Jack Parsons
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Sex rituals? I thought when I awoke the following morning.

It didn't seem to fit. Jack Parsons and Ed Forman had been two uncommonly bright kids experimenting with rockets, and corresponding with the early rocket pioneers. They had showed up at Cal Tech and formed an alliance with some of von Karman's graduate students. Unlike the latter, Parsons and Forman already had hands-on experience with mixing solid rocket fuels and constructing rocket bodies.

Cal Tech thought the idea of space rockets was silly, except for von Karman, perhaps the nation's leading expert in jet propulsion. Von Karman gave the group the use of facilities. After some explosions, they ended up in Pasadena's Arroyo Seco--a small canyon that passes near South Orange Grove Blvd.--at a spot near Devil's Gate Dam, and near where von Karman, Parsons, and others founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory a few years later.

The project had soon attracted the attention of the U.S. military, which was looking for some form of jet-assisted takeoff for planes using the short air strips in Southeast Asia. The group obtained a number of JATO patents, most under Parsons' name, and formed a company named Aerojet Engineering Corporation to sell JATO units to the military. The early stockholders had had financing problems, and their intellectual property had essentially been expropriated by General Tire and Rubber.

But JPL's WAC Corporal had become the first rocket to enter extra- terrestrial space. And another member of the original rocket group had gone on to found China's missile program.

Sex rituals? Was there some sort of contradiction here? On the other hand, this was an important lead. Sex itself is a powerful explosive. Perhaps Parsons' death had something to do with his unusual personal life.

The new lead was waiting for me at the office. Sheri had started the laborious process of sifting through our own research collection. She had marked a reference to Parsons in The Great Beast, the biography of Crowley mentioned by von Karman.

One of the particpants in those sex rituals was L. Ron Hubbard, the future founder of Scientology.

A group of Crowley followers had established a church in Pasadena in the 1930s. It was called the Agape Lodge, and was started by Wilfred T. Smith, whom Crowley had met in Vancouver in 1915. According to John Symonds, Crowley's biographer, Wilfred Smith subsequently aroused Crowley's ire by seducing Helen Parsons, the wife of John Whiteside Parsons. Parsons was then one of the Agape Lodge flock. Symonds referred to Parsons as "Dr." Parsons, apparently thinking his Cal Tech association implied a doctorate.

Crowley wrote Smith that his seductions were giving the Agape Lodge the reputation of being "that slimy abomination, a `love cult'." (I found it difficult to see how something named agape could have avoided that stigma.) Crowley apparently expected little reform from Smith, pointing out that when he had met Smith in 1915, Smith was sleeping with both a woman and her daughter. So Smith was disfellowshipped, and Parsons took over the church. Parsons, meanwhile, had transferred his affections to Helen's younger sister "Betty" (Sarah Elisabeth Northrup).

In the summer of 1945, some time after Parsons had sold his shares in Aerojet, a young L. Ron Hubbard appeared at the Agape Lodge. Parsons thought Hubbard had great magic potential. Betty did too, and started sleeping with Hubbard. Parsons wrote Crowley of Ron Hubbard: "He is the most Thelemic person I have ever met and is in complete accord with our own principles. He is also interested in establishing the New Aeon. Thy son, John."

With the loss of Betty, Parsons set about magically attracting another principal partner. He had succeeded by February 1946 when he wrote Crowley about a girl named Marjorie Cameron. "I have my elemental! She turned up one night after the conclusion of the Operation, and has been with me ever since, although she goes back to New York next week. She has red hair and slant green eyes as specified."

In the newspaper clippings Homer Nilmot had given me, Robert Cameron was cited as Parsons' brother-in-law. Apparently Parsons was married to Marjorie Cameron when he died in 1952.

Parsons continued his magical operations with the sexual participation of Marjorie Cameron. By some unclear mechanism, these resulted in revelations delivered through the mouth of L. Ron Hubbard. Parsons gave them special significance, writing Crowley: "I have been in direct touch with One who is most Holy and Beautiful as mentioned in The Book of the Law. I cannot write the name at present. First instructions were received direct through Ron, the seer. I have followed them to the letter."

This was pretty rich. "Ron the seer." If Ron was God's (any god's) mouthpiece, he was in an ideal position to manipulate Parsons. Hubbard had started by taking Parsons' girl. You could already guess that Parsons' money would be next.

