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Signs of the times …
This could be a page from a medieval illuminated manuscript, but the symbolism is hard to place. The tree with its roots in hell and its branches stretching to heaven recalls any number of myths and religions, from Eden’s tempting apples to Yggdrasil, the tree connecting the nine worlds of Norse mythology. The snake is a major player in numerous cosmologies from the Amazonian sacred anaconda to the biblical seducer. The mandala in the sky invokes eastern spiritualism.
Good egg …
In fact, it’s a page from The Red Book, a secret 1922 work by one of analytical psychology’s founding fathers, Carl Jung. Until it was finally published 11 years ago, it had been hidden for many decades: first in a locked family cupboard, then a bank vault. The Jung Foundation lists Muspell, home of the Norse fire gods, and the World Egg (for Jung a symbol of God and selfhood) among the illustration’s imagery.
Seeing red …
Jung’s theory of recurring cultural archetypes, buried in the mind and shared by humans regardless of history or geography, is well known. What only a few had been permitted to see was how he had recorded his personal journey into visions, dreams and hallucinations in this book, which he began in 1913 at the age of 38, in what some have speculated was a midlife psychosis.
Soul man …
The Red Book has been described as Jung’s most important work, although he fretted that publication would bring him ridicule. At its core, it marked his move away from science to the realms of myth, magic and the soul.
Included in The Botanical Mind Online, to 31 July
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