14 Nov He Blew Himself Up, or Did He?
As handsome as a 40s movie star, Jack Parsons, (born Marvel Whiteside Parsons; October 2, 1914 – June 17, 1952), died at the age of 37 in a horrific explosion which was either an accident, suicide, or assassination.
In his short life Parsons rose to prominence in two widely disparate arenas: as a major player in the history of the US space program, and as one of LA’s and perhaps the world’s most prominent occultists.
As a child, Jack Parsons’s interest in sci-fi led him to experiment with rockets, later being expelled from boys’ school for blowing up toilets. He went on to become one of the principle founders of Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he invented the first rocket engine.
Parsons’s obsession with the occult began in childhood as well: he performed rituals in his bedroom to invoke the Devil, stopping until later in life when he feared he was successful. In his search for occult knowledge it is known that Parsons attended lectures on Theosophy by Krishnamurti. At the age of 25, he converted to the Thelema of Aleister Crowley, heading the local OTO lodge in Pasadena.
Parsons’s house in Pasadena, called The Parsonage, functioned as a commune and included a laboratory in the basement. Occult rituals were performed at the house, the most famous being the Babalon Working which was designed to bring the Scarlet Woman goddess to earth. Co-worker in this ritual was L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. When Marjorie Cameron, appeared at the house soon after, Hubbard and Parsons decided she was indeed the Scarlet Woman (it didn’t hurt that she had red hair), and Parsons married her.
Perhaps due to karma, perhaps bad luck, Parsons’s fortunes changed. An alcoholic and heavy user of cannabis, he had moved onto harder drugs. He was expelled from JPL for his hazardous conduct in the workplace and for his occult proclivities. He was under investigation by the FBI and the Pasadena police department and was accused of being a spy. Parson’s father had died as a psychiatric patient hospitalized for severe clinical depression, which some authors have speculated Jack inherited. When Jack died from the explosion in the basement, it was either a science project gone wrong, an occult working, suicide, or an assassination for his alleged espionage activities.
Jack Parsons was a mad genius, an occultist, an author, someone who really was a “rocket scientist,” an intrepid explorer of inner and outer space, and certainly one of Spiritual LA’s most fascinating characters.
© 2020 Catherine Auman
This is an excerpt from Catherine Auman’s book Guide to Spiritual L.A.: The Irreverent, the Awake, and the True
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