Jung: the Red Book

This book proposes that the psychology of C. G. Jung and the scholarly practice of arts-based research have the potential to develop each other. In particular, I suggest that Jung and arts-based research already share ideas and strategies about knowing and being that can be furthered by forging a relationship between them. Consequently, the aim of this book is to enrich both Jungian studies and arts-based research, whether they be treated as separate domains or, more excitingly, become a dual enterprise. That is, Jungian studies expands by seeing how the creativity innate to Jung emerges into knowing through arts-based research. Conversely, arts-based research is deepened by the Jungian practice of psyche. What arises is a Jungian arts-based research as we show by two major examples in later chapters. Ultimately such a reorienting of a field within psychology, such as Jung's, and the multidisciplinary endeavor of arts-based research, can point to a transdisciplinary transformation of learning. Such a future would have important implications for the academy, for societies and cultures, and religions, as described by transdisciplinary theorist, Basarab Nicolescu (2014). Transdisciplinarity is a new framework for knowledge and so too is arts-based research. Key examples in both paradigms are offered in this book by Joel Weishaus's The Nuclear Enchantment of New Mexico, 1 (2019) and Jung's Liber Novus or The Red Book (2009). Therefore, this book is for audiences in which disciplines are related without having to be enacted in a hierarchy, a feature of both transdisciplinarity and arts-based research. For example, this book is for those engaged in arts-based research who seek psychological dynamism within creativity. They will find it in Jungian psychology which is based on the notion of an innately creative psyche oriented towards meaning-making. Such practitioners may come to this book seeking Jung or merely aiming to deepen and extend their practice. As the first four chapters will demonstrate, Jung provides arts-based research with theories and practices that go far beyond psychotherapy to broader concerns of image-making, historical meaning, philosophy and spiritual practice. These concerns augment existing arts-based strategies. This book is also for Jungians who want to understand or embark upon arts-based research, not least because arguably C. G. Jung pioneered creative practice as a way of knowing in The Red Book (2009), which will be examined in chapter 4. Those not directly engaged in art-making should also find this book insightful in showing that Jungian studies is already at home in this mode of academic inquiry. Arts-based research enhances what Jungian studies can be, and where it can find new domains of applicability. In short, Jung and arts-based research (often ABR for brevity) can extend the kinds of knowing and being possible in making new knowledge. Ultimately, I suggest that Jungian ABR amounts to a paradigm that brings together

The English abstract is also found online with pics: http://hellenicpsyche.blogspot.com/2015/02/philemon-red-book-and-jungs-shadow-by.html

O ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ, ΤΟ ΚΟΚΚΙΝΟ ΒΙΒΛΙΟ ΚΑΙ Η ΣΚΙΑ ΤΟΥ ΓΙΟΥΝΓΚ (JUNG) - Philemon, the Red book, and Jung's Shadow

Abstract (in English of the original Greek article)

"Philemon, the Red Book, and Jung's shadow":

This is about an article on the recently discovered and published book of Carl Gustav Jung, the famous Swiss psychologist and father of Analytical Psychology.  From Jung's theory of shadow (part of human personality structure and psyche's component to Jung's own "shadow" or revealed dark side...  Was he a "saint" or a "sinner"?  Besides of being the father of Depth Psychology and a pioneer of modern psychodynamic and humanistic psychologies, was he also the father of a new religion...even the father of New Age, as some scholars claim?  Was he a Christian, a pagan or even of his own religion?  Mainstream psychology of the academic establishment has acted as a gatekeeper of any psychological theory that integrates psychology and spirituality/religion/ancient & indigenous cultures/new science & quantum physics. 

