Oh Man, Folks, in a world of conspiracy, there are all kinds of names. It's easy to miss some of them, but one name you should definitely remember is a guy called Jack Parsons, a literal rocket scientist and a fascinating, fascinating person. I still read about this guy. Actually, I think there's something more to the story. But who was he?
Well, he was a rocket scientist, as you said, but he hit some interesting associates and friends and people you would hang out with and let's say, do very specific things.
Right, Yeah, besties with Alistair Crowley, who you may ever heard of. Kind of a big deal in that occultic space. But there's a lot of parts about this guy's story, Jack Parsons story, that you probably aren't familiar with, And if you haven't heard this episode, it's a good time to dig in.
So here we go with sex Hoults in rocket Science, the Jack Parsons story, from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt and they call me Ben.
We are joined with our super producer Paul Decktt. Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Today we bring you two worlds that will smash together, the world of science, rocketry, physics, and the occult, the mysterious, the the void.
Absolutely and that sounds maybe like a little bit of hyperbole, but it's that's absolutely true. Today's episode centers on something that the three of us find fascinating and we hope you find it fascinating too. It's a little known cover up that was quite successful for decades. It occurs in the United States, and it does, as you said, Matt, combine the bleeding edge of science with the hidden dare we say occulted heart of the dark arts?
Yes? And how different are they really? We'll get into that too. The exploration of mankind's abilities, that's really what both of those pursuits are. What can we achieve either with our hands or through our mind and through some other plane that may be spiritual?
Right, And this also calls to mind the old sci fi quotation that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
And there you have it. That is the end that encapsulates this episode.
Yes, let's start at the beginning. Marvel white Side Parsons.
Yeah, that's not a comic book character.
It's his real name. Isn't that a great name?
It is.
Marvel Whiteside Parsons is born on October two, nineteen fourteen, in Los Angeles, California.
Yeah, he's also known as Jack. That's what he becomes known as.
Yes, Yes, And from his early childhood days, Jack has an abiding interest in rocketry. At this point in the early twentieth century, rocketry is still seen very much as a science fiction thing.
Yeah, that's where it exists in the pages of fiction, of drawings of what a rocket could.
Be like, right, people landing on various lunar shores, weird space rocks, and meeting you.
Know, martians, perhaps.
Martians, Yeah, some sort of some sort of alien that functions as a stand in for whatever ideology the author dislikes. Yep, there's a lot of There was a lot of communism in space at the time. Gotta love allegory, Yeah, especially when it's naked allegory. Yeah, you know what I mean. But Jack swallows the stuff hook line and sinker. He loves it, loves it, and I think a lot of us can understand that feeling. Right. In nineteen twenty eight, Jack and his friend, a guy named Ed Foreman, start
experimenting with rockets on an amateur level. Matt, have you ever done this when you were a kid? Did you ever make and launch those model rockets?
Yeah, and that's about the right time. When he was fourteen, he was doing this. When I was in middle school to high school, my friend Scott and I would spend a lot of time in the backyard experimenting with chemicals and with cardboard tubes actually, which is something that Jack also did.
Hey, Paul, what about you? Were you a rocketman a rocket boy? So conspiracy realists, fellow listeners, our super producer Paul has asked us to relay to.
You because he won't record his own voice.
Because he couldn't get him on MIC. He asked us to relate to you that he, like many of us, as a child, bought the model rocket kits, experimented with them in the backyard, and noted there was an element of danger to it.
Yeah, there's like there's an explosion that happens, and then this thing goes up into the air really high, and then usually at least in my experience, blows up to some extent.
And Jack Parsons to let the badger out of the bag. Here. He is from a wealthy family.
A very wealthy family, a very well.
To do family, and he gets some leeway experimenting with these rockets, something a lot of kids can maybe afford to do, And even if they can afford to do it, not many of them have the ingenuity, perhaps yeah, to do this. So his parents' backyard is filled with craters very soon after he begins experimenting with stuff, and his neighborhood is littered with flaming bits of paper and scorched cardboard tubes.
Yeah, and this is a year before the Great Depression hits, by the way, in nineteen twenty eight. So everybody's living the high life shooting off rockets in their backyard. Well, at least Jack is right, right.
And as Parsons and Foremen go to high school, they become captivated with how ingenious is this? They become captivated with the idea of creating a solid fuel rocket engine. And this concept at the time is widely considered poppycock, nonsense.
It can't happen. Why would you study that right now?
Yes, what are you a poon? Yes, you know what I mean?
And to get on the liquid stuff.
And if God meant rockets to travel to space, wouldn't God have put them there already?
Yes?
One are those things. Yeah, but Parsons also as a kid, has long, meandering teenage conversations. I'm sure we can all identify with some of with those situations, like when you're when you're a teenager, you often get involved in these epic marathon conversations. You hang up, no, you hang up?
Yeah?
Right, Yeah, So who is who is Parsons talking to?
Uh, he's he's talking to someone who was born two years before him, who was also a fairly young man at the time, a man named Werner von Brown, Magnus Maximilian von Brown. There's there's a lot more names in there. Yeah, you might remember this fella. So he has kind of become a name on this show. We talk about him
quite often. He's the former Nazi scientist who helped to develop the V two rocket for the Nazi Party, and then he was secretly brought over to the US via that Operation paper Clip that we speak about, where over sixteen hundred scientists were brought to the United States and then you know, he went on to develop the Saturn five heavy lift vehicle that was used in the Apollo programs that took us to the Moon, as well as the original rockets that started the United States space program.
