| In
This Issue |
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Welcome
by Tom Singer
Announcement
by Ami Ronnberg
We
Value Your Ideas
Receive
This Newsletter for Free
A
Pictorial Guide to The Red Book
by Jay Sherry
The
Red Book, First
Impressions by Tom Kirsch
On
the Aspects
of
Beauty in C.G. Jung's Red Book
by Paul Brutsche
Watch
the Kalachakra Mandala Video
by Kavita Bala and Liz Popolo
Upcoming
Events
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Welcome |
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 This
edition is devoted to several articles on the recently published Red
Book. The publication of the Red Book has been a joint effort of the
Philemon Foundation and W.W. Norton & Company, both of whom
have been extremely generous in allowing us to reproduce many images
from this extraordinary volume. Linda Carter and Ami Ronnberg made
invaluable contributions to this edition of the Journal as my
co-editors.
The Red Book is huge in many ways. Physically, it weighs 8.8 pounds and
its dimensions are 15 3/4 inches x 12 inches--a very large book by any
standards. Psychologically, it reveals the prima materia of Jung's own
mythology, grounded in archetypal images and forces. Historically, the
Red Book is a foundation stone for much of both the past and future
development of Analytical Psychology. Culturally, the Red Book reflects
many of the currents that emerged in early 20th century
“globalism”.
Spiritually, the Red Book is one of the first modern records of the
rediscovery of the inner world and its link to spiritual values.
Another part of the enormous scope of the Red Book is that it cannot be
digested in a few sittings or even a few years. Perhaps it will take
fully another generation of scholars to put the Red Book in
perspective. That's why this edition of the ARAS/Art and Psyche Online
Journal devoted to the Red Book presents no more than an early taste of
what this book has to offer. In the following articles our authors
touch just a few of the multiple ways in which one might approach the
Red Book: “On the Aspects of Beauty in C.G. Jung's Red
Book” by Paul
Brutsche, “First Impressions” by Thomas Kirsch, and
“A Pictorial Guide
to The Red Book” by Jay Sherry. Each
of our authors has a point of view
and an early “take” on the Red Book that might help
us begin to develop
our own point of view about what is of value in this book. Their
reflections are highlighted by a beautiful, three-dimensional Tibetan
image, “The Mandala of the Enlightened Mind” by
Kavita Bala and Liz
Popolo of Cornell University. Our next edition will return to the
publication of papers from the Art and Psyche conference, as well as
other ARAS Online articles of interest.
Tom Singer, M.D.
Co-Chair of ARAS Online for National ARAS
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Announcement |
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With the completion of this
special edition about The Red Book, there is another ending as Linda
Carter will be leaving her role as Co-editor of the Journal. She has
recently become the US Editor-in-Chief for The Journal of Analytical
Psychology (JAP) and this will require much of her time. She will also
continue to lead the development of a second independent conference,
called Art and Psyche in the City, which will be
linked to the many
offerings of art and music in New York City in April 2011. We will miss
her enthusiasm and creative spirit, her many talents as an editor and
her willingness to put in a tremendous amount of hard work. We wish her
well with her new endeavors.
Ami Ronnberg
Curator
ARAS New York
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Upcoming
Events |
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- The
Philemon
Foundation is pleased to announce a series of Red Book events in Los
Angeles in April, 2010.More
information
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The C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco is hosting a weekend
conference on the Red Book in June, 2010. More
information
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The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. is hosting a conference
on the Red Book and Jung's life/work June 19, 2010 in the Coolidge
auditorium in connection with the Red Book exhibition, June 17-August,
2010.
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We
Value Your Ideas |
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As
our journal grows to cover both the ARAS archive and the broad world of
art and psyche, we're eager to have your suggestions and thoughts on
how to improve it. Please click here
to email us or send your comments to info@aras.org.
We look forward to your input and will reply to every message.
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| A
Pictorial Guide to The Red Book |
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An
excerpt from A Pictorial
Guide to The Red Book, by Jay
Sherry
The Red Book, page 125.
C.G. Jung |
The publication of The Red Book by W.W. Norton & Co. last
October was a major publishing event not only for the Jungian community
but for all those interested in psychology and 20th century culture.
The fact that Jung circulated drafts of it and showed it to many
different people makes it clear that he did intend it to reach a wider
public. The Philemon Foundation and the Jung family are to be thanked
for doing just that. The book is selling well and is now in its sixth
printing; the original was on display at the Rubin Museum of Asian Art
in New York and now travels to the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles where a
series of events are planned in coordination with its exhibition.
