MARCUS PARKS
I don't know if it's because of all the Thelema we've been reading but I had a dream last night that me and Carolina were in a trouble with a young James Caan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean that really does fit.
BEN KISSEL
What a lucky young James Caan.
MARCUS PARKS
But that's the thing, it was lucky for James Caan because I was the one that felt put out. You know how it happens? I felt a little put out of the whole thing.
BEN KISSEL
Okay fine, James. I'm just gonna go eat my chicken vindaloo alone.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wait a second. But is this because he wouldn't let you fuck him?
MARCUS PARKS
No. No, no, no. They just seemed to be having a better time without me than they were-
BEN KISSEL
Yeah why did you dream that you were with another dude? I mean it's fine but-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not his fault, he doesn't know.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's his dream!
MARCUS PARKS
I don't choose what I dream about. It's Thelema. And in Thelema there's a lot of those MMF situations happening.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There absolutely is.
MARCUS PARKS
A lot of spitroasting. A lot of spitroasting.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is very difficult to be a magician because one of the singular most difficult things I think truly is to be able to sit in a fairly stuffy room surrounded by a group of people in robes and remain hard.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because that is one of the trials of one of the steps of the OTO is literally you must enter into the circle rude published, that is what they called it. And then you have to maintain it which is very difficult for me because again I love to perform but not when it's intimate.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Tough day to be a janitor. Welcome to Last Podcast on the Left everyone. I am Ben hanging out with Marcus, the newly horned up Marcus by the way, looking at James Caan's young tushy, and Henry Zebrowski.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So you were watching them have sex with each other?
MARCUS PARKS
Not at all. I don't know. I said nothing in my statement to imply that.
BEN KISSEL
You said there was a throuple!
MARCUS PARKS
A throuple, yeah. A throuple, not necessarily a threesome. A throuple is different from a threesome.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh. So you were the boring part?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You were doing the everybody sitting around figuring out what we're gonna watch on Netflix in a trifecta together?
MARCUS PARKS
Yes!
BEN KISSEL
Ooh that's hard.
MARCUS PARKS
The throuple, I'm talking about a throuple. That's why I said throuple, not threesome. No, it was a throuple.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And then at the end of it an old girlfriend from high school, this really Christian girl, she got a hold of me and was like, 'Hey I hear you're having some troubles, you want to get together?' I'm like I don't want that either.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know what I find interesting? You know in our dreams, everybody you see is you.
BEN KISSEL
Indeed, that's the case. And of course a throuple, that's what I call my air, land, and sea, my fish filet chicken breast sandwich and good old beef. Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Technically that's already called a McGangBang. That's already been done.
BEN KISSEL
McGangBang.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Fantastic. All right everyone, we're onto Jack Parsons Part 2.
MARCUS PARKS
So when we last left Jack Parsons the year was 1939 and he'd just been introduced to the Los Angeles occult scene in the form of the Agape Lodge of the OTO founded by Aleister Crowley. At the same time he was also making seismic breakthroughs in the scientific world through his work in rocketry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And can they be uncoupled? I submit that they cannot.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
But by 1939 the term 'rocket' was seen as a purely science fiction term. Put another way, it would be like if we developed faster than light technology but called it warp drive instead of the more scientific way of saying it, FTL.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that's what I fucking hate. Just call it warp drive.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, just call it warp drive.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that's the problem though and then Trump did it with Space Force and then you're like ugh, it's fun that it's Space Force but they don't do anything.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They just got a new flag.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
And it's stupid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well they're blowing stuff up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. So to shed the science fiction connotations, the Jack Parsons crew at Caltech, the so- called Suicide Squad, they decided to change the name of their technology.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Magic.
MARCUS PARKS
Instead of calling them rockets, Parsons and the rest would from then on refer to this new technology as-
BEN KISSEL
Metal hot dogs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Perfect.
MARCUS PARKS
Jet technology.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jets.
BEN KISSEL
Jet technology. Okay. Jets.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then they all got together and they faced off against those Puerto Ricans, they had the rumble.
BEN KISSEL
That's the Jets and the Sharks, my friend. That is... Now I forgot what it is.
MARCUS PARKS
West Side Story.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
West Side Story.
BEN KISSEL
West Side Story.
MARCUS PARKS
However this technology was not shooting towards the stars just yet in 1939. WWII had already begun and conflict in one way or another was obviously on the horizon for the United States. So the Suicide Squad was given funding from the government to develop Jet-Assisted Take Off for their fighter and cargo planes. This technology was known as JATO.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
MARCUS PARKS
And the Suicide Squad became America's first government sanctioned rocket research group. I'm gonna be using the term JATO a lot over this series.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. So just get used to it.
BEN KISSEL
JATO. And what does it stand for again?
MARCUS PARKS
Jet-Assisted Take Off. That's why I'm reiterating.
BEN KISSEL
JATO.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you, yes.
BEN KISSEL
J-A-T-O.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the evil cousin of Kato.
BEN KISSEL
He did too much meth to fall asleep.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was outside of the pool house.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay.
MARCUS PARKS
So after almost blowing themselves up on the Caltech campus with a twin set of explosions when an oxygen line caught fire and ignited a tank of ethylene, the Suicide Squad asked the government for a budget of $100,000.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey!
BEN KISSEL
That's nothing.
MARCUS PARKS
They got 10.
BEN KISSEL
Oh good.
MARCUS PARKS
But were still overjoyed that someone was finally taking them seriously. And they'd honestly sort of high balled it a little bit. You ask for a lot, you get a little.
BEN KISSEL
I've seen Shark Tank.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's important to do.
MARCUS PARKS
In fact Parsons and his crew believed that they had been immediately welcomed into the higher ranks of scientific society because just after they'd received funding, they were invited to do a formal dinner at Caltech. They're in the big leagues.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We're going to war, we're getting chicken.
BEN KISSEL
This is really exciting. Good broccoli too.
MARCUS PARKS
However Frank Malina, one of their crew, discovered that the Suicide Squad had actually been invited to the fancy dinner due to a clerical error but frank didn't have the heart to tell the rest of the crew that they'd only been invited by accident.
BEN KISSEL
Who cares? If you're invited by accident you're still invited. I think that's how we got invited to Heidi Klum Halloween party. I'm not going to tell her that we're invited because as soon as they find out then you're off the list.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A W is a W in all areas of life. Never question, just show up.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely. Show up. You were invited.
MARCUS PARKS
So after months of testing different powder formulas in huts made of corrugated iron in the Arroyo Seco where the temperatures regularly hit 100°, Parsons made a breakthrough that got the crew closer to JATO, Jet-Assisted Take Off.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah. That's what it stands for.
BEN KISSEL
JATO.
MARCUS PARKS
So the government doubled his group's funding in 1940.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man.
MARCUS PARKS
But just as Parsons was breaking new ground in the field of rocketry, he was also immersing himself in the works of Aleister Crowley.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Mr. Crowley!
MARCUS PARKS
And he was well on his way to discovering knowledge that he believed would allow him to change the fabric of reality.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because not only was it 'Konx Om Pax' that was a book that inspired him which we talked a little bit last week which is what Aleister Crowley views as one of the fundamental books that one must read in order to become a Minerval inside of the OTO.
BEN KISSEL
A Minerval?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's what the initiates are called.
BEN KISSEL
A Minerval?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A Minerval!
BEN KISSEL
Oh my.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he was also obsessed with a book called 'Darker Than You Think' which was by Jack Williamson and it's about what? Were-people.
BEN KISSEL
Were-people.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Anybody that can turn into an animal. It's a secret society that has fostered doubt in werewolves, right, so that they could go back and hide, right. Because they staged the witch hunts of the 1800s, right. Saying look, we got all the witches and all the werewolves, we got them all.
BEN KISSEL
They were LARPing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. No but they were werewolves. And then they went into hiding so they could go and plan their next move so they can come back and take over the world. But he got really into this concept of shapeshifting, right. There was something about this. And the fact that the lead woman in the book was a big bosomed, flaming red-haired, green-eyed woman that would become as we see-
MARCUS PARKS
The scarlet woman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. His obsessions as things went on. But now we're seeing him in what I call his like neophyte phase.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where he is starting to understand the processes of magical thinking and ritual and he is getting obsessed with it because at the same time not only is it personally fulfilling, it's inspiring, but it's getting him out of the world of all these stuffy scientists and getting them into the world of all this hot ass bush.
BEN KISSEL
All right. So now you feel better getting that off your chest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's one thing.
BEN KISSEL
All right, fantastic. A merval sounds like an otter that doesn't like to swim.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's been saving.
BEN KISSEL
He's a typical merval.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Minerval.
BEN KISSEL
He's a typical Minerval.
MARCUS PARKS
Now concerning Aleister Crowley, perhaps the most important concept in his belief system Thelema is that of will which again is not necessarily how we think of will.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not the will to succeed or the will to survive. Rather will in Thelemic terms is more destiny combined with purpose.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And again this is more of your interpretation. Will, as you'll discover the more and more you read it, the more and more you understand that it is a constant shifting deciphering of will and what that means on any different level. It is both a practical level, just straight up it is my will to be the hottest Scottish-Polish NBA player that they've ever seen, right?
BEN KISSEL
Well that's not possible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Exactly. But that's just one of my wills, right. Then you find out what lines up-
BEN KISSEL
Shouldn't it be in the realm of possibility?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the idea is that what your true will may be, also maybe. Because think about it, was it really in the realm of possibility for any one of us to be professionals in the entertainment industry? I don't fucking know.
BEN KISSEL
Well I think so.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not necessarily. We were born way outside of it. None of us had institutional connections. What do we see? Mostly people who make an entertainment or people that are born in money and in magic.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah but it would be like if we didn't have any mouths or eyes or ears or feet or hands.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You gotta be super talented then.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's true.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You gotta be the torso man.
MARCUS PARKS
I had like two fortune tellers telling me when I was a kid that I was gonna do well in entertainment. So I got that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's because they were just trying to molest you. That's different.
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But again it's more about like these concepts are moving and shifting.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So it really depends on what aligns with you. And with Jack Parsons as soon as he discovered this, because we talked about last episode he was such a headstrong motherfucker, that he was like ah yes I know my will.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean my interpretation still holds I think. Destinies change, purposes change.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And in Thelemic thought, every person has a true will or purpose that should be pursued to the exclusion of all else. And of course that can change, purposes change, goals change. And Crowley theorized that much of the world's problems came from people not following their true will. And perhaps from Henry's interpretation that might be not recognizing when your will has changed, holding onto something far longer than you should.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Exactly.
BEN KISSEL
Or it's like a dude named Minerval who was born with his foot backwards but also became an NFL kicker.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But again, learn how to use it, understood. I need to do football backwards.
