La Franc-Maçonnerie aujourd'hui

Psychoanalyst can be compared to archaeologists who layers after layers identify clear out the successive layers of our sediments called "certainty - prejudice", "pride" then "resistance - barrier" in order to get closer, and to target our Unconscious. This Unconscious can be compared to what esotericists call "the thin tip of the soul". Does the initiatory way that Freemasonry suggests enable to get closer to it ? To answer this question, we gathered Marie-Hélène Gonnin (Freudian psychoanalyst) and Jacques Fontaine (Freemason, author of many works, published by Detrad) among others) with Daniel Videlier, in this third and last part about this subject.

Second part of our trilogy about Freemasonry in recognition of the Freudian psychology. Marie-Hélène Gonnin (for the psychological part) and Jacques Fontaine (author of many works about Freemasonry, he is a Freemason himself)) will analyze the following themes:
- what does violence mean, simulated or suffered, by the "uninitiated" who gets to the masonic temple's doors and then get over the different degrees ?

 

"Freemasonry on the Couch" could have been called this unexpected meeting between a Freemason, Jacques Fontaine, and a psychoanalyst (non initiated), Marie-Hélène Gonnin. What a Freemason and an analyzed have in common ? What links can we establish between the ritual of masonic
If to Jacques Fontaine, the Socratic Know yourself" represents the recurrent theme between psychoanalysis and Freemasonry, to Marie-Hélène Gonnin,

"You who enter here, give up on hope" indicates Dante on the frontispiece of the Hell doorway.
"Isn't it the warning Henry Corbin should have meditate on when he entered freemasonry at sixty three years-old, in 1966 ? " asks Jean Clergue-Vila, ironically... Henry Corbin was famous as a philosopher, specialist of Iran and of Shiite gnosis.

This recording was filmed during a white table organized by the lodge "Les Amis Fidèles"  (The Faithful Friends) at the Grand Orient de France.
"To initiate" someone, in its etymological meaning, is "to put him on the way". Yet in ordinary language "to be initiated" means to reach a high level of knowledge...  Where does that misinterpretation come from? 
The Internet has deeply changed our access to knowledge: the soar of blogs, the success of Second Life or Facebook, but also online games offer a plethora of distraction, communities of which the virtual universe - if you are not always the hero - systematically give the person-netsurfer the feeling that he is in the middle of this universe and that he controls it.

The keen interest to knowledge and spiritual dimension of man is accompanied of a proliferation of the number of groups, researches, called "esoteric" which often   Yet, Freemasonry, in spite of its diverse movement, claims it is an initiatory order which aim is to work on symbolism.  Is the work on symbols an « esotericism» ?
The word "esoteric", etymologically "inner", refers to a particular type of knowledge, hidden, which is opposed to another one called "exoteric", so "external", accessible for everyone. That's why the importance of initiation for the transmission of esotericist knowledge which will lead the apprentice to assimilate, progressively, knowledges of a superior order. But, are things that simple?

Robert Langdon, the famous professor of symbology of Harvard, after his investigations in the "Da Vinci Code" and "Angels and Demons", comes back in "The Lost Symbol", Dan Brown's last book. 
In this last thriller, the professor is called to come to Washington by his friend Peter Salomon to talk about the esotericist origins of the American capital.
In Washington, Robert Langdon is welcomed by a strange character and discovers that his friend disappeared.
The race against time begins (twelve hours) to find his friend Peter Salomon changes to a true initiatory path: gathering tools, opening to knowledge, symbolic death.

A historic  panorama and the current relation between Christian Churches and Freemasonry.
The history of facts and ideas isn't a long, quiet river. Thus, what fortune made that the medieval operative Freemasonry (cathedral builders) really Christian (cf extracts from the  Regius Manuscript - 1390 - quoted by Jean-François Var) became in the 19th century, in France, under the influence of Napoleon 1st, a masonry really politic with "The prefect as the Worshipful Master, the mayor as the Senior Warden and the police captain as the Junior Warden"... ?

What is the Scottish Rite ? To André Kervella "Freemasons have never been clear about the origins and the characteristics of this descent of the 18th century, yet if you don't know where you come from, it will be hard to define yourself! "
The word "Scotland" is indeed omnipresent in Freemasonry, in the name of its rituals (Scottish Rite, Scottish Rectified Rite) but also of its degrees (Scottish Master). What are the reasons of that, are they geographic, historical, symbolical or initiatory?
To answer that hard question, we gathered around Jean Solis three renowned historians and researchers: André Kervella,  Robert Kalbach and Roger Dachez.