RedHanded - Episode 290 - Jack Parsons: The Occultist Sex-Crazed Father of Modern Rocketry

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

From Copernicus to Newton, the greatest minds in history have had a crater named after them on the moon. But one name you may not know is Jack Parsons, a pioneer of rocket science whose contributions were so monumental that man wouldn’t have set foot on the moon without him. However, his sex-crazed occultism and bromance with L. Ron Hubbard made it hard for the scientific community to embrace him, leading to his eponymous crater being placed on the dark side of the moon. This story has everything from revolutionary science to orgies, the occult, and demonic rituals - what are you waiting for…See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC Party. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made.

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I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And welcome to Red Handed, a person-based Red Handed, which we'll be doing a few more of this year, I think. This is a fascinating case and I'm very excited personally to do this. So let's just get on with it. Let's. I have a question for you. Uh-huh. You're on Have I Got News For You.

Uh-oh. And you have to answer the following question. Copernicus, Da Vinci, Shakespeare, Einstein, Isaac Newton, and Michael Jackson. What do all of those people have in common? Bat shit. Bat shit. Yeah. Dead. those people have in common um batshit uh yeah dead dead yes yeah nailing it points points all around okay you've got two q correct answers what specifically are you thinking of what my answer that i need you to say i don't say is that all of those people have a crater on the moon named after them.

No way. Michael Jackson. Apparently so. Why not? Sure. Fucking go nuts. He's a paedophile. Anyway, having a crater on the Earth's moon named after you is a very serious and rare honour reserved for history's most influential people. And another one of these influential and extraordinary human beings is a man called Jack Parsons, a pioneer of rocket science. You may not have heard of him, but his contributions to the field were so monumental that Neil Armstrong would likely have never set foot on the moon

if Jack Parsons had never existed. The US certainly wouldn't have the military power it has today, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory probably wouldn't exist. But despite these unbelievable achievements, a lot of people in the scientific community would rather that the name Jack Parsons be forgotten entirely. Because, yes, he was a revolutionary, pioneering rocket scientist. But Jack Parsons was also a sex-crazed occultist and deep bosom friend of none other than the

inventor of Scientology slash Dianetics. He had to change the name because he lost the rights to Dianetics, L. Ron Hubbard. Best buddy, best pals. This just sets this up for exactly what this story is going to be. And that friendship is probably why the scientific community chose Jack's eponymous crater on the distant, dark side of the moon to keep him out of sight and out of mind. NASA isn't exactly thrilled to embrace the fact

that the origins of modern rocketry are inextricably linked to orgies, the occult, and demonic rituals. Oh, bore off, NASA. Bore off, NASA, exactly. Indeed. I want a hat that says that. Bore off NASA, give Jack Parsons a better crater.

Exactly. And you can put the NASA logo on anything because it's not copyrighted. There you go. That's why you see it on so many hats and jackets and stuff because you have to pay for it. So we can nick it, bore off NASA. But they can't avoid it because it's fact. This story does have it all. So let's get on with it.

Born on the 2nd of October 1914 in LA. Libra King. Jack was the only child of Ruth Virginia Whiteside and Marvel H. Parsons. Marvel? I know! What a name. But a Marvel he was not. Because just a year after the birth of their son, Ruth filed for divorce.

After discovering that Jack's father was playing away with a sex worker. And so Marvel moved away and joined the army, with Ruth forbidding him from ever contacting his son Jack again. For many women at the time, being a single mother would have meant absolute disaster. Remember, this is like fucking 1915 times. But luckily, Ruth's parents had extremely powerful connections and equally deep pockets. So they even moved to California to be closer to their daughter and grandson, and just casually bought a mansion for the whole family to live in on a stretch known as Millionaire's Row in Pasadena. So Jack grew up surrounded by domestic servants, never wanting for anything. He spent the majority of his free time reading books on mythology and science fiction.

At school, Jack wasn't super popular. He got bullied for being posh and slightly effeminate. But he did have one friend, a boy named Edward Foreman, who, once when Jack was being bullied, had stuck up for him. Edward and Jack, though, didn't have much in common. Edward was from a very ordinary working-class background, but they did share a love of science fiction and rockets. In 1928, at the age of 14,

the pair had even come up with their own motto, which is very sweet. Per aspera ad astra, which means to infinity and beyond. Bore off NASA. Bore off NASA. Bore off NASA. No, it means through hardship to the stars. I mean, you immediately see here already that these two boys somehow connect with each other

