Jack Parsons, the father of rocket science and founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), was an enigma of a man to say the least. Parsons lived a double life, one of science by day and dark magic by night, although he believed the two were one and the same. He conjured spirits and ancient deities, and he delved into sex magic. He believed he had no limits and could manifest energies just as real as the once-believed-impossible science he helped create.
His known associates were eccentric and somewhat controversial; his mentor was none other than cult leader and prince of darkness Aleister Crowley. Parsons even became a Priest for Crowley’s order of Thelema. Parsons also became friends with Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and ended up contributing to much of Scientology’s foundation – as he and Hubbard would discuss magic and philosophy for hours on end. As brilliant a scientist as he was, it wasn’t long before his unorthodox personal life began to affect him professionally. Much like pet owners who begin to resemble their animals, this mad genius began to mirror his work – becoming highly explosive. In the end, he became too unpredictable to work with, and one of his experiments ended up leading to his death at just 37 years old.
Aleister Crowley Mentored Jack Parsons
According to Crowley, he had a revelation in Cairo, Egypt, in which the spirit Aiwass dictated an entire prophetic text to him; this text became known as The Book of the Law. This acid trip became a religion and a way of life for Parsons and many others.
It was the occult philosophy of Thelema, founded by Aleister Crowley, that Parsons adhered to. In the late 1930s, Parsons joined the Ordo Templi Orientis (The O.T.O.), in Los Angeles and partook in their drug-fueled, sexually charged rituals. Parsons was eventually named Priest of the Los Angeles chapter.
He Ate Menstrual Cakes With His Cult
As part of the O.T.O., Crowley and Parsons would perform the “Gnostic Mass,” which Crowley devised as a perversion of the Catholic Mass. During the Mass, an altar of candles and hieroglyphic patterns stands together with an upright coffin on a black-and-white stage, awaiting the ceremony’s officiants to emerge. In the coffin, the priest awaits the arrival of the priestess who, once she makes her entrance, leads the ceremony and prayers along with the priest.
During their unholy version of the Eucharist, participants drink wine and eat the “Cake of Light” – made with menstrual blood. Yes, as in actual cakes made with actual menstrual blood inside them.
He Bought A Mansion For Sex Magic And All Things Hedonistic
With all Parsons’s rocket science genius, he became pretty rich (naturally). What did he do with his riches? He bought a mansion on Pasadena’s Millionaire’s Row and welcomed his sex-magic cult into it with open arms, and it quickly became a den of hedonism. In addition to housing all of the O.T.O.’s operations, all sorts of eccentrics became frequenters of the “the Parsonage.”
Science fiction writers, poets, Manhattan Project scientists, self-proclaimed witches – the house was always full of people, many of whom donned strange masks and costumes during their stay on the premises.
He Made His Marriage A Foursome After Seducing His Wife’s 17-Year-Old Sister
Apparently, there was no line Parsons wouldn’t cross when it came to sex. Ritual sex, adulterous sex, and even a little bit of incest… it was all fair game to him. With the encouragement of his church, Parsons began having a sexual relationship with his wife’s 17-year-old sister, Sara. His wife, Helen, started sleeping with another man around the same time, a senior member of the church named Talbot Smith.
The four of them decided to move into the Parsonage together and continued to have multiple sex partners while also engaging in group sex (for ritual and recreational purposes) until Jack and Helen Parsons finally divorced.
He Became ‘Frenemies’ With L. Ron Hubbard (Who Stole His Girlfriend)
After crossing paths with Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, Parsons quickly fell under his spell. The two became friends and confidants. They fenced together; discussed philosophy and magic; the two were even rumored to be sexually involved. And by 1945, Hubbard was living at the Parsonage.
Hubbard greedily worked his way through many women in his time at the Parsonage – right on through, in fact, to Parsons’s girlfriend Sara. Sara became quite taken with the science fiction author. She and Hubbard ended up founding Scientology together.
He Tried To Conjure Up A New Girlfriend
After Parsons’s lover/sister-in-law became enamored with L. Ron Hubbard, Parsons turned to his trusty old black magic. He became obsessed with researching things like ghosts and poltergeists and decided to conjure up himself a new lover.
That’s right – he decided to summon up an “elemental” to be his new girlfriend, and the ritual involved him masturbating onto magical tablets to the sound of music.
It was after one of these rituals in 1946 that Parsons met his soon-to-be-second wife, Marjorie Cameron. He was convinced his ritual had worked and that she was his elemental. She was even the inspiration behind his book of poetry, Songs for the Witch Woman.
Parsons And Hubbard Tried To Summon A Goddess Together
Hubbard and Parsons teamed up to perform an Enochian magical ritual known as the Babalon Working, which basically involves trying to incarnate an actual goddess. The ritual took weeks during which the two men engaged in ritual chanting while waving swords in the air and drawing occult symbols. Then they broke out the runes and dripped animal blood on them. Finally, they attempted to “impregnate” magical tablets by masturbating on them together.
News of this got back Crowley and he was appalled. The founder of a sex cult, the guy widely known as “The Wickedest Man in the World,” was appalled. In a telegram, he called Parsons a “weak fool” and insisted Hubbard was a swindler taking advantage of Parsons. He was right. Hubbard just gained Parsons’s trust, stole his girlfriend, and ran off with $20,000 under the guise of a business investment that Parsons never saw again.
