I should advise you to put it all down as beautifully as you can...Then when these things are in some precious book you can go to the book and turn over the pages and for you it will be your church—your cathedral—the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal...for in that book is your soul.

CG jung, 1926 Letter to his analysand christiana morgan

What is the Red Book?

Carl Jung’s Red Book (Liber Novus) is a deeply personal, illustrated manuscript Jung worked on between about 1913 and 1930. It records his self-experiments in psychology, where he engaged directly with dreams, fantasies, and visions during a period of his “confrontation with the unconscious”. It reads like a mythic, symbolic journey – blending psychology, art, religion, and philosophy. In it, Jung developed key ideas such as the collective unconscious, archetypes, and individuation. The book remained unpublished for decades, but now is seen as foundational to Jungian psychology. Of his years working on the Red Book Jung said:

“The years {…} when I pursued the inner images, were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this...My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That was the stuff and material for more than only one life. Everything later was merely the outer classification, the scientific elaboration, and the integration into life. But the numinous beginning, which contained everything, was then.”
- C.G. Jung, The Red Book: Liber Novus

When Jung told Christiana Morgan she should create her own “Red Book,” he was encouraging her to—in her own unique way—engage with and creatively document her own inner psychological life. He was advising her to record her dreams, fantasies, emotions, images, and dialogues with inner figures in a serious, creative way. The point wasn’t to imitate his Red Book, but to undertake her own creative, symbolic journey toward individuation and wholeness.

This season’s curriculum is designed as a cumulative series of lectures, case studies and practices–each building on the last–forming a support framework that helps participants to begin Red-Booking. The goal is not, of course, that each person finish their book by the end of the course! But rather that the series inspires and supports a beginning to this journey.

This season we also offer bi-weekly Open Studio sessions for the weeks when there is no formal session. Open Studio time will be lightly facilitated time to work on one’s Red Book material in a more informal group setting.