Crowley wrote to his head man in America, referred to as Frater Saturnus: "Apparently Parsons or Hubbard or somebody is producing a Moonchild. I get fairly frantic when I contemplate the idiocy of these louts."

Moonchild? What was a Moonchild? I made a note to look it up.

In the meantime, Hubbard ran off with Betty in Parsons' yacht. Parsons wrote Crowley that he had magically evoked a storm which drove the two back to shore. "I have them tied up; they cannot move without going to jail," he wrote.

Symonds' account of Hubbard abruptly ends there. Clearly, however, there was more to the story. Was there a continued relationship between Hubbard and Parsons?

Later in 1949, Symonds relates, Parsons took the Oath of the Abyss, which was said to be an attempt to unite his consciousness with the Universal Consciousness. Parsons gave himself the magical name of "Belarion Armiluss Al Dajjal AntiChrist." Symonds thought Parsons was going crazy at this point.

"Dajjal," Sheri explained, "is Arabic for `deceiver,' which was the name given the Antichrist in Islamic legend. Ad-Dajjal was supposed to have a red face, one eye in the middle of his forehead, and to rule all the world, except Mecca and Medina, for forty years before being destroyed by the Mahdi."

Weird stuff. Why would Parsons chose that name?

"So now we know the real identity of the Antichrist," I told Sheri. "Parsons was trying to start a New Aeon or New Age, and Hubbard (Ron the Seer) was trying to cash-in on it. There are God-hucksters on the radio who have suspected all along that New Age movements are the work of the Antichrist. I think they're right. When you hear someone declaring a `New Age,' or a `New Order' run for your life."

"What's wrong with a New Age?" Sheri wanted to know.

"I suppose it's mainly a question of who's in charge. When a group proclaims a New Age, you can bet they themselves expect to end up running the show. Those in power now typically wouldn't need, and wouldn't want, a new order for themselves. They're doing well enough under the old order, thank you. So it's either another elite group making a power-grab, or else it's disgruntled trouble-makers, angrily enduring the `present distress,' perhaps envious of the rest of the world or suffering from an illusion of insignificance. These types might well vote for radical political and social reforms. The little guys in the present age, naturally, are going to be well-rewarded big honchos in the next world. But today's little guys are a large, heterogeneous group, and they disagree on the nature of the changes needed."

We catalogued a few questions: What had lead Parsons to become a closet magician? Why was he so naive where L. Ron Hubbard was concerned? What were Parsons' occult activities immediately prior to his death?

Where was L. Ron Hubbard in June 1952?

Then there was Homer Nilmot. He undoubtedly already knew what we had thus far discovered about John Whiteside Parsons. Probably a good deal more. What hadn't he simply told me at the outset? What was he trying to accomplish?

I had met Homer a few weeks previously at a party given by Trisha, Sheri's roommate. Homer introduced himself and asked what I did. I told him I was an "ontological detective". The description had just slipped out, and it occurred to me it would look good on a business card. Homer chose to focus on the detective part and asked for a meeting. At lunch at Downey's he seemed to know a lot about me--enough to make me wonder who was playing detective. He had given me a cash retainer, and had discouraged any questions about himself or his organization.

The strange phone call I had received indicated someone else was also interested in Jack Parsons.

"Why don't we focus on the following," I said to Sheri. "First, how did L. Ron Hubbard come to meet Jack Parsons? The biography of Crowley doesn't explain that. Was it through the O.T.O.? And what happened after the incident with Ron running off with Betty in the yacht? We need more details."

Sheri had arranged a meeting with David Wilson, the Penn academic who was supposed to be the Crowley expert. Like many academics, I assumed he had fallen in love with his subject. If so, this would be helpful. In order to understand Parsons, I had to see the world through his eyes, and Parsons obviously admired Crowley.

How would an expert on rocket propulsion reconcile his professional life with the other one involving the Agape Lodge? Maybe Parsons just liked sex. Or maybe there was more to it than that.

There was a small line of students waiting outside David Wilson's office. I had never understood why a professor would voluntarily choose to teach a summer session. I knocked on the door and they looked somewhat resentful when Wilson came out with a departing student and told those waiting office hours were over for the day. He gave me a good-humored grin and we went inside.

