Quantum of Solace – 007′s Alchemy

Animus and anima in “harmony”

“Everything I write has precedent in truth.” -Ian Flemming
By: Jay  http://jaysanalysis.com/2011/07/20/quantum-of-solace-007s-alchemy/
Upon first viewing, I was not initially impressed with Quantum of Solace.  I took it as a mediocre Bond film with scant hints of deeper meanings and clues.  Recently, I watched it again and it changed my mind.  Not only is it chock full of subtle hints and clues, it actually appears to display a kind of alchemical process.  While that might sound far-fetched, allow me to prove my thesis. First, take into account the fact that Ian Flemming would very much have been enamored with just such an idea, given the occultic-secret milieu he inhabited.  In fact, Flemming had direct associations with Aleister Crowley, and based some of his characters such as LeChiffre on him.  Times Online writer Ben Macintyre explains in his review of a Flemming biography:
“Fleming’s villains, like his heroes, are patchworks of different people, names  and traits. Le Chiffre, the Benzedrine-sniffing villain of Casino Royale,  is believed to be based on Aleister Crowley, who gained notoriety in  inter-war Britain as “the Wickedest Man in the World”. Crowley was a  bisexual, sado-masochistic drug addict. A master of Thelemic mysticism (“Do  what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”), he specialised in  mountaineering, interpreting the Ouija board, orgies and thrashing his  lovers. The press simultaneously adored and hated him. Crowley made Le  Chiffre seem positively sane.”
Crowley also was an asset for a time for British intelligence.  Thus we see that alchemy coming into play shouldn’t seem strange.  In fact, the original 007, Dr. John Dee, was Queen Elizabth’s “seer” and was himself an alchemist.  As Flemming is known to have said: “Everything I write has precedent in truth.”  As with all Bond films, there is the famous artsy intro, and often they too are a clue to the kind of esoterism we can expect to see in the film.  This one begins with sand and silhouettes, ending with an eye and a “swastika” formation.  While you might be incredulous at first, hang with me, as swastikas pop up several times in this film, and for a reason.  Towards the end we see the leggy swastika morph into an eye (which will be relevant later on).

Leggy swastikas!

Both eyes and swastikas are prevalent in this film, as well as alchemy, so let’s analyze.   As with most modern films, Carl Jung’s archetypes and gnostic proclivities come to the fore.  Originally, the swastika symbol dates back to the most ancient cultures such as India and Mesopotamia as a “sun wheel,” of the so-called Bronze Age, with possibly some relevance to solstices and equinoxes.  Carl Jung had a lifelong fascination with the symbol, and gave it some possible association as an archetypal symbol in the collective unconscious.  So we begin with four women at the four cardinal points, which bring to mind the four elements, as well as images of sand or earth:  all of which pertain to alchemy.  Alchemy is the classical and medieval “art” of transformation, and the end goal of the alchemists was the “Great Work,” whereby all things are brought to perfection and harmony (or solace), under the provident gaze of the “all seeing eye.”  The “eye,” brings to mind the perennial symbology of secret societies as well as intelligence agencies and groups, such as MI5/6 and DARPA, who sit atop our panopticon surveillance society.
In its material sense, alchemy is supposed to be the transformation of base metals into gold, and in its philosophic sense, the transformation of the human world and consciousness into something divine.  Whether this means actual transformation of man into some kind of godlike being through transhumanism or a initiatic ritual transformation of one’s perception is up for debate amongst alchemists, and possibly some clever person would combine them both in modernity.  In the Jungian sense, the process involves the archetypes of the subconscious being explored to achieve a purported integration and harmony in the subject’s psyche.  Cosmically, it’s the transformation of prima materia into “divine” material. So for Jung, alchemy is really only concerned with psychological process and interpretive structures the individual constructs around his world.  In the Bond film, however, there will be a correspondence between the inner struggle Bond experiences, as well as the exterior struggle against the secretive, world domination bent “Quantum” terrorist group, projected in several layers of symbolic meanings.

Swastikas in the floor plan of the PM’s office.

