Chattanooga Pulse

2009 saw the publication of the book containing the artistic vision that influenced Carl Jung’s later work. Titled The Red Book—Liber Novus, it was originally a red, leather-bound folio-sized volume on which Jung worked for 16 years. Then he stopped, leaving it a magnificent fragment.

This large volume, roughly comparable to an extensive world atlas, contains a world of Jung’s making, though this world has plenty of connections to our own. It includes a wonderful, digitally accurate facsimile of the sections that make up Jung’s fragment, as well as a translation and an introduction by Sonu Shamdasani, with additional material.

The Red Book is presented, after introductory material, in three sections, “Liber Primus,” “Liber Secundis,” and “Scrutinies.” It has the look of a medieval alchemist text with particularly elaborate illuminations, that is, capital letters at the beginning of passages become complex paintings, variously sized. The passages themselves are calligraphic, very lush artistry. There are also large paintings and poems with paintings called “Incantations”; these recall the Illuminated Poems of William Blake.

The subtitle “Liber Novus”—(New Book) reminds me of Giambatista Vico’s Nuovo Sciencia (New Science or Knowledge). Some of you may recall that Vico served as the villain in the second “Ghostbusters” film. Vico went deeply into mythology and poetry, and his work was imposing, perhaps sufficiently scarily imposing that he was written into that movie.

Jung enters the realms of mystery and paradox, for more than a decade and a half, creating paintings of mystical expressionism, along with a vertiginous spiritual text that contains a good deal of clarity.

In his epilogue, Jung says that he stopped work on his folio when he received the “golden flower”, which he calls an alchemical text in 1928. Jung published an introduction to The Secrets of the Golden Flower in 1948, 20 years later, according to Psyche and Symbol, edited by Violet S. de Laszlo.

This book reminds me of Gustave Flaubert’s novel The Temptation of Saint Anthony, written late in Flaubert’s career, such a controversial work, but staggering in its esoteric poise. Such text may be rare, but Carl Jung’s “Red Book” shows itself absolutely remarkable.

Jung demonstrates a fine quality of execution of strange conceptions. This artistic direction had begun well before Jung set up The Red Book, and much of the content comes from these writings, called “Black Books.” The writing is emphatic, careful and astonishing, a deep meditation on spiritual art and the book is an exemplary object of spiritual art.