(Readers should look for specific information about these events on the
front page of this issue.) It then goes to the Library of Congress with
final stops in Paris and Zurich. How lucky we are to realize that when
we read Jung addressing himself to “my friends”
that we are now
included in his salutation. Sonu Shamdasani's commentary and footnotes
brilliantly elucidate the text and its evolution while the
cross-referencing system helps us navigate its complexities with
relative ease.
I will confine my observations to its imagery because the text will
take time to unravel. The book is like a primeval forest that readers
enter at the spot meant for them alone; it is a hermeneutistic delight!
It was with a sense of excitement that I opened the book and paged
through it for the first time. How would Jung's depictions of his
fantasies compare to the images I had formed in my mind over the years
from reading “Confrontation with the Unconscious”?
They unfold in the
Liber Primus in a series of panels done in a style reminiscent of
illustrations found in the popular historical literature of the period
which would have inspired his boyhood drawings of battles and castles.
Read the entire
paper. |
The
Red Book, First Impressions |
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An
excerpt from The Red Book,
First Impressions by Thomas
Kirsch
The Red Book
C.G. Jung |
Jung's Red Book
has just been released, and I am writing this a week after the material
has been made available to the public. What has long been considered
the source of all Jung's creative ideas after his traumatic split with
Freud is now public. In the
seminal chapter “Confrontation with the
Unconscious” in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, his so-called
autobiography, Jung writes “All my later discoveries come
from the
experiences that I had during that period of immersion in my inner
fantasies.” This is where Jung experienced the reality of the
unconscious and “knew” that there was a layer
beyond the personal
unconscious as expressed by Freud. This deeper strata of the
unconscious Jung variously called the realm of archetypes, collective
unconscious, the objective psyche, but no matter what name he used, he
identified an aspect of the psyche that is common to all mankind and is
similar to other inborn functions of the human organism. Since his
break with Freud, Jung has been criticized by scientists and others who
have not accepted his theory that there is an inherited level of the
psyche, the collective unconscious.
Now, thanks to the brilliant editorial work of Sonu Shamdasani, with
the support of the Jung Estate, we have the raw data of The
Red Book, carefully researched
and amply footnoted. It is from this material that Jung developed all
his mature thoughts on the nature of the psyche. How does one interpret
this book of 54 paintings and over 200 pages of text written in Gothic
text?
Read the entire
paper. |
On
Aspects of Beauty in C.G. Jung's Red
Book |
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An excerpt from On
Aspects of Beauty in C.G. Jung's Red
Book by Paul Brutsche
The Red Book, page 72.
C.G. Jung |
The publication of The Red Book
has met with tremendous success. Such success, of course, rests on the
exceptional quality of the content and the depth and richness of the
imagination conveyed throughout; also of central significance is the
unique artistic quality. The book immediately impresses by the beauty
of the calligraphy, the stunning images and the many beautiful
adornments. It amazes by the technical skill and the aesthetical sense
of the author, reaching a level of artistry one would not have expected
from a scientist. The patience and care with which this precious work
has been elaborated is profoundly moving. One finds oneself witnessing
an inner process of a rare depth, having taken shape in the silence of
a long and loving encounter with the soul.
The beauty of the forms one finds in The
Red Book did not primarily
emanate from an aesthetic preoccupation on the part of Jung: for him
this was a soul matter. It is amazing to think that a person,
throughout 16 long years, would be willing to produce a transcription
of a text containing inner experiences previously written (in the Black
Books) and to invest an incredible amount of laborious devotion to
embellishment of color and pictures; and all this without the intention
of publishing it, at least not while he was working on it. While
elaborating his pictures and carefully transcribing his original
reflections in a calligraphic style, Jung's mind was not turned towards
a future public he wanted to please or to whom he wanted to teach
something; this endeavour was a goal in and of itself.
Read
the entire
paper.
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Watch the
Kalachakra Mandala Video |
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By Kavita Bala and Liz Popolo
Mandala of the Enlightened Mind |
To view the
animation, please click on the image to the left.
The Kalachakra (wheel of time) Mandala, depicted here, represents one
of the
most complex teachings in Tibetan Buddhism. The sand Mandala, drawn by
laying
down grains of colored sand, represents a 5-storied palace, the
residence of 722
deities, with the Kalachakra deity at the center. This 3D model of the
Mandala
was created by Prof. Kavita Bala, Associate Professor in Computer
Science,
Cornell University, and Liz Popolo, a Cornell graduate, in
collaboration with
the monks from Ithaca's Namgyal Monastery. This 3D model, unveiled for
the
Dalai Lama's visit to Cornell, shows the 5 stories of the Mandala:
Enlightened Body, Enlightened Speech, Enlightened Mind, Enlightened
Wisdom, and
Enlightened Great Bliss, drawn as exponentially-proportioned mandalas
nested
within each other.
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