Sex and Rockets

by John Carter

  Interestingly, Parsons encouraged Betty to take other lovers, as he did, because he perceived himself above the petty jealousies felt by normal men. For a time, this sentiment was true, and their various affairs seem to have strengthened their feelings for each other, paradoxical as that may sound. At the end of the day, they always had one another to turn to.

  Of their relationship, Alva Rogers wrote:

  Betty, who had been living with Jack for a number of years, complemented him admirably. She was young, blonde, very attractive, full of joie de vivre, thoughtful, humorous, generous, and all that. She assisted Jack in the OTO and seemed to possess the same devotion to it and to Crowley as did Jack…The rapport between Jack and Betty, the strong affection, if not love, they had for each other, despite their frequent separate sextracurricular activities, seemed pretty permanent and shatterproof.

  As Parsons was fond of Crowley, so was the magus in turn impressed by Parsons, although he worried about the young man's loyalty to Smith, in whom Crowley could only see trouble. Soon after Smith departed, Parsons sent an offer of retirement to Crowley, as he thought Crowley was treating Smith unfairly and therefore didn't feel right about taking his place. Crowley did not accept the offer and, in July 1943, wrote a letter to lodge member Max Schneider: “As to Jack: I think he is perfectly alright at the bottom of everything; but he is very young, and he has at present nothing like the strength to deal with matters within his jurisdiction objectively.” (Schneider and his wife had a small cabin on Mount Palomar that the members of the lodge often used for short retreats.)

  Although quite reckless in his personal life, Crowley was a decent judge of character, and his opinion of Jack was good, if somewhat guarded, consistently documented in his letters to other members. In December of 1943, Crowley wrote to the actress Jane Wolfe, who had earlier alerted him to Parsons’ potential as “the child”:

  Jack is the Objective (Smith is out, an affaire classée: anybody who communicates with him in any way is out also; and that is that, and the best plan is to sponge the whole slate clean, and get to work to build up Thelema on sound principles. And no more of this brothel-building: let's use marble, not rotten old boards!) Jack's trouble is his weakness, and his romantic side—the poet—is at present a hindrance. He gets a kick from some magazine trash, or an ‘occult’ novel (if only he knew how they were concocted!) and dashes off in wild pursuit. He must learn that the sparkle of champagne is based on sound wine; pumping carbonic acid into urine is not the same thing.

  I wish to God I had him for six months—even three, with a hustle—to train in Will, in discipline. He must understand that fine and fiery flashes of Spirit come from the organization of Matter, from the drilling of every function of every bodily organ until it has become so regular as to be automatic, and carried on by itself deep down in the Unconscious. It is the steadiness of one's Heart that enables one to endure the rapture of great passion; one doesn't want the vital functions to be excitable.

  In February 1944, he wrote to the Burlingames (also lodge members):

  …I am very glad indeed of your offer to co-operate practically in any way possible. I have left Jack Parsons in charge; he is quite all right in essence, but very young and easily swayed by passing influences. I shall look to you to help in keeping him up to the mark.

  In contrast, three Aerojet memos written by Parsons in August of 1944 clearly show him in charge of his program there, working on smokeless powder with aluminum perchlorate as an oxidizer. Despite others’ failures with these materials, Parsons practically insisted on moving ahead with his own experiments. He also attended a solid fuel conference during the summer and fall of 1944, of which his typed notes are now in the JPL archives.

  Obviously, Parsons liked to be in charge and not under authority, in both his professional and personal lives. Sometime that year Parsons made an interesting statement in a letter sent to McMurtry: “I am a little sour on the OTO inasmuch as by experience I doubt the value of membership coming in except via previous experience and individual training of the A∴A∴ sort. It seems to me the early grades (which are all we have here) are too free in admitting non-descripts and too lax in that they do not provide a definite program of training and qualifications. The better people I have met always seem to come via an interest in A∴A∴ aspects.” This instance is not the first time Parsons questioned his association with the OTO, nor would it be his last. He had a long history of bucking authority; the OTO soon became one more “authority” trying to tell him what to do.

