by John Carter
It is likely that Parsons’ underestimation had little to do with his occult activities, which seem to have been tolerated as one of many eccentricities associated with his brand of genius. Amo Smith had his pith helmet, Malina was a communist, and von Kármán talked about the golem—this was the normal state of affairs at Caltech. In reality, Parsons is forgotten because he was not a part of Caltech proper, not a “scientist” in the stuffy sense of the word. He did not hold a degree from an accredited university.
One of the biggest questions remaining is why Parsons and Forman abandoned rockets altogether at the end of the war. Their early work was diverted into other directions as the war demanded new technologies, yet it was not they but Malina who took up pure rocketry after the war ended. Was Parsons’ work with the OTO more important now than his profession? Did Aerojet make him sign a non-competition agreement? Was he resting on his laurels when he should have been pursuing other fields of research? Or was there simply no funding for such things anymore? Hopefully, and likely, considering Parsons’ mentality, his original interest was more than a matter of mere profit, but what had started as a passion got lost in the distraction of war and personal upheavals.
Today, Parsons’ inspired ingredient for rocket fuel, ammonium perchlorate, is causing its own problems. According to Jonathan Parfrey, president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, toxicological studies by the EPA show that perchlorate is an endocrine disruptor which also harms fetal development. Perchlorate has also been linked to conditions like aplastic anemia and hypothyroidism. After having leached into groundwater at Aerojet's Sacramento, San Gabriel and Chino Hills facilities, multimillion-dollar perchlorate cleanups are currently underway.
In contradistinction to the underestimation in the field of rocket science and the aerospace industry, Parsons’ accomplishments in the arcane sciences have been highly overrated and grossly exaggerated. As a magician he was essentially a failure. As a Thelemite he learned the hard way what was required. He loved Crowley's “Law” but couldn't adhere to it—though he tried harder than most. He violated the rules, undertook unauthorized and unorthodox magical operations, and claimed the grade of Magister Templi without first completing all the grades below it. He couldn't handle working under authority—his ego was too big. His record of failure is valuable in that regard. He was a great promulgator of thelemic ideals in his essays, but as an idealist his elitism ruined his work. Indeed, some would say he was guilty of hubris, which the gods always punish.
In his (short) personal and business lives Parsons also scored poorly. His romantic naiveté led him to trust those whom he should not have trusted. He chose some very good friends but also some very bad associates. He wisely joined in on the founding of Aerojet, only foolishly to sell out a few short years later, which, admittedly, even the great man von Kármán did. However, there is little excuse but naiveté for what Parsons did with the money he received from that sale. In addition, his mix-up with the Israelis was perhaps a simple mistake in judgement, but one that he could have avoided quite easily. He admired them but misjudged U.S. policy.
The whole matter of his death has also been greatly overemphasized. Suicide is simply not tenable, and the only clear possible murder suspect is Kynette, the crooked cop, although there may be others. A U.S. scientist who attempted to pass government “secrets” onto the Israelis, and who was loading explosive chemicals on a truck bound for Mexico and then Israel, may have won himself a few anonymous enemies.
Despite these suspicions and the fact that Parsons was an experienced handler of explosives, his death may truly have been accidental. As noted, Parsons sweated profusely, as two separate acquaintances have testified, one of them also pointing out how hot it was that June day in 1952. Even a safety-conscious expert could let a tin can slip out of a sweaty hand. The hole in the floor, the shrapnel stuck in low places, the loss of the right arm, all point to a dropped container. And it is questionable just how “safety-conscious” was a man who stored all sorts of dangerous explosives in his kitchen, on the back porch, in unlicensed labs in residential areas.
The only evidence not easily explained is the detective's original comment that the explosion occurred behind Parsons, and the fact that the trash can was full of explosive substances which should not have been there. Murder cannot be ruled out, but a sad accident seems more likely. Had the notorious Los Angeles police investigated the scene, we could consider a coverup. But it was the Pasadena police, assisted by Army Ordnance. If someone had wanted him dead, a car bomb would have been easy enough to rig. But fulminate of mercury is not stable enough for a murder scheme that had to be clever enough to fool an expert. Had it been mixed ahead of time and planted in his lab, Parsons would have noticed it right away. It's true that fulminate of mercury becomes more dangerous as it dries, but as soon as Parsons had seen a can of dried fulminate of mercury, he would've known someone had planted it there. Of course, unless it was beneath the floorboard, as Cameron claimed to have discovered, and cordite with a fulminate of mercury fuse may be a possibility.
Based on the evidence—admittedly obscured by 40 years of time—it seems that John Parsons’ death was accidental. Of course, there remain the accusatory remarks of Cameron—not the best witness for later events, but she was the closest person to Parsons at the time of his death. Furthermore, the discovery of additional evidence might lead one to believe that it was murder.
As a boy, I read an odd little science fiction story, one that Parsons never could have seen, as it was published in 1955, three years after his death. The title was “End as a World,” and the author was F.L. Wallace. I found the story in an anthology edited by H.L. Gold entitled The Third Galaxy Reader, for which I paid a dime at a garage sale. “End as a World” wasn't the best story in the book, but it wasn't the worst, either. It was a different kind of story. Its surprise ending stuck in my memory for a long time.
