Jack Parsons

[Richard Romeo]

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.
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