Jack Parsons was one of the co-founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a facility still utilized today by NASA. Unlike his collaborators, Malina and Von Kármán, there is little mention of Parsons on the JPL website. It’s not because Parsons didn’t accomplish anything notable; he was a prominent rocket scientist at the time. He is credited with the invention of solid rocket fuel, which played a part in enabling us to reach beyond our atmosphere.
His omission enforces the idea that history is written by the victors. Parsons was a member of the occultist Thelema religion, which was based on a central tenet of “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” and an expression of sexual liberalism called sex “magick” (Pendle 2005). This philosophy influenced many of his scientific practices and only served as an incentive for NASA to omit mentioning him as much as possible. Because Parsons had beliefs that were considered crazy at the time, and many that are still considered controversial, his scientific achievements were largely written out and he was sensationalised for his occult practices. It is uncommon that stories are told about a revolutionary thinker whose beliefs did not eventually get adopted, which makes figures like Parsons especially important to learn about.
Jack Parsons, born in 1914 in Los Angeles, was fascinated with the idea of space travel and rocket propulsion from a young age. While he was growing up space travel was science fiction, popularized by authors like Jules Verne. In his teenage years Parsons experimented in his backyard with his friend Edward Forman, attempting to create a stable fuel that would have sufficient power to launch a rocket (Kean 2024). Their motto was Ad Astra per Aspera, Latin for “through rough ways to the stars.” Parsons and Forman continued to experiment, essentially teaching themselves the chemistry required to excel in rocket science. In 1935, the two met with Frank Malina, a graduate student at Caltech, hoping to design a liquid propellant rocket motor (Malina 1980). They were approved, but given very little funding, working under Theodore von Kármán, the director of the Caltech Aeronautics Laboratory (GALCIT). Their first major test was on Halloween 1936 in Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco. It was a fiery success. The motor failed three times, and on the fourth attempt, the oxygen pipes broke, spewing flames towards them. However, the engine had worked (JPL 2011). By January 1937, they had made rapid progress and were offered an official laboratory space at GALCIT. According to Malina, students began to call them the “suicide squad” because of their multiple cases of chemical leaks and an exceptionally bad explosion that almost resulted in Malina’s death (Malina 1980). Eventually banned from campus in 1940, the group moved back to Arroyo Seco, and their facilities evolved into the Jet Propulsion Laboratory we have today. In 1942, they built on their progress with Jet Assisted Take-Off. They formed a company called Aerojet Engineering Corp, created only three months after the first rocket company in America. They began selling their technology to the Armed Forces shortly after. (Winter 2017).
However, Parsons’ fascination with the occult didn’t start in 1942; it began almost two decades earlier when he first began experimenting in his backyard as a child. According to the Science History Institute, at the age of 12 Parsons tried to summon a demon, and was so terrified that he vowed not to perform any more occult rituals (Kean 2024). Nonetheless, his practices continued. He never particularly hid his interest, being described by Von Karman as a “delightful screwball.” Before rocket tests, he often recited Controversial British occultist Aleister Crowley’s “Hymn to Pan” (Ostberg 2025). For their first big test in Arroyo Seco, Parsons reportedly chose a site near a dam called the Devil’s Gate. In 1939, Parsons and his wife attended a ceremony of Thelema, a religion that Aleister Crowley, whom Parsons already admired, had invented. He and his wife quickly joined. The tenet “Do what thou wilt” was not based in hedonism as many believed at the time, but rather in finding your True Will and your purpose. However, in practice there was a lot of sexual activity and drug usage among consenting adults, which gave the religion a bad reputation. In 1941, the couple was initiated into the Ordo Templi Orientis, a small commune that looked to Thelema for its guiding philosophy.
