Sex and Rockets

by John Carter

  The financial arrangements Rogers mentioned were as follows: Parsons would forward the money to Karl Germer in New York, who would send it on to Crowley in England. Germer (January 22, 1885–October 25, 1962) was known in the OTO as “Frater Saturnus.” These financial arrangements lasted until Crowley's death in 1947.

  Again, to quote Rogers:

  Jack was the antithesis of the common image of the Black Magician; in fact he bore little resemblance to his revered Master, Aleister Crowley, either in looks or in his personal conduct. He was a good looking man in his early or mid thirties, urbane and sophisticated, and possessed a fine sense of humor…I always found Jack's insistence that he believed in and practiced magic hard to reconcile with his educational and cultural background. At first I thought it was all fun and games, a kick he was on for its shock value to his respectable friends; but after seeing his correspondence with Crowley, and the evidence of the frequent remittances to Crowley, I had to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  The association becomes easier to reconcile when one considers Crowley's own view of magic, presented in Liber O vel Manus et Sagittae: “In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth, and the Paths, of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist.

  “It is immaterial whether they exist or not. By doing certain things certain results follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.”

  Despite Parsons’ outward appearance, he was the subject of regular public attention and rumors that he was the leader of a “black magic cult,” rumors denied by his scientific associates, many of whom were regulars at the house, if not members of one or the other orders. As early as 1941, Parsons was investigated (at his previous residence), but no arrests were made. Rather than any occult activities, this investigation concerned some explosives he was storing at the house, either the tetranitromethane Malina mentioned, or the gunpowder Forman's first wife talked about, or both.

  In 1942, local police came to 1003 S. Orange Grove to investigate an alleged backyard ceremony wherein a pregnant woman had reportedly jumped nude through a fire nine times. The police made it clear that they thought the claim absurd and that they were only investigating because it was their duty. Parsons easily assured them of his community standing: he was an important rocket scientist with a professional reputation to uphold. Ironically, the ceremony probably took place as described.

  A 16-year-old boy reported Parsons to the police, claiming that three of Parsons’ followers had forcibly sodomized him during a “Black Mass” at the house. Again the police investigated but found Parsons’ “cult” to be little more than “an organization dedicated to religious and philosophical speculation, with respectable members such as a Pasadena bank president, doctors, lawyers, and Hollywood actors.” The actor John Carradine, for example, read one of Crowley's poems at the inauguration of Agape Lodge No. 2 in 1935.

  In September 1942, the Pasadena police received an anonymous tip via a letter sent by an ex-member of the Agape Lodge bearing the signature “A Real Soldier” and postmarked San Antonio, Texas that accused Parsons of “black magic and sex orgies.” Once again, Parsons was cleared of all charges. An anonymous letter was also sent in October 1944.

  Local papers are said to have revived these stories during slow news periods, but I was unable to find any of the articles. The police always stood by their original findings whenever further accusations arose. Too many cries of “Wolf!” made them turn a blind eye. Although rape was not going on, plenty of other unusual (but legal) things were, and the neighbors just had to learn to live with it.

  The Pasadena branch of the OTO had its other troubles, some of which were caused by parsons’ and Crowley's financial go-between, Karl Germer. Germer had arrived in the United States from a German concentration camp and settled in New York. His stated goal was to work on building up the OTO in his new country; in actuality he did the opposite. Germer took a paranoid dislike to Wilfred Smith, perhaps because he saw him as a competitor for the lead position, and began a smear campaign, constantly writing Crowley about Smith's activities in the worst possible light.

  Wilfred Smith had a reputation as a womanizer which equaled that of Crowley, who viewed his own succession of “Scarlet Women” as a necessary magical aid. Smith's affairs, however, seemed to be an opportunity for Germer to deride him. Over 200 letters exchanged between Crowley and Smith during this period have been preserved, letters that evidently document the slow but steady deterioration of the relationship between Crowley and Smith.