BEN KISSEL
So he kicks it backwards.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
Like a horse.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's something else, that's something different. JATO. That is JATO.
BEN KISSEL
JATO it is. All right, I'm getting it now.
MARCUS PARKS
Now I think the concept of true will, I think it holds true for some people and it isn't true at all for others. Although I'll admit that the older I get, even since we did our Aleister Crowley series, the more of the concept of true will really does make a lot of sense to me.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because it's on you to mine yourself, the raw material of your spirit, to find what the will is. And that's the thing, it's on you to do it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I'mma go make some raw material right now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See? Again, the man is of chicken wing, right. Ben Kissel's will is mostly centered around chicken wing issues and chicken wing politics, right.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What's in that world. And in that Kissel's expressing his Bud Light will.
MARCUS PARKS
Right.
BEN KISSEL
That is true. As a matter of fact on Sunday I did get a little bit too drunk and I was like chicken wings, why do they call them chicken wings when they're actually chicken feet?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is just completely utterly incorrect.
BEN KISSEL
No, there's no way, they have to be the wing. And I was convinced for 30 seconds they were feet. Isn't that weird?
MARCUS PARKS
No. Well you can buy chicken feet. Have you never been to a grocery store?
BEN KISSEL
No, I know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm so confused.
BEN KISSEL
I fought all over myself with this.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We've known each other for so long.
BEN KISSEL
For some reason I was like why would they call chicken wings chicken wings when they're feet? And then i was like no, that's wrong.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's in the name of the food!
BEN KISSEL
I know. I was questioning everything.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
It was like last night when I texted Henry at like 1 in the morning feeling like an idiot because I finally figured out that the reason why the Scottish water creature the Kelpie, the seahorse, the Kelpie is called a Kelpie because of kelp. It's underwater.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cause of fucking seaweed!
BEN KISSEL
Oh, intriguing indeed.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And Henry texted back 'we are dumb as shit'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, man. Because Kelpie is also the name of the unhelpful Starbucks barista.
BEN KISSEL
I love Kelpie.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the modern interpretation.
BEN KISSEL
I love kelp.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Jack Parsons, he was getting into Crowley's teaching so deeply that he began to consider Thelema itself as his true will. Rocketry was not his true will, Thelema was his true will, the true student. As such Jack and Helen were initiated into the Agape Lodge of the OTO on February 15, 1941 with Jack taking this as his motto. Henry, please.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"The establishment of Thelema through the rituals of love."
BEN KISSEL
Oh that's nice.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean it's he's basically stating his intention to fuck his way through a lot of magic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
As I was going through this process again, right, because when we did the Aleister Crowley series I also went insane and now I'm back in it.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I sent Marcus some really funky ass Thelema jazz.
MARCUS PARKS
I'm waiting. I'm waiting because next week is when we're truly going to get into the magic stuff, I'm waiting for then so I don't mix the science and the jazz too much.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I wish I could play some for you now.
BEN KISSEL
Can we play it next episode please? Next episode we'll get into the jazz.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(moaning) It's just humping music, right. It's humping music.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you know what it is, man? Is that we're caught up on our fucking bullshit.
BEN KISSEL
I agree.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because we talk about yeah, he's fucking his way through magic. But he just understood what if fucking became my life?
BEN KISSEL
Nothing wrong with that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not only is fucking the center of my life but then I can figure out the sort of personal power attached to it. Fuck rockets. I've been blowing up since I was 9! I've been doing this a long time and now I'm like wait a second, now I can fuck and wear a wizard cap and do the whole fucking... All of the pageantry? Like the idea of doing those rituals and walking into a room and you're blindfolded and a man with a robe is pulling you in there and then there's a nude woman there and she's gonna suck you not til you come cause you gotta save it. It's incredible!
BEN KISSEL
Edging. Edging indeed. And fuck rocket is a fantastic new dildo product.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's a great one by Linda Lovelace.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's been dead for years.
BEN KISSEL
No, she's not. Wasn't she the one that had the clitoris in her throat?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's Deep Throat, yes.
BEN KISSEL
That was Linda Lovelace though.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He refuses to learn. He refuses to engage with the material.
BEN KISSEL
I think that was Linda Lovelace.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She's dead, she's been dead since 2002. She has been dead.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay fine.
MARCUS PARKS
I think you're thinking of...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That is Debbie Does Dallas, he is correct. But Debbie Does Dallas comes from like 1972.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah but that was Linda Lovelace.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
What a story there.
MARCUS PARKS
Anyway, I think yeah, it's all this talking about fucking his way through magic, it's not bad, I'm not poo-pooing it at all. It is a good excuse to live a lifestyle that's stinky and sweaty in all the best ways. But Jack Parsons was a true believer in Thelemic principles. He's not just doing it, yes it's fun, that's great, that's a great side.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
That is definitely a great side effect.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He understood.
MARCUS PARKS
But he's doing it because he believes in it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He understood it's one package. And that it's all one, all of it. And who he was is that he was just an egg and now he need to crack the egg and become a chicken.
BEN KISSEL
Oh exciting.
MARCUS PARKS
Well once Jack Parsons was a part of the Lodge he increased the membership, started giving talks about the OTO in his own home, and began to think of the OTO as his family which would prove to be a grave mistake later on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
And so Parsons split his time between JATO tests and the OTO. And he would spend his off time in the desert unwinding the way a guy who splits his time between highly dangerous experimental rocketry and sex magic might do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
BEN KISSEL
Scrabble.
MARCUS PARKS
No, I don't know. I don't know the name of the game that him and Ed Forman used to play. I mean maybe it's called like shoot gun or almost die.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. What is this?
BEN KISSEL
I can see him being a board game guy.
MARCUS PARKS
They'd stand 50 yards apart from each other, take handguns, and then just fire them at each other to see who could get the closest to the other guy without hitting him with a bullet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude.
BEN KISSEL
Well what if they hit him?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He'd get shot. But man, this thing is he's not a board game guy. This is the freakiest, wildest motherfucker you would ever meet. You wouldn't want him nowhere near your girlfriend.
BEN KISSEL
Oh wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
At this point, this time, because everything's taken off and he's getting super slippery with it and all the magic and shit.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Man, I love this motherfucker.
BEN KISSEL
They can have sex with my girlfriend, her name is Minervala and she's fantastic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She needs to do the reading.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, absolutely. She has ears where her eyes are supposed to be and you should see where her eyes are.
MARCUS PARKS
But the thing about the OTO is that it did interfere with Jack's day job. One time he stayed up far too late partying, reading poetry, playing records with all his magical buddies.
BEN KISSEL
Aw that's nice.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a nice night. But he was super hungover because he really liked absinthe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And made his own absinthe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey man, fucking keeps you wiggly, man.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It's a strong one.
MARCUS PARKS
So the next morning because he was so hungover he rushed through a countdown and it caused a huge explosion.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the thing.
BEN KISSEL
Wait a second, how do you... Okay, you count down. How did he rush through it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's was just like all right, let's go. 5-4-3-2-1. All right, who's got it? Who's got it? Put it up there!
BEN KISSEL
Like Tommy Wiseau directing The Room but he knew the rental was only good for 15 more minutes?
MARCUS PARKS
Well I think with the countdown, I might be talking completely out of my ass here but I'm extrapolating from knowledge that I've learned about rockets over the last couple of weeks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
MARCUS PARKS
I think part of the point of a countdown is not just to like let everyone know that the rocket's about to go off so they can look, I think there's a lot of preparations that you're doing during the countdown.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, putting pressure in the oscillator.
MARCUS PARKS
Timing, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then yeah, fire up the gribble gobble and then get Ted off his sandwich.
BEN KISSEL
Absolutely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey Ted, you're sitting on a sandwich. And he's like ugh, my lunch!
BEN KISSEL
Get off of the sandwich.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But if you just go like 5-4-3-2-1 fucking do it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fucking go, get it going.
BEN KISSEL
It's not about the numbers so much as the actions.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's not so much like when we show up hungover we just ruin a week of content.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well technically some of our best episodes have been hungover.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Some. But again, freedom is a two-edged sword.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because sometimes it's the other side.
MARCUS PARKS
Many of our worst.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that's the thing is that when he shows up hungover, he blows shit up.
BEN KISSEL
Right, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
However Parsons' involvement in the OTO was a double-edged sword.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is a candle good or evil?
BEN KISSEL
Neutral. Ooh, sandalwood.
MARCUS PARKS
Because while it did sometimes cause them to make mistakes, the intellectual exercise of studying Thelema seemed to unlock some previously inaccessible part of his intellect. Or so the legend goes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is inspiring.
BEN KISSEL
It is.
MARCUS PARKS
Now by the time Pearl Harbor was bombed in December of 1941, the JATO systems developed by the Suicide Squad were still showing positive returns. So the research took on a new urgency. Now even though Parsons had proved that Jet-Assisted Take Off, JATO, could work,
he hadn't yet found a fuel formula that didn't fail 30% of the time. And you can't send that shit out into the battlefield.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not yet.
BEN KISSEL
Well it depends what you care about your soldiers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I mean if it's Vietnam then yeah, fuck it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let's see how it works in the jungle.
BEN KISSEL
Pearl Harbor, everyone knows it was a PSYOP, dude.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We let it happen. We let it happen, bro. We gotta do that episode.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a lot more complicated than that. It's so much more complicated than that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
FDR could jump. But he couldn't walk. That's what's weird is that he could jump.
BEN KISSEL
Really? Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
But then after working with this formula that didn't work 30% of the time, an idea sprung from his unconsciousness that changed the course of humanity.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'mma go!
BEN KISSEL
Uh oh, he's gonna go.
MARCUS PARKS
See Parsons had been working with black powder for the JATO test to no avail and liquid fuel was still too volatile for what the military wanted. But according to the legend, Parsons finally made the breakthrough to replace black powder with something else after seeing workmen spread hot asphalt on a roof.
BEN KISSEL
Oh god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And this is where weed helps science. I mean this.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sometimes you're just spacing out, we were just joking about this before the show about how yes sometimes it looks like we're not working because what we're doing is called executive time.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where you're sitting and you're just thinking, you're just thinking about what could you do?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Right? And you wonder.
BEN KISSEL
We're working.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I want to move forward, what should I do? I need to put this down in my calendar, executive time. This was his executive time, watching a bunch of guys slave on the roof as he's just smoking doobies and he's just like holy fucking shit.
BEN KISSEL
What a horrible job that is. They were putting asphalt on a roof?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, they were doing the tar on the roof.
MARCUS PARKS
Tar on the roof, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
So it's hot as all shit. Oh my god.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a rough job, man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's a hard job.
