The Red Book (Liber Novus) was published by W. W. Norton and the Philemon Foundation in October 2009, nearly fifty years after Jung’s death. The publication was a cultural event: the book had been known to exist for decades, but Jung’s heirs had kept it locked in a Swiss bank vault, and its contents were the subject of intense speculation. When it finally appeared — a massive folio volume reproducing Jung’s calligraphic text and hand-painted illustrations in full color — it transformed understanding of Jung’s work and life.
The book records Jung’s “confrontation with the unconscious” — the period from 1913 to approximately 1930 during which he deliberately induced visions, conversed with autonomous inner figures, and recorded everything in elaborate calligraphy and paintings. The confrontation began after his break with Freud, when Jung found himself in a psychological crisis that he later described as a “creative illness.” He heard voices, saw visions, and feared he was losing his mind. Instead of retreating, he chose to engage: he sat in his study, provoked the visions, recorded the dialogues, and gradually developed the theoretical framework — archetypes, the collective unconscious, individuation — that would become analytical psychology.
The Visions
The dialogues and visions recorded in The Red Book are extraordinary. Jung converses with figures he calls Elijah, Salome, Philemon, and Ka — autonomous personalities who emerge from the unconscious and engage him in debates about the nature of the soul, the relationship between good and evil, the death of God, and the meaning of sacrifice. The figures are not allegories — Jung insists that they have their own will, their own opinions, and their own purposes — and the dialogues have a dramatic intensity that goes beyond anything in Jung’s published works.
The Paintings
Jung’s illustrations — roughly 200 paintings and drawings — are among the most remarkable artistic productions of the twentieth century by a non-artist. They depict mandalas, cosmic landscapes, mythological figures, and abstract patterns in vivid colors, executed with a precision and intensity that reflect hundreds of hours of meditative concentration. Jung understood the paintings as acts of “active imagination” — not illustration of ideas but independent expressions of the unconscious, to be contemplated rather than interpreted.
Collecting The Red Book
First edition (W. W. Norton, New York, 2009): Large folio, cloth binding, slipcase.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine in slipcase: $200–$500
- Very good: $100–$250
- Reader’s edition (2012, smaller format): $20–$50