‘A Course of Severe and Arduous Trials’

Front matter

Lynn Brunet

‘A COURSE OF SEVERE AND ARDUOUS TRIALS’

BACON, BECKETT AND SPURIOUS FREEMASONRY IN EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY IRELAND

CHAPTER FIVE Initiatory Rites in Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable and Other Prose

CHAPTER SIX Trauma, Druidism and the Gnostic Tradition in the Work of Bacon and Beckett vii vi

APPENDIX Francis Bacon websites

Notes Select Bibliography

Acknowledgements

This research project represents a new way of looking at the work of creative individuals in the light of their association with members of secret societies and fraternities. As such, it is a challenging study that in some ways asks the reader to re-evaluate the relationship between artist, writer and society. Thus the commitment of those trusted friends and colleagues who have stood by me in this research is all the more to their credit as it would have been very easy for them to back away. My greatest appreciation goes to Professor Kristine Stiles, Duke University, whose career in art theory has been focused on the relationship between trauma and violence in the work of contemporary artists and who has offered me invaluable editorial guidance and ongoing mentoring of my overall project; to my friends and colleagues at the University of Newcastle, namely Professor Lyndall Ryan, who as an historian has confronted some of the darkest aspects of Australian history, who was undaunted by my views and has remained an important mentor; to Sharon Walsh for her invaluable perspective from the Child Welfare sector; and to my constant friend and fellow artist Maureen Clack, who has patiently stayed with me on this theme over the years of this research. Amongst family, much gratitude goes to my son Daniel, who understands, with great insight, the impact across generations of the abusive use of initiatory rites; to my daughter Alice, for providing the constant motivation to pursue this line of research; and to my mother Monica and late father Kevin, whose own repressed histories lie buried in the subject under discussion.

Many thanks, too, to Dr Martin Harrison, the art historian for the Bacon Estate, for his encouragement both in the early and final stages of research; to Dr Margarita Cappock and the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, for permission to use their archive; to Professor Ernst van Alphen, Leiden University, for his time discussing this theme; to Professor David Fitzpatrick, Trinity College, Dublin, for his professional opinion on viii Acknowledgements the Masonic membership of Bacon’s family members and to Sir Grey Gowrie for his advice on Bacon’s family background. Thanks also to Mario Corrigan, librarian, Kildare County Library; Catherine Marshall, curator, Irish Museum of Modern Art; Professor Declan McGonagle, University of Ulster; Professor Brian Maguire, Dublin College of Art and Design; Cecil Fitzpatrick, archivist, Grand Orange Lodge, Belfast; the staff of the Grand Lodge of Ireland; and the staff of the National Library of Ireland. Special thanks are also due to the photographers John Minihan and John Haynes who have graciously supplied their work for the cover of this book. Lastly, the research for this project could not have even begun without generous funding support from the University of Newcastle in Australia.

Much appreciation goes to the publishers Grove/Atlantic and Faber and Faber for permission to use extracts from Beckett's work. Regrettably, it was not possible to include reproductions of the large number of Bacon’s paintings discussed in the text. However, images of Bacon’s paintings are widely available online and in catalogues. A list of online sources is available in an appendix at the end of the volume and the relevant catalogues are cited in the notes and bibliography.

Introduction

This study is the product of a developing body of research and a new theory within the creative arts that proposes that particular artists and writers, especially those who appear to express a deep and confusing sense of anxiety and despair, may be representing the traces of initiatory rites found in various fraternities, religious groups, secret societies and cults.

Two of the twentieth century’s most important creative figures, the artist Francis Bacon (1909-1992) and the writer Samuel Beckett (1906- 1989), both convey in their work a sense of foreboding and confinement in bleak, ritualistic spaces. Gilles Deleuze has suggested that it is in these spaces that Bacon and Beckett ‘have never been so close’, as Bacon's figures and Beckett’s characters ‘trundle about fitfully without ever leaving their circle or parallelepiped’ This book provides a reading of Bacon and Beckett’s work that demonstrates the many parallels between the spaces and activities they evoke in their work and the initiatory practices of fraternal orders and secret societies that were an integral part of the social landscape of the Ireland of their childhood. As T. Desmond Williams notes, secret societies were probably more a part of everyday life and politics in Ireland than in most other countries and since the eighteenth century new fraternal orders were being formed in Ireland every decade.’ Many of these societies modelled their ritual structures and symbolism on the Masonic Order.’