  Like Parsons, Lodge Master Wilfred Smith was a good-looking man with a charming personality and a strong love of women. One of Smith's lovers was Helen Parsons, John's wife, who bore Smith a son in 1943. Germer convinced Crowley that this affair was the last straw with Smith, who was now a detriment to the work of the OTO, particularly with a child to rear.

  Ironically, considering the “Great Beast's” own salacious reputation, Crowley wrote Smith that he was giving the OTO “the reputation of being that slimy abomination ‘a love cult.’ Already in 1915 in Vancouver, all I knew of you was that you were running a mother and her daughter in double harness—since then one scandal has followed another.”

  Crowley himself was no stranger to scandal. In fact, he himself had had a number of children by different women. This “black magician,” as he came to be considered in his native England, eventually committed many blasphemies against Christianity, which, after his wretched childhood, he set out to destroy and replace with “Crowleyanity” and his “Law of Thelema,” which he truly hoped would sweep the world.

  Married to Rose Kelley, whose brother Gerald would become the Knighted President of London's Royal Academy, Crowley lived a leisurely life because of a large sum of money his father left him. He was an imposing figure and the beneficiary of numerous unusual adventures. One night of his and Rose's honeymoon, for example, was spent in the so-called King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid, during which Crowley worked ceremonial magic.

  Crowley was not content to be monogamous, however, and he had a voracious sexual appetite for both women and men. In fact, the “Key” to the OTO was sex magick. Crowley's sex rites, however, were not to be taken lightly or casually, as he himself thought them to be very serious and powerful magic.

  Crowley's ritual sex partners were often prostitutes and men he'd picked up in Turkish bath houses. Even with the women the Great Beast often insisted on having anal intercourse, so convinced was he of its magical qualities. One of his sexual partners and first disciples was Victor Neuburg, an orthodox Jew who had become agnostic and with whom Crowley played the passive recipient. Neuburg, who was in love with the Great Beast, was also the victim of Crowley's sadism, enduring beatings, including one across the butt with nettles.

  In his practices he also used his “Scarlet Women,” including a young girl named Leah Hirsig, to whom Crowley had taken a fancy in the spring of 1918. Leah did not serve as the Scarlet Woman, however, until 1920, at Crowley's Abbey of Thelema at Cefalu, Sicily, which he and Leah called the “College of the Holy Ghost” and which was “sexually free.” At one point at the Abbey, a male goat was supposed to copulate with Leah, but he “failed to perform” and was sacrificed, splattering Leah with his blood.

  One scandal that nearly torpedoed Crowley was the death of a young acolyte who had engaged in a ritual of drug-taking and drinking the blood of a sacrificed cat. The incident was the source of sensational headlines in London: “New Sinister Revelations of Aleister Crowley. Varsity Lad's Death. Enticed to ‘Abbey’. Dreadful Ordeal of A Young Wife. Crowley's Plans,” as well as “Young Wife's Story of Crowley's Abbey. Scenes of Horror. Drugs Magic and Vile Practices.” Crowley was accused not only of sexual deviation but also of cannibalism. Because of such bad publicity, Crowley ironically riled Italy's fascist dictator, Mussolini, no angel himself, and was subsequently tossed out of that country and his abbey.
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br />   The German branches of the OTO were closed because of the Nazis, who also arrested and tortured Crowley's main advocate and money-supplier, Karl Germer, one of whose friends, Martha Küntzel, became an ardent admirer of Hitler and “regularly bombarded Crowley with letters loaded with praises of Hitler.”

  Adding to his scandals, at one point Crowley tried to make money selling “Elixir of Life Pills” that were supposed to enhance virility. Those who took them probably never realized they were composed of a “neutral base combined with Crowley's own semen.” They were probably energized by some sort of sex magick.

  Thus, it is clear that Crowley's excoriation of Smith was based not on any so-called morals but was merely an excuse for him to blast Smith. In reality, when Crowley heard that Smith had legally incorporated the Church of Thelema, he mistakenly took it to mean that Smith intended to raise his new son to replace Crowley. Germer played no little part in this deception.

