It happened in October of the year 1913 as I was leaving alone for a journey, that during the day I was suddenly overcome in broad daylight by a vision: I saw a terrible flood that covered all the northern and low-lying lands between the North Sea and the Alps. It reached from England up to Russia, and from the coast of the North Sea right up to

Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is

He argued that individuation and collectivity were a pair of opposites related by guilt. Society demanded imitation. Through the process of imitation, one could gain access to values that were one’s own. In analysis, “Through imitation the patient learns individuation, because it reactivates his own values.”155 It is possible to read this as a

If the spirit of the depths seizes you, you will feel the cruelty and cry out in torment. The spirit of the depths is pregnant with iron, fire, and death. You are right to fear the spirit of the depths, as he is full of horror.

Liber Novus thus presents a series of active imaginations together with Jung’s attempt to understand their significance. This work of understanding encompasses a number of interlinked threads: an attempt to understand himself and to integrate and develop the various components of his personality; an attempt to understand the structure of the human

He differentiated between two situations in which the collective unconscious became active. In the first, it became activated through a crisis in an individual’s life and the collapse of hopes and expectations. In the second, it became activated at times of great social, political, and religious upheaval.

One needs death to be able to harvest the fruit. Without death, life would be meaningless, since the long-lasting rises again and denies its own meaning. To be, and to enjoy your being, you need death, and limitation enables you to fulfill your being.

Jung went so far as to suggest that his patients prepare their own Red Books. Morgan recalled him saying: I should advise you to put it all down as beautifully as you can—in some beautifully bound book. It will seem as if you were making the visions banal—but then you need to do that—then you are freed from the power of them. If you do that with

The chapters follow a particular format: they begin with the exposition of dramatic visual fantasies. In them Jung encounters a series of figures in various settings and enters into conversation with them. He is confronted with unexpected happenings and shocking statements. He then attempts to understand what had transpired, and to formulate the