BEN KISSEL
That's who we should be talking about is those roofers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah, finally.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you for all the roofers out there because we have a roof over our head because of them.
MARCUS PARKS
That's right.
BEN KISSEL
Chicken wings!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's the cardigans.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Ben, do you think in the future you'll write a book of chicken wings or a book about chicken wings? Because they're too very different things.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Is there a difference? Chicken wings is a two-boned food.
BEN KISSEL
It is a double-edged sword in many, many ways. No, actually sometimes I feel guilty for eating chicken wings. Sometimes I can't eat meat on the bone, it makes me feel guilty.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hypocrite. That's a hypocrite.
BEN KISSEL
I was about to eat some ham yesterday and I put it in my mouth and I took it out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
BEN KISSEL
No, I mean I like pigs. I'm not eating ham because I feel like it tastes like human flesh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hey, you know, hey.
BEN KISSEL
It's a psychological thing. I've been talking about my love for pigs for three years and it's starting to build.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. I am incorrect in saying Ben Kissel lives an unexamined life.
BEN KISSEL
It's examined.
MARCUS PARKS
It's highly examined, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's true, it shows there's something in there.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know what's being examined.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know.
BEN KISSEL
But it's examined.
MARCUS PARKS
The smell inside of the asphalt reminded Jack Parsons of a flaming liquid weapon used by the Byzantine Empire that was called Greek fire.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Greek fire. Nothing but hot Greek fires.
BEN KISSEL
Sweet.
MARCUS PARKS
Greek fire was a naval weapon that set enemy ships on fire by emitting jets of liquid fire from bronze tubes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Tubes!
BEN KISSEL
Awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
Reputedly one could not extinguish Greek fire once it spread across your ship except by using sand, strong vinegar, or in one telling old urine which I guess points towards ammonia.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Old Urine is also the story of a dog that was shot as a puppy.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because of its terrible name.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it was too bad. He kept on throwing all the kids in the well. And it's like you're supposed to rescue them out of it.
MARCUS PARKS
But what made Greek fire truly fearsome and effective was the fact that it burned on water which made escape from an already burning ship impossible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh man, smoke on the water.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, legitimately.
MARCUS PARKS
Fire on the water.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
MARCUS PARKS
It also meant that Greek fire could reliably burn for long periods of time, reliably and steadily, consistently. Now no one knows exactly what Greek fire was made of because its recipe was a secret passed down through emperors. But it's theorized that it was either petroleum, saltpeter, sulfur, or naturally occurring asphalt.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Asphalt's naturally occurring?
MARCUS PARKS
I suppose so.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know. May I ask then why are we putting this on roofs? It seems highly flammable.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, no. Actually I think that we're all incorrect. I think all three of us might be incorrect in a way but only about the asphalt.
BEN KISSEL
Are they putting a basketball court up there?
MARCUS PARKS
Asphalt in and of itself is not combustible. But if you mix asphalt with other things-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's what you mix it with.
BEN KISSEL
It was just the smell. It was the smell that made him think about it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It's like bleach is fine and ammonia is fine but if you mix bleach and ammonia together you get mustard gas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I did not know that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
It's chemistry. I'm talking about how chemistry works. I'm fucking explaining chemistry right now.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You have become a high school teacher to me and Kissel and both of us are just like oh yeah?
BEN KISSEL
Middle school. Middle school teacher.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Asphalt.
BEN KISSEL
Also he's a horrible teacher, he's teaching kids how to make mustard gas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Don't go in the bathroom. Sorry, it's my asses fault.
MARCUS PARKS
See you know how to reach these kids.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I do know!
BEN KISSEL
That's cute though, asses fault.
MARCUS PARKS
So when Parsons saw those workmen spreading black asphalt on a Caltech roof, he grabbed a bucket of common roofing tar and added an oxidizer that allowed the tar to breathe and flame. There's about 40 or 50 more highly complicated scientific steps between that point and the endpoint. But before Parsons knew it he had created a fuel called GALCIT 53 which opened up a whole new category of rocket fuel, making solid propellants safer and more practical than the liquid propellants that tended to explode fairly easily and still tend to explode fairly easily. That fucking rocket that we launched off this morning almost exploded on the platform until the red squad went out and fixed the fuel leak.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But that is the excitement of science! And that you never know when you're a hero or your confetti. You never know!
MARCUS PARKS
And while this new category of rocket fuel would be used to fire ballistic missiles like Polaris, Poseidon, the Minuteman series, the descendants of GALCIT 53 would also propel space shuttles out of earth's orbit decades later.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I do find it magically interesting that one of the ways they figured out how to oxidize it was that when they put it in a tube, there's a space in the center of it that allows it to burn longer and that space is a five pointed star.
BEN KISSEL
Oh interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Very interesting indeed, sir.
BEN KISSEL
You got it. You really brought a lot of science to it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I will bring this whole thing to a fricking halt!
BEN KISSEL
Indeed it had halted.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Jack Parsons was only 27 years old when he made this discovery. But being 27 he was also making some extremely questionable decisions in his personal life, especially after he was fully under the freewheeling influence of the OTO.
BEN KISSEL
Well I will say this though. He's 27 in 1939 era which like inflation, it also affects age. So he's 43.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. And he only has 10 more years of his life. I think that that's also very interesting because we talk about the three ages of man and magic and what we have seen up until this point, the first episode was his boy phase, he was this child, right. But now we're seeing him as man phase, phase face as he grows to fruition and his power.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, great.
MARCUS PARKS
Now when his wife Helen went on vacation in June of 1941 with her mother, Parsons began an affair with Helen's half sister Sara Northrup, who was just a hair under 18 years old.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Something about hitting 'hair' on that really sits different.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Smidge? Just a smidge under 18 years old. Is that better?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Smidge sounds like yeah, this is my smidge right here. Yeah, I don't know how old she is. Don't ask her.
MARCUS PARKS
Well feisty, untamed, and somewhat cold, Sara greeted her sister Helen upon her return from vacation wearing Helen's clothes and saying, 'I'm Jack's wife now.'
BEN KISSEL
Oh she's Jack's wife now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
In a cruelly candid letter, Jack told his wife that he began the affair with her half sister deliberately and would do it again because he preferred Sara sexually and he was better suited to her temperamentally.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You say cruelly candid, he did it in his version of this is the throuple that you dreamed about, right.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, James Caan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Where it's cutting to the quick. And I had an actor once tell me, and it's true, if you wanna really do well in this business, you gotta be fucking. Right?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And you gotta be fucking all the time. And magically-
MARCUS PARKS
I know which actor told you that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You know exactly.
MARCUS PARKS
You didn't tell me but I know which actors you know and I know which actor told you that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes, yes. Basically this idea, and it's true, as a magician you're way more powerful if you be fucking, right. And so with Helen, yeah Helen's great and all but Helen's Helen.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he admitted that Helen's character was superior and he admitted that Sara would not have faced the hardships that Helen faced with Jack.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Definitely not. Definitely not.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
MARCUS PARKS
And he admitted, my god, she's not even anywhere near on the same level of woman as you are. But-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I love you, Helen. I love you, Helen. But the thing is a man, a poet should be alive, be drunken in love, betrayed, hurt, lifted from pinnacle to pinnacle. She licks my asshole.
BEN KISSEL
yeah, that's basically all that means.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well she's sexy and new.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then again he's fucking somebody new and then it gives you a little pep in your step.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know why he kept it in the family like that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She was right there.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah but...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was a smidge!
BEN KISSEL
He works at a goddamn college.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, well. Yeah, technically. By this point he's starting to move out of the college and into the private sector.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Literally.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's trying to create his Lodge.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And actually as we'll get to here in just a second, the half sister was sort of the point. Now this is a pretty clear cut dick move but Jack Parsons was doing all of this with the encouragement and the sanction of the OTO who looked at marriage as a quote "detestable institution."
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well that's technically Aleister Crowley's direct opinion of marriage but he was also married twice.
BEN KISSEL
Well that's why he thinks that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah. But the OTO then has rebranded since saying if it is your will, then get married.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But again, magicians be fucking.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
What if I just beat you up, OTO? What if I just don't give a shit what you tell me?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a whole organization. I mean yeah, that's the idea. They'd be like good, congrats. You're following your will.
BEN KISSEL
Thank you.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as for Aleister Crowley, He said people should marry for convenience and agree to go their separate ways without jealousy once it was over.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Why must there be divorce? It just sounds like a very divorced man's opinion.
BEN KISSEL
Sounds like someone who's listening to a heroin needle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And indeed Parsons saw his affair with Sara as a crucial step in his magical tutelage. He wrote that his passion for Sara gave him the magical force he needed at the time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I need my magical force!
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
The juice. Because the act of adultery tinged with incest served as a magical confirmation in the law of Thelema somehow. Can you explain that to me, Henry?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well it depends.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, explain why incest is good really quick.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A tinge.
BEN KISSEL
A tinge.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A smidge.
BEN KISSEL
45 seconds on why a smidge of incest is okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is not. Well there is a little bit, the concept of transgressions, right. The idea that a transgressive act can fuck with the magic juju and give it to you strong. But technically the OTO And Aleister Crowley and Thelema specifically comes out against incest. Technically.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But this was not incest because-
BEN KISSEL
Technically it seems like it doesn't.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's by marriage.
MARCUS PARKS
It's his wife's sister, that's why it's tinged with incest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
A smidge of incest. It's a bit of a hair of incest. It's a hair of incest caught between your teeth.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh it's long. Grandma?
BEN KISSEL
What in the world?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But truly it's more about the fact that Sara will be down with the activities of the OTO and understand hey... Because I think Helen was like well no matter what, I'm your number one, right? I'm your number one. And he's like yeah baby, yeah baby.
BEN KISSEL
It'll all work out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But then Jack Parsons at some point was like what if I had like five number ones? Right? But then you're all equal, you're like a team of rivals.
MARCUS PARKS
Helen, she was not some wilting flower.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
She didn't run away screaming. She was a full-fledged member of the OTO. She would be a true believer until the the day she died. Helen Parsons is extremely important to this organization.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very much so.
MARCUS PARKS
So she stayed. And perhaps because Parsons was able to pull off such an impressive sister switcheroo, he began to gain a reputation in the organization. Specifically Crowley's second in command in the OTO, a German immigrant living in New York named Karl Germer, he was hearing good things about this young rocket scientist out in California who had the tiniest bit of celebrity and just the tiniest bit more money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that seems to matter the most.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well very much so. A lot of organizations, they want their Tom Cruise.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But again, what L. Ron Hubbard, the difference between the genius and the artist which we'll talk about next week, is he understood we do need funding.
