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Jack Parsons and the Occult Roots of JPL

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Re: Jack Parsons and the Occult Roots of JPL

#61

Post by SquareWheel »

turnon wrote: post #29

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…

Both of your comments to this site now hint at conspiracy theories about a moon landing hoax. Your other comment was flagged but this one has not been.

Please do not spread conspiracy theories like this on Hacker News.

Re: Jack Parsons and the Occult Roots of JPL

#62

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

lostgame wrote: post #32
api wrote: post #2

If anyone hasn't seen Strange Angel I highly recommend it. It's definitely the "Hollywood version" to some extent but it's relatively close to his biographies and is a decent watch regardless. The title and thesis here is a bit wacky. JPL itself doesn't have "occult roots." Parsons was into occultism and Thelema/Crowley, which is far less sensational than it sounds if you've ever actually read any of that stuff. It's…

Source: previous O.T.O. member and Initiate, as well as an Initate of another particular Secret Society. Um, no. Sorry. I don’t know what you read; but maybe go check out ‘The Book of Lies’, or a number of Crowley’s other, more taboo and dark pieces of literature. Ritual Magick, especially as Crowley and Parsons participated in, may include the likes of summoning archangels and demons, the use of altered states inclu…

I dunno, I thought that a lot of it (especially the exercises in MiTaP) was reminiscent of later psychological research. For instance, I believe that its one of the first examples of negative reinforcement, which didn't really become mainstream until the 50's or so.

Additionally, if you check out Tibetan Buddhism rituals, you see a lot of what looks very like ritual magick. I was very very surprised at the amount of overlaps with the western/thelemic tradition.

Just my 0.02.

Re: Jack Parsons and the Occult Roots of JPL

#63

Post by gaius »

bitexploder wrote: post #59
cc439 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

The book Ordinary Men covers this. It is quite fascinating. Regular people became the Nazis. People on HN could become Nazis. This is an uncomfortable truth not many people are willing to confront. I’ll give HNers some credit, but still, the way it progresses is subtle and nefarious. (It being Authoritarianism into Totlitsrianism with a dictator$

[flagged]

Re: Jack Parsons and the Occult Roots of JPL

#64

Post by Angostura »

gaius wrote: post #63
bitexploder wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The book Ordinary Men covers this. It is quite fascinating. Regular people became the Nazis. People on HN could become Nazis. This is an uncomfortable truth not many people are willing to confront. I’ll give HNers some credit, but still, the way it progresses is subtle and nefarious. (It being Authoritarianism into Totlitsrianism with a dictator$

[flagged]

I'd be interested in seeing evidence of anyone on HN self-identifying as antifa. I mean, I'm anti-fascist, but 'antifa' seems like a pejorative label at this point.

Re: Jack Parsons and the Occult Roots of JPL

#65

Post by fsloth »

cc439 wrote: post #57
maxxxxx wrote: post #16

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…

Sure.

Nazis were more aligned than unaligned with the rest of the western culture.

The worst part when discussing pre-world war 2 germany is highlighting how racist and xenophobic they were - while politely glossing the issue that everyone was xenophobic and racist back then. It was totally ok in polite circles to consider eugenics as fine possibility to make progress forward in any western country back then, I think.

Nazi's didn't invent half of the horrors we know them for. They just took a few of them to their extremes. I think people understood from their example what parts of popularly held ideas were really not tenable since they were so strongly associated with Nazi attrocities.

Re: Jack Parsons and the Occult Roots of JPL

#66

Post by smcl »

Angostura wrote: post #64
gaius wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'd be interested in seeing evidence of anyone on HN self-identifying as antifa. I mean, I'm anti-fascist, but 'antifa' seems like a pejorative label at this point.

I haven't seen it either. In fact when I saw that the parent comment was flagged I thought that it probably called out the HN crowd for being too right wing. I've seen far more right-wing comments than left-wing - particularly when the James Damore stuff was hitting the news.

And re "antifa" as a pejorative - I think it's only really used that way among the Fox news or Infowars crowd. If those guys want to come out as "anti-anti-fascist" then there's a much simpler term they can use ...

Re: Jack Parsons and the Occult Roots of JPL

#67

Post by that_jojo »

astronautjones wrote: post #60
tunnuz wrote: post #4

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...

also many shades of this in the Pynchon classic Gravity's Rainbow

WHOA. Alright, time to re-read that guy again.

Re: Jack Parsons and the Occult Roots of JPL

#68

Post by api »

cc439 wrote: post #57
maxxxxx wrote: post #16

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…

Part of it is that we dont want to face what our forebears did in the 18th and 19th centuries to native populations. Better to portray Hitler as a comic book villain than as the culmination of a trend.
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