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Lynn Brunet |Ripping back the veil on Masonic abuse
turned upside down, and the everyday laws of morality
are derided. Turner (1982) describes the initiates in
these rites as being taught ‘that they did not know what
they thought they knew. Beneath the surface structure
of custom was a deep structure, whose rules they had to
learn, through paradox and shock’ (p. 42). Non-Western
secret societies have traditionally been associated with
these practices and incorporate death-and-rebirth
symbolism into their initiations (Eliade, 1995). In his
study of Mozart’s involvement in Freemasonry, Paul
Nettl (1987) suggests that these primordial practices
may have been the original basis for modern Western
secret societies, which in turn led to the elaborate and
formalised rituals of the institution of Freemasonry in
the eighteenth century (p. 93).
Four out of the five case studies here have known
or likely family connections to the Masonic Order
(Cronin, 1997, p. 9 Fitzpatrick, 2005 J. Golding,
2012, p. 53 Jung, 1963, p. 220). Freemasonry, as the
Encyclopædia Britannica (2026) describes it, is:
the teachings and practices of the fraternal (men
only) order of Free and Accepted Masons, the
largest worldwide secret society...spread by the
advance of the British Empire and remaining
most popular in the British Isles and other
countries originally within the empire.
However, the extent to which Freemasonry can be
described as secret is debatable, given the three centuries’
worth of literature, exploring its beliefs, practices and
symbolism, even including reproductions of some of
the rituals, so that research into it is far easier than
into many other groups. The first three degrees with
which the Masonic journey begins, known as Craft
or Blue Masonry, are the Entered Apprentice, Fellow
Craft and Master Mason degrees (Duncan, 1866).
Every Mason who wants to progress further into one
of the other Masonic Rites (sometimes called higher
degrees) must first undergo these three Craft degrees.
All degrees involve rituals, many of them loosely
based on biblical themes, allegorical tales, and moral
lessons, and often include oaths of secrecy, while the
initiates are sometimes blindfolded. Solomon’s temple
is a central theme and symbolises the individual’s
spiritual life. In the second or Fellow Craft degree, the
building of this temple symbolises the initiate’s own
inner process of gradual spiritual development. The
rituals involve a physical enactment of the narratives
within the lodge room and express a search for ‘light’,
understood as philosophical, spiritual, or mystical
illumination (Duncan, 1866). The organisation aims to
chart a course of spiritual and moral development for
the betterment of its members.
However, the Masonic Order has long been aware
of the potential misuse of its rituals and calls these
corrupt versions ‘spurious Freemasonry’, ‘irregular
practice’, ‘Hedge Masons’ and ‘side degrees’ (Lawrence,
1924, p. 190 Roberts, 1974, p. 28 Universal Co-
Masonry, 2026).1 These practices are not sanctioned by
the various Grand Lodges, but they can nevertheless
appear within some fraternal contexts as distorted
versions of the approved rituals. The potential for abuse
of the initiates is one of the attributes of older versions
of the degrees. Reports of abuse in Masonic contexts
or misuse of Masonic rituals or regalia have appeared
regularly in the literature of ritual abuse (Brunet, 2007
Katchen, 1992, p. 10 Kent, 1993, 1998 Schröder et al,
2020 Scott, 2001, p. 127). The sociologist Stephen Kent
(1993, 1998) used the term deviant Freemasonry in the
context of allegations of ritual abuse in North America
by individuals whose fathers were Freemasons. But as
far as this author is aware, the Order has not publicly
admitted to the use of Masonic rites for child abuse.
This author has suggested that since the eighteenth
century, the Masonic Order may have been ritually
enacting trauma on the body and psyche, centuries
before it was discussed in modern psychology and
psychiatry (Brunet, 2007). Some Masonic authors,
such as A. E. Waite (1925), have argued that Masonic
initiation practices are based on the concept of memory,
symbolically enacting what today could be described as
the psychological processes involved in memory loss
and retrieval. Here, the allegorical legend of Hiram
Abif, which was introduced into the second edition
of the Masonic Book of Constitutions in 1738, may
be a case in point. It is enacted in the third or Master
Mason degree (‘Masonic Miscellanies: The Legend of
the Third Degree’, 2025).
1 ‘Side degrees’ were unofficial meetings of fraternities aimed at
entertainment, rather than ritual purposes. They were popular in the first
half of the twentieth century, and companies arose to supply the fraternities
with paraphernalia and costumes for their hijinks and terrifying ordeals for
the blindfolded initiates. The DeMoulin Bros &Co in the US was one such
company. Its 1908 catalogue depicts their equipment, sometimes described
as ‘only an innocent joke’.

