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Lynn Brunet |Ripping back the veil on Masonic abuse
of Man, a site famous for its history of Celtic/Druidic
practices and fairy folklore. Here, Barney is dressed as
the Loughton Candidate, a human–animal hybrid, and
is accompanied by three transgender, muscle-bound
‘faeries’. The artist then begins an excruciating journey
of rebirth by crawling through a long tunnel lined with
Vaseline, emerging as an abject figure entirely covered
with the substance.
As Victor Turner (1987 1992) notes, the liminal stage of
initiation is often represented by long tunnels and can
be accompanied by surreal contexts, birth symbolism,
human–animal hybrids, and gender fluidity. These
elements all appear in Cremaster 4 and suggest that
the artist might have been attempting to connect
disturbing bodily sensations to the practices of the
ancient Druids. In an earlier work, Drawing Restraint 7
(1993), he enacts a scene in the rear of a limousine that
was driving around New York. This time, he is dressed
as a young satyr and is engaged in a struggle with an
older one, referring to the initiation of rites of boys in
ancient Greece and Rome that were associated with
myths of bestial rape (Robson, 1997). Now, though, he
is placing it within a contemporary context, prompting
questions about the practice of initiatory rape.
Cremaster 3 (2002) is the last of the five films he created
and introduces Masonic themes specifically. It is set
during the construction of the Chrysler Building in New
York in 1930 and draws together themes of organised
crime, Freemasonry and the Irish labour unions
(Spector, 2002). In the film, Barney’s Masons wear
aprons designed by the artist that feature the double-
headed eagle, a symbol of the Scottish Rite. They are
portrayed as a group of thugs, a syndicate of organised
crime that operated during the Great Depression.
Many visual references in the film represent the Order
as not being ‘on the level’.
One particular scene captures one of the most
disturbing aspects of the whole Cremaster Cycle. Five
boys, aged between six and fifteen, carry the rotted
corpse of a young woman up several flights of stairs in
the Chrysler Building and place her in the back seat of
a vehicle, a 1938 Chrysler Imperial. In trauma terms,
and in reference to Barney’s earlier Drawing Restraint 7,
the female corpse could be seen to represent an aspect
of rape, where a boy may be made to feel as if he is a girl
and annihilated in the act. The various ages of the boys
carrying her may indicate aspects of ritual abuse: the
repetition of initiatory ordeals throughout childhood
and the enforced exposure to seeing or even handling
corpses (real or fake) to make them feel as if they are
complicit in some terrible crime (Fraser, 1997).
Further scenes include the ritual demolition of the
1938 vehicle by five 1967 Chrysler Imperials in the
Chrysler Building lobby, which circle the older vehicle
and smash into it. Spector (2002) suggests that they
might represent a rage-filled father–son conflict based
on the birth ages of Barney and his father. Dressed as a
builder’s apprentice, the artist trowels cement over the
cars’ shining bodies and later pours cement into the lift
of the pristine Art Deco lobby, implying that his rage is
also being directed at the corporate/Masonic world. As
a consequence of his crimes, three Freemasons decide
his fate. Now the artist is dressed as a Masonic Entered
Apprentice, in dishevelled clothing with one trouser
leg rolled up and one side of his chest exposed. He is
lying on a dentist’s chair and is surrounded by Masons
who knock out his teeth, forcing him to symbolically
swallow his rage. The teeth are then excreted anally and
morph into a smooth phallic shape. The Apprentice’s
ability to dissociate from the pain, illustrated in his
calm submission to the ordeal, is mirrored in the cool
demeanour of his torturers and metaphorically implies
the successful socialisation of boy to man, where the
initiate forgets the source of his rage.
Barney’s Cremaster Cycle contains many more
complex scenes involving trauma and Freemasonry,
prompting the author to make a number of attempts
to discuss this theme with the artist. But he chose
not to respond, neither confirming nor denying this
interpretation. In interviews, he tends to focus on the
technical and conceptual aspects of the work rather
than on psychological interpretations. To produce
these elaborate films, Barney needed to appeal for
corporate sponsorship, and his overt and cryptic
references to Freemasonry could be seen as a homage
to the Order (Brunet, 2009b). However, the whole film
cycle, especially Cremaster 3, is more of an indictment,
seeming to reveal the profoundly damaging impact of
deviant Freemasonry through a highly sophisticated
aesthetic.

