Agatha Christie: Her Scope And Knowledge Of Esoteric Communities

First off, I would like to warn avid readers of Agatha Christie that I’ve included major spoilers in this article.

Like many authors of series or multiple books, Agatha Christie’s novels follow patterns. Sometimes a character is similar to one from another novel. Sometimes the main plot is the same. I’ve been reading Agatha Christie’s novels for years, and I’ve had the chance to pick up on a few of these pattern.

The pattern I’d like to write about in this article is the pattern of esoteric communities and groups of the elite. I will be discussing four of her books in particular (I haven’t read all of her books, so there may be others that contain these themes): Passenger to Frankfurt , They Came to Bagdad, The Big Four, and Destination Unknown.

Agatha Christie was born into an upper middle class family. Her exposure to the semi-upper stratum may have helped her see things in a certain light. I would like to see if this light could potentially provide us with a new perspective about esoteric groups we are familiar with.

In the three books I have included in this article, she clearly expresses a sympathy towards the masses. Agatha Christie frequently expressed her views through the heroine’s point of view in her novels. In one of her books, “They Came to Bagdad”, the heroine witnesses a man speaking about his plans for subjugating and brainwashing a large portion of the world by his secret society. Her internal dialogue after hearing this:

“ Surely those were the things that mattered – the little everyday things, the family to be cooked for, the four walls that enclosed the home, the one or two cherished possessions. All the thousands of ordinary people on the earth, minding their own business, and tilling that earth, and making pots and bringing up families and laughing and crying, and getting up in the morning and going to bed at night. They were the people who mattered, not these Angels with wicked faces who wanted to make a new world and didn’t care who they hurt to do it.”

pg. 168, They Came to Baghdad, Agatha Christie

So what does Mrs. Christie  have to say about esoteric communities?

 Destination Unknown:

Destination Unknown deals with a secret group running a large, well hidden illegal laboratory somewhere in Africa. Many doctors and scientists have fled here secretly to study and provide research for the group in charge of the laboratory. Many of the scientists we hear about in the book have fascist, communist and idealist views. Some are researching delicate subjects (lobotomies and mind control are hinted at).

A scientist that fled his country shares his views:

pg. 144 “ ’…The scientists must be the masters. They must control and rule. They and they alone are the Supermen. It is only Supermen who matter. The slaves must be well treated, but they are slaves.”

The heroine speaks to another scientist about his views on the world:

pg. 147 “ ‘Do you like being dragooned, being ordered about, having no say of your own?’

‘I’m prepared to accept it if it’s necessary. And it is necessary. We’ve got to have World Peace, World Discipline,  World Order.’”

And another character talks about the manipulation of the mind occurring in the laboratories:

pg. 225 – “Speaking about drugs that subdue and ‘induce docility’ – I’m inclined to think the effect is produced mentally. I mean that I think some of these organizers and administrators are well versed in hypnosis and psychology and that, without our being aware of it, we are continually being offered some suggestions of our well being, of our attaining the ultimate aim (whatever it is), and that all this does is produce a definite effect. A lot can be done that way, you know, if it’s done by people who know their stuff.’ “

After hearing a moving speech about how the laboratory plans to revolutionize and aid the world (an interesting thing to point out is that the man delivering this speech, thought to be the man running the show, is in fact just another underling working for the real head of the institution. This is a classic example of how the top of the pyramid is never really seen):

pg. 151 “For a moment Hilary understood. For a moment she stood where she stood, impregnated with that single-hearted desire for knowledge which swept aside life and death for millions of human beings as essentially unimportant. It was a point of view, and not an ignoble one.”

The heroine speaks to the man behind everything. An excerpt from their conversation:

pg. 267 “But you can’t send out a scientist just as you can send out a typist.”

“Why not?”

“Because once your scientist is in the free world again he could refuse to work for his new employer. He would free again.”

“True, up to a point. There may have to be certain ‑‑ conditioning shall we say.”

“Conditioning ‑‑ what do you mean by that?”

“You have heard of leucotomy Madame?”

Hilary frowned. “That’s a brain operation, isn’t it?”

“But yes, it was devised originally for the curing of the melancholia. I put it to you not in medical terms, Madame, but in such terms as you and I understand. After the operation the patient has no more desire to commit suicide, no further feelings of guilt. He is careful, conscienceless, and in most cases, obedient.”

“It hadn’t been a hundred percent success, has it?”

“In the past, no. But here we have made great strides in the investigation of the subject. I have here three surgeons: one Russian, one Frenchman, and an Austrian. By various operations of grafting and delicate manipulation of the brain they are arriving gradually at a state where docility can be assured. And the will can be controlled without necessarily effecting mental brilliance. It seems possible that we may in the end so condition a human being that while his powers of intellect remain unimpaired, he will exhibit perfect docility. Any suggestion made to him, he will accept.”

