Customer Reviews

Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

_Sex and Rockets_, a new book from Feral House about Jack Parsons, is rich with previously undocumented biographical information about this fascinating and talented genius, whose scientific career is no less interesting than his career as an occult initiate. This literal "son of Captain Marvel" (Marvel H. Parsons) was himself given the name Marvel at birth. Later his mother began calling him John, and he came to be known as Jack by his friends. In general Carter's book seems pretty well-researched. I appreciate the fact that _Sex and Rockets_ focuses more on the subject of Jack and his life than earlier literary efforts which have exploited the mythos surrounding Jack and his infamous Babalon Working to propagate highly speculative, only vaguely and loosely associated fringe agendas on the part of various writers. Carter has done a good job sticking to the subject.

The research in _Sex and Rockets_ focuses primarily on Jack's scientific career and secondarily on the Babalon Working itself. Of the former, the author traces a clear path detailing, validating and celebrating Parsons' contributions to the field of rocket fuel technology. Carter succeeds in his mission to carefully excavate and restore the previously almost-buried name and contributions of this scientist to their rightful stature in history. Of the latter, the author draws a clear juxtaposition between Cameron's view of the Babalon Working and Jack's own understanding. Carter clearly pinpoints the persistent indications in Jack's own records that reveal Jack's personal expectations of something more along the lines of an apotheosis than an actual incarnation, despite repeated communications from the Babalon archetype, also faithfully recorded, to redirect Jack's focus to the true nature of the Working, as time and again She gently deflects Jack's attention away from concerning himself with the future vehicle of Her manifestation. Carter also engages in some excellent reconstructive work about portions of the Working on which Jack's record is scant. While I do not agree with all Carter's conclusions or his particular slant on the Working at times, the Babalon Working remains a subject of myriad interpretations. Carter succeeds in his attempt to provide a more objective portrayal of the Working, and as such, his rings closer to true than other more fanciful and "fringe" speculations upon it have done in the past.

One thing I did not like about this book was the conspicuous absence of source citation. There were many interesting pieces of biographical information for which the author consistently failed to provide citation, neglecting to indicate whether he obtained the information from documents, records, conversations or interviews with people connected to Jack, etc. Comments by Cameron and others are recorded without so much as supplying the context in which they were made, when they were made, or to whom. Information about Jack's life which was not previously documented or heretofore known to the public is written as fact without offering any outside verification thereof. For example, Carter writes about a brief period of time where Jack's scientific career had stalled and Jack had taken an interim job at a filling station. Yet there is no source cited for this information. Whether the author obtained it from employment records, interviews with others connected with Jack's estate, or elsewhere remains a mystery, and the reader is left having to take the author's word with no means to verify it for himself. True, not every bit of information needs to be footnoted, and there is a lot of previously documented information about Jack's career. Nevertheless, previously undocumented and/or unpublished information should always be cited to verify its authenticity. Instead, the majority of existing citations in this book consist of things previously well-documented and cited elsewhere on numerous occasions, such as references to Crowley's writings and letters or O.T.O. ritual.

As a researcher, I find this frustrating, because without due citation for biographical information that is not documented elsewhere, how can _Sex and Rockets_ be regarded or used bibliographically as an authoritative source? The intelligent reader needs to see things historically documented or at least reasonably verified via citation, particularly where statements are attributed to other parties. This lack of documentation is definitely this book's biggest weakness. The author clearly did extensive and worthwhile research, so the lack of source citation is both puzzling and devaluing to the book as a whole.

Fair warning: there's one paragraph in the chapter "Death and Beyond" which brings up a very nasty bit of recent hearsay without duly informing the reader that the item in question is, in fact, unsubstantiated hearsay and that no physical evidence has been produced to substantiate it. Unless either the sources of the rumor, the author himself, or the publishers can produce the physical evidence claimed, or at least a sufficiently clear disclaimer as to its hearsay nature, repetition of this claim is inexcusably irresponsible, especially considering this book is the first reasonably thorough biographical work about Jack to be published. It smacks of crass sensationalism, which is totally unnecessary in exploring the life of a colorful and diversely talented person like Jack. I say produce the physical evidence or retract the rumor -- or at least amend the paragraph to clearly point out that it is nothing but hearsay and that no physical evidence to support the claim has been produced. Anything less is just plain exploitive, more worthy of the "Jerry Springer show" than an otherwise fairly well-researched biography.

Despite these two serious complaints, I still recommend this book as a ground-breaking, definitive biographical work on Jack Parsons. TIME IS ... for it to be read.

Shedona Chevalier (Soror M.'.P.'.B.'.) Master, Living Flame Camp, O.T.O.

