Jack Parsons (rocket engineer)

There's also a book about him by the same title.

> Amid McCarthyism, Parsons was accused of espionage and left unable to work in rocketry.

I would say his own society wasn’t very welcoming of him. As I recall he kept his occult interests mostly under wraps and his career was finished once it no longer was, subsequently dead during the McCarthy era.

What is it is the other way around?

That he progressed so far because of his occult roots, but that we don't hear about this sort of thing so much nowadays?

PS I personally find it, erm, disconcerting, that someone with a background in magic was able to reach these sorts of heights.

Humans rely heavily on social proof and familiarity to make decisions. There is social pressure to be normal and stick with the herd or only try small innovations on or close to the bounds of acceptable thought. But in contrast it is difficult to make serious contributions to state-of-the-art without being some combination of insane, obsessive or twisted. It can be done, but someone who just wants to set fire to everything is just going to learn more about fire than everyone else. While normal people don't learn how to do abnormal things.

The whole trick is setting up a society where strange people can make outsized constructive contributions even if society at large is trying to hit them with all the bullying tools it uses to make people stand in line. That is part of why liberty is so important, and why it is necessary to accept people even if they are just wrong about a belief.

This series has recently been recommended to me, but I haven’t had a chance to get into it. Thanks for the specific recommendation.

Maybe he still is: https://unherd.com/2021/09/satanism-is-everywhere/ He called himself the most influential person of the 20th century.

The answer is that people don't ever think for themselves. If you say to them that something is occultist, or a cult, or a conspiracy theory, then that's what they think, and they won't consider it. In reality, 'occult' belief systems like Thelema or even Satanism are far less mystical than mainstream religions like Christianity, with its con/transubstantiation etc.

My guess is the wife swapping. Nothing offends age of Osiris leaders more than the idea of someone else sleeping with their wife.

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I thought so too! That's why I posted it, of course. Every paragraph had something new to make my eyebrows reach for the sky.