Jack Parsons and the Occult History Behind NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab
NASA, Rockets, and the Occult Side of Jack Parsons
Before NASA reached the stars, one of the founding fathers of American rocketry was chanting ancient invocations in the California desert. Jack Parsons — rocket engineer, co-founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and devoted occultist — lived one of the strangest double lives in the history of science. His solid-fuel breakthroughs helped power the Space Shuttle and Minuteman missiles, yet he spent his nights performing sex magick rituals with Aleister Crowley's followers and attempting to summon a goddess called Babalon also known as the Scarlet Woman, Great Mother or Mother of Abominations.
This is the true story of the man who blurred the line between rocket science and ritual magic — and why NASA quietly erased him from history.
Who Was Jack Parsons?
John Whiteside Parsons was born Marvel Whiteside Parsons on October 2, 1914, in Los Angeles, California. Raised on Pasadena's prestigious "Millionaire's Mile" by his mother and grandparents after his father's affair led to divorce, young Jack grew up solitary and bookish. He devoured Jules Verne novels, Amazing Stories magazine, and Arthurian legends — fueling twin obsessions with space travel and the supernatural that would define his entire life.
At age 12, Parsons and school friend Edward Forman began building homemade gunpowder rockets in the family backyard, leaving it pockmarked with craters from explosive failures. Around the same time, Parsons attempted his first occult experiment: a bedside ritual to invoke the Devil. He believed it worked and was frightened enough to stop — for a while.
Despite poor grades, expulsion from military school (for blowing up the toilets), and financial hardship during the Great Depression, Parsons never gave up on his dream of reaching the stars.
From Backyard Rockets to the Birth of JPL
In 1934, Parsons and Forman connected with Frank Malina, a Caltech mathematics student studying rocket propulsion. The trio convinced renowned aerodynamicist Theodore von Kármán to let them use Caltech's Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory (GALCIT) for their experiments. Their dangerous tests earned them the campus nickname "Suicide Squad," and repeated explosions forced them to relocate to the Arroyo Seco canyon — the exact site where NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory stands today.
Parsons was the chemist of the group, Forman the machinist, and Malina the mathematician. Together, they conducted the first U.S. government-funded rocket research, developing Jet-Assisted Take Off (JATO) technology for the military. In 1941, their JATO-equipped Ercoupe aircraft successfully reduced takeoff distance by 30% at March Air Force Base.
Parsons' greatest technical achievement came in 1942 when he invented GALCIT-53, a castable composite solid fuel using asphalt as a binding agent with potassium perchlorate. Inspired by the ancient weapon Greek fire, this innovation was 427% more powerful than earlier formulas and could be safely stored and mass-produced. Variants of Parsons' solid-fuel design later powered NASA's Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters and the Minuteman, Polaris, and Poseidon intercontinental ballistic missiles.
In 1942, the group founded the Aerojet Engineering Corporation to sell JATO engines to the military. By 1943, the GALCIT Rocket Research Group was formally renamed the Jet Propulsion Laboratory — the name chosen because "rockets" still carried a science-fiction stigma.
Enter Thelema: Aleister Crowley's Influence on Parsons
While revolutionizing rocketry by day, Parsons was diving deep into the occult by night. In 1939, he attended a Gnostic Mass at the Church of Thelema in Hollywood and became captivated by the teachings of Aleister Crowley, the infamous British occultist known in the press as "the wickedest man in the world".
Thelema, Crowley's spiritual movement, taught that every person has a "True Will" — an ultimate purpose beyond ego — and that achieving it required rituals incorporating ancient Egyptian deities, sex magick, and Eastern and Western mysticism. Its central law: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law".
By 1941, Parsons and his wife Helen had been initiated into the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), Crowley's occult order. Parsons rose quickly, becoming leader of the California branch — the Agape Lodge — by 1942. Crowley himself called Parsons "the most valued member of the whole Order, with no exception".
Parsons saw no contradiction between rocket science and ritual magic. He famously recited Crowley's poem "Hymn to Pan" before every rocket test, believing it brought good luck. His colleagues laughed it off, and von Kármán simply called him a "delightful screwball". But Parsons believed magick was a real force that could ultimately be explained through quantum physics.
He moved the O.T.O. into a Pasadena mansion he called "the Parsonage," where Thelemites lived communally alongside artists, anarchists, bohemians, and science fiction writers — including Robert A. Heinlein. Parsons donated nearly all his salary to the Order and sent money to Crowley in London.
The Babalon Working: Sex Magick in the Shadow of Rockets
By 1944, Parsons' occult activities had cost him his career at JPL and Aerojet. Colleagues insisted he be removed before a major stock sale, viewing his rituals as disreputable. Undeterred, Parsons used his $11,000 payout to buy the Parsonage and devote himself fully to the occult.
In 1945, science fiction writer and U.S. Navy officer L. Ron Hubbard moved into the Parsonage. Parsons was immediately taken with him, writing to Crowley: "He is the most Thelemic person I have ever met and is in complete accord with our own principles".
From January to March 1946, Parsons and Hubbard performed a series of elaborate ceremonies known as the Babalon Working. The goal: to incarnate the Thelemite goddess Babalon — also called the Scarlet Woman — in human form on Earth. Parsons served as the magician while Hubbard acted as "scribe," recording visions and detecting magical phenomena.
The rituals drew on Enochian magic and Crowley's sex magick teachings. In one phase, Parsons masturbated onto magical tablets while Prokofiev's Second Violin Concerto played. The final ceremony took place in the Mojave Desert in late February 1946. Upon returning to the Parsonage, Parsons found that a red-haired woman named Marjorie Cameron — an unemployed illustrator and former Navy WAVE — had arrived looking for a room. Parsons believed she was the living manifestation of Babalon that his rituals had summoned.