  While he concerned with formal training and qualifications in his “spiritual” life, Parsons had no need for it in his aerospace occupation. Indeed, he thrived without such academic accomplishment and credentials, as did the business and science he helped found. In 1944, GALCIT changed its name to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a term coined in a memorandum written by von Kármán, Malina, and Tsien on November 20, 1943. At that time their budget was an astounding $650,000, and approximately 80 people worked there, though Summerfield was still operating out of his car. Malina was soon named Director of JPL, a position he held until 1946, although he is usually referred to as the second Director, von Kármán by default being the first. It seems that Malina was retreating from his anti-capitalist stance, also expressing to his parents just a little over a year earlier that “we are getting to be more and more like capitalists.” However, Malina and his first wife were long-standing members of the local communist “cell,” which certainly had much to do with his getting out of the rocket business after the end of the war.

  Despite the impressive budget, the JPL facilities were still rather primitive. Eugene Pierce, a local architect, took a job as an administrative assistant around this time. Of his first trip to the arroyo he said, “I took one look at those half-a-dozen nondescript, corrugated-metal and redwood-tie and stone buildings and thought, my God!—what have I gotten myself into? There's no future for an architect here.” Inside, the buildings things were no better. The corridors were extremely narrow, and Pierce shared an 8-by-10 office with Malina and secretary Dorothy Lewis, with whom JPL historians were able to conduct an oral history interview in 1972. In the interview, Lewis told them that Parsons “was the clown of the group. He loved to play jokes. That was all right.” Dorothy's office overlooked the liquid fuel test pit. Conversation halted whenever a test was run.

  Malina and Summerfield launched a small series of rockets called the “Private” in 1944, when Malina paused long enough to realize that they now had the means to carry out the original goal of the early GALCIT group. Constructed of little more than JATOs to which fins and a nose cone were attached, the Privates successfully carried meteorological equipment high into the atmosphere—for the purposes of pure research rather than military applications. This completed goal made Malina happy. The Private A was launched from Leach Spring, at Camp Irwin near Barstow, California, an army base in the Mojave Desert.

  The following year, however, found Malina working with missiles meant to be fired into enemy territory. The project ORDCIT—“America's first long range missile and space exploration program”—was formed for this purpose, in the same arroyo where GALCIT was located. Two of the missiles developed, the solid-fuel Sergeant and the liquid-fuel Corporal, were never deployed, but the later Regulus missile was. The Regulus was developed by others for deployment in western Europe during the Cold War. These small, mobile missiles were launched from the backs of trucks and, as with the other early missiles, were simply made from large solid-fuel JATOs with a few minor modifications to make them fly.

  It is another odd “coincidence” that the term “Regulus,” a star in the constellation Leo, appears in the work of Aleister Crowley, appearing in the title of Crowley's Liber V vel Reguli in its plural form. Reproduced in Regardie's Gems from the Equinox, Liber V is “the Ritual of the Mark of the Beast: an incantation proper to invoke the Energies of the Aeon of Horus, adapted for the daily use of the Magician of whatever grade.” The “Mark
of the Beast,” of course, is what Smith was supposed to tattoo on himself during his retreat.

  On March 11, 1945, Parsons wrote to McMurtry that he was “trying to get out from under [the OTO] and more into A∴A∴ work which suits me far better and in which I think I can do more.” However, he was not quite ready to leave the OTO at this time, and its apparent influence on his life would continue.

  Despite his occult leanings, Parsons enjoyed respectability in his professional work. On March 15 the Saturday Evening Post ran an article called “JATOs Get ‘Em Up,” highlighting the very successful use of solid-fuel JATOs, with mention of Parsons, Forman, Malina and Summerfield as the developers, under the direction of von Kármán. The article discusses the different wartime applications for which JATOs were currently being used, including on the Navy's PB-2Y seaplanes and the small Corsairs that were launched from aircraft carriers. Because of the JATOs, which helped them launch without the advantage of a long, smooth stretch of water, Catalan Flying Boats were able to land in the choppy waters of the South Pacific, undeterred by 18-foot swells, to carry out a rescue mission. Another dramatic rescue was made in Southern California when a Martin Mariner was forced down in a small lake: the Mariner needed a full mile to take off, but the lake was only 3000 feet at its greatest width, so JATOs were mounted under the plane's wings, allowing it to get back into the air safely.