at a very young age. And both of them are incredibly intelligent. The fact that at 14, you are making up Latin mottos. And that's very sweet. It's very sweet. This all starts off very wholesome and very sweet and grammatically correct yes it gets wild but we're here for it i'd like nasa so they make their little motto together and then the two boys carried out rocket experiments in

jack's back garden which ended up being covered in small craters because of them. I love this. This is what children should be doing. Not fucking hiding inside playing whatever. Minecraft. Exactly. And being given censored Roald Dahl books. Let them go outside and blow shit up. Yeah, yeah. Give the children more fireworks for God's sake

and let them use them with their bare hands. Survival of the fittest. And fireworks is exactly what Jack and Edward were playing with. They would scrape the gunpowder out of them and use it as fuel. And even though they were so young, both Jack and Edward took their research extremely seriously. They figured out that if they used glue as a binding agent for loose gunpowder, that made rocket fuel more stable. But at the same time, this obsession with far-flung uncharted worlds

grew another fascination in the young Jack. Away from his experiments with Edward, he was privately obsessed with the occult. Tell me something I don't know. I would actively go looking for the most fucked up shit I could really imagine.

And we're fine. We're successful. You're fine. I'm a gibbering rat. No. And Jack was no better. He, in his bedroom, would perform rituals to summon the devil. I bet everyone's done that at least once.

Oh, yeah. But according to Jack, for him, one night, one dark and stormy night, one of his devil summoning rituals worked. And Satan himself appeared to Jack Parsons in his childhood bedroom. I mean, yeah. If Jack Parsons didn't go on to be such a monumental figure, I would be like, why hasn't the devil got better things to do? But it's actually spending his time very efficiently with Jack Posse I think unlike God who just like talks to fucking shepherds and peasants and like sends pictures of the Virgin Mary and toast to random people in Utah like the devil's like all right I got time for you Jack I've seen your experiments

let's talk so the devil may have wanted to talk but Jack was only very young and this satanic apparition scared him so much that he stopped all of his occult pursuits for a little while and decided to stick with his rockets. However despite his obvious knack for research and science Jack didn't do particularly well at school and after he failed few exams, his mum sent him to a private boarding school in San Diego. But just a few months into his first year there, apparently pretending to be in the Beano, Jack Parsons got himself expelled for blowing up the toilet during one of his gunpowder experiments. After the Great Depression hit in 1929, Jack's family, who, like we said, were incredibly wealthy, ended up losing everything. And so the life of luxury and privilege that Jack had grown up with was suddenly taken away, as his whole family were now left destitute.

Soon Jack realised that he'd have to get a job in order to support the family. So we started working weekends at Hercules' powder company, where they manufactured, you guessed it, dynamite and gelignite, which I had not heard of, but apparently it's an explosive form of gelatin. Have you ever seen in films where they have like plastic explosive? Yes. That's gelignite. Ah, okay. So it's like malleable. Sure, it's not to make like some sort of like prank jelly that will blow up in someone's face. I mean, you probably could do that.

I just don't think there would be much face left. It's true. So yeah, Jack absolutely fucking loved working at this factory where he just got to play with giant vats of explosives. Because like they say, do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life. And what Jack loved more than anything was making explosives. Jack was in heaven at this factory and made sure to learn as much as possible about the materials he was working with. And when nobody was looking, Jack would even steal as much dynamite as he could for his and Edward's home experiments. After graduation, Jack wanted to pursue a career at Caltech.

But his family couldn't afford it. So instead, he started working full-time at the powder company. All the while, Jack and Edward carried on with their propulsion experiments and lovely friendship. Only now, they both felt that the time had come to move on from their hobbyist phase. They thought they'd try their luck at asking Caltech whether they'd let them use their state-of-the-art equipment. Unsurprisingly, they were not welcomed by the scientific community with open arms. Because in reality, they are two 20-somethings without a degree rolling up to one of the best academic institutions in the world, asking random people if they were working on rockets.

I know it sounds mental and that's why they get nowhere with it. But I do love the industriousness of it. Yes, me too. I love this. I love that they just go there and they're like, look, the worst thing they can say is no. Let's have a go. Exactly. And this was in the 30s when rockets were considered sci-fi fantasy stuff like time travel or women's rights.

But as luck would have it, Jack and Edward bumped into Frank Malina, a mathematician and mechanical engineer who just so happened to be writing about rocket propulsion. This is some Goodwill hunting shit, man. It truly is. When we were talking about how much Jack doesn't do well at school, but we know he's incredibly intelligent. It just screams of like, he just needs like a teacher,

a dead poet society style teacher. He needs Robin Williams. He does. To basically be like, I see your potential. You're a genius. Let me help you. And this is kind of in his 20s, the first time he sort of gets that. Yes, totally.

