Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 512: Jack Parsons Part I - The Suicide Squad

Episode Date: November 12, 2022

This week the worlds of science and magic collide as the boys begin the tale of one of the 20th century's most influential inventors... who also happens to be an occult legend, it's the story of rocket engine pioneer and student of Aleister Crowley, Jack Parsons.

There's no place to escape to this is the last time on the left That's when the cannibalism started I'm not key. I'm You want to do it with the anarchy and magic I don't give a shit what the audience thinks We're talking about the hidden language of angels. Oh, why does it constantly make the people who hear it cocks? I don't know. I don't know why you hear an angel talk and immediately you're like, hey You should think about fucking my wife Something about it. These angels are super convincing and I don't know why

Nothing wrong with having sex with another person's wife. Well, he watches and masturbates Nothing, welcome to last podcast on the left everyone. I am Ben hanging out with Marcus and Henry Today's episode put your I don't know what hat on wizards cap. I'm not quite sure Not just wizards cap. All right, you got to put on a flame retardant suit Okay, that's a big one because there's a lot of open flame in this episode There's also just straight up get your scrying glass. Oh, you're not gonna be able to understand a single fucking thing unless you can even just begin To understand the concept of the Luke's formula, which is like I am I am full of it I have had I've been sick sitting alone in a room reading Alistair Crowley. I'm ready to be unintelligible

Yeah, I'm coming for the listener. Yeah, but that's an episode two episode three We're not quite getting into the magic as hard as Henry keeps fucking a knocky in and on that bullshit I'll have to keep a knocky in until the fucking the day is done friend because you know ass grass or angel language Or get out of the fucking truck Absolutely get out of the truck Of course Luke's formula from what I remember from the Luke that I went to middle school with it involves jupe Gatorade and the Reebok pump. So this episode a second you just became freighter Belinda Jack Parsons part one

Now we here at last podcast to spend a fair amount of airtime over the years talking about magic But up until now we focused on the teachers and the creators people like Madame Blavatsky and Alistair Crowley Oh, the ones who create the brands the brands to continue forward and are hidden in some of your favorite current brands like Band-Aid and Coca-Cola using the magic of the Anarchy To really give a full scope of the magical experience though We thought it was about time we focused on a student and in doing so we hope to explore just what type of person Was drawn to magical practice decades after Crowley and Blavatsky have published their greatest works and were either dead or Beyond the height of their influence

This is the story of the ultimate student of magic as far as I'm concerned Publicly that we know that has stepped forward because Jack Parsons is all of us Which is interesting because kind of what his last name means as well. There's a lot of magical elements here But we're not getting to a Marcus is holding me back Absolutely, of course Marcus is holding you back in no way creating the entire Content that we have here to talk about Jack Parsons is he related to Alan Parsons at all? No, the Alan Parsons project. No, no others. No, I think but I think Alan Parsons was also in science

Didn't he do lasers wouldn't that his whole thing leave so I Can read your mind Looking at you I can read your mind and that of course is off the famous song I in the sky By the Alan Parsons Well, this is what happened after Blavatsky and Crowley This is what happened in the mid 20th century when America was far stranger than history has made it out to be when bohemian Unclaves of unconventional people use Crowley and ideas and practices to live lives that were truly experimental and in doing so they changed the shape of the century in

Concrete and practical ways ways that affect your life every single day It is completely true and it is really interesting to see another person that got involved in ritual magic They would go to literally change the fabric of history and Jack Parsons is one of those people because it's interesting because everybody thinks now It aids right everybody's into eating ass, right? They're all talking about eating ass and how brave they are for eating ass and do all this kind of shit But you know who ate ass your ancestors Jack Parsons ate ass and Developed some of the most important rocketry science on the face of the planet try that zoomer

You just on your fucking your little tiktoks. You got to get out there doing science while you're licking butthole Maybe yeah, exactly. It's more licking than eating. I've always said but isn't that good to build up an immune system Yeah, I suppose so it's healthy Well Jack Parsons was a man who was certainly one of the most fascinating and consequential figures of 20th century science But he was also a figure of great interest in the field of magic Jack Parsons was one of the first science fiction nerds who so loved the genre that he made the supposed fiction of rocket-powered flight a reality despite the scoffs of established scientific figures who maintained that rockets belonged only in comic books scoffs

Absolutely, there were scientists that didn't think rockets were gonna work Most scientists didn't think that rockets were gonna work the vast majority of scientists thought that rockets didn't win By the way, when we say rockets They actually check rockets were actually thought to be so much bunkum and hokum that they had to change the name of Rocket to guess what today we call them jets We call them jets, but you know, but Jack Parsons was actually one of those people who called rocket traveling to rockets traveling the moon Hokum because again at the beginning you'll see the transformation of Jack Parsons from the Scientific Explorer to the Explorer of the inner world then outer world because you could see at the very beginning

He was like we're using these rockets to try and get further into the atmosphere to study for weather and do and various things and study The space in a way that we never could before but eventually what he would do though He would set the building blocks for what would send us to space Mm-hmm, cool into a man like Jack Parsons once he made science fiction a reality He felt that it was not only logical, but almost inevitable that he could then do the same thing with myths legends and fantasy ie magic I did just read they're getting closer to being able to reanimate human dead human flesh

I did read an article on that. That's interesting. Hey, man. All you got to do is fucking pop it in the microwave Mm-hmm. We call that Your hot pockets done and your necromancy But with that confidence and the belief that science in the metaphysical realm could be combined Jack Parsons also inadvertently gave Another science fiction writer the final push that he needed to create the world's first science fiction religion Which of course boy came the most successful new cult of the 20th century Scientology

Fucking the real main brain man And as we go through these episodes you'll see it's always important that if you're starting a little religious movement Always keep one foot outside the circle because that allows you To not get run over by the train of beliefs. Mm-hmm. Absolutely a tubby little man Elron Hubbard does sound like a teacup that should be able to talk We've already mother already made our we've made our L.A. jokes in the past right there done now LRH is the future. We're gonna talk about But while Jack Parsons work in the field of science and his work in the magical realm produce results that are mixed when it comes to

consequence Good was never the goal of Jack Parsons quote-unquote good nor however was this goal evil quote-unquote evil But neither was he trying to gain power money or fame from what a sword good or evil? That's the truth is a flame good or evil indeed neutral think about it. You fucking pieces of shit Well, it's not that complex but for what I can tell Jack Parsons only goal in both science and magic was simply to see What would happen and to see how far he could take it? This was not out of a lust for power or even a lust for knowledge But more for the experience and the accomplishment in other words his only goal was to live an

Experimental life. I mean honestly at this point. He just sounds like Russell Brandt Did you ever have a job the Jack Parsons? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Oh, you're gonna love it self-made self-made man Oh, no, there's it. Oh my god. Yes, if you I told kissal before this is that you're if you're libertarian the very center of your the Cold libertarian heart would cry a single red and white and blue tear if it's red Freedom is a two-edged sword by Jack Whiteside hardsons because Robert Anton Wilson actually puts us another famous libertarian Puts this in a very interesting way is that he was Four dudes, right Jack Parsons was four men. He was a scientist. He was an occultist He was a political dissident and he was also an idiot

True libertarianism knows no country You're flag rogue rogue group of individuals who all like to get together and Complain with their free with their free metro cards around their neck And sometimes Jack Parsons experiments were positive and sometimes they were negative because experimentation is messy and unpredictable Chick got weird in bad ways for Parsons in the magic world more often than not and his scientific work was so recklessly Dangerous that it's a miracle. He made it to the age of 38 before he accidentally blew himself up I'm in my Jack Parsons here. Oh My but in true magical fashion i.e. the

Unpredictability of it all the courageous experimentation of Jack Parsons in the scientific realm Helped give humanity both the technology to destroy itself and the means to explore the stars Great is a candy bar good or evil? neutral But nevertheless the road to Parsons last fateful day as a charred corpse and a Pasadena garage is filled with explosions sex fire magic sex Heartbreak sex and betrayal. Oh, we got a horny boy in our hands man and his tank was never empty

He's the horny of scientists Since who's horny Stephen Hawking? Very horny was it Einstein super horny in that movie with Meg Ryan? Yeah, that's a fake. No, I was known for being quite a hornball Benjamin Franklin. Yeah, very horny extremely I feel like we're heading into conjecture. I don't know Benjamin Franklin was historically horny He remember that yes, they have a an actual Some bust a gigantic bust of Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia across the street from where he's buried in which he looks visibly horny He has a bone like it's this you can't see it in the at home, but it's

