The Astrological World of Jung's 'Liber Novus'

Daimons, Gods, and the Planetary Journey

Liz Greene

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351972741
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

C. G. Jung's The Red Book: Liber Novus, published posthumously in 2009, explores Jung's own journey from an inner state of alienation and depression to the restoration of his soul, as well as offering a prophetic narrative of the collective human psyche as it journeys from unconsciousness to a greater awareness of its own inner dichotomy of good and evil. Jung utilised astrological symbols throughout to help him comprehend the personal as well as universal meanings of his visions.

In The Astrological World of Jung's Liber Novus, Liz Greene explores the planetary journey Jung portrayed in this remarkable work and investigates the ways in which he used astrological images and themes as an interpretive lens to help him understand the nature of his visions and the deeper psychological meaning behind them. Greene's analysis includes a number of mythic and archetypal elements, including the stories of Salome, Siegfried and Elijah, and demonstrates that astrology, as Jung understood and worked with it, is unquestionably one of the most important foundation stones of analytical psychology, and an essential part of understanding his legacy.

This unique study will appeal to analytical psychologists and Jungian psychotherapists, students and academics of Jungian and post-Jungian theory, the history of psychology, archetypal thought, mythology and folklore, the history of New Age movements, esotericism and psychological astrology.

1

Martial matters

It [Ares] is the giver of seed, the occult dispenser of Nature in the three prime principles, and the bond of their union. It distributes to all things whatsoever its peculiar form, species, and substance, so that it may put on its proper and specific nature, and no other.¹

—Martin Ruland

Ares [Mars] … is the ‘assigner, who extends the peculiar nature to each species, and gives individual form’. It can therefore be taken as the principle of individuation in the strict sense … Ares, accordingly, is an intuitive concept for a preconscious, creative, and formative principle which is capable of giving life to individual creatures.²

—C.G. Jung

The red horseman

One of the most readily identifiable planetary personae whom Jung describes in detail in Liber Novus is called ‘The Red One’. This entity makes his entrance at the beginning of Book Two of Liber Novus, at a moment when Jung finds himself in a state of apathy, indecision, and depression:

I feel that my will is paralyzed and that the spirit of the depths possesses me. I know nothing about a way: I can therefore neither want this nor that, since nothing indicates to me whether I want this or that. I wait, without knowing what I’m waiting for.³

The appearance of this figure heralds a threatening change. The threat is reflected in the defensive position Jung holds as ‘the tower guard’ standing on ‘the highest tower of a castle’, and in the frisson he experiences when he sees the figure approaching:

I look out into the distance. I see a red point out there … It is a horseman in a red coat, the red horseman … I hear steps on the stairway, the steps creak, he knocks: a strange fear comes over me: there stands the Red One, his long shape wholly shrouded in red, even his hair is red. I think: in the end he will turn out to be the devil.⁴

The Red One has not come by chance; as he informs Jung, ‘Your waiting has called me’.⁵

If Jung created a pictorial representation of this entity, it was either destroyed or has not yet surfaced. But he provided enough descriptive material to allow the reader to recognise which astral potency had arrived to counteract his listless apathy and breach his defences. The epithet, ‘The Red One’, might have been entirely Jung’s invention, but it was more likely to have been directly inspired by mythic sources. The Egyptians referred to the planet Mars as Har décher, which means ‘The Red One’.⁶ The horned warrior-god Cocidius, known from archaeological evidence around Hadrian’s Wall and equated by the Romans with their battle-god Mars, and the Gaulish Rudiobus, likewise identified by the Romans with Mars, were both called ‘The Red One’.⁷ A powerful Celtic deity called the Dagda was also known as Ruadh Rofessa, the ‘Red One of Great Knowledge’.⁸ As Jung’s familiarity with the myths of various cultures was encyclopaedic, it is unlikely that he had failed to encounter this epithet for Mars in the course of his studies. And even if the name was spontaneous, the planet itself, when viewed from the Earth, appears to be red.

