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Welcome by Tom Singer

Announcement by Ami Ronnberg

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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

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 ÒglobalismÓ. 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: ÒOn the Aspects of Beauty in C.G. Jung's Red BookÓ by Paul Brutsche, ÒFirst ImpressionsÓ by Thomas Kirsch, and ÒA Pictorial Guide to The Red BookÓ by Jay Sherry. Each of our authors has a point of view and an early ÒtakeÓ 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, ÒThe Mandala of the Enlightened MindÓ 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

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  

- The Philemon Foundation is pleased to announce a series of Red Book events in Los Angeles in April, 2010.More information
 
- The C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco is hosting a weekend conference on the Red Book in June, 2010. More information
 
- 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.

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.

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 Òmy friendsÓ 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 ÒConfrontation with the UnconsciousÓ? 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 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 ÒConfrontation with the UnconsciousÓ in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, his so-called autobiography, Jung writes ÒAll my later discoveries come from the experiences that I had during that period of immersion in my inner fantasies.Ó This is where Jung experienced the reality of the unconscious and ÒknewÓ 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.

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.

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.