The Magic of the Moon
The Occult Significance of the Apollo Landings
Evidence suggests that secret societies were involved behind the scenes.
Of possible secret societies involved behind the scenes in the space program, the Freemasons are the most widely known suspects. However, they may not be the only ones.
Jack Parsons, for instance, was a brilliant chemist who was one of the founding members of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which oversees most of America’s civilian unmanned space probes. Parsons was also a practicing occultist and sex magician, a student of the self-proclaimed Great Beast, Aleister Crowley, and for a while a fellow conjuror with none other than L. Ron Hubbard, the science fiction writer who founded the cult of Scientology. (An excellent book, Sex and Rockets, has been written about Parsons, his role in the formation of JPL, and his occult connections.)
Sometime after Hubbard ran off with Parsons’ girlfriend and boat, Parsons was blown to bits in an explosion in his home workshop. Since then, JPL no longer boasts of his role in its creation. It is impossible to say whether Parsons was the only occultist involved in JPL, or how he may have influenced its future development. However, the evidence gathered by Richard Hoagland is quite suggestive that something funny’s going on with the space program.
It is claimed by some that a number of astronauts, including Gus Grissom, Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin, were Freemasons. I have not been able to find any documentary proof in the case of Armstrong, and it appears most unlikely.
However, Aldrin certainly was, or rather, is a 33rd Degree Mason. In the Headquarters of the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite in Washington D.C. there supposedly hangs a Masonic Banner Buzz took with him to the Moon.
Col. Buzz Aldrin, 33rd degree Mason, in the LM
In Aldrin’s autobiography, Return to Earth, the only mention of Masonry is when he says that he temporarily lost his grandfather’s Masonic ring that he wanted to take to the Moon while suiting up for the mission. He says nothing about that banner, nor of the “SPECIAL DEPUTATION” he undertook for the Texas Grand Lodge on the Moon. However, the charter of the Tranquility Lodge in Waco indicates it was to “claim Masonic Territorial Jurisdiction” on the Moon for the Lodge.
So Aldrin apparently claimed the Moon for Texas Masons. The whole thing, frankly, sounds like a fraternity prank; except that there is no mention of the banner whatsoever in his book nor at the site of the Supreme Council. It is a secret, just like the ceremony was. Since the mission, timed to the second, did not allow for much playtime, perhaps it was more important than it seems.
This at least demonstrates that Buzz knows how to keep the Craft’s secrets (though Neil, Mason or not, is even more close-mouthed).
It is perhaps all the more remarkable then, that Aldrin performed a rite that he was not so reticent about discussing. It is another one of his “firsts” — he was the first man to perform a religious ritual on another world, shortly after landing.
Here’s how he described it in Return to Earth:
During the first idle moment in the LM before eating our snack, I reached into my personal preference kit and pulled out two small packages which had been specially prepared at my request. One contained a small amount of wine, the other a small wafer. With them and a small chalice from the kit, I took communion on the moon, reading to myself from a small card I carried on which I had written the portion of the Book of John used in the traditional communion ceremony. (p. 233)
He goes on to say that he’d intended to read it back to Earth but that NASA had requested he not do this due to the legal battle that had erupted over the Apollo 8 crew reading Genesis 1 on Christmas Eve, 1968. Instead, he called for a moment of silence to contemplate the event and give thanks, and during that consumed the Sacred Elements. Meanwhile, Armstrong looked on with an “expression of faint disdain (as if to say, ‘what’s he up to now?’).”
Another source identifies the words as being the verse he read as, “I am the vine and you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit.” (John 15:5)
This was not the first prayer uttered in space, by any means. Apart from whatever unspoken thoughts the avowedly atheist cosmonauts might have had, the first known prayer was Al Shepard’s supposedly muttered on the pad before the first manned Mercury shot: “Dear Lord, please don’t let me screw up”or something to that effect.
The first formal prayer in space was probably Gordon Cooper’s. He uttered a prayer he had written beforehand privately during one of the later orbits of his flight, the last Mercury mission, shortly before the power went out. He later read it to a joint session of Congress.
As for Aldrin’s Communion service, as far as I have been able to determine, this rite is probably Episcopalian in origin rather than Masonic. It wasn’t the first scriptural reading beyond Earth, however, since Borman, Lovell, and Anders had read aloud the first chapter of Genesis on the first circumlunar mission.
And it was followed shortly by a very symbolic statement — Neil Armstrong’s famous declaration while stepping onto the lunar surface, “That’s one small step for man ...ah... one giant leap for mankind.” Buzz said that even en route to the Moon, Neil had said that he was “still thinking about” what he would say. Yet Buzz intimated that the statement might have been “thought up by Simon Borgin, a United States Information Agency offical who was in frequent contact with the astronauts and who accompanied us around the world. He was also the rumored source for Frank Borman’s reading of Genesis. For his part Neil declined to comment on any of these rumors to anyone including Mike [Collins, the Command Module pilot] and myself.” (p. 234)
In other words, the public religious and civic symbolism quite possibly originated with, or was at least influenced by, the astronauts’ State Department handler. But whether there is any occult significance to Neil’s statement — or the supposed “goof” he made, I have not yet been able to determine.
Still however, it is significant that the first ritual performed upon another world was not one of mere nationalism, like raising the flag, but a religious way of taking possession for God, something the Spanish did whenever they claimed a new land for their king.