He Had Affairs With Secretaries, Recited Pagan Poems, And Hosted Duels… At Work
Those who worked with Jack Parsons – especially members of his rocketry “Suicide Squad” like Edward Forman and Frank Malina – would often hear him recite a poem to Pan that was penned by Crowley while he worked on his rocketry experiments. Sure, this could be a little strange, but the real issue was his excessive lifestyle spilling out into work.
His devil-may-care attitude led to dangerous behavior that put the business at risk. He’d have not-so-subtle affairs with secretaries and host duels out on the rocket-testing range. He and Edward Forman would literally fire off guns at each other’s feet, trying not to flinch.
On one occasion, Fritz Zwicky insisted on a particular type of rocket fuel that Parsons didn’t want to try. So, he went out to where this fuel was being stored and blew the whole batch up. He literally blew up inventory.
He Was Investigated By The FBI & Booted Out Of His Own Business
All the negative attention Parsons and his mansion of black magic and debauchery – the Parsonage – were attracting led to an FBI investigation. Parsons’s cult involvement seemed like it could be a threat to national security. By day, he was a rocket scientist working for the government, and, by night, he was jumping out of coffins, eating menstrual cakes, and trying to conjure up poltergeists to have sex with. Naturally, the FBI got a little worried about his head space.
They found no sign that he was a real security risk. It didn’t matter, though. As the Cold War set in, people were being frozen out left and right for being alleged communists or sympathizers. After WWII, Parsons and several of his colleagues ended up losing their security clearance anyway. The government didn’t have room for people with… “quirkiness.”
He Made His Own Magic
After having created his own branch of science (and then being squeezed out of it) Parsons decided to create his own magic as well. He didn’t want to just work Crowley’s spells. Parsons was convinced he could combine science with magic and explore all of the physical and metaphysical realms.
It was a rebellion against the very concept of limitations to the human experience; he didn’t see himself or humankind as a race that needed to stay tethered to the Earth. Space travel, dimensional travel – it was all possible in his mind, and he set out for the physical evidence to prove it. He threw himself into his magic.
He Got So Freaky, He Creeped Out His Own Cult Members
In time, O.T.O. members actually started worrying about Parsons’s sanity. His non-stop attempts at manifesting things were really starting to freak them out. One member, Jane Wolfe ,wrote about her concerns to another member, Karl Germer.
“There is something strange going on. Our own Jack is enamored of witchcraft, the houmfort, voodoo. From the start he always wanted to evoke something—no matter what, I am inclined to think, so long as he got a result.”
He Died In An Explosion While Mixing Chemicals In His Lab
After being ousted from the rocketry game, Parsons took on consulting jobs and did some pyrotechnics work for the film industry. So, it wasn’t strange that he had explosive materials in his possession at the time of his death; it was the type of materials and how they seemed to have been handled that was suspicious.
It was June of 1952; Parsons and his conjured-up elemental of a wife, Marjorie, were planning a trip to Mexico after he finished up a few things in his lab.
It seems that while working with an extremely volatile chemical, there was an explosion involving mercury in Parsons’s lab. He was still alive when police arrived but not for long. Half of his face was missing, his jaw and skull were exposed. His right arm had been blown off, and his legs were in a crumpled heap positioned unnaturally before him. Surrounded by occult documents, he was apparently trying to tell the paramedics something about the explosion, but his injuries made him impossible to understand. He died from his injuries, and, upon hearing the news, his mother overdosed and died as well.
Strange Circumstances Led People To Think Parsons Was Assassinated
It appeared he was mixing chemicals in a can, which he dropped. His death was ruled an accident. But this scenario involves the founding father of rocketry stirring highly sensitive chemicals in a tin can, which seems highly unlikely. In another twist, there was also a morphine-filled syringe found at the scene, suggesting Parsons was drugged.
Those who knew him scoffed at this being an accident, claiming Parsons was far too careful and meticulous, and he wouldn’t be using a tin can to mix anything. And, according to chemical engineer George Santymers, the explosion had to have come from beneath the floorboards.
This led to claims that Parsons was assassinated – that the explosion was a government cover up. There was a theory going around that Howard Hughes had Parsons assassinated. Apparently, Parsons was believed to have stolen Hughes’s Aircraft Company documents. Some claimed it was the work Parsons had done for Israel at one point that motivated it, and anti-Zionists killed him. Finally, others believe he died during an attempt to create a homunculus.
Some Say Parsons Was Killed By Police Seeking Vengeance
Parsons served as an expert explosives witness during the trial of Captain Earl Kynette. Kynette was a corrupt police officer who was accused of attempted murder and conspiring to set off a car bomb. Kynette ended up being convicted, largely on Parsons’s testimony and reconstruction of the car bomb.
Because of this – and the fact that it was an explosion that killed him – some claim Parsons was murdered by police officers as vengeance for testifying against Earl Kynette.
When In Doubt, Blame Demons
Artist Renate Druks stated she believed Parsons’s death was due to a ritual he had been performing. She theorized the explosion was caused by a conjuring gone horribly wrong. She posited that, perhaps, he summoned some kind of fire demon by mistake.
The rite was a combination of alchemy and the theory of preformism, which claims organisms develop from miniature versions of themselves. What he was trying to create was a homunculus, a teeny, tiny creature of folklore, often compared to the Golem of Jewish faith.
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