BEN KISSEL
You do need funding.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And we do need some name recognition.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And Jack Parsons was just in the newspaper as the brand new Frankenstein's monster-looking guy that is ready for the fucking primetime, baby.
BEN KISSEL
Indeed. Sounds like he's more of the doctor.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Crowley's second in command, Karl Germer, he had an interesting story all of his own and he'd very much suffered for magic and had come out the other end still a believer. In 1937, just three years before Germer contacted Parsons, he'd been in Germany when Hitler banned all occult groups including the OTO.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
There's only room for one!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. As a result, Germer had found himself in a concentration camp.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
MARCUS PARKS
But he was eventually released and he immigrated to America.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
God, it's gotta be terrible to have ADHD in there.
BEN KISSEL
Henry, you are off the show. He's off the show, Marcus.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, you're done. You're done.
BEN KISSEL
He's off the show. That was so hacky.
MARCUS PARKS
You're done, that's it.
BEN KISSEL
That was so hacky, I'm upset!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is my will!
MARCUS PARKS
I'm super upset.
BEN KISSEL
I just did a whole thing on chicken wings!
MARCUS PARKS
I'm super upset.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah I know, that's why you can't, you got nothing on my.
BEN KISSEL
We've been doing this for 12 fucking years, buddy. We are professional entertainers.
MARCUS PARKS
You've been doing comedy for like 20 years, long before we came along.
BEN KISSEL
Oh comedy! Even 30 years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the best part is that because I have this experience, everything I say is canon.
BEN KISSEL
No, it's not canon.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Everything I say-
BEN KISSEL
It needs to be shot out of a cannon and into space and never heard from again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whoa! Whoa now, whoa.
MARCUS PARKS
Well once Karl Germer arrived in America from the concentration camp, he was then harassed by the FBI for being a close associate of Aleister Crowley. Because if you'll remember, Crowley had spent all of WWI in America writing pro-German propaganda for fun and profit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But he's a double double agent.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
whatever.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well he was was saying that he was writing things that were so ridiculous that it was actually making the Germans look bad.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah, that's how that works. I forgot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Eventually though, Germer settled into life in New York and was acting as Crowley's representative in America. He decided to act as a personal guru to Jack Parsons and implied that if Parsons accepted his tutelage, he would soon be introduced to Aleister Crowley himself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which would actually fit in because it's interesting during this time period, Jack Parsons, he was trying to become a more unquote "serious student" and there is a lot in the AA, not the OTO. So AA was Aleister Crowley's own specific brand of the OTO And it was just for him. But he viewed that as like Sea Org of the OTO, to put it in that level, right. Where the AA is what I have personal control over and you're supposed to meet a dude, right, you're supposed to have a guy that's supposed to be a handler that brings a neophyte into the AA. So at some point that's where Aleister Crowley, he says in a letter, "I wish to god I had Jack for six months, even three, with a hustle to train and will in discipline. He must understand the fine and fiery flashes of spirit come from the organization of matter, from the drilling of every function of every bodily organ until it has become so regular as to be automatic and carried on by itself deep down and the unconscious."
BEN KISSEL
Honestly he just wants to buttfuck.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He does.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's his will.
BEN KISSEL
But he just wants Jack Parsons to just be able to just take it whenever.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well Aleister Crowley, it's the opposite, he wants Jack Parsons to give it whenever, he wants to be able to look as Aleister Crowley did believe that his submission to another was the most powerful way. He got control by giving control.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Power bottoms.
BEN KISSEL
All right, of course.
MARCUS PARKS
Well once a Crowley introduction was dangled, Parsons increased his involvement in the OTO. He suggested that the OTO should move their headquarters from Los Angeles to Pasadena which would allow Jack to spend more time at the Lodge. But perhaps more importantly it would give the Lodge more space to spread out, especially after Jack Parsons rented a mansion at 1003 Orange Grove Avenue for $100 a month.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This place was fucking huge.
BEN KISSEL
$100 a month. I'm gonna jump off a fucking bridge. That's incredible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was a different time.
BEN KISSEL
It was a different time.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
So it was basically just taxes and rent. That's why they wanted to go to Pasadena? More space.
MARCUS PARKS
More space, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
More space.
BEN KISSEL
More bang for your buck. How many times did they say more bang for your buck?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think there was a lot of that in the OTO.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But Jack Parsons lived in Pasadena and it was an attempt, they viewed him as the one. That was one thing that started coming up, it was like as people were meeting him at the Agape Lounge-
MARCUS PARKS
Agape Lodge. The Agape Lounge...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's the outside.
BEN KISSEL
That's a hookah lounge.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But once they started meeting him, they were like oh he might have the X factor.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But Aleister Crowley again, he was a very hard teacher, literally. And you had to kiss the ring.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, all right.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Parsons filled that mansion with OTO Members and they were all supposed to live there communally, it was sort of a second draft of Crowley's failed Abbey of Thelema where people lost their minds and/or their lives in the countryside of Sicily.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Well that's where he ate shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then watched others eat poop.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I remember that.
MARCUS PARKS
I remember that, yeah. He ate shit and then spent two days going like that was a bad idea, oh my god, I shouldn't have done that.
BEN KISSEL
They didn't like it, gave them a stomachache.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I have this astral stomach ache, it must be something I ate.
BEN KISSEL
What have you been eating, pancakes or carbs?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Piles of shit.
BEN KISSEL
Piles of shit. Oh okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, you know me.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe circle that in the calendar and notice when the stomachache started, right after you ate that pile of human shit.
MARCUS PARKS
It was a full log. That's what he said, that it was a full log.
BEN KISSEL
I remember the story, that one sticks out. I remember only the things that I don't like the most. That was that one.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was an experimenter.
BEN KISSEL
I think he cut it with a fork and knife.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I saw the movie Salò.
BEN KISSEL
Ugh god.
MARCUS PARKS
Well when I say communal, this is communal living here in this mansion with all these OTO members, I don't mean that everyone was on equal footing. Rooms were assigned according to OTO hierarchy with Jack Parsons and Sara Northrup sharing a nice two room suite so they could have separate affairs as per the OTO's teachings.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They were working.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah it sounded like they were fucking but they were working.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Ever the nerd though, Jack Parsons covered the walls of his room with all the knives and swords he'd collected throughout the years.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's my boy.
MARCUS PARKS
Proving that you can still be a sci-fi fan who openly collects bladed weapons and still gets laid if you frame it the right way.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's all it is, man.
BEN KISSEL
I'm gonna tell you this, no one is framing it the right way.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's packaging, dude.
BEN KISSEL
So don't do it. I had a friend in college, he had knives above his bed, he just liked knives. But then you take a girl home and it's just scary.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
On college, again. It's different.
MARCUS PARKS
He's not framing it the right way. You can't say I just like knives, you gotta say like ah yes, this blade, i procured this blade when I was taking a travel to Kathmandu and discovered-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Super wet.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah but it's just scary cause now you're holding a blade that can kill somebody and they're in bed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ceremonial sword. That's how you frame it.
BEN KISSEL
This is my favorite chainsaw. (revving)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But do you have a job? Are you available? Sometimes it really helps.
BEN KISSEL
Less weapons in plain sight I feel also helps someone calm down.
MARCUS PARKS
Well ostensibly the mansion at Orange Grove was supposed to be a utopian community made up of true Thelemites who shared all the responsibilities.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is the problem. It's kind of like in Satanism, right. It's all of these guys, right. Each man and woman is a star, right. And it's all love under will and it's about expressing your true will. And it's just the thing about Thelemites is that it's really difficult to get them to work as a group.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because each one is so important to themselves, it's kind of hard to be like, 'Frayter of Babylon? You're on trash duty.'
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's just like I want to come! And you're like well why don't you come while you're doing the recycling?
BEN KISSEL
Working into it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, absolutely. Get aroused by recycling.
MARCUS PARKS
Didn't work out at all. And most of them fell into traditional gender roles if they fell into any role at all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because this is before they started really taking it seriously.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Jane Wolfe, one of the first members of the Agape Lodge, had to do all the shopping for the whole house. And another woman named Phyllis Seckler was supposed to do all the cooking. Neither one really did much of either.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
See at least they were bad at it too.
BEN KISSEL
I think that's fantastic. I mean just get Uber Eats, come on.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. So as the men went, an actor named Frederick Mellinger was supposed to do all the yard work.
BEN KISSEL
Oh and that's not happening. No.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he just didn't do it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
All the gardens died.
BEN KISSEL
I'm acting like I'm doing it but you're just not doing it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And he's just miming a rake.
BEN KISSEL
Miming, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they go and they're like why didn't you do the garden? Why aren't you doing all the leaves and stuff? And he's like it's just not my true will to rake. And it's like I just need you to just have the will to fucking... I'm gonna hit you. I'm gonna hit you.
BEN KISSEL
A true skill that actors have is the ability to stay in a location for a long period of time like one of these things they hangout in, the canisters of shit?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
An apartment?
BEN KISSEL
No, when you're on set.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
A trailer.
BEN KISSEL
A trailer, yes. So they can sit in those trailers for hours and hours and hours.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's very important.
BEN KISSEL
It's a skill.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And stay in the head mind mindset.
BEN KISSEL
Oh yeah, method acting. That's good.
MARCUS PARKS
Well there actually was one guy who kind of tried using 'it's not my true will', using that excuse to get out of work, Wilfred Smith, the cofounder of the Agape Lodge.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's in management.
MARCUS PARKS
He quit his day job, he was supposed to take care of the animals and the vegetables but while I guess working at the fucking gas company, that's an acceptable position, agriculture is apparently not a field fitting for a priest of the OTO.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whatever!
BEN KISSEL
It's not easy to do. Did he have any experimentation? Did he know how to grow a vegetable?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I do feel like there is something in manual labor that actually does help magically. I think that he was incorrect and it's because he was a fancy pants nerd. Yes.
BEN KISSEL
When was the last time he did manual labor?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
In the house, I have to. Now as soon as you have a house you have to do a bunch of work and it sucks.
MARCUS PARKS
Sara Northrup meanwhile didn't do shit except have sex with Jack and do her best to fuck up Jack's day when she felt Jack wasn't paying enough attention to her which was always.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
She was a spark plug.
BEN KISSEL
That's right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bit of a smidge.
MARCUS PARKS
Really about the only one who did anything was Helen Parsons who was still technically married to Jack. She was the treasurer and she did a competent job. But the thing is that a lot of these people had kids and they brought the kids to this mansion and then they just kinda let them run wild.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It ain't for a family. You know what I mean?
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're supposed to really be concentrating on your onus and having sex under will and all that kind of shit. Not like you gotta go to kindergarten? Meh.
