51–60 of 68 posts
I didn't see any support in the article for occult roots of JPL. Occult was simply another interest of Parsons.
If you want to know more about this, the Unexplained podcast has a 3-parts episode on the story of Jack Parsons. Really recommended! http://www.unexplainedpodcast.com/episodes/2018/3/20/s03-epi...
There's also a TV series: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7210448/ and a book by the same name: https://www.amazon.com/Strange-Angel-Otherworldly-Scientist-... . I read the book but haven't seen the series. The book was quite good but has some slow patches and seems to get a little lost at times. (I work at JPL)
The way the series depicts occultism vs traditional religion, traditional vs modernism and their interaction is surprisingly deep. It's not just shady characters using vulnerable and unstable people (it's that too). It's also people trying to escape traditional society and using things like occultism as way to get out. It leads to tragedies, but sometimes it nudges people to the right direction.
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Well, the article directly contradicts your perspective of Crowley and Parsons beliefs with: beastiality, incest, and more.
I'm agnostic about those allegations personally. Anything fringe back then was going to attract tabloid claims, and Crowley himself was a troll who was fond of promoting outrageous BS about himself for attention. They were a bunch of nutballs certainly but there's quite a bit of very sensational stuff out there about that scene that's just as questionable. Today they'd just be a bunch of goth swingers into Neo-Pagan…
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Casting Crowley as the evil crazed Satanist is basically like if people in 50 years were to watch a bunch of Marilyn Manson videos and decide he was really an evil vampire. It's part of the marketing. On the other hand, this > using veiled language meant to offend is frequently the opposite of the case. Frequently, the veiled language is used to obscure the nature of some rituals which many "uninitiated" would likely…
Crowley had a mischievous streak and delighted being in the spotlight. His writing style was infused by sarcasm and was all over the spectrum of using poetic and sexual language to both offend and veil. I do not think you are correct in your assessment as clearly he couldn't care less about offending people. An example is when he refers to masturbation as "child sacrifice": “For the highest spiritual working one must…
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According to most of what I've read Parsons was kind of conned by Hubbard. They did have an association for a while but I don't get the sense that Parsons had any direct role in Scientology per se. Hubbard invented that later.
The postwar Pasadena areospace scene was wild. Scientology is basically Crowley’s Thelema but in 1950’s space opera clothing. Parsons didn’t have any role in developing beyond introducing Hubbard to Crowely, and most notably Sara Northrup. Sara Northrup, later L Ron’s wife, helped develop Dianetics, and Scientology. I read J.W. Carter’s ”Sex and Rockets”, and Lawerence Wright’s “Going Clear” back to back, and togethe…
The ulter ego he says he encountered in his occult rituals he calls "Dajjal". Interestingly, it is the same name for the Anti Christ that exists in early Islamic literature. What is even more striking is that this same literature describes the Dajaal as one-eyed. We all know that the one eye is the symbol of the illuminaty cult. Another thing that really reminded me about this guy is the movie "Ready Player One", it…
https://paradoxosalpha.livejournal.com/79983.html
> As to my study of Islam, I got a sheikh to teach me Arabic and the practices of ablution, prayer and so on, so that at some future time I might pass for a Moslem among themselves. I learnt a number of chapters of the Koran by heart..... My sheikh was profoundly versed in the mysticism and magic of Islam, and discovering that I was an initiate, had no hesitation in providing me with books and manuscripts on the Arabic Cabbala. These formed the basis of my comparative studies.
— Alastair Crowley.
Parsons is a very interesting character. I think the same character traits that cause scientists to produce new theories also causes them to go into "weird" directions. You have to have a high level of stubbornness and fearlessness to go against the shared wisdom of the time. In general I love to read about famous persons who had a lot of on the surface contradictory facets to their personality. There is a tendency i…
One of the greatest self-inflicted wounds in the modern world is the propensity to portray Nazi Germany and its major figures in a completely cartoonish fashion. Godwin's law be what it may but the long term ramifications of pointing to Nazis as inhumanely evil to a point that breaks all logic has blinded people from being able to accurately understand exactly what led to their rise to power, what drove their decision making process, and how they managed to direct an entire country toward supporting the very goals currently portrayed as the actions of a handful of mad hatters divorced from all laws of human behavior.
Everyone knows the colloquialsim that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, well here's a perfecf example of that in action. Disingenuous representations and false accounts of history eliminate the possibility of developing a true understanding of how things actually progressed in reality. If you can't understand how things progressed, you have no hope of countering that progression until things have developed too far to be reversed through peaceful means.
Parsons is a very interesting character. I think the same character traits that cause scientists to produce new theories also causes them to go into "weird" directions. You have to have a high level of stubbornness and fearlessness to go against the shared wisdom of the time. In general I love to read about famous persons who had a lot of on the surface contradictory facets to their personality. There is a tendency i…
"A while ago I saw a British TV show about Hitler and there they had a scene where Hitler shot his dog out of anger. From whatever I know he loved dogs but somehow the show creators thought Hitler has to be portrayed as a totally bad guy." One of the greatest self-inflicted wounds in the modern world is the propensity to portray Nazi Germany and its major figures in a completely cartoonish fashion. Godwin's law be wh…
> Everyone knows the colloquialsim that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it...
Whatever self-inflicted or by design, a nation that understands Nazi Germany will not put up with the direction that most nations are going in regards to totalitarianism recently, so it may be working as intended.
Parsons is a very interesting character. I think the same character traits that cause scientists to produce new theories also causes them to go into "weird" directions. You have to have a high level of stubbornness and fearlessness to go against the shared wisdom of the time. In general I love to read about famous persons who had a lot of on the surface contradictory facets to their personality. There is a tendency i…
"A while ago I saw a British TV show about Hitler and there they had a scene where Hitler shot his dog out of anger. From whatever I know he loved dogs but somehow the show creators thought Hitler has to be portrayed as a totally bad guy." One of the greatest self-inflicted wounds in the modern world is the propensity to portray Nazi Germany and its major figures in a completely cartoonish fashion. Godwin's law be wh…
If you want to know more about this, the Unexplained podcast has a 3-parts episode on the story of Jack Parsons. Really recommended! http://www.unexplainedpodcast.com/episodes/2018/3/20/s03-epi...