8 ms·

Jack Parsons and the Occult Roots of JPL

168 points by JetSpiegel 8y ago

bsenftner 8y ago
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 8y ago
  Check out Strange Angel! It's a television series. They even came to Caltech to film on location.
api 8y ago
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.
- mikejulietbravo 8y ago
  Agree ^. It makes sense to me that if you are a person who believes that what society and the status quo deem as possible are limited, you probably also don't find traditional interpretations of "why" to be sufficient.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- oflannabhra 8y ago
  Well, the article directly contradicts your perspective of Crowley and Parsons beliefs with: beastiality, incest, and more.
  - api 8y ago
    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 8y ago
      From the OTO members I’ve run into this sounds about right.
  - armitron 8y ago
    Most of what they ascribe to Crowley is highly dubious and sensationalist. There have been many independent biographies of Crowley published, not to mention his "autohagiography" that shed a lot of light . The article also contains blatant falsehoods, their explanation of the avalanche incident is fabricated and not corresponding to history (diaries and 3rd party first-person accounts of what actually happened). Even wikipedia gives a different version of events that doesn't seem so callous. Moreover, a lot of Crowley's writings are deliberately using veiled language meant to offend the uninitiated and those predisposed to a superficial reading of his material. This is of course treasure for lazy journalists - and readers - that want to shock and stir up drama. As far as the incest/beastiality bits related to Parsons go, I can't find any verifiable references anywhere. They took some rumors as laid out in a highly sensationalist book and presented them as fact. This is the sort of trash, low quality article that has no place in HN. Parsons - and Crowley - deserve better.
    - imhelpingu 8y ago
- imhelpingu 8y ago
  Thelema is basically ritual magic and the direct antecedent to mid 20th century new age culture. Many of its practices are probably the basis for modern conceptions of spooky sex-cult behavior. The theory side does seem to be Hinduism-lite, though. I'll give you that.
  - yesenadam 8y ago
    Thelema is basically ritual magic and the direct antecedent to mid 20th century new age culture I'm no expert, but new age? It sounds more like wicca/satanist stuff to me, nothing like new age. "Aspects of Thelema and Crowley's thought in general provided inspiration for the development of Wicca and, to a certain degree, the rise of Modern Paganism as a whole, as well as, chaos magick, and Satanism."[0] New Age, it seems to me, comes from the very different world of the New Thought of the 1880s, Blavatsky, Besant, Steiner etc. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelema
    - api 8y ago
      I've always thought of New Age as what you get when you puree every religious, philosophical, and occult/esoteric text together in a blender and then strain out the gritty bits. I do kind of agree that New Thought is a stronger influence on pop new age than Crowley. He's too edgy.
- lostgame 8y ago
  Source: previous O.T.O. member and Initiate, as well as an Initate of another particular Secret Society. Um, no. Sorry. I don’t know what you read; but maybe go check out ‘The Book of Lies’, or a number of Crowley’s other, more taboo and dark pieces of literature. Ritual Magick, especially as Crowley and Parsons participated in, may include the likes of summoning archangels and demons, the use of altered states including the use of extreme hallucinogens and other drugs. While I agree the philosophy of the O.T.O./Thelema is not that revolutionary compared to many Eastern schools of thought; its rituals and practices are far from it.
  - disgruntledphd2 8y ago
    I dunno, I thought that a lot of it (especially the exercises in MiTaP) was reminiscent of later psychological research. For instance, I believe that its one of the first examples of negative reinforcement, which didn't really become mainstream until the 50's or so. Additionally, if you check out Tibetan Buddhism rituals, you see a lot of what looks very like ritual magick. I was very very surprised at the amount of overlaps with the western/thelemic tradition. Just my 0.02.
- ttflee 8y ago
  > JPL itself doesn't have "occult roots." Just my personal speculation: Qian Xuesen, one of the few who founded JPL and later the Chinese rocket industry, has a strange favor in researches of "special human body functions" which turned out to be nonsense at all. It would be easily explained had he ever been exposed to Aleister Crowley and/or L. Ron Hubbard in 1940s.
wuliwong 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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.