BEN KISSEL
I want to go with the no kid policy on that one. But if you are a kid running around the streets of Pasadena and with fairly loose parenting, maybe it was kind of fun.
MARCUS PARKS
For some of them. These were like three year olds.
BEN KISSEL
Oh they were miserable, they were just kind of confused and upset.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well as far as what Jack Parsons did, he had arguably the most important job. He paid for everything.
BEN KISSEL
That is the most important job and I need to talk to my fucking dogs about that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
BEN KISSEL
Because Jerry and Puffin have been just, 'What you do around here?'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
And it's like you fucking...everything that you look at.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I know. Wendy said something to me the other day, I was on the couch. She said aren't you supposed to be on tour right now?
BEN KISSEL
Shut the fuck up.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And I was like let me just sit.
BEN KISSEL
I know. It's unbelievable what they say with their eyes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well he gave his entire paycheck to the church of Thelema every month say for 10 bucks that he'd keep for himself. But for him it was worth it. He provided the money and the OTO provided him with a weird ass family and a like-minded community.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I really think in his way that's where Jack Parsons is different than a lot of these other kind of remoras on society as far as I'm concerned, where he really was starting to find fellowship and loved it. He loved the actual practice and the study and he was really getting into it. And he did the thing where he looked around like how do I make this my life and not everything else?
BEN KISSEL
That was the church I was forced to go to, Good News Fellowship Church. That's where they would marry a lesbian to a gay man because that's how that fixed that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It did.
BEN KISSEL
They did that.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that's not good.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. This guy named Steve, he was real feminine and tiny, he married this huge chick who was a truck driver.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's magic.
BEN KISSEL
But I don't think it worked out. They probably were pretty sad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Unless they started wailing on each other, fucking like crazy.
BEN KISSEL
No, I don't think so.
MARCUS PARKS
No, I don't think it would happen.
BEN KISSEL
It was a bad idea.
MARCUS PARKS
Parsons also brought in more people on his level. He's kind of balancing out the dead weight of the drama teachers and the former silent film stars who hadn't worked since the talkies had arrived.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my goodness.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But they're setting up the atmosphere.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
That is crazy, I feel like I picture them in black and white.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It does. I don't know how to make them in color in my mind.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Instead Parsons brought in his old childhood friend and business partner, Ed Forman, also brought in Ed Forman's wife. He also got a dude from the Hercules Powder Company and two math experts from Caltech. All these people were married and they were all eager to learn about the sex magic secrets of the OTO. This is 1940, it's a weird time in America.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's interesting because they understood this thing of like okay, we're all doing magic, it's totally okay for all of us to come in and we'll all fuck all of our wives' hottest friends. And we'll all hang out in a circle, at least most willing, and then sometimes how willing you are, that shows how hot you are.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
What?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, I'm saying that sometimes you're only as hot as what you're willing to do.
BEN KISSEL
Well if someone is real horned up for it.
MARCUS PARKS
That's horrible.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sometimes you are sitting in a hotel room and you're like I need someone to fucking lick my asshole and you're just gonna put that out in the universe and you just gotta accept who shows up.
BEN KISSEL
There you go.
MARCUS PARKS
All right. Well since Parsons was attracting individuals that were in positions of real power and esteem, he also drew the attention of the FBI.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
The FBI would investigate Jack Parsons several times over the next 10 years, writing a file that would eventually stretch to 200 pages. However the FBI never found anything illegal because Jack Parsons was only pretend evil like most people in the OTO. But even though the FBI found nothing, neighborhood busybodies got in on the action too.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because this is what Anton Lavey will steal later on, but the concept of the Satanic duality, that's what's fun is that it creates a barrier to entry. You create this environment where it seems super fucked up and super dark and mysterious and that actually precludes a lot of people from involving themselves because they don't want to get involved in something that's super fucked up. But then when you arrive you're like oh it's kind of silly, it's kind of nerdy.
BEN KISSEL
It's kinda boring.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You say it's boring, I find it as an actor, it's fascinating. And the idea of showing up in a costume and doing all of this shit is fucking rad. It's their version of LARPing and they get to suck each other's dicks.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Well a neighbor calling himself quote "a real soldier" sent a letter to Pasadena police tattling on Jack Parsons, writing that a black magic cult practicing Crowleyism and sexual perversion were flourishing at Orange Grove and somebody better do something about it before it gets out of hand.
BEN KISSEL
He's a real soldier, go do it yourself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He wasn't. He was a soldier of Pasadena's army of men that stare at your house.
MARCUS PARKS
As I said, nothing illegal was happening. But the Agape Lodge of the OTO was a dangerous organization to join emotionally if you weren't ready for it because the OTO, it's kind of the swinger's club of the magical world. Basically it's threesome rules, if you have to be convinced to do it, you're not ready for it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Nice.
MARCUS PARKS
In a prime example of feelings getting hurt, Jack Parsons brought in a guy named Grady McMurtry who would eventually bring the OTO back from the brink of obscurity in 1971 with Helen Parsons. But back in 1941 when McMurtry first joined, he was dealing with the emotional consequences of sex magic after Parsons and Wilfred Smith spitroasted his wife, got her pregnant, and paid for an abortion without telling him.
BEN KISSEL
Oh interesting. Also you continue to say spitroast, in America it is called rotisserie. And we did learn this because when we did, where were we, in Amsterdam?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I forget what it was.
MARCUS PARKS
We were in Manchester.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Because I mentioned rotisserie in one of our funny little bits and then they were like it's not rotisserie, it's spitroasting, which is so much more disgusting sounding.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what makes it more European.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, spitroasting. I brought that back, that's one of the things I brought back from Manchester as well as a relapse of long COVID.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Of course.
MARCUS PARKS
Hell yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's both. You got spitroasted by long COVID.
BEN KISSEL
It has definitely been fucking both ends of your life.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well as a consequence, Grady McMurtry said that Parsons and his ilk were a bunch of empty headed Athenians.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's as much as he could say after they all had sex with his wife.
BEN KISSEL
Wow.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's like you nerds!
BEN KISSEL
Empty headed Athenians.
MARCUS PARKS
And he also said that Parsons himself was quote "as coked up as a snowbird".
BEN KISSEL
That is funny.
MARCUS PARKS
He was correct in that last one, that one he was absolutely correct.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Yeah, very much so.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe correct with the first one, we just don't know.
MARCUS PARKS
Well in order to cope with all the new responsibilities facing Parsons in both the scientific and the magical world, Parsons started doing a lot of coke and a lot of speed. This was right around the time he co founded his own company with the other Suicide Squad members and called it Aerojet.
BEN KISSEL
Ooh that's cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is cool.
MARCUS PARKS
I like Aerojet.
BEN KISSEL
Definitely a cocaine idea.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
In addition Parsons was also making his own custom drugs, using his vast knowledge of chemistry. Of course this is encouraged by Aleister Crowley's teachings because Crowley said that drugs can assist in magical ritual and astral travel.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Wait a second but from the outside perspective, it's just a house that's now creating a bunch of drugs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Dude, it's awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
It's a meth lab kinda.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, yeah. That shit's fucking awesome. It's a bunch of questionable people in a very fancy neighborhood, like an elevated neighborhood, like the governor had a house there and shit.
BEN KISSEL
Right. Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And so that's what I love about this story is that they moved right into the heart of the burbs.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They created a community of naked artists, they were all having sex with each and doing all this shit, doing a bunch of drugs. And again for the time period it's super fucking awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
For me, this idea of it's in the super kind of square version of America where they're all fucking covered in come.
BEN KISSEL
I mean you would go knock on the door right now at 9 PM and be like can you keep it down, my dog, just turn it down to 9? Can we turn it down to 9?
MARCUS PARKS
Now speaking of Crowley, while it was nice that Parsons was bankrolling the OTO chapter in California, Crowley also felt that some of that OTO money should be spread to Crowley himself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Let's just think about this for a second. Okay, maybe I could get a little cut, huh? Come on.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And not just for heroin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Not just for heroin.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. He also needed it for his new magical project.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Wands. You think they grow on trees? Technically yes, they do.
BEN KISSEL
It just seems like someone needs to get a job.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Aleister Crowley technically had a job, executive time. He has to sit and think about all of the magic that he needs to do.
BEN KISSEL
I got it.
MARCUS PARKS
Actually he does have a job at this time. At this time he's making rejuvenation potions from his own come.
BEN KISSEL
No that's come! That's not a job!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You mean to tell me that our fan of the show and friend Tommy Pistol, that he doesn't have a job? All he does is come.
BEN KISSEL
No, he bangs on camera.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, he's coming.
BEN KISSEL
And he's got a huge ding dong because technically he is kind of short, so I think the penis does look a little bit bigger. But anyway...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're talking mess on a man who fucks for a living?
BEN KISSEL
I'm not talking mess at all! But he doesn't cell rejuvenation potions from his come. He puts his butthole on camera.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's because he's leaving money on the table.
MARCUS PARKS
Does he sell dildos that are modeled after his own dick?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He does.
MARCUS PARKS
That's the 21st century version of that, I'd say.
BEN KISSEL
That's what the fellas get to do because they don't make as much money as the gals there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
BEN KISSEL
They can sell their ding dongs. And gals sell a whole bunch of stuff.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Of course, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Well at this point in history Crowley was designing his tarot card deck deck.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah the Book of Thoth deck which is actually very powerful.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah, it's become fairly standard in the tarot community since Grady Mcmurtry and Helen Parsons pushed for its publication in the 70s. Now Crowley considered these cards to be the most important thing he'd ever done but Wilfred Smith who was still technically in charge of the Agape Lodge, he didn't agree.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
What do you mean? So Aleister Crowley was just like this is the most important thing I've ever done and the other guy was like no, it's not?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is the thing again about Thelema and magic is that it's all everybody's will. It's a bunch of upstarts, it's a bunch of people who got fucking mouthy mouths. But the problem is that Aleister Crowley didn't like that, he wanted a yes man. And when he presented this whole thing-
BEN KISSEL
Well yeah because he said this is one of the most important things I've ever done. And then the person just said no.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's their will.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Aleister Crowley was always looking for another Victor Neuburg.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Remember he was the guy that he powerbottomed into insanity.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He broke his mind, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, I remember.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He just could never get that guy back.
BEN KISSEL
Neuburg!
MARCUS PARKS
He never could.
BEN KISSEL
No.
MARCUS PARKS
When Smith didn't say yes to funding the tarot deck, he was ordered to step down and the OTO was split between those who supported Smith and those who wanted the tarot deck. And Parsons sort of became the man in the middle, I think because he revered Crowley but he was also friends with Wilfred.
