The Man Who Taught America It Didn’t Have to Choose Between Rocket Science and Creepy Occultism: New at Reason

Television critic Glenn Garvin finds the Tiffany Network dabbling in the dark arts with a CBS All Access network adaptation of a biography of rocket scientist/Crowley follower Jack Parsons:

It was not so long ago that any American who turned on his television at 8 p.m. on a Friday had a choice of Family Matters, Uncle Buck, America’s Most Wanted, Quantum Leap, or putting a gun in his mouth. And now the digital arm of what used to be known as The Tiffany Network has a series with a hero, or at least protagonist, who regularly masturbates on magic tablets in an attempt to summon the Whore of Babylon.

To be fair, neither the Whore of Babylon nor any of her precursor acts has appeared in the first three episodes of Strange Angel. But it should be just a matter of time. The series is based on a biography of Jack Parsons, a real-life pioneer of American rocketry and one of the founders of NASA’S Jet Propulsion Lab. More interestingly, he was also a follower of Aleister Crowley, the wandering, omnisexual occultist, practitioner of black magic and, at the very least, Luciferian fellow traveler. (Crowley always denied being a Satanist, but rather undercut his claim by referring to himself as “the Beast 666” and mailing out “Antichristmas cards.”)

Parsons was not just a dabbler in Crowley’s Thelima religion but a congregant sufficiently faithful and enthusiastic to have written a volume called The Book of AntiChrist. He stuck with Crowley though several wives, jobs, and security clearances before an early and violent demise. (Spoiler alert: Seventy years on, he still hasn’t come back.)

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