MANORATHA

This is a story about a nearly 100-year-old book, bound in red leather, which has spent the last quarter century secreted away in a bank vault in Switzerland. The book is big and heavy and its spine is etched with gold letters that say “Liber Novus,” which is Latin for “New Book.” Its pages are made from thick cream-colored parchment and filled with paintings of otherworldly creatures and handwritten dialogues with gods and devils. If you didn’t know the book’s vintage, you might confuse it for a lost medieval tome.

via www.nytimes.com

Fascinating reading in the NYT Weekend Magazine on the pending publication of an essential part of Carl Jung's writings that have remained unpublished for years and are about to emerge from years of seclusion. The journal details a formative part of Jung's life when his mind teetered on the edge of reality.  Instead of retreating from the visions and hallucinations, he actively induced them and then documented his journey in meticulous detail in prose and art. 

His writings and observations were the basis of his later work and the journal itself was both a resource and a work of art that he kept returning to for some 16 years.  The few illustrations and descriptions of the book make it seem more like a Carlos Casteneda (some of the indiscriminate reading from when I was 15 – amazing what
you find as publisher's discards on the streets of Bombay – story for
another day) book describing a shaman's journey  than dry analysis.  The illustrations themselves are the quality of what hangs in museums and reminiscent of some of Frida Kahlo or Salvador Dali – not necessarily pleasant but riveting.

Reminded me to go back and put some of the books on Consciousness & Neurobiology (more my line of interest) back on the reading stack (Koch, Nooretranders for this winter).  Hope to find the "Red Book" at Kepler's to look through in December.