Jack Parsons

Jack Parsons (1914-1952) was an American rocket engineer, chemist and Thelemite occultist who was a principal founder of both the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Aerojet Engineering Corporation, and who helped pioneer solid fuel rocket propellant technology in the 1930s and 1940s. In 1939 he converted to Thelema, the religious philosophy founded by Aleister Crowley, and by 1942 he was leading the Agape Lodge, the American branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis, in Pasadena, California. Between 1945 and 1946 he conducted a series of ceremonial magic rituals known as the Babalon Working, intended to invoke the goddess Babalon. Parsons died in 1952 at age 37 in an explosion in his home laboratory, an event officially ruled accidental though some associates suspected suicide or foul play. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/