ABSTRACT
The Red Book is a creative rendition of a series of disturbing fantasies that C.G. Jung experienced during his mid-life period. They were so bizarre and frightening that they plunged him, at times, into the feeling that he was going mad. However, he discovered that they bore similarities to the ancient tradition of the Mysteries, a set of secret initiatory practices related to the various religious beliefs of the ancient world. This led him into a lifelong study of myth, ancient religions, Gnosticism and alchemy that were to furnish him with his theories of the unconscious. However, one thing Jung failed to do was to question where these same subjects and their association with the Mysteries might be found in the practices of his own time, and much closer to home. Jung was connected, via family, to Swiss Freemasonry and this chapter outlines the nature of Continental Freemasonry in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
