SEX AND ROCKETS

Born Marvel Whiteside Parsons in 1914, Jack Parsons never knew his father except through the stories his mother Ruth told him. His life was in one respect a search for someone to stand in for that absent real father. Highly intelligent, he was interested in rockets from an early age and made significant contributions to astronautics, becoming one of the founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and of Aerojet Corporation. He also acquired a strong interest in the occult and, inspired by Aleister Crowley's 1907 book Konx Om Pax, attained high rank in Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis (Temple of the East), a quasi-Masonic society of secret rites.

Although he attended USC, Jack Parsons did not complete a degree. Despite this, he was a member of Theodore von Karman's team at Caltech, developed several designs for JATO units for the military, and invented a means of mixing and casting the solid propellants in an asphalt binder to achieve a storable motor with reliable performance.

Von Karman's group was part of GALCIT — Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, California Institute of Technology — funded by the Guggenheim Foundation, which also supported Robert Goddard's work. It was also the nucleus around which Aerojet formed. After World War II, Aerojet's military contracts dried up and the founders struggled to keep the company going. They were able to convince General Tire to invest enough to accomplish this. The firm then became Aerojet General. The original founders, not being, in today's parlance, suits, were not welcomed by the new management. They were induced to sell their stock for $50,000 per man — except for a man named Frank Malina, who missed the telegram because he was in London and a storm disrupted communications. Or so the book says. Malina became a millionaire as Aerojet General prospered.

The Ordo Templi Orientis, or OTO, blossomed from a long tradition of secret societies such as the Bavarian Illuminati, Freemasonry, and the Ancient and Meritorious Order of the Rosy Cross (the Rosicrucians). Indeed, such societies are too numerous to list, and each is headed by a charismatic individual with a gigantic ego. A large part of Jack Parsons' story is his struggle, within this secret world of competing egos, to master his own demons. Unfortunately, the book describes that struggle mostly by implication. As for the sex referred to in the title, there are mentions of partner-swapping among Parsons' occult-world associates as well as by the leaders of the OTO. Both intercourse and masturbation are reportedly part of OTO rites, and its grand secret is called some sort of tantric sex ritual. But this is the extent of it. Those looking for tittilating tales of debauchery will not find them here.

Parsons established an OTO temple at the Fleming Mansion, a turn of the century residence in a Pasadena neighborhood known as "millionaires' mile". He turned the house into apartments and advertised for tenants: "Apartments for rent. Must not believe in God." There were other criteria, aimed at excluding "mundanes" — conventional people. The term comes from science fiction fandom, another of Parsons' interests. He attended LASFS meetings on Thursdays, and held meetings for SF fans at the house, known as "the Parsonage", on Sundays. [pages 57-58] He was friends with a number of prominent SF writers including, apparently, Robert Heinlein — although Virginia Heinlein disputes this. [Page 60] It seems clear to me that portions of Heinlein's classic novel Stranger in a Strange Land were inspired by goings-on at the Parsonage. Carter explicitly leaves this judgement up to his readers. [Page 60]

Parsons' neighbors were scandalized by those goings-on. Police were called on several occasions, but no charges were ever filed. The residents were professional people who knew how to keep up appearances.

The book contains many interesting tidbits, such as the story of John Dee and Edward Kelley, to whom an angel dictated the Lost Books of Enoch letter by letter — in the Enochian alphabet of 21 letters — during the 16^th century. [Chapter 6]

