Sex and Rockets - The Occult World of Jack Parsons (gnv64)

Sex and Rockets - The Occult World of Jack Parsons
by John Carter,? Robert Anton Wilson
Feral House | March 2005 | ISBN-10: 0922915970 | ePUB/converted PDF | 8.44/7.18 mb
https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Rockets-Occult-World-Parsons/dp/0922915970
Converted to PDF by me.

This remarkable true story about the co-founder of Jet Propulsion Laboratory. By day, Parsons’ unorthodox genius created a solid rocket fuel that helped the Allies win World War II. By night, Parsons called himself The Antichrist.
Scientist, poet, and self-proclaimed Antichrist, Jack Parsons was a bizarre genius whose life reads like an implausible yet irresistible science fiction novel. Sex and Rockets looks at his short life and dual career as cofounder of Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and leader of the Agape Lodge of Aleister Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO). Author John Carter scours primary documents and interviews surviving friends and contemporaries to deliver an intriguing portrait of a dreamy, driven man equally interested in rocketry and magick. From his early childhood and deep attachment to his mother (who killed herself hours after he died) through his nonacademic research and brilliant innovations in solid fuels to his mysterious 1952 demise in a garage-laboratory explosion at the age of 37, the reader gets the impression of a man whose obsession with explosives and propellants was nearly single-minded. Yet this same man found spiritual fulfillment through Crowley's Law of Thelema, conducted magickal operations with L. Ron Hubbard, and signed an oath asserting himself to be the Antichrist--clearly Parsons wasn't a boring guy in a white coat. Carter pulls off the difficult task of integrating Parsons's disparate drives into one compelling story; though there are some rough spots and awkward transitions, one gets the sense that this illuminates the man's life better than a smooth, flawless work would. Robert Anton Wilson's introduction is smart and funny as always, initiating the uninformed into the basics of Crowleyanity while placing Parsons in the context of his times.

CONTENTS
Introduction by Robert Anton Wilson
Preface
one - The Early Years: 1914–1936
two - Parsons at Caltech: 1936–1939
three - A Short History of the OTO
four - Parsons’ Double Life: 1940–1942
five - The Return to South Orange Grove Ave.: 1942–1945
six - An Introduction to Enochian Magic
seven - The Babalon Working, Part 1: January–February 1946
eight - The Babalon Working, Part 2: March 1946
nine - Parsons’ Final Years: 1946–1952
ten - Death and Beyond
Afterword
Photo Section
Appendix A - Primary Bibliography
Appendix B - Secondary Bibliography
Appendix C - Additional References
Index