Carl Jung's "Red Book" a.k.a. Liber Novus
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Just recently received my copy of Jung's, never-before-published Red Book, originally titled Liber Novus. I've only recently begun reading it, but it's incredibly interesting.
At one point in his life, Jung felt compelled to write this book. It is 191 pages of illuminated manuscript, written in Latin and German calligraphy on sheets of paper that were roughly 13" by 18". The entire work is reproduced in color, and a short biography and English translation follow.
From Jung's preface:
The years, of which I have spoken to you, when I pursued the inner images, were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this. It began at that time, and the later details hardly matter anymore. My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That was the stuff and material for more than only one life. Everything later was mere the outer classification, the scientific elaboration, and the integration into life. But the numinous beginning, which contained everything, was then. - C.G. Jung 1957
It's much more a mystical book than any other you've probably read by him. What's included seems to be the heart of what he learned from Philemon - who in occult terminology seems to have been his HGA. The first few paragraphs from the Prologue, following some introductory quotations from the books of Isaiah and John:
If I speak in the spirit of this time, I just say no one and nothing can justify what I must proclaim to you. Justification is superfluous to me, since I have no choice, but I must. I have learned that in addition to the spirit of this time there is still another spirit at work, namely that which rules the depths of everything contemporary. The spirit of this time would like to hear of use and value. I also thought this way, and my humanity still thinks this way. But that other spirit forces me nevertheless to speak, beyond justification, use, and meaning. Filled with human pride and blinded by the presumptuous spirit of the times, I long sought to hold that other spirit away from me. But I did not consider that the spirit from the depths of time immemorial and for all the future possesses a greater power than the spirit of this time, who changes with the generations. The spirit of the depths has subjugated all pride and arrogance to the power of judgment. He took away my belief in science, he robbed me of the joy of explaining and ordering things, and he let devotion to the ideals of this time die out in me. He forced me down to the last and simplest of things.
The spirit of the depths took my understanding and al my knowledge and placed them at the service of the inexplicable and the paradoxical. He robbed me of speech and writing for everything that was not in his service, namely the melting together of sense and nonsense, which produces the supreme meaning.
- *But the supreme meaning is the path, that way and the bridge to what is to come. That is the God yet to come. It is not the coming God himself, but his image which appears in the supreme meaning. God is an image, and those who worship him must worship him in the images of the supreme meaning.
The supreme meaning is not a meaning and not an absurdity, it is image and force in one, magnificence and force together.
The supreme meaning is the beginning an the end. It is the bridge of going across and fulfillment.
The other Gods died of their temporality, yet the supreme meaning never dies, it turns into meaning and then into absurdity, and out of the fire and blood of their collision the supreme meaning rises up rejuvenated anew.
The image of God has a shadow. The supreme meaning is real and casts a shadow. For what can be actual and corporeal an have no shadow?
The shadow is nonsense. It lacks force and has no continued existence through itself. But nonsense is the inseparable and undying brother of the supreme meaning.
Like plants, so men also grow, some in the light, others in the shadows.
There are many who need the shadows and not the light.
The image of God throws a shadow that is just as great as itself.
The supreme meaning is great and small, it is as wide as the space of the starry Heaven and as narrow as the cell of the living body.*
For those of us who are interested.
Peace.
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93, Thanks for posting that. Coincidentally just the last week I was reminded of it again, and remembered I'd wanted to buy it, as my primary focus is inner archetype work, some of which is similar to some of what Jung wrote about. I used to mourn that I didn't read German, as not all his works are translated. This seems like a great book. 93 93/93 RC
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I just received my copy last night & am awestruck by it...
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oooh, I just got a hint that I might be getting it as an xmas present from wifey....
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Very good taoist almost, I see a Discordianism in the transcending of sense and nonsense or order/disorder. The show of light and shadow, LUX and NOX. The light of the cross and the shadow behind the cross.
It does seem that Jung was aware of the upcoming aeon as well, he spoke of a new God vs its image but also distinguishes the Shadow. Ra-Hoor-Kuit and Hoor-Paar-Kraat with the new God being the Cross itself that casts both light and shadow.
Personally, even before this information I would have vote to include Jung as a saint.
Certainly he has done more for occult sciences, than all 12 great labors of the mythical Hêraclês.
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My knowledge of Jung isn't that extensive.
Perhaps it's related, but I found a really interesting and telling mandala and description in the Red Book, however.
