Speaker 1: Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me Richard McClean smith. For
Speaker 1: the weeks in between episodes, we look at the stories that,
Speaker 1: for one reason or other, didn't make it into the show.
Speaker 1: For the last episode, we Are the Witchcraft, we took
Speaker 1: an in depth look into the extraordinary life and death
Speaker 1: of pioneering rocket scientist and magician Jack Parsons. As a scientist,
Speaker 1: Parsons is perhaps best remembered as a founding member of
Speaker 1: what would eventually evolve into Nassa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. As
Speaker 1: a practitioner of ritualistic magic, it is with the Babylon
Speaker 1: Working that he is most synonymous his ambitious attempt to
Speaker 1: conjure the divine feminine essence into being. There has been
Speaker 1: much dispute about how exactly Parsons intended to do this,
Speaker 1: whether by literally producing a child incarnation of the Goddess
Speaker 1: or by summoning her into the body of a living woman,
Speaker 1: the body thereby acting as an avatar within which the
Speaker 1: divine soul could emerge. From a feminist perspective, it is
Speaker 1: a somewhat complicated proposition, since, on the one hand, parsons
Speaker 1: Is working presents a genuine attempt to overthrow the dominant
Speaker 1: masculine and patriarchal order, which he considered repellent. Some have
Speaker 1: been critical, however, that it is yet another example of
Speaker 1: a man putting himself sent a stage as the savior
Speaker 1: and orchestrator. Ironically, such a view fails to recognize the
Speaker 1: woman at the center of it all. Regularly positioned as
Speaker 1: little more than a muse, both professionally and as a
Speaker 1: plot point in the life of Jack Parsons, Marjorie Cameron
Speaker 1: was anything but. Cameron was born on April the twenty third,
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two, in the small Midwestern town of Belle
Speaker 1: Plaine in Iowa, the first of four to her parents,
Speaker 1: Carrie and Hill. Her blue eyes and red hair, unlike
Speaker 1: any of her siblings, had been prophesied by her aunt Nell.
Speaker 1: It was also Nell's belief that her young niece would
Speaker 1: dutifully follow a righteous Christian path and become a nun.
Speaker 1: But Cameron was never one to be so easily coerced.
Speaker 1: Even from a young age, she was tuning into different frequencies.
Speaker 1: Knights would be spent in restless fits of sleep, flooded
Speaker 1: with peculiar visions, one time waking up to witness four
Speaker 1: floating white horses passing her bedroom window, or later spent
Speaker 1: in solitary strolls through the town's Oak Hill Cemetery under
Speaker 1: cover of moonlight. At fifteen, Cameron fell pregnant. Her mother
Speaker 1: is believed to have performed the abortion, though it is
Speaker 1: not quite clear how. Four years later, Cameron will make
Speaker 1: an unsuccessful attempt to take her own life, an early
Speaker 1: lesson in understanding those things you can escape and those
Speaker 1: things that you can't. Like many Bell Plane residents, Cameron's
Speaker 1: father worked in the rail industry. The town itself was
Speaker 1: a railway terminus, being quite literally the end of the line,
Speaker 1: it was only a matter of time before Cameron set
Speaker 1: off to discover what lay at the other end of it.
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty three, she took the first opportunity she
Speaker 1: could to find out, enlisting in the Navy, serving as
Speaker 1: part of the woman accepted for volunteer Emergency Service. She
Speaker 1: would eventually end up in Washington, d c. Cameron's burgeoning
Speaker 1: skills as an artist, in particular, her mastery of Lyne
Speaker 1: saw her employed as a cartographer, drafting military maps for
Speaker 1: the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The only woman in the
Speaker 1: office years later, realizing that many had died in the
Speaker 1: South Pacific as a result to the maps she created,
Speaker 1: Cameron will be unable to shake the sense of a
Speaker 1: psychical thread connecting her to every death, denouncing war forever.
Speaker 1: After having participated in a mysterious covert homeland operation, Cameron
Speaker 1: is transferred to the Naval Photographic Laboratory to assist in
Speaker 1: the making of propaganda films. When her brother, a tale
Speaker 1: gunner in the U. S. Air Force, is injured in battle,
Speaker 1: Cameron is denied her request to return home and visit him.
