The Red Book - Carl Jung's record of his encounters with entities from “inner space”

One day, sometime between 1913 and 1917, the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung followed a wise old man up a rocky ridge until they reached a structure that resembled Stonehenge. At the center of this structure stood an altar. On that altar stood a house. From the doorway emerged a doll-like woman whom Jung recognized as Salome, the stepdaughter of Herod Antipas who, after dancing for him on his birthday, had asked for the severed head of John the Baptist.

Salome saw Jung and began to worship him. When Jung asked why she was worshipping him, she replied: “You are Christ.” As she uttered these words, a black serpent coiled its body around Jung’s, completely enveloping his heart. Suddenly, it dawned on Jung that he had assumed “the attitude of the Crucifixion.” He looked at the wise old man, who was in fact the Biblical Elijah. “Why, it’s just the same, above or below,” Elijah said. Then Jung’s face changed into the face of a lion.

The above may sound like a dream, but it wasn’t. It was a daydream, one Carl Jung experienced as part of what he later referred to as the “most difficult experiment” of his career. In an effort to consciously observe the machinations of his unconscious mind, he spent years conditioning himself to let his imagination run wild...