Comment by api | Hacker News Reader

Comment by api | Hacker News Reader

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If anyone hasn't seen Strange Angel I highly recommend it. It's definitely the "Hollywood version" to some extent but it's relatively close to his biographies and is a decent watch regardless.

The title and thesis here is a bit wacky. JPL itself doesn't have "occult roots." Parsons was into occultism and Thelema/Crowley, which is far less sensational than it sounds if you've ever actually read any of that stuff. It's not any more shocking than someone being into Daoism, esoteric Hinduism, Sufism, or any other minority (in this country) religious or philosophical sect. The beliefs involved are no more or less bizarre than the beliefs championed by much more popular religions.

I have noticed a tendency for creative outside thinkers like Parsons to be into "weird" belief systems. I've met a good number of really bright hacker types who are into all kinds of non-mainstream beliefs including conspiracy theories, Neo-Paganism, esoteric types of religion, strong interests in topics like UFOs and the paranormal, etc.

Source: previous O.T.O. member and Initiate, as well as an Initate of another particular Secret Society.

Um, no. Sorry. I don’t know what you read; but maybe go check out ‘The Book of Lies’, or a number of Crowley’s other, more taboo and dark pieces of literature.

Ritual Magick, especially as Crowley and Parsons participated in, may include the likes of summoning archangels and demons, the use of altered states including the use of extreme hallucinogens and other drugs.

While I agree the philosophy of the O.T.O./Thelema is not that revolutionary compared to many Eastern schools of thought; its rituals and practices are far from it.

I dunno, I thought that a lot of it (especially the exercises in MiTaP) was reminiscent of later psychological research. For instance, I believe that its one of the first examples of negative reinforcement, which didn't really become mainstream until the 50's or so.

Additionally, if you check out Tibetan Buddhism rituals, you see a lot of what looks very like ritual magick. I was very very surprised at the amount of overlaps with the western/thelemic tradition.

Just my 0.02.

Well, the article directly contradicts your perspective of Crowley and Parsons beliefs with: beastiality, incest, and more.

I'm agnostic about those allegations personally. Anything fringe back then was going to attract tabloid claims, and Crowley himself was a troll who was fond of promoting outrageous BS about himself for attention. They were a bunch of nutballs certainly but there's quite a bit of very sensational stuff out there about that scene that's just as questionable.

Today they'd just be a bunch of goth swingers into Neo-Pagan LARPing and totally unremarkable.

From the OTO members I’ve run into this sounds about right.

Most of what they ascribe to Crowley is highly dubious and sensationalist. There have been many independent biographies of Crowley published, not to mention his "autohagiography" that shed a lot of light . The article also contains blatant falsehoods, their explanation of the avalanche incident is fabricated and not corresponding to history (diaries and 3rd party first-person accounts of what actually happened). Even wikipedia gives a different version of events that doesn't seem so callous. Moreover, a lot of Crowley's writings are deliberately using veiled language meant to offend the uninitiated and those predisposed to a superficial reading of his material. This is of course treasure for lazy journalists - and readers - that want to shock and stir up drama.

As far as the incest/beastiality bits related to Parsons go, I can't find any verifiable references anywhere. They took some rumors as laid out in a highly sensationalist book and presented them as fact.

This is the sort of trash, low quality article that has no place in HN. Parsons - and Crowley - deserve better.

Casting Crowley as the evil crazed Satanist is basically like if people in 50 years were to watch a bunch of Marilyn Manson videos and decide he was really an evil vampire. It's part of the marketing.

On the other hand, this

> using veiled language meant to offend

is frequently the opposite of the case. Frequently, the veiled language is used to obscure the nature of some rituals which many "uninitiated" would likely find offensive. It strikes me as rather disingenuous to proactively pretend otherwise, frankly.

Crowley had a mischievous streak and delighted being in the spotlight. His writing style was infused by sarcasm and was all over the spectrum of using poetic and sexual language to both offend and veil.

I do not think you are correct in your assessment as clearly he couldn't care less about offending people. An example is when he refers to masturbation as "child sacrifice":

“For the highest spiritual working one must accordingly choose that victim which contains the greatest and purest force. A male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence is the most satisfactory and suitable victim.”

His sense of humor wouldn't be out of place today. Crowley was a visionary genius who tapped into the 21st century and one could say helped bring it into existence. To portray him as nothing more than a sexual deviant or charlatan does not do the man justice.

Crowley was a visionary genius who tapped into the 21st century and one could say helped bring it into existence.

What makes you say that?

What about Crowley and the climbing expedition? I can’t imagine that story paints him in the best light.

Thelema is basically ritual magic and the direct antecedent to mid 20th century new age culture. Many of its practices are probably the basis for modern conceptions of spooky sex-cult behavior. The theory side does seem to be Hinduism-lite, though. I'll give you that.

Thelema is basically ritual magic and the direct antecedent to mid 20th century new age culture

I'm no expert, but new age? It sounds more like wicca/satanist stuff to me, nothing like new age. "Aspects of Thelema and Crowley's thought in general provided inspiration for the development of Wicca and, to a certain degree, the rise of Modern Paganism as a whole, as well as, chaos magick, and Satanism."[0]

New Age, it seems to me, comes from the very different world of the New Thought of the 1880s, Blavatsky, Besant, Steiner etc.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelema

I've always thought of New Age as what you get when you puree every religious, philosophical, and occult/esoteric text together in a blender and then strain out the gritty bits.

I do kind of agree that New Thought is a stronger influence on pop new age than Crowley. He's too edgy.

> JPL itself doesn't have "occult roots."

Just my personal speculation:

Qian Xuesen, one of the few who founded JPL and later the Chinese rocket industry, has a strange favor in researches of "special human body functions" which turned out to be nonsense at all. It would be easily explained had he ever been exposed to Aleister Crowley and/or L. Ron Hubbard in 1940s.

Agree ^. It makes sense to me that if you are a person who believes that what society and the status quo deem as possible are limited, you probably also don't find traditional interpretations of "why" to be sufficient.

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