Formulated by British humorist Stephen Potter circa 1950, thedoctrine of one-upmanship states quite simply that it is the businessof every intelligent man, no matter what situation he finds himself in, to be "one up" on the other chap. It is a philosophy that Jack Parsons, who died some two years later, would have benefited immensely by adopting. For a brilliant scientist Parsons was capable of remarkable naivete and as Gerald Suster delicately puts it, often had ideas "in excess of his ability to deal with them." In addition to being a rotten judge of character he wasn't conspicuously overburdened with common sense and had a knack amounting almost to genius for placing himself "one down" in relation to what Aleister Crowley called "our Brethren in California." Chief among these "Brethren in California" was of course Scientology founder Lafayette Ron Hubbard, who bamboozled Parsons with a series of "inspired" messages relating to the incarnation of Babalon, which he claimed to receive straight from the horse's mouth. Nowadays most sensible people associate Hubbard with the other end of the horse, but in the early Forties he was still an unknown quantity and seemingly had no trouble in swindling Parsons out of his money, his wife and his credibility in Crowley's eyes. ("It is the ordinary confidence trick.") Parsons was a potent but wildly erratic writer whose surviving material veers from elegiac beauty to surpassing daftness. If any constant can be traced through his work, good, bad or indifferent, it is that of schoolboy rebellion against "all authority not based on courage and manhood." Among other qualities, he shared with Crowley a conviction that "the key of joy is disobedience," and "conjured up" Marjorie Cameron to help him live it to the full. "I have my elemental," he exulted in February 1946, taking a characteristically rose-colored view of a magical operation which, while it was undoubtedly successful, ultimately proved to be a two-edged sword. For magical purposes Cameron chose to call herself Candida, the name of a parasitic fungal infection more commonly known as thrush. With her help Parsons attempted to conceive a Moonchild, thus provoking Crowley's ire ("I get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these louts") and effectively sealing his own fate. From then on the die was cast. In 1948 Parsons had an attack of the existential heebie jeebies and restyled himself Belarion Armillus Al Dajjal AntiChrist. Further bizarre events followed in rapid succession until, ripped off, conned and cuckolded by all and sundry, he blew himself to smithereens with fulminate of mercury. His death was neither murder (as some authors have rather fancifully suggested) nor a magical ricochet effect, but merely the natural culmination of a life dogged by disaster. Parsons has been profiled in several recent books, notably Montauk Revisited by Preston Nichols and Peter Moon, a turgid 250-page validation of John Grant's dictum that most occult potboilers are written by the gullible for the gullible. Now comes John Carter's full-length biography, which gathers together arcana from a wide variety of sources and binds them into a coherent whole. The text doesn't pretend to be definitive but nevertheless manages to cast fresh light on Parson methods, motives and manias. Particularly intriguing is its account of SF author Jack Williamson's peripheral influence on the so-called Babalon Working. Readers are also provided with several fascinating neuro-cameos of artist maudit Marjorie Cameron, whose red hair and natural sensuality made her ideal Scarlet Woman material. Cameron was in many respects a far more interesting figure than Parsons himself - but that's another story. These and other subjects are combined into a fast-moving, ever-changing word-portrait of human eccentricity. Parsons finally emerges as an occultist who, for all the scientific acumen attributed to him, would have blithely fallen for the three-card trick. Above all his life resembles a cautionary tale with the motto: "Don't dabble in the unknown." Perhaps that is the best way to view it.

I saw this book in a bookstore, and bought it because I mistook it for another book about John Parsons that I had read a glowing review of: "Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons" by George Pendle. I haven't found any non-amazon reviews of "Sex and Rockets", and having read the book, I see why.

The author, himself an occultist, botches what would seem like unbotchably juicy source material by spending pages upon pages on his own hobby by detailing inane minutiae about occult groups. Rank hierarchies, group branchings, not-so-famous members unrelated to Parsons, and other starchy details are enumerated over many pages. As for biographical information about Parsons himself, the author drops the ball on factual rigor. He often ends paragraphs of conjecture not with evidence but with unsubstantiated guesses. These are made even more frustrating by the fact that they usually seem pretty verifiable either through the public record or interviews. For example, there are many guesses about how Parsons "may have" talked "extensively" with this or that still-living figure. What's wrong, was that person not in the local phonebook?

"Sex and Rockets" was a disappointment, and as impossible as it seems, I've been put off from reading about eccentric occultist rocket scientists for a while. I'll probably get around to reading the other Parsons bio ("Strange Angel") eventually; it can only be better.