And there's like, there's a whole other host of things that he did for this country and for rocketry in general.
Yeah, it's a little bit of an eye opener for anybody who just started listening to our show to learn that the NASA institution, as we understand it, would not be capable of the feats it is capable of, yeah, without Nazi engineering and ingenuity.
Yeah. Yeah, And again at this point, he's just a young guy.
Yeah, and I feel, you know, I feel weird say Nazi ingenuity. We do have to point out Operation paper Clip was a genuine conspiracy, yeah, and cover up that occurred. A lot of the American public did not know about it and would not learn about it for some time. But many of those scientists were not necessarily like, they were not ideological Nazis.
No, they're the greatest minds in their fields.
Yeah, and they some of them were only there because they couldn't get out of Germany before things went south.
Certainly.
So that's this is all this all stuff that neither Parsons nor von Braun know about at this time. They're just two rocket nerds.
Yeah, just talking on the phone.
And as he said, Matt, the Great Depression hits here in the US. We usually think of the Great Depression just in terms of its effect on this country, but the Great Depression has consequences that touch the entire globe. Right, very few people, accept arguably the people responsible for the situation escape unscathed in most countries. The Great Depression starts in nineteen twenty nine, lasts until the late nineteen thirties, and because of this, Parsons family is not elite enough
to survive the situation. So instead of becoming increasingly aristocratic, they lose a ton of money. And this prevents him from completing his higher education at Pasadena Junior College and Stanford University, and he ultimately drops out.
Yeah. Then in a moment of I don't know, I guess this was just opportunity fortune. In nineteen thirty three, our gentleman here, Jack Parsons, and his friend Ed Foreman, they approach another man named Frank Molina, and he at this point as a graduate student at Caltech California Technical Institute, and they ask for his help for his expertise because he's already kind of working in these fields, like, how can you help us with rocket research that we want to do that we're so passionate about.
Right, And luckily for them, Frank is a pretty open minded guy. He says, you know what, yeah, I'll team up with you.
Yeah, that's yeah, okay, sure, let's do this. Guys. They must have come to him with something very compelling.
Well, also his field of study concerned rocketry.
Yeah, well exactly. But again for them to team up together, the other two gentlemen, Ed and Jack must have had some pretty good schematics or some math and or science worked out to have Molina go yes, let's do this, right.
Yes, So it's a good partnership for these guys because Frank is bringing scientific rigor, yes, academic discipline, and these rocket heads can I say that, sure they're rocket heeads, rocket heeads. These other rocket heeads are bringing a lot of practical knowledge and experience and know enough about rocketry to ask intriguing questions. And intriguing questions are the best way to talk to a grad student anywhere. Yeah, grad students in the audience, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
Yeah, these unanswered questions that perhaps we could be the ones to discover the.
Truth, and especially when they're niche, because you know, you have to imagine at this time, it's safe to say that Frank Molina is probably in need of someone to talk with about rocketry.
Yeah, because we're we're in the days, you know, the mid nineteen thirties, everything up until this point, Like we kind of mentioned earlier, rock Tree, the whole idea of jet propulsion, these kinds of things. It's just it's something of the future. It's something that you read in a book somewhere.
Right, it's a work of fiction. Nowadays, in twenty eighteen, as we record this, the phrase rocket scientist is almost always used as a synonym for genius, usually in a sarcastic way. Right. Yeah, but back in the nineteen thirties, pre World War Two, most people did as as you said, Matt, I think rocket Tree was ridiculous, eccentric and impractical. You know, pseudoscience, a sort of a hunt for fool's gold in the sky exactly.
Yeah, it would be like if you went out to a bar right now, and someone introduced themselves to you as a as like a teleportation specialist or something to that effect or research. I research teleportation.
I'm a teleportationist.
Yeah, you're like, oh, okay, well see you later.
Right, what do you really do?
Well?
I attempt to teleport things instantaneously through space and time.
Yeah, at this point it's mostly on paper, but we're getting there.
We've done some very interesting things with very small bits of matter.
Yeah.
I could totally see that that's an interesting person, maybe at a bar as a stranger, but that's not That doesn't sound like it's a real thing.
Yeah, you're probably not looking to get into any kind of business venture with that person at this point.
So these guys are not being taken seriously. Jack Parsons, head foreman Frank Molina are not being taken seriously. They form a group called gal Sit Rocket Research Group. They're ridiculed by professors and learned individuals of cow Tech. They even get a.
Nickname, Yeah, the Suicide Squad. Not the DC Universe IP, but yeah, the Suicide Squad. It's really just due to the reckless nature of what they do, how they perform their experiments, these things explode.
Which is mainly Then you go ahead and say it's mainly Parsons. Yeah, he's like, are you familiar with The Stand?
I am?
Okay. So in the adaptation of The Stand in the novel itself, which is better than the adaptation, no knock on the adaptation. But in the novel The Stand, there is a character called the garbage Man. Yes, trash can Man, that's it, that's his name, and trash can Man without spoiling the story.
And without just being wonderful to say.
Yes, yes, trash can Man has a weird fascination with blowing things up. And there's a little bit of trash can Man and Jack Parsons and Parsons and trash can Man, you know what I mean?