What happened while Jung was writing the Red Book?  Who was Philemon?  Was he a spirit that visited him?  Was it a figment of his imagination, a delusion, a hallucination, an interdimensional being, an existing lifeform or energy force of the collective unconscious, an angel or even a demon as some scholars, theologians and priests may argue?  Did he just lose his mind?  Did his work took over his everyday life?  How can we explain the fact that they were witnesses when unexplained phenomena happened, such as apparitions, objects moving in the house, footsteps, noises, doorbell ringing and nobody was there?  Although some Christians, especially Greek Orthodox priests and theologians (usually those whose background is limited to conservative/fundamentalist close-minded theology only) may not approve the Jungian perspective, especially after the new revelations made by the discovery of the Red Book, still many Christians, such as Greek Orthodox psychologists and even priests who are also pastoral counselors, psychologists or psychiatrists may approve the Jungian perspective and use it in their practice. 

One thing is certain: Jung surpassed Freud by taking psychology and psychoanalysis to the next level, which is the collective unconscious.  Freud misused Greek mythology, because he lacked a basic knowledge and understanding of classics unlike Jung.  So Freud came up with Oedipus Complex, a psychological phenomenon that truly exists and he brilliantly discovered, indeed, but with a wrong name, because it should not be "Oedipus".  Freud spoke about a concept that Sophocles never thought of: Oedipus unconscious tendencies of incest.  All that Sophocles wanted to say was something even more important than the Oedipus Complex and that was "Fate" or "Pepromenon" in Greek.  Greeks of all ages, from antiquity to the present, we still say in 5th century BC classical Greek a proverb that is well-known and frequently used in today's Greece: "To pepromenon fygein adynaton" (it's impossible to get away with Fate"), which is not deterministic or fatalistic or against "free will" (well, there is some free will to a certain point, but still there are rules in the universe), but it refers to some universal forces operating like a blueprint in the acausal/quantum field that is beyond space-time and that is keen to the World/Transpersonal/Collective Unconscious.  So what Sophocles actually talked about was the Numen's interference with every human life and psyche in an acausal field of no space-time.  And, as it is already said, that definitely comes from the World/Transpersonal/Collective Unconscious.  For Jung, Philemon belonged to that world.  His Red Book, a modern illuminated manuscript with beautiful imaginative and colorful pictures and medieval revival-styled, particularly Gothic-styled calligraphy laboriously painted by his own hand, is a long account of such occurrences, manifestations, and concepts that uses an elaborate visual language to convey meanings that overturn all we know or we think we know in this post-modern and post-human world!  Some people who reside in the ivory towers of academia and professional practice in psychology and mental health  that would be really dangerous, especially for their careers that are primarily based on academic politics...  That's why Philemon and the Red Book were kept a secret by Jung himself and were locked in a drawer until they were accidently found! 

Unlike Freud, Jung went beyond sexual drives and automatic functions of the psyche, he used the Greek word "psyche" for soul, including many tenets of Greek psychology/philosophy, and emphasized all these subjects which were neglected at his times and...some of them are still neglected: Mythology (i.e Greek), midlife, history and culture, religion and spirituality, ancient philosophy in psychology, classics, early Christian/patristic/byzantine studies, psychoanalytic anthropology, ethnographic studies of indigenous cultures in psychology, femininity and the sacred, ancient wisdom, alchemy, mandala, astrology, paranormal/parasychological/transpersonal studies, new science, mind/body medicine, and quantum  physics. 

The fact that Jung believed that he was visited by Philemon, does not necessarily mean that he endorsed all that Philemon said to him.  Of course, that applies only in the case we don't believe that it was not his own voices of his own unconscious or even a mere figment of his imagination, a delusion or a hallucination.  Jung did not really attack Christianity in his writings.  On the contrary, he put theology, early Christian Studies, and Byzantine Studies in the ballgame of psychology, which was so far inaccessible to those subjects, even ridiculous to think of that!  He actually showed respect to those writings and used their language and semiotics as important constructive tools for his psychological theories and interpretations of the psyche and its surrounding world.  So what if Philemon actually came from the Collective Unconscious world, a world whose glimpses and reflections we can barely start to see now with the most recent advances of quantum mechanics and mind/body medicine?  What if Jung wrote his book to warn us about what is coming to our world and to our times of Globalization and all the nightmarish things proposed in the song "Imagine" that is a global dictatorship disguised as a peaceful one just to find out soon that it has no religion, no nation, no history, no culture, no diversity, no individuality?  We all know that Jung was not just a psychologist and a psychiatrist, but also a philosopher and a visionary.  So what if he had foreseen all that and warned us about it?  What if the Red Book is the manuscript in the bottle lost in the sea that we found today offshore with the message from the past concerning the future?