Take a little flash of that and we'll post it Smirky smile with small eyes Well as was quoted in our main source of this series strange angel by George Pendle Parsons said that if he had the genius to found the jet propulsion field in the u.s And found a multi-million dollar corporation in the process Then he should be able to apply this genius to the magical field this motherfucker was just literally a child He walked into a university and said we're doing rockets And after he did that like really like he literally just let him run and we're gonna get into it

But he like why wouldn't you think you got the magic touch? Yeah Well for Parsons science and magic were two sides of the same coin Which isn't the most ridiculous notion when you consider the Parsons came of age in a time when discoveries about the way the world worked We're coming at one of the most rapid paces in human history And if you read the book sex and rockets the cult world jack Parsons by John Carter There is a he basically talks about how it's how we got into the Lima in the first place Which is that he felt that the original writings of book of the law were explicitly explaining quantum physics Yeah, so he was already he was seeing science in the magic. Yeah, and of course if you read the book sex and red rockets

You will go to prison. It's illegal. What is in that book? It's it's horrible. The author is currently in jail He is the dog fucker version of Adolf Hitler. He's currently writing his new book mine Mine mine mind snuggles Come up with it Mine snuggles Mine snuggles So you're plugging

So you're plugging It's called mind snuggles and it's a man who fucks dog. It's called sex and red rockets Why are we plugging it? If you don't eat all Hitler dog fucking, why are you plugging? I don't know My snuggles However Parsons was a far better scientist than he was a magician

And when it comes to the metaphysical realm, it could easily be said that one of his partners in the magical field was far more successful and consequential That partner was Elron Hubbard and Elron Hubbard will show up in full force in episode three I am waiting in the wing Oh my debut, he's very good man Again, you just got to keep your head on a swivel when you're dealing with magic because you say he was a bad magician No, I didn't say he was a bad magician. I did not say he was a bad magician. I said he was a better scientist than a magician Well, he definitely got paid for one Scientist by trade magician by desire

Yeah, but long before Parsons and Hubbard joined each other in the desert to attempt Alistair Crowley's moon child ritual that was supposed to summon the scarlet woman of Babylon who would bring about the end of the world Jack Parsons was little Marvel Parsons born October 2, 1914 in Los Angeles His name was Marvel? Yeah, his first name was Marvel and he was born Dick first Oh, it's the first pussy ever it came out of That's a tough way to break your back Marvel called Jack by his parents had been born in the middle of the great Los Angeles population boom wherein the amount of residents of the city had grown six fold from 50,000 to 300,000 in just 20 years So when Los Angeles finally got water

I would love to hear them complain about traffic 300,000 that's the amount of people that are in in front of me right now It's nothing You can't see this at home but the kids will just turned into Andy room like he just What's the deal with license plates? Why do I care where you're from? Well, they called him Jack they called him Jack because he was named after his father right who became he they separated the family separated because his father got a little to two into the sex workers for the comfort of the family Yes well yeah he wrote a letter to his wife that was one of those classics like you know today what I'm doing is considered wrong but in the future in the future everyone's going to be into it So it's like it's like it's your problem for not being on my level Time traveler you kind of need to be a time traveler already okay for you to understand our marriage

But as it's pointed out in the book Strange Angel there was something about Los Angeles perhaps the entertainment industry that attracted different esoteric belief systems and alternative ways of thinking And all this would later of course make LA a hotbed for cults Hey you don't think it still isn't it still is buddy don't count us out I just said would later make LA a hotbed for cults never said it stopped being a hotbed for cults It's a warm bed at this point cults have gotten too mainstream Yeah well okay everyone and now everyone just they're in their cult in their home on their butts In my day cults used to have to go outside or at the very least go outside to go to someone else's house and never leave that house Back in the day they had to annoy people outside of subway stations the hairy Christians like give them credit they still hang out at Union Square annoying everybody but they're there

They're doing it old school and I would also say there is a little bit of an esoteric edge to the fact that like well yes it was capitalism slash like front like you know expansionism But like we made Los Angeles green by the power of our ingenuity there's something about that where like obviously now we're seeing that it's a problem Yeah to put a bunch of green things where it's supposed to be a desert but the magical there's like a there's a transformational edge that kind of leads towards futuristic thought No it is the will like it's the the concept of will around the time of Jack Parsons birth in 1914 you could find secular utopian communities Christian scientists spiritualists Alistair Crowley Thelomites and Madame Blavatsky Theosophists All right there in Los Angeles in a town of about 300,000 people another quality that marked Los Angeles in the early 20th century was wealth and Jack Parsons like his eventual mentor Alistair Crowley He was born into a life of servants and palaces in the city of Pasadena raised by his single mother and his grandfather But as opposed to Crowley's reputation as a hellion which earned Crowley the nickname of a great beast 666 before he reached puberty Parsons was a spoiled only child with few friends who spent most of his time reading Arthurian legends and Greek and Norse mythology One day you all see I'll eat everybody's pussy within 25 miles

That's nice. Power of the nerd. Sounds like young Sheldon to me, but that's okay. Oh man. Yeah, you don't think young Sheldon ain't fucking I mean he's being abused Oh no it's gonna get even nerdier Ben. While Parsons enjoyed the more fantastical stuff his true love was early science fiction this guy was a true nerd a tiny little pudgy nerd specifically Parsons loved the work of Jules Verne Whose stories used actual technical knowledge to extrapolate how space travel or submarines might work and Verne wasn't the only one doing this HG Wells was predicting aerial warfare and a story called the war in the air And a writer named W Alexander predicted organ transplants and a story that had the unsettling title of new stomachs for old I wouldn't mind it. That's kind of weird. It's interesting about how like that's what I like about science fiction especially short form science fiction back in the day and that allows you to drop these little like ideas in there that like I do feel as we see those we've talked about that we've kind of magically projected a latent dystopia onto our reality because of the shit that we were all obsessed with the name in the 80s Well organ transplants are good unless they're unless you're beaten with a club and all of a sudden you wake up with one kidney less or something but when it's done medically and legally it's quite positive Very good. Yeah. Although sometimes you wake up and you didn't like to make rib but then you wake up and you're like now I want to make rib and it turns out you got your heart from somebody with Diabetes

Continue. Well for Parsons these stories blurred the line between fiction and reality to the extent where that line extended into the world the metaphysical as well The world of myth, legend and the occult. Concerning the science though Parsons was most drawn to science fiction stories about rockets which in the 1920s were considered by scientific minds to be pipe dreams even though people have been experimenting with the technology for centuries Well I think they said the closest they could get up is they think that they got something up like a mile high They figured out how to do that and then they're like we've done it You just like shot a thing up and they're like they'll all just stand around like good work everybody Not bad Good work and it's like that's a mission

Mission complete Well rockets were somewhat understandably considered unfeasible because most of the people who conducted these experiments tended to blow themselves up whenever they tried it For example the first recorded attempt at rocket flight occurred in China in the year 1500 when a man named Juan Hu strapped 47 black powder rockets to a wheelchair affixed to two kites I just love that this was so long ago Well sensibly the rockets would propel him up into the sky and then the kites would enable him to sustain flight after he reached altitude Dude I would have loved to be this guy's friend man They're watching you know the whole town got around you set up all these big barrels of shit and he's got a tie he's just like why don't we put a gold ribbon on the chair that'll make it nice When I shoot up to heaven and I meet the dragon that encircles the sun or whatever we'll show them we'll have gifts and shit and they're all like high-fiving and stuff man that must have been fun right before you let the fuse

Yeah dude all 47 rockets exploded all at once I mean at least the challenger got off the ground Yeah and the resulting blast disintegrated Juan Hu so thoroughly that he seemed to disappear into thin air or more likely a chunky red mist So did it work that's the question I mean a baby they did maybe like he was very sad you just hear the whole audience go like little golf I mean like I guess that's how that was supposed to go Wow In warfare there were also stories throughout history involving primitive rocketry by writer George Pendle's research armies were using rocket powered arrows as far back as 1000 AD

And rocket brigades were used by everyone from the British to the French to the Americans up until the war of 1812 Now I might be wrong but they were kind of like they were similar to sort of like fireworks in a way right where they would just kind of shoot a thing off like I don't really understand how they how old school rockets worked Yeah well I mean it is shooting something a long distance in order to stab someone I think with the rockets in the 1000 AD and the rocket brigades were you know trying to blow people up you know using rockets trying to blow people up from a long distance away Just a bit of gunpowder right They said they were doing it in 1241 they were just it was fire arrows at the time they considered those rockets But rocket brigades were abandoned because they blew themselves up far too often because it's a lot of black powder it's a lot of salt peter Or they couldn't deliver on their promises consistently enough to be countered on in a battle plan

