The Red Book: Carl Jung’s Inner Epic

The Red Book is Carl Jung’s monumental inner journey — a handwritten, illustrated manuscript created during a period of deliberate solitude following a psychological crisis. It spans from 1913 to 1930, though he kept it hidden for most of his life.

Unlike his formal scientific writings, this work plunges into a realm of visions, dialogues, archetypes, and symbolic landscapes. Jung once feared he was losing his mind — instead, he was gaining deep contact with what he later called the collective unconscious.

The book merges text and image in a near-mythic style. It was written in calligraphy on parchment-like paper, then richly illuminated with color paintings — as if a medieval monk and a modern psychologist had joined hands.

Its pages contain:

• Conversations with inner figures like Philemon, Jung’s wise inner guide
• Explorations of the Shadow, the Anima, and the Self
• Myths created from within: spontaneous symbolic episodes that would later form the foundation for Analytical Psychology

For Jung, the Red Book was the wellspring. He later wrote:

“All my later writings… had already been written here.”

And yet, he refused to publish it in his lifetime. It remained on a shelf — red leather-bound, mysterious — until it was finally made public in 2009.

Today, the Red Book is not only a record of Jung’s visions. It is an invitation to explore your own depths — not to analyze, but to engage.