However fascinating, all this background material does little to illuminate the life of the central character of the book. But in its gradual descent into arcane minutiae, the story parallels the life of its subject. He, after leaving Aerojet and losing his wife Helen to Wilfred Smith and his subsequent lover Betty (Helen's sister) to L. Ron Hubbard (both men lived at the Parsonage at some point), descended into a life dominated by drugs and magic. We are left with a picture of a man who lived in two worlds. Parsons was a competent aerospace engineer who made important innovations in solid-fuel rocketry, was able to find work in that field throughout his life (if intermittently), and was honored by JPL after his death. At the same time he was devoted to the magical doctrines and rites of the OTO, and spent much time and energy using them in efforts to invoke angels and elementals, for purposes which are obscure. The narrative adopts Parsons' point of view, frequently stating matter-of-factly that some god described in OTO holy writ had incarnated into one of his intimates, or was destined to, or that workings (spells) he performed had real effects. See e.g. Chapters 7 and 8, which describe Parsons' "Babalon Working" in excruciating detail. Parsons died in 1952 in a mysterious and controversial explosion at his home (which by then was not, incidentally, the Parsonage.)

John Carter's biography of Parsons contains a number of typographical errors. These are mostly instances of missing articles or prepositions, omissions which were not caught when paragraphs were rewritten. There are a few cases of incorrect tense within sentences, and two misspelled words. And there is at least one instance of subject-object number mismatch. While annoying, these errors do not detract much from the value of the work (such as it is).

I question several of Carter's (and by extension Parsons') interpretations of technical matters. For example:

It is hard to tell whether all of these technical misunderstandings are Carter's or whether they exist in Parsons' own papers. Parsons was right to be concerned about the safety of liquid oxygen, but not to dismiss it entirely. Even if, despite his reported correspondence with Goddard and the Verein für Raumschiffahrt, he was unaware that they used it successfully, he should have investigated it more fully. This dismissal is even odder in light of the fact that he recommended more study of trimethyl aluminum (which burns on contact with air) and went on to develop engines using red fuming nitric acid — no pussycat as rocket fuels go.

But in any case I can forgive Carter such technical errors, for he obviously has no scientific or engineering training. More troubling are his errors of historical fact. For example, he states that Robert Goddard moved to Roswell, New Mexico from Connecticut. [Page 12] In fact, Goddard was born in Massachusetts, grew up there, and began his rocket work there before moving to Roswell; he never lived in Connecticut. Later in the book, the company that built the faulty space shuttle SRBs is called Morton Thiokol. [Page 98] That was its name at the time, but now it is just Thiokol, a division of some other conglomerate.

Most disconcerting is the general tone of dismissing Robert Goddard as some ineffectual hermit who puttered around for decades without achieving anything of value. Carter sums up Goddard's life thus: "Back in New Mexico, Robert Goddard had his own problems. At the end of the war he fell into a depression, became ill and died before the year was out. Certainly his failure with rockets — and Caltech's success — was a contributing factor." [Page 101] This is doubly damnable in the light of what Carter reports on page 30.

I came away with the impression that the book had to be "padded". It reproduces two entire magazine articles about rockets: one from Popular Science and one from Popular Mechanics. Also included are Parsons' patent (with Malina) for hypergolic propellants, much of his poetry and magical writings, and many letters from Crowley, Smith and others involved with the OTO. Parsons' birth and death certificates are reproduced, as are a map of his Pasadena neighborhood, an organization chart, and certain technical notes from GALCIT. Together with the extraneous material on the history of the OTO and its antecedants, all this dilutes the book's impact.

The book includes four appendices, labeled "Primary Bibliography", "Secondary Bibliography", "Additional References", and "Sources for More Information". (I fail to understand why these divisions were made.) It also has a fairly extensive index. I cannot fault Carter for skimping on research. However, the accuracy and organization of the textual material and the book's quality of production both leave much to be desired.

Both Wilson and Carter overstate Parsons' importance. Wilson says in his Introduction, "If Verne's submarine could become materialized, why not his rocket to the moon? The question excited a lot of other boys beside Marvel Parsons; but, unlike most of them, he did something about it. He became John Parsons, almost certainly (as this book documents) the one single individual who contributed the most to rocket science." [Page xi] Despite such hyperbole, I do believe that John Parsons deserves a good biography. This present volume is not it.

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This page was last modified on 29 August 2023.