{"id":4811,"date":"2021-05-19T14:58:04","date_gmt":"2021-05-19T13:58:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shindig-magazine.com\/?p=4811"},"modified":"2021-05-19T15:29:04","modified_gmt":"2021-05-19T14:29:04","slug":"black-magic-science-counter-cultural-musings-from-tsptr-dossier-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/?p=4811","title":{"rendered":"Black Magic & Science \u2013 Counter-Cultural musings from TSPTR. Dossier #3"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the third of our monthly counter-cultural musings from TSPTR<\/a>, we look at the forgotten character of “LA Weird”, JOHN WHITESIDE PARSONS\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Photo: Public Domain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gram wasn\u2019t the only Parsons with a penchant for the Mojave Desert. Thirty years before GP would regularly venture to Joshua Tree, John Whiteside Parsons would frequent various locations in the high desert in search of both science and magic.<\/p>\n

“SLAIN SCIENTIST PRIEST IN BLACK MAGIC CULT” read one LA newspaper headline after his death in Pasadena on 17th June, 1952. By day John Parsons was one of America\u2019s leading scientists, building rockets for the US government. By night he emerged from a coffin to perform sex magick rituals with his fellow practitioners. He was one of America\u2019s greatest space pioneers, a founder of what would become the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech where the first rocket experiments took place in \u201936.<\/p>\n

Parsons seemed devoted to reconciling opposites, smashing together science and magic, the white lab coat and the black robe, fact and fiction. In the late \u201930s he began frequenting nightly meetings of the Ordo Templi Orientis, also known as the Agape Lodge, an occult society that convened in LAs. The OTO was the creation of English occultist Aleister Crowley, a heroin-addicted, sexually adventuresome, God profaning master of the dark arts, who the tabloids had christened \u201cThe Wickedest Man in the World\u201d.<\/p>\n

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At these gatherings Parsons took part in Thelemite rituals including the \u2018Gnostic Mass\u2019, a pagan take on Catholic Mass, where poetry was read, swords were drawn, wine was drank, breasts were kissed, and cakes made from menstrual blood were consumed, in a highly sexually charged atmosphere. It was here that Crowley’s philosophy of Thelema was propounded, a type of religious libertarianism that spoke of radical individualism and self-fulfilment.\u00a0Parsons became especially intrigued by Crowley\u2019s belief that sex could be an intrinsic component of magical rituals, lifting the practitioner onto a higher plane of consciousness.<\/p>\n

Parsons treated magic and rocketry as different sides of the same coin \u2013 both had been disparaged, both derided as impossible, but because of this both presented themselves as challenges to be conquered. If you delve deeper into Parson\u2019s story, you\u2019ll find encounters with era-shaping Nobel prize-winners and literary greats including Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein. Scientology “prophet” L Ron Hubbard also plays a significant part in the tale, acting as Parson\u2019s “scribe” in the \u2018Babalon Working\u2019, a dark ritual to invoke an actual Goddess on Earth.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Public Domain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Parsons died in \u201952 in a mysterious explosion at his home laboratory. He was discovered surrounded by rocketry papers and pentagrams, occult drawings and chemical formulae. He was 37 years old. The tabloids labelled him a Satan worshipping mad scientist, as did the scientific establishment, so the story of John Whiteside Parsons was locked in the attic, hidden in the footnotes and swept under the launchpad of the US space program. But Parsons’ scientific legacy is impossible to ignore. He forced the United States government to explore a science\u00a0\u200bit had previously mocked<\/a>, and laid the foundation for the rockets that carried man into outer space and onto the Moon.<\/p>\n

Shindig! wear and and endorse TSPTR clothing<\/i><\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the third of our monthly counter-cultural musings from TSPTR, we look at the forgotten character of “LA Weird”, JOHN WHITESIDE PARSONS\u00a0 Gram wasn\u2019t the only Parsons with a penchant for the Mojave Desert. Thirty years before GP would regularly venture to Joshua Tree, John Whiteside Parsons would frequent various locations in the high desert […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[927,928,912],"class_list":["post-4811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","tag-black-magic","tag-science","tag-tsptr"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4811"}],"version-history":[{"count":-2,"href":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}