So all three of them hit it off and they begin experimenting on rocket fuel together. Fast forward a month or two and the three of them had almost blown up Caltech's aeronautics building and got themselves kicked off campus and earned themselves the name The Suicide Squad. It's just cool. It is. It's just cool. I love stuff like this. And I love Frank for seeing the potential in Jack and Edward. Like, fuck yeah, let's just cool. It is. It's just cool. I love stuff like this.

And I love Frank for seeing the potential in Jack and Edward. Like, fuck yeah, let's go and blow some shit up. Exactly. So that same year in 1935, Jack married the love of his life, Helen Northrop. Uh-oh. A woman that he'd met a year before at a church dance. What Helen hadn't banked on was her new husband spending the majority of his wages to fund his rocket research

and turning their front porch into a laboratory to manufacture nitroglycerin as a side hustle. Come on, Helen, what were you expecting, man? Yeah, bore off, Helen. Jack even pawned Helen's engagement ring once in order to buy materials and constantly asked her family for loans. But it seemed to be paying off because despite his lack of a formal education, Jack was soon establishing

his name as somewhat of an expert in the field. And the first step to this was when he brought a bomb to court. Let's explain. In 1938, Jack was called to testify at the trial of Captain Earl Kinnett, the head of police intelligence in Los Angeles. Kinnett was accused of having set a car bomb in the attempted murder of a private investigator called Harry Raymond. Raymond had previously been an LAPD detective, but was fired after whistleblowing against corruption in the department. And the intelligence officers, well, they fucking hate a grass.

Jack's testimony at the trial involved him creating a perfect replica of the car bomb and conducting an explosion. And it played a major factor in Connett's conviction. As a result, Jack's status as an expert scientist in all things explosive was established in the public eye. Because presumably this was a very high profile case. Because that fucking Connett's head of intelligence. And at around the same time as the Connett trial, Jack's other childhood fascination was reawakened. January 1939, he and his wife Helen Northrup were invited to attend the church of Thelema on Winona Boulevard in the largest den of inequity there is, Hollywoodland.

If you haven't heard of it, Thelema was a Western esoteric social slash spiritual philosophist situation. Cult? I would go with Gnostic. But sure. It was a new religious movement founded in the early 1900s by none other than a cult-loving maniac, Alistair Crowley. And terrible mountaineer. Vista, terrible mountaineer.

And the fraternal organisation that Alistair Crowley created was called the Ordo Templi Orientis. This Crowley-created religious movement emphasised individual freedom, self-discovery, lots of chanting and naturally... Natch, natch, natch. Enormous orgies. Of course. Of course he did. Crowley believed

that sexual energy was the key to unlocking one's own magical powers. Born in the very magical Leamington Spa.

I did not know that Crowley was born in Leamington Spa. He was. He was born in Leamington Spa, England, one of Britain's more depressing towns.

It's not so bad. It's not as bad as Coventry but it's still the Midlands. Please don't stop listening up on the midlands lemington spa is quite nice but i didn't know that you also had the claim to fame of alistair craig i think you should shout about that more lemington shout about that more it makes you cooler do you know who went to school next to my house um i think you've told me before but i've forgotten edgar allen poe oh i walked past

the plaque the other day i'll send a picture to you there's a netflix thing the pale blue eye yes i watched that i wanted to love it yeah i was so ready to love it i was like this is it i love this shit i love christian bale let's watch this i was like meh you know i didn't love it either but i i was on my phone halfway through edgar allen poe does make a reference to stoke newton in it oh does he i think i might have been scrolling by that yeah i didn't finish it either but i was just like that's enough that's where i live goodbye anyway crowley was born in lemmington spa and he was raised in an insanely wealthy and religious fundamental christian family that'll end well crowley rejected his parents beliefs from a very early age and his mother even referred

to him as the Beast, a moniker that he actually rather liked and ran with the rest of his life. He adopted it with a few tweaks, often introducing himself as the Great Beast 666. Shut up, Alistair. He can't. But when we did the Elisa Lam episode, there's some confusion about the Hotel Cecil and the Hotel Cecil. So some people, Elisa Lam theorists, will be like, oh, Aleister Crowley opened a portal to hell in the Cecil Hotel. No, no, no. He did it in the Cecil Hotel in London. And that is where producer Alex Breon used to work. And he listened to that episode and he was like, I work in this building every day.