BEN KISSEL
You need to get merch. I'm actually with Aleister Crowley on this one. People would buy those.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
And they did.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And they did and it really meant something later on after his fucking death which is kind of sad. But Jack Parsons was regularly in communication with Aleister Crowley and he was trying to say hey, I'm super so serious about this, I want to be the center of this, not so much the leader but there's a vacuum of true leadership happening in Los Angeles and we need something. But at the same time he liked Wilfred Smith even though Wilfred Smith would later go on to bang his fucking ex wife and make a child out of it. Right?
MARCUS PARKS
It was technically still his wife when he banged her and got her pregnant.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But that was also all a part of the OTO, they were all cool with it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It was the whole thing.
MARCUS PARKS
They were all cool with it. Well in an attempt to sort of mend this rift between Crowley and Smith, Parsons published a magazine called 'Oriflamme' which was filled with articles about magic that were written by Smith and Parsons.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And the 'Oriflamme' was actually a republish of the original 1800s newsletter where the OTO was announced. Because back in the day you'd find out about the new esoteric group when it showed up in some kind of publication. And so that was where the OTO kind of introduced themselves in the 1890s. But they didn't become the OTO until 1915.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Now today Oriflamme is a Swedish makeup company. But back then Parsons used the name to publish poetry that I actually like, I actually like Jack Parsons' poetry.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. It's good.
MARCUS PARKS
It's somewhere between Aleister Crowley and Hawkwind. It's like Iron Maiden lyrics but psychedelic.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's dope.
BEN KISSEL
Can we hear some?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, Henry's gonna read some. And I think you could take these lyrics and just do this on your own later on, you could sing some of these lines to the tune of the verse in Run To The Hills.
BEN KISSEL
(singing) Run to the hills.
MARCUS PARKS
It's got a very Maiden cadence to it.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I height don Quixote, I live on peyote, marihuana, morphine and cocaine. I never know sadness, but only a madness that burns at the heart and the brain. I see each charwoman, ecstatic, inhuman, angelic, demonic, divine. Each wagon a dragon, each beer mug a flagon that brims with ambrosial wine. The mountains are palaces, women are chalices meant to be supped and not sold. The desert a banquet hall set for a festival ripe for the free and the bold. You fucking...this is good.
BEN KISSEL
Is it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"The wind and the sky are ours, heaven and all it's stars, waken and do what you will. Break with this demon spawned hell-inspired nightmare bond, Magick lies over the hill. They said I was crazy, ambiguous, lazy, disgusting, fantastic, obscene. So I hied for my sagebrush and cactus and corn mush to see if the air was so clean. Oh I height don Quixote, I love on peyote, marihuana, morphine, and cocaine. And may I be twice damned for a bank clerk or store hand if I visit the city again."
BEN KISSEL
Sounds like the Grinch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It is. Who's getting his dick sucked!
BEN KISSEL
Well I think if the Grinch did get his dick... Maybe that would have made him happier.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah man. You put that in a Kind Gizzard album or song, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, those lyrics are Dr. Seussy with it, sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Those are pretty good psychedelic lyrics, man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. That's like medieval rap.
BEN KISSEL
It was. I mean honestly it's better than anything in Hamilton.
MARCUS PARKS
I'll agree.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'll agree.
BEN KISSEL
I don't know what happened with that.
MARCUS PARKS
I don't know either. Now Parsons was pleased as punch at this poem and in everything he did for 'Oriflamme'. But when he sent a copy to his mentor, Crowley hated it just like he hated everything that he himself did not write.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
He was just on heroin. He was just angry and sick and I guarantee you if you met him when he was super high, he probably would have loved it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I believe that he was in a word jealous.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I think that he missed his youthful energy and he wanted to yuck his yum as much as possible because no one should feel the freedom that Aleister Crowley felt. He called him, he said the whole problem with him is that he was too poetic.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Too poetic? Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
In fact Crowley was particularly enraged at the poem.
BEN KISSEL
Why?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is funny, he wrote poetry!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Aleister Crowley started writing poetry.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it wasn't the poem, it wasn't poetry itself that Crowley was upset about, he was upset over the subject matter. Because he wrote to Jane Wolfe that all the poem was gonna do was revive the ancient stories about Crowley concerning drug trafficking and so on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Crowley was really mad towards the end of his life that only anybody will ever talk about is how I'm addicted to heroin and I ate shit that one time. He was like so butthurt at the end which is so funny because you're the most evil man in the world, that was your whole gig, dude. And now you're mad that they're calling you that. You set it up. Because it's just once you're labeled a genius one time you think you're a genius in every aspect. You start to think no, no, no, now they need to understand me on my terms. Where we're like no bro, you sold yourself as the great devil and now they bought it, so you'll live with it.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. At this point in history the last time that Aleister Crowley had been in the news was him actually trying to say that he wasn't evil.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Because he tried to win a defamation suit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. And he was like it was a character! He did the Alex Jones, he broke character in court.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, he said that actually his name means little sunshine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Like he's a Shih Tzu.
MARCUS PARKS
Just trying to get some money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Jack Parsons was embarrassed that Crowley wasn't picking up what he was putting down. But Karl Germer, Crowley's second in command, still had great respect for what Jack was doing. Germer also noticed that Parsons was the only one with any money because his company Aerojet was getting more and more profitable off government contracts, lest ye forget the WWII was still going on.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Well that was going to be one of my questions. Any concern about that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
BEN KISSEL
It doesn't seem like they're really talking about the big war.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no, they're doing magic.
BEN KISSEL
I know!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then the rest of their life is spent building weapons for the war. So they spend their whole days doing the war and then at nighttime they're getting their dicks sucked.
BEN KISSEL
Oh I see. So they are focused on the war, they know the war is happening.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. They're all in the arms industry, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very much.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. Again, war profiteers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well they didn't have to be drafted because they were considered essential for the war effort working on the weapons.
BEN KISSEL
Gotcha, gotcha.
MARCUS PARKS
So since Parsons had the brains and the bankroll, he was put forth as the only alternative from Wilfred Smith for leadership in the Agape Lodge.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Meanwhile he wasn't super pleased.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He didn't really want to be in charge.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
BEN KISSEL
It sucks.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Again, he was like that's not what I'm saying. Again, executive producer is a really good place to be when you show up and you don't have to come up with every single thing, you're like the fourth executive producer. You pay for stuff and then you go like that curtain should be
brown!
BEN KISSEL
And then you leave.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And then you just sit the rest of the time in video village with the things on.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Then you just get to do your sex magic.
BEN KISSEL
So it sounds like he was more of the inventor and not like... It's not a company. He wants to invent, he doesn't want to run a company.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. He wanted to live the life of the mind.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And since Crowley was further put off by Wilfred Smith because Crowley thought Smith was turning the OTO into a boring love cult-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whatever.
MARCUS PARKS
Jack's ascendance as head of the Agape Lodge was arranged. In return Parsons gave Crowley $300 for the tarot deck, perhaps revealing the more practical impetus behind Jack's new leadership role.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Thank you, Jack.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, that's nice. That's a lot of money.
MARCUS PARKS
Now this was 1943 and all this infighting had led to a significant exodus of the Orange Grove mansion residents who were actually probably more interested in Wilfred Smith's love cult angle than they were in living by the Thelemic principles.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean that's what's nice about these lodges right? Because if you're in there for the ritual magic you got it, got you covered. But if you're in there to just do group fucky sucky, all you gotta do is put on the costumes and go like yeah, I'm Saladin, blah blah blah. And then you do it.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. But if you don't like it you can only do it for so long.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes. Eventually it doesn't become annoying, I can imagine.
MARCUS PARKS
See while Parsons definitely kept the sex parties, he had refocused the lodge to make magical attainment the highest priority and he began teaching classes on the tarot and Crowley in studies. Now once Wilfred Smith was out as the head of the OTO, Crowley naturally wanted to get rid of him altogether. But Wilfred Smith and Helen Parsons had begun an affair of their own and Helen was pregnant.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And since Parsons actually did walk the walk when it came to the no jealousy rule, he asked Crowley to not not take any further action against Wilfred Smith until after the child was born because he still loved his wife. They're all in it together.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's trying to make it work.
MARCUS PARKS
But as soon as the child known as Kwan Lanval Parsons was born.
BEN KISSEL
Oh that'll be good for him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's gonna be fine.
MARCUS PARKS
Crowley set a complicated and humiliating plan in motion that was somewhat of a mix between a test of faith and a highly elaborate practical joke.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is Crowley at his very core.
MARCUS PARKS
Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
At his very core, I've been reading 'Moonchild' too and I forget how funny 'Moonchild' is. Moonchild' also has a lot of parody of other magicians, like he makes fun of fucking Golden Dawn, he makes fun of these people. There's like funny shit in it. But yeah, he definitely... Because you can't just kick him out.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You can't just say get out of here, he has to come up with this kind of put him through it, he's got to put him through a bunch of labors.
BEN KISSEL
You could just say get out of here but...
MARCUS PARKS
But if you do that, if you say just get out of here, you lose credibility, you lose leadership. You have to make them leave because that's the thing, it strengthens you if they leave especially after you give them a bunch of goofy bullshit to do, you can say they were not strong enough. Because check it out, listen to what Crowley had him do.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Crowley sent Wilfred Smith a 12 page letter that presented a mixture of cabalistic calculation, omen telling, and oracle reading. It included Smith's horoscope drawn up and cross referenced with broad readings from Crowley's masterwork 'The Book of the Law'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah and he's just looking at it like it's homework, right. Which is all of Crowley.
BEN KISSEL
Sounds like a lot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a lot of work. You look at it and you're like okay, I'm parsing through this.
MARCUS PARKS
Once Crowley established the appropriate amount of magical bullshit in the letter to the point where Smith couldn't argue with it, Crowley concluded by declaring that Wilfred T. Smith was not a man at all but was in fact the incarnation of a god, although Crowley did not know which god he was.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So Crowley posits, like listen, (British accent) 'So the best part is yes, you're no longer needed as the leader of the California edition of the OTO, I get right. It's a bummer. But it's a promotion in a way where you are now a god.'
BEN KISSEL
I'm a god now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(British accent) You're a god. I don't know which one.
BEN KISSEL
What superpowers do I have?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(British accent) One of those superpowers is definitely not being in charge of the OTO anymore.
BEN KISSEL
Whoa, that's cool.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(British accent) But that's because it's beneath you.
BEN KISSEL
I'm a god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(British accent) You're too good for it.
BEN KISSEL
I believe it, I'm a god now.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Smith's mission, Crowley wrote, was to find out which god he was.
BEN KISSEL
That's a lot.
