Entering The Red Book by Carl Jung

“The Red Book” has arrived into my care. Much of material I’ve read online tries to provide a context for this unique text. Little that I’ve encountered gets into what “The Red Book” is saying.

So I says to myself, “why not record the discoveries and questions that surface during my reading here?”. And thus…

“The Way of What is to Come”
[fol. 1]

By way of a prologue Jung opens with four biblical passages, three from Isaiah and one from John. These choices introduce the following archetypal themes:

The suffering servant (Isaiah 53: 1-4)
The divine child (Isaiah 9:6)
The incarnation (John 1:14)
The wilderness (Isaiah 35:1-8)

The first folio then opens creating a major distinction between the spirit of this time, namely use and value, from the spirit of the depths. The two spirits then play out a dialogue as if struggling for Jung’s attention.

“The spirit of the time wispered to me: “This Supreme meaning, this image of god, this melting together of the hot and the cold, that is you and only you.” But the spirit of the depths spoke to me “Tou are an image of the unending world, all the last mysteries of becoing and passing away live in you. If you do not possess all this, how could you know?” Carl Jung, The Red Book, pg. 230.

These opposite positions outline the difference between a personalistic viewpoint and the archetypal understanding that was to be Jung’s life work. And in the ability of these voices to find expression, we find introduced the technique of active imagination.

The first folio then closes with Jung recounting a vision and three dreams. The vision, which he experienced twice, two weeks apart at the same locale, revealed a terrible flood sweeping across Europe. “I saw yellow waves, swimming rubble, and the death of countless thousands.” Ibid, pg. 231.

It feels as if the collective horror of the impending war drives Jung to his inner sanctuary. The third dream recounted shows him giving grapes to a great waiting throng in a vast frozen landscape.

Amidst a final monologue from the spirit of the depths we hear a distict calling toward individuation:

“Woe betide those who live by examples! Life is not with them. If you live according to an example, you thus live the life of that example, but who should live your own life if not yourself? So live yourselves.” Ibid, pg. 231.