    - wuliwong 8y ago
      Nice, thanks. I just asked the previous commenter for book recs. I'll read at least one of these for sure. edit: I ordered "sex and rockets."
    - selimthegrim 8y ago
      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.
  - wuliwong 8y ago
    I could see that. I guess I was just thinking that Parson's gave him his first big break in the occult. I've never delved much deeper than internet reading. Do you have a book recommendations?
tunnuz 8y ago
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-episode-1-we-are-the-witchcraft-pt1-of-3 http://www.unexplainedpodcast.com/episodes/2018/3/20/s03-epi...
- bartcobain 8y ago
  And if you want to dig even deeper, the book "John Dee and the Empire of Angels: Enochian Magick and the Occult Roots of the Modern World" takes this topic even further. https://www.amazon.com/John-Dee-Empire-Angels-Enochian/dp/1620555891 https://www.amazon.com/John-Dee-Empire-Angels-Enochian/dp/16...
- freehunter 8y ago
  The Dollop podcast has an amusing take on Jack Parsons too. NSFW and probably less historically accurate than Unexplained, but amusing at least. http://thedollop.libsyn.com/jack-parson http://thedollop.libsyn.com/jack-parson
  - armitron 8y ago
    I couldn't make it past 5 minutes. Fratboy-level jokes and constant detours into the irrelevant. Clearly my sense of humor is different from theirs.
- tvanantwerp 8y ago
  Yet another podcast episode about Jack Parsons from Something True. Highly recommended. https://www.idlethumbs.net/somethingtrue/episodes/babylon https://www.idlethumbs.net/somethingtrue/episodes/babylon
- yittcvz 8y ago
  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/0922915970 https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Rockets-Occult-World-Parsons/dp/0...
killion 8y ago
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 8y ago
  Try this: http://web.archive.org/web/20181220194510/http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/aerospace-engineering/rocketry/jack-parsons-occult-roots-jpl/ http://web.archive.org/web/20181220194510/http://www.spacesa...
- jonnydubowsky 8y ago
  What's the series called?
maxxxxx 8y ago
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.
- api 8y ago
  Oh totally. There are lots of other examples. Issac Newton was into occultism and alchemy too, and Thomas Edison tried to build a machine to contact the dead using radio waves.
- firethief 8y ago
  I'm not sure Newton is an example. Alchemy wasn't fringe at the time, was it?
- cc439 8y ago
  "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.
jgrowl 8y ago
I tried explaining this interesting connection to a group of friends in college, but they looked at me like I was crazy.
turnon 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
- empath75 8y ago
  It’s likely not a coincidence as people into the occult tend to mix and match their mythology from a variety of sources. It’s almost assured that it was taken from Islamic sources. https://paradoxosalpha.livejournal.com/79983.html https://paradoxosalpha.livejournal.com/79983.html > As to my study of Islam, I got a sheikh to teach me Arabic and the practices of ablution, prayer and so on, so that at some future time I might pass for a Moslem among themselves. I learnt a number of chapters of the Koran by heart..... My sheikh was profoundly versed in the mysticism and magic of Islam, and discovering that I was an initiate, had no hesitation in providing me with books and manuscripts on the Arabic Cabbala. These formed the basis of my comparative studies. — Alastair Crowley.
ArtWomb 8y ago
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-tragedy https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/146051/bohemian-tr...
JoeDaDude 8y ago
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-episodes/magical-jet-propulsion-missing-link-mystery-typhoid-mary https://www.sciencechannel.com/tv-shows/dark-matters/full-ep...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
WalterBright 8y ago
> 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 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_propulsion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_propulsion
WalterBright 8y ago
I didn't see any support in the article for occult roots of JPL. Occult was simply another interest of Parsons.
- doodliego 8y ago
  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.
agumonkey 8y ago
half a century ago.. connecting esoterism and cosmology~... fascinating
calibas 8y ago
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.
lucastheisen 8y ago
Relevant: http://www.cc.com/video-clips/h71t46/drunk-history-jack-parsons-loved-his-sex-magick http://www.cc.com/video-clips/h71t46/drunk-history-jack-pars...
mycall 8y ago
> So why isn’t he as celebrated as the other founding fathers of spaceflight? Scientology?