And now I know that Aleister Crowley opened a portal to hell here. Delightful. Anyway, Crowley grew in infamy to become a British occultist, philosopher, poet, painter, novelist, mountaineer, bad one, magician, con artist and self-proclaimed prophet. He thought that it was he and he alone burdened with the responsibility to guide humanity. Yeah. It's always, it's always the way. In his day, Crowley was kind of a cross between a magician and a counterculture rock star who believed that he was in direct contact

with ancient Egyptian gods and demons. And though we're all too familiar with this kind of figure now, in ultra-Christian 1940s america this was quite beyond the pale i'd argue it still is now in america but question hannah yes lave or crowley oh good question very different forms of satanism i would argue that crowley is a theistic satanist and you will often find like with the temple of set for example theistic satanists often refer to ancient egyptian gods and their argument is it's always been the ancient egyptian gods it's never changed that's what it is that's who we're speaking to that's what crowley

is lave is much more philosophical much more about freedom of the self individuality you know actualization work hard figure it out for yourself, do what you want. He's much more Ayn Rand. Yes. It's basically Ayn Rand, but with like a sprinkling of like the occult. Yes. I'm much more LeVay because he's not theistic. Yes.

I think I am much more interested in what Crowley has to say, except his poems on gonorrhoea, obviously. I don't know. I find them both fascinating, but they are. They're very different so back to jack and helen when they first visited the church of thelema they took part in a ceremony known as the gnostic mass a central ritual of the oto this was jack's first introduction to the world of black magic in an official sense because obviously he's been doing his little like demon summoning activities in his bedroom since he was a teenager but what fascinated him the most about thelema apart from of course the orgies was how alistair crowley incorporated science

into religious practice crowley stressed that his work and that of his followers used the quote method of science with the aim of religion uh-oh i know who that sounds like but like it does make sense because i think for somebody brought up in a very religious environment like it would have been in the u.s at that time but who had a deep affinity for science here's somebody trying to bridge the two and make it feel like science is the answer so jack continued to sporadically attend the church over the following years. And he and Helen were eventually initiated into Thelema in 1941. And after the senior magicians of the church realized just how intelligent Jack really was,

they even had him placed as a potential successor to Crowley himself. And there you go, ding, ding, ding. Already within the church, he's immediately being recognized for his true potential, had him placed as a potential successor to Crowley himself. And there you go, ding, ding, ding, already within the church he's immediately being recognized for his true potential, unlike basically the rest of his life when he was in institutions of education. Now it is difficult to marry the two sides of Jack. One is the scientist and pioneer of modern rocketry, literally a rocket scientist, and the other is an occultist engaging in rituals, calling on ancient Egyptian gods to deliver him his wishes.

But that all changed when war descended on Europe. The government approached Caltech to achieve something that had never been done before. They needed someone to figure out a way for their planes to take off without a massive runway inside of combat zones. Every other group the government had reached out to for help with this problem simply said that it was impossible. But Jack's Suicide Squad had the answer. And the answer was rockets. Still, they knew enough, so they knew that they had to avoid the R word at all costs because people thought they were madey-uppy. Yeah, it's literally like at the time being like magic. Magic is how we will make this happen.

Yes. With the Egyptian god set by my side, we will reach the moon. So the Suicide Squad decided that Jet Assisted Takeoff, or JATO, was the name of the game. And so the Suicide Squad landed their first huge government contract and became the first ever government-sanctioned rocket research group. And at first, things were predictably explosive. About a quarter of their funding went towards repairing damage they caused to Caltech's buildings with their experiments. And so the Suicide Squad decided it would be wiser to move their project to the Arroyo Seco Canyon in California. In August 1941, shortly after Jack joined Thelema, the Suicide Squad made history

by making the first plane ever take off assisted by rockets. The only problem they had was that their fuel was still too unstable, no matter how much glue they put in it. Five months later, in December 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, forcing the US to enter the war and increasing the already monumental pressure on the suicide squad

to solve the problem of the exploding fuel. Fortunately, Jack's incredible intuition and probably help from Satan led him to something that nobody had ever before considered. He was inspired by the ancient Greeks and their famous explosive known as Greek fire. This was the inspiration for wildfire in Game of Thrones. Really? So, with his knowledge of Greek fire, Jack decided to use asphalt as a binding agent and created a fuel that was not only more stable than its previous iteration, but also