Speaker 1: Not one to be bound, she went home regardless, being
Speaker 1: court martialed immediately on her return, earned to duty. The
Speaker 1: following year, the war is over and Cameron moves back
Speaker 1: in with her parents, who had by now moved to
Speaker 1: Pasadena in California. Cameron intended to travel soon after to
Speaker 1: New York to meet up with someone she had been
Speaker 1: seeing during her time in the Navy. One morning, however,
Speaker 1: while waiting in line at the unemployment office, she bumps
Speaker 1: into an old acquaintance from the Navy, Alva Rodgers. Alva
Speaker 1: had just recently taken a room at a large house
Speaker 1: on South Orange Grove Avenue, boarding with a mad scientist
Speaker 1: she just had to meet. What happens next has been
Speaker 1: well documented in occult histories, with Cameron becoming a focal
Speaker 1: point of Jack Parson's Babylon working, the pair drawn inexorably
Speaker 1: together in love and lust in the realizing of their union.
Speaker 1: Where the Parsons as working could be said to have
Speaker 1: been successful or not, many speculated that in one way
Speaker 1: or another, something had opened up. In March, after the
Speaker 1: Babylon Working is complete, Cameron took a seat on the
Speaker 1: back porch at ten zero three Orange Grove Avenue and
Speaker 1: witnessed of peculiar silver cigar shaped object moving through the sky.
Speaker 1: This apparent sighting came a good year before civilian pilot
Speaker 1: Kenneth Arnold claimed to have witnessed nine unidentified objects flying
Speaker 1: with calculated precision near Mount Rainier in Washington State, but
Speaker 1: when she mentions this sighting to Jack, he makes no comment.
Speaker 1: The following year, Cameron travels to Paris with the intention
Speaker 1: of continuing on to England to meet with Alister Crowley.
Speaker 1: On the day she is due to travel, she receives
Speaker 1: word that he has died. Weeks later, while staying at
Speaker 1: a convent in Switzerland, Cameron takes a bath, and when
Speaker 1: she emerges, something inside has shifted. She feels changed. Facing
Speaker 1: the mirror, she crouches down and howls at the strange reflection,
Speaker 1: regarding herself as if for the first time. Restless and
Speaker 1: eager to understand this new self, Cameron leaves Jack and
Speaker 1: joins an artists colony in sam Miguel de Allende, Mexico,
Speaker 1: where she meets artists Leonora Carrington and Renata Drukes. After
Speaker 1: a short relationship with a young bullfighter, which ends in
Speaker 1: tragedy after he falls ill and dies, Cameron returns to
Speaker 1: Los Angeles and reunites with Jack. Are you always taking
Speaker 1: care of your family? Do you often take care of
Speaker 1: others not yourself? Now it's time to take care of yourself,
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Speaker 1: That's teladoc dot com slash Unexplained podcast. On that Fateful
Speaker 1: Day in June nineteen fifty two, after hearing the explosion
Speaker 1: coming from the direction of Parsons's laboratory at ten seventy
Speaker 1: one and a half Orange Grove Avenue, Cameron arrives to
Speaker 1: find journalists and photographers already wading through the rubble looking
Speaker 1: for anything peculiar to get their teeth into. Correctly, anticipating
Speaker 1: that her husband's unconventional personal life will be raked over
Speaker 1: in the ensuing weeks. With attention inevitably turning to his
Speaker 1: surviving widow, Cameron has little choice but to flee as
Speaker 1: lurid headlines promised to reveal the secrets of the Pasadena
Speaker 1: Scientists sex Madness cult and black magic orgies. Cameron is
Speaker 1: already making her way to the Mexican border. In her
Speaker 1: possession are the contents of a strange black box that
Speaker 1: had been discovered in Parsons laboratory by the police. The
Speaker 1: box was covered in magic charts and tables, and also
Speaker 1: bore the ominous note don't go further or you will
Speaker 1: lose your life. One friend subsequently tasked with looking after it,
Speaker 1: had cut his thumb on one of its hinges when
Speaker 1: he tried to open it for Cameron. There is no