Really by the time Jack Parsons it seems like rocketry had been relegated mostly to recreational fireworks outside of a few researchers Because there were some men who very much believed in rocketry But seeing as how Jack grew up in Pasadena he had a whole desert where he could fire off homemade rockets and blow shit up with his grandfather Using materials he gathered from store-bought fireworks That is fun It is kind of interesting that it's probably it sounds vaguely like a rich person's hobby that they can actually get away with this shit Is that he had the money and the resources to buy this stuff Yeah to buy it that's true but the idea of blowing it's the gunpowder

Yeah that's true Now we took that back the trash people took that from the rich people Blowing shit up in the desert is certainly not a highfalutin hobby But to get the goods I see what he's saying Yeah Yeah I get what you mean Now Parsons was homeschooled until the age of 12 But when he was suddenly sent to a public junior high at puberty

He arrived as a fat little effeminate momma's boy with odd highfalutin manners that didn't do well on a Los Angeles playground I mean what do you do if you create a little Prince Andrew that he doesn't know You know his whole life has been living in the cedar lined mansions of Pasadena where they would just hand him books or like Learn the history of the world Like that was when they used to have like a book that was just called like Germany and you like open it up and you just learn everything about Germany And that's all you do for days And then of course you might be a little strange Well this is a perfect I mean it's just it's a perfect storm of pure and utter horror that all of us had to go through

You're hitting puberty he's thrown into gen pop he's now in the deep end And he's just like oh you guys don't love rockets I mean just immediately punched in the face That's a thing combine that with the fact that he arrived every day in his grandfather's limousine wearing a tailored woollen suit Speaking in an affected British accent and carrying around a stack of science fiction magazines Oh man Yikes I mean what do they call them in the Joel Rifkin series an abuse unit Abuse unit

Yeah Yeah it's hard man they don't know because everybody else is like playing outside Yeah You know everybody else is like playing with a hoop and a stick and beating each other up and fucking like messing with girls underneath the bleachers And then you literally have the the retongue genius arrived It was just like Papani and his listen to my tales of being eight But there can be you know coming from money I'm sure there were some kids who thought it was a good time who saw that he had the good stuff

Good toys and things Well, yeah this kid his name was a Edward Foreman to Parsons great luck He was saved from a particularly serious beating by a kid two years older than him Edward Foreman pulled the bully off and broke the bully's nose thus beginning a lifelong friendship Nice That's why nerds always acquire goons Always I had a pretty good goon squad myself growing up

Oh yes It's very important Cultivate your goon Grow your goon treat your goon with enough kindness so they don't turn on you but enough pressure and So that they also understand to heal when it's important for the society You do understand you're talking out loud No, no actually I mean it took me personally until high school to develop the skills to gain a goon squad

But then after that the bullying stopped because that's the thing I turned some of my bullies into my goon squad There you go Boom that easy Flip it You gotta flip it Now Foreman actually liked hearing Parsons talk about science fiction becoming science fact Because Foreman's father was an engineer And it didn't hurt that Parsons was given $20 a day by his grandfather for pocket money

At a time when the average wage was 26 cents an hour Oh my god he was going every day to school Oh yeah dude Like 500 bucks in his pocket essentially he was Francis from Peewee's big adventure Yeah he wasn't quite that bad but a little bit Well Francis was a dummy and kind of a bully in his own right He's the worst kind of a rich kid But while one might think that Foreman was only in it for the mooching

He and Parsons soon started working on plans on how they could build a rocket that goes to the moon Cool And they spent so much time experimenting with explosives that their nickname at school was The Powder Monkeys Cool yeah I love it That's like a Rivers Cuomo side project Yeah Man I tell you why I remember this one time I showed my mom I was like

I went fever so I was so obsessed as a little kid about how I wanted to be an inventor Like I was obsessed with this idea so he was like build things in the house And I'd be like mom look at the time machine she'd be like your father and I are about to get divorced And she didn't want to deal with it right But then one time I showed her this design for a cape that had a bunch of pockets in it And I was like I'll jump on this and I'll be able to like fly I'll be like a superhero And I remember my mom being like And me Thomas you are never going to be able to fly

And I'll always remember the night because I was watching Dean Cain's Superman You remember that Superman show that he was in I remember She shut off the TV to be like you're never going to fly Henry Thomas And Eva once and I remember being sad and I went and I put all my papers and I put them away And now look at me I fly fucking three times a month Absolutely and you've learned to hate it Yeah you really hated it I think it's the thing you hate most in life

Very much But at the same time Parsons also claims that around this age he had his first mystical experience Although not much is known as to what actually happened or how it happened In his early high school years he's like 13 maybe 12 Parsons claims that he tried invoking the devil in his bedroom Yes burn and earn and earn it's fucking sweet I remember when I used to get all my wicca books and shit and we used to talk about demons man It was fucking awesome when you're 13

Just imagine you're the devil and you're like I don't want to hang out in your 12 year old room I don't want to see your comic books You're disgusting Parsons however only said that the experience was a quote magical fiasco Whatever that means And while it certainly ignited an interest in the occult it also put him off serious practice until he was more prepared So who knows what he actually summoned I don't think he summoned the devil This neighbor Rodney who's like please for the love of God I need the chanting to stop

It must stop alright because if not I'm gonna beat you I know listen I know your parents there I'm gonna have to step in I'm gonna have to beat the living shit out of you And I don't want to This is a fiasco it's a fiasco Fiasco sounds like he just spilled all of his beakers he just everything turned out to be a total disaster He probably wet himself by accident I killed the doves That's a magical fiasco

Meanwhile Jack Parsons was blowing up so much shit at home with Edward Foreman that his mother sent him off to military school And of course once he got there Foreman could no longer protect him But just like a class clown uses laughter to ward off bullies Parsons used his knowledge of explosives To impress the other kids and probably just to see if he could pull it off Parsons blew up every toilet in the academy all at once Yes see now this is cool Yeah and he got kicked out as a result Well cool even cooler dude

Yeah it is cool and I was going back and now we can go back to the old school there and be like what happened man why are you back dude I got kicked out I was too badass for military school They call me rocket nerd He returned home but found that the field of rocketry and air travel was rapidly gaining traction Other people his age were starting to get into it In 1927 when Parsons was just 13 he made contact with future German rocket scientist Werner von Braun When von Braun was only 17 years old Wait how the fuck did that happen

I don't know man pen pals they used to talk on the phone What There's also a time period where like you could call up a historical figure on the phone Yeah And they just like pick it up it was just been like yep it's FDR still can't walk It was easy to do But it's not just I mean they're 17 and 13 you know And these are the guys who are I mean you know Werner von Braun

Not a spotless record but was still partly responsible for sending man to the moon And of course Jack Parsons is also responsible for quite a bit of space travel as well But these two guys are talking on the phone at 13 and 17 But suddenly when Parsons was 15 The gravy train that he'd ridden all his life suddenly came to a stop When the stock market crash that caused the Great Depression wiped out almost all of his family's wealth To the point where Parsons figured there wasn't really any point in continuing school He was too smart for it

He had all the knowledge he needed to work and explosives and propulsion And he was never going to be able to afford college And there was also no college that was going to let him seriously study rocketry anyway So he figured fuck it I'm going to do it myself He dropped out and he got a job at the Hercules powder company Fucking around with dynamite Wow Dude this is truly like an example of what I would call the basics of magical thinking

You can poo poo me all you want but it's like you saw the straight line You saw a straight line It's like I'm just going to go write you a gunpowder I don't need to learn math I don't need to learn biology I mean he will learn math eventually Kinda But still it was all cobbled together

It's not that he doesn't need to learn it It's that he doesn't need to be taught that shit Like all that stuff comes naturally And he can put in the work himself to understand it Because that's the thing that cannot be over seeded how fucking naturally brilliant Jack Parsons also was Yes All of it is self taught May I just say Hercules Hercules Hercules

He's been saving it Remember that Remember that fried chicken Remember there was some fried chicken in that scene too Hercules Hercules I lived on Clump Avenue for a bunch of years I don't remember Of course

