Image: Historiated Initial fol.1(r). © The Foundation of the Works of C.G. Jung, Zurich. Used with permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
Colour in the Texts of Liber Novus and The Red Book
Liber Novus, 1913-1916
An analysis of the text of Liber Novus confirms that colours appear often in the context of the narrative (Appendix, 1).
The text includes many references to blood and bloody, in keeping with the turbulent historical period during which it was composed, and with the themes of sacrifice, death, and rebirth of a new god. Black, white, gold, green, blue, yellow and silver appear frequently. Significant images include black, white and iridescent serpents, a white bird, a black scarab and beetle, a red sun, the Red One, Jung’s ‘I’ as a leafy green man and daimon, a black stranger (Death), a form dark as the earth and black as iron with gold eyes, and a blue shade or Christ (RB RE:174, 194, 212, 216, 262, 263, 388, 413, 537, 551).
The text contains lyrical and symbolic evocations of colour.
In ‘The Murder of the Hero’ (Liber Primus cap. vii), after Jung dreamed that his ‘I’ and an unknown companion had killed Siegfried, he had a second dream:
I saw a merry garden, in which forms walked clad in white silk, all covered in colored light, some reddish, the others blueish and greenish. (RB RE:162).
Jung interpreted it later, during his interviews with Aniela Jaffé for Memories, Dreams, Reflections:
[T]his dream expressed the idea that he was one thing and something else at the same time.
The unconscious reached beyond one, like a saint’s halo.
The shadow was like the light-colored sphere that surrounded the people.
He thought this was a vision of the beyond, where men are complete. (Protocols:170; RB RE:162).
In ‘The Anchorite’ (Liber Secundus cap. iv), Jung’s ‘I’ encounters a desert monk, and then spends the night in a cave.
In the mantic section of Layer 2, he reflects on the solitary:
Dull from the sun and drunk from fermenting wines, you lie down in ancient graves, whose walls resound with many voices and many colors of a thousand solar years. (RB RE:249).
After first meeting Philemon in ‘The Magician’ (Liber Secundus cap. xxi), Jung muses in Layer 2: ‘you shimmered multi-colored and inextricable’ (RB RE:408).
Thus by 1915 he envisioned the beyond, the thousand solar years, and Philemon, as multicoloured, evoking the full colour spectrum.
After first meeting Philemon in ‘The Magician’ (Liber Secundus cap. xxi), Jung muses in Layer 2: ‘you shimmered multi-colored and inextricable’ (RB RE:408).
Thus by 1915 he envisioned the beyond, the thousand solar years, and Philemon, as multicoloured, evoking the full colour spectrum. ~ Diane Finiello Zervas, From the Instinctual to the Cosmic: Jung’s Exploration of Colour in The Red Book, 1915-1929/30, Pages 33-34