June 25, 2008

• Rocket Surgery

  I don’t remember how this long strange googletrip started today.  I have been even more distractible than usual, if that’s possible.  Maybe some unseen force took over my mind, or my computer.  As an explanation, that one makes as much sense as any.

  I know I started out searching for and reading web pages about sidereal astrology and Chaldean astrologers.  Somehow, from there, I found myself looking at a bunch of oddball military mission patches.  From there, through some connection that’s beyond my ken, I ended up on a page dealing with a book by Jack Parsons.
  
  What an interesting man!  Said to be a descendant of a founder of the Hell Fire Club, his parents named him Marvel, which he changed to John.  He died in 1952, at the age of 37, after having helped to found Jet Propulsion Laboratories.  A high school dropout, he did solid-fuels research that others in the field credit with having been seminal for space exploration.  A crater on the far side of the Moon is named for him.

  He was also an associate of Aleister Crowley, who appointed him to replace Wilfred Smith as head of Thelema O.T.O.’s Agape Lodge in California.  When Wilfred Smith left, he took Jack Parsons’s wife, Helen Northrup, with him.  Helen’s half-sister, Betty Northrup, then moved in with Parsons, and later left with Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.   Hubbard and Betty married, but he had another wife at the time.  They may or may not have had a daughter, Alexis, whom Hubbard later disowned, claiming she was actually Parsons’s child.

  The Babalon Working, a magickal ritual, was undertaken by Parsons and others of Agape Lodge, to invoke a Scarlet Woman, with whom Parsons intended to sire a Moonchild avatar (think “Rosemary’s Baby”).  When Marjorie Cameron came along, Parsons considered her the fulfillment of the Babalon Working. 

  Jack Parsons died in an explosion at his home in June, 1952. 

  My source for much of the above is wikipedia.org.

  Parsons is the subject of one of the “mad scientist” features at rotten.com.

  His life has become the basis for a web comic.

  In his own words:

  “When the majority of men surrender their freedom, barbarism is near but when the creative minority surrender it, the Dark Age has arrived.”

  “No man is worthy to fight in the cause of freedom unless he has conquered his internal drives. He must learn to control and discipline the disastrous passions that would lead him to folly and ruin. He must conquer inordinate vanity and anger, self deception, fear and inhibition.”

  [Freedom] can only be insured by the allegiance to the principle that
  man has certain inalienable rights; among which are the rights:

  • To live his private life, insofar as it concerns only himself, as he sees
    fit.
  • To eat and drink, to dress, live and travel as, where and he will.
  • To express himself; to speak, write, print, experiment and otherwise create
    as he desires.
  • To work as he chooses, when he chooses and where he chooses at a reasonable
    and commensurate wage.
  • To purchase his food, shelter, deical and social needs and all other services
    and commodities necessary to his existence and self expression at a reasonable
    and commensurate price.
    
  • To have a decent environment and upbringing during his childhood until
    he reaches a responsible majority.
  • To love as he desires, where, how and with whom he chooses, in accordance
    only with the desires of himself and of his partner.
  • To the positive opportunity to enjoy these rights as he sees fit, without
    obstruction on the one hand or compulsion on the other.
  • Finally, in order to protect his person, his property and his rights, he
    should have the right to kill an aggressor if necessary. This is the purpose
    of the right to keep and bear arms.

  These
  rights must be counterbalanced by certain responsibilities. The liberal accepting
  them must guarantee these rights to all others at all times, regardless of
  his personal feelings or interests. He must work to establish and protect
  them, live in a manner commensurate with them and be prepared to defend them
  with his life. He must refuse allegiance to any state or organization which
  denies these rights and he should aid and encourage all who, without qualification
  or equivocation, endorse them. He must refuse to compromise these principles
  on any issue or for any reason. Nothing short of such a commitment will assure
  the survival of liberty, or democracy of society itself.
  

  [source:  about.com]

  • 5:57 pm
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