MARCUS PARKS
And in order to do this, he gave him a plan though. He said you gotta leave the Orange Grove mansion.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(British accent) You're gonna need to leave town, you're gonna need to get the fuck out of there.
MARCUS PARKS
You're gonna have to cut off all contact with the Agape Lodge.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
You're going to have to tattoo the number 666 on your forehead.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This is the only way!
BEN KISSEL
Oh that's great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(British accent) I have done the reading, I've done the math.
MARCUS PARKS
And you got to move to the desert. And only then after you go out, do all that, only then would you be set upon the path to discovering which god you are.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's important.
BEN KISSEL
That's great.
MARCUS PARKS
All that's just the fucking prepwork.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Legwork, yeah.
BEN KISSEL
I wish I had this logic when I was a bouncer to get drunkards out of the bar.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. Being like listen, you're not drunk enough. Honestly dude?
BEN KISSEL
Come back when you're drunker.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You should come back when you're drunker.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Smith of course resigned from his position rather than go through this humiliating ordeal that was obviously just meant to humiliate him.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh he didn't get the 666 tattoo on his face?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No, no. He understood.
BEN KISSEL
Like the guy that got the Romney R on his face?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The vibe seems to be he was excited up top and then as he was going through the documentation he's like I'm being roasted.
BEN KISSEL
So he did notice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
The thing is though Parsons soon resigned as well. The in-fighting and the pressure from his job was starting to get to him and the weak attempt to manipulate Wilfred Smith into doing something so stupid kind of soured Jack Parsons on Aleister Crowley for just a little bit. But if you'll remember, Jack Parsons had grown up without a father. So Crowley jumped on that need for a father figure by writing a paternal if bullying letter refusing to accept the resignation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yep.
MARCUS PARKS
Crowley also of course left out the part saying that he really needed Parsons to stay because he was the only one around making any real money.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was definitely the angel donator.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Now Parsons knew that he was being manipulated but he still had a thirst for knowledge and he still believed in the OTO and he believed in Crowley's work even if he didn't always believe in Crowley himself.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
So Parsons decided to adopt Crowley as a father figure and he continued his work for the OTO.
BEN KISSEL
I mean most of our dads haven't eaten human shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I mean I don't know what my father did in Vietnam.
BEN KISSEL
That's true.
MARCUS PARKS
Your dad fucked around in a submarine in the Gulf of Mexico in Vietnam.
BEN KISSEL
Well we don't know he didn't eat human shit.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
To be honest I feel like that actually shows that it was more likely he'd eaten a little human shit because all these navy men are all fucking pranking each other and shit.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They used to take out the torpedo tubes and he'd crawl inside the torpedo tubes and they'd roll him up and down the submarine. They had a great time in Vietnam.
BEN KISSEL
I can't believe we didn't win that war.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I don't know what happened.
MARCUS PARKS
Now concerning Jack Parsons' place in the scientific world, he was very much developing machines of war. He was building guided missiles that could fly 150 miles to deliver 1000 lbs payloads capable of killing hundreds if not thousands in a single shot. But what's crazy is that while he was developing these weapons of medium destruction, he was also playing dangerous pranks on his employees. He was setting off smoke bombs during lunch.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's a fun guy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's out of pocket, man.
BEN KISSEL
I wouldn't really like to be the employee but it sounds like he had fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, great fun. No, he would take firecrackers and walk up to area where they were working on volatile chemicals and he put the firecracker into a tin can to make it louder and then light it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's fun.
MARCUS PARKS
And then everyone would freak out because they thought they were about to die but he's laughing and laughing.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
My thing is man, honestly your job is you're making these bombs, right? Stop being so scared all the time.
BEN KISSEL
Well it's a scary process.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Stop flinching. Jack Parsons was steely-eyed.
BEN KISSEL
I guess so.
MARCUS PARKS
But since Parsons was of the opinion that no object is neither good nor evil, even if it is a ballistic missile-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
But does a ballistic missile, does it... How do I make this neutral? If it's just in your house, it's a table.
BEN KISSEL
That could be a table, it could be a lamp, it could really be anything. Maybe you could use it to make holes if you wanted a lake.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It'd definitely help me fucking... You could take over that HOA with one.
BEN KISSEL
Oh sure. Oh my goodness.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Jack's company pushed forward and they were given $3 million to further develop missile and jet technology. This shit is getting bigger and bigger. By that time Aerojet had changed its name to the Jet Propulsion Research Project or JPL.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Jack Parsons lives! That's what they call it nowadays.
MARCUS PARKS
And the group dynamic had changed as well. It was far more corporate and eventual trips to the moon had taken a backseat to the possible destruction of everything on the ground. It's not a bunch of buddies blowing it up anymore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No. Ugh, now it's a job.
BEN KISSEL
Well they're dealing with some pretty important stuff.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Maybe you want a little structure.
MARCUS PARKS
But Parsons continued to use JPL as his private experimental lab, continuing on with the same self educated diy attitude that had gotten him there in the first place. This of course caused tensions with the more hoity toity employees at JPL, like an astrophysics professor named Fritz Zwicky.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whatever, nerd. You're not fucking having nerd sex.
BEN KISSEL
But now can we just say maybe they're right? Because it seems like he's doing a lot of experimental stuff with very dangerous chemicals.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Executive time. Okay? He needs to think of ideas and he needs to do things as it is his will.
BEN KISSEL
He doesn't have a degree. It's okay but...
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's the thing, that's what Zwicky said. He said that Parsons was dangerous and untrained. Which he was, both of those things were very true. But he got results.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Bro! Who needs that fucking degree, Does Lebron need a degree in jumping in a basketball game?
BEN KISSEL
No, it's different. It's different.
MARCUS PARKS
If anyone on this show, Ben, that I would imagine would be absolutely for Jack Parsons-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
This man. This man.
BEN KISSEL
I am fine with the man who pulled himself up by his weird suspenders and he made himself a physicist without a degree. But I'm just saying at some point maybe he could have gone to a class.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Whatever, dude.
BEN KISSEL
A safety class.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He was the class, bro.
BEN KISSEL
Well that might be the problem.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Zwicky had no respect for Parsons and Zwicky would order chemicals for experiments that Parsons told him wouldn't work for rockets. Parsons was like why are you doing that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Fucking wrong, Zwicky. Fuck you, Zwicky.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. But Zwicky's saying I'm the professor, I've got the knowledge, I'll order them.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ugh Mr. Teacher, I'll do whatever you want, Mr. Teacher.
BEN KISSEL
I like the doers more than the teachers but some-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's on the teachers side! What is happening?
BEN KISSEL
I am pro-teacher in many ways. I just think he could have been taught how to be safer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Weird.
MARCUS PARKS
All right. That's so weird. I want to see how you respond to this, Ben.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
When the chemicals arrived that Zwicky ordered that Parsons said no, we don't need those, why are you ordering those? When they arrived, Parsons snuck out to the building where the chemicals were being held and he blew up the building.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's what I'm talking about, dude. Student becomes the master. Oh Mr. Teacher, oh what if I blow up your school, Mr. Teacher?
BEN KISSEL
He's got $3 million! Is he Tiger King trying to kill his alligators?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's in charge of himself, bro.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah man, this is his company.
BEN KISSEL
We're about to go to war.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We were at war!
MARCUS PARKS
We're in war.
BEN KISSEL
We're in war!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man, all's fair in war.
BEN KISSEL
This isn't us! Technically it's an act of domestic terrorism.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Look at you. We got him in the hypocrite trap, man.
BEN KISSEL
No, this is not a hypocrite trap. He blew up a government building because he was pissed at a professor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We got him against the wall, hear him scrambling.
MARCUS PARKS
It's not a government building. This is a private building, bro. This is a company that he owns with a bunch of dudes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Private enterprise, bro! Freedom is a two-edged sword!
BEN KISSEL
He just sounds like he would buy Twitter for $44 billion.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, that is his ability.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
No man, this is a company that is owned and founded by a bunch of dudes called the Suicide Squad.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah bro, get with it.
BEN KISSEL
All right, I'm fine with it. Just saying.
MARCUS PARKS
All right.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Eventually though the demands the military put on Parsons got to be too much. They demanded 20,000 JATO mechanisms a month when Parsons had barely managed to build 2000 in the entire previous year. So when a company called General Tire bought 51% of the company Parsons had started with the Suicide Squad, Jack Parsons and Edward Forman sold their shares to Frank Malina for $11,000. No small sum in 1943.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Absolutely not.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And there was a little bit of conjecture about whether or not they were forced out or not or asked to leave. Because again, the suits took over.
BEN KISSEL
Sure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So once the suits came in and took, they bought it out and stuff and they look at Jack Parsons and they were like you're too much of a renegade.
BEN KISSEL
Well because he blew up that entire building.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Taught that teacher a lesson he should have known himself.
MARCUS PARKS
Well ever since, that company has been involved in every manned space vehicle that the United States has ever launched. And the shares Forman and Parsons sold were worth $12 million just by the 1960s, nevermind present day.
BEN KISSEL
That was maybe a mistake. Maybe they should have kept those.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
They might have just fired them.
BEN KISSEL
Put them in your back pocket.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But money was not what Jack Parsons was after.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Freedom!
BEN KISSEL
But money often times, it has been scientifically proven now that it does make you happier.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's different, he's trying to get into magic biz.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
While he still briefly worked as a consultant for JPL after the sale, he left the rocketry world completely at the age of 30 to completely focus on magic for the rest of his short life.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Age 3, the man ascends.
MARCUS PARKS
Now in modern value, Jack Parsons' $11,000 was worth $200,000, a fair sum.
BEN KISSEL
Okay, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
So using these proceeds he bought out the mansion lease 1003 Orange Grove Avenue and spent almost all of his time at the Lodge as a man of magic and leisure.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's all I want. One day, one day! If you could listen to this jazz fusion shit dude.
BEN KISSEL
I can't wait.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm gonna show you guys. All day long, that's all you listen to. (jazz sounds)
BEN KISSEL
Nice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Just fucking and drinking espressos.
BEN KISSEL
Sounds exciting. So he was alone now or he still had a whole crew?
MARCUS PARKS
Dude, he's got the crew. He's living with the crew. He's there 24 hours a day.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Jack don't got to fucking wake up at 7 AM to go in and build rockets no more, Jack's there all fucking day long, bro.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah dude.
MARCUS PARKS
He's there playing with toy boats in his bathtub.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah bro!
MARCUS PARKS
He's there hanging out with Sara.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
That's my boy!
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
He's there fucking playing drinking games with Grady McMurtry who had since forgiven him for impregnating his wife and paying for an abortion behind his back. They're playing drinking games, man.
BEN KISSEL
That's nice. That's fun.
