James Bond, Ian Fleming and Aleister Crowley

This is a non-political piece, though not entirely so.

A recent viewing of Casino Royale inspired the following "brain dump" on the subject of James Bond, a character who has appeared in many filmed entertainments but only two real films: On Her Majesty's Secret Service and the most recent venture. The other entries in the series provide much fun but do not engage any deeper emotions; as drama, they do not exist.

The two films have much in common. Both "err" on the side of realism, at least when compared to the comic-book hijinks of the other adventures (although Casino Royale still contains at least one action sequence which is much too much). Both star unfamiliar actors who, on first meeting, seem like someone other than James Bond. Both feature low-key, non-elaborate, nonsense-free pre-credit sequences. Both add depth to a notoriously 2D character by emphasizing his vulnerability. (The new film portrays Bond as an SAS thug whom M fashions into her tool.) Both feature resignation-from-the-service scenes. Both feature women who come across as actual human beings, not sexual playthings. And as the final credits materialize, the classic Bond theme signals defeat, not triumph -- dehumanization, not heroism.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service meant much to me on first viewing. For many pubescent lads, the "Bond girls" of the other films summarily ended the "Girls? Yuck!" stage of sexual development. But Tracy, played by Diana Rigg, was something different. Bond married her. And my thirteen-year-old self (I think I was that age on first viewing) suddenly understood why a man would want to spend the rest of his life with one woman.

This is a love story, featuring one of the most sophisticated courtships in film history. As one critic noted, there is something "Shavian, if not Congrevian" in the way these two "dwindle into marriage." When they plan out their lives together -- Zurich or Rome? -- I thought I had caught a glimpse of my own future. (A presumptious little snot, I was. Little did I know...!)

Countess Teresa di Vicenzo, a.k.a. Tracy, a.k.a. Mrs. Bond, daughter of the head of the Union Corse, may be my favorite female character in the history of cinema. Much of my fondness for her derives from the rescue fantasies she awakens. The script intimates, but does not state, that she has deep-seated and irreconcilable issues with her crooked father, who loves her yet remains blind to his own role in her breakdown.

Yet despite her suicidal tendencies, she proves herself Bond's equal. When he pulls a dangerous skiing stunt, she outdoes him. When he toadies to Daddy, she stands her ground. When Blofeld gets his ass kicked by a girl, she's the girl. Although deeply troubled, she is very much worth the trouble.

Fleming no doubt based Tracy on his own wife, Anne. Most people know that Fleming, as a British intelligence officer, enjoyed a Bond-esque love life, but few know the severity of his own psychological issues.

For Fleming, women maintained desirability only as long as they remained quasi-fictional creatures. The moment any lover displayed signs of humanity -- menstruation, vomiting, even tooth-brushing -- he became physically repelled and could no longer have sex with her. At the age of 44, he fathered a child with Anne (whose divorce was not yet final) and finally decided to make the segue into maturity. She was already an accomplished artist; he set out to be a writer. She was more than his equal.

Incidentally, Casino Royale's Vesper Lynd drew inspiration from legendary Polish-born spy (and accused double agent) Christine Granville, whose nickname, it is said, was Vesperale. She and Fleming became intimate after the war; no woman other than Anne had meant so much to him. And yet it has been claimed (though I've yet to see evidence for the idea) that Fleming himself had a hand in her murder. Her WWII-era contact, Countess Teresa Lubienska, also met with a mysterious end in the 1950s; she may have lent her name to Mrs. Bond.

Rumor holds that Le Chiffre in Casino Royale and Blofeld in OHMSS were both inspired by Fleming's most notorious acquaintance, Aleister Crowley. I feel certain that Crowley's quaint insistence on being called by a spurious title inspired one of the major plot points in OHMSS: Blofeld threatens to unleash mass death if he does not have his ersatz coat of arms recognized!

"Sir Crowley," as he styled himself, met Fleming via the latter's MI5 boss, Maxwell Knight. Knight really was known to his underlings as M. Surprisingly, he had allied himself in the 1920s with Britain's fascist movement.

(Side note: An early scene in the new version of Casino Royale indicates that this film's M -- the marvelous Judi Dench -- also has a first name beginning with that initial. Maxine, I would guess.)