Jung proved that nothing is closed to an open mind, despite that some "scholars" who claim that they are making psychology super scientific are actually still having a close mind in the 21st century and because of them academia looks like a dark medieval library, like that in Eco's brilliant masterpiece "The Name of the Rose"...  I chose to answer them in Latin, as Jung used Greek and Latin a lot, but I doubt if they will understand it, as all they know is mainstream psychology and modern and...post-modern knowledge (if post-modern is knowledge and not a social construct of ultra modern theorists declaring a war against tradition/orthodoxy).  Well, too bad!  That's their problem!  So here it is:  "non umbra diem" or to use Eco's closing words of the aforementioned book: "Stat rosa pristina nomine nomina nunda tenemus"!

This article examines the link between C.G. Jung's experiences recorded in The Red Book to that of an initi-atory process found in the study of Western esotericism, and the serious confrontation that the opus brings up for the initiate. It is a sincere attempt at bringing a new perspective on what Jung struggled to illuminate in his observations. One of Jung's grandsons, Ulrich Hoerni, acknowledges in the preface of The Red Book, that this work provoked much reflection to what kind of audience it is actually directed towards. It is the contention of this writer that The Red Book is a visually rich and sharp yet clear to understand first-hand account that essentially illustrates an esoteric process alchemists have spoken of as initiation.

This dissertation employs a hermeneutic methodology via deductive and imaginal approaches which chiefly rely on Liber Novus and Jung’s Collected Works to examine image 169 and critically situate the work in a hermeneutic framework. The purpose of this study is to explore the likely relationship between image 169 and Jung’s personal myth and his individual cosmology. I also consider how image 169 may shed light on the meaning of Jung’s psychology and analyze the figures depicted in image 169. Jung did not realize his personal myth until around 1930, which coincides with the probable year he began painting image 169. From the earliest moments of Jung’s childhood, he experienced elaborate fantasies, which culminated in his confrontation with the unconscious. Between 1913 and 1916, Jung documented his fantasies in a series of black notebooks, which he later transcribed into Liber Novus: The Red Book. Jung’s experiences during this time period compelled him to consider the relationship between the living personality and the community of the dead. Image 169 suggests a pictorial formulation of Jung’s psychology and what I have termed as the apocatastasis of the dead. Both Western and Eastern sources seem to have influenced Jung’s rendering of the image, as evidenced by his study of Zimmer’s Artistic Form and Yoga in the Sacred Images of India, the Shri-Chakra-Sambhara Tantra, and the fantasies of Kristine Mann.
Key words: liber novus, personal myth, apocatastasis, the dead, individuation, mandala, self

After he began his confrontation with the unconscious, but before he started work in the red leather-bound volume regarded as The Red Book: Liber Novus, C. G. Jung argued with an inner female voice. In the argument he declared that what he was doing was not art but nature. To probe Jung’s perceived gap between art and nature, this study forms a conjunction between The Red Book and Charlotte Salomon’s multimedia artwork, Life? or Theater?. Employing Jungian, arts-based, and feminist perspectives through hermeneutical and transdisciplinary methods, it invites new perceptions to emerge by closely engaging with the images, voices, and insights evoked by these distinctive yet related artistic endeavors. Findings demonstrate how creative work in the form of psychological investigation or as art can facilitate a reciprocal relationship with the unconscious as a means of psychological development and knowledge transmission. The study also reveals a relevant historical connection between Jung and Salomon’s artwork.

