This episode of American Alchemy explores the hidden, esoteric, and occult history behind rocket science and the modern space program, arguing that mysticism, ritual, and possible contact with non-human intelligence have been quietly woven into the story of humanity’s journey to the stars — from ancient mythological traditions through Nazi occultism, Jack Parsons’s sex magic rituals, Russian Cosmism, Freemason influence at NASA, and ongoing claims of “downloads” from non-human intelligences by figures inside the US space program.
The Mystical Side of Space Exploration
The episode opens with Buzz Aldrin performing a communion ceremony on the moon during Apollo 11, carrying a Scottish Rite Freemasonic flag — establishing that ritual and esotericism were present at the very dawn of lunar exploration.
Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14) conducted a private ESP experiment en route to the moon, believed the cosmos might be conscious, and founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences — with Wernher von Braun attending an early fundraiser.
George Ellery Hale, the astronomer who built Mount Wilson Observatory and made Edwin Hubble’s discoveries possible, claimed creative inspiration from an “elf” or spirit, designed his laboratory as a tribute to the Egyptian sun-worshipping pharaoh Akhenaten, and was called a “priest of the sun” in his obituaries.
Jack Parsons: The Occult Rocket Scientist
Jack Parsons, co-founder of what became JPL, was a self-taught rocketry genius who developed JATO (jet-assisted takeoff) solid-fuel boosters for the US military — but was also a devoted member of Aleister Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) and practiced ceremonial sex magic.
He conducted the “Babylon Working” ritual with L. Ron Hubbard (pre-Scientology) to summon a divine feminine archetype; Hubbard later stole Parsons’s girlfriend and money.
Parsons believed his rituals opened doorways to non-human intelligence and that UFO sightings surged after his 1946 rituals — he died in a mysterious 1952 explosion, and a lunar crater now bears his name.
Nazi Occultism and Rocket Science
The Nazi regime was deeply invested in the occult: Heinrich Himmler ran the Ahnenerbe (a pseudo-scientific institute claiming Aryan descent from Atlantis), turned Wewelsburg Castle into a ritual center, and the Nazi Party emerged from the Thule Society, which held seances to contact non-human “star beings.”
Hermann Oberth, a pioneer of rocketry, publicly endorsed UFOs as extraterrestrial craft and said humanity had been “helped” by “people of other worlds.”
Wernher von Braun, former SS major and architect of the V2 rocket program using concentration camp slave labor, was brought to the US via Operation Paperclip, had his Nazi record scrubbed, and became the public face of NASA and the Saturn V rocket.
Russian Cosmism and the Quest for the Stars
Russian Cosmism, originating with philosopher Nikolai Fyodorov, held that humanity’s destiny was to defeat death through technology, resurrect all who ever lived, and colonize the cosmos.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the father of Russian spaceflight, developed the foundational rocket equation and believed “ethereal beings” communicated through celestial symbols — genius was the ability to channel these messages into technology.
Soviet thinkers sometimes treated paleocontact (ancient alien contact) as a semi-legitimate scientific inquiry, unlike in the West where it was fringe.
NASA’s Esoteric Dimensions
NASA was established in 1958 as a civilian agency, but the National Aeronautics and Space Act allowed indefinite withholding of anything deemed strategically sensitive — including potential contact with non-human intelligence.
Operation Paperclip brought von Braun and his Nazi rocket team into the US; swastikas were reportedly on display at some early facilities, and von Braun was caught sending classified documents to Nazi counterparts in the USSR without consequence.
Von Braun collaborated with Walt Disney on educational space films; one depicted astronauts discovering constructed ruins on the moon’s far side at 33° — a number significant in Scottish Rite Freemasonry.
Rituals, Symbolism, and Freemasonry in Space Missions
Numerous key NASA figures were Freemasons, including Buzz Aldrin (33rd degree), John Glenn, James Webb (NASA administrator), and multiple astronauts — creating what the episode calls a power structure mixing “former SS officers, Freemasons, and occultists.”
The Apollo mission patch features Orion’s belt (the three stars Mintaka, Alnilam, Alnitak), which the ancient Egyptians associated with Osiris — raising the question of whether the “A” stands for Apollo or Asar (Osiris).
Launch pad 33 at White Sands and runway 33 at Kennedy Space Center echo the Masonic significance of the number.
JPL’s first successful liquid-fuel rocket test occurred on Halloween (Samhain) in 1936; Explorer 1, the first US satellite, launched on Imbolc — both pagan cross-quarter days.
Apollo 8 launched on the winter solstice (December 21, 1968) and the crew read from Genesis on Christmas Eve — a symbolic death-and-resurrection pattern.
Apollo 11 launched on the 24th anniversary of the Trinity atomic test; the landing occurred under the sign of Aquarius.
The Influence of Non-Human Intelligence
Former CIA officer John Ramirez described the 2005 NROL-16 launch: the patch featured pentagrams, a pelican, Bigfoot, and palm trees; it launched at 12:50 a.m. on Walpurgisnacht (a pagan “gateway” holiday); the payload was named Prometheus; and the trajectory headed northeast toward the Big Dipper — paralleling a ritual described in the Necronomicon.
The Big Dipper recurs across traditions: Egyptian rituals used dipper-shaped tools for afterlife journeys, Daoist sages traced its stars in ascension rites, Ptolemy wrote of souls ascending through Orion’s Belt, and the Thule Society saw circumpolar stars as a point of origin for non-human intelligences.
Modern experiencers like Chris Bledsoe report contact with entities linked to the Dipper calling themselves “the Guardians” — the same term now used by the US Space Force, whose Space Delta 7 emblem shows a bear before the Big Dipper.
The Mystical Roots of Scientific Breakthroughs
Diana Pasulka’s research features “Tim Taylor,” a NASA mission controller who claims to receive “downloads” from a non-human intelligence through specific protocols — leading to real patents and technologies. He told Pasulka that “the next development in rocket science will come from religion.”
James Ryder (former Lockheed Martin VP) gave talks on “The Garment of God” linking mysticism and technological progress; Dr. James Lacatski (DIA physicist, AAWSAP program) suggested the US government has accessed a non-human craft.
Jeffrey Kripal revealed that Charles Chase (Lockheed Skunk Works) invited him to give a private talk on levitation to top engineers — studying accounts of shamans and monks who claimed to float.
Senior defense figures including Robert Weiss, Steve Justice, Eric Schrock, and Air Force Research Lab Commander Neil McCaslin advised Tom DeLonge and Peter Levenda’s Secret Machines project, which argues UAPs are “mystical machines” operated by consciousness.
The episode closes with the observation that scientific geniuses throughout history — Einstein, Dirac, Pauli, Heisenberg — described their breakthroughs not as invention but as reception, and with Neil Armstrong’s quote: “There are great ideas undiscovered. Breakthroughs available to those who can remove one of truth’s protective layers.”