To the story: after a wild car chase, Bond nabs Mr. White, the go-between for Quantum and its associates.  In alchemy, the first of the four stages is the nigredo stage, which is the Dark night of the soul.  In this stage, the soul is cut off and corresponds to putrefaction and decomposition.  The soul must confront the “shadow within,” to move to the next stage, which is calcination, or “whiteness.”  This film picks up where the last film left off, where Bond had lost his love who betrayed him, Vesper. Vesper means evening or night. Bond must now face his own worst nightmare in Quantum – himself.  It should also be noted that each of these so-called stages can be repeated, and that is what we will see.  Now, following the chaotic nigredo stage, Bond confronts Mr. White and in Jungian lingo it’s the calcination stage (whiteness): this is the stage where shadows are realized, confronted and inflated egos are purified.  Bond loses Mr. White and is bent on revenge for those connected to Vesper.  Whiteness is also the stage, according to Jung, where animus and anima are working towards harmony.
We find out that Quantum is “everywhere,” including inside British Intelligence.  Quantum is a shadowy international group that uses corporate fronts.  In fact, as researcher Phillip Collins has noted, Quantum bears a striking resemblance to the real international intelligence  “get the job done” privatized operation described by Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, titled ‘The Secret Team.”  The Secret Team functioned as a kind of corporate intelligence for hire squad that did what needed to be done.  That is precisely what Quantum is, and Quantum is itself both – the team and the corporation. Dominic Greene we learn runs the organization, whose main front is the Green Movement.  In fact, Greene at one point in the film blames government as the problem, and touts privatization, while demonizing “government.”  Greene is an apostle for the Green Movement, and claims to support numerous environmental causes, and brings to mind someone like Al Gore.  Another interesting point of relevance for reality here is that the Green Movement itself arose out of the Nazi and Europhile mind as a needed return to so-called “nature,” which functions under the guise of caring for the planet, but which is actually a corporate front for the strategic controlling of resources.  That is exactly what Dominic Greene does in Quantum of Solace!
In fact, after Bond visits Port au Prince and gets Greene’s identity, he discovers Greene is meeting with a new military dictator of Bolivia named Medrano, who is himself to be installed with the help of Quantum, so long as he plays ball with Quantum’s wishes of being granted large tracks of seemingly worthless desert land.  Medrano thinks Quantum is after oil, but what Greene explains later is that he is interested in controlling the natural resources, particularly water, through his phony “Tierra Project,” and engineering a fake water crisis to be blamed on global warming and environmental degradation.  I can’t think of any other film which has so openly shown the public what is really going on.  This is literally what is happening in the real world.  Global corporate groups are vying for control of resources through phony, engineered crises like “global warming” and “climate change,” and the Green Movement.  Greene also tells Medrano that Quantum has “26 nations ready to recognize the new military junta in Bolivia” as the official government.  This shows that Quantum is itself a corporation larger than most governments, and holds them under its sway, as is also the case in the real world.  We also learn that the CIA and British Intelligence have signed on to support Greene, to the dismay of Bond and M, who are unable to do anything about it.

Note as well that Dominic Greene wears a metallic heart belt buckle. The swastika is, of course, a sun symbol, and is also associated in some alchemical works with the heart, too. Here, Greene is shown as the heart of the conspiracy.

We move to a massive production of the play-turned-opera, La Tosca, in Bregenz.  Here, the eyes are prominent and come to the fore, and what is particularly noteworthy is the fact that the play is likely based on an Italian Freemasonic illuminist revolutionary.  The story chronicles the life of a revolutionary who falls in love and ends up murdered, but who is likely based  (note 16) on an actual member of the Italian illuminist revolutionary sect known as the Carbonari.  This is significant because the symbology of the play, the symbols of the Carbonari (as the last link shows), and the symbols of the intelligence agencies (and the introduction to the film) are all based around the all-seeing eye.

The Church is within the Eye.

It was, of course, the goal of the Alte Vendita Lodge and other Italian Republicans to overthrow the Vatican and all thrones, and establish the Enlightenment’s ideal, the secular republic.  The film is telling us that the same ideals are at work here-the removal of all vestiges of the old order, the Ancien Regime, and the establishment of a world republic.  However, the new world republic has morphed into something new: now, it is an international corporate global “environmentalist” control grid, run by rogue intelligence workers and secret teams that have co-opted the old institutions, such as the Church of Rome and the nation-state, to their ends.  It is the Reich added to the Fabian socialist model, with a new twist of techno-elitism.  In fact, when Bond identifies the members of Quantum at the opera, he is able to send the grainy photos back to MI6 headquarters, and instantly has full files on each person.  Welcome to the panopticon surveillance society – that is the meaning of the eye at its most obvious, exoteric level.  Indeed, Bond had also gone to Hotel Dessalines earlier, which is a Port au Prince hotel named after the black anti-colonialist revolutionary, Jean-Jac Dessalines.  So that’s two references to revolutionaries and several swastikas.  Aren’t swastika types and leftist revolutionaries at opposite ends of the spectrum?  Yep. Two sides of a dialectic, as I’ve been saying.
M takes her suspicions to the office of the PM and discovers that he is very much in bed with Quantum and is not interested in any inquiries into Dominic Greene.  He tells M that the natural resources are “running out” and the dollar is collapsing.  Each of these things are engineered (in the film and in reality), and that is what you areopenly  being told.  In fact, that too is the deeper purpose of the opera taking place within the film.  One one level, Bond and Quantum show up and watch an opera about “Illuminists.”  Bond eyes the members of the modern “Illuminati” and sends home digital eyes to the home office of em eye six.  You are watching all this with your eye, while simultaneously in reality, these very eyes watching and surveilling you, and most of you are completely unaware.  So meta-narrative enters the picture to show you the complexity of the meaning of the film, as it blends with reality.  This was my point in the article on psychological warfare.
Not only is Bond struggling through his own alchemical transformation, the viewer is targeted for this process, as well.  Revealing the entirety of the globalist plans to you in a fictional narrative has the effect of putting a spell on you. You are now mesmerized and cannot believe that such a thing really exists. Yet, every day, in your face, are hundreds of examples of a massive corporate green scam that is ultimately designed to depopulate the earth and bring in a new order of the ages.