International Journal of Coercion, Abuse, and Manipulation Volume 9, Issue 2 2026 44
Francis Bacon (1909–1992)
Francis Bacon could be described as the archetypal
tortured artist, and much of his struggle related to the
fact that he was a gay man at a time when homosexuality
was illegal in Britain. But his paintings capture
something more than this: an inexplicable sense of
violence and turmoil, as well as disturbing religious
scenes that, as an atheist, he could not explain. All he
could say of them was: ‘I’m just trying to make images
as accurately off my nervous system as I can. I don’t
even know what half of them mean’ (Sylvester, 2000, p.
186). He likened the shambolic state of his studio to his
confusing state of mind (Cappock, 2005) but claimed
that he was lucky as a painter because ‘images just drop
in as if they were handed down to me’ (Sylvester, 2000,
p. 8). He also believed that artists had the advantage
of staying close to their sensations from childhood
(Peppiatt, 1996). All these statements suggest the
presence of an underlying trauma where flashbacks,
inexplicable sensations, and deep confusion are its
indelible characteristics (Healey, 1993).
Born to members of the English Protestant gentry
in Roman Catholic Ireland and from a generational
military family, Bacon’s childhood was spent in the
Curragh in County Kildare (Davies, 1978, p. 2). The area
has a long association with both military and religious
practices, dating back to the ancient Druids. It has also
had a long involvement with secret societies, and from
the mid-nineteenth century onwards, the Masonic
Order has had a strong presence there (Costello, 1996).
His father, Edward Anthony Mortimer Bacon, a retired
captain, applied a tough military ethos to rearing his
son and treated him as a weakling. The artist also
spoke of sexual abuse by his uncle and early sexual
encounters with his father’s stable hands (Davies, 1978
Harrison, 2005 Sinclair, 1993 Sylvester, 1998). While
the family papers were lost during the Irish Civil War,
historian David Fitzpatrick suggested that the men in
Bacon’s family were likely members of Freemasonry,
as British military officers in the region were often
Masons (personal communication, October 10, 2005).
This connection may help to explain the more obscure
elements in his paintings.
Bacon produced many images containing curtains and
a rectangular structure in the centre of a windowless
space he said he always loved rooms with extensive
curtains, citing those in his grandmother’s house
(Davies, 1978, p. 80 Harrison, 2005, p. 113). These
paintings, though, do not convey a domestic interior
but frame screaming figures, ghoulish popes, and
painfully contorted bodies, suggesting a more
frightening scenario.
In Freemasonry, the Holy Royal Arch rite involves
curtains and is based on the Old Testament story of the
second pilgrimage of the children of Israel. A society of
Royal Arch Masons is called a Chapter, and the ritual
space is set up to represent the tent-like tabernacle
where the Ark of the Covenant was kept, near the
ruins of Solomon’s temple. In the Irish version, it uses
four coloured curtains or veils (blue, purple, scarlet,
and white) that are suspended from a framework and
stretched across the Chapter room, creating a series
of cubicles (Duncan, 1866, p. 218). In the ritual, the
candidate must pass through each of these curtains
to undergo the ceremony known as the Passing of the
Veils, an intense experience described as representing
a mystical state, ‘a glimpse of what lies beyond death’
(Manasseh, n.d., p. 1, par. 3).2In
1
Ireland, this ceremony
is described as elaborate and full of symbolism, ‘to make
a lasting impression on the candidate’ (Aspeslet, n.d., p.
2). In this ritual, there are three Principals, or presiding
officers, who wear gowns and various headdresses the
Principal representing Joshua or the High Priest wears
a mitre, similar in style to a bishop or the pope (Cryer,
2002 Wells, 1984).
Bacon created a series of paintings depicting popes
in the 1950s and 1960s, initially based on Portrait of
Pope Innocent X by Diego Velázquez. They are set in
curtained spaces inside a rectangular framework,
using vertical stripes of paint such as purple in Pope
1 (1951) and scarlet in Untitled (Pope) (1950). This
curtained arrangement accompanies many of his
works, suggesting that it might represent a Royal Arch
initiatory space when set up for the Passing of the Veils.
What they contain, though, suggests a spurious version
of the ritual. Bacon’s popes seem to be screaming,
although the artist did not necessarily agree with this
interpretation and said that their open mouths could
indicate yawning, laughing or sneezing (Davies, 1978,
2 In Masonic rituals the term ‘candidate’ is used for a man who is being
admitted into a degree through an initiation process. He can be blindfolded
or wear particular clothing signifying his status. Once admitted, he will
receive regalia signifying his elevated status, such as a particular apron,
embroidered collar and symbolic jewels (Duncan, 1866).