
Jack Parsons and the Occult Roots of JPL - JetSpiegel
http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/aerospace-engineering/rocketry/jack-parsons-occult-roots-jpl/
======
api
If anyone hasn't seen Strange Angel I highly recommend it. It's definitely the
"Hollywood version" to some extent but it's _relatively_ close to his
biographies and is a decent watch regardless.

The title and thesis here is a bit wacky. JPL itself doesn't have "occult
roots." Parsons was into occultism and Thelema/Crowley, which is far less
sensational than it sounds if you've ever actually read any of that stuff.
It's not any more shocking than someone being into Daoism, esoteric Hinduism,
Sufism, or any other minority (in this country) religious or philosophical
sect. The beliefs involved are no more or less bizarre than the beliefs
championed by much more popular religions.

I have noticed a tendency for creative outside thinkers like Parsons to be
into "weird" belief systems. I've met a good number of really bright hacker
types who are into all kinds of non-mainstream beliefs including conspiracy
theories, Neo-Paganism, esoteric types of religion, strong interests in topics
like UFOs and the paranormal, etc.

~~~
oflannabhra
Well, the article directly contradicts your perspective of Crowley and Parsons
beliefs with: beastiality, incest, and more.

~~~
api
I'm agnostic about those allegations personally. Anything fringe back then was
going to attract tabloid claims, and Crowley himself was a troll who was fond
of promoting outrageous BS about himself for attention. They were a bunch of
nutballs certainly but there's quite a bit of very sensational stuff out there
about that scene that's just as questionable.

Today they'd just be a bunch of goth swingers into Neo-Pagan LARPing and
totally unremarkable.

~~~
selimthegrim
From the OTO members I’ve run into this sounds about right.

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WalterBright
> changed the name to “Jet Propulsion Laboratory.” Despite the fact that they
> were not researching jet engines

A rocket engine is a "jet" engine as the jet of gasses provides the thrust.
What we think of as a "jet" engine today was originally called a "turbojet"
engine.

~~~
nabla9
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_propulsion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_propulsion)

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tunnuz
If you want to know more about this, the Unexplained podcast has a 3-parts
episode on the story of Jack Parsons. Really recommended!

[http://www.unexplainedpodcast.com/episodes/2018/3/20/s03-epi...](http://www.unexplainedpodcast.com/episodes/2018/3/20/s03-episode-1-we-
are-the-witchcraft-pt1-of-3)

~~~
yittcvz
Additionally the "biography" of Parsons, "Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of
Jack Parsons", is a great read.

[https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Rockets-Occult-World-
Parsons/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Rockets-Occult-World-
Parsons/dp/0922915970)

~~~
smacktoward
And because Parsons' life intersected in the late '40s with that of L. Ron
Hubbard, he features prominently in Lawrence Wright's excellent history of
Scientology _Going Clear_
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_Clear_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Going_Clear_\(book\)))
as well.

Wikipedia summarizes Parsons' and Hubbard's sex-magic collaboration here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons_(rocket_engineer)...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons_\(rocket_engineer\)#L._Ron_Hubbard_and_the_Babalon_Working:_1945%E2%80%9346)

------
maxxxxx
Parsons is a very interesting character. I think the same character traits
that cause scientists to produce new theories also causes them to go into
"weird" directions. You have to have a high level of stubbornness and
fearlessness to go against the shared wisdom of the time.

In general I love to read about famous persons who had a lot of on the surface
contradictory facets to their personality. There is a tendency in the media to
view people as one-dimensional. People don't seem to be able to compute that
people are not all-good or all-bad. A famous people would be Newton who was
kind of an ass and also spent a lot of time on alchemy and other stuff.

A while ago I saw a British TV show about Hitler and there they had a scene
where Hitler shot his dog out of anger. From whatever I know he loved dogs but
somehow the show creators thought Hitler has to be portrayed as a totally bad
guy.

~~~
cc439
"A while ago I saw a British TV show about Hitler and there they had a scene
where Hitler shot his dog out of anger. From whatever I know he loved dogs but
somehow the show creators thought Hitler has to be portrayed as a totally bad
guy."

One of the greatest self-inflicted wounds in the modern world is the
propensity to portray Nazi Germany and its major figures in a completely
cartoonish fashion. Godwin's law be what it may but the long term
ramifications of pointing to Nazis as inhumanely evil to a point that breaks
all logic has blinded people from being able to accurately understand exactly
what led to their rise to power, what drove their decision making process, and
how they managed to direct an entire country toward supporting the very goals
currently portrayed as the actions of a handful of mad hatters divorced from
all laws of human behavior.

Everyone knows the colloquialsim that those who fail to learn from history are
doomed to repeat it, well here's a perfecf example of that in action.
Disingenuous representations and false accounts of history eliminate the
possibility of developing a true understanding of how things actually
progressed in reality. If you can't understand how things progressed, you have
no hope of countering that progression until things have developed too far to
be reversed through peaceful means.

~~~
bitexploder
The book Ordinary Men covers this. It is quite fascinating. Regular people
became the Nazis. People on HN could become Nazis. This is an uncomfortable
truth not many people are willing to confront. I’ll give HNers some credit,
but still, the way it progresses is subtle and nefarious. (It being
Authoritarianism into Totlitsrianism with a dictator$

------
wuliwong
The story of Jack Parsons is one of my favorites. He really contributed
scientifically, was certainly in part responsible for L. Ron Hubbards rise to
fame and also a protege` of Aleister Crowley.

~~~
api
According to most of what I've read Parsons was kind of conned by Hubbard.
They did have an association for a while but I don't get the sense that
Parsons had any direct role in Scientology per se. Hubbard invented that
later.

