BOOK
Explorers often break boundaries in ways that our morally skittish society whitewashes. California, as ground zero for cultural and scientific innovation, is a virtual garden of outsiders and eccentrics, and, asSex and Rockets shows, few stories make juicier examples than that of John "Jack" Parsons (1914-1952). Parsons was a cofounder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a primarily self-taught pioneer in the use of solid rocket fuels.
Parsons was also a political dissident, a poet, and an avid practitioner of ritual magic - largely the variety developed by English scandal magnet Aleister Crowley, which was an integration of Masonic rites, hermetic mysticism, and Tantric sexual practices. From a mansion in Pasadena, California, Parsons led America's most active lodge of Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis. Crowley called himself the Great Beast, and Parsons followed suit, taking the moniker Anti-Christ and hoping to free the world from what he saw as Christianity's repressive slave mentality.
California in the 1930s and '40s was already a heady place for testing possibilities and extending reality, and a foreword by Robert Anton Wilson does a good job of charting the cultural influence of Parsons and his circle. Parsons swapped ideas with science fiction writers such as Robert A. Heinlein and Ray Bradbury, as well as a large contingent of the Southern California demimonde. Even L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, played an important role in Parsons' drama, as scribe, medium, business partner, and later, the book claims, unscrupulous confidence man who appears to have tricked Parsons out of a great deal of money.
Fascinating personalities aside, one of the book's surprising points of interest is its lengthy and detailed description of the magical rites undertaken by Parsons. By covering the ins and outs of ritual operations, including invocations of angels and demons, magical languages, and numerological details, author John Carter gives curious readers a deep sense of what serious magicians do. (Details of the rites may shock those spooked by liberal use of blood, semen, and anti-Christian posturing.)
Parsons has long held mythic status among several subcultures, and this book makes great efforts to give a straightforward look at the man's life. But the pseudonymous author (his name is changed to protect his "government job") can't really set the story so straight - Parsons' life was too mixed up for that. The messiness is refreshing, though, because it shows how complicated our heroes sometimes are, and that cultural, scientific, and religious upheaval often work together explosively.
Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons by John Carter: $24.95. Feral House: (800) 967 7885,www.feralhouse.com.
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