Oh, totally.
And so it's no surprise that the people who are used to more buttoned up conservative experiments and methodologies, it's no surprise that they think this guy is just a somewhere between a cartoon and a terrorist.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, Well, it's not like he conducts himself in any of those manners that you're speaking. These guys are would probably consider themselves and acted like like hot Shots Part two. But no, for real, like like walking around campus like you doing rocket scientist lady, and also smoke a little pot, probably.
Drink talk about socialism. Yeah, because they hung admal up. But they it wasn't just hanging out to build and talk about rockets. They did have social lives and they spent that time together and they partied.
There goes the suicide Squad. But by the way, uh, I know you, you and Noel had mentioned this before, and specifically I think you had mentioned this. But Castle Rock just because we got into a Stephen King, Yeah, novel there Castle Rock. I'm finally starting to watch and I could not I could not recommend it more.
How far are you?
I'm only three episodes in, but I'm just loving all the little bits and pieces I keep picking up from the universe.
I'm very interested to hear what you think about the end because the whole season's out now.
Oh it is. Oh that makes me happy.
I think ten episodes. Okay, So without saying anymore, okay, I don't know how to direct this in a way that won't spoil it. Where you Matt, how about this, folks? I would love to hear what you think about this. Matt. I know you would too, but we don't want to spoil it for Matt. So if you have strong opinions, I would love to hear them. I'm a little conflicted about the end. You can write to me directly so that it doesn't go to.
Write to conspiracy. Just put a conspiracy at how stuff works dot com. Just put a little note in there that says at the top, Matt, don't read this.
There you go, great, great, Uh, yeah, I want to hear what people think, because it did get renewed.
Yes, so.
Trash can man aside suicide squad aside parsons isn't completely counterculture in nineteen thirty five. Well, in nineteen thirty four he meets a woman at a church dance incredibly common way to meet people at the time, and in nineteen thirty five he marries her.
Yes, miss Helen Northrop, who is the sister, the older sister I believe of Sarah Northrop Hollister. And that's going to come into play a little later. So we're not going to expound on that. If you know what that is, you can just put a little a little feather in your cap.
And if you're the sort of person who cheats at crosswords trivia.
Don't do it.
You will have an opportunity because we're going to take a break for a word from our sponsor. I know a lot of people dealt with a moral or ethical quandary, some of you to borrow the line from D and D. We're very lawful, good about it. I will not cheat. I will wait to hear the story.
Yeah, did you eat that one marshmallow now? Or did you wait until after the ad break to get two marshmallows?
M hmm, yeah right? Or did you decide I do what I want because doing what I want should be the entirety of the law.
Oh, back to well Man. So many easter d eggs already? Alright, I keep going.
Back to Parsons. So they continue, despite the ridicule, to make multiple breakthroughs in the study and manufacture of engines, but more importantly rocket fuel.
Yeah, the fuel for those engines. Exactly.
They actually receive the first government funding for a rocket try research group, at least in the US.
And you know it's this isn't something that our archfriendemissism, our nemesis slash friend, Jonathan Strickland, he would call it a princely sum but you know what they do get where they get mad one grand, they get a stack, they get a single stack. But man, that is a nice stack at the time.
Right, especially in the thirties, right. And here's the thing. They pretty much they have to spend about twenty five percent of it, about a quarter of this thousand dollars.
Good chunk of the budget, repairing.
Damage to buildings on the Caltech campus.
Damage you say, they've just they've.
Been blowing stuff up left. So although they're and also they asked for a lot more than one thousand dollars, Yes, they got one thousand dollars. So they have to spend a bunch of money repairing the campus and the damage they've done to it. Eventually they have to move from the campus entirely due to the danger post by the explosives, and they relocate to the Arroyo Seco Canyon. They're conducting experiments and someone's watching them.
Oh yeah, who is that group? Oh yeah, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is watching them, the FBI. Yeah. I think generally when you're making explosives or things that can explode, that's you're gonna get on a list.
And they did, they did get on a list. Also a side note, maybe maybe we should come up with some alternate some alternate interpretations of the FBI acronym.
Oh okay, the fully bundled.
Institute, that's not okay, the fun Boys International, that's it.
That's it, fun Boys International with a Z on the boys.
Oh my gosh, all right, let us know if that's a good T shirt idea. And Boys International because we could get the we could get the FBI loco.
Yes. And one of the reasons they're very much interested in these gentlemen and their penchant to blow things up is because they're interested in extremists of any sort that might want to get with these guys and or just blow things up on the site where they're now located in that Arroyo Siico canyon.
Right right, because they are literally just in a couple of rundown shets iron shets the security is not very high.
So in addition to being aware of these these rocketheads political leanings and the ideologies with which the identify, the FBI is also aware of the fact that someone the political extremists would be what we call a terrorist today, that someone could ride up their in force, maybe with some firearms and take the explosives, take these chemicals, maybe even take this technology and launch a rocket at a bank, at a city, you know, or.
Just blow it up from the ground level, or just blow.
It up, that's right, without even bothering to deliver the rocket. So this is when the FBI first has their eye on Parsons and Co. In nineteen forty one, the Suicide Squad founds the Aerojet Engineering Corporation to sell rockets to the military. The scientists who had previously derided and pooped and pissed on Parsons work now are lining up around the block across the country to join this booming industry
because Uncle Sam has officially opened up his wallet. Yeah, and Uncle Sam's wallet is big.