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For dates and tickets Well Parsons, he wasn't the only person to drop out of high school Edward Foreman had actually dropped out a couple of years before And he'd just been working odd jobs ever since So, they got back together and when the two of them Weren't working their day jobs They were continuing highly dangerous rocket experiments Alright, so fun

Parsons took care of the science He was completely self-taught Foreman acted as the engineer What he learned from his dad And Foreman was the one who actually built the shit that Parsons was dreaming up Wow And after destroying Foreman's backyard With near constant small scale explosions

They began conducting their experiments in the deserts of California Where Parsons would also conduct magical experiments years later Wow, now that I think about it, he's more like Pugsley from the Adams family Yeah You know, fuck that He's a bit of a pus Yeah Yeah

Meanwhile, Parsons was advancing at the Hercules powder company at his own peril Because on average, at least one worker died per year Due to accidental explosion at their plant in Pinolay It's so fucking cool I thought that might be higher I thought that number might be higher One per year? That's not so bad

It's just crazy to work at a place where just shit would just explode They would just be like, well, there goes Jerry and then you move on They just go like, no Well, it's on average one worker per year So that means that you might go like two years without losing anybody And then you lose five all at once Five, yeah Right

But soon enough, Foreman also took an apprenticeship at the Hercules powder company And it finally gave both of them access to high grade explosives and materials Parsons and Foreman also began to discover that they weren't the only ones obsessed with rocketry Another group of rocket aficionados named the International Planetary Society Had almost launched a seven foot tall rocket using something other than black powder As a propulsion system, because everyone was using black powder at that time for rockets Now granted, one of the members of the IPS had been engulfed in flames when he ignited their experimental rocket by hand This is a part of it

This is what you, it's a part of the experience But nevertheless, Parsons and Foreman figured they could improve on the system Because again, if you're starting at everybody's on fire, all you need to do is improve Anything's gonna improve Absolutely And they began work on what would change rocketry and therefore the world forever Liquid rocket fuel That's what Kissel's drinking right now

Absolutely, it's for my rockstar lifestyle Here I am, sitting Sitting Have you been drinking that rockstar reserve, Ben? No, I haven't, I don't touch this age It's aged 15 years Yeah, the doctor says if I have one more sip of that, I'm in a day Did you guys have rocket clubs in high school?

Because I remember the rocket clubs, like they were not cool like this They were like a step above the horse people I built rockets by myself, I built rockets when I was a kid I saw that in you, I saw it through you Yeah, me and my dad would build them sometimes, I would build them sometimes myself But there was one other friend who would build rockets with me, but yeah dude, I was way in the model of rockets And I could get those fuckers to launch pretty high Sometimes they would explode on the ground though, I did explode a couple on the ground

But yeah, I fucking love rockets We should do it again, Marcus We can Let's do fucking, let's do rockets That's a great idea, that's a great idea Yeah, we'll do rockets You end up like Pierre Paul, you're gonna blow your freaking hand off and then it'll be awesome It'll be cool, I have claws

Yeah, you'll be great with claws As long as you don't blow out our throats, we'll be fine Yeah, that's the problem That's a great idea guys Now when it came to the world of science at this point in history The focal point for the most exciting, revolutionary and dangerous stuff was happening at Caltech in Pasadena, the hometown of Jack Parsons See, while Caltech had Edwin Hubbell working on telescopes, Thomas Morgan developing chromosome theory, Carl Anderson discovering the positron and Charles Richter inventing the Richter scale all at the same fucking time in the same place It also had Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, whose respective works would lead to the creation of the atomic bomb

Yeah, but then Cal State had the guy that invented Dutch oven, which is when you fart underneath the blanket And then you stick your partner's head underneath it So it's just as different as Cal Tech UCLA had O.J. Simpson There you go, fantastic That's great Interestingly though, Caltech was founded by a man who was already mixing science with mysticism long before Jack Parsons had done so Astrophysics professor Gregory Hale built lodging for other astronomers that could only be accessed by a nine mile hike and he named this place the Monastery

They're all kind of like this because Oppenheimer also was kind of mystical too When we do our thing on the Manhattan Project, we're going to get into Oppenheimer's real weird mystical shit The monastery adorned with Egyptian symbols, it became the location of monastic rituals led by George Hale himself And without knowing any of this, Caltech was where Parsons showed up at the age of 20 looking for like minds And his confidence was so much he showed up at 20 years old as a high school dropout He just rolled up, he literally just showed up and I'm your rocket guy Which is still how my mom thinks show business works He just could walk in

Henry Thomas, have you thought about doing a show? Have you thought about doing a TV show? No mom, I fucking haven't, not once Maybe you should do something on Broadway You know what? No, I refuse It's hard work Parsons and Foreman have been drawn to Caltech by an article that discussed the possibility of using rockets to power aircraft What we call jet engines Eventually they were put into contact with a student named Frank Molina who was just as obsessed with rocketry as Parsons and Foreman were

Together these three would convince Caltech to give them meager funding eventually to begin work on rocketry Despite the fact that neither Parsons nor Foreman were students at Caltech Soon enough they were developing some of the earliest liquid fueled rocket engines These are children with no training And no education They just started doing it Now at this point most scientists at Caltech thought that rockets were quote as I said something to be left to the comic books But the one person who was forward-thinking enough to give our boys a chance was a scientist archetype named Theodore von Karman

It's Doc Brown He is Doc Brown Dr. Theodore von Karman He was a beret wearing absent-minded professor with a thick Bavarian accent Who had a reputation for romancing the wives of his students and hosting parties with his sister Where both of them would wear Japanese kimonos for no discernible reason We are being fun and eclectic That is why we press breasts

Me and sister press breasts to congratulate ourselves for being related Hey bro, first of all you fucked my wife and then you gave me a C on this paper If you're gonna fuck my wife can you at least give me an A No, because she was bad at it I was raging to sex Aw man, this is horrible I think he was the one who was famous for giving lectures in German He would give the first half of the lecture in German

Not realizing that nobody in his class spoke German And then he would realize oh fuck I'm supposed to be giving this in English But he wouldn't start over He'd just do the rest of the lecture in English And expect you to figure out what the first half of the lecture was about Well, there's some hints in there Used to be a free your country I guess so, my snuggle

But what Carmen is best known for is his work in keeping bridges from my snuggle My snuggles My snuggles I can see him writing it in the fucking book It's writing it inside of a kennel You know what I mean? Like in dog jail But what Carmen is best known for is his work in keeping bridges from collapsing as often as they used to Particularly after the 1940 Tacoma Narrows bridge disaster

That occurred just after the bridge experienced its first light gale of wind Oh Surprisingly, the only fatality in this collapse was a Cocker Spaniel named Tubby Who was lost No, what happened? Why was Tubby on the bridge? But Tubby was in somebody's, he was in his owner's car And the owner got out, Tubby couldn't get out cause Tubby was Tubby And there was a photojournalist and a professor named Farqua Harson

Who tried rescuing Tubby but eventually the car started sliding This is mine struggles These are mine struggles Tubby, well, you know Tubby tragically plunged to his doom And the owner was compensated $7,000 in today's money for the loss of Tubby That's nice It's better than they do now, now they just blame us for being too fat for the bridge

Probably charges money Now Dr. Von Karman was able to fix, actually I think he was a professor Professor Von Karman And Professor Von Karman was able to fix these failures of bridge design Because he was in charge of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at Caltech Named GALCIT for short It might be GALCIT because depending on how you get into the Caltech, I don't know Let me talk about this

GALCIT It's Cal-C, it's a hard C I like the soft C Yeah, because GALCIT sounds like you're patting your knee looking at a woman from across the bar Sure GALCIT, but GALCIT sounds awful I don't like GALCIT, I don't know why, but I don't You're the author

Using GALCIT's wind tunnel, Von Karman was able to create new ways of designing bridges that wouldn't collapse in strong winds That's great GALCIT was also where Jack Parsons, Edward Foreman and their new crew member Frank Molina took their rocket proposal And while Theodore Von Karman was unable to give them any funds, he allowed them to use GALCIT's facilities Even though only one of them was actually a student at Caltech And only one of them, he was not only the only student, he was the only one with a high school diploma Okay Now during the time that Parsons was doing all the DIY work that was impressive enough to gain him free access to high-tech collegiate facilities

He was also certainly no monk when it came to the ladies No dude, he had this prepackage, there's something about nerds Yeah Some of these guys, it's like they figure it out because he was horny, horny, horny He lost the baby fat He lost the baby fat, he had like a sort, he had eraser head hair, but he fucking rocked it, it looked cool He looked cool Yeah, he was handsome, he was daring

