# The modern occultists and their circles

The magicians of the modern age and their strange reach: Aleister Crowley and the founding of Thelema, the rocket-scientist magician Jack Parsons and the Babalon Working that ties JPL to the occult and to Scientology, and Anton LaVey's Church of Satan. How ceremonial magic wove itself through science, counterculture, and pop culture.

*This story parallel: The Rosicrucians and the invisible college*
*This story parallel: Scientology and the occult-rocketry nexus*
*This story continues: Hermes Trismegistus and the Hermetic tradition*
*This story parallel: Paganism: the old religions, their fall, and their return*
*This story part of: Religion and ideology*

## 1904 — Crowley receives the Book of the Law and founds Thelema

In Cairo, Aleister Crowley claims a spirit dictated to him the Book of the Law, founding the religion of Thelema with its creed 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law'. It became the fountainhead of much of modern Western occultism.

> "such as have obtained since the Spring of 1904, e.v."
> — Magick in Theory and Practice, p. 16-18

## c. 1920 — Crowley, 'the wickedest man in the world'

Crowley sets up an Abbey of Thelema in Sicily and leads the occult order the OTO, earning tabloid infamy as 'the wickedest man in the world'. His system of magick shaped Wicca, chaos magic, and the counterculture that followed.

## 1936 — Jack Parsons: the occultist who helped found JPL

Jack Parsons, a self-taught genius of rocket propulsion, co-founds what becomes NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory while devoutly practicing Crowley's Thelemic magic. Rocket science and ceremonial magick sat side by side in the same brilliant, reckless mind.

## 1946 — The Babalon Working

Parsons and the future Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard perform the Babalon Working, a series of rituals meant to incarnate a goddess on earth. The strange episode links the birth of American rocketry to the occult and to Scientology.

## 1952 — Parsons dies in a mysterious explosion

Jack Parsons is killed at 37 in an explosion in his home laboratory, his death ruled an accident but debated ever since. A crater on the far side of the Moon is named for the rocketeer-magician.

## 1966 — Anton LaVey founds the Church of Satan

Anton LaVey founds the Church of Satan and later publishes the Satanic Bible, turning a theatrical, atheistic Satanism into a registered religion. It marked the arrival of the occult into mainstream American pop culture.