When the history of the American space program is finally written, no figure will stand out quite like John Whiteside Parsons. Remarkably handsome, dashing and brilliant, 'Jack' Parsons was one of the founders of the experimental rocket research group at Cal Tech and the group's seven acre Arroyo Seco testing facility would eventually become Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA's rocket design center.

Werner von Braun claimed it was the self-taught Parsons, not himself, who was the true father of the American space program for his contribution to the development of solid rocket fuel. Although Parsons has been memorialized with a statue at JPL and has had a crater on the dark side of the moon named in his honor, his story remains shrouded in mystery – for what is little known about this legend of aerospace engineering is that Parsons was an avid practitioner of the occult sciences, and for several years, Aleister Crowley's hand-picked leader of the US branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis, the Southern California-based Agape´ Lodge.

Parsons was born in Los Angeles on October 2, 1914, the son of a wealthy and well connected family living in a sprawling mansion on Pasadena's 'Millionaire Row.' His father worked for Woodrow Wilson. After his parents divorce, the solitary childhood of Parsons imbued him with a deep hatred of authority, and a contempt for any sort of interference in his activity. Parsons interest in the occult apparently commenced at an early age and in one of his diaries he claimed to have visibly evoked Satan at the tender age of 13.

After discovering Crowley's philosophy of Thelema (Greek for 'true will'), Parsons joined the Agape´ Lodge in 1941. Wilfred T. Smith, the expatriate Englishman who started the order in the early 1930s with a charter from the Great Beast himself, wrote of Parsons in a letter to Crowley: "I think I have at long last a really excellent man, John Parsons. And starting next Tuesday he begins a course of talks with a view to enlarging our scope. He has an excellent mind and much better intellect than myself . . . John Parsons is going to be valuable."

Another member of the Lodge, Crowley's old friend, actress Jane Wolfe described Parsons as "26 years of age, 6'2", vital, potentially bisexual at the very least, University of the State of California and Cal Tech, now engaged in Cal Tech chemical laboratories developing 'bigger and better' explosives for Uncle Sam. Travels under sealed orders from the government. Writes poetry -- 'sensuous only', he says. Lover of music, which he seems to know thoroughly. I see him as the real successor of Therion [Crowley]. Passionate; and has made the vilest analyses result in a species of exaltation after the event. Has had mystical experiences which gave him a sense of equality all round, although he is hierarchical in feeling and in the established order."

Parsons rose quickly through the ranks, taking over the Agape´ Lodgefrom Smith at Crowley's decree within a year.

"For I am BABALON, and she my daughter, unique and there shall be no other women like her."
~ ~ The Book of Babalon, verse 37.

In one of the most celebrated feats in magickal history, Parsons and pre-Dianetics L. Ron Hubbard (whose role is too complicated to describe in this short essay) performed The Babalon Working, a daring attempt to shatter the boundaries of time and space and intended to bring about, in Parsons own words, "love, understanding, and Dionysian freedom [ . . .] the necessary counterbalance or correspondence to the manifestation of Horus."

The above reference recalls Crowley's announcement of the Aeon of Horus, described in his Book of the Law (Liber AL vel Legis), a blasphemous, strangely beautiful, prose poem which Crowley 'received' from a discarnate entity called Aiwass in Cairo in 1904. Crowley, self-styled 'Great Beast 666,' considered himself the avatar of the Antichrist and the Book of the Law is a proclamation that the era of the 'slave gods' (Osirus, Mohammed, Jesus) had come to an end and that the Age of Horus and 'the Crowned and Conquering Child' had begun. In its infancy, Crowley predicted, the Aeon would be characterized by the magickal formula of bloodshed and blind force, the tearing down of the established orders to make way for the new.

Crowley held the two World Wars as evidence of this, but did not see the Horus-force, as evil, rather as embodying the innocence of a hyperactive child who is like a bull in a china shop. Babalon, a Thelemic counterpart of Kali or Isis, was described by Parsons as, ". . . black, murderous and horrible, but Her hand is uplifted in blessing and reassurance: the reconciliation of opposites, the apotheosis of the impossible."

The impossible was precisely what Jack Parsons, the scientific sorcerer, had in mind.

Lucifer Rising . . .

In its initial stages, The Babalon Working was intended to attract an 'elemental' to serve as a partner for Parsons' elaborate sex magick rituals. The method employed was that of the solo 'VIII Degree' working of the O.T.O, the quasi-Masonic organization reformulated by Crowley in the earlier part of the century in accordance with his 'Do What Thou Wilt' mythos of Thelema. Parsons used his 'magickal wand' to whip up a vortex of energy so the elemental would be summoned. Translated into plain English, Parsons jerked off in the name of spiritual advancement whilst Hubbard (referred to as 'The Scribe' in the diary of the event) scanned the astral plane for signs and visions.

Apparently, it worked. In a letter to Crowley dated February 23, 1946, Parsons exclaimed "I have my elemental! She turned up one night after the conclusion of the Operation, and has been with me since."

The elemental was a green-eyed, flaming redhead named Marjorie Cameron, (later of Kenneth Anger's Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome film, an artist of some reknown and a primary force in the New Age 'Goddess' movement). Cameron was only too happy to participate in Parson's sex magick and now Parsons could get down to the real business of the Babalon Working: the birthing of a 'moonchild' or homunculus. The operation was formulated to open an interdimensional doorway, rolling out the red carpet for the appearance of the goddess Babalon in human form, employing the Enochian Calls [angelic language] of Elizabethan magus John Dee and the attraction of the sex force of the duo's copulation to this end.

As Paul Rydeen points out in his extended essay Jack Parsons and the Fall of Babalon:

"The purpose of Parson's operation has been underemphasized. He sought to produce a magickal child who would be a product of her environment rather than of her heredity. Crowley himself describes the Moonchild in just these terms. The Babalon Working itself was preparation for what was to come: a Thelemic messiah."

To wit: Babalon incarnate as a living female, the Scarlet Woman as consort to the Antichrist, bride of the Beast 666. In effect, Parsons also claimed the mantle of Antichrist for himself, as the magickal heir of Crowley prophesied in Liber AL: 'The child of thy bowels, he shall behold them [the mysteries of the Apocalypse]. Expect him not from the East, nor from the West, for from no expected house cometh that child.'