It is that No, it's so big. It's so big. Bit, You've got a lot of money, and Uncle Sam doesn't even really know how much is in that wallet because it's kind of infinite, and sometimes that money just disappears in the level of trillions and weird little black budgets.
Or just a palette of let's say a billion dollars can disappear in recent memory and barely make a mention in the news.
It gets on a plane. I didn't see it get off? Did you see it get off? I don't know where it is.
It's gone to buy a plane? Doctor?
Who knows?
Who knows?
It's not like we weigh these things.
Right, Let's get back to the real issues. Okay, something social and insignificant, perfect man, we has? Has this show made us cynical? No? Has this show made you cynical? If you're listening, let us know.
We've had a few people right in about that.
That's true, that's true. And you and I have been in situations where the void stared back, Yeah, you know, or the abyss stared back.
I feel like it kind of always is staring. Just do you choose to see it or not?
Yeah, me and the me and the abyss have been making some smoldering eye contact recently.
Made some smoldering eye contact with a dude earlier today. I won't bore you with those details.
Oh yeah, I was gonna spring that on you and ask you to mention that story at the end. Maybe we can do that at the end. Would you be okay with that?
That's perfect?
Okay, And that's this is a Paul and Matt story. So we'll have to wait till the end. We're we're building up expectations. Man, we better deliver ours.
Let's let's do it just like these guys. Let's deliver a payload.
There we go. Now again, Paul refuses to be recorded on this show because he's worried about his future political career. But he did purposely turn on the mic and chuckle it.
He did. He gave me a little George W. Bush chuckle it was but that was great.
Deliver the payload. Okay, So the industry is booming right in nineteen forty three. There's this need for advanced research into rockets, and it's growing exponentially because other countries are researching this. And just as the US is concerned about the technological innovations occurring in rival countries today, the US is concerned back then of possible technological gaps.
Yeah, because we have you know, you always have to be ahead of your enemy. The whole point of that military thing.
And as we've discussed in previous episodes, nation states don't have friends, they have interests.
Yes, So Parsons Co founds this thing called the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that you've probably heard of before, the JPL JPL yeah, and they went with this term jet propulsion at the suggestion of one of the suicide squad members, the third man, Molina, And the whole idea was to avoid the stigma associated with that idea or term rocket rocketry.
Right, rocket just as a phrase. It turned a lot of people off.
We're just interested in this jet propulsion. It sounds nice too, isn't.
You like jets? You know, propellants.
Yeah, it's perfect.
It's just those two things together.
It's just the means of transportation.
They're pregaming before they go into a meeting, and they're just coaching themselves not to say the R word. Right. So, Parsons and his associates, without going too deep into this, they play a crucial role in the development of rocketry technology excuse us jet propulsion as World War Two shifts into high gear, and the contributions they make also result in financial windfalls. Yeah, for all three men, but Parsons and particular because he is the mad jet fuel Genius,
which is also a cool nickname. So we could spend our entire episode focusing just on his contributions to the field of rocketry, as well as his obsession with blowing things up. In general. But there is more to this story. You see, Jack Parsons had another obsession, one that was even stranger than rocket science.
And we're going to go down that rabbit hole after another quick word from our sponsor.
Years where it gets crazy. In addition to being obsessed with rockets and rocketry, Jack Parsons was obsessed with the occult.
Yes, the a coat.
Yeah really, these are what our colleague Lare and Vogelbaum will call actual facts. Yeah right. He is not only obsessed with the occult, but there is a strange concordance, a strange confluence and concurrence of events here because as his career as one of the well actually the world's best rocket scientists.
Jet propulsion scientists.
Oh yeah, thank you, Matt, Sorry guys, as his reputation grows there, his association with the occult also grows and deepens, and he moves up the rank in these esoteric organizations, one in particular.
Yes, the OTO. So in the late nineteen thirties, he Parsons begins going to these nightly meetings at the Los Angeles chapter of the Ordo Temple Orientis or the OTO, and it's an occult society and it was. It was formed by a gentleman that you also may know from this show. Wow, all the hits in the episode, all the goodwins, mister Alister Crowley, can we.
Get a sinister sound cue for that? Paul? There we go?
Oh, yes, quite appropriate for the Master of the dark arts. So at this time, mister Crowley, notice I say Crowley and not Crowley. We learn from our mistakes. Yeah, people, at this time, he's known as the wickedest man in the world. He's got quite the reputation.
Yeah. He's an English occultist, ceremonial magician, con man, all these things, scam artists, yeah, novelists.
Does weird things in old ancient Egyptian.
Temples, Yeah, and an explorer. He is a British fellow born in eighteen seventy five. And as you said, he is the founder of maybe he would say, the discoverer, the prophet of the Oto. And when Parsons is first going to these things, he's a young guy, he's in his early twenties and he's seen something that he would he would have never seen before. Right, he is watching magical rituals being performed and this affects him deeply. But it's easy to say that someone sees a ritual and
it affects them deeply. That's what religion is about. These rituals are much more graphic than the typical rituals you would encounter in most organized religions.