The room was sparsely furnished, but exuded more the atmosphere of a private den than an academic office. Missing were the stacks of papers and research reports piled high on desk, filing cabinets, and spare chairs. There was an oriental rug spread out in front of the desk, with two padded armchairs angled on either side. Nested among the books on the wall shelves was a CD player, softly pumping out "Bass Strings" by Country Joe and the Fish. A framed print on the wall showed a dancer sensuously arching backward, her left hand resting on the floor behind her.

Wilson himself was in his mid-fifties, with layered medium-length white hair combed forward. His face showed the intense enthusiasm of an undergraduate.

"So you're interested in that old rascal guru Aleister Crowley," he said, waving me to an armchair. "What can I tell you about him?"

Homer Nilmot's questions to me had indicated a political motivation for his interest in Jack Parsons. I decided to start with that angle.

"Can you tell me something about the political attitudes of Crowley and his followers?"

The answer came almost immediately, without reflection, like a well- rehearsed lecture for Psychology 101.

"You have to distinguish between Crowley-the-Herald-of-the-New-Age, and Crowley-the-Man. Crowley-the-Cambridge-Don had the turn-of-the-century British upper class attitude that viewed much of the outer world as peopled with inferior wogs, geeks, and niggers, who for their own good needed to be ruled with a firm British hand. By contrast, the Book of the Law (his revelation) was democratic, anarchistic, hacking apart the group mythologies of society and nation with their self-perpetuating codes of personal and economic bondage.

"Crowley-the-Man sometimes said that women were creatures of inferior minds. The Book of the Law said every man and every woman was a star, which Crowley-the-Herald-of-the- New-Age interpreted to mean full equality between the sexes. Most of Crowley's followers were in fact women of an independent spirit.

"Occult organizations are by their nature hierarchical. There are masters and disciples, inner and outer orders. Everyone gets spiritually ranked according to his or her initiatory stage. This aspect of things undoubtedly appealed to Crowley-the-Man, who wanted to possess the occult knowledge and spiritual stature denied ordinary people. Nevertheless, Crowley- the-New-Ager set out to democratize magic by publishing the secret traditions.

"Crowley's political program was essentially set out in Liber Oz."

Wilson got up to pull out a typed sheet from a drawer in his desk. It was a plain sheet of white paper with no heading. An address in California was listed at the bottom of the page. I read:

Every man and every woman is a star.

There is no god but man.

Man has the right to live by his own law,

to live in the way that he wills to do,
to work as he will,
to play as he will,
to rest as he will,
to die when and how he will.

Man has the right to eat what he will,

to drink what he will,
to dwell where he will,
to move as he will on the face of the earth.

Man has the right to think what he will,

to speak what he will,
to write what he will,
to draw, paint, carve, etch, mould, build as he will,
to dress as he will.

Man has the right to love as he will,

take your fill and will of love as ye will,
when, where, and with whom ye will.

Man has the right to kill those who would thwart these rights.

The slaves shall serve.

Love is the law, love under will.

"It would upset a few people," Wilson said. "The right to die when and how you will? The military and the medical profession would prefer to keep that prerogative to themselves.

"The right to dwell and move around where you will? That's anathema to the modern conception of the nation-state. How would we dispense with immigration authorities, border patrols, the passport mafia, and the coast guard? How would the tax collector keep track of anyone in such a world?

"To love as you will? Free love provoked violent reaction in the Sixties. And who believes in it anymore in the Live AIDS era?

"To eat as you will? That implies sovereignty over ones own body. Are you kidding? Look at the governmental and media hysteria over substances with psychopharmacological properties. As for less controversial chemicals, it still takes an average of 8-10 years and $100,000,000 to get a new drug approved by the FDA and out on the market. Thousands can die while the FDA decides whether a new treatment is `safe'.

"Free speech? Destroyed by the libel laws. A few years ago the Trilateral Commission published a book by Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington which said that the problem with modern democracies was there was too much democracy and too much free speech. That democracies could only survive as long as most people left the problems of running a country in the hands of an educated elite, like (and this was Huntington's example) in the good old days when Harry Truman was able to make do with a handful of Wall Street lawyers and bankers. Huntington proposed going after the press with a liberal dose of the libel laws.

"No God but man? What would the religious establishment say to that? How are you going to terrify people into submission without an external supernatural power to back up arbitrary codes of largely monetary conduct?"

Okay, I thought. This still doesn't tell me much about Homer Nilmot's interest. Or not that I could see, right off hand.

