Parsons cofounded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), led the Agape Lodge of Aleister Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), and mingled with notable scientists, thinkers, and writers of his day, including Ray Bradbury, L. Ron Hubbard, and Robert A. Heinlein. Among Parsons' hobbies including explosives and solid rocket fuels was the avid practice of magical rituals in the vein of Aleister Crowley. Carter initiates readers into the world of angels and demons, magical languages, and numerology used.

The research in _Sex and Rockets_ focuses primarily on Jack's scientific career and secondarily on the Babalon Working itself. Of the former, the author traces a clear path detailing, validating and celebrating Parsons' contributions to the field of rocket fuel technology. Carter succeeds in his mission to carefully excavate and restore the previously almost-buried name and contributions of this scientist to their rightful stature in history. Of the latter, the author draws a clear juxtaposition between Cameron's view of the Babalon Working and Jack's own understanding. Carter clearly pinpoints the persistent indications in Jack's own records that reveal Jack's personal expectations of something more along the lines of an apotheosis than an actual incarnation, despite repeated communications from the Babalon archetype, also faithfully recorded, to redirect Jack's focus to the true nature of the Working, as time and again She gently deflects Jack's attention away from concerning himself with the future vehicle of Her manifestation. Carter also engages in some excellent reconstructive work about portions of the Working on which Jack's record is scant. While I do not agree with all Carter's conclusions or his particular slant on the Working at times, the Babalon Working remains a subject of myriad interpretations. Carter succeeds in his attempt to provide a more objective portrayal of the Working, and as such, his rings closer to true than other more fanciful and "fringe" speculations upon it have done in the past.

One thing I did not like about this book was the conspicuous absence of source citation. There were many interesting pieces of biographical information for which the author consistently failed to provide citation, neglecting to indicate whether he obtained the information from documents, records, conversations or interviews with people connected to Jack, etc. Comments by Cameron and others are recorded without so much as supplying the context in which they were made, when they were made, or to whom. Information about Jack's life which was not previously documented or heretofore known to the public is written as fact without offering any outside verification thereof. For example, Carter writes about a brief period of time where Jack's scientific career had stalled and Jack had taken an interim job at a filling station. Yet there is no source cited for this information. Whether the author obtained it from employment records, interviews with others connected with Jack's estate, or elsewhere remains a mystery, and the reader is left having to take the author's word with no means to verify it for himself. True, not every bit of information needs to be footnoted, and there is a lot of previously documented information about Jack's career. Nevertheless, previously undocumented and/or unpublished information should always be cited to verify its authenticity. Instead, the majority of existing citations in this book consist of things previously well-documented and cited elsewhere on numerous occasions, such as references to Crowley's writings and letters or O.T.O. ritual.

As a researcher, I find this frustrating, because without due citation for biographical information that is not documented elsewhere, how can _Sex and Rockets_ be regarded or used bibliographically as an authoritative source? The intelligent reader needs to see things historically documented or at least reasonably verified via citation, particularly where statements are attributed to other parties. This lack of documentation is definitely this book's biggest weakness. The author clearly did extensive and worthwhile research, so the lack of source citation is both puzzling and devaluing to the book as a whole.

Fair warning: there's one paragraph in the chapter "Death and Beyond" which brings up a very nasty bit of recent hearsay without duly informing the reader that the item in question is, in fact, unsubstantiated hearsay and that no physical evidence has been produced to substantiate it. Unless either the sources of the rumor, the author himself, or the publishers can produce the physical evidence claimed, or at least a sufficiently clear disclaimer as to its hearsay nature, repetition of this claim is inexcusably irresponsible, especially considering this book is the first reasonably thorough biographical work about Jack to be published. It smacks of crass sensationalism, which is totally unnecessary in exploring the life of a colorful and diversely talented person like Jack. I say produce the physical evidence or retract the rumor -- or at least amend the paragraph to clearly point out that it is nothing but hearsay and that no physical evidence to support the claim has been produced. Anything less is just plain exploitive, more worthy of the "Jerry Springer show" than an otherwise fairly well-researched biography.

Despite these two serious complaints, I still recommend this book as a ground-breaking, definitive biographical work on Jack Parsons. TIME IS ... for it to be read.

Shedona Chevalier (Soror M.'.P.'.B.'.) Master, Living Flame Camp, O.T.O.