  Another one of the JPL group, Charles Bartley9, made an improvement to Parsons’ original asphalt binder in 1945. To replace the asphalt, Bartley created a polysulfide compound, for which the word “thiokol” was coined, from the Greek words for “sulphur” and “glue.” Called “Thiokol LP-2,” the compound is a polymer, which means an artificial compound with a very repetitive molecular structure consisting of long molecules joined together endlessly. The regular molecular structure is what gives polymers their desirable qualities.

  The compound name can also be found in “Morton-Thiokol,” a well-recognized aerospace manufacturing firm today. As late as the Korean War, solid-fuel JATOs were used on Sabre Jet fighters, which would jettison the canisters after use, such that the Korean jungles must be full of them. Solid-fuel rockets launched the Polaris missiles, a name correlating to “Pole Star,” the moniker Parsons used in writing to refer to Smith. Solid fuel, of course, is also what launches the Space Shuttle, of which Morton-Thiokol was the manufacturer until the Challenger disaster, after which Aerojet got the contract.

  In 1945, Betty's sentiment was recorded by Jane Wolfe who shared some other concerns about Parsons’ private life in a letter to Karl Germer:

  There is something strange going on, quite apart from [Wilfred] Smith. There is always Betty [Northrup], remember, who hates Smith. But our own Jack is enamored with Witchcraft, the hounfort, voodoo. From the start he always wanted to evoke something—no matter what, I am inclined to think, as long as he got a result.

  According to Meeka [Aldrich] yesterday, he has had a result—an elemental he doesn't know what to do with. From that statement of hers, it must bother him—somewhat at least.

  Parsons’ ardent thrill-seeking was, of course, not just professional but personal, and he once wrote that one of the rituals he used was “liable to produce dangerous side phenomena and sometimes permanent haunting in an area where it is repeated.” Wolfe's “witchcraft” reference is to one of Parsons’ projects, called “The Witchcraft,” which, along with “The Gnosis,” was his attempt to devise a religious system of his own that addressed fields Crowley seems to have stayed out of. The surviving papers concerning The Gnosis and the Witchcraft are reproduced in the book Freedom Is A Two-Edged Sword.

  The elementals or spirits Parsons was invoking evidently disturbed the other Parsonage residents. One still-living and active member of the OTO and the A∴A∴ today, Phyllis Seckler (“Soror Meral,” initiated by Wolfe into the A∴A∴), recorded:

  Meeka also reported to Jane that another two persons always had to do a lot of banishing in the house. They were sensitive and knew that there was something alien and inimical was there [sic]. When I had been there during the summer of 1944, I also knew there were troublesome spirits about, especially on the third floor. It got I couldn't stand being up there, and a friend of mine couldn't even climb the stairs that far, as the hair on the back of her neck began to prickle and she got thoroughly frightened.

  The “Meeka” referred to was Meeka Aldrich, who pledged the grade of Minerval in August 1945 and was granted the I° of the OTO on August 25. Like Helen Parsons had for a while, she served as the treasurer of Agape Lodge in September, though she shared that office with another during the following month. Meeka kept active in the lodge after that, and was the one who found places for the lodge to meet from late 1946 into 1948.

  As the war ended, the founders of Aerojet started looking for a way to make the firm viable, because its future was suddenly very uncertain. It is ironic that Parsons’ work, despite its anti-military beginnings and goal, had become the backbone of military operations, so much so that his company was virtually dependent on war. How he was able to reconcile his profession with his personal life, which, while hedonistic, he ostensibly viewed as spiritual, is a quirk of the human mind in general, as millions of others have been able to do the same.

  Fortunately, the firm was able to convince General Tire to invest in it. If it succeeded, fine; if not, General Tire was big enough to absorb the loss as a tax write-off. With the purchase, Aerojet became Aerojet General, today known as GenCorp Aerojet. Once General Tire bought in, it decided it wanted the whole pie but none of the old-timers hanging around, so it sent its people out to strong-arm Aerojet's founders into relinquishing their stock. All sold out but Malina, who happened to be in London at the time and who later wrote that sunspot activity disrupted the telegraph transmission, such that he never got the offer. The solar storm proved a boon, however, as he became a millionaire as a result. In the ‘60s, von Kármán calculated that if he himself had held onto his stock he would have been worth $12 million.

