In the third and final part of this series on Eyes Wide Shut,
we’ll look at Bill’s journey as a whole and at its underlying esoteric
meaning. We’ll see how symbolism placed by Kubrick connects all of the
women in the movie, making Bill’s encounters a multi-faceted exploration
of the feminine principle.
Note: It is recommended that you read the first and second part of this series first. Also, again, gigantic spoilers.
The previous parts of this series of articles on
Eyes Wide Shut
was solely dedicated to the secret society discovered by Bill. This
elite club, attended by the world’s most powerful people, deals with
Satanism, black magick and even ritual sacrifices. Aided by his friend
Nightingale, Bill infiltrates one of the secret society’s occult rituals
and witnesses a ceremony presided over by a high priest. Then an orgy
ensued.
In the second article, I explained how real life secret societies,
such as the Hellfire club and the O.T.O., actually practice these kinds
of rituals. The occult principles behind them derive from Tantric yoga,
where the energy generated by physical arousal is used to reach a
“higher state”. This concept was reused (and maybe corrupted) by
Aleister Crowley who called it “Sex Magick”. According to him and his
peers, knowledge of this type of magick was the biggest secret of past
secret societies and was only disclosed to the highest initiates.
There is, however, no (direct) mention of any of this in
Eyes Wide Shut.
In fact, the ceremony witnessed by Bill, with its elaborate
choreography and its creepy music, appears to be one big, empty, phony
piece of dramatic theater that simply exists to give the rich people
some kind of mystical reason to engage in gratuitous debauchery. While
Kubrick stripped the occult ritual of all of its esoteric, “magickal”
meaning, he did infuse the entire movie with it. If one looks at the
pace of the movie, at Bill’s journey and the people he encounters, it
becomes somewhat apparent that the “magick” does not occur during the
ritual itself but during the movie as a whole. Was Kubrick somehow
initiated to occult secrets? Was he trying to communicate them through
his movie? Let’s look at the concepts behind the ritual.
Kundalini Rising
The concept of magick through reproductive forces is said to
originate from ancient ritual practices, as traces of it can be found in
Hinduism, Taoism and in Medieval secret societies, such as the Knight
Templars. In today’s Western world, the O.T.O is said to be the heir of
this path as it claimed by Aleister Crowley and his acolyte, Theodor
Reuss.
“Theodor Reuss was quite categoric: the OTO was a body of
initiates in whose hands was concentrated the secret knowledge of all
oriental orders and of all existing Masonic degrees.(…) The order had
“rediscovered” the great secret of the Knights Templar, the magic of
sex, not only the key to ancient Egyptian and hermetic tradition, but to
all the secrets of nature, all the symbolism of Freemasonry, and all
systems of religion.”
- Peter Tomkins, The Magic of Obelisks
The basic principle behind this “great secret” is the raising of the
Kundalini or “life force”, an energy that can be used for magickal
purposes.
“In all Tantric magic, the essential requirement –
whether in the ecstasy of couples or the solo ritual of a priestess –
involved the raising of the energy known as the serpent of fire, or
kundalini. This mysterious energy described as lying dormant in the
lowest of the seven chakras, can be aroused by two distinct methods,
called, traditionally, the right- and the left-hand path. The right hand
allots supremacy to the male principle, the left to the feminine. As
the serpent power is aroused, according to clairvoyants, it climbs up
the backbone of the adept, energizing each chakra, till it emerges from
the skull – symbolically as the snake’s head like those so clearly
depicted in Egyptian statuary.
(…)
As adepts describe the rising of the serpent, it unites with the
“many-petaled louts of the cerebral region” to bring about illumination –
or the highest form of initiation -as the current “climbs from the
duality to unity by reversing the path it originally took the chakras to
procreate humanity.”
Details of the OTO’s initiation into Hindu and Tibetan Tantra,
including ceremonies involving the use of “exudation” from specifically
trained priestess were brought to a wider public by Crowley’s follower
Kenneth Grant. Sacred courtesans, experts in ritual eroticism, known in
India as nautch girls (…) were exceptionally honored.”
- Ibid.
While sacred courtesans were “exceptionally honored” in Eastern
esotericism, today’s twisted black magic orders use Beta Programming
slaves and dispose of them when they are through with them. In short,
the exact opposite of being “exceptionally honored”.
Kundalini rising, the concept behind Tantric magic is wholly
represented in a single image, Eliphas Levi’s depiction of Baphomet.
This famous depiction of Baphomet includes all of the symbols behind
Sex Magick – the rising of the kundalini (represented by the phallic
pole wrapped by two serpents) through the union of opposite forces. The
torch above the goat head represents illumination.