Yeah, because we're talking about sex magic. Ultimately, we're talking about chaos magic rituals that a lot of time involve blood and other bodily fluids and acts of a carnal nature. Let's say, well, and this is you know, he gets married in nineteen thirty five, and then now we're in the late thirties at this time as he's really kind of coming into his own as a scientist in this field.
It's right, like you said at the same time, this is before World War Two, this is before a lot of the huge advancements in his career as he's beginning to go to these meetings. But he is like fairly newly married, and I don't know, I can't imagine what that relationship was like behind the closed doors, what it was like knowing that your husband is out going to these things.
Well, every relationship is a foreign country, that's correct. Each interaction we have with any other person, especially romantic interaction obeys its own laws and rituals.
Yeah, for sure. And well and the fact that the whole sex, magic, blood magic thing is not the only thing going on.
Oh yeah. There's also a ton of spoken word essentially invocations, ritualistic chanting, and so on. And there's there's drinking. There's more than a dollop of hedonism as they're conducting these rituals. There's also the consumption of various things like this mason gross to some people, but cakes made of menstrual blood, for instance.
That mason gross to people.
I don't want to denegrate someone's religion just because it's not my thing, because.
At a thing. Is that a thing outside of this group? Menstrual cakes? I do not know menstrual cakes. I don't know, Matt, Okay, I guess it's kind of like the placenta eating the placenta after birth, which has become a thing and is quite popular.
Yeah. I look, I'm not in the OTO, understood, I'll be I'll be explicit about that, okay, all right, but I'm more or I'm not in the I am not currently in the OTO, okay, but they're still around today. Yes, and shout out to any of you who are currently members of the organization or have been affiliated with it, we'd love to we'd love to hear more about this stuff.
Yeah, if you want to explain menstrual cakes, I am all yours and.
You seem very you're fascinated with this.
I guess that's what you could call it.
I'm concerned. I wish you could see this face mass making. Yeah, yeah, maybe you're perplexed. Maybe that's a better word. This group is practicing Crowley's philosophy of Flemo, which is at base kind of I read it described as religious libertarianism, yeah, which I thought was a pretty pretty neat way to encapsulate it. This is the origin of do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
Remember that callback callack?
Yeah right, we brought it back. Parsons is hooked. He is very attract to this idea of radical individualism, of nonconformity, and the focus upon fulfilling one's self your own goals.
Yes, and if anyone else is fulfilled because you are fulfilled, then so be it. But ultimately it's about you.
Right, and sort of admitting the open secret that most people practice, which is, you know, we're all the main characters of our own stories.
Right, there's nothing you can do about it, nothing you could do about it. Go ahead and try and break that ego, right, maybe you can.
Yeah, I don't know. It's kind of like you can. You could be a cult leader, right and make other people echoes of yourself anyway, that maybe that's Some people who are in the OTO will feel that that is unfair too. Crowley, sure, but he is a master manipulator, and this organization does have a lot of manipulative people
in it. Will see how that comes into play. Parsons is especially intrigued by Croley's beliefs that sex can be an intrinsic component of magical rituals, that it's not just a necessary but filthy act, as some of the puritanical forces of the time would have him believe. He's he likes this idea of sexism means of increasing epiphany.
Yeah, reaching some higher plane that you couldn't reach just by walking around or thinking about something or writing. You know, there's a physical act that can take you somewhere else and back to his buddies, which, by the way, just before we get there, a physical act that can take you somewhere else. Think about within the context of jet propulsion, right,
Oh yeah, what he's trying to create. The technology that he is creating in tandem with this is a physical way to get to somewhere else, either mood or other places.
You know, yeah, planets, and the idea that your thoughts can have tangible material results upon the world around you through the force of your will alone. Oto is all about the will, philemic magic or whatever.
And in the end, you know, it's just physical forces involved. In one case you've got explosions and the other you've just got friction.
You got explosions. We're a family show. But yes, that is a fantastic point and there's something alchemical about that, right, transformative and Parsons friends back to the suicide squad. They think this is really weird stuff. Yeah, they're not on board. They're like, hey, man, we're here for the rockets. We already ate.
Yeah, I mean we hear you, we hear you, just not right.
Now, right right right? You used to be cool. Let's be work friends. But they think it's you know, they I think it's weird, but there's still genuinely friends. At first, they just feel like this is a harmless obsession. This is just Parsons being Parsons, at least at.
First, Yes, and then he just keeps going double down. Oh my gosh. So let's talk about Thelma, this religion that was founded. It is a religion, and it was founded in nineteen oh four. So you know, at the time when Parsons joins up, it's like thirty years old something around. They are well thirty five.
I guess it's pretty young.
Yeah, it's a young religion. It's as old as I am. If there is a religion that is old as I currently am, as we're recording this podcast, it's very young. However, like most occult practices, this gentleman Alistair Crowley, he argued that it's based on these ancient, ancient beliefs, these esoteric thoughts that have occurred far far before he was born, far before anyone that is on earth was born, that are forgotten a lot of times, or hidden, or just.
Universal law that exists that is bigger than our common understanding of the world in which we live. Yes, exactly, higher planes of consciousness, stuff of the ooze. There we go. Yeah, primordial. The word the lima itself is a form of ancient Greek for will. You know it's in like determination, not some.
Guys, not William.
Yeah, wouldn't that be funny though?
It's just will It's.
