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The rocket scientist who summoned demons: The true horror story of Jack Parsons
Aside from helping lay the foundations for modern rocketry, Jack Parsons performed a bizarre series of ceremonies to try and conjure powerful supernatural entities.
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In the winter of 1946, two men from very different walks of life walked into California's Mojave Desert together, where one of them became convinced an extraordinary experiment they had been conducting had finally succeeded.
One of the men was pioneering rocket scientist Jack Parsons, a self-taught chemist who helped establish what would become NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and whose innovations in rocket propulsion would help lay the groundwork for the Space Race that would erupt in the years that followed. His unlikely companion was none other than L. Ron Hubbard, then a science fiction writer who had yet to compose the writings that would form the underpinnings of the Church of Scientology that he later established.
Despite Parsons' work with rockets and his companion Hubbard's fictional writings about them, their work together in the early months of 1946 had nothing to do with rocket propulsion, spacecraft, or other technological innovations that would eventually carry humans to space. Instead, Parsons and Hubbard were engaged in an elaborate series of occult ceremonies at the time, whereby they intended to summon an elemental feminine goddess known as "Babalon" (not to be confused with Babylon) to help them bring an otherworldly entity into physical existence.
Their efforts, known today as the "Babalon Working," represent one of the most unusual affairs in American history, with tangential connections to the history of space exploration.
Given its strangeness, the episode has garnered attention from several scholars and historians over the decades, who have sought to understand a series of events at the intersection of science and the occult involving one of the most unconventional innovators behind modern rocket propulsion.
Parsons, born in 1914, would become a key figure in the early development of American rocket technologies by the 1930s and 1940s in California, ultimately helping establish what would become the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). His contributions included the historic experiments at Pasadena's Arroyo Seco on Halloween Day in 1936, which NASA now recognizes as the foundational experiments that launched JPL.
Very much in contrast with his scientific aptitudes, Parsons also cultivated an interest in ceremonial magic during this period. By the early 1940s, he had immersed himself within the California chapter of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), the organization associated with the infamous British occultist Aleister Crowley and his religious philosophy known as Thelema. In 1943, Parsons became the new leader of the organization's Agape Lodge, which subsequently began operating out of his Pasadena residence on South Orange Grove Avenue.
Parsons' occult interests became particularly focused on the evocation of supernatural entities during this period, which the young rocket scientist seemed to genuinely believe could be manifested in the physical world through ritual practices. Ultimately, this led him to undertake an ambitious — and utterly bizarre — series of ceremonies aimed at conjuring what was supposedly one of Thelema's most powerful supernatural entities.