The real M was a naturalist and collector of unusual animals who, as "Uncle Max," hosted a children's radio program. OHMSS subtly alludes to this background. M seems to have met AC (as friends called him) via Dennis Wheatley, another secret service contact who wrote many works of occult fiction which no longer maintain their once-formidable popularity. Interestingly, Knight began his career within a private, ultra-conservative spy network which considered Crowley an enemy of England and, thus, a prime target.

Longstanding rumor holds that Crowley had some connection with the suicide of Maxwell Knight's first wife. Knight was homosexual, and his sexless marriage existed purely for the sake of appearance. I have speculated (but, obviously, will never be in a position to prove) that Crowley used these circumstances to dabble in blackmail, which might have occasioned the tragedy.

Rumor also ties Fleming, Knight and Crowley together in Rudolf Hess' mysterious wartime flight to England. The complex story, insofar as it is known, is best told in Peter Levenda's Unholy Alliance. Hess had a fascination with the occult, and we have excellent reason to believe that AC and he had mutual friends within the pre-war German occult milieu. Crowley had spent some time in Germany in the early 1930s; this segment of his life remains rather mysterious, although we do know that he later -- for an appropriate price -- told British intelligence everything he knew about the Germans he met. One of those acquaintances, I believe, was Karl Haushofer, known to history as the father of geopolitics. Haushofer became a second father to Rudolf Hess.

One factoid not noted by Levenda deserves mention here: While in British custody, Hess repeatedly complained of the spicy curries served to him by his captors; he even mentioned this strange cuisine during a long, rambling statement at his post-war trail. Hess felt that he was being drugged, and all sources agree that he suffered a breakdown in captivity. Crowley often served hot curry dishes at dinner parties (he was, among his many other talents, quite the cook), and reportedly laced his feasts with drugs. His guests suspected that he used the spices to hide any unusual flavoring imparted by the "secret ingredients." If Fleming played a Crowley-inspired trick on the captured Hess, then one could argue that the "Beast" helped to father the intelligence community's ongoing interest in drug-assisted interrogation.

Did Fleming have a personal interest in the occult? Perhaps. When he learned German, he chose, as his major translation project, a work on alchemy by Carl Jung. He was known to dabble in astrology, and he had learned about tarot. Fleming's associate in intelligence work was Donald McCormick, who later went on to write, under the name Richard Deacon, what became the standard biography of John Dee, the famed magician (and spy!) of Shakespeare's era. Crowley considered himself an incarnation of Dee. I have seen no firm evidence that Crowley met McCormick, although a meeting seems likely.

According to McCormick, Dee's code number in the service of Elizabeth I was 007.

(Donald McCormick also wrote a popular book about Jack the Ripper; alas, the work contains much misinformation. Crowley himself believed that the killer was a fellow occultist who styled himself Roslyn D'Onston. I wonder if McCormick and AC ever "talked Ripper"?)

If Blofeld was a fictionalized Crowley -- fleshy, repulsive, yet strangely attractive to women -- then SPECTRE, I would posit, was ODESSA, or the post-war Nazi underground, which really did try, in its more modest way, to pit the superpowers against each other, echoing a scenario often seen in the films. Although Crowley himself admired Churchill and remained loyal to Britain during WWII (after all, he could acquire his heroin fix legally in no other country), he believed that Hitler had been inspired by The Book of the Law, the "Bible" of Crowleyanity.

So when you see Casino Royale, glance toward the edges of the screen. You may glimpse the ghost of "The Beast" lurking in the shadows.

And when you see On Her Majesty's Secret Service, keep in mind that the Union Corse, which most viewers presume to be fictional, is, or was, quite real. (See this 1972 Time story on the organization.) The Corsican mob controlled the docks of Marseille and, thus, most of the European heroin traffic. One of the few books in English on the Union Corse is Henrik Kruger's The Great Heroin Coup, a classic of parapolitics, now rather difficult to find. (Some JFK researchers believe that this work is vital to an understanding of the assassination, although that is a subject for another time.)

By the way, Fleming took that infamous martini formulation -- "shaken, not stirred" -- from his good friend Somerset Maugham, yet another literary figure who dabbled in espionage. "Oliver Haddo," the lead character in an early Maugham work called The Magician, was based on -- you guessed it -- Aleister Crowley, who had married the sister of Maugham's best friend.