In the modern era the artist’s role has often been interpreted as providing an important link to the subliminal currents that underpin the community, revealing those taboo or repressed issues that the society as a whole is unable to confront. Some artists do this by exploring their own struggles and psychological experiences and then externalising these explorations in creative form. The cliché of the tortured artist accompanies this modern concept. By making their struggles visible artists confront their viewers with unresolved issues that some in the public may share.

Often neither the artist nor their audience is fully aware of the implications of their work.

Francis Bacon and Samuel Beckett could each be described as driven by a powerful creative force underpinned by a sense of disturbance that has not yet been fully understood. Both have plumbed the darkest levels of their psyches and transferred their responses onto the canvas, be it a literal piece of linen, a theatrical stage or the pages of a novel. Bacon called this process of transference ‘the pattern of one’s own nervous system being projected on the canvas.* Beckett’s realisation that his literary voice needed to be based on the dynamics of the psyche and on the ‘big blooming buzzing confusion’ of his own inner turmoil was a decision that marked him as a new voice in theatre and one that was to be representative of his time.’

This book asks whether the sense of disturbance created in their work could be associated with traumatic exposure to initiatory rites that were commonly practised by many secret societies in early twentieth-century Ireland. As there is no evidence to suggest that either man ever joined any secret societies this study asks whether they could have been exposed to the rituals in some other context.

As anthropologists explain, the use of initiatory rites applied to children and accompanied by a series of frightening tricks, enacted as rites of passage into adulthood, is a common practice in many cultures. These rites can often be painful and terrifying affairs and are generally conducted by specially appointed ritual elders. Many societies frown on such practices, regarding them as a sign of a backward culture, one steeped in superstition and fear, and claim a more enlightened view where the child is spared such brutal horrors. But what if similar practices lie behind the work of Bacon and Beckett? The reading here suggests that there may be the traces in their work of a clandestine initiation process, one that draws on a combination of Masonic rites, Druidic lore, Irish mythology, and biblical and classical themes, blended together with a liberal dose of cruelty.

Francis Bacon and Samuel Beckett share a number of commonalities in their life experiences. Both were born in Dublin, Beckett in 1906° and Bacon in 1909.’ Beckett spent his childhood in suburban Dublin while

Bacon as a child lived in the rural county of Kildare not far from the city, interspersed with periods living in London. Both lived through the Irish Civil War. For Bacon this was experienced close at hand, while for Beckett it was a more distant reality. Both left Ireland, Bacon in his youth and Beckett in his young adulthood, to pursue their careers in the wider artistic world beyond Irish shores. Both were raised as Protestants and both rejected their religion proclaiming either an atheistic or agnostic position. Bacon’s response to religion and its accompanying hypocrisy was one of vehement disgust;* while Beckett rejected his Protestant upbringing regarding it as ‘only irksome and I let it go.’ Both grew up in an environment where Freemasonry and other fraternal organizations were close at hand, providing a sanctuary for the men in a socially sanctioned and exclusively male environment.

Both men carried a burden that informed their artistic work. Bacon was homosexual in an age when it was still regarded as a crime. His incompatibility with the ideals of masculinity shared by his male relatives and much of the Irish community of his childhood led to his rejection of the mores of his day and his claim to an outsider status. The theme of homosexuality, violence and turmoil permeate his images, while the chaotic state of his studio, immortalized in his famous comment, ‘[t]his mess around us is rather like my mind’ reflected the state of confusion that accompanied much of his personal life." Beckett experienced problems with depression, night terrors and anxiety attacks in his young adulthood that led him to undergo a two-year period of psychoanalysis in London. While his relationship with his mother was fraught with tension and may have been the cause of some of his emotional difficulties, his period of psychotherapy proved largely ineffectual with the analyst finding no clear causes for his extreme level of anxiety." The theme of mental distress, inner turmoil, and a sense of emotional void is one that runs throughout Beckett’s work.

