Hundreds of years ago, if you told someone
that one day, human beings would fly through the air, they would assume you were talking
about witchcraft. And yet, in 1904, the Wright Brothers flew
the first successful airplane. One decade later, in 1914, Jack Parsons was
born. While most boys in his generation were still
fascinated by airplanes, Parsons was already two steps ahead. He dreamed about building the first rocket
ship that would take men to the moon. Of course, back then, this idea was considered
a total fantasy. In the 1920’s and 30’s, characters like
Buck Rogers popularized the idea that humans could explore the expanses of space, but it
was purely science fiction. Flying an airplane is one thing, but no man
could truly go to the moon, unless they had magic powers. Scientists and engineers from around the world
said that the math simply didn’t add up, and that mankind would never make it out of
the stratosphere. For Jack Parsons, the opinions of all of these
experts didn’t stop him from trying to make this dream a reality. He studied the chemistry necessary to create
a liquid rocket fuel that was, in fact, strong enough to defy gravity...And, for good measure,
he practiced a bit of real magic, too. His work would become the basis of NASA’s
modern-day space program. But his legacy was tarnished by his involvement
with the occult. Instead of being in the limelight of history,
the memory of his accomplishments were pushed aside for years. This is the story of the original rocket man,
Jack Parsons. Early Life
Jack Parsons’ parents, Ruth Whiteside and Marvel Parsons were originally from wealthy
families in Massachusetts. They moved to Los Angeles together in the
early 1900’s. In 1914, they gave birth to a son, “Marvel
Whiteside Parsons”. When he was very young, his parents got a
divorce. Ruth Whiteside called her son “Jack”,
instead of “Marvel”. Ruth purchased a house on Orange Grove Avenue
in Pasadena, California, which has the nickname “Millionaire Mile”, because the streets
are lined with mansions. Parsons was a bookworm, and he enjoyed reading
sci fi instead of playing outside and making friends. He was so fascinated by stories of magic,
that he once tried to summon the Devil in his bedroom. Parsons wanted to grow up to build a rocket
ship so badly, he was willing to do whatever it takes, even selling his soul to Satan. Nothing happened, of course. He later called this experience a “magical
fiasco”, and he never attempted to do it again. In Junior High, he did badly in school, even
though he had a bright mind. Growing up without a father, Parsons was awkward
around other boys, and many people considered him to be effeminate. Another boy in his class, Edward Forman, was
also being bullied for reading science fiction books. The two became close friends, and shared the
dream of going to space one day. When they were in High School, they experimented
with fireworks and home made rockets in the Parson’s back yard. He was always trying to figure out methods
to make the rockets go higher in the air. Their back yard was full of large craters
made from all of his attempts. He was so hyper focused on this goal, that
his grades continued to plummet. Jack Parsons’ mother sent him to a boarding
school called the Brown Military Academy in hopes that it would straighten him out, but
it didn’t work, because he was expelled for blowing up one of the dormitory toilets. Ruth Whiteside’s father had been supporting
their lavish lifestyle. So when he passed away in 1931, they had to
move into a much smaller house. Parsons was attending college to study physics
and chemistry at the time, but he had to drop out, because his family could no longer afford
the tuition. The chemistry classes he took in school were
enough for him to find a job as a chemist at the Hercules Powder Company, which specialized
in creating gunpowder. He earned $100 a month, which is more like
$1,760 a month after modern inflation, and he was learning so much-needed information
about explosive chemicals. He married Helen Northrup in 1935, when he
was 21 years old. He tried to save up money for tuition so he
could transfer his credits to to Stanford University, but it was simply too expensive. The Suicide Squad
Jack Parsons was still very close with his childhood friend Edward Forman. He and Ed attended public lectures at local
universities to learn from some of the greatest minds in the aeronautics industry. They met a Caltech student named Frank Malina,
who introduced them to his thesis advisor, Theodore von Karman. He allowed them to have access to the Guggenheim
Aeronautical Laboratory, which had been abandoned after the Great Depression. Once they had access to the state-of-the-art
equipment, they gathered a team of other graduate students at Caltech to help them build their
rocket engine. As their experiments got bigger and bigger,
they had to move out into the desert, in an area known as the Devil’s Dam in Pasadena. Their official named was the GALCIT Rocket
Research Project, but around campus, they earned the nickname “Suicide Squad”, because
of all of their near-death experiences experimenting with explosives. The succeeded in building the J.A.T.O Rocket,
which was rocket fuel-assisted takeoff. Soon enough, the United States Air Force took
notice to their rocket engine. The government hired Jack Parsons and his
friends to create the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Years later, this same laboratory would become
the foundation of NASA. He made so much money, he was able to buy