This article aimed to revisit C.G. Jung experiences of katabasis, or in other words the experiences of descending to the underworld, or world of the dead, followed by the return to the world of the living, the anabasis. In psychological terms, these experiences mean confronting the unconscious and the subsequent expansion of consciousness. To revisit C.G. Jung's experiences of katabasis, it was rescued historically (1) in classical antiquity through greek mythology, (2) in the medieval and modern period, through the works of Dante Alighieri, Emmanuel Swedenborg and William Blake, and (3) finally in Jung's own life with an emphasis on the constitution of The Red Book. The katabasis experiences were of vital importance to Jung and culminated in the genesis of analytical psychology.

Hermeneutics is a significant dimension of C.G. Jung's analytical psychology, although Jung did not develop a consistent hermeneutic method, and this aspect of his work has not yet been sufficiently explored. This paper examines the relevance of Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutics and narrative theory for the interpretation of Carl Jung's Red Book, which can be perceived as a narrative experiment. Ricoeur focuses on the narrative character of human experience. Paul Ricoeur's ideas of narrative and plot are significant for exploring Jung's inner experience described in his Red Book as well as the narrative structure of The Red Book.

In this chapter I interpret Jung's visions in The Red Book in the light of psychedelic and evolutionary neuroscience. I argue that The Red Book is an exemplar of the visual capabilities of the human brain. Not so much the visual capacity to see the external world, but the internal capacity to create emotionally rich visual imagery that provides meaning and sustenance to human beings. As opposed to seeing The Red Book as an anomaly that does not quite fit into any specific tradition or genre, I argue it represents the continuation of a very ancient impulse evident in our species: that is the impulse to alter the normative structures of consciousness and to release and make manifest emotionally potent forms of visual imagery. In order to situate The Red Book in a broader ethnographic context, I discuss anthropological data on ritual transformations of consciousness in Latin America and Africa, as well as neuroscientific research into the possible neurobiological basis of such rituals. Jung seems to have been dealing with modes of consciousness alien to mainstream Western thought, exploring the terrain of uncharted cognitive domains. I argue that science is beginning to catch up with Jung who was a pioneer whose insights contribute a great deal to our emerging understanding of human consciousness. Additionally, The Red Book, by recuperating modes of experience abdicated by the West, offers the opportunity for contemporary humans to realign their modern rationalistic mode of cognition with the archaic ground of consciousness.

C.G. Jung wrote that archetypes are “like riverbeds which dry up when the water deserts them, but which it can find again at any time” (1964/1970, p.183). Water in this image is the lifeblood of the unconscious and its images, but what if it is encountered in its frozen form? By looking deeply at the image of ice from a variety of mediums, such as documentary films, the narrative of nightly dreams, and the products of active imagination, one can glimpse the archetypal world beneath.  This is an imaginal journey into the images of icy landscapes, the unconscious, and C.G. Jung’s The Red Book. It shows the powerful medium that this image of ice can become in connecting the individual, the unconscious, and the natural world, in an age of ecological concern.

Key Words: Ice, Carl Gustav Jung, The Red Book, active imagination, dreams, film, art, climate change, water.

'The Unnamable' is the third novel in Beckett’s Trilogy. In this novel Beckett engages in a profound exploration of the self that seeks to find what lays behind the creation of his other novels. This chapter suggests that 'The Unnamable' may be telling us more about the practices of spurious Freemasonry, in particular the practices associated with the important role of the poet/seer in the Druidic tradition. As Mircea Eliade notes, the tradition of initiation involves a series of special teachings conducted by a group of ritual elders. Throughout this novel Beckett refers to a group of men he variously calls ‘gentlemen’, ‘avatars’, ‘governors’ and ‘the lords of creation’ who provide such teachings and torment the narrator with their trickster behaviour, taking him through a further series of arduous trials. One of these involves the ritualistic annihilation of the family in a symbolic act that suggests the use of butchered animal remains to signify the body parts of the family members. The rejection of the family corresponds with the tradition of male puberty rites across cultures, where the boy is physically and symbolically removed from the protection of the mother to be re-birthed (often painfully) into the patriarchal context.

