the red book

The Red Book, whose formal title is "Liber Novus" (New Book) was written and illustrated by the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung beginning in 1914, after he'd been shaken by a series of apocalyptic visions. In one, he looked out a window and "saw blood, rivers of blood," foreshadowing the imminent world war which would soon prove to be the deadliest and most irrational conflict the world had seen up to that time.

Jung probably had no idea how long he would be at work on the project, which he finally abandoned unfinished in 1930, after 16 years. He was aware of its significance, however, and carefully laid the hybrid Latin-German calligraphy on 600 pages of parchment with India ink, embellished them with a multitude of startlingly bright images, and enclosed it all between folio-sized red leather covers.

By 1914 Jung had already parted ways with his early mentor Sigmund Freud, in whose limited conception both the subconscious and the human soul were dominated by sexual content. Jung overleapt Freud's limitations, and The Red Book partially chronicles the development of what one reviewer calls his "mythically suffused conception of the human psyche."

But even more importantly, Jung was driven to resolve the inevitable conflict between his methodical and systemically ordered scientific mind -- his rational self -- and the irrational and instinctive contents of his psyche, the great discovery of his scientific work. This is also the great psychic conflict of our secular, technological age, and our overemphasis on rationality and method can only prevail for so long before it is undermined by explosions of dream imagery and instinctive spirituality emanating from below, from the subconscious, or as some would have it, the soul. What else are all the various "New Age" movements but this?

Now as the end of my own trail of life comes in sight, I need to read this book and tie up all the remaining loose ends of the past 65 years. And, as if on cue, a facsimile of The Red Book has now been published, appearing in October of this year. I'm going to order my copy today, and I anticipate this will be the last book on the list, and the final volume among I don't know how many hundreds I've read in my lifetime, fully digesting maybe half of them.

Click on Jung's illustration for a larger view.