Parsons and Cameron began performing sex magick together, with Hubbard continuing as assistant. In the second phase of the Working, inspired by Crowley's novel Moonchild, the pair aimed to magically conceive a "magical child" — a Thelemic messiah who would embody Babalon and usher in a new spiritual age.
During a solo desert retreat, Parsons believed a supernatural entity transmitted to him Liber 49 (also called The Book of Babalon), which he claimed was a fourth chapter of Crowley's sacred text The Book of the Law.
Crowley was not impressed. He complained to his associate Karl Germer: "I am fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these louts!"
L. Ron Hubbard, Betrayal, and Downfall
The partnership between Parsons and Hubbard ended in betrayal. While living at the Parsonage, Hubbard had begun a relationship with Parsons' partner Sara Northrup. Then Hubbard convinced Parsons to invest $20,000 in a business scheme called Allied Enterprises — buying boats in Florida and reselling them at a profit.
Hubbard and Sara fled to Miami with the money, bought a yacht, and attempted to sail away. According to Parsons, he performed a magical invocation to the god Mars that conjured a storm, forcing Hubbard's boat back to shore. Through legal action, Parsons recovered roughly $2,900 — a fraction of his investment.
Hubbard went on to found Dianetics and, eventually, Scientology. Parsons was left broke and heartbroken. Crowley, who had warned Parsons about Hubbard from the start, saw his suspicions confirmed — the "wickedest man in the world" had recognized a con artist when he saw one.
The Final Years and Mysterious Death
Stripped of his rocketry career, his security clearance revoked during the Red Scare after accusations of espionage, Parsons spent his final years doing odd jobs — repairing washing machines, creating pyrotechnics for Hollywood films, and working as a freelance explosives consultant. He married Cameron and continued his occult practices, writing essays blending libertarian individualism with Thelemic philosophy.
On June 17, 1952, an explosion ripped through Parsons' home laboratory in Pasadena. He was mixing fulminate of mercury for a film pyrotechnics order when something went catastrophically wrong. Parsons, just 37 years old, died of his injuries shortly after.
The cause was officially ruled an accident, but controversy has surrounded the event ever since. His colleague Edward Forman thought it plausible, recalling Parsons had "criminally sweaty hands." Others described his lab habits as "scrupulously neat" and doubted he would make such an error. Theories of suicide, murder, and even a ritual gone wrong have circulated for decades.
His mother, Ruth, took her own life with a deliberate drug overdose the same day she learned of her son's death.
Did the Occult Really Shape NASA?
The short answer: not officially. JPL's modern operations and NASA's institutional history are built on physics, engineering, and government funding — not ritual magic. After Parsons' death, his contributions were systematically minimized. For years, he appeared as a footnote in Caltech's technical papers; eventually, even the footnotes disappeared.
But the symbolic connection between Parsons' twin pursues — breaking Earth's gravity and breaking spiritual limitations — continues to fascinate. As show creator Mark Heyman put it: "Drug use and orgies is just a hard thing to fold into NASA's official story". Even Wernher von Braun reportedly called Parsons the "true father of the American space race".
Today, Parsons is recognized with a small crater on the far side of the Moon — the side rarely seen from Earth. His life has been adapted in the CBS series Strange Angel and explored in biographies including George Pendle's Strange Angel and John Carter's Sex and Rockets.
What Can Spiritual Seekers Learn from Jack Parsons?
Parsons' story offers powerful lessons for anyone exploring the intersection of science, spirituality, and personal transformation:
Vision without boundaries can change the world — and destroy you. Parsons dreamed of reaching the stars when rocketry was pure science fiction, and he made it real. But the same boundless drive led him into obsessive rituals, financial ruin, and an early death.
The shadow side of spiritual power is real. Parsons' deep dive into sex magick, goddess invocation, and Thelemic oaths shows how spiritual practices can become consuming obsessions when they lack grounding, ethics, and community accountability.
Science and mysticism share a common root: the desire to transcend limits. Parsons genuinely believed that rocketry and ritual magic were two paths toward the same goal — reaching beyond the known. Whether or not one agrees with his methods, his life reveals the ancient human impulse to merge the material and the spiritual.
FAQ: Jack Parsons, NASA, and the Occult
Q: Was Jack Parsons really involved in the occult?
A: Yes. Parsons was an initiated member and eventual leader of the Ordo Templi Orientis, Aleister Crowley's occult order. He practiced Thelemic magick, performed sex magick rituals, and believed in the reality of supernatural forces.
Q: Did NASA have occult roots?
A: JPL — which became part of NASA — was co-founded by Parsons. While his occult beliefs influenced early culture at the laboratory, NASA as an institution is built on science and engineering. The occult connection is historical, not operational.
Q: What was the Babalon Working?
A: A series of sex magick rituals performed by Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard in early 1946, aimed at incarnating the Thelemite goddess Babalon on Earth. Parsons believed the rituals succeeded when red-haired artist Marjorie Cameron arrived at his home shortly after.
Q: How did Aleister Crowley influence Jack Parsons?
A: Crowley's philosophy of Thelema — centered on discovering and following one's "True Will" — became Parsons' guiding spiritual framework. Parsons joined Crowley's O.T.O., became its California leader, recited Crowley's poetry before rocket tests, and corresponded with Crowley for years.
Q: How did Jack Parsons die?
A: He died on June 17, 1952, at age 37, in a home laboratory explosion while mixing fulminate of mercury. The death was ruled accidental, but theories of suicide and murder persist.