Yeah, he was always immaculately dressed, no one ever saw him without wearing a vest Like dude had a fucking style going Apparently though that he did have a sweating issue, this is true He had a sweating issue and he was like holding a McNally Where if you ever see him in anything above 67 degrees, he's sopping wet And he was kind of like that, but some girls like that Absolutely, so then he's not like Prince Andrew, the way that you classified him as earlier Although we have learned from people who knew Prince Andrew that he does sweat

Yeah, of course Yeah Well, Jack Parsons also, he would sweat a lot, but he also, what he would do, he was one of those guys that thought he could hide it with Cologne But it just mixed, you know that like Cologne B.O. mix that's just highly unpleasant Uber driver That's just not so bad, not so bad Well in 1933, two years before Parsons gained access to Galsett, he met his future wife and one of his future partners in Magic, Helen Northrup Ironically, at a Christmas dance at a Baptist church

But she was the right woman, man Sometimes you just know because she was just as freaky as him Okay See, while Parsons had been raised with no strong religious affiliation, Helen had grown up half witchy and half Christian Very common Her family had moved to Pasadena after her mother chose the location through the use of a Ouija board But her stepfather, a strict Baptist, only allowed Helen to attend extracurricular activities at the Baptist church when she came of age This was where she met Jack Parsons, and Helen's strict Christian stepfather encouraged a relationship with this handsome young scientist

Not knowing that this same young man had attempted to summon the devil in his bedroom when he was a child It was a fiasco Yeah, it was a guy named Fiasco, it was a fiasco But even though Parsons was a good looking dude who was immaculately dressed at all times, he was still a scientist And he courted Helen like a scientist I would put him in the He's in the Aegon Spengler realm of scientist, where he was a... How do you put it? There's something about him being... He collects mold, spores, and fungus

Yes, but there's something uniquely charismatic about him Where people were kind of like, because again, it shows, and this is for everybody out there, that like, you know, where's your purse then, stuff like that When you are enveloped so deeply in your interest, in your specific interest, people are attracted to it And you're passionate, like if you're passionate about something, people are really... And that's what he was, he was a true believer when it came to science One night, he took Helen on a date and invited his buddy Edward Foreman along But after Parsons spent hours talking to Foreman about rockets, instead of paying the least bit of attention to his date She left without telling him and neither man noticed

But the relationship continued And since both Jack and Helen were becoming increasingly witchy, she and Parsons would attempt to communicate telepathically when they were apart Both tuning in at 9 p.m. each night because they couldn't afford long-distance phone calls That's kind of romantic Yeah, that's a fun idea That's a little romantic That's fival, it's the fival thing It's a little bit like that, the conversation was probably pretty good, because he was just having it with himself

So he was probably just like, oh you want to suck my dick again, oh my god He was just like, oh you want to buy me another car, you want to buy me more stuff, sweet Honestly, be nice, show your tits to the moon thinking about your boyfriend, sometimes he'll think about him You never know You never know Somewhere out there And he'd just show your pussy to the sky But since they seemed to be well matched in all the ways that mattered

Parsons proposed to Helen a year later with a three-carat diamond ring and a 25-caliber pistol Cool Okay And he was so absent-minded at their wedding in 1935 that he forgot to kiss her at the end of the ceremony Oh my god, he's a bumbling scientist He really is, how do you forget to kiss her? He's like, he's got a kiss in there He's all hubbub, it's because everyone's going, everybody's on fire, you know, like god knows what's happening

Explosions are just going off Well, eventually Jack and Helen settled down in Pasadena where Parsons got a day job at the Halifax Powder Company Because apparently California was fucking full of dynamite factories at this point in time Sure But since they were now permanently in Pasadena, Parsons could devote even more time to his rocketry work at Galsett But since Parsons' entire life was explosives and propulsion at this point He spent all the money he made on rockets and rocket accessories And Helen was in a constant battle with her husband just to meet the basic cost of living

Because he spent all their fucking money on rockets Literally, like he would have been in another world, he sounds like Timothy McVeigh Like this is a more, quote-unquote, like, innocent time Where it was like they would literally eat on barrels of dynamite Like there was shit, like their home was filled with explosive material That's kind of fun though, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, Parsons, I mean, at one point, like his wife is in the back of his car And she just discovered loose sticks of dynamite back there

Yeah, just hanging out He just casually tossed like so many half-eaten dollar menu cheeseburgers Wow There's where those were Oh, I've been looking for them! Another time, Parsons was working in the makeshift explosives lab on the back porch of the home he and Helen shared When he got a call that his grandmother was being rushed to the hospital But at the same time, he was heating up a large vat of explosives

You really don't want to be startled at this point Yeah, oh yeah So he handed a spatula to Helen and told her to keep stirring And under no circumstances stop until he came back Presumably without telling her what would happen if she stopped You want me to get your coffee too, or you just keep stirring? Honestly, don't look at me, you just keep stirring However, even though Parsons could be thoughtless, he was also generous and good-natured

He was prone to adopting stray animals He had a little owl that he adopted And he eventually domesticated it And he had a pet owl that would hang around That's cool, man, I want an owl, dude Yeah, and this of course extended to stray people as well And Parsons usually left Helen to be the villain who had to kick these dudes out of their house Yeah, and that would be a running theme

But while Parsons was spending all his money on rockets and rocket accessories He and his partner spent what little time off they had from their day jobs Scrounging Southern California for spare parts Eventually they had enough to complete their first rocket And they chose Halloween 1936 as the date of their first test Well, that's kind of romantic, they're little treasure hunters together Isn't that nice? You're scavengers?

Scavengers, yes, it's like Borderlands It's to build a giant bomb, so it's fun Is that a bomb? It's a rocket Well, it's a... let's just say at the time It's a bomb in a tube It could become a bomb From a bomb, yeah Make anything like a bomb, I'll make a bomb right now

You just did So did you Fuck you In a location in the northern area of the Arroyo Seco near Devil's Gate Dam The trio almost set themselves on fire in a failed launch Yes, they did But 15 days later, they tried again with greater success By January, they'd gotten their rocket motor to fire long enough

Without exploding that they were allowed to come out of the desert To perform rocket motor tests on the Caltech campus But they did still have to do so without funding Yeah, just blowing his money, blowing whatever's left Well, they had to pawn Helen's engagement ring Yeah And they got Helen to request cash advances from her job So they could pay for rocket parts

Cool ass wife Well, eventually she did become sick enough of being their bankroll That she made Parsons and Foreman dust and sweep her entire house Before she would give them five bucks for a rocket part There you go, that's good Yeah, just get When you tell Egon Spengler that he has to mop the house You know you're also not getting a great job

That's the problem too, is that you know that they're all like talking They're barely doing it and you're just like, alright, here's your fucking five dollars Like, thank you for the attempt But as Parsons, Foreman and Molina began their work on campus They picked up another crew member, a Chinese graduate student Named Qian Xu Sen I believe it's Qian Xu, yeah, Qian Xu Sen Yeah, and the rocket research group was officially recognized by Galsit

As a fully financed project Whoa So now that Qian was a part of the group and money was coming into play Parsons could now pull off bigger and therefore more dangerous experiments And their reputation for playing with fire in very public ways Earned them a nickname on campus Soon they were being called the Suicide Squad Whoa, that's amazing

It's fun as hell, they were legitimately a dangerous group of people today And not even in a bad way It was just in the honest name, there's just something about it, I love that idea In the honest name of science, just being like, we're blowing shit up today And they go outside and they just strap a bomb to it, see what happens And they're all watching with binoculars while things just explode all around them It was very dangerous Suicide Squad

In their first big fuck-up They managed to kill all the grass in the front lawn of the chemistry building With an experimental liquid that exuded highly toxic and potentially fatal vapors I just love when cartoon characters are real That's what I love about it, the thing about history is that certain things pop up And you wonder where they come from And you're like, just this idea that they were all like these bumbling mad scientists That's all real

In another fuck-up, they tested a rocket in the staircase of the galset building And that rocket, of course, malfunctioned And it spread a corrosive fog that left a layer of rust on every metal surface Which the rocketeers had to scrub off while the faculty and the janitorial staff stared them down Oh, wow Other times, members of the Suicide Squad would just lightly blow themselves up And when someone heard any sort of loud pop on campus, they'd run to their window To see if one of the squad had accidentally killed themselves

