The red book =
Liber novus
by Carl Gustav Jung · first published 2009
59% recommend41% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Jung's journal of dreams and illustrated visions from around World War I, valued for its striking art and calligraphy and as a raw window into the origins of his archetype ideas
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
When Carl Jung embarked on an extended self-exploration, the result was "The Red Book," a large, illuminated volume he created between 1914 and 1930. However, only a handful of people have ever seen it. Now, in a complete facsimile and translation, it is available to scholars and the general public.
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If you are interested in Jung's metaphysics I strongly recommend ordering a copy of The Red Book (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393065677) even though it costs 200$, it is worth every penny. It is amazing to read Jung's unfiltered mind.
on “Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli bridged mind and matter (2017)” ↗The Red Book by Carl Jung.
on “Ask HN: Thought-Provoking Books” ↗Yes, you've discovered archetypes. Go read Jung's Red Book, none of this is new.
on “The Mushroom That Makes People Have the Exact Same Hallucination” ↗…alcoholics. Although to play the spiritual devil's advocate, one could argue that mortifying the flesh has long been a mystical practice (accessing the etheric plane, if one believes in that modality). Jung's Red Book [1], written and illustrated during a (debatable) psychotic break and only recently released from his archives in 2009, is also a fascinating attempt to integrate the spiritual with the scientific. [0]…
on “How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later (1978)” ↗…astrology to model the world you should instead use physics. If you want to use astrology to model the inner world then read e.g. "Golden Bough" and Jung's archetype work and his Liber Novus (aka The Red Book), and maybe "The Varieties of Religious Experience" and "The Perennial Philosophy". And then just make up your own system. It will work just as well for prediction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough…
on “Ask HN: Help me learn astrology in 2020” ↗Perhaps intuition is just fast thinking? To be able to connect bits and pieces of seemingly disparate information cogently? I love flipping the pages of The Red Book. I am charmed by Jung’s calligraphy and art. Even if I don’t understand enough High German. The entire book is a work of art.
on “Ask HN: Help me learn astrology in 2020” ↗…across? That'd be very interesting. + Edit to my post: Meant to put Finnegan's wake to Joyce, not Ulysses! (even thought that's a pretty decent mindbender in itself) + Some I forgot: - C G Jung - The Red Book (get the readers edition) - Nobody mentioned McKenna! 'True Hallucinations' for example. Skip everything to do with I Ching and Timewave. - Illuminatus! trilogy was only mentioned once for some reason…
on “Ask HN: What is the most mind blowing book you've ever read?” ↗OT My father introduced me to Jung's Red Book [1] many years ago; it is a truly fascinating psychology book. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Book_(Jung)
on “Readings in Database Systems, 5th Edition” ↗I use C.G. Jung's "The Red Book". It's imposingly large, very red, and full of impenetrable medieval-style German handwriting and disconcerting drawings documenting Jung's dreams and visions circa World War I. There is an English translation…
on “Ask HN: Coffee table books” ↗There is a cheaper "Readers Edition" of the Red Book available. Also, Jung's student Marie-Louise Von Franz wrote a bit about Jung's later ideas in her books, "Number and Time", and "Psyche and Matter".
on “Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli bridged mind and matter (2017)” ↗Hmm, this is hard to answer. I have read Jung's CW 9, 11, 12 and 16 and bits and pieces from the rest, but I think when I read The Red Book things really changed for how I see his work. It is extremely raw material, of an alienist on the verge of madness, and yet he managed to extract the deepest reason out of the experience. I think it…
on “Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli bridged mind and matter (2017)” ↗I have a copy of C.G. Jung's The Red Book, which is also pretty strange: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_(Jung) I haven't bothered to try to read most of it, but it makes for a good conversation piece, at least. It's very big and, well,…
on “Codex Seraphinianus: A new edition of the strangest book” ↗…attracted some downvotes. I guess I'll just add that another thing I remember hearing about in school was that a lot of Jung's theories were considered impenetrable without having access to his so-called "Red Book" - which was not widely available until ~2009.
on “The history of humans trying to reduce one another to a personality profile” ↗According to Wikipedia the "Red Book" was written during an odd time for Jung: >Biographers and critics have disagreed whether these years in Jung's life should be seen as "a creative illness", a period of introspection, a psychotic break,…
on “The history of humans trying to reduce one another to a personality profile” ↗…can often tell if any translation has had a translator remotely connected to the language. The language doesn’t lend itself to fluidity and nimbleness. Altho I have read some translations of Carl Jung’s Red Book from High German to English that intrigued and somewhat appealed to me. I don’t know if it was the translator or Jung’s language/words itself. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia + http://nabokovsecrethistory.com/news/nabokovs-synesthesia-an...…
on “How to Be a Professional Author and Not Die Screaming and Starving” ↗