~~~
jonathankoren
The postwar Pasadena areospace scene was wild.

Scientology is basically Crowley’s Thelema but in 1950’s space opera clothing.
Parsons didn’t have any role in developing beyond introducing Hubbard to
Crowely, and most notably Sara Northrup. Sara Northrup, later L Ron’s wife,
helped develop Dianetics, and Scientology.

I read J.W. Carter’s ”Sex and Rockets”, and Lawerence Wright’s “Going Clear”
back to back, and together they paint a fascinating portrait of the time.

If you want to round out the Pasadena OTO scene, Spencer Kansa’s “Wormwood
Star” about Marjorie Cameron is supposed to be good, but I haven’t read it
yet.

~~~
selimthegrim
Hubbard and Sara absconded with a bunch of money Crowley has entrusted Parsons
with for OTO purposes and bought a yacht and partied in Florida. Crowley
pretty much wrote off Parsons after that.

------
killion
Unfortunately this article doesn’t load for me, I wanted to see it because I
really enjoyed reading Strange Angel by George Pendle. There is a series on
CBS All Access that is very, very loosely based on the book which is fun to
watch if not at all accurate.

~~~
theoh
Try this:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20181220194510/http://www.spacesa...](http://web.archive.org/web/20181220194510/http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/aerospace-
engineering/rocketry/jack-parsons-occult-roots-jpl/)

------
ArtWomb
Wow, lots of great material in here. Certainly enough for screenplay research
;)

As a companion to the this I love this piece about George Sterling's art
colony in Carmel at the turn of the century. Utopian bohemianism, whether
based upon magic, spirit, or tech. Is a perpetuating driver of human mythos ;)

[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/146051/bohemian-
tr...](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/146051/bohemian-tragedy)

------
calibas
The founder of an old cult that would eventually become the Jehovah's Witness
predicted that the apocalypse would begin on October 2, 1914, the day Jack
Parsons was born.

------
JoeDaDude
The video in the article shows up as unavailable, but there is a version
available here (blocked unless you subscribe to cable TV Science channel):

[https://www.sciencechannel.com/tv-shows/dark-matters/full-
ep...](https://www.sciencechannel.com/tv-shows/dark-matters/full-
episodes/magical-jet-propulsion-missing-link-mystery-typhoid-mary)

------
jgrowl
I tried explaining this interesting connection to a group of friends in
college, but they looked at me like I was crazy.

------
WalterBright
I didn't see any support in the article for occult roots of JPL. Occult was
simply another interest of Parsons.

~~~
doodliego
Exactly, sounds like he was a bright guy and a free-thinker with interesting
hobbies. Somehow this gets twisted into nonsense about a Satanic NASA, moon
hoaxes, and secret space fleets. Paranoia in action.

------
bsenftner
There is one hell of a filmed entertainment series here. You've got every
element necessary, including the "truth stranger than fiction" angle. I wonder
what, if any, studios are developing this history into a show, film or
something.

~~~
cgoecknerwald
Check out Strange Angel! It's a television series. They even came to Caltech
to film on location.

------
lucastheisen
Relevant: [http://www.cc.com/video-clips/h71t46/drunk-history-jack-
pars...](http://www.cc.com/video-clips/h71t46/drunk-history-jack-parsons-
loved-his-sex-magick)

------
turnon
The ulter ego he says he encountered in his occult rituals he calls "Dajjal".
Interestingly, it is the same name for the Anti Christ that exists in early
Islamic literature. What is even more striking is that this same literature
describes the Dajaal as one-eyed. We all know that the one eye is the symbol
of the illuminaty cult. Another thing that really reminded me about this guy
is the movie "Ready Player One", it had the same insinuations, regarding the
moon landing mixed with the illuminaty one eye and the movie The Shinning.

~~~
lifthearth
Whatever religion posses you will have overlapping symbols that are in
conflict with the occult. This is intentional. Occultists create subversive
symbols to filter out trojan horse intellectuals (EG: The Church of Satan).
People who seem smart and capable of deep thought but are actually being
coached by a religion and only wield rational thought to serve their religion
are pretty common and undesirable to have around when mindhacking. It also
creates an "us-vs-them" paradigm that improves community at the cost of wider
social ostracism. Anyone who has argued with a christian trained in
apologetics on hot button topics knows what I'm talking about in regards to
trojan horse intellectuals. So by adopting "bullshit" (like antichrist
worship) that directly conflicts with "other bullshit" they can dereference
the pointer to the religious back door. Then occultists build their own back
doors and reprogram themselves to do what they want.

Obviously major religions want to be the only answer. As any hacker knows as
long as more than one person has admin privledges on a network, there is no
guarantee control over that network can be maintained. All major religions say
that the apocalypse will start when people turn away from them. The result is
increasing radicalization as a religion dies out which helps it hold on a
little longer.

As for the Eye. Yeah good luck finding constancy in an interpretation. It's
the symbol the visual center of the brain is most tuned to. It's going to be
everywhere regardless of whatever meaning people ascribe to it.

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mycall
> So why isn’t he as celebrated as the other founding fathers of spaceflight?

Scientology?

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agumonkey
half a century ago.. connecting esoterism and cosmology~... fascinating