400% more powerful. They'd done it. Jack and the Suicide Squad didn't know it then, but what Jack had just discovered was the first step in ushering humanity into the space age. You bet he had a fucking seven weeks of orgies after that. Yeah, and I was going to try to do like a spacey tune. Wait. that yeah and i was gonna try to do like a spacey tune wait i'm so tired i don't death

give us a spacey jingle hannah a spacey jingle oh that's just just fucking fox A spacey jingle. That's just fucking Fox. Send help. Send rocket fuel. Send demons. Anyway, a few years after this discovery, in the Arroyo Seca Canyon, Jack and his team founded Jet Propulsion Laboratories, JPL, a company that would go on to be at the forefront of interplanetary exploration with 6,000 employees and a budget in the billions. But just as quickly, as often happens when you

make a deal with the devil, just as quickly as Jack found his stratospheric success, it all began to unravel. In June 1941, Helen left Jack for a few months. And during this time, Jack embraced the sexually permissive attitude of the OTO. And he began sleeping with Helen's 17-year-old sister, Sarah. Yeah, and Elrond's going to show up pretty soon. Mm-hmm. So when Helen returned, Jack and Sarah announced that they were now together.

And Helen, not wanting to be left out, coupled up with Wilfred Tabbert Smith, one of the senior magicians at the OTO. That'll show him. Mm. Yeah, fuck that. And actually, the two couples remained close. I think that's what happens when you have an orgy every night of the week. Yeah, fuck that. And actually, the two couples remained close. I think that's what happens when you have an orgy every night of the week. Yeah. They even joined up with a bunch of

other Thelemites and moved into a huge mansion together, which became the new HQ for the OTO, which I believe was owned by Jack Parsons and they called it the Parsonage. Ah, well, there you go. This is, look, I'm going to bring back a mild cult klaxon because when you're all just like having orgies with each other talking about all this crazy shit and then you move into a compound yes exactly and the only rule for living in that compound is that you had to say you did not believe in any god cult so there the group lived as self-sufficiently as they could they grew their own food slaughtered their own livestock for meat and also for blood rituals, which is very important. And his increasing dedication to Thalema began to affect Jack at work.

He'd often show up to JPL hungover or sleep-deprived from having stayed up all night for ceremonies, a.k.a. orgies. And what didn't help was his increasing abuse of cocaine, amphetamines, peyote, mescaline, and opiates. They don't make them like that anymore. No. I don't think you can get mescaline if you pay for it now.

I don't think, it's like Quaaludes, it doesn't really exist anymore. Plus, Jack would constantly invite his colleagues at JPL to join him at OTO, which understandably began to really grate on people at the company. Not quite Friday night at the pub, is it? Maybe just like feel them out.

Not feel them up, feel them out before you make, you know, it's not like do you want to come over and watch some bizarre horror movies I'm into? Do you want to come over and have an orgy at my cult compound? It's a bit much. And the other scientists used to basically brush jack's occultism off as like an eccentric hobby which when someone's brilliant you do give them a bit more you do indeed the problem is when it starts to interfere with his work and he starts turning up a bit wrecked and they're like maybe it's gone a bit far because now it was clear to everybody that

all of this stuff with occultism was much more than just a little hobby for Jack. Like I said, they didn't appreciate him bringing it into the workplace. Because again, you imagine you've worked so hard, fought so hard to have to get the world to take what you can do seriously. You finally get a huge fuck off team and billions of dollars. And then now the guy who was at the heart of it all is going on about fisting demons and hardcore drugs. And it just so happened that the OTO received a visit from the FBI and the Pasadena Police Department at around this time. They'd received reports of a black magic cult operating in the mansion, presumably because that is what happened. But it's like the FBI. I mean, yes, cult. They have to. They have to obviously take it seriously. It's just the black magic part that's what happened. But it's like the FBI. I mean, yes, cult.

They have to obviously take it seriously. It's just the black magic part that's quite funny. So apparently a neighbour had complained that she'd witnessed a naked pregnant woman jumping through fire in a satanic ritual. And a 16-year-old boy had alleged that he'd been raped at the parsonage during an orgy. But after an investigation,

the FBI determined that nothing illegal had taken place and concluded that the OTO were weird as fuck, but not really a threat to national security. Though I would say, like, it's probably quite hard to find out what specifically has gone on. And any time a group of people move onto a compound where they want to live their lives separately and off the grid from everybody else, abuse is probably going to not be too far behind. But not long after this, the great Beast Crowley himself made Jack the head of the Californian branch of the OTO. And as his star was rising at Thellamere,

things only got worse for Jack Parsons at JPL. By mid-1943, JPL was mass-producing JATOs for the military, and the government was investing huge amounts of money into the company to develop rocket-based weapons. And with this money also came government regulations, and a whole host of new chemists and physicists. And these professional scientists were not exactly on board with the way Jack Parsons and the Suicide Squad were handling their work. Jack and his team, incredible as they were, still carried out their work like schoolchildren,

playing with Bunsen burners, which was not really a good fit for what was now a government agency. And slowly but surely, the original founding members of JPL were squeezed out of the company. A tale as old as time. The government used their knowledge of Jack's communist ideals, being that he lived in an actual commune, and his membership to a religious cult as well.