The work of both artist and writer has been interpreted in many ways, among them as representing existential themes and a deep level of angst that surrounded mid-twentieth-century culture. The reading here will suggest that the degree of angst in their work may be associated with the subject of a developing body of research, one that suggests that the initiation of children by members of fraternal groups and secret societies may be one of the more clandestine practices of western culture.”

As Alan Axelrod notes, the whole concept ofa secret society is a male institution.” Most secret societies incorporate some form of initiation, utilising the themes of birth, death and rebirth found in the primordial practices of many cultures. These initiatory rites typically express a fear of female power and an appropriation of women’s power to give birth.” Taking the child from the realm of the mother and ‘re-birthing’ him into the reality of war, toughness and masculinity is the principle upon which the ancient practice of male puberty rites is based. As Paul Nettl suggests, these primordial practices may have been the original basis for the evolution of secret societies, which led ultimately in the eighteenth century to the elaborate and formalised rituals of the institution of Freemasonry.”

Since its inception in the eighteenth century the Masonic Order has spawned a proliferation of allied secret societies and fraternities that have adopted its ritual structures for their initiation practices. In Ireland, by the turn of the twentieth century, much of the male population belonged to one or more of these organizations. These societies were sites of male solidarity and many of them drew on Masonic rites for the form and symbolism of their rituals; many also infused ancient Celtic beliefs and Druidic practices into their ritual processes. The central practice of initiation in these societies took on a range of forms, sometimes reflecting the Irish warrior tradition as well as classical and Egyptian themes, Christian beliefs and Old Testament narratives.

Freemasonry has attracted a continuing debate between apologists and detractors who have argued for and against its role in western society and of more neutral historians and philosophers who have traced its ancestry and attempted to weigh the opposing positions. At the core of these discussions lies a duality; a duality that anthropologists explain accompanies initiatory practices across cultures. Evan M. Zuesse, for example, suggests that there are two forms of liminality created through initiation: positive liminality, which integrates structure and builds up a divine order and negative liminality, which destroys order and isolates its victims.“ The tradition of initiation involves knowledge of the human psyche that can be utilized in one of two ways: either in its symbolic form as a signifier of a legitimate spiritual and moral path for the individual, or for the purpose of power over others. Freemasons have devised the terms ‘true’ and ‘spurious’ Freemasonry or ‘regular’ and ‘irregular’ practice to address this issue and in the history of the Order a number of eminent Freemasons have debated the nature of these two forms. At the heart of this duality lie the nature of power and the application of metaphysical principles for corrupt or benign purposes.

The formal rituals that were eventually sanctioned by Grand Lodge, those practices regarded by Masons as ‘regular; ‘pure’ or ‘true’ Freemasonry, took on a highly symbolic and spiritual significance that was originally modelled on the principles and trade union practices associated with the craft of building the great cathedrals of the medieval period. Only to be available to willing adults, these sanctified rituals were intended to symbolically express the soul’s journey from birth to death, and initiates were to be taught various spiritual, philosophical and moral principles to enable them on their journey through life.” Initiation, in this context, is seen to represent the theme of spiritual renewal and the initiate’s progress through various degrees, a symbolic expression of his spiritual progression. All Masonic degrees are aimed at edifying the initiate through a series of allegorical and cautionary tales as well as mythological enactments. A set of high moral principles and philosophical ideals, as well as a set of strict guidelines acknowledged by Grand Lodge, has accompanied the Order’s official representation of itself since the Enlightenment.

However, as a number of key Masonic authors note, corruption has been woven into the Order since its inception and is present amongst the vast array of loosely related variations of the basic Craft degrees." Freemasons term those rituals regarded as unacceptable to Grand Lodge ‘spurious’ Freemasonry or ‘irregular practice’ and the debates among Freemasons as to when and where these forms originated have been long and much argued. Some Masonic authors claim that the difference was based on geographical concerns, with Britain the site of the genuine Order, while other Masonic authors, such as Robert Freke Gould, claim the character of the Enlightenment itself, despite its rhetoric of reason, to be responsible for the emergence of ‘all kinds of strange and disordered fancies, the work of disordered imagination, to an extent probably never known before ....” Individual characters such as the ‘magician’ Count Cagliostro (Giuseppe Balsamo, 1743-1795), regarded by many as a charlatan, were deemed responsible for spreading irregular versions throughout the Continent.” Cagliostro was to revive Gnostic practices that contained elements derived from Egyptian sources.” In the eighteenth century initiation into Cagliostro’s Egyptian Freemasonry became a fashionable preoccupation amongst the aristocracy, for both men and women alike.

