Sunday, December 17, 2006

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.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Joseph Cannon said...

Man, you guys just would not BELIEVE the long, weird, racist claptrap I had to delete just now. I'm beginning to think someone out there is deliberately trying to annoy me.

Man, if my audience is a bunch of nutcases, I need a new audience. Or maybe I should just close down shop. Who needs this?

Anonymous said...

Joseph, if they're trying to annoy you that means you're getting to them. Hang in there.

This was a great post. All interconnected it reminds of Hopsicker or Jeff Wells at Rigorous Intuition.

Anonymous said...

I love this post. Great literary-historical info. There is so much background information in film and literature that simply gets lost to time. OHMSS was always my favorite Bond film, so (relatively) faithful to the book, and I could never understand why it was often passed over or dismissed. Can't wait to see the new one. How is it that these skinny Bond books have such a lasting hold on our collective imaginations? I think it has something to do with the subconscious information they contain--connections, personalities, ideas captured just beneath the surface, which you have just so nicely scratched!

Anonymous said...

I also want to applaud the post. The idea of Casino Royale as a study in programmed dehumanization is thought-provoking enough to be worth the price of admission in itself.

But what really set me going was the mention of Karl Haushofer, which led to a fascinating crawl through Wikipedia that went from Haushofer to Heartland Theory to Neo-Eurasianism to Russia's Eurasia Party. I also bookmarked the link about Maxwell Knight's fascist connections.

(Both topics link up with one of my continuing sub-interests, which is documenting the various ways in which fascist ideas and associations made it through the "event horizon" of World War II to covertly influence the postwar world -- occultism and spy stuff being two of the most obvious.)

So please, put up with the nutcases and don't be discouraged from more posts like this one.

Anonymous said...

You must not know anything about Aleister Crowley because you left out a lot of information about Aliester Crowley and the Illuminati. I guess they paid you not to mention the fact that he HEADED a revival of the Illuminati which never went away. It was called the AA or the Silver Star and it was EXTREMELY POWERFUL, including the Bushs and the Rothschilds and the Harrimans and the Astors and Hohenzollerns and the Warburgs and Vladimir Lenin, just to name a few.

This is the background we need if we want to understand why Bush and Cheney (Illuminati) personally destroyed the WTC and blamed the innocent Osama Bin Laden.

Crowley was not only involved in the OTO but was also a member of an arcane secret society known as the A:.A:. (Argenteum Astrum) or the Order of the Silver Star. The "silver star" referred to is Sirius itself, the most prominent in the heavens and positioned as the chief star in the ancient constellation "Phoenix". The ancient Assyrians and Phoenicians both derive their name from this legacy.

Crowley identified the Order of the Silver Star as the Illuminati itself. As he was considered to be the head of the Illuminati, the correspondences continue to run even deeper. The heart of his magical current was inspired from Sirius and there was much tradition to back this up. In occult tradition, Sirius is the Hidden God or "the sun behind the sun". As the moon reflects the sun, so does the sun reflect Sirius. This concept was expressed in The Book of the Law when Crowley wrote "The Khabs is in the Khu, not the Khu is in the Khabs." The word Khab means star while Khu refers to light. What is being taught here is that collective "wisdom" often assumes that the stars emanate light. The truth of the matter is that the stars are in the light and are merely reflecting it. It was in this sense that Crowley and the ancients who worshipped Sirius were worshipping the light of creation. Sirius was the brightest star, therefore it reflected the most light and was the most powerful.

WHAT YOUR TEACHER NEVER TOLD YOU!

Dates to Memorise: 1776, 1778, 1782, 1784, 1792, 1870, 1884, 1933, 1991.

¹1776 - Illuminati of Bavaria. (Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry by Albert G. Mackey M.D., page 405.)

"A secret society, founded on May 1st 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, who was professor of canon law at the University of Ingolstadt.

To give the Order a higher influence, Weishaupt connected it with the Masonic institution, after whose system of degrees of esoteric instruction, and of secret modes of recognition, it was organised.

Weishaupt.... had originally been a Jesuit, and he employed therefore the shrewdness and subtlety which distinguished the disciples of Loyola, and having been initiated in 1777 in a lodge at Munich, he also borrowed for its use the mystical organisation which was peculiar to Freemasonry.

In this latter task, he was greatly assisted by the Baron Von Knigge, a zealous and well-instructed Mason.

....on June 22nd 1784, the Elector of Bavaria issued an edict for its suppression. Many of its members were fined or imprisoned, and some, among whom was Weishaupt, were compelled to flee the country...." End quote.

This group, the Illuminati, were the designers of the two seals found on the reverse side of every U.S. one dollar bill, dated from 1933 onwards.
Graphic of the eye in the triangle from the dollar bill




THE EYE OF LUCIFER


The eye in the triangle was called by Weishaupt ....The Insinuating Brethren. This simply meant that ultimately the Luciferian gnostic eye would represent the leaders of the One World Government who, under the control of their leader, Lucifer, would dominate every other group in society.