  But it was hard to resist the offer Aerojet General was making. The war was ending, the future was uncertain, the group had achieved what they intended to achieve with rockets, and now Aerojet was offering them $50,000 apiece for their stock. Charles Bartley remembers Parsons and Forman coming into his office at JPL quite excited, bragging how they had managed to get out of the company while they were still ahead. The war was over, they told him, and rockets were finished. The field had no future. They were going to start a chain of laundromats with their money and become rich men. It is difficult to understand how the two obviously passionate men could have given up their youthful goals about rockets so easily, particularly since they still hadn't launched anything into space.

  In fact, Parsons had actually sold out before the war ended and intended to continue his hazardous passions. In a letter dated December 14, 1944 to Grady McMurtry, Parsons wrote that he had “sold out at Aerojet, purchased 1003 [S. Orange Grove Ave.], and am starting a new company engaged in chemical research.” Evidently interested in other dangerous pursuits, he added that he was trying to get the ex-High Priestess Regina Kahl to return to the lodge. In apparent response to a question from McMurtry as to whether he could send Parsons anything from Europe, Parsons replied “a witch, young, red headed…” His letters to McMurtry are full of references to Europe being “witch country.”

  The “lady-killer” Parsons did not confine his sexual largesse to his private world, however. Indeed, both he and Forman were well-known around the Aerojet office as well, and the office managers cringed when they saw the randy pair come in because both men seemed to be working their way through the secretarial pool. Each had had affairs with several women there, according to those who knew them then, and their relationships with these women interfered with the secretaries’ work to the point of disruption. But they were the founders, and their presence had to be tolerated until they sold out and left. Zwicky claimed that Haley had actually convinced Parsons to sell out prior to t
he General Tire buyout, simply because of his problems at the office, but von Kármán and others disagree with Zwicky on this count. Parsons told Rypinski that he left because Aerojet was less interested in research and more interested in production and sales. However, Parsons did not get back into research after he left.

  Parsons and Forman formed Adastra Research, a small explosives company that was investigated for “espionage” when the two were caught with a large quantity of “x-nitrate,” a powerful explosive. It was determined that the compound had been procured for experimental reasons, and the charges were dropped. Parsons then went to work for the Vulcan Powder Company in Pasadena, where he would remain for the next two years.

  Back in New Mexico, Robert Goddard had his own problems. At the end of the war, he fell into a depression, became ill, and died before the year was out. Certainly his failure with rockets—and Caltech's success—was a contributing factor.

  In late August of 1945, Lou Goldstone brought L. Ron Hubbard over to meet Parsons, who liked Hubbard immediately. As noted, Hubbard had been the model for D. Vance Wimple in White's Rocket to the Morgue. He told a lot of war stories which, though hard to believe, were well-liked by most, and he fit right in with the unusual assortment of people who lived there.

  Hubbard had just come from the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in San Francisco and complained of various ailments including rheumatism, arthritis, hemorrhoids, conjunctivitis, and aches in his side, shoulder, stomach, and knee. After several hospital visits, Hubbard was given a medical discharge from the Navy and began receiving financial benefits when he told them he could no longer practice his livelihood of being a writer.

  The Parsons circle included not only a circuit connecting Hubbard and Crowley but also one linking Crowley to Lovecraft, whom Hubbard had met through Lovecraft biographer Frank Belknap Long. (Writers have tried for years to link Lovecraft and Crowley in one way or another, but this is a direct connection that has not yet been explored.) In addition, Hubbard and Parsons associated with people in Pasadena who had met Clark Ashton Smith, one of Lovecraft's regular correspondents, as well as of Crowley's “inner circle.” Lovecraft's “The Colour Out of Space” had appeared in the September 1927 issue of Amazing Stories, the publication Ed Forman had written about, so Parsons had probably read it. He may also have read Weird Tales, which regularly featured the work of Lovecraft in the teens and twenties. Judging by Crowley's remark in December 1943 in his letter to Jane Wolfe, this was simply the sort of “magazine trash” Parsons was reading.