So what does all of this have to do with
Eyes Wide Shut? At
first glance, nothing much. While we see a ritual involving “sacred
courtesans” in the movie, there is absolutely no mention of “kundalini
rising” during the whole thing. However, if we take a closer look at
Bill’s journey as a whole, from the beginning of the movie to the end,
we realize that the real ritual does not occur at the elite mansion, but
within Bill’s head. As he encounters new women and is exposed to new
opportunities, his kundalini rises – and Kubrick added clues to denote
this fact.
The Movie as a Ritual
While
Eyes Wide Shut appears to be all about sexuality,
nobody in the movie ever reaches climax. While Bill has many chances of
satisfying his urges with attractive women, it never actually happens.
However, as the movie progresses, there’s a definite increase in desire
and lust, but Bill manages to keep it under control. Managing this “life
force” is at the core of Tantric magic. Viewers are constantly reminded
of this process several times during the movie when Bill imagines his
wife with a naval officer. Each flash is increasingly intense – going
from kissing to all-out copulating.
As the movie progress, Bill’s flashes of Alice cheating on him become
more intense. Towards the end of the movie, she’s about to reach
climax. These scenes reflect Bill’s kundalini rising. Having these
flashes would be hurtful and painful and they remind the viewers that
Bill’s journey started out of pain and humiliation.
Towards the end of the movie, Bill is so horny that he gets flirty
and grabby with a complete stranger, minutes after he met her. While
that scene was rather odd and surreal, it reflects his “progress” in the
ritual.
The very last lines of the movie conclude and define Bill’s journey.
After running around New York and getting aroused by all kinds of stuff,
Bill stands face-to-face with his wife and talks about how “awake” he
is now. With his “life force” fully charged, Alice ends the movie with a
phrase completing the ritual:
“- I do love you. And you know, there is something very important that we need to do a soon as possible.
- What’s that?
- F*ck.”
Ending the movie on that particular note suggests that the entire
journey was one of increasing intensity, one that ultimately lead to a
“magickally charged ” climax, the goal of Crowleyan-magick.
Bill’s journey was not all fun and games, however. As the movie
progresses, there is a constant back-and-forth between pleasure and
pain, attraction and repulsion, life and death, and so forth. The path
is all about duality and, just like the floors of Masonic lodges are
checkered in black and white, Bill’s journey consists on his
alternatively stepping on black and white tiles – seeing the dualistic
nature of all things.
Eros and Thanatos
Bill’s night out in New York City is characterized by numerous
encounters with the female gender – each one of them offering a “cure”
to a broken heart. However, each encounter also bears a potentially
destructive aspect to it, one that counterbalances its appeal and
attraction. While Bill is looking to procreate, he sees that his urges
engender pain and even death. Bill’s journey is therefore a
back-and-forth between man’s two basic impulses as defined by Freud:
Eros and Thanatos.
Freud saw in Eros the instinct for life, love and sexuality in its
broadest sense, and in Thanatos, the instinct of death, aggression. Eros
is the drive toward attraction and reproduction; Thanatos toward
repulsion and death. One leads to the reproduction of the species, the
other toward its own destruction. While each one of Bill’s encounters
promise the sweet temptation of lust, they also have a destructive
counter side.
Bill’s first encounter occurs when he visits one of his regular
patients that died. The dead patient’s daughter kisses Bill and tells
him that she loves him. We therefore see in this scene a juxtaposition
of concepts of lust and desire with death. Also, if Bill went with this
woman, it would ultimately hurt her husband – another bad side of
succumbing to lust.
Each one of Bill’s female encounters promises gratification, but ends
up being interrupted by something negative, such as guilt or potential
danger. Also, every time Bill is in contact with the sleazy-yet-tempting
aspects of lust (prostitution or slavery), he quickly discovers the
dark, exploitative and destructive side of it.
For instance, right after Bill enjoyed the “delights” of seeing MK
Kittens at work at the elite ritual, when returning his costume, he
immediately sees the dark side of it all. The shop owner, who previously
caught his underage daughter with two Asian businessmen and was
outraged by it, had a sudden change of heart.
Standing behind his business counter, the shop owner sells his
underage daughter as if she was another product. After enjoying masked
slaves in lavish rituals, Bill sees the other side of the “trade”: Young
girls being sold by exploitative people to a system feeding on minors,
turning them into MK slaves. Is that why this store was called
“Rainbow”?
Bill’s journey is therefore one that continually alternates between
the primal allure of lust and the destructive social constructs that are
erected around it. There is nothing more basic and instinctual than
carnal attraction, but our modern world has made these relations
complex, bound by rules, and prone to exploitation. While lust is
nature’s way of pushing humans to procreate, social constructs have
created all kinds fetishes, distortions, games, and perversions around
this primal urge … to the point that it has been denatured and debased
into an unhealthy obsession.
As Bill navigates between joy and pain, monogamous marriage and
anonymous debauchery, we notice that there’s a common thread uniting his
various encounters.
