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

“To the superficial observer, it will appear like madness."

from The Red Book (Jung) by Carl Gustav Jung

If you go to thinking,224 take your heart with you. If you go to love, take your head with you. Love is empty without thinking, thinking hollow without love.

C. G. Jung • The Red Book

But if you try to reach the station called Insight before you pass through the town called Emotion, you never reach your destination.

Arnold Mindell • Working With the Dreaming Body

Joy at the smallest things comes to you only when you have accepted death. But if you look out greedily for all that you could still live, then nothing is great enough for your pleasure, and the smallest things that continue to surround you are no longer a joy. Therefore I behold death, since it teaches me how to live.

C. G. Jung • The Red Book

Just as Christ tormented the flesh through the spirit, the God of this time will torment the spirit through the flesh. For our spirit has become an impertinent whore, a slave to words created by men and no longer the divine word itself.204

C. G. Jung • The Red Book

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.

C. G. Jung • The Red Book

In December 2012, Norton additionally released a "Reader's Edition" of the work; this smaller format edition includes the complete translated text of The Red Book along with the introduction and notes prepared by Sonu Shamdasani, but it omits the facsimile reproduction of Jung's original calligraphic manuscript.[1]

While the work has in past years... See more

Carl Gustav Jung • The Red Book (Jung)

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

C. G. Jung • The Red Book

1913

If you have still not learned this from the old holy books, then go there, drink the blood and eat the flesh of him who was mocked61 and tormented for the sake of our sins, so that you totally become his nature, deny his being-apart-from-you; you should be he himself, not Christians but Christ, otherwise you will be of no use to the coming God.

C. G. Jung • The Red Book

Liber Novus itself can be understood on one hand as depicting Jung’s individuation process, and on the other hand as his elaboration of this concept as a general psychological schema. At the beginning of the book, Jung refinds his soul and then embarks on a sequence of fantasy adventures, which form a consecutive narrative. He realized that until

C. G. Jung • The Red Book

Liber Novus = depictions of Jung’s individuation process + general depiction of this psychological schema