Words+Bindings - The Fashion Books Thread - Page 5

The work is inscribed by Jung with the title Liber Novus (The New Book). The folio size manuscript, 
11.57 inches (29.4 cm) by 15.35 inches (39.0 cm), was bound in red leather, and was commonly referred to 
as the "Red Book" by Jung. Inside are 205 pages of text and illustrations, all from his hand: 53 are full images, 
71 contain both text and artwork and 81 are pure calligraphic text.[7] He began work on it in 1913, first in small 
black journals, during a difficult period of "creative illness", or confrontation with the unconscious, and it is said 
to contain some of his most personal material.[8] During the sixteen years he worked on the book, Jung 
developed his theories of archetypes, collective unconscious, and individuation.[9]

The Red Book was a product of a technique developed by Jung which he termed active imagination. As Jung 
described it, he was visited by two figures, an old man and a young woman, who identified themselves as Elijah 
and Salome. They were accompanied by a large black snake. In time, the Elijah figure developed into a guiding 
spirit that Jung called Philemon (ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ, as originally written with Greek letters). Salome was identified by 
Jung as an anima figure. The figures, according to Jung, "brought home to me the crucial insight that there are 
things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life."[4]

The Philemon figure represented superior insight and communicated through mythic imagery. The images did 
not appear to come from Jung's own experience and Jung interpreted them as products of the collective unconscious.