Leucotomies happen to include snipping nerves in the brain to treat mental illness. A complete turn-around in character is usually a “side-effect”.

A little more on this man behind everything:

pg. 280 “This Aristides, he has a finger in every pie. He is behind nearly everything. The banks, the government, the manufacturing industries, armaments, transport! One never sees him, one hardly hears of him! He sits in a warm room in his Spanish castle, smoking, and sometimes he scrawls a few words on a piece of paper and throws it on the ground and a secretary crawls forward, and picks it up and a few days later an important banker in Paris blows his brains out! It is like that.”

“How wonderfully dramatic you are. But it is really not very surprising. Presidents and ministers make important pronouncements, bankers sit back behind their sumptuous desks, and roll out opulent statements ‑‑ but one is never surprised to find out that behind the importance and magnificence there is somewhere some scrubby little man who is the real motive power.”

 They Came to Bagdad:

This novel deals with a secret society that Agatha Christie describes as “a third party or group working under cover and so far absolutely unsuspected by the world at large.”

The book was published in 1951 (before the cold war), so the group previously mentioned is mainly described as driving a wedge between two countries that seem as though they are on the verge of reconciliation (U.S.A and the U.S.S.R).

pg. 90-92 “There are two divergent points of view dominating different parts of the world. That is true enough. And they are represented loosely in the public mind as Russia and the Communists, and America. Now the only hope for the future, Victoria, lies in peace, in production, in constructive activities, and not destructive ones. Therefore, everything depends on those who hold those two divergent view points, either agreeing to differ and each contenting themselves with their respective spheres of activity or else finding a mutual basis for agreement or at least toleration. Instead of that, the opposite is happening. A wedge is being driven in the whole time to force two mutually suspicious groups farther and farther apart. Certain things lead one or two people to believe that this activity comes for a third party or group working undercover and so far absolutely unsuspected by the world at large. Whenever there is a chance of agreement being reached or any sign of dispersal of suspicion some incident occurs to plunge one side back in distrust or the other side into definite hysterical fear. These things are not accidents, Victoria. They are deliberately produced for a calculated effect.”  “But why do you think so and who’s doing it?” “One of the reasons we think so is because of money. The money, you see, is coming for the wrong sources. Money, Victoria, is always the great clue to what is happening in the world. As a physician feels your pulse to get a clue to your state of health, so money is the lifeblood that feeds any great movement or cause. Without it, the movement can’t get any headway… a third point, enormous sums of money seem to be going completely out of circulation… all over the world a great demand for diamonds and other precious stones has arisen. They change hands a dozen or more time until finally they disappear and cannot be traced. This of course is only a vague sketch. The upshot is that somewhere a third group of people whose aim is as yet obscure are fomenting strife and misunderstanding and are engaging in cleverly camouflaged money and jewel transactions for their own ends. We have reason to believe that in every country there are agents of this group, some established there many years ago. Some are in very high and responsible positions, others are playing humble parts, but all are working with one unknown end in view. In substance it is exactly like the fifth column activities at the beginning of the last war. Only this time, it is on a world‑wide scale.”

“But who are these people?” Victoria demanded. “They are not, we think, of any special nationality. What they want is, I fear, the betterment of the world. The delusion that by force you can impose the Millennium on the human race is one of the most dangerous delusions in existence. Those who are out only to line their own pockets can do little harm ‑‑ mere greed defeats its own ends. But the belief in a super stratum of human beings ‑‑ in supermen to rule the rest of the decadent world ‑‑ that Victoria, is the most evil of are all beliefs. For when you say “I am not as other men” ‑‑ you have lost the two most valuable qualities we have ever tried to attain: humility and brotherhood.” … “in the past two years 28 promising young scientists of various nationalities have quietly faded out of their background. The same thing has happened with constructional engineers, with aviators, with electricians and many other skilled trades. These disappearances have this in common: those concerned are all young, all ambitious, and all without close ties. Besides those we know of there must be many, many more. And we are beginning to guess at something of what they are accomplishing… and yet there are still obscure parts of the world remote from trade routes, cut off by mountains and deserts in the midst of peoples who still have the power to bar out strangers and which are never known or visited except by a solitary and exception traveller. Things could go on there, the news of which would never penetrate to the outside world or only as a dim and ridiculous rumour…”

pg. 166 “And as she stared at Edward’s unmasked face, she knew suddenly what Carmichael had meant by Lucifer. She knew what he had seen that day as he looked along the passage to the consulate gardens. He had seen that young beautiful face that she was looking at now ‑‑ for it was a beautiful face: Lucifer son of the morning, how art thou fallen.”

pg. 167 “It’s a new world Victoria. A new world that will rise out of the muck and ashes of the old.”

