WEIRD SCIENCE: The documented history on NASA's Jack Parsons cutting-edge science and occult practice in the 20th century
Straight from Parsons' own writings, Alistair Crowley's correspondence, declassified FBI files, biographies, and JPL's own records.
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The documented history on NASAs Jack Parsons —it’s one of the strangest, best-substantiated overlaps of cutting-edge science and occult practice in the 20th century. It’s not “conspiracy theory”; it’s straight from Parsons’ own writings, Alistair Crowley’s correspondence, declassified FBI files, biographies (like George Pendle’s Strange Angel), and JPL’s own records.
JPL/Aerojet co-founder and rocket pioneer: Correct. Parsons (with Frank Malina, Edward Forman, and under Theodore von Kármán) was a core member of the GALCIT Rocket Research Group at Caltech in the 1930s—the direct precursor to JPL. They developed the first practical castable solid rocket propellant (JATO units for WWII aircraft). Aerojet (which Parsons helped launch) commercialized it; derivatives powered Space Shuttle solid rocket boosters and other systems. JPL became a NASA center in the 1950s, long after Parsons’ involvement. He wasn’t “NASA’s founder” (NASA didn’t exist until 1958), but his work was foundational to U.S. rocketry.
jpl.nasa.gov
OTO leadership and Aleister Crowley connection: Yes. He joined the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), became its U.S. head (Agape Lodge in California), and corresponded directly with Crowley, who called him a promising disciple.
Babalon Working (Jan–Mar 1946) with L. Ron Hubbard: Fully documented. After being pushed out of JPL/Aerojet in 1945 over security concerns tied to his occult activities, Parsons performed a series of Enochian-based sex magick rituals in Pasadena. The goal: summon and incarnate the Thelemic goddess Babalon (a force of liberation and the “Scarlet Woman”) to birth a “Moonchild”—a Thelemic messianic/antichrist figure inspired by Crowley’s Moonchild. Parsons used semen on talismans (masturbating onto parchment tablets to music), invoked with his own blood in some steps, and had Hubbard (then a naval officer and aspiring occultist) act as scribe, recording visions. Parsons later met Marjorie Cameron, whom he believed was the elemental woman summoned. He declared the working a success and later took the oath as Belarion Armillus Al Dajjal, the Antichrist “come to fulfill the law of the Beast 666.”
en.wikipedia.org
Government funding: The GALCIT group got military contracts (including ~$3 million scale-up for rocket weapons during WWII). But that money was for jet-assisted takeoff and solid-fuel tech—not rituals. The Babalon Working happened after Parsons lost his JPL role and security clearance. No records show taxpayer dollars directly funding the magick; it was his private pursuit.
tech.caltech.edu
Other details: Parsons Crater on the Moon’s far side? Named after him by the IAU. Aerojet’s engines? Yes, Shuttle heritage. FBI files? Open—focused on his OTO/”sexual perversion,” possible leftist ties, and odd behavior. He published occult material (including The Book of Babalon/Liber 49), but not “peer-reviewed” scientific papers on it.
Parsons died in 1952 at 37 in a chemical explosion in his Pasadena home lab (ruled accidental, though some speculate otherwise). He never saw the space age he helped enable.
The “demons”
This is where it shifts. Parsons and Crowley framed their work in Thelemic terms—”Do what thou wilt” as the guiding law, with Babalon as a liberating goddess. Parsons saw it as spiritual evolution and a path to human freedom. Critics (and some conspiracy circles) label it literal demon summoning because of the blood/semen rituals, Enochian calls, and Antichrist self-identification. Hubbard later distanced himself and founded Scientology (some claim he “stole” techniques or even ripped off Parsons financially).
Parsons was sidelined precisely because his occult life raised red flags with funders and security. The agency “wrote him out” of early PR for decades, only acknowledging his technical role later. Modern JPL is a straightforward NASA/Caltech engineering outfit—rovers on Mars, not pentagrams. It’s a hell of a story: a self-taught chemist blowing up rockets by day and trying to birth an antichrist by night.
