Its interesting that Hubbard dissed Korsybski and Freud the subject of
psychology and psychotherapy and I've probably left some people out,
other philosophers for example. but said " Crowley was my friend."
Hubbard said Crowley was his "very good friend" to a small gathering of fledgling Scientologists in the earliest days of Scientology, at Philadelphia (PDC) in late 1952.
In his loose-lipped cocaine-energized state, Hubbard was somewhat recklessly name-dropping to give himself "gravitas" before that specific audience. This was not unlike the vanity-lists of great thinkers presented in the front of both 'Science of Survival' and 'Scientology 8-8008', except that those vanity-lists of great thinkers were likely assembled by Hubbard's assistant and editor John Sanborn, and discreetly omitted any reference to Crowley. After all, the books were going to have a wider audience than the Philadelphia lectures to a small group.
By the time that the Philadelphia lectures of '52 were being promoted and sold to public Scientologists, Hubbard was in hiding, while his wife was on her way to the federal penitentiary for crimes committed under his direction. At that point, his attention was on money-grubbing (more than ever), monument(-to-himself) building, and subpoena-avoiding.
Of course, Crowley was not his "friend." He had never met Crowley, and Crowley had only known of Hubbard through some letters he had received from Jack Parsons a few years earlier, in 1945&46. After reading these letters, Crowley had concluded that Hubbard was a swindler and a confidence man.
Hubbard was studying Crowley's writings at the time of the '52 Philadelphia lectures. This was obvious to me when I first heard these lectures. By that time, I had read most of Crowley's books. A few years later, this was confirmed by L. Ron Hubbard Jr. (Nibs), who told me that his father had studied Crowley's writings each night before the Philadelphia lectures. Incidentally, Nibs - before he was eventually crushed by Scientology's hush-money and Fair Game machine - also asserted that his father used drugs - to "open doors" - and also used self-hypnosis. These assertions were later supported by courts' evidence, even though Scientologists still snicker at the idea.
When I first heard the Philadelphia lectures, the mentions of Crowley seemed peculiar, as I had only heard of Hubbard's story of his having been "sent in by Naval Intelligence to break up a black magic group," that had appeared, in 1969, as PR damage control.
Hubbard, by 1969, had not only distanced himself from Crowley, but had added another detail to his tales regarding his already "erased" second wife, Sara: Crowley had become a black magician whose group, in America, Hubbard had heroically destroyed, but Sara had become a Russian spy whose real name was "Komkovadananov." (!)
Hubbard lied to the "wogs" and Scientologists about Crowley, and then lied about his second wife, Sara Northrup, to Scientologists, explaining in the 1969 confidential issue, 'Intelligence Actions - Covert Data Collection':
"The objective of the enemy is to discredit... Their first blast was from the San Francisco papers, Sept. 1950, quoting the publisher (of Book One) Ceppos being critical of me (he was a communist) followed by the LA papers, pushed then by Sara Komkovadamanov (alias Northrup) 'divorce' actions, followed by attempted kidnapping of myself. Other details were pushed into it including the murder of four and so on. This was a full complete covert operation. At the back of it was Miles Hollister (psychology student), Sara Komkovadamanov (housekeeper at the place nuclear physicists stayed near Caltech), Gene Benton and his wife - president of the Young Communists League... This was a full war against Dianetics."