  Crowley removed Smith through an ingenious means. First, he drew up a horoscope for Smith based on the unusual circumstance of his birth. Smith's horoscope had a complex of eight planets, which one could easily interpret as if Smith were an avatar of some god. This complex was something Crowley had found in only one other instance, that of Shakespeare. He called it “one of the most astonishingly fortunate figures that Frater 666 [Crowley] has ever set up in his whole life!” and printed the horoscope, intended only for Smith, under the title, “Is Smith A God?” The 12-page document was also titled Liber Apotheosis or Liber 132.

  Crowley wrote:

  The simple, the astounding truth, flooded the mind of Frater 666 with light. It explains all obscurities; it reconciles all contradictions. We have all of us throughout been kindled by a single misapprehension, precisely as if a Staff of Astronomers mistaking a planet for a star, observed its motion, and so found nothing but irritating, bewildering, inexplicable attacks upon the “Laws of Nature.”

  All becomes clear on recognizing the fundamental mistake: Wilfred T. Smith, Frater 132, is not a man at all; he is the Incarnation of some God!

  He hoped Smith's ego was big enough to fall for it yet he also secretly wondered if it weren't somehow true, as his belief in astrology required it to be true no matter how paradoxical he personally found it to be. The members of the lodge started referring to Smith as “the Unknown God,” a reference to the New Testament verse of Acts 17:23, which reads:

  For as I [Paul] passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.

  It has not been documented whether Smith ever claimed “Knowledge & Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel,” which was a part of the A∴A∴'s 5° = 6▫ rite.

  “Is Smith A God?” continues:

  The word “god” implies a fact; it is no question of convenience as when the Ephesians called Barnabas “Jupiter” and Paul “Mercury.” [Acts 14]

  The incarnation of a god is an exceedingly rare event to become known, although frequent enough when he makes it secretly “to take his pleasure on the earth among the legions of the living.” It being known, it is important to ascertain his purpose, especially as (in the present case) the material envelope has been so perfectly constructed that he is himself not fully aware of it.

  One must distinguish such cases very sharply indeed from that phenomenon—in these days so common as to constitute an appreciable percentage of the population as to exercise noticeable influence upon society—of the incarnation of elementals.

  Nor is a god here to be confounded with a daimon or angel, even although his function wholly or in part prove to be that of an angel or messenger (cf. The Book of the Law I, 7: there is no reason to suppose that Aiwaz is, or is not, a living man).

  By “god” is to be understood a complete macrocosmic individual as contrasted with human-elementals who incarnate partial-planetary or zodiacal-intelligences of higher or lower rank in the Yetziratic Hierarchies; such are salamanders, undines, sylphs and gnomes in human form.

  It is of the first importance for those who would reap full benefit from the sojourn of such a King on this planet that they should understand his nature; they ought to know his name! To determine his identity is a task of notable magnitude…

  It must therefore be his primary task to recognize himself. With this end in view he must first of all withdraw completely from further occasion of contamination; and he must devise for himself…a true method of self-realization.

  It is not necessary that the god should have incarnated at (or before) the birth of Wilfred T. Smith. A quite possibly significant moment might have been the Summer Solstice of 1916, or during the Winter of 1906 when terrific forces were set in motion by the Chiefs of the Order.

  The “child” (i.e. the “god”) might well have been begotten by the Paris Working (January, 1914) or as the result of some of the immense Enochian invocations: in the latter case the name of the god required might be found on the Watch Towers of the Universe [the Enochian Tablets], his nature determined by analysis of the squares concerned. Another possibility suggested by the place of residence of Frater 132 is that one of the aboriginal “Red Indian” gods may have seized the opportunity somehow afforded by Frater 132's state at the moment…

  Frater 132 has to realize and proclaim his identity and function very much as Frater 666 regards himself in the light of what is spoken of him in The Book of the Law. He ought to be able to say simply: I am Apu-t or Kebeshnut or Thoum-aesh-neith, or as may be the case. It will not serve the present purpose to accept Asar [Osiris], or Ra, or one of the universal gods such as of whom all men are in a sense incarnations.