But most of the time, they'd actually, they would literally see them lying on the grass Like blackened and charred like Wiley Coyote That's a great day to be in college Yeah, because they'd blow themselves out of rooms through windows Yeah, like through windows and shit And that's just the power of being like 20 Where you can get up and be like, whoa, like, you know, with the goggles on with your hair sticking up And like, it's cool, we're like, I can't get out of this chair right now

No, not too quickly, absolutely Well, these guys said, what a crazy time for college kids We had 9-11 So I guess we saw a little bit more than they did A bit of a rocketry experiment in and out of itself Yeah But interestingly, the Suicide Squad, and particularly Jack Parsons' expertise in explosives Would have real-world consequences in the world of true crime and civic corruption

This story's amazing In the 1930s, Los Angeles was under the thumb of a corrupt mayor named Frank Shaw Shaw was under investigation by an anti-corruption advocate named Cliff Clinton And Clinton had tapped an LAPD officer named Harry Raymond to investigate In the middle of the investigation, though, Raymond got in his car, turned the key And was damn near killed by a car bomb No Go get new, man, this is like, that's good 1930s juice

Yeah It's crazy Now, all signs pointed towards police chief Earl Kynet as being behind the assassination attempt Because Kynet was not only a well-known crony of Mayor Shaw But he had also been found with a garage full of materials That had probably been used to construct a car bomb No, no, no, no This is my collection, it's just a collection of dynamite

Bomb material, it's a collection Do I need to arrest you? Because I can, I am literally the police chief Yeah, I mean, it's possibly circumstantial So To prove that those materials could in fact be the same that were used in the attempted murder of Harry Raymond The prosecution went to Caltech and asked, hey, you got anybody that can explain this to us And they said, fuck yeah, send in Jack Parsons

Send in the suicide squad Yeah Parsons was easily able to build the exact same bomb the police chief had built by extrapolating from the materials found in the garage And he even took the jury out to a testing site to use the car bomb to blow up a car So fucking, this is all nerd boners across the fucking board And just so you know, I'm being 100% accurate with this, as you can see this bottle of Scotch is half-gun Because I know for a fact that Sheriff did this well, well intoxicated, so drop And now let's test the bomb

You know, because again, one thing about Jack Parsons, as you'll see, is that he did like attention Like, he did like it, there was a showman aspect, which is where I think the magical shit really comes in I think people who explode things for fun often like attention I think so And when the damage in the test was found to be nearly identical to the damage to Raymond's car, Chief Kynet was sent to jail That was all Jack Parsons Now around this time, possibly boosted by his own slight celebrity, Jack Parsons began to build himself into a bit of a legend To promote his group's ideals of rocketry and to gain additional funding, Parsons began to work on a novel

That he planned to sell to MGM Studios for an adaptation, a story of espionage, murder, and organized labor That was back when the Union movie was big, but then the problem is that you also then get investigated for your politics really hard So in time period two, if you're super pro-Union Yeah, as opposed to now where everything is so pure and clear But it's just so cute, he was like, I wrote a screenplay, I intend to sell it to MGM, not realizing that they just say no Dude though, this is back in the day though You can really like, if you had it, there was an interest because he was becoming a public figure and everyone was interested in this stuff But it was also like more like, you were seeing the play of imagination

Yeah And it would come up a lot, it would come like, these guys were all selling scripts Like because Molina too was trying to sell a script Well the hero Franklin Hamilton is pretty much Jack Parsons And the other members of the Suicide Squad were turned into characters that were also based on their personalities There was Lin Lao, a man torn between returning to China or working on Rockets in America There was Thomas El Quude, a Union organizer with a deep hatred for Nazis I hate the Nazis! Stole my ice cream! What? Whoa!

And then my favorite was a defrocked Franciscan monk named Theophile Belvedere Sounds like one of my D&D character belts Theophile? Oh my But what's interesting about Theophile Belvedere in particular is that the character had an extreme interest in the Kabbalah Which magical students know is the ancient Jewish mystical tradition that is the foundation of most right hand magical practices Now he was, he based the character off of himself Like that was him saying he was already getting involved in this stuff Because he just ran across this writings, like he ran across on accident

Mm-hmm Well it was around this time that Jack Parsons also found a book called Conx Am Pax Written in 1907 Filled with quotes from Sappho, the Koran, and Dante, Conx Am Pax was a sort of puzzle book of the occult It spoke of mystics, demons, and magic And it was written in such a complicated and Byzantine style that it reminded Jack Parsons of the technical aspects of rocketry Which were themselves still being written And as it turned out, the author of Conx Am Pax was none other than Alistair Crowley

Whoa Get into my ass I do think that the conch would probably be Alistair Crowley's favorite kind of shellfish because it does look like a penis And a butthole at the same time And a butthole And kind of a vagina now that I think about it You're correct because the butthole is actually also a symbol of the sun The butthole and the vagina are just symbols of the sun and the moon

And Conx Am Pax is also a, Conx Am Pax is also a iteration of LVX Which is Luke's, which is a part of the Luke's formula This concept that you learn as you go through the OTO, it's kind of, it's a working formula, it's very complicated But Conx Am Pax was actually a book that Alistair Crowley wrote as sort of a child's invitation This is one interpretation of it as a child's invitation to the occult So he wrote these stories for his daughter And as soon as you read them, because I've been half sick with fucking like this whole week And trying to understand it again, because you forget it's layers of layers of allegory

That you kind of have to cross check references as you go Because that's how Alistair Crowley liked to write It was a, it was poetry to be worked on And he was immediately interested in this many layers Because that's what's interesting, it's interesting to an earth You can see why ritual reaction, ritual magic is really interesting to born nerds Because you are a, it's a puzzle It just laps on your lap, and you kind of had like, the more you read it

Which is, I don't know how, I don't know if it's like how when I was reading Dianetics And by like hour ten of it, it starts to make sense When it shouldn't, you know what I mean? I don't know I don't know whether what, and that's kind of how this book is as well Like I was pouring over it for like four hours and eventually you're like Oh, that's interesting, it's allegory It's like, he talks about, he basically writes a children's tale That tells the, the how you go through the various degrees in AA

Which is his version of like the O.T.L. You know, it's interesting I like it Henry, I wouldn't, I don't want, I want to recommend dietnetics for you And that's called bomb experimenting That's again, it's another, another brain Well that's a rocket ship to the moon right there buddy Dianetics

Well I think part of the reason why that shit starts to make sense after about ten hours I think the whole point of it, not the whole point of it, but I think Part of the intellectual exercise of it is that you just read this shit Until your brain figures out a way to make it make sense to you Like it's a meditation and eventually you can find, you can figure out the puzzle But it's what the puzzle means to you, rather than what the puzzle means to everyone And that's Alistair Crowley in particular It's all about the personal

And there's something about that that speaks to someone who is independently driven And they're like, and I think there is about, because it is referenced to many There's many like stories and myths that are attached to it Especially like the Ellucian myths and all this stuff that's like kind of layered within it And you, you get to see what he, it's all references So again, it's, it's, it's why I love a book that has a map in the front of it You know Hey, from New York Lane

Hi, I'm Jackie Zabrowski And I'm MJ And I'm Holden from the Page 7 Podcast And we're going on TO ETH That's right, we're touring all up in this mother freakin' country A fake cursing, so whatever, Jackie, just say the filthy F word already And we will say the filthy F word when we come to your town

That's right, we're coming to Texas, the Midwest, the Northeast, and then right back here in Cali, baby For ticket links and more details, visit LastPodcastNetwork.com That's right, LastPodcastNetwork.com Page 7 and Wizard and the Bruiser present Release the Butthole Cut Wait, that's really what we're calling the tour? Absolutely, Release the Butthole Cut For more information, go to LastPodcastNetwork.com

Now Jack Parsons and his wife were at this time swinging in unconventional intellectual circles And in 1939, based on Parsons budding interest in Crowley's work They were invited to an event by some friends of theirs A pair of gay siblings named John and Francis Baxter The event in question was a gnostic mass for the Church of Thilema And the group hosting the event was the Ordo Templi Orientis Better known as the OTO Specifically, Parsons had stumbled upon the Agape Lodge

Which had been founded by Alistair Crowley himself over 20 years before Well, you wanted to start it, but if you remember from the Alistair Crowley episodes Which you should listen to, if you want to know how, if you want to catch up to this series You should listen to the Alistair Crowley episodes and the Elron Hubbard episodes To kind of see how we got here But he tried to go to LA, but it was too hot It was too hot, basically hot Yes, Alistair Crowley did not enjoy the temperature of LA