666 WORDS ON JACK PARSONS   February 21, 2000
 21 out of 24 found this review helpful

Formulated by British humorist Stephen Potter circa 1950, thedoctrine of one-upmanship states quite simply that it is the businessof every intelligent man, no matter what situation he finds himself in, to be "one up" on the other chap. It is a philosophy that Jack Parsons, who died some two years later, would have benefited immensely by adopting. For a brilliant scientist Parsons was capable of remarkable naivete and as Gerald Suster delicately puts it, often had ideas "in excess of his ability to deal with them." In addition to being a rotten judge of character he wasn't conspicuously overburdened with common sense and had a knack amounting almost to genius for placing himself "one down" in relation to what Aleister Crowley called "our Brethren in California." Chief among these "Brethren in California" was of course Scientology founder Lafayette Ron Hubbard, who bamboozled Parsons with a series of "inspired" messages relating to the incarnation of Babalon, which he claimed to receive straight from the horse's mouth. Nowadays most sensible people associate Hubbard with the other end of the horse, but in the early Forties he was still an unknown quantity and seemingly had no trouble in swindling Parsons out of his money, his wife and his credibility in Crowley's eyes. ("It is the ordinary confidence trick.") Parsons was a potent but wildly erratic writer whose surviving material veers from elegiac beauty to surpassing daftness. If any constant can be traced through his work, good, bad or indifferent, it is that of schoolboy rebellion against "all authority not based on courage and manhood." Among other qualities, he shared with Crowley a conviction that "the key of joy is disobedience," and "conjured up" Marjorie Cameron to help him live it to the full. "I have my elemental," he exulted in February 1946, taking a characteristically rose-colored view of a magical operation which, while it was undoubtedly successful, ultimately proved to be a two-edged sword. For magical purposes Cameron chose to call herself Candida, the name of a parasitic fungal infection more commonly known as thrush. With her help Parsons attempted to conceive a Moonchild, thus provoking Crowley's ire ("I get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these louts") and effectively sealing his own fate. From then on the die was cast. In 1948 Parsons had an attack of the existential heebie jeebies and restyled himself Belarion Armillus Al Dajjal AntiChrist. Further bizarre events followed in rapid succession until, ripped off, conned and cuckolded by all and sundry, he blew himself to smithereens with fulminate of mercury. His death was neither murder (as some authors have rather fancifully suggested) nor a magical ricochet effect, but merely the natural culmination of a life dogged by disaster. Parsons has been profiled in several recent books, notably Montauk Revisited by Preston Nichols and Peter Moon, a turgid 250-page validation of John Grant's dictum that most occult potboilers are written by the gullible for the gullible. Now comes John Carter's full-length biography, which gathers together arcana from a wide variety of sources and binds them into a coherent whole. The text doesn't pretend to be definitive but nevertheless manages to cast fresh light on Parson methods, motives and manias. Particularly intriguing is its account of SF author Jack Williamson's peripheral influence on the so-called Babalon Working. Readers are also provided with several fascinating neuro-cameos of artist maudit Marjorie Cameron, whose red hair and natural sensuality made her ideal Scarlet Woman material. Cameron was in many respects a far more interesting figure than Parsons himself - but that's another story. These and other subjects are combined into a fast-moving, ever-changing word-portrait of human eccentricity. Parsons finally emerges as an occultist who, for all the scientific acumen attributed to him, would have blithely fallen for the three-card trick. Above all his life resembles a cautionary tale with the motto: "Don't dabble in the unknown." Perhaps that is the best way to view it.


Tedious, Confused, and Awful   February 15, 2000
 19 out of 24 found this review helpful

After reading the relatively glowing reviews here and in several magazines, I was looking forward to this book. The dual nature of Parsons' work and personal life was, and still is, interesting to me. Throw in some technical jargon (I'm an aerospace engineer) and I'm ready for a good time. However, this book was simply awful, and it's difficult to know where to begin the bad review.

The author makes the classical mistake of the academic or believer to describe the occult or mystical in minute details, spending paragraph after paragraph listing degress, rites, rituals, temples, splinter groups, etc. Background and explanation is good, a college course is not.

