The Holy Grail of the Unconscious (Jung’s “Red Book”)
SARA CORBETT - September 16, 2009
This is a story about a nearly 100-year-old book, bound in red leather, which has spent the last quarter century secreted away in a bank vault in Switzerland. The book is big and heavy and its spine is etched with gold letters that say “Liber Novus,” which is Latin for “New Book.” Its pages are made from thick cream-colored parchment and filled with paintings of otherworldly creatures and handwritten dialogues with gods and devils. If you didn’t know the book’s vintage, you might confuse it for a lost medieval tome.
And yet between the book’s heavy covers, a very modern story unfolds. It goes as follows: Man skids into midlife and loses his soul. Man goes looking for soul. After a lot of instructive hardship and adventure — taking place entirely in his head — he finds it again.
Some people feel that nobody should read the book, and some feel that everybody should read it. The truth is, nobody really knows. Most of what has been said about the book — what it is, what it means — is the product of guesswork, because from the time it was begun in 1914 in a smallish town in Switzerland, it seems that only about two dozen people have managed to read or even have much of a look at it.
Tags: Carl Jung
PERFECTIBILISTS: The 18th Century Bavarian Order of the Illuminati
The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship
Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism
Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith
America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Well, after everything else I’ve read by and about Jung, I suppose I’ll have to get this book too as soon as I have a spare $100.00 or so. . .
September 24th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
As much as I still love Jung’s ideas (with some reservations), like the article lays out, Jung is viewed as a prophet, and Jungians are disciples who revere him like a saint. It is a faith in many ways. There’s a quote from someone I can’t put a name too right now who said that Jung should have been much more open and simply declared himself a prophet of the collective unconscious. It would have prevented many misunderstandings they said.
I’ve been saving up for this book since I first heard it was coming out and will probably do some posts on the content when I get it.