William will William magic. Thelemic magic, spelled with a K is a system of physical, mental, and spiritual exercises designed to quote cause change to occur in conformity with will. This is going to be familiar to a lot of people who have read things like The Secret Yeah, or Mind over Matter.
And type stuff, manifestation beliefs.
Right, can believe it, you can achieve it. So this differs from some of that pop psychology self help stuff because it has specific instructions meant to meant to accomplish certain tasks. So Croley adds that K to magic because he wants to differentiate it from stage magic or illusion.
Yeah. And it's not just switching out the sea, it's adding a K to the full word message.
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, that's really important to Croley, Yeah yeah, and to people who practice this today. Many of the rituals in this discipline are a synthesis of older rituals, stuff from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and then practices from Eastern belief systems. They captured Croley's attention.
Well, and that's ye. Crowley was a member of their medic Order of the Golden Down for a while and he borrowed a lot of that stuff.
Right, right, and I think was pretty open about it.
But like this is my thing now, my thing now.
Yes, And there are some examples of this kind of stuff. There's a ritual in the Library of Things that he's written. There's a ritual meant to invoke a holy guardian angel that you could have a conversation with, and rituals called libra semic and there's a gnostic mass it's a eucharistic
kind of ritual. And then of course there's sexual gnosis, the idea that through physical acts with oneself or another person or people, it's possible to achieve a higher plane of consciousness, which for skeptics is going to sound a lot like a way to convince people to sleep with you.
Yeah. Well, and it's also a it's an interesting little litmus test when you're going through and trying to sell someone on this religion. You can tell if it's someone you want in your group or not as soon as you get there, and you start discussing how perhaps we'll use the word masturbation of you and your friends here that we're all hanging out with as I'm talking to
you about this, that's one of our major rituals. And a certain percentage of those people are going to turn around, walk away, and then a few others are going to go, let me hear a little more about this. And those are the people that you want in your group.
And there's probably something. It's probably not something where they just throw people to the deep end. It escalates over a period of time, right, sure, But.
A little peak behind the curtain gets you your converts. I'm thinking strategically in cult formation and gathering the masses.
Right right right, the idea of being special or privy to this hidden knowledge. But for people who do believe this, do practice it, and do feel that they have attained the realizations for which they yearned or the results that they desired, this stuff is legitimate. So we're presenting both sides of the belief. We're despite not being in the OTO, we're not making a judgment call about it, as these people are all in theory, consenting adults in full possession of their wits.
As long as you're not hurting anyone, like say, branding them with a cattle iron, then we're okay.
Right, do what thou wilt, you know what I mean? And many It's important to mention that many practitioners of this form of magic do seek material, tangible results, money, power, love, a breakthrough in rocketry, for example. But it's not a mandatory thing. Sometimes it's just a higher realization. Crowley believed himself to be a prophet, as we said, and Parsons at this time is relating the concepts of magic that he's exploring to the ideas of quantum physics in itself.
Quantum physics is a relatively new concept at this time. They're both in their own way young religions.
Yeah, oh wow, that's a really great point of quantum physics. As a young religion, I can totally see that.
I mean, when you get to the edges of physics, it's really just the smartest people in the room throwing their opinions at each other. Yeah, you know what I mean, which I think is a beautiful, beautiful point for our species to be at. So we mentioned that Parsons makes a lot of money. He encounters significant amounts of cash, as the US government continues to buy his groups liquid jet fuel first and jet engines designed to run on this fuel.
Yeah.
This allows him to start holding his own elaborate oto rituals at his house, which becomes known as wait for it, the Parsonage.
Oh, that's pretty great. It's okay, the parsonage. Well, hey, hey, we ben so let's say I've got really nothing to do. It's a Friday night. I hear about this new group. I'm gonna go hang out at the parsonage here. It's a good place to be. What am I going to get into while I'm over there?
I'm so glad you asked, Pat. You're gonna get it. If you can get in the door, you're gonna get into a crazy time. These rituals are very not safe for work as we call it today, and they are wild for the standards of the time. There are people shouting chants during massive orgies, and on multiple occasions, the Parsons is taking steps to attempt to conceive the Antichrist
the moonchild, Wow, straight from the invisibles. Yes, while he is at the forefront of rocket technology, he is attempting to be at the forefront of antichrist advocacy.
Wow. And then he he finishes up, has the I'm assuming the help clean up afterwards, because you don't want to do that on your own, I'm assuming. And he's wealthy, as we said. Then you, you know, put on your lap coat and head on into work on Monday.
I mean we've all been in situations like that, right, sure. Yeah, good fences make good coworker relationships. Ok, that's probably That's probably what his buddies are saying to each other.
Yeah, like, look, man, he's getting that stuff. But man, he's really got some great ideas.
But when he's here, he's here.
Yeah.
So in nineteen forty one, things get even stranger. Parsons engages in an ongoing sexual relationship with his wife's sister, who is seventeen years old at the time. Oh, underage person.
Yeah, And here's the problem. The group he's a part of, the ORTO the OTO. It's kind of encouraged because it's something that he wants and that it's all that matters.
And it seems consensual to everyone involved, so they don't call the cops or anything.
And well there's a flip side of the coin too, right, Parsons wife is also in a sexual relationship with one of these other most senior members of the OTO.
