Written by Parker Rogers
Art by Parker Rogers
As your curator of obscure history, I have been interested in Parsons for a long time since first learning of him in a podcast. His achievements in this country, paired with his freaky lifestyle, immediately captivated me and every detail I learned was another reason to keep learning. Aside from the fact he briefly dated a seventeen year old. To know he was one of the men who got us to the moon while also practicing occult magic during a time where occult practices were so deeply ingrained in the satanic panic, was thrilling to me. Thousands of families gathered round to watch that first rocket launch years after his death, none of them knowing the devious activities he spent his time doing. I hope you enjoy him just as much as I do.
Robert Anton Wilson said Jack Parsons was actually four men: “A scientist, an occultist, a political dissident, and an idiot.” Parsons was one of the few with a controversially avant-garde life outside of being one of the men who helped NASA eventually reach the moon. A science fiction enthusiast in the 1950’s, he aimed to bring technology off the page. His freetime, however, consisted of studying the occult, ritual sex magic, and drugs. His striking looks complemented his radical persona. Despite being a scientific pioneer, he remained devoted to magic; studying under Aleister Crowley, the English occultist and founder of Thelema, who dubbed himself “The Wickedest Man in the World.” Recently, Parsons’s story has gained attention through various podcasts and the fictional retelling on the show Strange Angels.
Parsons grew up in his grandfather’s mansion on Millionaires Row in Pasadena, California, after his mother moved there following his father’s infidelity. From a young age, it was clear Parsons had a brilliant mind, which his grandfather nurtured through backyard experiments that often created craters. Parsons spent hours launching makeshift rockets, eventually blowing the yard into a small crater. Parsons did all this with a good friend Ed Forman, a man who he would be close to for the rest of his life. But even with his creativity being channeled like such, Parsons was hardly able to keep himself from trouble, causing his mother to send him to military school. A failed endeavor after he was expelled for blowing up every toilet in the building simultaneously.
After the stock market crash in the ’30s, Parsons and Forman dropped out of high school, recognizing that college was no longer an option. But Forman’s father was an engineer, and Parsons had the initiative to teach himself everything he would need. He did not require someone to guide him through the topics he would learn, his drive provided that. So he got a job at the Hercules Powder Company, and the two continued their experiments with what little cash they could pull together.
In 1935, Parsons and Forman attended a lecture on rocket engines at The California Institute for Technology, a field that was taking hold at a disappointingly slow rate. Most accredited scientists at the time believed that rocketry was something to be left to the comic books. To the point where they changed the name from rockets to jets to be taken seriously. However Parsons looked past all this, his imagination took the reins from any social biases. Here, the two met Frank Malina, who was writing his Ph.D. thesis on rocketry at Caltech. Froman and Parsons discussed collaborating with Malina to send rockets into space. Although Malina was intrigued by the idea, he understood that anyone aiming to send rockets to space risked credential suicide; at that time, it was virtually unheard of. So, the three decided to team up, agreeing to work openly on rocketry within the stratosphere while secretly working to send rockets into space.
With Malina being the only one attending Caltech, or even having a highschool diploma, the group struggled to find funding for their projects. But Parsons used every penny he could to fund their dreams; spending most of his weekly paychecks, selling homemade nitroglycerin, and pawning his wife’s wedding ring to finance their research. However, in their eyes it was worth it; they were laying the groundwork for something that most people lifted their noses at.
The group quickly gained notoriety on campus for their explosive experiments, getting named “The Suicide Squad.” Students and faculty would rush to the windows whenever they heard loud bangs, often finding the boys covered in soot sprawled on the lawn like a Looney Tunes cartoon.
There were major fuel problems in the early days of rocketry. You see, there were two types of fuel, solid and liquid. Solid was highly particular, and if handled incorrectly or jostled it would cause the experiment to explode instead of launch. Liquid more often than not ended up spraying the boys in flames. But he was able to make a break, finding a way to improve on the liquid fuel, allowing their experiments to be far more successful. This success led to the team receiving lab space from the school, this space was the creation of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. NASA now abbreviates it as JPL, and it was this lab that would go on to manufacture the Lunar and Mars Rovers, as well as the Voyager One and Two spacecrafts.