They used all of that information to push him out. It was a pretty easy task. He kind of sets it up for them. In the end, Jack sold his stock in JPL and left the company with just $11,000. That's so sad. I know. He'd always dreamt of building rockets for a living. His dream had been somewhat realised, but just not exactly how he'd hoped. His rockets weren't shooting man into space like in the comic books he'd grown up loving. Instead, they were being attached to bombs

and used in warfare. In 1945, just 30 years old, unemployed and without a college degree, Jack became increasingly involved in the world of science fiction and even befriended a bunch of sci-fi writers. He even featured as the protagonist in a few sci-fi comics, notably one called The Rocket to the Morgue, which was somewhat prophetic. And with the money he'd made from JPL, Jack bought a massive house, because yes, we're like $11,000, that's that, but it is in the 40s.

So he buys a massive house and he dubs it The Parsonage, and it became a hub of occultist fanaticism and DIY rocket science. of house and he dubs it the parsonage and it became a hub of occultist fanaticism and diy rocket science he also rented the rooms out by placing ads in the newspaper calling for only bohemians artists musicians atheists anarchists and other exotic types to apply and he made it clear that quote any mundane soul will be unceremoniously rejected. And this is when Jack met a man named L. Ron Hubbard. Thunderclap. Perhaps you've heard of him.

Jack and Hubbard became close friends, and Jack found himself infatuated with Hubbard's apparent magical intuition. Jack even wrote Crowley a letter, saying that he was convinced that Hubbard was in touch with some higher intelligence, and that he was the most thelematic person he'd ever met. Hubbard moved into the parsonage and loved OTO's polyamorous sexual ethics. Sarah, Helen's now 21-year-old sister, became infatuated with Hubbard, and the two began sleeping together.

Jack tried his best to not let this get to him, but it did. So he began to look for a new partner, the only way he knew how, summoning one by way of black magic, which led him to seek out some particularly dark rituals that freaked out even the freakiest OTO members, who believed he was inadvertently inviting evil spirits into the mansion. Pretty soon they all began reporting sightings of poltergeists, floating orbs, ghostly apparitions, disembodied voices and even screaming banshees appearing in the windows of the parsonage. And this incident with the screaming banshees

apparently scarred Edward Foreman for the rest of his life. Because yes, we haven't talked about Edward, but he's very much like there. Mm-hmm. In the sort of wings of all of this OTO craziness. In December 1945, Jack began conducting a series of rituals based on 16th century Enochian magic, which of course involved him masturbating onto magical tablets to the soundtrack of Sergei Prokheev's Second Violin Concerto.

Of course it did. And if you have listened to our Scientology series, this next bit will be familiar to you. Jack Parsons described his magical wanking process as Babylon working. Which, Saru made the excellent joke of sounding like a shared working space in East London. Babylon working. Oh my God. I'm surprised it doesn't already exist. Maybe we should start it.

No. Wink, wink, wink, wink, wink. And he called it Babylon working, not because he was inspired to start a co-working space, but because he was actually attempting to summon the sexy, dark, Thelemic goddess Babylon to be his replacement, Sarah. You do have to go one up when your ex fucks you over. You're like, fuck you, Sarah.

You're going to start sleeping with L. Ron Hubbard. I'm going to start sleeping with a thelemic goddess. Yeah. Fuck you. Take that, bitch. Hubbard is very much in on these rituals. Hubbard would sit in the corner writing down observations, as Jack had these magical wanks in the name of his own spiritual advancement.

The final Babylon working ritual took place in the Mojave Desert in February 1946, and during that ritual Jack had a vision of a red-haired woman. When Jack returned to the parsonage afterwards, there was a woman there that he'd never seen before. Her name was Marjorie Cameron, an unemployed illustrator and former member of the Women's Naval Reserve, and she had red hair. Marjorie was just there visiting a friend, but Jack was convinced that she was the woman from his vision and the human embodiment of the dark goddess Babylon, who he had summoned with his sexy wheeze. But, as we said, Marjorie was literally just there visiting a friend who didn't have a clue what the OTO was,

or that Jack believed that she was some sort of dark goddess. Nonetheless, Marjorie and Jack did begin sleeping together, and she assumed that his weird ritual chanting was just some sort of kink. I mean, you know what? It you, it's hard to meet people. And if you do go visit a friend and then, you know, one of her housemates is just like, you really remind me of a dark, philemic goddess. And I would really love to, you know, fist you. Are you going to say no?

