The Suicide Squad
“It has seemed to me that if I had the genius to found the jet propulsion field in the US […] then I should also be able to apply this genius in the magical field”
He was still alive when the ambulance arrived, responding to reports of an explosion that had ripped through his Pasadena home. It was a rush order for a movie production — a batch of explosives whose production had gone awry.
He was still conscious, though missing and arm and half his face. He attempted unsuccessfully to communicate with the arriving paramedics. Jack Parsons died at the hospital, 37 minutes after the explosion. He was 37. His mother, too, died soon after, swallowing an overdose of barbiturates upon hearing the news.
Parsons’ death produced scandalous headlines, owing to the paraphernalia discovered at the explosion site. There were blueprints for rockets and numerous occult drawings. The LA Mirror proclaimed, “Slain Scientist Priest in Black Magic Cult,” helping to unleash a torrent of coverage around the pioneering rocket scientist’s shadowy personal life.
What’s most remarkable about the stories that followed were how many of them proved true. That’s not to say, of course, that papers in the early 1950s weren’t capable of spinning outlandish tales decades before the rise of supermarket tabloid journalism, but Parsons’ own dalliances were, in many cases, far more lurid than most reporters of the era were capable of conjuring out of thin air.
By virtually any metric, Parsons’ rise and fall was a remarkable trajectory. A college dropout who’d been expelled from high school for blowing up toilets, he was largely self-taught in the ways of rocketry. Inspired by the pulp science fiction magazines of the 1920s, Parsons engaged in an increasingly complex series of backyard experiments at his childhood home in Southern California. Rockets were constructed out of cardboard, aluminum and a variety of explosives, ranging from cherry bombs to gunpowder.
Parsons and high school classmate Ed Forman ingratiated themselves with graduate students at nearby Caltech, courtesy of on-going experimentation. It was there they met Frank Malina, who became the third member of the crew jokingly deemed the "Suicide Squad” by the student body. Their research found a home under the umbrella of Caltech’s Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory as the GALCIT Rocket Research Group.
The group pioneered concepts of jet propulsion, earning a $1,000 grant to explore the concept of Jet-Assisted Take Off (JATO) in 1939. The following year they received another grant, this time from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) for $10,000. A quarter of the funding was allocated to repairing the damage to Caltech buildings their experiments has caused. Later that year, the loud and disruptive activity forced the team to relocate off campus to a number of unventilated corrugated iron sheds in the Arroyo Seco canyon.
That site served as the birthplace for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which was folded into NASA later the following decade, with Parsons’ work in stable rocket fuel serving as a key foundation for space travel. In 1942, Parsons cofounded Aerojet Engineering Corporation. And by 1943, the 30-year-old self-made rocket scientist was forced out of the company by a team of shareholders who disapproved of his unorthodox methods, including a tendency to answer the door with a snake wrapped around his neck.
Parsons became taken with Aleister Crowley’s Thelema philosophy. "It has seemed to me that if I had the genius to found the jet propulsion field in the US, and found a multimillion dollar corporation and a world renowned research laboratory, then I should also be able to apply this genius in the magical field,” Parsons said of his involvement in the world of Crowley’s magick. He rose the ranks at Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis, leading the founder to remark that Parsons was, "the most valued member of the whole Order, with no exception.”
With money acquired from the sale of his Aerojet shares, Parsons purchased a mansion later nicked “the Parsonage.” It was here he made the acquaintance of naval officer-turned science-fiction writer named Lafayette Ronald Hubbard. The two were fast friends, participating in fencing and performing magick rituals. Hubbard eventually moved into the mansion. “Suspect Ron playing confidence trick,” Crowley wrote of his disciple in a telegram to a fellow O.T.O. member, “Jack Parsons weak fool—obvious victim prowling swindlers.”
Hubbard ended the friendship abruptly, running off with $20,000 and Parsons’ then-girlfriend. Parsons sought to address the latter by performing a Babalon Working. The ritual, which involved animal blood and his own seed, was designed to conjure the Thelemite goddess, Babalon. Results were mixed.
Parsons spent his final years performing consulting work. The downstairs laundry room became a home laboratory, while the upstairs was transformed into lodging artists, beat poets and other early-50s bohemians. Around this time, the FBI launched an investigation into Parsons over charges of espionage tied to the Israeli government. The investigation was dropped, but not before stories of his strange behavior surfaced.
By June 1952, Parsons was dead by his own hands. The mysterious nature of much of his life led some to suspect it was suicide and others murder. Two days after his death, a Pasadena paper offered a third suggestion, “Possibly he was trying to reconcile fundamental human urges with the inhuman, Buck Rogers type of innovations that sprang from his test tubes.”
Sources:
The Occult Rocket Scientist Who Conjured Spirits with L. Ron Hubbard https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vvbxgm/the-last-of-the-magicians
Occultist father of rocketry 'written out' of Nasa's history https://www.wired.co.uk/article/jpl-jack-parsons
Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons by George Pendle