Nowadays we hear a lot about the technological futurism of South Africa-born Elon Musk, engineer and business magnate, and how the newest inventions and transhumanist vision he proposes might influence humanity for the worst.
The Rejected, Heretical Genius of Modern Science
Despite being the main subject of a 2018 CBS historical drama, Strange Angel, itself based on George Pendle’s biography, Jack Parsons (1914–1952) remains an unknown commodity for the masses, despite sharing similarities with Musk. Parsons was not a celebrity in his days, certainly, but someone who wanted to use technology, mainly in the field of aerospace engineering like Musk, for occult reasons.This sidelining is quite unique in the history of science: Parsons has been called the “father of American rocketry” by someone like Wernher von Braun, himself the pioneer of rocket technology in Nazi Germany, who would then be recruited by the US.
The experiments Parsons conducted at Caltech in the early 30s and 40s contributed heavily to rocket technology, which would be the reason the Allies won WWII and even made space travel possible.
Trained in chemistry as well, his idea to combine asphalt and potassium perchlorate ultimately produced composite solid propellant and, thus, modern solid rocket propulsion.
We read in the New York Post, resuming his legacy:
Without Parsons, Neil Armstrong may have never set foot on the moon, and American military power might be a fraction of what it is today.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a NASA-affiliated research center he co-founded, still remains the American pioneer of space travel, sending robots to Mars.
So man reached the moon (or did he?) and robots reach Mars thanks to Parsons. So why has he been forgotten in American culture?
His extravagant occultism might explain it.
The Disciple of “The Wickedest Man in the World”
To know Jack Parsons is basically to know Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), the famed English occultist, his master.We can’t go into the details about Crowley himself here, but some readers must know that he has been called “the wickedest man in the world” (name of a 4-part BBC documentary about him) and also called himself “the Great Beast 666.”
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Crowley, a degenerate bisexual and drug-addict who rejected the Christian morality of Victorian Britain, created an occult philosophy, named Thelema, where “sex magick,” or the ritual use of sexuality, played an essential role.
Crowley’s main book is the The Book of the Law, written in early 20th century Egypt, which he said was dictated by a sort of supernatural being, “Aiwass.”
This does look like a parody of the Qur’anic revelation, and the leading Crowley scholar today, Tobias Churton, noted that the book was indeed inspired by an heresy within the Islamic world, namely the esoteric cult of the Yazidis, but we’ll not detail all of this here.
What’s important to know is that Crowley was eminently deranged and deviant.
You’d think such a man would have no real influence?
Well, not so: outside Parsons, he had dozens of influential disciples, such as Major-General J. F. C. Fuller, considered the greatest British military writer of the last century and the one who introduced armored warfare in modern conflict. Crowley also appears on the cover art for The Beatles’ 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Parsons himself discovered the works of Crowley in the late 30s, and entered into contact with him.
Crowley was quite appreciative of the young man, seeing potential in him, and in 1942 elected him as the leader of the Californian chapter of the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), one of his main organizations.
Parsons wasn’t satisfied with such a position: he wanted to go beyond his master Crowley.
Parsons’ Dark Experiments… And Did They Succeed?
A faithful disciple and also an avid reader of science-fiction literature, Parsons wanted to test the possible reality of what Crowley wished for in his books.Hugh Urban, an American academic, writes in his Magia Sexualis, pp. 136-137:
Parsons, it seems, was determined to put Crowley’s most radical and transgressive ideals into living practice. The most remarkable of Parsons’s ritual operations was his “Babalon Working,” which had as its goal to shatter the boundaries of time and space in order to bring about the incarnation of the “magickal child,” or Thelemic messiah, that Crowley had described as the herald of the New Aeon of Horus. Parsons’s cohort in this operation was none other than L. Ron Hubbard, who would later go on to write the best-selling self-help manual Dianetics and found the Church of Scientology, one of the most lucrative new religious movements of the twentieth century.
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The ultimate goal of these operations, carried out during February and March 1946, was to give birth to the magical being, or “moonchild,” described in Crowley’s works. Using the powerful energy of IX degree Sex Magick, the rites were intended to open a doorway through which the goddess Babalon herself might appear in human form. Incarnate as a living female, Babalon would then become the Scarlet Woman and consort of the Antichrist (a role Parsons would later claim for himself). In a letter to Crowley, Parsons claimed that the operation had been successful, that he had in fact given birth to “One who is Holy and Beautiful,” and that he was to act as her “guardian” for nine months: “Then it will be loosed in the world.”
It’s intriguing to note that we can find this “operation” to bring the “moon-child” represented in cinema as well: Roman Polanski’s 1968 horror thriller Rosemary’s Baby has been accused of being sickly too close to what Crowley wrote and to what Parsons claimed actually happened.
Those who have watched the movie will know why.
Also, the fact that Polanski’s pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, was assassinated in a “ritual-like” manner by the Manson family is another “occult” fact for these analysts.
But let’s get back to Parsons: he says the “operation” was successful… was it?
Urban continues:
Parsons would not, however, live to see his dream of the moonchild fulfilled. His spiritual cohort, Hubbard, turned out to be a devious charlatan who ran off with his partner Betty and $10,000 of his money (just a few years later founding the wildly successful Dianetics and Scientology enterprises). The aging Crowley, meanwhile, considered the whole affair ridiculous and was outraged by the “idiocy of these goats.” Finally, in one of the more ironic twists in the history of sexual magic, Parsons himself literally went up in flames, killed in an accidental chemical explosion in 1952. Nonetheless, many of Parsons’s admirers have suggested that his Babalon Working may have had some real-world effects, that it had served to “crack open the Apocalyptic gateway and activate the cult forces necessary for the upheaval of consciousness,” as we see in the increasing chaos of war, disease, famine, and terrorism in the late twentieth century.
Scary.
His disciples also note that the phenomenon of the flying saucers or UFOs in the skies came just after his death, his “accidental death” itself still remaining a “mystery” as per his biographer John Carter.
Whatever the truth in all of this, Jack Parsons is an intriguing case in how science and technology collides with occultism.
This Jack Parsons who, in the last years of his life, renamed himself: Belarion Armiluss Al Dajjal AntiChrist.