Masonic authors who connect Freemasonry to a more ancient lineage argue that the pure and spurious forms were present in its earlier incarnations. Among them, C. W. Leadbeater, writing in 1926 stated: ‘Masonry, as we have it today, is the only true relic of the faith of the patriarchs before the flood, while the ancient Mysteries of Egypt and other countries, which so closely resemble it, were but human corruptions of the one primitive and pure tradition.” Albert Mackey, looking at the philosophical roots of Freemasonry in biblical times, argues that the pure form was that practised by the Israelites and involved a belief in the unity of God and the immortality of the soul.” The spurious forms, he argues, were those sets of initiatory rites practised by the pagans, including all of the different cult groups of the Classical world. These pagan versions, he suggests, were based on ‘a course of severe and arduous trials ... a long and painful initiation, and ... a formal series of gradual preparations, which the candidate voluntarily underwent in order to seek the enlightenment of a mystical experience.” Mackey locates the spurious forms in terms of their use of terrifying initiation practices and the use of ‘a scenic representation of the mythic descent into Hades, or the grave, and the return from thence to the light of day.” These two different forms, he argues, merged during the building of Solomon’s Temple to produce an immediate prototype of the modern institution.”

The ordeals of the ancient mystery cults were intended to produce altered states of consciousness, a mystical encounter experienced as a state of bliss or a sense of oneness with the Divine. The methods used involved the exploitation of pain, fear, humiliation and exhaustion.” Such techniques appear to have emerged from the warrior tradition, where, through the exposure to scenes of brutality and the fear of imminent death, a warrior could experience a blissful state of release and a sense of immortality. These practices were associated with beliefs in the transmigration of the soul that encouraged warriors to sacrifice themselves in battle.”

The relationship between the feeling of terror and the sense of a ‘sublime’ experience became one of the key themes of the Enlightenment philosophers, many of whom were Freemasons and therefore familiar with the principles of initiation. Immanuel Kant and Edmund Burke were both Freemasons who commented on this theme. Kant had stated that the experience of the Sublime, induced through the feeling of being overwhelmed through terror, is a condition in which the individual’s imagination fails to comprehend what is actually occurring.” Similarly, Burke had argued that the experience of terror had the capacity to produce a set of responses that place the individual in a unique state. This state he called Astonishment, ‘that state of the soul in which all its motions are suspended, producing ‘the effect of the Sublime in its highest degree?” Terror, he argues, is the ruling principle of the Sublime, and involves the impulse for self-preservation. Burke mentions the Druids in this context and comments on the obscurity of their rituals in the dark woods and under the oldest and most spreading oaks. “To make everything very terrible, he says, ‘obscurity seems in general to be necessary.”

In Ireland in the pre-Christian period the Druids, who were the priestly advisors to the Irish kings, were the overseers of an initiatory process that incorporated a set of painful and terrifying practices. In Druidic initiation candidates were locked up in caves, crawled through long tunnels or were sealed into chests or coffins for days at a time, to emerge ‘twice-born.” These initiatory practices were euphemistically known as the ‘mystic fire’ and the candidate’s eventual release from these torturous trials was sometimes expressed in terms of an emergence into a blaze of light.” In Irish lore the peoples who were regarded as bringing these mystical practices to Ireland were known as the Tuatha dé Danann, a mysterious race that was associated with the gods or the ‘fairies. Some believed they were overthrown by another race, the children of the Gail Glas, who had come to Ireland from Egypt via Spain, who also brought their initiatory traditions with them.** As Dudley Wright notes, ‘[the Druidic] ceremony of initiation was similar to the Egyptian rites of Osiris, which were regarded as a descent into hell, a passage through the infernal lake, followed by a landing in the Egyptian Isle of the Blessed.”