During this time, Parsons gained local fame as an explosives expert while assisting in a case against a Los Angeles police captain accused of attempting to plant a bomb in a detective’s car. Parsons created a replica of the device, demonstrating its power by blowing up a Chrysler, which led to the captain’s arrest.
All of this caught the attention of the US Army, giving Parsons a grant to develop rocket engines for planes. The project led to the creation of Jet Assisted Take Off (JATO) technology.
In 1940, the group was banished from campus due to constant explosions and moved to western Pasadena. While Parsons’s chemistry career flourished, his personal life became increasingly complex. Deep down, he identified as a student of the occult, having attempted magical practices since childhood—including trying to summon a demon at age twelve. He was fascinated in the world of Aliester Crowley, an English occultist who formed Thelema, a religion largely focused on living out one’s true ‘will.’ Crowley considered himself a diabolist, his own mother named him “The Great Beast 666” as a child. Crowley was also the head of the Ordo Templi Orientis, an occult secret society that practiced hermetic magical rituals.
In early 1941, Parsons and his wife joined the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), followed later by his sister-in-law. The lodge quickly embraced Parsons, with member Grady McMurty saying “Jack is a man of integrity, aspiration, all he lacks is an experienced instructor. He is easily the outstanding personality of the whole group.” Fond words coming from a man whom Parsons had impregnated his wife and paid for a termination behind McMurty’s back.
He threw himself into the magic entirely, making the OTO his family for better or worse. He sunk the majority of his paychecks into the organization. Eventually moving the group into a house in the area he grew up in back on Millionaire’s Row in Pasadena.
It was around this time Parsons started sleeping with his wife’s sister, who was just under eighteen at the time. His wife was on vacation when it started, and was greeted by her sister telling her she was Parsons’ wife now. But polyamory was encouraged within the OTO, and Parsons stood by his decision, understanding it was better for his magical powers. His wife, Helen would stay in the group, beginning to date other men and becoming a fundamental part of the organization. The two would stay friends.
The following year, Parsons was made lodge master by Crowley, for at this point the two had developed a father/son relationship. Crowley was fond of Parsons, finally having a student that could keep up with him, and understand the messages he was trying to convey. Crowley wrote of Parsons “I wish to God I had him for six months–even three, with a hustle to train in Will, in discipline. He must understand that fine and fiery flashes of spirit come from the organization of Matter, from the drilling of every function of every bodily organ until it has become so regular as to be automatic, and carried on by itself deep down into the unconscious.”1 Crowley may or may not have also been interested in the more sexual side of the sex rituals with Parsons, but not much can be said of that aspect of their relationship.
Crowley looked at Parsons as “the child who shall behold them all,” referencing chapter one of The Book of The Law. According to Crowley, Parsons was the child whowould be his successor. Who would understand the mysteries and secrets inside The Book of The Law that even Crowley himself did not understand.
Parsons pushed himself farther than his peers in magic just as he had done in science. Taking an unorthodox approach by incorporating witchcraft and voodoo, something the others avoided altogether. Pushing himself to a point that shocked even Crowley, a man who had taken to meth and had once eaten a man’s shit. Parsons increasing interests in “breaching the border between the spiritual and material realms to bring a supernatural entity into the world.”2 made Crowley nervous.
This was nothing, however, compared to Parsons’ friendship with L. Ron Hubbard. Parsons and Hubbard had met at a science fiction writers group, the two became friends and Parsons invited Hubbard to join the OTO. Hubbard promptly moved in the year of 1945, and immediately started an affair with Parsons sister-in-law/girlfriend, Sarah Northrup. But Parsons walked the walk when it came to the polyamorous side of the OTO, and let her go to Hubbard.
By January of the following year Parsons and Hubbard had teamed up to perform a series of experiments to invoke an elemental, which is in a nutshell a type of spirit. The recordings of this would become The Book of Babalon, Parsons’s written work of the series. This was an attempt to end the time of Horus, a violent force leading mankind to catastrophe. Parsons believed that within every man and woman was the force of Babalon, and could be manifested into a single woman. Parsons would do this by directing a spiritual baby into the womb of a specific woman. This spiritual manifestation would become Parson’s Scarlet Woman, the incarnate force of Babalon. This was all very similar to Crowley’s moonchild rituals.