The actual description of events is needlessly confusing, with the tiresome use of the "later" approach, i.e., "we will see later why --insert topic-- is important". If something is important enough to bring up, describe it now. I haven't seen this technique used this much since freshmen english. Also, there is a constant tendency in the book to play catch up with Parson's work versus his personal life. The author seems to start with a simple "two path" description, but relatively quickly (approx. chapter 5) branches to Parson's personal/mystical life, and then spends a paragraph here, a chapter there, to finish off Parson's professional career.

The worst aspect of the book is the fact that I don't really have a better understanding of Parsons the man now then I did before I read the book. I simple possess a few more facts, mostly irrelevant, and sense of loss for the time I wasted. The book is far more interested in explaining, possibly promoting, the occult than exploring the different aspects of Parson.


A juicy expose of a brilliant man.   October 3, 2000
 14 out of 18 found this review helpful

John Parsons made some of the most important contributions to science in the 20th century, yet he had a dark fascination with the occult. This book reads very much like Hollywood Babylon -- lots of juicy and shocking details -- but essentially it skims the surface and doesn't explore Parsons' psychology. Why would a brilliant scientist involve himself with the fantasy world of the occult? I myself have read The Book of Lies by Crowley, and some of his other work, yet none of it has convinced me magick is a worthwhile pursuit. Parsons himself never really got any of these rites to work, so why did he faithfully continue on this path? In spite of this book's lack of depth (or an answer to this question), I found it to be an enjoyable read. Always fascinated by the hijinks of the church of Scientology (not yet formed when the events of this book took place), it was amusing to read the true account (as opposed to the Churh of Scientology's account) of L. Ron's affiliation with Parsons -- also bravely told in Bare-Faced Messiah, now sadly out of print but available on the net. The book contains a good selection of photographs, but could use more footnotes. Anyone interested in Parsons, Crowley or Hubbard should find this book interesting.


Slightly uneven portrait of a fascinating man   January 24, 2006
 12 out of 14 found this review helpful

Jack/John Parsons was a polarized man with expansive influences in modern day America. As John Parsons, he was a father of solid rocket fuel, the third most influential man in rocket history (according to pioneer Theodore von Karman), and a co-founder of both NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Aerojet Corporation. He was a self-taught experimenter whose work rivaled that of PhDs. As Jack Parsons, on the other hand, he called himself The Antichrist and ran an occult lodge practicing Aleister Crowley's Ordo Templi Orrentis and the Thelemic rituals. With L. Ron Hubbard (later founder of Scientology), he practiced dark Babalon rituals to raise spiritual elementals and gain a higher awareness.

Author Carter uses public records, media sources, books, NASA archives, letters, and more to recount the life of the enigmatic Parsons. He is painfully meticulous in his telling of the story (some details are a bit too much unless you are an extreme fanatic of either rockets or Crowley). In Chapters 7 and 8, for example, every second of the Babalon rituals, lasting 12 days in one case, is recounted. The author even fills in portions of the ritual that are missing from Parsons's own notes. As a contribution to the occult record, these may be significant to get on paper once, but they are very trying for the armchair aerospace enthusiast to absorb. The author's research has revealed untruths in other published accounts, and he has the facts to back up his version of the events. Carter gives all his sources in footnotes and several extensive appendices, as well as references within the text to other worthwhile sources.

Carter seems to be a bit inexperienced as a writer. He does some odd foreshadowing that just seems to hang. He also searches for "coincidences" when there are none. For example, he makes note that a girlfriend of Parsons, L. Ron Hubbard, and the author Heinlen (who met Parsons just once) were all in the Navy. With the cast of dozens of scientists, occultists, and hangers-on that appear in this book, it hardly seems significant that three unrelated people did Navy duty at one time. Another "coincidence" is that Parsons's acid-aniline fuel mix was later used in the Titan missle, and Aleister Crowley sometimes referred to himself as Teitan (original Greek spelling). Considering Parsons was long gone from the military and DoD by the time the Titan missle was named, and Crowley used dozens of names and symbols in his many writings, this seems completely superfluous.

The book gets 4 out of 5 stars for the slightly-lacking writing quality. It can't be completely discounted, and if you can make it past the tedious amount of detail in spots, this is a worthwhile read. Parsons as a man gets 5/5 for being a genius, for being influential, and for just being "out there," and this is one of the best sources for reading about his life in government reseach and in the occult.