Writing in 1894 James Bonwick commented on the interest held amongst Irish Freemasons of the day in the magical powers of these ancient peoples. He states: ‘[e]nthusiastic Freemasons believe the Tuatha were members of the mystic body, their supposed magic being but the superior learning they imported from the East. If not spiritualist in the modern sense of that term, they may have been skilled in Hypnotism inducing others to see or hear what their masters wished them to see or hear’.** Such practices, while regarded with high esteem in some circles, were perceived with suspicion in others. In the late seventeenth century the Irish freethinker John Toland had aired his views on the Druids, regarding them as deceivers of the people, who through trickery led the people by the nose.” As Andrew Prescott notes, there is a body of writing going back as far as Jonathan Swift that connects Masonic practices with that of the Druids.**

When Christianity came to Ireland in the person of St Patrick in the fifth century the Druids were to recognise a number of similarities between Christian and pagan practices that encouraged them to convert to Christianity, allowing a relatively easy transition from one set of beliefs to the next.” The version of Christianity St Patrick brought with him contained Gnostic elements and was a syncretic blend of Greek and oriental traditions. Among these traditions was the Gnostic practice of initiation. St Patrick’s Purgatory, celebrated at Lough Derg in County Donegal in Ireland, was a practice whereby a priest would be locked up for long periods in a cave, known as the Cave of Death. The pilgrim would proceed through the cave and experience a series of frightening trials incorporating terrifying sounds, visions of fiery punishments and an encounter with demons in order to test his faith. Lough Derg was also thought to have been a site of Druidic initiation.”

By the turn of the twentieth century in Ireland, just prior to the birth of Francis Bacon and Samuel Beckett, the various threads of these metaphysical traditions had merged and were present in a range of forms amongst the secret societies of the day. Many of the men of the ruling Protestant elite belonged to Freemasonry, while working class Protestants were likely to belong to any number of the various secret societies that utilised Masonic-style rituals for their initiatory practices. Some men belonged to a number of fraternities. While outwardly respectable churchgoing men embraced the tenets of Christianity, it appears that behind the closed doors of the lodges and meeting rooms these same men may have been practising initiatory rituals derived from various pagan and classical sources.

Male initiation processes in general demonstrate the ever-present threat that men can impose on each other and the close proximity of death in all relations between men. The terror experienced by the novitiate is the central ingredient of the initiation process and his vulnerability throughout the experience marks the power of the group over the individual. Once safely through this process he is then protected by the group provided he adheres to the strict requirements of secrecy. The cementing of male relations through implied terror — we could kill you but we have chosen not to — is the hallmark ofall fraternal initiatory structures. Anthropologists have long recognised that central to the initiatory process across cultures is the use of shock to place the candidate into an altered state in order to be receptive to new information.” The experience of terror is thus a key ingredient of the initiation process and the symbolism of death and rebirth, to represent the change that the initiate must undergo, accompanies most, if not all, initiatory processes.

Contemporary psychology has, over the course of the twentieth century, developed an extensive knowledge of the effects of shock, terror and trauma on the psyche of the individual. Research suggests that dissociation, memory loss and identity fragmentation are common responses to the experience of trauma.“ In psychoanalytic terms dissociation refers to ‘..acompartmentalization of experience ... [in which] traumatic memories are characteristically stored separately from other memories, in discrete personality states.” They result from an experience of overwhelming threat in which the totality of the experience is not accommodated within ordinary memory. Traumatic shock immerses the individual into a state described as ‘a phylogenetically older psychological mechanism — to freeze or play dead, or ... psychic numbing?“ It is produced through a natural biological response where the brain produces a wave of opiates to numb the individual to what would otherwise be an overwhelming experience, often associated with an imminent sense of death. Such a mechanism clearly has a protective function, serving the psychic preservation of the individual in the context of a terrifying ordeal. This concept of dissociation seems to approximate the eighteenth century philosophers’ views on the Sublime, where the individual fails to comprehend what is occurring in front of them and experiences a state of Astonishment, ‘that state of the soul in which all its motions are suspended. In the context of the initiatory ordeal the effect of the brain’s natural opiate production can give rise to those sensations associated with the mystical experience such as a state of divine bliss, a sense of going ‘into the light’ or of blissfully floating away from the body.