“Tell me.”

He told her and in spite of herself, she was almost carried away, carried into the dream. The old bad things must destroy each other. The fat old men grasping at their profits impeding progress. The bigoted, stupid Communists, trying to establish their Marxian heaven. There must be total war ‑‑ total destruction. And then ‑‑ the new heaven and the new earth. The small chosen band of higher beings, the scientists, the agricultural experts, the administrators ‑‑ the young men like Edward ‑‑ the young Siegfrieds of the new world. All young, all believing in their destiny as supermen. When destruction had run its course, they would step in and take over. It was madness ‑‑ but it was constructive madness. It was the sort of thing that in a world shattered and disintegrated could happen.

“But think,” said Victoria, “of all the people that will be killed first.”  “You don’t understand,” said Edward. “That doesn’t matter.”

Passenger to Frankfurt:

This novel, written to mark Christie’s 80^th birthday, includes the word Siegfried quite often. It is mainly portrayed as the opera by Wagner that is based on the story of Sigurd in Norse mythology. It begins with a ring that is able to create gold (kind of like the alchemical process).  Throughout the novel, Christie often speaks of a project, titled “Project Benvo”, or Benevolence. In essence it is a brain operation that makes the patient a very calm and benevolent person.

pg. 57 “’They – whoever they are – work  through youth…But you’re blind, too. There are bandages over the eyes of youth. They can’t see where things are taking them. What’s going to come next? What’s in front of them? And who it is behind them, urging them on? That’s what’s frightening about it… It’s so frightening, this same idea that always recurs. History repeating itself. The young hero, the golden superman that all must follow.’ She paused, then said, ‘Same idea,  you know. The young Siegfried.’”

Although almost all of Christie’s books deal with a simple “who-dunnit” murder, this book does not. Therefore, a large portion of this book is dedicated to monologues and conversations based on topics of the people funding revolutions, experimental work, golden youth, the Young Siegfrieds,the truth being unpalatable, and the great mystery of who is running the world behind the scenes.

A little more about Project Benvo:

pg. 182 “…’there is something that can change a man in his outlook on life – his reaction to people and to life generally. He may be in a state of homicidal fury, he may be pathologically violent, and yet, by the influence of Project Benvo, he turns into something, or rather someone, quite different…He wishes to benefit others. He exudes kindness. He has a horror of causing pain or inflicting violence. Benvo can be released over a big area, it can affect hundreds, thousands of people if manufactured in big enough quantities and if distributed successfully’

‘How long does it last?’ said Colonel Munro. ‘Twenty-four hours? Longer?’

‘You don’t understand,’ said Miss Neumann. ‘It is permanent.’

pg. 167 “’He mentioned it after talking about some operation that they used to do on people’s brains…And he said that the side effects were impossible. I mean, the people were quite happy and meek and docile and didn’t worry anymore, or want to kill themselves, but they – well I mean they didn’t worry enough and therefore they used to get run over and all sorts of things like that because they weren’t thinking of any danger and they didn’t notice it’.”

This sounds like a mass programming of people to separate them from their natural feelings of fear, anger and questioning, things that we have been using  since the beginning of our existence to help us realize we are in a bad situation, in danger or in trouble.

The Big Four:

There aren’t as many credible ideas on esoteric communities in this book (the main characters deal with four people running everything, and are able to easily escape them over and over again), but there is a little bit on mind control here. Of course, this is one of her earliest works, first published in 1927.

pg.26 “He came to me once, this chemist, and I could see he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He hinted to me of experiments on which he’d been engaged in Li Chang Yen’s palace under the mandarin’s direction – experiments on coolies in which the most disgusting regard for human life has been shown”

Coolie was a term used to describe the Chinese (or Asian) slaves imported to the Americas by the British. These slaves were generally manual laborers.

If you look into Agatha Christie’s books knowing what to look for, you stumble upon some very interesting ideas. These ideas support a number of common theories or themes we talk or hear about in today’s world. Agatha Christie was clearly familiar with the ideas of mind altering, programing and personality adjustment (Monarch mind control?) as well as the New World Order and a few esoteric, secret communities. Her work on these subjects is worth a read.

Sources:

• Morgan, Janet P (1984), Agatha Christie: a biography, London: Collins.
• Mandel, Mike, and Chantal Zakari. They Came to Baghdad. Watertown, MA: Eighteen Publications, 2012.
• Christie, Agatha. Destination Unknown. Thorndike, Me.: Center Point Pub., 2012.
• Christie, Agatha. Hallowe’en Party; Passenger to Frankfurt; The Thirteen Problems. Sydney: Lansdowne, 1980
• Christie, Agatha. The Big Four. Toronto: Bantam, 1986

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