Carl Gustav Jung. Red Book (Liber Novus). 1914-1930.
The first words of Carl Gustav Jung’s Red Book are “The way of what is to come.” What follows is 16 years of the psychoanalyst’s dive into the unconscious mind, a challenge to what he considered Sigmund Frued’s - his former mentor’s - isolated world view. Far from a simple narrative, the Red Book is Jung’s voyage of discovery into his deepest self.
Jung had a bookbinder make an enormous volume covered in red leather into which he poured these explorations into himself - 205 pages of written text and illustrations, all in his hand, including psychedelic drawings of mythical characters of his dreams and waking fantasies - explorations that Jung feared would make people think him mad. So he kept it secret, and for 50 years following his death in 1961, the book was locked away in a Swiss bank vault, completely unknown to the world.
The Red Book’s wildly creative illuminations and text were a product of a technique developed by Jung which he termed ’active imagination’, and who knows … Clearly the man was a Blakean polymath genius, but damn if it doesn’t look like ol’ Carl may have had a little cactus hook-up working there back in the day as well. In any case,
Far out.