168 points by JetSpiegel 8y ago

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 8y ago
Check out Strange Angel! It's a television series. They even came to Caltech to film on location.

api 8y ago

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.

mikejulietbravo 8y ago
Agree ^. It makes sense to me that if you are a person who believes that what society and the status quo deem as possible are limited, you probably also don't find traditional interpretations of "why" to be sufficient.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
oflannabhra 8y ago
Well, the article directly contradicts your perspective of Crowley and Parsons beliefs with: beastiality, incest, and more.
- api 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    From the OTO members I’ve run into this sounds about right.
- armitron 8y ago
  Most of what they ascribe to Crowley is highly dubious and sensationalist. There have been many independent biographies of Crowley published, not to mention his "autohagiography" that shed a lot of light . The article also contains blatant falsehoods, their explanation of the avalanche incident is fabricated and not corresponding to history (diaries and 3rd party first-person accounts of what actually happened). Even wikipedia gives a different version of events that doesn't seem so callous. Moreover, a lot of Crowley's writings are deliberately using veiled language meant to offend the uninitiated and those predisposed to a superficial reading of his material. This is of course treasure for lazy journalists - and readers - that want to shock and stir up drama. As far as the incest/beastiality bits related to Parsons go, I can't find any verifiable references anywhere. They took some rumors as laid out in a highly sensationalist book and presented them as fact. This is the sort of trash, low quality article that has no place in HN. Parsons - and Crowley - deserve better.
  - imhelpingu 8y ago
imhelpingu 8y ago
Thelema is basically ritual magic and the direct antecedent to mid 20th century new age culture. Many of its practices are probably the basis for modern conceptions of spooky sex-cult behavior. The theory side does seem to be Hinduism-lite, though. I'll give you that.
- yesenadam 8y ago
  Thelema is basically ritual magic and the direct antecedent to mid 20th century new age culture I'm no expert, but new age? It sounds more like wicca/satanist stuff to me, nothing like new age. "Aspects of Thelema and Crowley's thought in general provided inspiration for the development of Wicca and, to a certain degree, the rise of Modern Paganism as a whole, as well as, chaos magick, and Satanism."[0] New Age, it seems to me, comes from the very different world of the New Thought of the 1880s, Blavatsky, Besant, Steiner etc. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelema
  - api 8y ago
    I've always thought of New Age as what you get when you puree every religious, philosophical, and occult/esoteric text together in a blender and then strain out the gritty bits. I do kind of agree that New Thought is a stronger influence on pop new age than Crowley. He's too edgy.
lostgame 8y ago
Source: previous O.T.O. member and Initiate, as well as an Initate of another particular Secret Society. Um, no. Sorry. I don’t know what you read; but maybe go check out ‘The Book of Lies’, or a number of Crowley’s other, more taboo and dark pieces of literature. Ritual Magick, especially as Crowley and Parsons participated in, may include the likes of summoning archangels and demons, the use of altered states including the use of extreme hallucinogens and other drugs. While I agree the philosophy of the O.T.O./Thelema is not that revolutionary compared to many Eastern schools of thought; its rituals and practices are far from it.
- disgruntledphd2 8y ago
  I dunno, I thought that a lot of it (especially the exercises in MiTaP) was reminiscent of later psychological research. For instance, I believe that its one of the first examples of negative reinforcement, which didn't really become mainstream until the 50's or so. Additionally, if you check out Tibetan Buddhism rituals, you see a lot of what looks very like ritual magick. I was very very surprised at the amount of overlaps with the western/thelemic tradition. Just my 0.02.
ttflee 8y ago
> JPL itself doesn't have "occult roots." Just my personal speculation: Qian Xuesen, one of the few who founded JPL and later the Chinese rocket industry, has a strange favor in researches of "special human body functions" which turned out to be nonsense at all. It would be easily explained had he ever been exposed to Aleister Crowley and/or L. Ron Hubbard in 1940s.