She didn't. Marjorie's into it. And not long after meeting Marjorie, Jack sold the parsonage for $25,000 and started a company called Allied Enterprises Consolcio Consolcius, with probably the worst business partner in the world apart from Alan Johnson, L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard suggested that Jack use the last of his life savings to come with him to Miami to buy three yachts, which they would then sail to the West Coast and sell for a profit. The start of Sea Brigade? What's it called? Sea Org. Sea Org. Well remembered. Thank you. Sea Brigade. Same, same, same. Jack's friends told him this was a terrible idea, which obviously it is, but Jack wasn't listening. He agreed to L. Ron Hubbard's plan.

But once the yachts had been purchased, Hubbard stopped answering Jack's phone calls and ran off with Sarah and all of Jack's money. I will add here that Jack and Sarah never divorce, so Hubbard literally just takes his wife, all of his money, everything. I mean, honestly, he's living up to his reputation. L. Ron Hubbard, steal your bitch, steal your money, steal your yachts. Hide your kids and hide your wife.

So when Crowley found out what had happened, he called Jack a weak fool and a victim. This actually set a fire under Jack's arse like never before. And he tracked Hubbard and Sarah down in Miami, where he discovered the pair and the three yachts. He managed to get a temporary injunction and restraining order put on them in order to stop them from leaving the dock. But regardless, one evening, Jack received a phone call telling him that Hubbard and Zara had escaped, because Hubbard is not a kind of man to give a shit about something like a little legal injunction. So Jack did the only thing he could do now that the authorities had failed him. He drew a pentagram on his hotel room

floor and summoned a demon to stop the boat. And sure enough, Sarah and Hubbard's yacht crashed, forcing them back to shore. In the end, they settled things in court. The company was dissolved and Jack was reimbursed, almost $3,000. Sarah convinced Jack not to take any further action by threatening to report him for statutory rape. After all, she'd only been 17 when they'd first slept together, which is a year younger than the legal age of consent in Californian law. Hubbard, who was already married,

then bigamously married Sarah, and went on to found Scientology and Dianetics. Many years later, in 1969, the Sunday Times published an article about Hubbard and his involvement with OTO and Jack Parsons' black magic activities. In response, the Church of Scientology released a press statement claiming that Hubbard had actually been an undercover agent working on behalf of the US Navy. He does that a lot. Yeah and apparently this was on a mission to infiltrate

Jack's black magic cult and rescue Sarah from his evil influence which you know sounds totally legit. On the 19th of October 1946, Jack married Marjorie Cameron, still under the firm belief that she was the goddess Babylon, who he'd summoned by jizzing onto magical tablets. They moved into a house together in Manhattan Beach, and Jack began working as an expert consultant in army ordnance investigations regarding explosions. By this stage in the game, he'd become pretty distant from the defunct OTO, but he stayed in touch with Crowley until his death in December 1947,

which was also the same year the Cold War began. And as the Red Scare swept across the US, the government began investigating anybody they suspected of being a communist sympathiser. As a result, Jack was stripped of his security clearances due to his subversive character and sexual perversions during his time at OTO. However, according to the FBI documents that were declassified later on, the FBI's main concern was Jack's relationships with Marxists at Caltech and his membership to the ACLU. With no other option, Jack spent the following two years bootlegging nitroglycerin for money, whilst working as a car mechanic and labourer at a petrol station.

The financial strain, along with his clearly wavering mental health, put a lot of pressure on his marriage with Marjorie, and the pair of them decided to take a break. Marjorie was, by this stage, a pretty well-respected artist on the beatnik scene, and she decided to move down to Mexico to join an artist's commune, where she began sleeping with a sexy matador. Sure, Marjorie. So fucking Kerouac, man. So now left with no friends, no wife, and no scientific career,