Red-Headed Women
The most important women in the movie are Bill’s wife, his daughter
Helena, Amanda (the Beta slave who was sacrificed at the ritual) and
Domino (a prostitute he met on the street). All three adult women are
somewhat physically similar as they are tall, well-proportioned, and
red-headed. They also appear to be connected on “another level”.
While Alice is a respectable, upper-class lady, she makes a living
using her looks in loveless relationship, a little like what a
prostitute would do. On the other hand, the time spent between Bill and
Domino is sweet and tender, a little with what happens in a loving
relationship. Alice is therefore not very different from Domino, and
vice-versa.
There are also links with Amanda. While Alice was (probably) not at
the occult ritual attended by Bill, when he comes back from it, she
describes to him a dream that is similar to what he just witnessed and
what Amanda just experienced.
“He was kissing me. Then we were making love. Then there
were all these other people around us, hundreds of them, everywhere.
Everyone was f-cking. And then I …I was f-cking other men. So many. I
don’t know how many I was with. And I knew you could see me in the arms
of all these men … just f-cking all these men.”
Alice’s dream “connects” her with Amanda who was at the ritual and who actually lived Alice’s dream.
The day after the ritual, Bill finds his mask creepily “sleeping”
next to his wife. Is this Alice’s way of saying that she’s aware of
what’s going on? Maybe that she’s participating in this? Is it a warning
from the secret society? Alice never acknowledges the mask, so I guess
we’ll never know.
Was Domino at the ritual? It is also interesting to point out that “Domino” is a type of mask used in these types of gatherings.
Looking closer at the “magic circle” formed by the women of the
ritual, we can identify a few women who could be Domino. The day after
the ritual, Bill shows up at Domino’s house with a gift, but her
roommate informs him that she is HIV-positive … and that she might never
be back again. Is this true or was Domino yet another “casualty” in
Bill’s journey? Like Amanda and Nightingale, Domino mysteriously
disappears after the ritual.
The fact that these women are all connected reveals one fundamental
fact: Bill’s journey is not about a specific woman, it is about the
feminine principle as a whole. It is an esoteric quest to understand and
“be one with” the feminine principle that is opposite to his.
Helena Down the Same Path?
Throughout the movie, Helena (Bill’s daughter) is shown to be groomed
to be another Alice. There are also some cues linking Helena to Domino.
For instance, there’s a stroller in front of Domino’s apartment and, at
the end in the movie, in the toy store, Helena is very interested by a
stroller and shows it to her mother.
There is also something strange about the
scene above: the two men behind Helena happened to be at Ziegler’s
party at the very beginning of the movie.
The two same men at Ziegler’s party: same hair, same physical stature and the guy on the right wears similar glasses.
Why are these two men in the store, looking at toys? Is New York City
such a small town? Was Kubrick lacking extras to appear in that scene?
Unlikely. Could it be that they’re part of the secret society that’s
been following Bill and his family? Strange fact: When the men walk away
and disappear from the shot, Helena appears to follow them … and we
don’t see her for the rest of the movie. The camera indeed zooms onto
Alice and Bill, who are completely absorbed with themselves. Is this a
VERY subtle way of saying that their daughter will be sucked in by the
Beta slave system of the secret society? Another enigma.
In Conclusion
Stanley Kubrick’s works are never strictly about love or
relationships. The meticulous symbolism and the imagery of all of his
works often communicate another dimension of meaning–one that transcends
the personal to become a commentary on our epoch and civilization. And,
in this transitional period between the end of 20th century and the
beginning of the 21th century, Kubrick told the story of a confused man
who wanders around, desperately looking for a way to satisfy his primal
urges. Kubrick told the story of a society that is completely debased
and corrupted by hidden forces, where humanity’s most primal
urge–procreation–has been cheapened, fetishized, perverted, and
exploited to a point that it has lost all of its beauty. At the top of
this world is a secret society that revels in this context, and thrives
on it. Kubrick’s outlook on the issue was definitely not idealistic nor
very optimistic.
His grim tale focuses on a single man, Bill, who is looking for an
undefined something. Even if he appears to have everything, there is
something missing in his life. Something visceral and fundamental that
is never put into words, but that is quite palpable. Bill cannot be
complete if he is not at peace with the opposite of him: the feminine
principle. Bill’s quest, therefore, follows the esoteric principle of
uniting two opposite forces into one. As suggested by the last lines of
the movie, Bill will ultimately “be one” and get physical with his wife.
After that, the alchemical process and the Tantric ritual would be
complete. However, as Kubrick somehow communicates in the final scene,
even if these two extremely self-absorbed, egoistical and superficial
people believe they’ve reached a some kind of epiphany, what does it
really change? Our civilization as a whole still has its eyes wide shut …
and those were Kubrick’s last cinematographic words.