MARCUS PARKS
They had this one drinking game where they would chug aperitifs and then they would recite esoteric texts to see who could articulate their recitations the longest.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Because that's important because you're supposed to hold your attention. A lot of the fucking ritual shit is all memorization.
MARCUS PARKS
But while Parsons was out of the rocket game, he wasn't yet done with explosions. He and Ed Forman founded the Ad Astra Engineering Company, named after one of Aleister Crowley's magical organizations. And they continued to experiment with combustibles. At the same time though Parsons was alienating some of the older members of the OTO with his complete control over the mansion on Orange Grove. To make ends meet because he's not getting that Aerojet money anymore-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
No.
MARCUS PARKS
Parsons was renting out every available room to people outside of the OTO, although he still wanted to make sure he had the right vibe from all the new residents. This is what he wrote in a newspaper ad calling for borders.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
And remember, I think this was 1947.
BEN KISSEL
Okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Is it that late?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
45? It might be.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's like '44, '45. Somewhere around there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
"Only bohemians, artists, musicians, atheists, anarchists, and other exotic types need apply for rooms. Any mundane soul would be ceremoniously ejected."
BEN KISSEL
The thing about a mundane soul is they pay rent.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Well you're looking for a non mundane soul that has disposable income.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
It sounds like it's the same thing that they're doing in Williamsburg, Brooklyn right now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Very much so.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
What do you mean, Williamsburg, Brooklyn?
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it's a bunch of trust fund kids.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a bunch of kids that somehow have $5,000 a month for rent and they don't work.
BEN KISSEL
Real artists are out in Bushwick now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, sucking dick by the bridge.
MARCUS PARKS
They're even further out than that now, man. They're in Ridgewood.
BEN KISSEL
Oh, they made it all the way to Queens?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I'm salty. I'm salty about that.
MARCUS PARKS
You guys don't know this? Oh no dude, Ridgewood is supposedly one of the coolest neighborhoods on earth now. They're lying. They're absolutely lying.
BEN KISSEL
Oh okay. No, I mean it's the people that make it cool. Sure.
MARCUS PARKS
I guess so. If they only knew Catalpa. But even though the OTO members weren't super jazzed about non members coming in, Jack's ads did create a groovy atmosphere.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
(jazz sounds)
BEN KISSEL
All right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's all music that sounds like that.
MARCUS PARKS
As author George Pendle put it, nuclear scientists and rocket scientists lived alongside occultists and sci-fi nerds.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool.
MARCUS PARKS
While Parsons and Sara Northrup led gnostic masses for the OTO members upstairs as high priest and high priestess.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Ooh. I can feel the groove.
BEN KISSEL
All right. Oh sure.
MARCUS PARKS
Now concerning those sci-fi nerds, Parsons was still a massive science fiction fan after all those years and he'd been hanging out with some of the most famous sci-fi writers of the century. He was hanging out with Robert Heinlein.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Robert Heinlein actually tried to say he had nothing to do with Jack Parsons but they know for a fact that they were really close friends. Robert Heinlein is a weird guy.
MARCUS PARKS
He's a weird guy, yeah. But he was hanging out with Ray Bradbury as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And they were both fascinated by the way Parsons could bring science fiction into reality.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You hear that? Science fiction into reality. Guess who's coming into the scene soon, my boy's coming around.
BEN KISSEL
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
Now as far as how Parsons met those guys, the Los Angeles sci-fi writers like Heinlein, Bradbury, and Isaac Asimov as well as special effects nerds like Ray Harryhausen who did the fucking skeletons in Clash of the Titans-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Sweet.
MARCUS PARKS
And publishers like Forrest Ackerman.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Forrest Ackerman who was one of the most important collectors of all time. He collected esoteric things.
BEN KISSEL
I've heard that name a lot.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. They'd all hang out together in a downtown Los Angeles cafeteria called Clifton's.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Which is where Jackie had a bachelorette party.
BEN KISSEL
Oh does is it still existing?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah, it's still there.
BEN KISSEL
It still exists. That's interesting.
MARCUS PARKS
Well Clifton's was run by Clifford Clinton who had been the anti corruption activist whose investigations into Mayor Frank Shaw had led to the car bombing we talked about last week.
BEN KISSEL
All right, it's all coming together.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
So think about this, it's coming together.
MARCUS PARKS
See from what I can tell and I might be wrong on this, Clifford Clinton was probably the one who thought to ask for star witnesses in the car bombing trial from Caltech because Clifford had underwritten projects at Caltech concerning the development of nutritional foodstuffs to combat mass starvation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Cool. Like bugs.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
Oh not bugs. Cornflakes!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Pink slop!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It's bugs, it's gonna be bugs. We're all gonna be eating bugs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah.
BEN KISSEL
We're not all gonna be eating bugs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
We won't know it though.
BEN KISSEL
We are gonna know it.
MARCUS PARKS
We're gonna be eating bugs.
BEN KISSEL
No one's eating bugs.
MARCUS PARKS
Well you're not going to live long enough to eat bugs.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's not gonna even know.
BEN KISSEL
You're not gonna live long enough to eat bugs. I'm the healthiest one here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Oh you're right, I forgot. You're right.
BEN KISSEL
Technically I am.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
BEN KISSEL
Medically.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
MARCUS PARKS
What?
BEN KISSEL
Theoretically.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You haven't seen a doctor in 20 years!
BEN KISSEL
Exactly.
MARCUS PARKS
Well it's at Caltech that Clinton was put on to Jack Parsons. And after Parsons became the star witness that put the car bomber behind bars, he dropped by Clifford Clinton's cafeteria where he found the greatest sci-fi minds of their generation just hanging out.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah man.
BEN KISSEL
All right, everyone's at Clifton's.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Eating soup.
BEN KISSEL
I love it.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah, man. Split pea Wednesdays. Now these meetings were certainly impressive just for the amount of brain power in the room. It's sort of like that crew of directors who all hung out in the 70s, like Spielberg and Lucas and Scorsese and Coppola all fucking hanging out.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, it was like when Bill Gates and Clinton used to hang out with Epstein.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Epstein!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, great minds. Great minds. But in Last Podcast land, these sci-fi meetings at Clifton's cafeteria are more known for being the place where a certain sci-fi writer supposedly made a bet with Robert Heinlein that he could make a religion out of science.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
All we do is replace gods with beakers.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. All of this has been done around soup.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's a soup-based life.
BEN KISSEL
It is a soup-based life, isn't it?
MARCUS PARKS
Now that story isn't true but there's no doubt that had it not been for those meetings at Clifton's cafeteria, Jack Parsons would have never met L. Ron Hubbard.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The ginger lover extraordinaire.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
The smartest man with the best body who's ever lived in the 20th century.
BEN KISSEL
There you go.
MARCUS PARKS
And L. Ron Hubbard may have never learned what he needed to learn in order to eventually create Scientology.
BEN KISSEL
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
It's with the entrance of L. Ron Hubbard and the eventual destruction of Jack Parsons that will conclude our series in two weeks after the Thanksgiving holiday.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You must be careful who you pretend to be because we are who we pretend to be. And Jack Parsons, he will be emoliated like so much rocket fuel on his way to magical purity. And the problem is with every genius is that they are absolved into the godhead. While the artist who must a lot of times decipher genius works, they live on and on and on to smoke parliaments in space, thinking about how they used to be a clam.
BEN KISSEL
You sound like someone trying to explain that really shitty movie where everyone walks backwards.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
What?
MARCUS PARKS
That movie where everyone... Tenet?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Tenet.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah, Tenet.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's mixing it up with Inception.
BEN KISSEL
No, I'm talking Tenet. They all walk backwards.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Tenet is when everyone goes... It's hard for the people to see, you go... Tenet. You do the hand signal.
BEN KISSEL
It's the dumbest thing I've ever seen but everyone's like I think I get it. It's like no, it was just poorly written.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
It's just sparingly written.
BEN KISSEL
All right everyone. Well thank you so much for listening.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't believe he's pro teacher today.
MARCUS PARKS
I can't believe you're so pro teacher.
BEN KISSEL
I'm pro teacher everyday! Give them more money!
MARCUS PARKS
You're pro teacher?
BEN KISSEL
I got an education.
MARCUS PARKS
Pro gatekeeping.
BEN KISSEL
No! I just said he shouldn't blow up the goddamn building!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I thought that you were the lamplight of libertarian freedom and all you are is talking about all of these structures.
BEN KISSEL
Oh my god. First of all libertarianism no longer exists in any-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
You're just so happy to have all this infrastructure. What's happened to him? I thought it was always be cozy.
BEN KISSEL
You guys have been trying to speak for me for a long time.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah? All you do is talk.
BEN KISSEL
Thank god. Okay everyone. Well thank you for listening.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Unbelievable. Unbelievable.
BEN KISSEL
We will see everybody in Indianapolis and Grand Rapids this weekend. Marcus, he's not gonna be there but we're gonna have Jackie Zebrowski and Holden McNeely.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yes.
BEN KISSEL
So they'll fulfill half of what Marcus can bring. So there you go.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I would say we'd need to others to completely fulfill you. But Eddie is busy.
BEN KISSEL
Yes, Ed Larson is on his honeymoon right now, enjoying his life and swimming in the water.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. And thanks to everyone who is being very understanding about me taking these shows off. I'm still good enough to record, still good enough to live a life but just not good enough to travel to two different cities and perform for six hours over the course of two days. So thank you very much for understanding.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Yeah. I like about our fans is that they are fairly chill.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, you guys are fairly chill.
BEN KISSEL
They're cool. They're cool man, they're cool.
MARCUS PARKS
But thank you.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Sometimes they get riled up but so do I.
BEN KISSEL
All right everyone, well thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting all the shows here on the network. And what we're doing on Sirius has been so fun and you guys are just being wonderful. So hail yourselves!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Hail Satan.
MARCUS PARKS
Hail Gein!
BEN KISSEL
Megustalations everybody.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Find your path yourself. It's important.
BEN KISSEL
It is important.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Remember, you go out there every day, right, you fucking find your locus. And sometimes it takes some reading. Sometimes it takes getting your butthole licked in a mansion somewhere.
BEN KISSEL
Yeah. All of that is fine. But then he blew up a building. That's all I'm saying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
I can't believe that he is just-
BEN KISSEL
Don't commit an act of domestic terrorism.
MARCUS PARKS
It was his building.
BEN KISSEL
He would've stormed the capitol.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He said he wanted to become a police officer before our last episode of Side Stories.
BEN KISSEL
No, I didn't say that. I said when I was 9 years old and my mom told me not to.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI
He's changing.
BEN KISSEL Oh my god, all right.