Jack did the only thing a man could do in that situation. He began carrying out sexy black magic rituals with sex workers. And apparently, these were successful, that situation. He began carrying out sexy black magic rituals with sex workers and apparently these were successful as he went on to claim that he'd had an out-of-body experience and traveled to the biblical city of Chorazin and upon returning he was the embodiment of an entity named Bellarian Amalus al-Dajjal or the Antichrist. So look, while researching this case, we've had to read so much insane, crazy magic voodoo bullshit from the minds of Alistair Crowley and Jack, and I cannot decide for the life of me if these guys really believed this shit or if they were

just fucking around to piss other people off and to get laid. Loads and loads and loads of lays. Either way, after returning as the Antichrist, after having fucked a bunch of probably terrified sex workers, because remember he's chanting away about fucking demons and whatnot, Jack testified to a closed federal court that the Church of Thelma was both anti-fascist and anti-communist and was simply all about individualism. His security clearance was reinstated by a review board

and Jack was allowed to start working in the scientific field again. He was then approached by the then-emerging state of Israel to help them with their rocket programme. So yes, the demonic rituals seem to be paying dividend. And he even briefly worked for Howard Hughes' aircraft company. But although Jack had been cleared of any wrongdoing, the FBI was still keeping an eye on him. And a misunderstanding led them to accuse Jack of being an Israeli spy.

Jack was fired by Hughes, and the situation only grew worse when the FBI discovered that the man who'd offered Jack the job in Israel had connections to the Soviet Union. The review board still considered Jack a liability and in 1952 they permanently banned him from working in rocketry. And so Jack Parsons, the man who founded the American rocketry complex, was reduced to making a living by creating pyrotechnics and explosives for the Hollywood film industry.

After a while, Jack and Marjorie reunited and moved into a large house in California. They rented out the top floor to bohemians and beatniks, and Jack used the first floor laundry room as a laboratory, where he worked on his pyrotechnic projects, brewed absinthe, and stockpiled explosives. He's come full circle. He and Marjorie then spent a few months in Mexico together, where Jack took a job setting up an explosives factory for the Mexican government. Then they made plans to move to Israel together and start a family and bypass the US Review Board.

But then, on the 17th of June 1952, a day before they were set to leave for Israel, Jack suddenly received an urgent order of explosives for a film set. So he immediately got to work in his home lab, not knowing he was about to take his rocket to the morgue. Callback. That's the comic. No, I know.

No, I'm telling the listeners. Spoon-feeding them, are we? Leave them to work it out for themselves. So Jack was mixing up a batch of mercury fulminate in a coffee can. Oh Jack. When his hands slipped he dropped the can on the floor and it went boom. The initial explosion came into contact with his huge stockpile of explosives and chemicals that he all kept in the same room, and what resulted was an enormous blast that tore through the house. Somehow Jack was still conscious when the upstairs lodgers

found him, but the right side of his face was blown off. Both of his legs and his left arm were broken. Jack Parsons was rushed to hospital, but it was no use. He died 40 minutes later, in agonising pain. When his mother found out what had happened, she swallowed a bottle of barbiturates and took her own life the same day. Many of Jack's colleagues refused to believe that his death was an accident, and speculated that the explosion must have come from underneath the floorboards, suggesting that there had been a plot to kill him. Police entertained this idea,

but they insisted that Jack had been known to store chemicals in a way that was criminally negligent. And after they found a used morphine syringe at the scene, they concluded that he'd probably been as high as a kite, and they quickly dropped their investigations. Some members of the OTO believed Jack had actually killed himself. Others who knew him theorised that Howard Hughes had assassinated Jack, still believing that he'd stolen documents for the Israelis. I think the most popular opinion is that

he killed himself. Like the argument that people make is like how does he do all of this for decades? He was never never careful like he never did things in the way the government wanted him to do it why that day but then it's also like he did that for so many years at some point was it going to catch up with him well yeah it just depends which way you slice it really yeah so marjorie was convinced that jack had been murdered either by police who were still mad about his role in the conviction of Earl Kinnett or by those opposed to Israel. One of Marjorie's friends later revealed that she believed Jack died trying to create a monkilus. Now nobody knows for sure what really happened

but no one can argue that Jack Parsons didn't lead an extraordinary life and that his legacy will always be remembered despite his crater being on the dark side of the moon. In 2005, author George Pendle published a book on Jack titled Strange Angel, The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons. Pendle described Jack as the Che Guevara of occultism and said that although Jack would not live to see his dream

of space travel come true, he was essential to making it a reality. He said he saw both space and magic as ways of exploring these new frontiers, one breaking free from Earth, literally and metaphysically. Wow. Yeah, I think he's a fascinating character. And I think he is well worth an episode on Red Handed. So there you go. That is the story of Jack Parsons. We hope you enjoyed it. We hope you learned a lot. And as ever, we'll see you next week for some more shenanigans. Hooray! Bye till then. Hail Satan. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich,

be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime,

The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now, exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met.

But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this

time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.