The illustration is on page 105 of the manuscript.
The commentary is on page 297 of the translation, footnote 186.
As soon as I saw it, it made me think of learning wholeness in terms of past and present Aeons. It just made me smile.
I'll describe it for those who don't have the book yet when I have more time.
peace.
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Well, I was about to copy the description, when I saw that it had previously been printed in another work. Here was the heart of the drawing.
It was basically an equal armed cross, with a white star on top of a blue star at the center representing the self. On the periphery at each arm were four archetypes.
At the top of the cross, a bearded wise father in blue.
At the right, a virgin in blue.
At the left, the harlot in red.
At the bottom, the fiery haired "cthonic" figure, representing the "Luciferian" element.I just looked at it and saw in a flash that the old aeon had embraced only two of the archtypes and had rejected and repressed the harlot and the beast, the very archetypes that had emerged in Crowley as necessary for the new aeon. It was just such a beautifully simple representation of something that for so long has been so difficult to for me to conceive or find so clearly represented in anyone else's thoughts that I thought I would throw it out for discussion.
Peace.
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I assume absolutely none of you had read 'Septem Sermones ad Mortuos' which is decidedly gnostic and has been out for years... Jung talked incessantly about the Self, the transcendence & union of opposites, and many other ideas that fit nicely with Thelema. That being said ,its said that so many new age folk and others essentially conflate & misunderstand his work (e.g. his notion of hte collective unconscious which has NOTHING to do with a shared consciousness in the sense described by 99% of new agers) to pander to their own prejudices.
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@Aum418 said
"I assume absolutely none of you had read 'Septem Sermones ad Mortuos'"
For those of you who are interested, Septem Sermones ad Mortuos is included as an appendix in Jung's autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
729
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I got my copy from the Missus yesterday (best present ever!)
I found this article (about the history of the book, not so much the contents) interesting:
www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/magazine/20jung-t.html
"Already there are Jungians planning conferences and lectures devoted to the Red Book, something that Shamdasani [a professor, and longtime Jungian scholar] finds amusing. Recalling that it took him years to feel as if he understood anything about the book, he’s curious to know what people will be saying about it just months after it is published."
I have to confess that I'm mostly ignorant of Jung, and what little I do "know" is most likely distorted/misunderstood. I'm looking forward to perusing Liber Novus over the next few months, and am looking forward to being merely a consumer for a while.
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Avshalom Binyman, 93,
Have you read Memories, Dreams, Reflections? That would be a better place to start than The Red Book itself. Just don't take it as an 'autobiography,' as some uncritical thinkers have.
93 93/93,
Edward
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Edward,
I have not. Thanks for the tip!
Avy
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Edward,
I'm about 50 pages into Memories, Dreams, Reflections
It's clearly autobiographical so far, so I take you to mean that it is not just autobiographical, but also a guide of sorts? -
93,
It is autobiographical, but it isn't an autobiography. By design, it excludes much of what happened in Jung's outer life; and against his wishes, some of the most interesting parts were removed by the family. For example, his decades-long relationship with Antonia Wolff isn't even mentioned, yet on Emma Jung's own admission, Wolff kept Jung from going right off the deep end during the Confrontation with the Unconscious phase.
It was members of the family, of course, who kept The Red Book safely out of sight for many, many years. They are, or were, mostly rather conventional, middle-class Swiss people (read Jung's own paper, The Swiss Line in the European Spectrum, for some insight there), and telling about extramarital affairs and the shadow side of mystical adventures just wasn't their style.
We don't have a great biography of Jung yet. Sonu Shamdasani, who edited The Red Book for publication, has a book of his own, Jung Stripped Bare by his Biographers, Even (a pun on the title of a Marcel Duchamp painting) about how unfair the whole field has been. (Shamdasani is a Jung fan, of course, so he has his own biases). But while some biographies are spiteful, some books out there are weak because the family tends, or tended, to get nasty with critics of Grandpa. Richard Noll's second Jung book, The Aryan Christ is bad (he goes way, way over the top, starting with his title), but he no longer publishes through Princeton University because that university holds the North American rights to Jung's works. The Jung family laid down the law: no more Noll books on CGJ, or you lose the rights to the Collected Works. The money spoke in this case.
Whatever - MDR is a book I've read through at least a dozen times over the years, and even if a lot was cut out or stashed in the family vault, it's still a fascinating book. And yes, it is a spiritual guide in some senses.
93 93/93,
Edward