Traumatic experiences, if they are repeated often enough, especially in childhood, can remain cordoned off and unavailable to the normal waking consciousness of the individual. This amnesia often manifests as a central and profound absence that is felt as a deep and pervasive sense of confusion. Freudian explanations of this amnesia are that it is ‘a defensive process ... in which the memory of the trauma is incompatible with the subject’s other conscious ideas.” While the individual can remain amnesic to the original events, the side effects of traumatic experience can be the serious and debilitating effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, such as anxiety, nervousness and depression, sleep disturbances, the tendency towards addictive behaviours, personality fragmentation, psychosomatic symptoms and so on.

As I will suggest, both Francis Bacon and Samuel Beckett demonstrate many of the traits associated with repressed trauma. For a creative individual, the sense of disturbance that underpins traumatic experience can bea powerful stimulus to the production of creative work. While the events and circumstances of the trauma remain repressed they can nevertheless be felt in all their intensity, as Bacon suggests, as an effect ‘on the nervous system’ experienced by the individual as a series of dissociated images, sounds, bodily responses and tactile sensations and involving a profound sense of confusion. The following discussion will demonstrate that, coupled with a sense of trauma in their work, there appears to be

Introduction Il many traces of Masonic rites, suggesting some form of exposure to ritual practices.

As Ross Nichols notes, Druidic magicians sometimes dipped or annealed children in the mystic fire, a euphemism that implies that, in pre-Christian times, children were sometimes submitted to initiatory ordeals.** Research since the 1980s has revealed the continuation of such practices in the contemporary era.” After preliminary revelations of the ritual abuse of children in Britain, the United States and other first world countries in the 1980s a set of heated public debates ensued, but by the late 1990s the topic had plunged into obscurity. However, psychologists at the coalface have since documented many cases and a body of research has emerged that confirms the existence of ritual abuse as a contemporary practice. In the American context, for example, James Noblitt and Pamela Perskin were able to provide a comprehensive summary of the data using an anthropological and historical methodology that attempted to put the material into context. They examined the broad range of accounts of religions, cults, and fraternal organizations that used traumatic rituals for the purpose of creating altered states of consciousness. These mental states, they argue, have sometimes been viewed as sacred, but can also be used for psychological control. Their conclusion, like that of others who have explored this field, is that the practices appear to have been going on in an underground form, perhaps for centuries.

A definition of ritual abuse derived in 1988 at the University of New Hampshire and employed in the field states that it is ‘[a]buse that occurs in a context linked to some symbols or group activity that have a religious, magical, or supernatural connotation, and where the invocation of these symbols or activities, repeated over time, is used to frighten or intimidate the children.” Ritual abuse is rarely enacted as a single episode but is usually repeated over an extended period of time and can begin in early childhood.” The psychologist Lenore Terr notes that children who go through such repeated trauma, as opposed to those who only experience a traumatic event once, learn to protect themselves by the use of repression as a defence against remembering.” Many psychologists have observed that survivors commonly report abuse in Masonic contexts, using Masonic ritual and regalia.” In a discussion of this phenomenon

Noblitt and Perskin state that it is ‘possible that such cultists operate within Freemasonry without the knowledge or consent of the majority of its membership ... [and] ... it is also possible that some cultists imitate Masonic rituals during their abusive ceremonies.”* Such a statement correlates with the arguments proposed by those Masonic authors who acknowledge the existence of spurious Freemasonry and the potential for the degradation of the rituals when not practised according to the strict guidelines of Grand Lodge.

The following analysis of the work of Bacon and Beckett will take into account contemporary research into the mechanisms of trauma and the phenomenon of ritual abuse, as it is currently understood. Their work has often been regarded as epitomising the dark underside of the modern experience. This book supports that presumption by suggesting that they may have depicted, in close detail, something of the trauma associated with this dark underside. It will argue that their powerful imagery may be pointing to the continued use in the modern era of an archaic initiation practice that combines the ‘old religion’ of Ireland with the beliefs of the Old Testament and the practices of the Classical period. It will suggest that Bacon’s stark imagery and Beckett’s obscure performances may be two separate artistic responses to a course of severe, arduous and painful trials carried out in Ireland in the early twentieth century.