Another trial describes a process of sensory deprivation in a dark space that Beckett calls “some sort of dungeon, an oubliette” where he senses a group of robed figures who circle about him, filling him with terror as they slowly motion towards him in the dark. He also describes strange lights and poisonous smoke, which attack his senses and aggravate his lungs. The practice of immersing the candidate in a shroud of darkness for a long period and then exposing him to flashing lights was used in the Druidic tradition to produce altered states of consciousness that would facilitate visions, outpourings of poetry or prophecies. Beckett was plagued throughout his life with a terrible fear of the dark and this chapter argues that he may be describing all of the body sensations associated with a torturous initiation in a dark space, conducted in a Masonic context. Such an ordeal is deliberately aimed at producing a dissociative state in the victim in which parts of the psyche remember the abuse, while the everyday conscious mind remains oblivious to these experiences. These sorts of encounters correlate with contemporary reports by both child and adult survivors who have undergone ritual abuse in more recent periods.

This chapter argues that many of Beckett’s plays contain Masonic elements and probes further aspects of the initiation process. 'Endgame', for example, alludes to one of the pledges made by the Masonic candidates and includes further references to Royal Arch rites as well as to those from the Knightly Orders known as Red or Christian Masonry. A number of the short plays, especially those that display strange ritual actions such as 'Act Without Words I', 'Come and Go' and '…but the clouds …' appear to be drawn from specific ritual movements conducted during the rites. A category of plays, including 'Happy Days', 'All That Fall' and 'That Time', contain some elements of Masonic ritual but the emphasis is on subjective states as they explore feelings of grief and depression as well as the theme of childhood. A further category deals with the subject of torture and is found in plays such as 'Rough for Radio II', 'Rough for Theatre II' and 'What Where'.

Some of the particular discoveries related to Masonic themes in Beckett’s plays include the following. 'Endgame' appears to be littered with allusions to Royal Arch rites. Such allusions include the name Hamm, which has both biblical and Masonic significance. Hamm’s wearing of the handkerchief relates to the candidate wearing a napkin on his head as a blindfold. Clov’s ritualistic performance with the ladder at the beginning of the play relates to the ritual steps taken towards the ladder as a symbol of spiritual growth in the Royal Arch degree. This play also has references to the crucifixion of Christ, which appears in the Masonic 18th Degree. There are many more allusions to Masonic ritual in this play that are enacted in a farcical manner, suggesting a parody of the traditional rites. 'Act Without Words I' involves mimed enactments and strange ritual movements that can be related to the section of Royal Arch rites where the candidate is lowered into an underground crypt after he has symbolically sojourned in the desert.

There are many more references to initiatory practices in these and other plays. Overall, this chapter suggests that many of Beckett’s plays constitute an aesthetic negotiation of the trauma of an irregular Masonic initiation process that has not been fully brought to consciousness, but nevertheless forms a key element underpinning the playwright’s creative expression.

As our current darkness deepens, many dominant perspectives are brought to bear on the very real issues facing us—political, economic, environmental, monetary, climate and so on. We recognize that the signature of the chaos we are living today comprises loss of meaning and fragmentation across scale. Yet the one perspective that confers meaning on Life is no longer a contender in the battleground of dominant narratives i.e., the soul perspective. To demonstrate just how difficult it is to consult the logic of the objective psyche in relation to making consequential decisions in the real world today, even in communities dedicated to the life of psyche and its attendant cultural practices such as dream work, I wrote this essay after reading an account of how the publication of The Red Book came about in 2007, when a group of Jungians gathered to facilitate the scanning of Jung’s original manuscript for reproduction via computers. edited April 2024.