a mansion in Pasadena, which he named “The Parsonage”. Secret Life, and The Babalon Working
By day, Jack Parsons seemed to be a man of science and logic. Little did his friends and family know that
he was leading a double life casting magic spells at night, in hopes that the Universe
would help his dreams come true. He met the magician Aleister Crowley and became
deeply involved with the Occult. They believed in a belief system called Thelema. Their mantra was “Do what thou wilt”,
which was a way of manifesting their wants and desires into existence. Aleister Crowley had grown up in a strict
Quaker household, where his parents raised him to read the Bible on a daily basis. Later in life, he was able to attend Cambridge
University, where it became evident that he had the IQ of a genius. He wholly rejected the teachings of the Bible,
and focused instead on secularism. However, anything against Christianity was
interpreted as being “Demonic”. Crowley fully embraced this as part of his
identity, calling himself the “Beast”, and attempting to summon powerful demons to
come to his aid. From the time Jack Parsons was experimenting
with rockets in his back yard as a kid, the idea that man could actually go into space
was still a fantasy. Many people refused to believe that it could
possibly be real. And while it’s hard for us to imagine now,
the mere suggestion that man could reach the moon was considered to be sinful. While Thelema has plenty of spooky and paranormal
elements to their religion, their core belief system was actually not too far off from many
new-age beliefs, and modern-day publications like The Secret, which calls this concept
“the law of attraction”. Practitioners of Thelema did, in fact, believe
in magic, but it wasn’t just card tricks and parlor games. They practiced “sex magic”- which is exactly
what it sounds like. They believed that the intense feeling people
have while having an orgasm opens a gate to the universe. They believed that in that small window of
opportunity, it is possible for a human being to perform a magic spell. All they really needed to do to perform this
spell was to focus on their intention while having sex, and their wish would come true,
because it was put out into the universe. Jack Parsons became the leader of his own
group, and they would have huge sex magic orgies at his mansion in Pasadena. Not surprisingly, Parson’s wife did not
enjoy this sort of lifestyle, so she left him. He began to have an affair with his wife’s
sister, Sara Northrup Hollister, who believed very strongly in the occult. Unlike her sister, she actually enjoyed participating
in these orgies, and Jack Parsons was just one of many men in the group that she would
practice sex magic with. While it may not surprise anyone, Aleister
Crowley was addicted to sex, and multiple orgasms in one day were no longer enough to
satisfy him. He experimented with drugs. He eventually became addicted to heroin, which
was his downfall. At one of Jack Parson’s meetings, he and
Sara Hollister met a science fiction writer named L. Ron Hubbard. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because
Hubbard would go on to found the cult of Scientology. But at this time, he was one of the very few
sci fi writers who were writing in such detail about the possibility of sending humans into
space. As a hardcore sci-fi nerd, Jack Parsons was
thrilled to meet L. Ron Hubbard, and invited him to join in on the parties as much as he
wanted. Parsons believed that he could summon a goddess
named Babalon. She is described as being the “Great Mother”
of the Earth, and a symbol of a sexually liberated women. He asked his group of followers to participate
in this project called The Babalon Working. He thought that through all of these magical
sex rituals, the “Scarlet Woman” would come along to give birth to the “Moon Child”. They believed that this child could be raised
to aspire to travel to space, instead of holding on to the comforts of Earth. They never actually gave birth to a real baby,
because they hoped that this would be more of a symbolic gesture for future generations
of mankind. The Scarlet Woman was a symbol of “free
love” throughout the world, so people could have sex outside of marriage more openly. In a way, you could say that this spell actually
worked. Just a few years later, the United States
entered the “Space Race”, and the entire world turned on their televisions to watch
the first steps on the moon. In the 1960’s, the hippies spread the free
love movement that Parsons had hoped for. Maybe, just maybe, the sex magic of the Babalon
Working changed the world, after all. His Last Years on Earth
After discovering his ties to the occult in the late 40’s, Jack Parsons was fired from
his job at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Since he was down on his luck, L. Ron Hubbard
asked Jack Parsons if he would be interested in partnering in a boat business in Florida. Parsons gave Hubbard $20,000 to start the
business, and Sara Hollister asked if she could go, too. After stealing his girlfriend and robbing
him blind, Parsons realized that he made a terrible mistake by trusting him. At this point, L. Ron Hubbard truly did create
a successful boating business, but he never bothered to pay back the startup loan. Jack Parsons had to go to court to get his
$20,000 back. Years later, L. Ron Hubbard would become the
founder of his own religion, called Scientology, and he used this boat business to create his