Jack/John Parsons was a polarized man with expansive influences in modern day America. As John Parsons, he was a father of solid rocket fuel, the third most influential man in rocket history (according to pioneer Theodore von Karman), and a co-founder of both NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Aerojet Corporation. He was a self-taught experimenter whose work rivaled that of PhDs. As Jack Parsons, on the other hand, he called himself The Antichrist and ran an occult lodge practicing Aleister Crowley's Ordo Templi Orrentis and the Thelemic rituals. With L. Ron Hubbard (later founder of Scientology), he practiced dark Babalon rituals to raise spiritual elementals and gain a higher awareness.

Author Carter uses public records, media sources, books, NASA archives, letters, and more to recount the life of the enigmatic Parsons. He is painfully meticulous in his telling of the story (some details are a bit too much unless you are an extreme fanatic of either rockets or Crowley). In Chapters 7 and 8, for example, every second of the Babalon rituals, lasting 12 days in one case, is recounted. The author even fills in portions of the ritual that are missing from Parsons's own notes. As a contribution to the occult record, these may be significant to get on paper once, but they are very trying for the armchair aerospace enthusiast to absorb. The author's research has revealed untruths in other published accounts, and he has the facts to back up his version of the events. Carter gives all his sources in footnotes and several extensive appendices, as well as references within the text to other worthwhile sources.

Carter seems to be a bit inexperienced as a writer. He does some odd foreshadowing that just seems to hang. He also searches for "coincidences" when there are none. For example, he makes note that a girlfriend of Parsons, L. Ron Hubbard, and the author Heinlen (who met Parsons just once) were all in the Navy. With the cast of dozens of scientists, occultists, and hangers-on that appear in this book, it hardly seems significant that three unrelated people did Navy duty at one time. Another "coincidence" is that Parsons's acid-aniline fuel mix was later used in the Titan missle, and Aleister Crowley sometimes referred to himself as Teitan (original Greek spelling). Considering Parsons was long gone from the military and DoD by the time the Titan missle was named, and Crowley used dozens of names and symbols in his many writings, this seems completely superfluous.

The book gets 4 out of 5 stars for the slightly-lacking writing quality. It can't be completely discounted, and if you can make it past the tedious amount of detail in spots, this is a worthwhile read. Parsons as a man gets 5/5 for being a genius, for being influential, and for just being "out there," and this is one of the best sources for reading about his life in government reseach and in the occult.

What a frustrating book . . . . An incredibly fascinating set of locales, ideas and characters: magick, rockets, early sci fi utopian dreamers, and a writing style that manages to make it all about as interesting as a history of, say, the ball-bearing industry. The book truly comes across as someone's notes for a book they never quite got around to writing. NOTHING comes to life in it; there is no vitality in any of the descriptions, no attempt to make any kind of meaning out of the details of Parsons' life. R.A. Wilson's lively intro only makes you realize how flat and colorless the rest of the book is. Still, for a glimpse into a world that begs for better documentation, this is worthwhile reading. Where else can you get a straightforward account of L. Ron Hubbard as a wife-stealing conman? Sex-magick Crowleyites in 1940s suburbia? Frontiers of science, magick, and social experimentation, all happening at the same time and the same place?

Worthwhile as a map, but not much fun as a journey . . ..

A Review from BLACK PEARL: The Journal of the College of Thelema (Vol. I, No. 71, March, 2000). Copyright 2000, College of Thelema (permission by editor granted Amazon Books to use). With its campy sci-fi cover featuring a leggy woman, a rocket ship, and the Enochian alphabet, the tone is set for this long overdue biography of Jack Parsons, the man at ground zero of what we now consider the modern "arts" of rocketry, science fiction, and magick. In this treatment by John Carter (pseudo-nym), Parsons comes across as a compulsive and restless spirit who, in his short lifetime, attempted to reconcile these seemingly strange bedfellows - with varying degrees of success. Seeming almost gossipy at times, the book reads with deceptive ease for a biography, due in large part to its lack of in-depth background information on Crowley and related occult theory. Though brief histo-ries of the O.T.O., Enochian magick, and the like are given, the reader is wisely referred to other sources, thereby avoiding what could easily become a massive and confusing tome where the import of Parsons' contributions would be lost. This makes Sex & Rockets a treat for those with a knowledge of Thelema and the esoteric. By the same token, this allows the casual reader to enjoy all the "good stuff," supplementing their knowledge as they see fit. Ultimately, I am inclined to agree with the author that, at the end of the day, Parsons' contributions to rocketry are vastly underrated and those to the occult overrated. However, I think that Parsons' approach to Thelema, and the occult in general, was highly subjective and, taking into account his own personal demons, his methods may gain merit as time goes by and may even become considered innovative. The book culminates in the chapter "Death and Beyond," a veritable avalanche of tangential relation-ships and events as diverse as UFOs and Beat Culture, leaving one with much food for thought. Knowledgeable, well researched, with great photos, and not a little scandalous, this book is seminal. - GREG FIORINI