So there's this very open attitude towards sex and very fluid relationships. Right, yeah, monogamy, that's something for the squares. The Pasadena police, meanwhile, have been receiving repeated complaints about unspeakable acts occurring at the parsonage. Imagine forties, you're one
of the neighbors. You live in a nice neighborhood. You're probably wealthy, as you don't you're probably well off if you're living next door to Jack Parsons, and then you're hearing these crazy chants, these moans of sexual ecstasy, and then maybe some ritualistic screaming. You don't know what's going on.
It is funny that at in every instance they begin as a simple noise complaint and the officers show up, and then they find themselves in a oh, very different situation. But there's nothing you do privacy of your own home.
Just keep it down, please, I guess you're right, Yeah.
Well that's true. I don't know what the blue laws were at the time where he is, like, if he could actually be arrested for doing something in his home. I sawtomy in the like.
Yeah, or maybe consumption of an illegal substance.
Ah.
The counter culture is like the Pasadena police Force, well aware of Parsons' activity, and in a way he becomes a precursor to the common thing that we have here in the US today on the West Coast, the billionaire bro tech guru Tony Stark esque genius. Right, he makes massive amounts of money from his innovations. He spends massive amounts of money partying, pursuing alternative lifestyles. And we can compare it today to tech gurus go microdosing at burning Man.
Sure, and also come out with incredible technology, or at least own the companies that come out with incredible technology.
Right, And there's this sense that they are somewhat above the law of the common peasant.
Right.
Note quick cut in your head, folks to that picture of Elon Musk on the Joe Rogan Show smoking a massive blunt and you know his employees can't do that because there would be problems with their security clearances for SpaceX.
Yeah, I really didn't think that was real when I just saw the thumbnail from YouTube.
That nice photoshop.
Yeah, that's funny. Oh wow, I mean, I it's marijuana. It's fine. It's legal there.
It's very close to being legal across the US, you know what I mean. That's just the money got too good. That's what happens. The morality this is a different episode, but the the racism disguised as morality, that was the original reason for the criminalization of marijuana. Just it doesn't match up to money.
Yeah. That being said, we encourage you not to do drugs, everyone listening, unless you want to. And that's all the whole of the law.
So there, Hey there were oh man, no comment, no comment. So the counter culture aware of this. This guy is an La Musk a Tony Stark. Soon, another figure of California's underground scene joins the activities, a fellow named el Ron Hubbard. Oh that's true, Pauk. We got to sound cue great man. Who's l Ron Hubbard?
El Ron Hubbard is the father of a little thing called dionetics. It's a philosophy that he created, that he summoned, and he would later change his mind and create the concepts that would become a full on religion scientology.
A religion for tax purposes.
Maybe I don't know, I don't know. L Ron Hubbard was thinking.
Well, he joins the gang. He joins the parsonage in nineteen forty five, and around this time Fumboys International remaws their interest in parson and both because they're concerned about his unorthodox private life, his open practice of the dark arts, and still his political inclinations. These may lead him to be considered untrustworthy or sympathetic to communist forces.
Yeah. Yeah, and in the worst he would be the worst kind of mole, the person who is at the top creating technology that will then be used. You know, he's not some he's not a rocket scientist employed by this thing. He is the rocket scientist running septualizing thing.
Yeah, he's at the point of expertise where his best guess qualifies as leading scientific theory.
Yeah, you don't want iron Man as an enemy.
Right there you go, that's a good quote. Yeah, you don't want iron Man as an enemy. And also, a someone who switched or became a spy or double agent or a mole for ideological purposes is much more difficult to control than someone who does it because they're in or they're being blackmailed, for instance, right, yea much more dangerous. Also, so they're like, Okay, the guy's happy. I don't think he's hurt anybody, and we need rockets. At this time,
there's some personal problems that he encounters. The person that he's infatuated with Sarah.
That's the sister of Helen, his wife.
She becomes infatuated with l Ron mister Steel your girl Hubbard.
Oh yep, that's him.
And this makes Parsons insanely upset and he starts delving into He's moving up in the ranks of the OTO, by the way, on the time, getting into leadership positions. He develops a different focus. He has a deeper interest in witchcraft and the darker side of magic. He's fascinated by Poltergeist, by spiritual apparitions.
Oh man. Feeling really tortured at this time.
And being always an innovator, right, he decides to try and create a new lover, to create his own lover and elemental.
Wow like like a like a Golam lover.
Yeah, like like a thought form. He wants to manifest. Got you a perfect lover? Uh? Sarah runs off with l Ron Hubbard, and so Parsons takes part in these very unusual rituals that are supposed to help him manifest his thought into the world.
Yeah. He uh, he plants his seed with magic tablets. Yep ah, and he does it to the sound of music, not the not the musical. Yeah, but there's well and well, this is something that's at the basis of most chaos or some chaos magic, where where seed is planted on a piece of paper that has writing and or a symbol on it that is then burned a lot of times like a roun.
Yeah. And and shortly after this, Parsons meets a woman named Marjorie Cameron, and he feels as if this is the elemental force that he has invoked somehow conjured. She becomes his muse, and he sees his scientific and spiritual pursuits as increasingly intertwined, you know what I mean. Yeah, he sees himself as of the line of great thinkers like Isaac Newton who totally totally may breakthroughs in physics, but then also totally believed in alchemy and practiced.
It and thought that perhaps the science was part of the alchemy.
