Saturday, October 6, 2018, 8:30 pm, $7
E.DAVIS’ JACK PARSONS + J.BERMAN’s EARTHLINGS
World-renown fringe religion scholar Erik Davis materializes into our cine-séance with Babalon Rising: Jack Parsons Blasts Off, an inside report on the Man of the Hour, Jack Whiteside Parsons, the OTOsorcerer/inventor who founded the JPL, spread wide the words of Aleister Crowley, incidentally catalyzed the cult of L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology, and, with New Age matriarch Marjorie Cameron, brought Thelemic sex-magick into Californiaparlance. Author of Techgnosis, The Visionary State, and Nomad Codes, Davislets sparkle his crown of occult expertise, as he here flips through clips of Parsons’ presence in contemporary film and TV, including Ridley Scott’s Strange Angel, Craig Baldwin’s Mock Up On Mu, et al. CO-FEATURED is journeyman Jonathan (Commune) Berman in person, energizing a rapt audience with the theatrical premiere of his mind-bending Calling All Earthlings, seeded by another SoCal desert wizard, George Van Tassel. A Hughes Aircraftengineer who ”dropped out” of the industry, built the Integratron (without nails!) and his own airfield at Giant Rock, and initiated the post-War UFO craze, Van Tassel serves as a sympathetic protagonist for Berman’s multi-faceted essay, a phantastic philmic freak-show that generously affirms ”alternative” beliefs and the multiplicity of West Coastcosmologies.