Jack Parsons

[Lorentzen / Nicklaus]

right, this fellow was really a pretty pynchonesque person. (o.k., i put a 
quarter into the nono cash box). here comes some original sound:

"...the creative individual must take his place as a creative leader in society. 
he must fulfill his destiny and his responsibility; he can achieve both in 
fearlessly following his creative will, his own inner truth, and in inevitable 
corollary, he must know and assist others who strive to do likewise.
then, by leading the slaves a little out of slavery, and the masters a little 
into humanity and culture, maintaining all the while his own inviolable 
independence, he will achieve that balance which alone gives significance to the 
human story.

  l i b e r  77  v e l  o z / t h e  r i g h t s  o f  m a n 

  do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law
     there is no god but man.
     man has the right to live by his own law.
     man has the right to live in the way that he wills to do.
     man has the right to dress as he wills to do.
     man has the right to dwell where he wills to dwell.
     man has the right to move as he will on the face of the earth.
     man has the right to eat what he will.
     man has the right to drink what he will.
     man has the right to think as he will.
     man has the right to speak as he will.
     man has the right to write as he will.
     man has the right to mould as he will.
     man has the right to paint as he will. 
     man has the right to carve as he will.
     man has the right to work as he will.
     man has the right to rest as he will.
     man has the right to love as he will, when, where and whom he will.
     man has the right to die when and how he will.
     man has the right to kill those who would thwart these rights.
  love is the law, love under will.

the exposition of the rights of man is a statement of first principles. you are 
referred to crowley's works, the writings of nietzsche, mencken, and berntrand 
russell, emerson's essay on self reliance, and the declaration of independence 
and bill of rights in the american constitution. here i'm not unduly concerned 
with theory, but rather with you, who, like myself, have independently reached 
these conclusions, and who are interested in a practical reduction. 
freedom is twofold; there is the freedom within, and the freedom without, and, 
like all things, the first freedom starts at the home plate.
the mainspring of an individual is his creative will. this will is the tone of 
his tendencies, his destiny, his inner truth. it is one with the force that 
makes the birds sing and flowers bloom; as inevitable as gravity [!], as 
implicit as a bowel movement, it informs alike atoms and men and suns.        
... the force burns in every man ... it's possible to cultivate habits of mind 
and of attention. the splendor of nature is all about us, immortal in 
loveliness, inexhaustible in wonder. the sky calls to us in the high places, the 
wind and the rain greet us, trees and grasses speak to us, mountains and the 
great plains and green valleys; we only have to open our minds and hearts to the 
eternal forces, and we and the eternal forces are one ...
the will is creative and dynamic, and it must move in hard fact. by their fruits 
shall ye know them. success is your proof;- but  y o u r  success, on your own 
terms. the way is hard; you will face failure after failure, fall after fall. 
but each fall and each failure is a success, a new jewel for the diadem of 
conscious experience.
life - beautiful, terrible, splendid and pitiless;-life is your adversary and 
your love. she must you accept unreservedly, and she you must overcome. she woos 
to destroy, she submits to conquer; she conquers to submit - that tigress is 
your paramour, the cosmos is your adventure.
 and the goal? the totality of experience - the gesture commensurate 
with the universe.
 is that not enough?"  
           
 (jack parsons: living thelema. pp. 85-90 in: christopher s. hyatt (ed.): rebels 
 & devils. the psychology of liberation. tempe, arizona 1996: new falcon 
 publications)

                                              kfl
Rich schrieb:

> guess this isn't so strange, eh?
>
> rich
>
>
> Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons
>                                            by John Carter
>                             ( Feral House, 1999, US$24.95, ISBN: 
> 0-922915-56-3)
>                                     Reviewed by Rosemary Pardoe.
>
> [This review is probably exclusive to the web site, as I hope to have a 
> different one in the next G&S.]
>
> In discussing the undertaking by Jack Parsons of his personal 'Black 
> Pilgrimage to Chorazin', in G&S 26 ("The Black Pilgrimage",
> pp.52-53), I came to no definite conclusions on where he might have acquired 
> the idea for this risky project. When I heard, shortly
> afterwards, that a biography of Parsons was in the offing from Feral House, 
> I had great hopes that it might provide the answer.
>
> John Whiteside Parsons (1914-1952) was by day a top rocket scientist, but by 
> night he was a practitioner of Thelemic Magick and
> an associate of Aleister Crowley. After he took his astral Black Pilgrimage 
> to Chorazin in the late forties, he believed he had
> become the Antichrist. When he died it was in an explosion about which many 
> questions still remain today. Thus there is much for
> the pseudonymous 'John Carter' to cover in this book, and, unfortunately, 
> although he discusses the Black Pilgrimage in fair detail,
> he offers no theories on where Parsons got the idea. Carter briefly mentions 
> the Biblical references to Chorazin, the legend that it
> would be the birthplace of the Antichrist, and the present day ruins, but 
> there is no suggested source given for the Black
> Pilgrimage. It looks more and more likely that Parsons' inspiration was 
> MRJ's "Count Magnus" (perhaps via L. Ron Hubbard or
> Sam Russell), especially as Carter notes the influence of fantastic fiction 
> on some other aspects of Parsons' activities ("...[he] may
> have acquired the moniker [Belarion] from a fantasy novel which featured a 
> character by that name"; and "Williamson's book
> [Jack Williamson's werewolf novel, Darker Than You Think] evidently 
> influenced Parsons' writing...").
>
> Sex and Rockets is an interesting read, well illustrated with photographs, 
> newspaper cuttings, patent applications and all manner of
> other related items. One feels the author could have gone into more depth, 
> however, and the lack of notes and references means
> any reader wanting to research some aspects of Parsons' life more thoroughly 
> has difficulty knowing where to start (the
> reasonably good bibliography doesn't altogether compensate for this 
> omission). As for Robert Anton Wilson's introduction (his
> name appears on the - otherwise wonderful! - dustjacket in letters as high 
> as Carter's); this is the usual mix of joyously surreal
> originality and aggravatingly obvious errors of fact which we expect of him.