In 1944, less than a year after the JPL was officially named, Parsons was removed from both it and Aerojet because of his involvement in the Thelema religion, which sent him spiraling further into the occult. In his writings, The Book of Babalon, Parsons described a supposed encounter and successful summoning of an ancient goddess he called Babalon. He performed a ritual over 11 days, with increased phenomena. There were heavy windstorms and rain, rapid knocking, broken lamps, downed electricity, a shining light floating in the kitchen, paralysis of an electrician’s arm, a voice saying “let me go free,” and then an overwhelming feeling of tension. A few days later a woman showed up at his doorstep whom he believed was Babalon in human form. Together with L.Ron Hubbard, he performed many rituals and had Babalon speak through him (Parsons 2023). In 1946, Hubbard proposed a business venture to Parsons, involving the purchase and resale of yachts on the East Coast. Not considering it could be a scam, Parsons gave Hubbard his life savings. When he finally realized, Parsons attempted to summon a weather demon, and it worked! A storm came in that forced Hubbard back to port. This event ended Parsons and Hubbard’s friendship (Kean 2024), but did not stop Parsons’ involvement with Thelema.
In his Manifesto of the Antichrist, written in 1949, he described himself as the embodiment of the Antichrist. He preached that all should follow Thelema and through the law of the Beast 666 (what Crowley called himself), their philosophy would conquer the world (Parsons 2023). It’s important to note that Parsons didn’t believe an Antichrist was inherently evil, just a means of changing the current order. While reading his short book Freedom is a Two-Edged Sword, it’s hard not to notice many comparisons with today’s liberal beliefs. He believed people should not be subjected to persecution on “moral, political, economic, racial, social or religious grounds.” He was heavily against McCarthyism, which had directly affected him earlier in his life. He believed in sexual liberation and that the Christian church should not have any legal standing on things like contraceptives, abortion, and consensual sex (Parsons 1989).
It’s obvious why beliefs like this would be controversial, especially from someone in the science community. Even though he worked for, and was directly funded by the government, he believed that they should have very little influence on the activities of their citizens. He was also opposed to the idea of Christianity’s profound hold on the United States as a whole (Parsons 1989) but his dislike of the current order would get him in real trouble, specifically with the FBI. In 1938, he began regularly attending meetings of a Communist group at Caltech. Although he didn’t believe in communism or fascism, he found the meetings intellectually stimulating and even subscribed to the first openly communist newspaper in the country, along with joining the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He would eventually stop attending meetings when the organizer insisted he officially join the Communist Party (Pendle 2005). In 1948, the FBI investigated his involvement with the communist party and removed his clearance from government projects because they believed he engaged in subversive behavior. His access was reinstated in 1949 after he testified against their claims (Carter 1999).
This wasn’t Parsons’ first or last encounter with the FBI. In 1943, they had searched his house and it was determined that nothing of a “subversive nature” was there. However, in 1950, after he had taken some confidential project files from his workplace for a business deal with the Israeli Government, he was investigated for espionage. Although not convicted, his security clearance was removed and never reinstated, meaning he could never work in the government-led rocket industry again (FBI, 1952).
Now 36 years old, Parsons had lost the career he built; he could no longer work for the JPL or Aerojet, even though he had co-founded both. Shortly after, while working in his home laboratory, Parsons was fatally injured in a sudden explosion. Two people found him underneath a bathtub in a pool of blood. His legs were shattered and bent, his right arm was missing, and his face was half blown off. Despite his injuries, he was still conscious. By the time he had reached the hospital with the ambulance crew, he was declared dead. Although the newspapers initially focused on his long list of scientific achievements, within three days they began publishing stories about his occult practices (Pendle 2005). Even with all his contributions, which would eventually influence the Titan rockets and the Space Shuttle, had he lived, there was no chance NASA would have embraced him (Kean 2024). On the JPL website, in one of the few times where he is explicitly mentioned, he is described as “a freethinking explosives expert who dabbled in pagan rituals and liked to keep volatile rocket fuels in his home” (JPL 2011). This seems especially harsh considering the nature of his death was due to a home laboratory accident.
Many of Parsons’ beliefs were considered incredibly controversial at the time, but there has been a resurgence in many of his ideas since his death. His story proves a great example of eccentric inventors taken to the extreme, and allows us to think about where the invisible line in the sand is; how much is too much? Overall, he is a man who has been heavily demonized, and although he committed reckless, radical, and sometimes criminal actions, his beliefs and scientific achievements are notable and should not be overshadowed by his controversies. It presents us as a society with the opportunity to learn more about controversial figures that contributed heavily to our society’s development, learning about them not despite their controversy, but because of it.
