After someone blew up part of the Georgia Guidestones on July 6 and then Georgia’s GBI knocked down the rest as a precaution, the enigmatic structure was in the news like never before, and that meant that rumors about a tie between the Guidestones and Scientology would start up again.
We heard from several readers who said they were seeing mentions of Scientology and its founder L. Ron Hubbard in regard to the Guidestones, asking us about any possible connection.
There is none. A 2015 documentary firmly established that the Guidestones were built in 1980 at the behest of a conservative Christian evangelical surgeon in Iowa named Herbert Hinzie Kersten (1920-2005). He designed the installation to promote his own vision for the future, advocating for a smaller human population (held at 500 million worldwide), small government, and staying in tune with nature.
Despite this origin, it was seen as a “satanic” installation by some groups, which have cheered its destruction.
So how did the notion that Scientology was involved arise and become so persistent?
We can think of a few reasons. Some outsiders accuse Scientology of being “satanic” because of Hubbard’s association with Aleister Crowley, Thelema, and other occult ideas in the 1940s. And there’s no question that some of the basic ideas behind what would become Scientology were things Hubbard stole directly from Crowley. (See this article, for example.)
Also, Scientology has its own tradition of preserving its ideas for future generations with as much permanence as possible. To explain that, we have to go back a few years.
In Southern California in February 1980 (about eight months after work on the Guidestones had begun in Georgia), L. Ron Hubbard said goodbye to some of his most loyal followers, got into the back of a van driven by the young couple Pat and Annie Broeker, and drove away into complete seclusion.
About a year later, from hiding, Hubbard ordered a large reorganization of the Scientology movement, creating a number of new entities. One of these was the Church of Spiritual Technology. CST plays an important role in Scientology as the ultimate authority on Hubbard’s trademarks and copyrights, which it lends out to another organization, the Religious Technology Center. RTC nominally runs Scientology with its chairman, David Miscavige. But if something threatened RTC or Scientology as a whole, CST could take back the trademarks and copyrights and rebuild the movement. Denise Brennan, who helped create the reorganization in 1981-1982, explained all this to us. She explained that lawsuits might decimate the Church of Scientology International, or even reach Miscavige and RTC, but CST was untouchable and designed to be “the ultimate backstop,” she said.
But CST’s role was not only to be a legal oasis. It also was given, by Hubbard, a bizarre mission: To preserve his legacy for thousands of years. Brennan told us that Hubbard took the notion from his own novel, Battlefield Earth, which he was completing at that time. So in hiding in California Hubbard ordered underground vaults to be built and for his ideas to be etched in stainless steel and stored in them. As a result of his orders, CST has built four underground vaults in California and New Mexico, where Hubbard’s writings and lectures are stored on media that is designed to last at least six thousand years.
Hubbard himself didn’t prove to be as durable. After several years with the Broekers and other caretakers in seclusion, he died on a ranch near Creston, California, on January 24, 1986 after a series of strokes. He was 74 years old.
Although Hubbard died, Scientology still considers what he wrote to be its “scriptures,” and his instructions must be followed to the letter. So CST went ahead and spent hundreds of millions on the project to archive his words. This was divulged by Scientology to the IRS in disclosures it made as part of a process to grant the church tax exempt status in October 1993.
A few weeks after that incredible victory for Scientology and its new leader, David Miscavige, the Associated Press carried a story saying that among the things Scientology had divulged to the IRS was that it planned to build “indestructible obelisks” around the country with pictographs to describe Scientology concepts for future generations.
In 2014, Jeffrey Augustine, at his blog, published that disclosure by Scientology’s CST to the IRS, containing this passage…
CST also has firm plans to construct many large indestructible obelisks in different parts of the world with the express purpose of preserving for all future generations of man, the precepts from the book The Way to Happiness, by L. Ron Hubbard. These precepts will be translated into pictograph form, etched onto large stainless steel sheets and then be attached to the obelisks. Thus these vital precepts will survive far into the future in such a form that even a primitive culture will be able to decipher them and derive the basis for a sane cultural beginning.
And in 2020, we added another interesting wrinkle: We had talked to a former CST contractor who told us that as recently as 2007 the Scientology subsidiary was still working on plans to build the obelisks.
So, one might assume that given Scientology’s own plans to educate future generations with permanently etched instructions in underground vaults, and plans to build obelisks in various places, that this led some people to believe that Hubbard and Scientology were also behind the Guidestones.
You might assume that. But when we looked around to see what is actually being said by people about the connection between Scientology and the Guidestones, we mostly found completely batshit conspiracy nonsense.
So really, trying to find a rational explanation for why this persistent notion came about is mostly an exercise in futility.
The takeaway? The Guidestones had nothing to do with Hubbard. But as far as preserving words for future generations, the Guidestones (R.I.P.) had nothing on Scientology.
Thank you for reading today’s story here at Substack. For the full picture of what’s happening today in the world of Scientology, please join the conversation at tonyortega.org, where we’ve been reporting daily on David Miscavige’s cabal since 2012. There you’ll find additional stories, and our popular regular daily features:
Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history
Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea
Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time
Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology
Random Howdy: Your daily dose of the Captain
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The Hubster did want to 'smash his name into history'. I am surprised that Miscavige hasn't put up a huge statue of Lron in Clearwater. Fundraising opportunities are always needing an excuse to start up. Just what mankind needs right now, another Ozymandias.
Please preserve all your articles Tony, and really, ones like this one, need to be put into an anthology.
You earned more books being published by you, if you ask me. You explain things well, and I find not complaints really. You get Scientology.
I'm glad you did all your articles, and ones like today's really ought be in an anthology.
You are essentially doing the FAQ for Scientology, and telling the fuller truth.