Liber Novus (The Red Book) by C. G. Jung

 

C. G. Jung worked on Liber Novus (The Red Book) from 1914 to 1930.  This year it was published in a first edition that features both a facsimile of Jung’s original "illuminated pages" and an English translation.  In the book’s preface, Ulrich Hoerni reminded “Jung himself stated that he had gained the material for all his later works from his confrontation with the unconscious” and referred to Liber Novus as “a record of this confrontation.”

In the Introduction by Sonu Shamdasani, Jung is quoted from some noteworthy interviews.  In 1952 Jung commented that upon learning war had broken out in 1914, “I understood that my dreams and my visions came to me from the subsoil of the collective unconscious.”  These dreams and visions were the catalyst for the meditations to be found in Liber Novus.  Also included is Jung's description of something he experienced while writing in Black Book 2
 

“I said to myself, ‘What is this I am doing, it certainly is not science, what is it?’  Then a voice said to me, ‘That is art.’  This made the strangest sort of impression upon me, because it was not in any sense my impression that what I was writing was art.”

 
In “Liber Primus”—the first of the three major sections of Liber Novus—Jung’s ‘soul’ engages in conversation with Jung’s ‘I.’  This conversation with his soul is resumed at various intervals and magic becomes a consequential topic.  The other two major parts of the book are entitled “Liber Secundus” and “Scrutinies.”  Within Liber Novus God, Gods, Jesus and the devil are pondered in relation to Jung’s own soul and personality.  There are encounters in the book with such figures as Elijah, Salome, an ‘anchorite,’ Izdubar, ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ and ΒΑΥΚΙΣ.

Here are some quotations.

“It belongs to this mystery that man is not redeemed through the hero, but becomes a Christ himself.” (p. 253)


“When thinking leads to the unthinkable, it is time to return to simple life.  What thinking cannot solve, life solves, and what action never decides is reserved for thinking.”  (p. 293)


“A special gift is something outside of me.  I am not the same as it.  The nature of the gift has nothing to do with the nature of the man who carries it.”  (p. 303)