The story started with newspaper and radio accounts of the end of the world. Day-to-day activity stopped as people look up and wait for the end. Suddenly a loud noise was heard, and a bright flash of light was seen overhead. It was not what was expected, i.e., the explosion of the planet: It was the first rocket ship. It was indeed the end of the world, the story concluded, but the beginning of the universe.
John Parsons, self-professed Antichrist, may not have brought about the end of the world, but through his contributions to science he played a part in bringing about the beginning of the universe.
* * *
33. PETN is still used for demolition and special effects today.
34. [Publisher's Note: After hearing that Feral House was issuing a biography of John Parsons, The Church of Scientology became interested in seeing how L. Ron Hubbard would be depicted within. After contacting Scientology's Office of Special Affairs in Los Angeles for information they were said to have concerning Hubbard's involvement with Naval Intelligence, Feral House was sent, in June 1999, a copy of a certificate given Hubbard for attending and completing “the prescribed course in training for military government” at the Naval School of Military Government, Princeton University. Scientology's package also contained a 19-page document by L. Fletcher Prouty, a former Colonel in the U.S. Air Force, author of The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World, and perhaps best known as being the mysterious character played by Donald Sutherland in Oliver Stone's J.F.K.. Prouty's affidavit discusses the probability that Hubbard's Naval Records have been altered and “sheep-dipped.”]
Afterword
Helen Parsons Smith died July 27, 2003 at Tahoe Forest Hospital, close to her longtime home in King's Beach, CA. She was survived by her son Kwen Smith and his wife, along with their two children and their two grandchildren. Helen was the oldest OTO initiate at the time of her death, the numerologically significant age of 93. Her obituary says that for a long period in her life “she may well have been the only regularly active priestess in the world who carried forth the celebration of the
mass of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica.” Per her wishes there was no funeral; she enjoyed her privacy to the end.
One other notable event took place since this book was first published four years ago. I was able to uncover the inspiration for Parsons’ Black Pilgrimage, which I discussed in chapter 10. The source was M.R. James’ short story “Count Magnus,” published in 1904. It has been reprinted in several places; my copy is in Collected Ghost Stories, published by Wordsworth Editions, Ltd. in 1992. I believe the story may also be found online.
The fictional Count Magnus De la Gardie was a late 16th-century/early 17th-century mage residing in a huge manor in Vestergothland, Sweden. He seems to have been named for a real Count Magnus who lived in the same area from 1622 to 1686, but the two have nothing else in common. The center of the story is the mysterious Black Pilgrimage he was said to have undertaken, what form it actually took, and what he brought back from it. The nature of the pilgrimage itself is never discovered, though the thing he brought back is hinted at. It seems to have been some sort of supernatural beast, a demon or familiar spirit that protected Magnus even in death.
James does specify the destination of the Black Pilgrimage. It was Chorazin in Palestine (now in Israel), the city which Jesus cursed, the city which later legends said would birth the Antichrist, the city which Parsons also named as the destination of his pilgrimage. Its unique black ruins still stand; they are black because they are made of the local basalt. Of all of Chorazin's ruins, the best-known is the unfinished synagogue. James has Magnus write of his Liber nigrae peregrinationis, “If any man desires to obtain a long life, if he would obtain a faithful messenger and see the blood of his enemies, it is necessary that he should first go into the city of Chorazin, and there salute the prince [of the air].” The story doesn't specify how long Magnus lived, but based on internal evidence one may deduce it was around 120 years. The story does make clear that Magnus obtained his faithful messenger, and did have occasion to see the blood of his enemies.
On February 28, 1946 Parsons wrote Liber 49, a book from Babalon whose 58th verse says, “Thou shalt make the Black Pilgrimage.” No further details were given until Parsons wrote The Book of Antichrist a few years later. In The Book of Antichrist, the first section of which is entitled “The Black Pilgrimage,” Parsons wrote that he began his pilgrimage in November of 1949, in response to a dream he says came from Babalon. He describes the pilgrimage as an astral working conducted in his temple.
Parsons wrote, “And I went into the sunset with Her sign, and into the night past accursed and desolate places and cyclopean ruins, and so came at last to the City of Chorazin. And there a great tower of Black Basalt was raised, that was part of a castle whose further battlements reeled over the gulf of the stars. And upon the tower was this sign [a circle inscribed with an inverted triangle]. And one heavily robed and veiled showed me the sign, and told me to look, and behold, I saw flash below me four past lives wherein I had failed in my object.” Parsons goes on to name these past lives; I have described each of them in detail in chapter 10. After this he writes, “And thereafter I was taken within and saluted the Prince of that place…,” echoing Magnus’ instructions to go into the city and salute the Prince of the Air. Judging from hints in Parsons’ letters to Karl Germer in 1949 and later, his purpose was not long life, a faithful messenger, nor to see the blood of his enemies; it was always the furtherance of Thelema. (But if the furtherance of Thelema necessitated any of these, Parsons surely hoped they would follow. He specifically names Christianity—all of Christianity—as the enemy of mankind.) The pilgrimage itself is not mentioned again in his surviving writings.