"Do you know anything about a Crowley follower named Jack Parsons?" I asked.

"Just what I've read here and there. The Symonds biography of Crowley has some material. Then there are some books by the current head of an O.T.O. lodge in London, Kenneth Grant. One is called The Magical Revival and another Aleister Crowley & The Hidden God. They discuss Parsons' experiences with a `Frater X.' If you compare the events with Symonds' biography, Frater X is obviously L. Ron Hubbard, the Scientology founder. Grant chose not to use Hubbard's name, perhaps fearing a dirty tricks or character assassination campaign conducted by some of Hubbard's fanatical followers."

I took note of the two books.

"Does it make sense for a scientist like Parsons to be a magician?" I asked.

Wilson just grinned at me.

"Does it make sense for a scientist to be a Protestant?" he finally responded. "Did it make sense for Isaac Newton, the inventor of the calculus and expositor of the law of universal gravitation, to write commentaries on the biblical books of Daniel and Revelation, and to devote his time delving into alchemical treatises?"

"Okay. Let me alter the question. What is the relation of magic to science and religion?"

I asked that question because I was annoyed at his superior attitude, but he didn't seem to notice.

"Sir James Frazier, the anthropologist, characterized science, magic, and religion as three approaches to reality, and I would agree. The scientific approach can be summarized in the phrase `seeing is believing'. Scientists are from Missouri--you've got to show them. Physical science deals with the basic forces of material reality--gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak and strong nuclear forces--as elucidated by experiment.

"The key psychological characteristic of the domain of physical science is that it purports to study behavior that manifests itself independently of human cognition or belief. You don't have to understand gravity in order to fall off a building and die from the impact. It doesn't matter if you've ever heard of gravity or even if you vehemently deny its existence. Stick your finger in an electrical socket and you get a shock, whether saint or sinner, Methodist or Moonie.

"Ideally, scientists are supposed to be neutral skeptics.

"For example, Einstein said that large gravitational bodies such as stars would warp space-time around themselves. So that even a light ray passing by would apparently change directions-- just as though it had been `pulled' off course by gravity--and continue at an angle to its original path. This was an interesting theory by a leading scientist. But the theory was only believed when the phenomena was actually observed in the solar eclipse of May 29, 1919. When announced later, the confirmation made headlines around the world. Even then Einstein himself wasn't convinced his own theory was correct, because he had made other predictions that hadn't yet been confirmed."

The phone began to ring.

"Anyway, that's the way the scientific approach is supposed to work. But doesn't really," he added, picking up the phone.

When he finished I asked him what he meant.

"Well, scientists don't work in a vacuum. You go to college to learn the current body of accepted, and acceptable, beliefs. What questions you ask depends on what questions you feel comfortable raising in a seminar comprised of educated colleagues. The university doctoral program indifferently screens out the incompetent and the competently heretical. What experiments you perform depends on what experiments are `worthwhile'. What is `worthwhile,' of course, depends on what you can get grant money for, and what you can publish. Both of these require referees who are already grounded in the body of current beliefs.

"Here is one example. French peasants in the Seventeenth Century kept reporting meteorites. The scientific community laughed at the superstitious reports from gullible bumpkins. Any educated person `knew' that stones don't fall from the skies.

"If you really believed in observation and experiment, of course, you would have gone out and seen the meteorites for yourself. This just shows that how scientists actually operate differs from the Pollyanna descriptions of the scientific method you find in high school textbooks."

"The Seventeenth Century occurred some time ago," I astutely observed.

"It's not any different today," he replied. "In 1962 a French astrophysicist named Jacque Vallee watched his colleagues erase a magnetic tape on which his satellite-tracking team had recorded data on an unknown flying object. The data had a suspicious resemblance to classical ufo sightings, and he was given the explanation that `people would laugh at us.' What is interesting to a psychologist is the fact astronomers were willing to destroy scientific data rather than run the risk someone might associate them with cultists and cranks.

