellious nature and artistic proclivities made her the black sheep of the family. She worked for the railroad, and enlisted in the Navy for several years before she made it to LA. Excelling as an artist, a writer, a poet and an actress, here Cameron found herself an active member of the avant garde of artists at the intersection of art and drugs. She continued throughout the rest of her life to produce writings, poetry, drawings and paintings, and acted as a mentor to such well-known artists as Wallace Berman and George Herms. Kenneth Anger had her star as The Scarlet Woman in his film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, the entirety of which can be watched on YouTube.
Nomadic, Cameron lived at various times in Pasadena, West Hollywood, Venice, Joshua Tree, Beaumont, Mexico, San Francisco, and Santa Fe. Later in life she suffered from poor physical and mental health, mostly due to heavy drug use. Cameron continued to believe she was Aleister Crowley’s prophesized Scarlet Woman until the end of her days when she died in LA in 1995.
This is an excerpt from Catherine Auman’s book Guide to Spiritual L.A.: The Irreverent, the Awake, and the True
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