ABSTRACT

This chapter outlines C.G. Jung’s recollections of his childhood experiences as revealed in his autobiographical account Memories, Dreams, Reflections and asks questions about their possible sources. His earliest childhood dream at age three or four, of a ritual phallus in an underground chamber, still perplexed him in his eighties, while his solitary games in later childhood seemed to be pervaded by a profound spiritual quality and intense emotions. For Jung, this produced a sense of being two personalities, No. 1, the ordinary schoolboy and No. 2, the one who inhabited a private other world in which he was a man from the 18th century. This chapter examines these childhood experiences, finding parallels in rituals from the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite (AASR) and the Rite of Memphis in Freemasonry, as well as in reports of the ritual abuse of children since the 1980s.