These ceremonies took place over eleven days in January of 1946. They used the Enochiean magic system developed by Elizabethan magicians. It was this same system that so many of the key doctrines of Thelema had been revealed to Crowley. Once they had completed the series of invocations it took four days for the results to manifest themselves. This caused Parsons and Hubbard to live in an air of tension for days, leading them out into the Mojave desert. It was there Parsons said the tension “suddenly snapped,” causing him to turn to Hubbard and say, “It is done.” He spoke in absolute certainty, and when he walked back to the house he found a woman waiting for him there. A woman with “an air of fire type, with bronze red hair, fiery and subtle, determined and obstinate, sincere and perverse, with extraordinary personality, talent, and intelligence.”3
This woman, Marjorie Elizabeth Cameron was a former member of the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services (WAVES) in the United States Army. She felt similarly for Parsons, and the pair spent the next few weeks in bed where Parsons performed a long series of magical rituals that Cameron was not privy to at the time.
During this time Parsons got Cameron pregnant, but she terminated the pregnancy in New York. It was at this point, however, that Parsons realized it wasn’t the fetus that would become the Scarlet Woman, but Cameron herself!
While Parsons seemed to be living out his wildest fantasies, Crowley was highly disappointed in all this, and began to lose faith in Parsons, quickly. While performing these rituals Parsons had neglected many other aspects of his life, especially those who depended on him. Crowly wrote to Karl Germer, “Apparently he [Parsons] or Rob [Hubbard] or somebody is producing a Moonchil. I get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these goats.”4
At this point Parsons began to understand Crowley’s distrust for Hubbard, who had gotten Parsons and his ex-girlfriend/sister-in-law involved in a partnership purchasing yachts in Florida and selling them in California. Parsons invested over twenty thousand dollars, a sum of over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in today’s money. Hubbard invested a measly twelve hundred. In Crowley’s eyes all of this confirmed Hubbard to be a trickster, but before he could speak to it Hubbard had burned through most of Parsons’ money, taking Northrup with him. By the time Parsons caught up to them in Florida he was only able to retrieve a fourth of what he had invested, and nearly went broke trying to get there.
After all this, Crowley removed Parsons as lodge master, causing Parsons to resign from the OTO altogether. Parsons’ life began to fall apart.
He was fired from his job working for the US Army after rumors of voodoo, cults, homosexuality, and communism surfaced, listing him as an undesirable employee for national defense work. Cameron also left him to go to an artist colony in Mexico. This left Parsons to work at a hospital and pump gas. But he took this in strides, viewing it as just a job, and not letting it hit his ego. He still practiced magic in the evenings, hiring sex workers when it was necessary for his rituals. Parsons went through a phase of calling himself the antichrist, and even tried starting his own religion.
However, this low point in Parsons’ life passed. When Cameron found out he was being investigated by the FBI she returned, ready to give the marriage a second chance. He started his own company, the Parsons Chemical Manufacturing Company in 1951, and made explosives, pyrotechnics, fog effects, and squibs for Hollywood. After a few months he made plans with his wife to move to Mexico for a few months. He talked of growing grapes, and making wine.
The day they planned to leave however, Parsons received a call from a special effects corporation that needed a rush order of explosives. Parsons accepted, though it is not clear why. He worked in the laundry room he had converted over the last few weeks into a storage space for his explosives, and a makeshift chemistry lab. A friendwho had moved in to help cover the mortgage while they were away joked, “For God sakes Jack don’t blow us up!”
Parsons laughed maniacally, replying “Don’t worry about it!” Moments later the entire room exploded. It is believed Parsons dropped the tin can he was using to mix the volatile chemicals, igniting the surrounding explosives. He was pronounced dead at the hospital at thirty seven years old. This is the accepted story, but there are several conspiracies surrounding the chemist’s death.
Cameron found a way to sneak the three pounds of weed they had stored in the house past the investigation that had quickly set up at the house. His old friend Ed Forman commented that Parsons had always had sweaty hands.
Cameron was haunted by Parsons’ death, but she also seemed to enjoy the mystery of it all. Suggesting the government had faked his death, or leaning into whatever wild conspiracy was presented. Either way, she would still identify as his Scarlet Woman for years to come, through life of death, they were paired.