King Charles’ New Painting, Baphomet and Butterflies
Coincidence: yes, no, yes, no, anyone know?
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When King Charles’ new portrait arrived in our house as front page news, I immediately hated it on a visceral level. The butterfly. The colour. The expression that didn’t even look like King Charles III.
Then I saw something pop-up on an Instagram story that I thought was just tinkering with some digital app. So, assuming it was faked, I tried it myself.
Copy and paste the portrait, flip it so that the butterflies are on the outside, line the edges up, and a sinister head emerges:
It looks like the head of a goat on a human chest, or more specifically, the Baphomet — the goat-headed figure that you may recognise from press coverage of the Satanic Temple statue, although it represents something much older than that, and the current version was drawn by a French occultist in the 1800s.
If you aren’t familiar with that image, you may not initially see it in the painting, but I’d be surprised if you don’t note the uncanny similarity when you compare the two, even down to what looks like nipples. Another version of the mirrored and inverted image has been posted several times online, also showing a Baphometical-looking figure.
But, whichever way you look at it, is it all just another coincidence?
Afterall, since initially writing this piece, I have tried doing a similar thing with portraits on Artvee, and yes, sometimes an intimation of a ‘face’ or ‘figure’ rises to the surface.
It is ironic that people could say it is like those symmetry butterfly paintings you do as a child: put some paint dollops on one side of the paper, press it over, open it out and voila! A something — whatever you want it to be!
And there is, after all, a butterfly in this painting.
Surely it is a coincidence that it isn’t really a British butterfly, but a Monarch butterfly? Or maybe it is just apt because he is a monarch. But why fuel the conspiracy theories that already hang like a shroud over the Palace? Why feed the fire unless you want it to blaze hotter?
Butterflies have a lot of connotations in the world of conspiracy theories. But also if you know a little about Nazi history. Or the CIA. Or mind-control experiments: also known as MK Ultra, or MONARCH Programming, allegedly stopped in the 70s.
Two butterflies
Did you notice, too, that there is what looks like a second, unmentioned shadow butterfly, also facing the King, but with its wings open in an oddly aggressive posture, above the main butterfly? Or is it just a coincidental butterfly-shaped splodge and a trick of the eye?
And the colour. The colour of blood.
Perhaps we could say it is just the personal choice of the artist, Jonathan Yeo, who has previously done a Porn Collage Series using clippings from hardcore pornographic magazines instead of paint.
But why choose an artist with this background to paint the King of England and the Head of the Church of England? And is it realistic to think he was told to paint whatever, and however, he wanted?
Sizing it all up
And the apparent dimensions of 8ft 6in by 6ft 6in, with the three sixes being, well, three sixes; is that just a funny coincidence, too?
So, why load up a British royal portrait with all this suggestiveness? Or is it all just unfortunate coincidence that will get tongues wagging and ensure even more reason to brandish the term ‘conspiracy theory’ for any question that is a little off-the-wall — talk that is destabilising and fringe and needs stopped.
The last royal portrait I remember was Queen Elizabeth’s — the one where she had her eyes closed. Closed to everything going on around her? Or just resting? Is there a difference, sometimes?
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