International Journal of Coercion, Abuse, and Manipulation Volume 9, Issue 2 2026 42
The biblical Hiram Abif was a master craftsman who
worked in metals and other media and created the brass
furnishings and vessels for King Solomon’s temple (1
Kings 7:13–14 2 Chronicles 2:13–14). However, in
Freemasonry, his role is elevated to that of chief architect
or master builder of Solomon’s temple, and the legend of
his death is a main focus. The legend begins before the
temple is completed. The workers had been promised
that if they completed the work successfully, they would
be elevated in status to that of Master Mason and given
the accompanying secret word of recognition. But three
craftsmen conspire to extort this privilege prematurely
from Hiram Abif, using threats of violence. When he
refuses, the three traitors murder him with three blows
to the body and head. The men then bury his body in
a shallow grave, and later it is found in a putrefied state
by King Solomon’s men, who decently bury it. In the
enactment, the initiate takes the role of Hiram Abif in
a theatrical depiction of the murder. This is followed
by the ‘raising’ of the initiate when one of the Masons
whispers the secret or Lost Word into the initiate’s ear.
Its symbolism can be read on many levels, among them
as a death and rebirth scenario or the development of
the soul through earthly trials (Axelrod, 1997 Duncan,
1866 Hahn, 2008).
The Hiramic legend could also be interpreted as a
symbolic representation of betrayal trauma, which,
as Jennifer Freyd (1996) tells us, is the type of trauma
that is most likely to be forgotten, a phenomenon most
relevant to children abused by close relatives. The
three blows to Hiram Abif may be seen as symbolising
the impact of repeated trauma on the psyche again,
one of the characteristics of ritual abuse is causing
amnesia, where the children are repeatedly subjected
to terrifying experiences. The initial burial in the
shallow grave might then be seen as the burial of
the memories just below the level of consciousness,
with the reference to its putrefied state signifying the
debilitating psychological damage that such buried
memories can produce. The raising of the initiate, on
the other hand, and whispering the Lost Word into the
initiate’s ear, could signify the restoration of the ability
to put into the words these traumatic memories—lost
and now found. The following case studies will look
at how five leading creative thinkers might have been
aesthetically expressing their own partially buried
traumatic experiences.
Matthew Barney (b. 1967)
The project began in 1999 within the author’s discipline
of art history and in the context of contemporary art
practice. In the 1990s, themes of trauma and memory
were being explored in attempts to make sense of
the burgeoning examples of contemporary artists
portraying disturbing themes and traumatic content
in their work (Antze &Lambek, 1996 Terdiman,
1993). The most striking examples were taking place
in the field of performance art, where the artists were
depicting ritual themes and committing acts of violence
and destruction, often to their own bodies, that hinted
at underlying trauma (Stiles, 1998). One suggestion
was that this type of art could be examined forensically,
as evidence and traces of a crime (Rugoff, 1997, p. 17).
In the 1970s, the presence of scatological acts, such as
the ingestion of urine and faeces, along with intensely
misogynistic themes in performance art, prompted the
Italian art historian Leah Vergine (2000) to ask whether
they might have been related to cult practices. But she
did not pursue this concept, and by the 1990s, neither
had any other art historians or theorists. This author’s
doctoral thesis was to investigate this possibility
(Brunet, 2007).
The first case study was of the work of Matthew Barney,
a leading filmmaker, sculptor, and performance artist
from New York who emerged with a blockbuster
exhibition of The Cremaster Cycle at the Guggenheim
Museum in 2003. The work comprises five films
produced over seven years it contains multiple
references to bodily trauma, including rape, and
depicts the artist’s own version of Masonic rites. It is a
complex, layered and obscure work containing eclectic
references to mythology and to the theme of initiation.
It includes references to the Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite, a system of 33 degrees that is very popular
in the United States.
Barney has been described as an artist ‘who thinks
through his body’ (Tomkins, 2003, p. 50), and acts
of extreme physicality permeate his work. In his early
work, the anus was depicted as a significant bodily site,
and the title of the work at the Guggenheim refers to
the Cremaster muscle, which raises and lowers the
testicles. His signature medium in the film cycle is
Vaseline, which was flung aggressively at the museum’s
walls. The film Cremaster 4 (1995) is set on the Isle