Part 1
How far overboard can one person go with the search for occult meaning?
Just so we’re clear, I mean occult in the true sense of the word, ‘hidden’.
What I’m presenting here is a wild ride in synchronicity, where I make a lot of wild connections between events and objects in Eyes Wide Shut and a real location in New York State.
It started almost a year ago when I listened to a Jay Weidner interview on Red Ice Radio. Jay referred to the character played by Sydney Pollack, Ziegler and pointed out that the name meant ‘brick layer’ in Yiddish. In other words, a Mason.
This began to resonate with me, if only because I could vaguely recall hearing something like it before but where, I could not recall. I knew it was not in relation to Kubrick or the film.
Sometime later, I was rearranging some books and came across ‘Ultimate Evil’ by Maury Terry and it hit me like a ton of bricks.
To summarize Terry’s book investigates the possibility that the Son of Sam murders were not perpetrated solely by David Berkowitz but was the work of a Satanic cult that had connections to the Manson Family. Terry uncovered evidence there was evidence of a Satanic Cult operating in NYC and Westchester which had a headquarters in a mansion on Long Island, possibly run by a prominent doctor (HarFord?). The author hints at having a name or names but not being able to publish. The cult sponsored the Son of Sam murders and even created snuff film videos from some of the murder scenes.
Quoting from page 411 of the 1987 hardback edition, "The Children's (name of the Berkowitz's Satanic Coven) leader was further said to be a Mason ( a Ziegler), rank unknown..."
Also recall that the exterior shots of the orgy mansion was Mentmore Towers, a former Rothschild mansion (something Weidner also points out in the interview). From page 416 of the same edition,
"The abandoned church (site of rituals) in central Westchester... was immediately identified by Captain Gerry Buckholt... as the nearby 'burned out' mansion, which turned out to be the former Warburg-Rothschild estate. "
So I was off and running to make connections that demonstrated the Kubrick was referring to an actual cult in operation on Long Island (he was born and raised in NYC) possibly even the same cult Terry was describing. I noticed things like the town of Milton Keynes in the UK (the one with the Somerton Orgy Statue) is roughly the same distance from London as Montrose is from NYC.
I revisited some notes I had made previously and noticed something else regarding Westchester County in NY.
While playing around with the letters, I noticed that Somerton is an anagram for Montrose. Montrose, Colorado is the birthplace noted blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo of Spartacus fame. Was Kubrick making a reference to something he was exposed to during the making of Spartacus? Well long answer yes, I believe he did and that will be the subject of a future blog. Let’s leave at this for now, in his book, “I am Spartacus” Kirk Douglas reminisces about his sometimes tumultuous relationship with Kubrick and ends with an anecdote about how he convinced Stanley to visit his therapist with him. After the session, Kirk’s therapist recommended Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle to Kubrick as an excellent basis for a movie.
Montrose is also a town in Westchester County, NY. Now I was hot on the trail! Kubrick uses some stock footage to show travel about NYC and it’s environs (EWS was filmed entirely in the UK). Specifically, there’s a scene where following the events at the mansion, Cruise’s character, Dr. Harford makes a return trip and the camera shows him traveling Route 495 to Somerton. RT 495 runs through Long Island. The camera also shows him passing an Exit 39a to Glen Cove Rd. That exit would run directly to Montrose.
I also did a lot of research into the mansions of Long Island’s Gold Coast and found several promising candidates for a real life Somerton, including Welwyn. Built by one of the founders of Standard Oil (talk about a Statanic group bent on world domination!) it is now the site of the Holocaust Memorial of Nassau County. I recalled Kubrick’s unrealized film “The Aryan Papers” regarding the Holocaust, which he allegedly abandoned after seeing “Schindler’s List”.
Although I enjoyed all of the research and what I learned, I could not weave it into any kind of story arc for EWS. Until during one of my routine viewings of EWS, I took particular notice of the scene where Harford is ministering to the prostitute Mandy in Ziegler’s bathroom. In that scene there is a fireplace in with elaborate Asian fish designs that are not in keeping with any of the other décor in the room.
My initial take on the Masonic apron with the fish in the bathroom combined with other symbolism in EWS led me to a connection between EWS and the mythology of the Dogon. Had Kubrick read Robert Temple’s ‘The Sirius Mystery’? Subject of a future blog.
Meanwhile, I read that a blue Chinese fish is a symbol of a story where someone was ‘fishing’ to catch a ‘lord’ and perhaps it was just meant to symbolize Ziegler’s recruitment of Harford and his wife into their elitist swinger’s club.
But me being me, I looked into other possibilities. In the same viewing I noticed the wallpaper in the room where Harford is visiting Marion after her father has died.
The symbols are the fleur de lis.
So that had me thinking, “France”.
Then there is the scene where Harford is at Rainbow Fashions renting his costume for the orgy when Millich’s daughter whispers something to him inaudibly. Turn on closed captioning on the DVD and she says ‘You Should Have a Cloak Lined with Ermine’.
But there was more, I can’t recall the exact sequence, if I was perusing French Coats of Arms or if I thought the Asian blue fish could be a stylized dolphin in coats of arms but I found myself Googling ‘blue dolphin coat of arms’. Besides the Cork City, Cork, Ireland coat of arms and the flag of Aguilla, I came across Guy VIII, Count of Vienne. He was also nicknamed the ‘Dauphin’.
Now, one may notice this coat of arms contains a blue dolphin (which to my eyes looks more like the fish in EWS) with the fleur de lis on a field of ermine! The trifecta!
Now the Dauphin refers to a title given to the heir apparent of France. (French heir apparent, Dauphin or ‘Dolphin’. English heir apparent, Prince of Wales. What is it with these guys and marine mammals?)
From Wikipedia:
Guy VIII, Count of Vienne, had a dolphin on his coat of arms and was nicknamed le Dauphin. The title of Dauphin de Viennois descended in his family, the Princes of Ivetot, until 1349, when Humbert I sold his seigneurie, called the Dauphiné, to King Philippe VI on condition that the heir of France assume the title of le Dauphin. The wife of the Dauphin was known as la Dauphine.
I looked into the history of the family and the region of France, Viennes. It was made a Roman colony by Julius Caesar, another favorite of Kubrick’s. Frederic Raphael, screenwriter for EWS, in his book ‘Eyes Wide Open: A Memoir of Stanley Kubrick” states that Kubrick asked him if he thought JCs Gallic Commentaries could be made into a film.
There was a Council of Vienne between 1311 and 1312 whose principal act was to withdraw papal support for the Knights Templar. Was Kubrick connecting the Mason’s to the Templars? Quite possibly.
But there is another Coat of Arms that employs the fleur de lis, dolphin and ermine.
To be continued...
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