wuliwong 8y ago

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 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
  - wuliwong 8y ago
    Nice, thanks. I just asked the previous commenter for book recs. I'll read at least one of these for sure. edit: I ordered "sex and rockets."
  - selimthegrim 8y ago
    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.
- wuliwong 8y ago
  I could see that. I guess I was just thinking that Parson's gave him his first big break in the occult. I've never delved much deeper than internet reading. Do you have a book recommendations?

tunnuz 8y ago

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

bartcobain 8y ago
And if you want to dig even deeper, the book "John Dee and the Empire of Angels: Enochian Magick and the Occult Roots of the Modern World" takes this topic even further. https://www.amazon.com/John-Dee-Empire-Angels-Enochian/dp/1620555891 https://www.amazon.com/John-Dee-Empire-Angels-Enochian/dp/16...
freehunter 8y ago
The Dollop podcast has an amusing take on Jack Parsons too. NSFW and probably less historically accurate than Unexplained, but amusing at least. http://thedollop.libsyn.com/jack-parson http://thedollop.libsyn.com/jack-parson
- armitron 8y ago
  I couldn't make it past 5 minutes. Fratboy-level jokes and constant detours into the irrelevant. Clearly my sense of humor is different from theirs.
tvanantwerp 8y ago
Yet another podcast episode about Jack Parsons from Something True. Highly recommended. https://www.idlethumbs.net/somethingtrue/episodes/babylon https://www.idlethumbs.net/somethingtrue/episodes/babylon
yittcvz 8y ago
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/0922915970 https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Rockets-Occult-World-Parsons/dp/0...

killion 8y ago

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 8y ago
Try this: http://web.archive.org/web/20181220194510/http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/aerospace-engineering/rocketry/jack-parsons-occult-roots-jpl/ http://web.archive.org/web/20181220194510/http://www.spacesa...
jonnydubowsky 8y ago
What's the series called?

maxxxxx 8y ago

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.

api 8y ago
Oh totally. There are lots of other examples. Issac Newton was into occultism and alchemy too, and Thomas Edison tried to build a machine to contact the dead using radio waves.
firethief 8y ago
I'm not sure Newton is an example. Alchemy wasn't fringe at the time, was it?
cc439 8y ago
"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.

jgrowl 8y ago

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

turnon 8y ago

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 8y ago
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.
empath75 8y ago
It’s likely not a coincidence as people into the occult tend to mix and match their mythology from a variety of sources. It’s almost assured that it was taken from Islamic sources. https://paradoxosalpha.livejournal.com/79983.html https://paradoxosalpha.livejournal.com/79983.html > As to my study of Islam, I got a sheikh to teach me Arabic and the practices of ablution, prayer and so on, so that at some future time I might pass for a Moslem among themselves. I learnt a number of chapters of the Koran by heart..... My sheikh was profoundly versed in the mysticism and magic of Islam, and discovering that I was an initiate, had no hesitation in providing me with books and manuscripts on the Arabic Cabbala. These formed the basis of my comparative studies. — Alastair Crowley.

ArtWomb 8y ago

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-tragedy https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/146051/bohemian-tr...

JoeDaDude 8y ago

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

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

WalterBright 8y ago

> 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 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_propulsion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_propulsion

WalterBright 8y ago

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

doodliego 8y ago
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.

agumonkey 8y ago

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

calibas 8y ago

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.

lucastheisen 8y ago

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

mycall 8y ago

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