The conventional wisdom is that Ron L. Hubbard started up Scientology to make money. Not true. He started it up to win a bet over a bottle of wine.

Circa late 1940’s, Ron Hubbard, Robert Heinlein, Poul Anderson, and spouses Fredrick Pohl and Judith Merril used to meet socially over the Pohl’s kitchen table every Friday night to swap ideas, help each other out with their projects, make suggestions, and generally shoot the breeze.

Heinlein mentioned one evening that he was working on a new short story about cults, but was having a lot of trouble with it because cults were so esoteric and little known. ‘Nonsense’, said, Hubbard, ‘Cults are a dime a dozen and anyone can start a new one up overnight’. So the bet was on over a bottle of wine.

A month later Hubbard won the bet with Scientology. What happened next was that the first people in brought in their contributions to Hubbard original tenets, and overnight Scientology took off with wings of its own. Judith Merril was a chum in Toronto in the late sixties and told the story.

For similarly true story about ‘Sylphs’ see: https://www.radionicships.com/Starrgram10.

For a similar true story about ‘The Radionnic Ships of the Heavenly Host’ see: https://www.radionicships.com/.