He couldn't handle it I could see that, he wears a lot of layers I really feel that Alistair Crowley could have succeeded farther in life If he had been around for the invention of goldbond I think it is very difficult for him Air conditioning may have done him well Parsons, when he attended this event He was of course attracted to the quasi-masonic gestures of the rituals that he witnessed

But what really caught his attention was something new Sex magic There's just something about it, babe I don't know what it could be, but something about it I think it's sex magic I think it's that there's breasts in here Because the Gnostic Mass He went to see the Gnostic Mass, which is very long

It's an hour and a half long thing that you go to But it's a lot of titties And it's a lot of sticking swords in the cups And all this kind of stuff, it's very horny feeling And you're like, ooh, it's fun, you got the ropes and chin Oh, yeah He saw a priestess stroke the lance of a priest Which was followed by the priest kissing the priestess between her breasts

While lavishly sensual declarations were made I'm happy my priest didn't do any of that, man He was huge, nasty looking He kissed me between my breasts He was surprised what he found there It was a little boy's heart I love you Here's some of those lavishly sensual declarations

I love you I yearn to you Pale or purple, veiled or voluptuous I who am all pleasure and purple And drunkenness of the innermost sense I desire you Burn to me perfumes Wear to me jewels Drink to me

I am the blue-litted daughter of sunset I am the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night sky To me To me Well, all right He's reading it like a garbage man Why not? I'm trying to show you

They're allowed to be sensual Because when it comes down to it, it's like, yeah, obviously though Well, in the intent You're supposed to read it very horny You're supposed to be, you know Pale or purple, veiled or voluptuous I who am all pleasure and purple And drunkenness of the innermost sense I desire you

All right, I don't want to hear any more of this from you, Marcus I was the way Henry did it I am the blue-litted daughter of sunset I am the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night sky All right, save it, save it for the wives, guys Come on, to me I'm having one Oh, God dang it

He's fucking me I understand what's happening And I'm sure someone already has fan fiction about that I know for a fact they do We read it The show like this was catnip to a romantic intellectual Like Jack Parsons Who was coming closer and closer to looking at magic

The same way he looked at rocketry In fact, he rolled with everything At that first mass Including the partaking of the infamous cakes of light Oh, yeah Now, if you'll remember, cakes of light Were perversions of communion wafers That were typically baked with menstrual blood

Or semen Oh, interesting Oh, good I actually find it interesting Because now that we call it perversions of the communion But actually When I'm starting to understand Upon this layer of reading it

Because every single time I come back to Crowley and magic And I back into it reading it again You start to understand it's not perversions, it's dilutions It's actually going back to the essential Instead of like Because in transomstantiation, right If you do believe in the Catholic rite of mass Is that you believe it is magically turning into human blood

This is actually just cutting out The middle man of your imagination And going straight to No, we put the blood in it because the blood Is the very creative force of human life Fuck you both Look at me Look at me like I'm fucking nuts

You're trapped in here with me Screaming I've been drinking a lot of coffee I've got a sprinkle of Jack coffee That's why I liked the original Jagermeister There was real deer blood in it Oh, really? Yeah, much like Coca-Cola had cocaine

The Jagermeister actually had deer blood in it For flavor But then they came up with some other way to do the flavor That didn't involve deer blood I can't wait to yell in the next two episodes I'm just going to be yelling so much And I am sorry for all of you Good

Well, the cakes of light that Parsons ate Were made with animal blood Because presumably no menstrual blood was available What do you mean? It's hard to get I guess no one was on their period Just wait You can't wait I guess maybe all the ladies were

Well, I know one of them was like Postmenopausal All the other ladies might be all On the same cycle I talk about it on the live show No, we know Well, Parsons gobbled These cakes of light up anyway

Right alongside his wife Helen Because Helen, she showed up She was all in as well They were both all in After the ceremony The Baxter's introduced Jack and Helen To the senior members of the Agape Lodge Who were not necessarily

The movers and shakers That conspiracy theorists like to believe Members of these organizations to be Yeah man Magicians, what have we learned about Magicians? They don't get a lot of concrete Shit done Except they are also

Now it's also more like What is now also a shell for the CIA That comes up later on Oh, he didn't have to He didn't have to, he made the choice Sounds like he was pressured anyway He did believe he was at the feet Of one of the most powerful Black Sorcerers

To ever live, so you do feel pressure But still But the most consequential member Parsons met Was Wilfred T. Smith Although Wilfred T. Smith Was not a consequential person Outside of the Agape Lodge Even though Smith had been a founding member

With the blessing of Alistair Crowley himself Wilfred was by 1939 A 53-year-old clerk For the Southern California Gas Company Who wore a ceremonial robe That he had made himself From a theater curtain You are roasting him, you are not your job

I'm not roasting him He was a wizard first I didn't roast him at all He worked for the Gas Company He was a wizard on the weekend It's like flatulence of the opera Yes, that is funny That is funny, that's good

Flatulence But it was Wilfred Smith Who invited Parsons to weekly thalamic masses And although Parsons was repulsed by Smith He knew that this was his best chance To further explore the works and magic Of Alistair Crowley From a person who knew the man himself

Now in 1939 Alistair Crowley's reputation As the wickedest man in the world Had long since passed him by He was by this time A broke 64-year-old heroin addict Described by novelist Anthony Powell As having mottled

And porous yellow skin With the features of Quote A horrible baby Well, listen That is something Technically, that is the magical Rise and ascendance

If you do look at the formula Of the actual words of the Oh, God, look this up Not Kongs on Packs, but their Actual Godhead system Technically, you go from baby to man to baby So, magically He's correct

Nailed it, all right, well maybe that's not what you should follow If it's, I mean He was not taking care of himself He should have Did he write the got baby Got baby man baby thing after He started looking like a big baby You say right

I say discovered magically What a coincidence it was What if I just say That's the whole point You start baby, then you do man now and baby again When you're the head of the religion You make it You are the Godhead

LRH looked in the mirror every day and being like I am the Scientological Ultimate Brat, or he did it I think that Hubbard Looked in the mirror every day and was just like Oh, fuck Fuck, fuck, fuck I got this

There must have been some moments I'm gonna mix it up all day We were talking about this last night Elron Hubbard I went back and read what we wrote last time It's just his manic energy Just fascinates me Because he just never slows down

He never slows down He never falters, never trips Always rolls It's a thing to learn from Because he just never got set back He just got in the boat, he's like Can't live on land anymore, now we live in a boat There you go

Perfect Crowley was mostly concerned with heroin, hours long sessions of cunnilingus with sex workers in a vague attempt to try to get a boner again, chess and going to the movies He loved the movies

This ain't a bad life Heroine sounds pretty abysmal He wrote in his diary His favorite movie at the time was A Night to Remember It was a movie about the Titanic He saw it four times But

He hated the cartoons before the features He described one Donald Duck cartoon as Sad I believe it But he didn't like Trump It's just sad I'm sure that it is

Why do we want to remember the night the Titanic went down? I don't know But I adore that movie Is it a good one? I never saw it It's interesting, it's a romantic telling of the Titanic sinking No, I mean the 1996 one I love that movie

Titanic, I've seen that Of course I've seen that Now to give a brief refresher While Crowley's influence in Europe had waned if not disappeared completely He still held sway over the OTO Agape Lodge in Los Angeles

Now to give a brief refresher on what the OTO is the Orto-Templi Orientus is a sex-based magical order that's basically, if I may simplify it incredibly, for the sake of all involved It's a combination of Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Rituals and Tantric Yoga I have an actual intro prepared for next week that I'm going to bring in But yes, you are not too long It's the separation from the Golden Dawn that is basically about sex magic

and it's continued to operate to this day that is like the official Alistair Crowley religion that then he would change he would basically take this stuff from the Golden Dawn he would put the lemma into it Kind of where you get the OTO God damn it, I've read this book

The Book of Lies and it turns out it was full of fucking truth I want to refute That is what happened and when he realized it was kind of stilling down all these allegorical stories that it's about the harnessing the creative power of life itself

which is what sex is supposed to be Rude and Stem, right? Chalice and Sword They talk about the dualities Yeah, the Chalice and Sword Yeah, but much to release his surprise Crowley had come across the sex magic secrets of his order

intuitively and independently although as we said in our Crowley series Alistair was much more focused on the butthole than the OTO was prepared to accept at least at first When he took over he fucking put it into overdrive because the final thing, I mean obviously

to gain the final steps of the OTO it is sodomy on yourself right, like it is you get gaped right, that it's literally insects and rockets, they said that literally he put the gape in a gape that's like the thing that he does

where it's like the 8th ritual literally is cum menstrual blood you're supposed to rub it on your asshole and then you jerk off onto the runes so it's like it's all fun Isn't that creative? It's going to get weird if you have to keep escalating

it's going to get weird eventually Roos was so impressed with Crowley's understanding of sex magic that he made him head of the British OTO eventually Crowley expanded the OTO by laying the foundations for the first OTO chapter in America the Agape Lodge in Los Angeles