Right. Yeah, So Parsons is the same way rocketry is magic and magic is rocketry. For example, when he works on his experiments in the desert, he recites a pagan poem to pan. You can imagine how weird this sounds to the g men. Yeah, who are listening in the fun boys are not You're not having fun.
This is not as fun as It's not as fun.
As the boys thought. Persons eventually runs into financial trouble after he gets involved with bad investments associated with al Ron Hubbard. This is a pattern Hubbert goes on to repeat.
By the way, is this the whole yacht thing? Mm hmmmm the yacht boys.
Yeah, Hubbard had convinced him to take money and travel to Miami and buy three yachts.
Oh, three yachts.
He has a yacht thing. El Ron Hubbard has a yacht.
At a time. That's that's that's a lot, okay.
Many of the academics that are suspected of being Communist sympathizers are blacklisted as the Cold War sets in post World War two, and this means a Parsons and a lot of his colleagues lose their security clearances, and without their security clearances, they are out of jobs.
Oh wow, Yeah, that is that is a sweeping change that starts coming through around that time, and then I can imagine someone who's associated with something like the Oto and order the those old communist beliefs that he even maybe had just back in the day that the Fun Boys know about. I can imagine him just getting xed off that list. Right.
So he found himself having to earn money as a manual laborer, a hospital orderly, a car mechanic. He was pushed out of science, so he dove even deeper into
the occult. He ended up working for the film industry making explosives, creating pyrotechnics, and just before he took a trip to Mexico, or just before he was going to leave on a tripa planned in nineteen fifty two, he received a large order of explosives for a movie and while getting everything together, there was an explosion involving mercury. Parsons suffered fatal wounds and he died at the age of thirty seven.
This was only thirty seven. He's done all of this, that's crazy.
He his death was ruled an accident. His friends suspected it was a state sponsored conspiracy to remove this dangerous mad genius from the fold. And that's where it stops. Parsons controversial private life led him to be wiped from NASA history and that magic stuff aside, esoteric orders aside. That's another true cover up, and for a long time
his role was not acknowledged. According to biographer George Pendall, Parsons was written out of the history books, his role in rocketry discredited for decades simply because his supernatural beliefs did not fit into the other supernatural beliefs that were more dominant at the time.
Wow.
I mean, that's an interesting way of looking at it.
It really is, It really is, and I can identify with that holy mackerel. It makes you wonder about today the people at the bleeding edge of science, what are their closed door religious beliefs White biohackers and stuff. Yeah, biohackers. I mean even like maybe you're Elin Musk and some of those people out there right now that can essentially do anything they want to do at any time. What are their spiritual beliefs? And is there anything that's hidden enough that we won't know about it? Oh?
I see, Yeah, that's a fascinating question. Anything you know what you had the opportunity to ask, oh, someone about this earlier today? You and Paul both we didn't forget folks.
I missed that opportunity.
There is a story here, and it's a story that I really enjoyed hearing. I know that we've been going long, but can can you give us just like the broad Strokes, the brad Strokes.
Okay, you're the here're the broad Strokes. Right before we started recording this episode, I walked in. I was heading in a little bit early so I could continue.
Researching here, and I was running late.
Ben was not quite in the office yet, and our president of our network, his name's Connell Burn. He was showing somebody around the office and I'm gathering up my computer and my books and everything, and I'm heading in. And you know, I don't think about that because our
president walks around with important people all the time. I don't know who walks around with Anyway, Conall says, hey, Matt, this is my friend Brad and I you know, I just turn and put my hand out and it's just is Bradley Cooper standing there staring at me with those beautiful blue eyes. My goodness, they're striking. But anyway, here's the thing, and I hope, I hope he wouldn't be
upset to mention this. But we begin chatting and we get into some conversations about the Apollo missions, and then he wants to talk a little bit about September eleventh, and then we want to talk about a little bit about these other conspiracies. And the guy I think would fit right in with us. And perhaps that's just because he's such an enigmatic person that he will engage you in anything you want to talk about. But I did not bring up either of those subjects. So yeah, there
you go. So there you go.
How Matt and Paul met Bradley Cooper.
Yes, and Paul met Bradley a little later over by the water cooler, and they had a very nice conversation about his new movie coming out by the way, that he is his directorial debut and he's working with Lady Gagats called a Star Is Born. There you go, plug for Bradley Cooper.
You're welcome, Brad and thank you everyone for tuning in. We want to know where you land on this. I think now the story of Jack Parsons and his legacy is a little more apparent in the public sphere. It's more common knowledge. But do you feel that as a society, our norms limit our ability to innovate technologically, you know what I mean, Like like the US government, and this may apply. This surely applies to other governments as well.
The US government in the past had a very difficult time hiring quality hackers because of their affinity for drugs. And you know, they were brilliant minds, brilliant computer people, but they didn't want to stop smoking weed or stop you know, doing whatever drug they do. And they have to be clean to pass the security clearance.
Yeah, that's fascinating.
So eventually they, I believe in many cases, eventually the US government just folded and made exceptions to the rule. Do you think those exceptions should exist? Let us know. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, check out our community page. Here's where it gets crazy, where there are tons of fascinating conversations in the mean game is a double plus good.
And that's the end of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get into contact with us in a number of different ways. One of the best is to give us a call. Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK. If you don't want to do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email.
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