"You even have witch-hunting organizations like CSICOP--the Committee for Snotty Interpretations of Claims of the Paranormal--which engages in character assassination of scientists involved in parapsychological research. CSICOP members claim their goal is rooting out fraud. But it isn't fraud that really upsets them. It's heresy. CSICOP once ran a study refuting a particular astrological correlation. When one of the editors of their magazine realized that a statistical error had been made, and that the study actually supported the astrological assertion, the magazine refused to print a retraction. He wrote a letter to the editor, but they wouldn't print that. He himself then did a further study, which this time came to the `right' conclusion, and CSICOP published it, but refused to publish the reference to the error in the previous study. They then agreed to publish a statement that his second report had been `censored.' Then, without his knowledge, they censored the reference that the report had been censored. It shows their real function is propaganda.

"They have a court jester, an erstwhile stage magician and a paid disinformation agent for the U.S. Department of Defense, who goes around claiming parapsychological research results are obtained by trickery. Imagine CSICOP scientists being led around by the nose by a stage performer! CSICOP even got Nobel-prize winners to sign a statement that astrology was superstition. It was absurd. Most of the people who signed that statement wouldn't know a Gemini from a Taurus. Yet they were perfectly willing to declare there was no scientific evidence for astrology."

David Wilson was clearly on his soap box. I just listened.

"It's the basic appeal to authority rather than evidence. The Pope says you shouldn't wear prophylactics--he's the Pope, after all. And a CSICOP T.V. scientist says there's no evidence for psychokinesis--well, he's on T.V. after all. He must know what he's talking about."

He paused, so I interjected: "How would you characterize the religious and magical approaches?" I was still listening between the lines, trying to get a sense of where Jack Parsons may have been coming from--living simultaneous lives as a rocket genius and a Crowley disciple.

"The religious and magical approaches are quite distinct. Both believe in an unseen order, a sacred realm. Both are concerned with laws that operate according to one's psychological state. It's difficult to generalize, but the religious approach is basically concerned with worship and reward and punishment. You worship a God by emulating his characteristics. The devotees of Dionysus were infused with his spirit. Followers of Jesus receive and express his love.

"The magician is more pragmatic. Crowley defined magic as the `art and science of causing changes in conformity with will.' That is, magic integrates psychology and physics. Magicians believe in the Hermetic principal `as above, so below.' There is a complete correspondence between the inner and outer world, between the microcosm and macrocosm, between your state of mind and your outer world experience.

"The magical approach is technological in that you want to bring about changes in your own or others behavior, in the state of society, or in physical matter. But the starting point for effecting change is the consciousness of the magician himself. Or herself.

"A magician would not hesitate to use a religious approach. For example, a magician might meditate on the God Dionysus, or perform a prayer or ritual dedicated to Dionysus, in order to infuse his own consciousness with the Dionysian spirit, if this were important for the accomplishment of a particular goal.

"Neither would a magician hesitate to study science. Science is, after all, a very powerful method for getting at certain aspects of physical reality. In fact, one standard type of magical exercise involves immersing yourself in a point of view alternative to what you are normally accustomed.

"Around here," he waved his hand vaguely at the surrounding walls--I assumed he meant the university--"we talk about putting on our psychologist's hat, or economist's hat, or physicist's hat--meaning you interpret something in terms of the conventional wisdom of that profession. A good magician believes in the multi-model approach. For the moment he may become a psychologist, or economist, or physicist, or he may take the cosmic viewpoint of a priest in the ancient Egyptian city of On, or adopt the paranoia of a life-long member of the John Birch society. The manipulation of reality requires a plasticity of consciousness."

"Aren't there different types of magic?" I asked. "How does, say, black magic differ from white magic?"

Wilson laughed. "How does the gas mileage of white cars compare to that of black cars?"

"You're saying there's no difference."

"Not at all. People who buy black cars may be, in general, different drivers from people who buy white cars, so white cars may get different mileage." He paused. "I suppose there are different ways to answer your question. On the one hand there's the good-guys-wear-white-hats approach. White magic is what we do. Black magic is what anyone I don't like does. In this sense, `white' magic is magic used for a purpose you approve of.

"But magic is really a neutral technology, somewhat independent of the goals of the magician."

Wilson paused, thought for a moment, then decided to stop there.

"Nothing you have said so far makes Crowley or magic seem all that awful, aside from whether you think it makes any sense." I said. "So why does the mention of Crowley's name arouse so much hostility?"