Sea Org. He borrowed much of the same principles taught
by Aleister Crowley and Jack Parsons about setting intentions and being the best person
you can be, mixed in his own fictional ideas made up in his science fiction novels. Even though Sara Hollister left Jack Parsons
to marry L. Ron Hubbard, there were plenty of other women in the group who practically
worshiped him. He met an actress and artist named Marjorie
Cameron. Just like all of his other intentions, he
had put his ideas about an “elemental woman” out into the universe. So when he met her, he believed they were
soulmates. They were so intensely attracted to one another
when they first met, they spent two weeks straight making love in his bedroom. He married Cameron in 1946. Marjorie Cameron was more than a tad bit eccentric. She claimed that she had visions of the coming
apocalypse, and she created artwork about her occult beliefs that would later become
popular during the Beat Generation. The 1950’s was the beginning of the McCarthy
era, where the FBI was investigating anyone under suspicion of having ties to Communist
party. They began to investigate Jack Parsons, due
to the fact that he took documents home from his new employer, Hughes Aircraft Company. They suspected that he may be supplying the
USSR with these documents on rocket engines. After learning that he was under investigation,
Jack Parsons voluntarily showed up to the FBI offices in Los Angeles to explain that
he took the documents home, because he wanted to give examples of his past work to apply
to a job in Israel. The FBI thought that he could actually be
a spy for the Israeli government. He was fired from the Hughes Aircraft Company,
and this was enough to blacklist him from ever getting another aeronautical job again. Declassified documents reveal that the FBI
had been following Jack Parson’s movements since 1948, because of his occult ties to
Aleister Crowley. They believed that this was a “subversive
group” that they should consider to be dangerous, and they were just waiting for a moment where
he may slip up. In 1951, Parson’s career was over, and his
marriage to Marjorie Cameron was falling apart, so they seperated. Jack Parsons’ was no longer raking in huge
paychecks. He occasionally worked as an explosives consultant
on the sets of Hollywood action films, but those gigs were few and far between. He had to work the night shift at a gas station,
and he rented out the spare rooms in this house for extra income. In June of 1952, Parsons received an order
from a film set to create several explosives for a movie. They asked him to hurry, because they were
running on a tight schedule. One of his tenants joke, “Be careful, or
you’ll blow us all up.” Parsons responded with a chuckle, and said
that everything would be fine. An hour later, the lab exploded. He was still alive, with half of his face
blown off from an explosion. He was rushed to the hospital, and died from
his injuries at just 37 years old. His official cause of death has been ruled
an accident, but many elements of the explosion are surrounded in mystery. He had so many years of experience mixing
chemicals and creating bombs, people find it hard to believe that Jack Parsons could
have made such a careless mistake. Some think that maybe, he was feeling so low,
he wanted to kill himself. But if Parson’s intention truly was to commit
suicide, he would have known how to build a bomb that would have killed himself instantly,
instead of suffering in the hospital. Some people speculate that someone wanted
him dead, and they snuck into his lab to tamper with his chemicals. The idea that he was assassinated by the government
is a conspiracy theory, of course, but it’s one that makes a lot of sense. It seems almost too convenient that Jack Parsons
blew himself up at the start of the Cold War. He knew plenty of government secrets about
their fledgling space program, and he was already showing signs of wanting to flee the
country. Parsons truly was a genius capable of building
a bigger and better rocket than ones he created by the U.S. government, and they may have
feared that he would sell his services to the USSR. The fact that Jack Parsons credited his work
with the occult for his success in rocket science was an embarrassment to the rest of
the aeronautic community. If the public knew about this, it would completely
ruin the credibility of the government’s attempts to build a space program. They were already having a hard enough time
raising taxpayer dollars as it was, without some guy chatting about sex magic. Sadly, the program earned a lot more credibility
after he was out of the picture. After his death, NASA would name one of the
craters on the moon after Jack Parsons. Only, it was on the dark side that no one
can see. This is very much how they felt about his
contribution to rocket science. They want to give credit where credit is due,
but many wanted to keep his memory out of the limelight. While he was alive, Jack Parsons’ ultimate
goal was to have his rocket experiments succeed not just for himself, but for future generations. He wanted the whole world to look to the stars,
and know that it was a reality, and not just some fantasy written in a sci fi novel. Whether you believe in the supernatural or
not, Parson’s sex magic spells actually worked, because all of his intentions that
he set out into the universe eventually came true. Tragically, he did not live long enough to
see NASA send a man to the moon, but if he was watching from across
the universe, he would surely be proud.