May I just say instead of being head of the OTO can I be the butt of the OTO? He was like both, duality duality and Crowley named the aforementioned Wilfred Smith as Magister Templi in 1950 Now back then Crowley was high on the hog

as was Wilfred Smith but by 1939 when Parsons came on the scene Wilfred Smith was working for the gas company What is the hog? Is the hog heroin? Yes, now it was Well, at that point Crowley I mean he was dead broke

and he was trying to make money selling rejuvenation tonics that he made from his own jizz People say hey, hey man It is interesting, I think we talked about this when we did the Crowley episode about how you just end in supplements Yeah, I'm surprised

he's not the next senator from Pennsylvania But even so, Crowley still held a lot of sway over the Agape Lodge which is one of, if not his last bulwark of power but he'd hoped that the LA branch might attract bankers and captains of industry

really anyone with money they do like to get gaped to be fair So, I mean, well and again it starts, it's about the trappings that's what people don't understand, it starts all nerdy but with the Crowley world you also get your dicks on

I do think that it is a sex magic, it is not pleasurable for a reason like it's supposed to attract you and because it's nice Of course, but because the guy in charge worked for the gas company which is not, there's nothing wrong with working for the gas company

I do feel like you're maligning this clerk for the gas company he's trying to remind the audience normal person so far this is his active way to make sure he tells the audience what he feels about magicians he doesn't say magician once like he just says

the clerk for the gas company I'm not saying, that's not what I'm saying at all I'm just saying that if you're trying to attract bankers and captains if you're trying to attract Nelson Rockefeller or you're not the bait, you need good bait remember like fucking children of God

with the flirty fishing to use the right bait I love conversations about gas Scientology it's again, which we'll get into in the next two episodes Actors Scientology got you attract

people that other people want to be around yeah you can't use the guy from the gas company as your point man I'd rather be around him than most of these Scientologists actors sure, whatever but, they ended up attracting

mostly people in the fringes society communists, pacifists, marginalized gay people like the backsters it was not people with a lot of money but, that changed when the backsters brought in Jack Parsons Parsons was a man of real consequence

who was energized by Crowley's talk of hidden dimensions and forbidden planes and he saw connections between Crowley's magical teachings and the work that scientists like Heisenberg and Schrödinger were doing in the quantum field now this hadn't been the only magical

philosophy that Parsons had explored he'd also looked into Madame Blavatsky's theosophical society but, Parsons had found himself quote, nauseated by Theosophies talk of the good and true is a shoe good

or evil well, a shoe is mostly good to be fair, a shoe is mostly good unless it's kicking a homeless man that's a foot that's the foot is the foot good or evil

well, for me the way I kind of see it the reason why Jack Parsons hated this talk is because that's a conclusion you know, it's something that an experimental human like Parsons had no interest in he was a seeker, an explorer and as someone like him, someone else coming to a conclusion for him

just wasn't any fun and that's what Blavatsky's all about it's a teacher, I have the answers I have what's going on by contrast, the principles of Crowley were more open-ended and ripe for exploration well, according to Crowley until you talked to Crowley and then he wanted

to control the whole thing which is always the problem with the perennial master with someone who wants to be the master and where Jack Parsons is truly interesting is because he is the student and he was a full, and he was, you remained a student and never wanted to be in charge of any one of these things, he didn't want to be in charge

he wanted to kind of be a conductor but he didn't want to, he didn't want all the responsibility, if you read Freedom as a Two-Edged Sword you see this interesting thing where he basically says, like, you know this entire universe is based upon our perception, we are each

we are creating the entire world within our own minds and we are the ones that have the power to control, we can only control our world and nobody else's but we have to leave room for other people's worlds, so how do you expect me to pay taxes in America now

if you can't, yeah that's what he did, if you can't believe an objective reality at all how are you supposed to fill out a fucking income tax form I don't know and now Freedom as a Two-Edged Gun is it not, is it not Two-Edged Gun

that's very dangerous, the sword Freedom is scary but needs its responsibility talk about that but even so Parsons had always been drawn to the darker side of the occult specifically the sorts of myths and legends

laid out in a since discredited cultural anthropology book called the Golden Bau the Golden Bau was supposedly a collection of European pre-Christian pagan rituals and beliefs which were brought to life on the silver screen in the 1973

classic The Wicker Man oh sweet but we now know that Fraser filled in maybe one too many gaps in missing knowledge which is to say he made a lot of shit up based on guesswork and presented all of it as fact

that's what Henry and I asked you to do magic it's magic it's just you gotta fill in those gaps man do you remember when they did it in Jurassic Park? absolutely and remember what happened? because they filled in the gaps with the amphibian DNA

they started reproducing asexually and everything went to shit no you see because human beings are trying to put limits on the powers of life itself the Chris Pratt one they had little hamster bowls he's an umbrella

good or evil good point neutral but the important part about the Golden Bau is that the author Sir James George Fraser also had an inkling that magic and science were linked just like Jack Parsons Fraser wrote that

quote both science and magic opened up a seemingly boundless vista of possibilities to he who knows the causes of things and both can touch the secret springs that set in motion the vast and intricate mechanism of the world

rippin balls dude man look at what we're mined today dude get your shit together you're the one you guys are all trapped in your little boxes man get out of your fucking box today man holy shit in other words Jack Parsons had a mind primed

for magic and a promising future that could possibly fund the OTO and therefore fund Alistair Crowley oh so Wilfred Smith initiated Parsons into the OTO immediately and it's with

the collision of science and magic that will pick back up for part two of our series nice his story just like I don't know what it is it's deeply inspiring I was actually in therapy and I need I was talking about this but how like I needed some form

of inspiration and I've been reading through these books again I just forget just how like this that idea of like you can get out there you could build a rocket you can suck and fucking you too can die in explosion at 38 years old and it's up to you yeah you

have the power that is great awesome alright there it is Mr. Parsons part one is all done it's all wrapped up yeah so next week we're going to be in Grand Rapids and Indianapolis come and check us out

we're going to be without Marcus Parks Marcus Parks is still holding his body together with duct tape but soon he will be patched together not unlike you ever seen the Japanese ceremonial pottery that's yes it might have been broken in one time but now it's held together

by gold yes indeed yes that's great there I'm well enough to do a show in a putz around town but just not well enough to travel between two cities do six hours of performance and you know and ride on the horrible roads

of Indianapolis which is what almost sent me to the hospital last time that is completely literally what happened but we are going to be there Indianapolis and I'll say India Indiana you need to invest more in your infrastructure how else would we be

able to tell if the shocks in our cars work unless they're tested tested but yes can't wait to see everybody in Grand Rapids and Indianapolis we're going to have an absolute blast so thanks all for checking that out thanks for checking out our serious shows thanks for checking out all of the shows

here on the network and do we have any other clerical stuff to tell our audience I will say that coming up very soon the next full series of no dogs in space is very close to being released hopefully about two weeks from now

but in the meantime be sure to check out the extra play we just did an extra play on our series that expands on our joy division series that we did last year that people seem to like based on mine and Caroline's experiences in Manchester

so be sure to go check that out no dogs in space you're absolutely a couple of regular Manx you're going to love the new series it's all about Luke Bryan which is a man I just found out existed today Luke Bryan I don't know I saw a billboard for him

he looks like one of these countries but he's like a new country guy he's been on for a long time they're doing fog hat they're doing fog hat fog hat Eileen Warnows did not have a great time with that man micro prints

micro all right everyone thank you for listening hail yourselves hail Satan magus dilations everybody your mind allow yourself to see go to the chapel within I think that's also important

find what it looks like in your mind tonight sit down visualize that somewhere deep inside of you there is a chapel that holds all of your potential energy and power walk inside see me standing there give me money inside of that chapel

and listen I'll help you well that is what it's all about isn't it at the end of the day everyone's just looking for fucking funding it's hard it's hard to be a wizard this show is made possible by listeners like you thanks to our ad sponsors you can support our shows by supporting them

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