"Oh. For a number of reasons. Crowley wasn't all that nice of a guy. He was a notorious practical joker and show-off. If anyone conceived a disagreeable opinion of Crowley, he went out of his way to confirm their worst impressions, often acting like a dirty-minded little kid. It was perhaps the inevitable consequence of growing up in a family who believed in the literal truth of the Bible, thought they were the only true Christians, and looked forward to the imminent return of Christ. Besides the fact that he enjoyed manipulating others' perceptions of reality, Crowley was, I think, practicing the magical principle that relates the degree of power you have over someone to your capacity to generate intense emotion in that person. That is, it was better they spoke badly of him, than they not speak of him at all.

"He was a show-off alright. When he first left Cambridge, he went around as a Count Vladimir Savareff. Another time, when the Paris authorities had commissioned a bronze butterfly to cover the private parts of the monument which Jacob Epstein had made for the tomb of Oscar Wilde in Pere-Lachaise, Crowley stole the butterfly and showed up at the Cafe Royal with the butterfly afixed as a cod-piece over his evening dress.

"Then there was sex. Remember, we are talking about the early part of the twentieth century. This was a time when parents still read John Harvey Kellogg's Plain Facts for Old and Young to learn the thirty-nine signs of the secret vice of self-abuse in their children. Kellogg exemplified the spirit of the age when he recommended having the skin covering the end of the penis sewn up to prevent erection, and the application of carbolic acid to the clitoris to prevent abnormal excitement in females.

"Well, Crowley's magic, especially later on, was tantric. It involved sex. To the public at large that made it black magic by definition. The public essentially first heard about Crowley when he opened his Abbey of Thelema at Cefalu in Sicily. The British papers began a campaign of villification claiming that the Abbey was inhabited by drug addicts who spent their days indulging in sexual abominations. As a result, Crowley was banished from the country by Mussolini in 1923."

Banishment by Mussolini? Was that serious condemnation or not? But I dropped that line of thought because here was opportunity to ask a basic question about those sex rituals.

"What's sex magic?"

Wilson turned for a moment and looked out the window across his desk.

"Like most other types of magic ritual, it's a way of reprogramming the human mind," he said finally. He got up and moved to one of the bookshelves. "I usually refer people to this book for the basic mechanism involved."

The book was entitled The Mind Possessed: A Physiology of Possession, Mysticism, and Faith Healing. It was written by a British psychiatrist named William Sargant.

"Sexual magic was practiced by the Ordo Templi Orientis long before Crowley became a member. Crowley, incidentally, always wrote OTO in a manner that made the phallic symbolism of the letters obvious--the O's representing the testicles. He also formed the A in Aleister with curls at the bottoms of the verticle strokes and the cross-bar positioned at the top of the letter, so that the total effect was an ithyphallic version of OTO."

The phone rang again. While Wilson talked to a student about an exam, I looked once more at the sheet of paper Wilson had given me when I had first come in the office. A group entitled JPMS had sponsored the flier. The address was in Glendale, California.

When Wilson got off the phone, he looked at me as though it were time for me to leave.

"Just a couple more quick questions," I said. "There are groups of Crowley followers around today. What are they like?"

"It all depends. Many intellectuals read Crowley for the clarity of his thought, which contrasts with a lot of the New Age bilge floating around today-- channelled revelations from 35,000-year-old Lemurians and moralistic dolphins and whatnot. But keep in mind the Media-Crowley. The Media-Crowley was the wickedest man alive. Look at the Bantam edition of Crowley's autobiography. Notice the advertising blurb at the top."

He showed me a paperback The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. The blurb said these were "the profane and uninhibited memoirs of the most notorious magician, satanist and drug cultist of the 20th century."

"Anyone who actually read the book will come away with a much different impression that they get from the cover. But think about it. There are all sorts of kooks and crazies who want to be associated with Crowley because they take this hype seriously. They're looking for a piece of the action of drugs, black masses, satanism, sex, bloody rituals, and whatever else the media have lead them to expect. It's not likely to be a nice crowd. And some of those weirdos can be downright dangerous."

Wilson looked at me carefully. "Downright dangerous," he repeated.

"What about this group?" I held up the sheet of paper with the quotations from Liber Oz, and tapped the name at the bottom.

Wilson shrugged ignorance.

"What does JPMS stand for?"

"Oh that." Wilson didn't bat an eye. "That's the Jack Parsons Memorial Society."

The Magician is the author of other episodes of the Jack Parsons story (http://zolatimes.com/jparart/Aparmenu.html).

-30-

from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 2, No 9, March 30, 1998