  Crowley then sent Smith on a “Grand Magical Retirement” to find the god within himself. Unknown to her, Helen was going to accompany him, but it is unclear where their son went during this time. The High Priestess of the Agape Lodge, Regina Kahl, was quite ill and spent much of this period in the hospital. Her last attendance of a lodge meeting occurred in November 1942. After his “retirement,” Smith often tried to go back to the house, according to Grady McMurtry (later Hymenaeus Alpha X°), but he was not welcome there.

  At this time, Parsons was corresponding with McMurtry, who was stationed in Europe on military duty. McMurtry often sent Parsons poems he had written, usually of a mystical nature. Parsons encouraged McMurtry to contact Crowley while he was in England, an act that led to Crowley initiating McMurtry all the way to the X° of the OTO. To Parsons’ surprise, McMurtry returned to the United States a few short years later as his superior in the Order. With Smith having left, Parsons was Acting Head of the Lodge at this time.

  Smith's retirement took place at a turkey farm outside of Pasadena belonging to a member of the lodge named Roy Leffingwell. In his quest to find the god within himself, Smith had to build a small altar from rocks he found the site. He also had to tattoo the “Mark of the Beast” on his forehead or right palm and (if desired) over his heart and his mons veneris (sic). Everything that happened to him during the retreat was to be carefully recorded and forwarded to Germer, the “Outer Head” of the OTO. Eventually, Smith was told by Leffingwell to leave the farm.

  While Smith thus floundered, Parsons had plenty of money for his occult activities, as, by the summer of 1943, Aerojet was doing $650,000 in business. In June of that year, Parsons and von Kármán were invited to Norfolk, Virginia, where they turned their attention to aircraft carriers because JATOs were unable to keep up with the bigger bombers and the ease with which runways were now being constructed. Two of von Kármán's former students were now a captain and an admiral in the Navy, and the Hungarian and Parsons were invited to demonstrate their JATOs for the Secretary of the Navy and his admirals. This test took place on the USS Charger, which was docked at Norfolk. Parsons outfitted a Grumman airplane with solid-fuel JATOs, but when the plane took off it covered the Secretary and his admirals with a cloud of yellow smoke that left a nasty residue. A few of the
officers got mad, but the Secretary merely told them to find a way to get rid of the smoke and they would have a contract. This incident led to the development of Aeroplex, Aerojet's brand name for smokeless powder.

  Also in 1943 Parsons divorced Helen, having struck up a relationship with her younger sister (they may have been half-sisters), Sara Elizabeth Northrup, AKA “Betty.” Another version of events says that Parsons took up with Betty before this, when Helen was out of town. Parsons told his old friend Rypinski, “I got rid of my wife [Helen] by witchcraft.” Born April 8, 1925, Betty was tall (5’9”), slender, with blondish brown hair. Like Helen before her, Betty acted as Parsons’ priestess at the Gnostic Mass, the pair fulfilling the roles left vacant by Smith and Kahl. Parsons’ devotion was such that the Mass was held every single day. Betty was also Parsons’ partner in the performance of sex magick—the “magic” of inducing altered states through prolonged sexual ecstasy. Kahl, on the other hand, was a lesbian.

  At Parsons’ urging the 18-year-old Betty left the University of Southern California (USC). Parsons was 11 years her senior, and her parents were not at all happy about the arrangement. Parsons later noted the implied element of adultery and incest in this relationship with his wife's sister was most appealing. (The breaking of taboos is a typical “tantric” practice, but it may also be that Parsons felt stung by his wife's “betrayal” with Smith.) Parsons and Betty lived as a couple, although they never did marry.