This short biography touches upon the salient points of a fascinating individual: John W. Parsons, self-educated, visionary, explosives expert, rocket scientist and striving occultist, died at an early age, thirty seven, due to a freak explosion in his garage, a makeshift laboratory that was later discovered, had enough explosive material within it to take-out an entire city block. Was it murder? Was it a major conjuring ritual gone wrong? Or was it simply a terrible accident due to carelessness and oversight?

Parsons was indeed a unique character. His interest in Science Fiction, for example, moved him into literary circles, whose members are SF legends: Heinlein, Van Vogt...he became the protege of the founder of the OTO, Aleister Crowley. Another interesting personality, L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology, moved into his house, and allegedly took part in an extensive magical rite that might have drastically changed, for the worse, Parsons life. Many things may have contributed to Parsons turn of bad luck, but as the author points out, Hubbard ran off with Parsons wife and disappeared with a substantial sum of money, which later, Parsons sued for and won. Betrayal can have a devastating effect on anyone, as it obviously did on Parsons...

My only criticism of the text is the superficial manner in which the subject matter was explored - for such an interesting individual, much more time could have been spent researching his relationships and particularly his time at Hughes Aircraft and the alleged 'deal' he made with the Israeli government. It was rumoured that Parsons was organising to move to Israel with his wife Cameron, just prior to his mysterious death. Similar to most artists and non-conformists of the time, Parsons had a thick FBI file and had been under surveillance for an extended period...these intriguing aspects of Parsons life should have been unpacked, but were not...your guess is as good as mine.

Despite its lack of depth, ~Sex and Rockets~ is a fascinating read.

After reading the relatively glowing reviews here and in several magazines, I was looking forward to this book. The dual nature of Parsons' work and personal life was, and still is, interesting to me. Throw in some technical jargon (I'm an aerospace engineer) and I'm ready for a good time. However, this book was simply awful, and it's difficult to know where to begin the bad review.

The author makes the classical mistake of the academic or believer to describe the occult or mystical in minute details, spending paragraph after paragraph listing degress, rites, rituals, temples, splinter groups, etc. Background and explanation is good, a college course is not.

The actual description of events is needlessly confusing, with the tiresome use of the "later" approach, i.e., "we will see later why --insert topic-- is important". If something is important enough to bring up, describe it now. I haven't seen this technique used this much since freshmen english. Also, there is a constant tendency in the book to play catch up with Parson's work versus his personal life. The author seems to start with a simple "two path" description, but relatively quickly (approx. chapter 5) branches to Parson's personal/mystical life, and then spends a paragraph here, a chapter there, to finish off Parson's professional career.

The worst aspect of the book is the fact that I don't really have a better understanding of Parsons the man now then I did before I read the book. I simple possess a few more facts, mostly irrelevant, and sense of loss for the time I wasted. The book is far more interested in explaining, possibly promoting, the occult than exploring the different aspects of Parson.

Sex And Rockets: The Occult World Of Jack Parsons is the engaging, highly recommended biography of John Whiteside (Jack) Parsons, a primary architect of modern rocket science and co-founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Parsons (who had a crater on the dark side of the moon named for him) had dark, secretive interests which overshadowed his outstanding public career for Parsons underwrote Aleister Crowley's "Book of the Law", held numerous soirees celebrating science fiction, and performed weird black magic rituals under the eyes of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. After being investigated by the FBI and become estranged with the United States government, Parsons met his death when a mysterious explosion leveled his home. Sex And Rockets is riveting reading, enhanced with Parson's never-before-printed writings and period photographs.

This new edition should make more readers aware of this weird and forgotten part of our history. Carter pulls no punches and has little sentiment for anyone but Parsons, who he paints as a sort of tragic hero, equally obsessed with ritual occultism and rocket science. It is a testament to his inner will that Parsons worked with and was respected by some of the most brilliant scientists of his time--even though he had little formal training in science. He was instrumental in founding the modern era of space flight, and was honored by having a crater on the moon named after him (appropriately enough on the "dark" side.) All this while using his new-found wealth to open up a sort of bohemian paradise in his home on "millionaire's row" in the conservative Pasadena of the 1930s. Carter reveals all this and more in this fascinating book. Don't miss it.