I saw the Scarlet Woman sitting on the Beast with seven heads and ten horns, covered with blaspemous names… On her forehead a name had been written, a mystery: Babalon the Great, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the Earth. I saw the woman was drunk from the blood of the Saints, and from the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. Seeing her, I wondered greatly. –Revelation 17: 3-6

Jack Parsons was quite an intriguing chap. He was an American rocket propulsion researcher and co-founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who pioneered innovations in jet fuel composition. Werner von Braun claimed that Parsons was the true father of the U.S. Space program and there is a crater on the dark side of the moon named after him. But, sometimes with an eccentric individual’s biography it is fun to start at the final chapter.

Jack had the habit of fiddling about with volatile chemicals and compounds in his laboratory without taking the necessary safety precautions. Jack might have been nimble, even a bit quick, but he was unable to jump over the deadly explosive fireball of fulminate of mercury that day in 1952. He died of wounds several hours later. His dear mum took her own life with a bottle of sleeping pills shortly after hearing the news of her son’s demise.

When Parsons was not busy engineering and firing off rockets, he spent his spare time studying the occult and performing magick rituals. Evidently Jack played his tarot cards right because he was chosen by Aleister Crowley to lead the Agape Lodge of the Thelemic Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) in California.

Here is where things get a bit more interesting. According to the reputable writings of the Scientology cult, The U.S. Navy assigned L. Ron Hubbard to monitor Parsons as part of a plan to “break up a black magic ring.” Supposedly, Parsons broke his sacred vows of secrecy to the O.T.O. and revealed hidden knowledge to the now famous cult huckster.

Some time later, Parsons and Hubbard engaged upon a mission entitled Babalon Working. The goal was to produce the “Moonchild” – a being who embodies physically a spirit deity, but not inhabited by a human soul. This being is also referred to as a “Magical Child” (essentially designed to manifest an individual incarnation of the archetypal divine feminine called Babalon). The process draws heavily from rituals and magick that Crowley derived from The Babylonian Ishtar and the “Great Whore” from the biblical “Book of Revelation.”

From Jan. 4th to 15th, Parsons and Hubbard engaged in a nightly ritual of incantation, talisman-waving & other Black Magic, faithfully described in Parsons diary as a Conjuration of Air, Invocation of Wand, & Consecration of Air Dagger. The climax of the ceremony occured the following day with Ron at the alter working his 2 subjects into a sexual frenzy. Over Rachmaninoff’s “Isle of the Dead” he intoned such gems as:- Her mouth is red & her breasts are fair, and her loins of full of fire. As exalted Parsons wrote the next day, Babalon is incarnate upon the earth today manifestation. And in that day my work will be accomplished and I shall be blown away upon the breath of the father, even as it is written. (source)

Evidently, Crowley did not have too much faith in Parsons, or the Scientology Huckster. After hearing news of the attempted supernatural baby creation, he wrote to Karl Germer, head of the OTO: “Apparently Parsons or Hubbard or somebody is producing a Moonchild. I get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these louts.”

Shortly thereafter, Hubbard swindled Parsons into investing money into a business enterprise. Instead of turning a handsome profit, Hubbard and his girlfriend used the money to purchase a yacht. When they attempted to escape, Parsons performed a full invocation of Bartzabel, the spirit of Mars, creating a squall forcing them to return to the dock. Crowley cabled the U.S. branch headquarters with the message: “Suspect Ron playing confidence trick-John Parsons weak fool-obvious victim prowling swindlers.”

Parsons managed to fulfill his aforementioned prophecy and blew himself up in his laboratory a few years later (maybe with a little help from the F.B.I.). L. Ron Hubbard went on to create one of the most destructive cults in the modern era. Funny how things work out.

I hight Don Quixote, I live on peyote, marijuana, morphine and cocaine, I never know sadness, but only a madness that burns at the heart and the brain. I see each charwoman, ecstatic, inhuman, angelic, demonic, divine. Each wagon a dragon, each beer mug a flagon that brims with ambrosial wine. ~ Jack Parsons