The date in Roman numerals - 1776, on the base of the pyramid, does not stand for July 4th (Declaration of Independence) but for the inauguration of the Illuminati, May 1st. The reason for this is that Weishaupt and his society designed both seals in Bavaria.

The word 'Illuminati' means the 'Enlightened Ones' or the 'Illumined Ones', pregnant with the mystical gnosis or secret knowledge of Lucifer (the bright and shining one himself).

1778 - Von Knigge infiltrates Freemasonry but only has influence in the upper degrees where preside the Sages - the Elect - the Adepts.

A man shouted at me and complained about my expose during one of my lectures in Australia. I asked "Which degree are you in?" He replied "The 18th", to which I answered "Would you please sit down, sir, you do not know enough yet."

His wife encouraged him to sort me out at the conclusion of the meeting. He failed to do this and within a month, the woman was a widow. Her husband died in very mysterious circumstances in a car park.

1782 - In this year, the small group of Illumined Masons who designed the two seals, handed them in a red velvet bag to a messenger. This messenger, now hooded, handed the velvet bag to Thomas Jefferson on the 17th June, in his drawing room in Virginia.

1784 - Thomas Jefferson was appointed U.S. Ambassador to France where he was able to study European Illuminism in great detail. Both Weishaupt and Jefferson adopted a common policy and Jefferson returned to the U.S. and became Secretary of State.

1789 - On September 15th, the Congress accepted the Great Seal of the United States of America. This was in two parts of course, but until 1933, only the so-called 'eagle' was the emblem of the U.S.A. The pyramid with its 'eye in the triangle' capstone was not used officially until much later on.

1792 - During this period of time, the Congress debated the cancellation and deletion of the pyramid and eye seal. Embarrassing questions were being asked. "What has an Egyptian pyramid to do with the U.S.A.?" Strangely enough the objections were squashed and the seal remained.

Very few outsiders know about the intimate plans of Albert Pike and the architects of the New World Order. In the 19th Century Albert Pike established a framework for bringing about the One World Order. Based on a vision revealed to him, Albert Pike wrote a blueprint of events that would play themselves out in the 20th century, with even more of these events yet to come. It is this blueprint which we believe unseen leaders are following today, knowingly or not, to engineer the planned Third and Final World War.
About Albert Pike

Picture of Albert PikeAlbert Pike was born on December 29, 1809, in Boston, and was the oldest of six children born to Benjamin and Sarah Andrews Pike. He studied at Harvard, and later served as a Brigadier-General in the Confederate Army. After the Civil War, Pike was found guilty of treason and jailed, only to be pardoned by fellow Freemason President Andrew Johnson on April 22, 1866, who met with him the next day at the White House. On June 20, 1867, Scottish Rite officials conferred upon Johnson the 4th to 32nd Freemasonry degrees, and he later went to Boston to dedicate a Masonic Temple.

Pike was said to be a genius, able to read and write in 16 different languages, although I cannot find a record anywhere of what those languages were. In addition, he is widely accused of plagiarism, so take with a pinch of salt. At various stages of his life we was a poet, philosopher, frontiersman, soldier, humanitarian and philanthropist. A 33rd degree Mason, he was one of the founding fathers, and head of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, being the Grand Commander of North American Freemasonry from 1859 and retained that position until his death in 1891. In 1869, he was a top leader in the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

Pike was said to be a Satanist, who indulged in the occult, and he apparently possessed a bracelet which he used to summon Lucifer, with whom he had constant communication. He was the Grand Master of a Luciferian group known as the Order of the Palladium (or Sovereign Council of Wisdom), which had been founded in Paris in 1737. Palladism had been brought to Greece from Egypt by Pythagoras in the fifth century, and it was this cult of Satan that was introduced to the inner circle of the Masonic lodges. It was aligned with the Palladium of the Templars. In 1801, Issac Long, a Jew, brought a statue of Baphomet (Satan) to Charleston, South Carolina, where he helped to establish the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. Long apparently chose Charleston because it was geographically located on the 33rd parallel of latitude (incidentally, so is Baghdad), and this council is considered to be the Mother Supreme Council of all Masonic Lodges of the World.

Pike was Long's successor, and he changed the name of the Order to the New and Reformed Palladian Rite (or Reformed Palladium). The Order contained two degrees:

*

Adelph (or Brother), and
*

Companion of Ulysses (or Companion of Penelope).

