Jung's Red Book

**Loddfafner** · 12-28-2009, 09:32 PM

Today I splurged on Carl Jung's Red Book. It is a massive tome that will require a shelf all to itself. I have not as yet sat down to read it and see if it has earned its hype or if it is all just corny crap. In the style of a medieval illuminated manuscript, it was Jung's private journal of his dreams and plunge into alleged psychosis. It was an exploration of his own mind as he worked through the ideas that formed his later, more alchemical writings. Instead of saints, the images are of mandalas , world trees, mythical beings, and the like. It was hidden in a Swiss vault for a long time by Jung's heirs to protect his privacy and his scientific reputation.

**Loddfafner** · 12-30-2009, 02:51 AM

But that other spirit forces me nevertheless to speak, beyong justification, use, and meaning... He took away my belief in science, he robbed me of the joy of explaining and ordering things, and he let devotion to the ideals of this time die out in me.... He robbed me of speech and writing for everything that was not in his service, namely the melting together of sense and nonsense, which produces the supreme meaning.

Like plants, so men also grow, some in light, others in the shadows. There are many who need the shadow and not the light.

To understand a thing is a bridge and possibility of returning to the path. But to explain a matter is arbitrary and sometimes even murder. Have you counted the murderers among the scholars?

Do you believe, man of this time, that laughter is lower than worship?

I needed a visible sign that would show me that the spirit of the depths in me was at the same time the ruler of the depths of world affairs. It happened in October of the year 1913 as I was leaving for a journey, that during the day I was suddenly overcome in broad daylight by a vision: I saw a terrible flood that covered 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 the Alps. I saw yellow waves, swimming rubble and the deaths of countless thousands.... Once I also saw a sea of blood over the northern lands.

**Loddfafner** · 12-30-2009, 04:26 AM

I wandered for many years, so long that I forgot that I possesed a soul. Where were you all this time?

Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language. One would like to learn this language, but who can teach and learn it? Scholarliness alone is not enough; there is a knowledge of the heart that gives deeper insight.... But how can I attain this knowledge of the heart? You can attain this knowledge only by living your life to the full. You live your life fully if you also live what you have never yet lived, but have left for others to live or to think.

We must learn from that saint who was disgusted by the plague infections; she drank the pus of plague boils and became aware that it smelled like roses.

I take part in that murder; the sun of the depths also shines in me after the murder ha been accomplished; the thousand serpents that want to devour the sun are also in me. I myself am a murderer and murdered, sacrificer and sacrificed. The upwelling blood streams out of me..... You thought you knew that abyss? Oh you clever people! It is another thing to experience it. .... Through the murder of princes we will learn that the prince in us, the hero, is threatened.

**Loddfafner** · 01-01-2010, 01:31 AM

Huge letdown in chapter 7: he finds Siegfried's body, realizes he was the assassin, and that he had to kill the hero just as the old Germanic tribes sacrificed Thor and the old Gods to make way for Christianity. He fuckin better have a damn good explanation for this.

**NordicPower** · 01-16-2010, 12:50 AM

I've ordered The Red Book months ago. However, I can't get my hands on it for quite a while still. It seems it's sold out everywhere. I'm thrilled about this book- can't wait to have it in my hands and read it from cover to cover.

**Lenny** · 01-21-2010, 01:40 PM

I needed a visible sign that would show me that the spirit of the depths in me was at the same time the ruler of the depths of world affairs. It happened in October of the year 1913 as I was leaving for a journey, that during the day I was suddenly overcome in broad daylight by a vision: I saw a terrible flood that covered 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 the Alps. I saw yellow waves, swimming rubble and the deaths of countless thousands.... Once I also saw a sea of blood over the northern lands.

That is uncanny. A pretty dead-on prediction [in poetic language] of the 1914-1918 war. Even the yellow-waves-- Mustard gas?

**Anthropos** · 01-21-2010, 02:48 PM

According to himself he was an 'extreme left-wing protestant'. In practice and by the letter of his works, we think that he was a satanist, and this is not just conjecture on our part, because he frequently wrote about what he considered to be the most profound 'spiritual facts' in terms of 'demonic possession', and he also frequently implied and sometimes stated explicitly that this 'demonic possession' - which moreover, after a naive evolutionist fashion, he considered to be rooted in a 'primitive original state' of man - should be the source of the Christian God! We must add that we find that to be a disgusting thing to say and ludicrous at the same time, although not ludicrous enough, apparently, because he has quite some followers in fringe circles of contemporary European culture. So much for the Jung that, according to so many neospiritualist propagandists, was the 'psychologer who embraced religion'. We, for our part, consider his influence to be much worse than that of Freud. The latter was, by the impression that we got from reading his works, a reasonably honest and straightforward man, and even a rather good writer. Some of his ideas, those e.g. concerning the 'psychology of the masses', are rather interesting even, whereas Jung's works are poorly arranged, boring and worthless, not to say detrimental.

**Liffrea** · 01-21-2010, 03:43 PM

Originally Posted by NordicPower
I've ordered The Red Book months ago. However, I can't get my hands on it for quite a while still. It seems it's sold out everywhere. I'm thrilled about this book- can't wait to have it in my hands and read it from cover to cover.

If you google it and search around a bit there are pdf’s you can download via torrent, large files, though, 280mb.

If anyone wants I can PM them the link I found.

**Óttar** · 01-21-2010, 09:18 PM

I am downloading the German manuscript which is done in the Medieval style with almost unintelligible print. Can you provide a link to a download of a translation in normal print?