Andean Grand Hotel lattice swastika.

Greene discovers Bond is onto him and sends him a message by dipping and drowning Agent “Strawberry Fields” in oil.  This causes M and MI6 think Bond has gone rogue and that Greene is after oil.  Bond realizes he is after the control of resources, but let’s go back to the alchemy – this brings to mind the Bond classic Goldfinger, where one of Bond’s gals was “dipped in gold” as a method of execution.   What is the end result of alchemy? The production of gold from base metals, or the philosopher’s stone.

24 karat chicks!

However, Bond is still in process of transformation, so the nigredo stage has returned for more purification: there has been yet another female sacrifice.

Petrol dipped chicks!

It should also be noted that the entire fake hotel created for the film, titled the Andean Grand, is replete with black and white masonic floor coloring.  The hotel, then, takes on the symbology of the lodge, with large “G”s placed prominently.  A lodge is also a hotel, you see.

Welcome, brother 007. Will you be lodging with us long?

Black and white are symbolic of the duality supposed in Masonry and eastern religions to be a duality of ontological necessity. Evil and good are viewed as flip sides of the same coin, each mutually dependent on the other.  This schema is applied to geo-politics and psychological warfare, as well, as dialectical opposites are actually managed by a higher power that has intimate knowledge of both “sides.”  This is why so many people are under mind control and subject to doublethink – it’s a system designed to control through confusion.   For example, incredulous persons will find all this to be poppycock for the simple reason that those upper echelons wouldn’t purposefully reveal the way the world really works: that is precisely why it’s done.
Greene makes this controlled opposition clear, when he responds to an angry Medrano about signing onto Quantum’s control of resources:

“You should know something about the
people I work with. We deal with the left or the right, with
dictators or liberators.”

And that’s how it’s done.  It’s a Nietzschean approach of being “beyond good and evil,” and working with whatever paradigms and worldviews are necessary to get the job done, and it is this that is beyond the one-dimensional thinking of most people.   Greene then tells Medrano that if he refuses to sign onto Quantum’s control of resources, Quantum will simply topple him and install someone who will. Does this sound familiar?

The purification and transformation.

So Bond has been on the revenge trail, struggling with his own inner demons, worried he will also end up getting his new interest “Camille” killed. Camille, too, is after revenge against Medrano for burning her family to death when she was a child.  Bond tells her how to cope after you kill someone, and after a lengthy battle in an “eco-hotel,” Bond captures Greene and Camille gets revenge.  However, when Camille has killed Medrano, the fire that has ignited in the “eco-hotel” causes her to have a flashback and breakdown, following upon her assassination.  This occurs during the now massive fire.  The name “Camille” means “altar server” or acolyte.  We can surmise from this that Bond is bringing Camille through the same transformational process as his acolyte, as Bond himself undergoes transformation, due to his (justified) issues with the feminine. In Jungian psychoanalysis, it is the final rubedo, red-orange stage of alchemy wherein the subject has achievedinterior  harmony and individuation.  After eliminating Greene, Camille says, “I wish I could set you free, but the prison is in your mind.”  This lets us know the journey has been the process of Bond’s psyche.  We end with Bond tracking down the man responsible for Vesper’s death, noticing that the Canadian intelligence agent with him has the same necklace Vesper had, which is also a swastika.

“Hey sweetcakes, I love you so much, here’s a swastika necklace.” (Nazi pillow talk)

So why all the swastikas?  Because the control of left and right is in the power of the eye, which is found on the dollar.  The eye is found on the dollar because the dollar (and all such fiat currencies) is the source of power of the global elite, which is neither left nor right, but uses both, like a chemist in a lab uses different chemicals to concoct a new synthesis.  As Greene said: “You should know something about the people I work with. We deal with the left or the right, with dictators or liberators.”  As such, alchemically, the union and synthesis of dualities mirrors the process of inner transformation Jung thought he had discovered, which was actually just the acceptance of gnosticism, as Jung himself admitted.  Read in this way, the process involves the overcoming of one’s conscience – overcoming the dialectic of good versus evil, into a supposed higher synthesis of transcending such absolutist categories.  Such is the essence of the gnostic scheme.  In terms of geo-politics, those running the globe have similar proclivities: an esoteric “Great Work” wherein man is brought to perfection through scientific regimentation and world control.  To do this, the world too must be brought through successive alchemical stages and processes into the omega point of techno-transfiguration.  What is “quantum”?  It is the minimum amount of any physical entity involved in an interaction, and that sounds very similar to chemistry, which arose from alchemy.