Jack Parsons: The occultist at the heart of NASA
By this point, we know that the only thing NASA was looking for in its recruits when gearing up for the space race against the Soviet Union was intelligence and obedience.
One might think that these two aspects were pretty good things to have when creating rocket ships. So long as they can understand the kind of concepts they’re dealing with and are willing to do as much as they can until the task is done, what more do you need, right? Well, on the one hand, sure. If you’re going to put the reputation of your country in the hands of a bunch of scientists, they do need to be the best you can possibly get your hands on.
On the other hand, you might also want to look into their history and check whether they’d spent any time in the immediate past trying to blow you and your allies up in order to make way for a fascist dictatorship.
It’s true, a number of the rocket scientists working for NASA during the space race had been freshly recruited from the team of Nazi scientists who’d been tasked by Hitler to work on their atomic bomb project. I suppose at that point, the American government reasoned that an active Soviet Union was more of a threat than a defeated Reich and saw no problem in giving their “best and brightest” a second chance.
Perhaps it was that attitude that made them shrug their shoulders and hire a man like Jack Parsons, a rocket engineer, chemist and absolute dish from Los Angeles, California. This was a man who wouldn’t let a disenfranchised economic background dissuade him from doing the thing he was most passionate about, building rockets and, in particular, rocket fuel. Starting as a kid by building rockets in his back garden before becoming a major part of the development of rocket systems during the Second World War.
As much of a catch for NASA as the lucky girl who’d marry him, right? So, what was the issue? At least, in the American government’s mind, the fact that he was a diehard occultist who followed the teachings of Aleister Crowley to the letter.
How did this Jack Parsons join NASA?
Parsons had been introduced to the so-called Church of Thelema in 1939 after two friends of his took him to the Church of Thelema on Winona Boulevard in Hollywood.
There, Parsons witnessed the Gnostic Mass and was instantly hooked. The more he embraced Crowley’s philosophy, the more he felt like his scientific pursuits had a philosophical and religious companion. Both were focused on exploring the limits of what human beings were capable of experiencing. Rocketry puts us among the stars, and ritual magic forces us to look radically inward.
Parsons founded the team of rocket scientists that would become colourfully known as ‘The Suicide Squad’ (not that one) for their dangerous experiments. This team, working under Parsons, would develop the jet propulsion system that the majority of US rockets would use when they joined the war, yet despite being a vital part of the war effort, the US government finally began to cotton on to Parsons’s personal life, and they did not like what they saw.
Alongside his devoted belief in Thelema, Parsons was also a close friend of L Ron Hubbard, and his interest in leftist and Marxist politics was growing as well. Clearly, this was a bridge too far for the American government, which expelled him from NASA in 1944, causing Parsons to strengthen his bonds with the pccult. Hubbard in particular responded to Parsons’ embrace of him by running off with all his savings, and Parsons died in 1952 after an explosion in his home laboratory.
A sobering reminder that, in he eyes of the United States government, it’s better to be a literal Nazi than a communist or an occultist.