Sex, Drugs & Rocket Science: The Occult World of Jack Parsons with Adam Parfrey of Feral House

Adam Parfrey’s fearless publishing style has lead to an invaluable contribution to the modern literary world – he dares to venture where few men dare, releasing information to the world that is absolutely priceless. Known for his risqué and unconventional choice in books, their content and subject-matter provide insight and illumination into topics that the general public, for the most part, has never stumbled upon or even heard of. Parfrey aside for now though, this West of The Rockies episode focuses on a very particular book, namely, Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons, written by John Carter (alongside a rather insightful and entertaining foreword by Robert Anton Wilson). Jack Parsons was a rocket scientist, inarguably the most significant and influential rocket scientist to have walked this Earth. Though oft overlooked in history and popular media, his works and inventions are essentially the entire basis for NASA’s successful rocket program. He was an eccentric, daring and fearless man, co-founder of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and an absolute genius whose experimentations lead to the invention of rocket fuel, helping the allies to win WWII. When not engaging with rockets and explosives, however, Parsons lead a secret life of underground occultism, associating with the likes of Aleister Crowley and L. Ron Hubbard, engaging in sex-magick rituals, and, most incredibly, signing an oath asserting himself to be the Antichrist (and in fact genuinely believing so). Interesting, or perhaps more frighteningly, Parsons decided to invoke the Devil at the mere age of thirteen, performing a ritual in his bedroom (which is commonly believed to have been successful), and rather unsurprisingly frightening himself to such an extent, that he ceased to pursue his bizarre occult interests for quite some time.