In Ghosts & Scholars issue 26, Jamesian scholars Rosemary Pardoe and Jane Nicholls discuss the possible literary and historical sources for James’ Black Pilgrimage. They document James’ knowledge of the apocryphal Revelation of the Pseudo-Methodius (fourth century) in which Chorazin is first mentioned as the birthplace of the Antichrist, as well as his familiarity with W. Bousset's Der Antichrist, published in 1895, which also documents the legend. James’ favorite story by the early Irish horror writer Sheridan Le Fanu was “The Familiar,” in which the phrase “the prince of the powers of the air” occurs. The phrase originates with St. Paul, who refers to Satan in this manner in Ephesians 2:2, and James would have known about its Biblical origin as well.
Pardoe and Nicholls also document James’ familiarity with John Dee. James edited a list of Dee's manuscripts in 1921, compiling his list from several others and from original sources. One of the titles on Elias Ashmole's list was Liber Peregrinationis Primae (The Book of the First Pilgrimage). The authors speculate that this title influenced James’ Liber nigrae peregrinationis (The Book of the Black Pilgrimage). This may be, but it only takes a basic knowledge of Latin to translate such a title. (Dee's book describes magical conversations recorded during a trip to Krakow in 1583.)
Pardoe and Nicholls excel when they show just how Parsons could've encountered James’ story—and it occurred only months before he received his instruction to go on the Black Pilgrimage from Babalon. Samuel D. Russell wrote an essay on James which appeared in the Fall 1945 issue of The Acolyte (a fanzine). Russell and Parsons both frequented the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS), so it's fairly certain that James was discussed there. Parsons received his instructions on February 28, 1946, which seems to imply he had been reading James recently.
Unless further evidence appears, it appears that M.R. James invented the Black Pilgrimage as a literary device based on legends of Chorazin, rather than its being a genuine magical tradition. Parsons took inspiration for a magical working based on this concept, just as he had taken inspiration from other fantasy works (for instance, his favorite novel was Jack Williamson's supernatural thriller Darker Than You Think, discussed in chapter 4.) Recall Crowley's letter criticizing Parsons for taking such a low form of literature so seriously. Despite the criticism, Parsons continued to take his inspiration wherever he would find it.
James doesn't tell us how Count Magnus died; his death is a mystery, as is Parsons’. In contrast, however, Magnus had something that Parsons didn't. He had his “faithful messenger,” the thing that he brought back from his Black Pilgrimage, the thing that protected his estate even after his death. Parsons doesn't seem to have brought anything back from his pilgrimage to protect him, and his messengers were few. The foremost of these were Cameron and Karl Germer, who preserved his writings and his message for future generations. They are gone now, and with the passing of Helen the story has come to a close.
Ruins of Chorazin
The starred crater, at 37° N latitude, 171° W longitude was named “Parsons Crater” in 1972 by the International Astronomical Union. Parsons Crater is on the dark side of the moon.
Parsons at the Parsonage.
John Parsons seen in the 1933 graduation photo from University School, top row, fourth from right.
Pasadena's private University School.
Photos courtesy of Pasadena Historical Museum
John Parsons stands above JATO at Arroyo Seco, June 4, 1943.
Arroyo Seco test site, 1936.
Photos courtesy of JPL Archive
In the Arroyo Seco Test Site, John Parsons, left, and Ed Forman, right, show greater caution than usual by wearing pith helmets.
Arroyo Seco Test Site in late 1936. John Parsons in dark vest, Ed Forman bending over in white shirt; Frank Malina is probably the individual bending over in a light-colored vest.
Photos courtesy of JPL Archive
Rudolph Schott, Amo Smith, Frank Malina, Ed Forman and John Parsons relax on Halloween, 1936.
Mannequins of the scene above used for the JPL Open House “Nativity Scene.”
Photos courtesy of JPL Archive
Posed photo in August 1941 of Theodore von Kármán (in black), surrounded by Clark Millikan, Martin Summerfield, Frank Malina and Captain Homer Boushey.
Photo courtesy of Aerojet
Parsons, second f
rom left, Forman, third from left, Malina, center and cohorts in an Ercoupe test.
Photo courtesy of JPL Archive
Very first Ercoupe flight in August 1941. The figure at left is either Ed Forman or John Parsons.
200-pound solid fuel JATO cannisters, the invention of John Parsons, as produced for Allied use in World War II.
Photos courtesy of Aerojet
Monument at Jet Propulsion Laboratory celebrates its birthday, first erected on Halloween, 1968.
Photo by Greg Bishop
John Parsons believed the 1940 story, Darker Than You Think, presaged the appearance of Babalon. This is the cover of the 1948 edition.
Rocket to the Morgue, published by John Parsons’ sci-fi soirée friend, A.H. White, under the pseudonyms Anthony Boucher and H.H. Holmes, includes a Parsons-like character named Hugo Chantrelle, a Caltech scientist obsessed by Fortean phenomena.
The Parsonage of 1003 S. Orange Grove in Pasadena. The house no longer stands.
Aleister Crowley, the man John Parsons called “Father,” making the sign of Pan.
