Cassandra Khaw
The Verge
April 24, 2014

Jack Whiteside Parsons was an unusual man. He co-founded both the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Aerojet Engineering Corporation, created pyrotechnics for the film industry, wrote a book of poems, and masturbated onto “magical tablets” in an attempt to conjure a lover. At Wired UK, Olivia Solon intertwines her interview with biographer George Pendle with a look into the rocket engineer’s occult-tinted history. While it’s arguable if Parsons is the “forgotten figure” Pendle paints him to be, it is still amazing to see how a disciple of the notorious Aleister Crowley contributed to space technology.

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