Pike's right-hand man was Phileas Walder, from Switzerland, who was a former Lutheran minister, a Masonic leader, occultist, and spiritualist. Pike also worked closely with Giusseppe Mazzini of Italy (1805-1872) who was a 33rd degree Mason, who became head of the Illuminati in 1834, and who founded the Mafia in 1860. Together with Mazzini, Lord Henry Palmerston of England (1784-1865, 33rd degree Mason), and Otto von Bismarck from Germany (1815-1898, 33rd degree Mason), Albert Pike intended to use the Palladian Rite to create a Satanic umbrella group that would tie all Masonic groups together.

Albert Pike died on April 2, 1891, and was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery, although the corpse of Pike currently lies in the headquarters of the Council of the 33rd degree of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry in Washington, D.C. (see The Deadly Deception, by Jim Shaw - former 33rd degree Mason and Past Master of all Scottish Rite bodies.)
The Albert Pike Monument

Albert Pike made his mark before the war in Arkansas as a lawyer and writer, but as a Confederate Brigadier General, he was, according to the Arkansas Democrat of July 31, 1978, a complete "WASH-OUT," not a hero. Yet, Gen. Albert Pike is the only Confederate general with a statue on federal property in Washington, DC. He was honoured, not as a commander or even as a lawyer, but as Southern regional leader of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. The statue stands on a pedestal near the foot of Capitol Hill, between the Department of Labor building and the Municipal Building, between 3rd and 4th Streets, on D Street, NW. More detail about the monument, including a photo and map can be found here. Further background on the colorful history of the statue can be found at the Masonic Info website. During the 1992 presidential campaign, Lyndon H. LaRouche and his vice presidential running mate, the Reverend James Bevel, launched a mobilization to remove the statue of General Albert Pike from Washington, D.C.'s Judiciary Square. On February 1, the campaign drew an angry attack from freemasonic leader C. Fred Kleinknecht, who attempted to defend both Pike and the Ku Klux Klan from LaRouche and Bevel's attack. A speech given by LaRouche defending his actions can be found here (March 20, 1992). And a speech by Anton Chaitkin entitled 'Why Albert Pike's Statue Must Fall' can be found here (September 21, 1992).
The Illuminati and Albert Pike

Adam Weishaupt (1748 - 1811) formed the Order of Perfectibilists on May 1, 1776 (to this day celebrated as May Day throughout many western countries), which later became known as the Illuminati, a secret society whose name means "Enlightened Ones". Although the Order was founded to provide an opportunity for the free exchange of ideas, Weishaupt's background as a Jesuit seems to have influenced the actual character of the society, such that the express aim of this Order became to abolish Christianity, and overturn all civil government.

An Italian revolutionary leader, Giusseppe Mazzini (1805-1872), a 33rd degree Mason, was selected by the Illuminati to head their worldwide operations in 1834. (Mazzini also founded the Mafia in 1860). Because of Mazzini's revolutionary activities in Europe, the Bavarian government cracked down on the Illuminati and other secret societies for allegedly plotting a massive overthrow of Europe's monarchies. As the secrets of the Illuminati were revealed, they were persecuted and eventually disbanded, only to re-establish themselves in the depths of other organizations, of which Freemasonry was one.

During his leadership, Mazzini enticed Albert Pike into the (now formally disbanded, but still operating) Illuminati. Pike was fascinated by the idea of a one world government, and when asked by Mazzini, readily agreed to write a ritual tome that guided the transition from average high-ranking mason into a top-ranking Illuminati mason (33rd degree). Since Mazzini also wanted Pike to head the Illuminati's American chapter, he clearly felt Pike was worthy of such a task. Mazzini's intention was that once a mason had made his way up the Freemason ladder and proven himself worthy, the highest ranking members would offer membership to the secret 'society within a society'.

Anonymous said...

In his book Masonry "Beyond the Light", William Schnoebelen (now a saved Christian) talks about his experiences as first a Satanist and then a Mason who passed through nearly all the Mason Degrees, including some that American Masons are unaware of; such as degrees in Masonry like the Egyptian rites of Masonry and the Paladin. During his initiation into Palladium Masonry William sadly admits to standing with Masons, some who were also satanists and chanting; "Glory and Love for Lucifer! Hatred! Hatred! Hatred! to God accursed! accursed!accursed!". He says that hashish provides some of their "illumination", taking after the 1st "Illuminati" 18th century Mason Adam Weishaupt.

Anonymous said...

"Crowley considered himself an incarnation of Dee"

IIRC, Crowley believed himself to be Ed Kelly, not Dee. He goes on in one of his books (forget which) about the memory of having his ear cut off. I'm still not sure if he meant it to be taken seriously...

Joseph Cannon said...

Kelly? I'll have to look that up. You may be right. I think it can be stated that he considered the Dee/Kelly relationship a sort of precursor to his work with Neuberg.

bongiben said...

like the article

interesting to read uncle mac was M

and the jimmy savile story from this week suggesting he was at it too