Speaker 1: such issue. Inside, she discovers all of Jack's magical papers
Speaker 1: and learns for the first time of her involvement in
Speaker 1: his Babylon working. If there had been any doubt before
Speaker 1: about his intentions with the ritual, to Cameron, at least
Speaker 1: now there was none. It all made sense that night
Speaker 1: in Switzerland, when she had felt changed, her body had
Speaker 1: been the vessel and Babylon had been received. She was
Speaker 1: the scarlet woman. Inside she also found copies of Jack's
Speaker 1: correspondence with Alister Crowley, in which he informs him of
Speaker 1: the peculiar object that Cameron had seen in the sky
Speaker 1: the first few days after the pair had met. It
Speaker 1: was a sign after all. The next few months are
Speaker 1: a personal hell for Cameron as she struggles with the
Speaker 1: unceasing actuality of Jack's death, which will result in at
Speaker 1: least one suicide attempt, but through it all, a heightened
Speaker 1: awareness of something is growing inside. A few months after
Speaker 1: Jack's death, Cameron, now returned from Mexico, arrives to stay
Speaker 1: at the home of a friend in Pasadena, carrying with
Speaker 1: her a brightly colored finch in a bird cage. Having
Speaker 1: left the house one morning, Cameron returns to find that
Speaker 1: her beloved bird has died. The devastating news sends her
Speaker 1: into a state of deep distress. Moments later, her housemates
Speaker 1: watch as she takes the bird from the cage and
Speaker 1: holds it in her hands, quietly stroking its bright feathers.
Speaker 1: After thirty minutes, they look on in astonishment as the
Speaker 1: bird's feet begin to twitch, its head starts to turn,
Speaker 1: and finally it jumps up in her hands, flapping its
Speaker 1: wings and chirping into the air. Cameron returns the bird
Speaker 1: to its cage and says nothing. Over the next four decades,
Speaker 1: spurred on by her conviction that she was the divine goddess,
Speaker 1: Cameron will dedicate herself to her art and magic, living
Speaker 1: a singular life of transcendental exploration and forging a pioneering
Speaker 1: path which will later be celebrated and appropriated by the
Speaker 1: Beat movement and the counterculture of sixties America. But she
Speaker 1: was the first among many. Needless to say, there is
Speaker 1: far more to Cameron than could be done justice in
Speaker 1: such a short space of time, But for anyone interested
Speaker 1: in learning more, her art is as good a place
Speaker 1: as any to start. Described by curator Yale Lipschutz as
Speaker 1: an exploration of female sexual power in relation to mysticism,
Speaker 1: you can find much of it collected online by the
Speaker 1: Cameron Parsons Foundation at Cameron hyphen Parsons dot org. I
Speaker 1: can also recommend Spenser Cancer's biography Wormwood Star The Magical
Speaker 1: Life of Marjorie Cameron. If you enjoy listening to Unexplained
Speaker 1: and would like to help supporters, you can now go
Speaker 1: to Unexplained podcast dot com forward slash support. All donations,
Speaker 1: no matter how large or small, are massively appreciated. All
Speaker 1: elements of Unexplained are produced by me Richard McClain Smith.
Speaker 1: Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and feel
Speaker 1: free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas
Speaker 1: regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you
Speaker 1: have an explanation of your own you'd like to share.
Speaker 1: You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com
Speaker 1: or on Twitter at Unexplained pod. Now. It's time to
Speaker 1: take care of yourself. To make time for you, teledoc
Speaker 1: gives you access to a licensed therapist to help you
Speaker 1: get back to feeling your best. Speak to a licensed
Speaker 1: therapist by phone or video any time between seven a m.
Speaker 1: To nine pm local time, seven days a week. Teledoc
Speaker 1: Therapy is available through most insurance or employers. Download the
Speaker 1: app or visit teledoc dot com. Forward slash Unexplained Podcast
Speaker 1: Today to get started. That's t e l a d
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