In his later explorations into alchemy, Jung discovered and quoted many descriptions of the dangerous Martial spirit and its potential transformation.⁹ But at the time Jung was working on Book Two of Liber Novus, alchemical texts had not assumed the psychological significance they held for him later, and it is likely that he relied more on Alan Leo’s various descriptions of Mars, as well as on Wilhelm Roscher’s Detailed Lexicon of Greek and Roman Mythology.¹⁰ Leo published the following description of the astrological Mars in 1912:

All the animal propensities, sensations, passions, desires, and appetites come under the vibration of Mars … Mars is the ruler over the animal nature in man; and the task set for humanity is not only that of subjecting, ruling and controlling the animal nature, but also its transmutation into a higher force than that which ministers to the animal soul.¹¹

Leo implied a purposive or teleological element in the Martial force that closely resembles the more succinct, alchemically orientated description Jung articulated many decades later:

Astrologically, Mars characterizes the instinctual and affective nature of man. The subjugation and transformation of this nature seems to be the theme of the alchemical opus.¹²

In 1918, Max Heindel declared that Mars presides over the ‘holy function of generation’ and imparts fertility.¹³ Heindel’s interpretation accords with that of the alchemist Martin Ruland, who stated in the seventeenth century that Mars is ‘the giver of seed’;¹⁴ Jung in turn cited Ruland’s statement when he noted that Mars is ‘the formative principle which is capable of giving life to individual creatures’.¹⁵ According to Heindel, ‘the brusque’ Mars arouses ‘the passion that has caused sorrow, sin and death’, and is thus ‘a Lucifer spirit’.¹⁶ This demonic quality mirrors Jung’s initial perception of The Red One as the devil. In a seminar on children’s dreams given in 1936, Jung, exploring the historical transformation of the figure of the devil, noted:

When he appears red, he is of a fiery, that is, passionate nature, and causes wantonness, hate, or unruly love.¹⁷

Heindel, like Leo, emphasised the creative face of Mars when its ferocious instinctual energy is directed toward loftier goals. Mars, in Heindel’s view, provides ‘a strong constitution and physical endurance, a positive, independent and self-reliant nature, determined and proud, generous and energetic, resourceful and quick to learn’.¹⁸ It may be significant that, in Jung’s natal horoscope, the planet Mars, as he himself was fully aware, was placed in the zodiacal sign of Sagittarius.¹⁹ This sign, and the constellation with which it is connected, have been portrayed in astrological iconography from the Babylonian world to the present day as a centaur – half human and half horse – carrying a bow.²⁰ When The Red One first appears in Liber Novus, he is on horseback. In Jung’s view, the horse itself, like Mars, is a symbol of the instinctual side of the human being, and can even personify the devil.²¹ In the text accompanying the horoscope that the Freudian analyst Johan van Ophuijsen prepared for Jung in 1911, citing interpretive paragraphs in Alan Leo’s The Key to Your Own Nativity,²² Jung was offered a description of Mars in Sagittarius that resembles The Red One, and an important aspect of Jung himself, with disturbing accuracy:

You have the courage of your ideas and opinions, which are not always those of the people around … In religion, this position makes one who is either a little unorthodox or who is very active, devoted, and perhaps a little militant in manner … It favours travel, and change of opinion, occupation, and abode … Quarrels and disputes are probable.²³

In an earlier work, Alan Leo offered a similar character portrait of Mars in Sagittarius, emphasising the quality of aggressive religious scepticism:

An active mind seldom in agreement with others, fixed and positive in its own ideas, and frequently at variance with accepted opinions. In religion militant, aggressive, unorthodox or sceptical … He is mentally and morally brave, daring and fearless of the opinions of others. The position makes him somewhat of a traveller, walker, rider, sailor or athlete.²⁴

Heindel’s description of Mars in the zodiacal sign of Sagittarius may also be relevant. This placement ‘gives an argumentative disposition and fondness of debating on subjects of serious nature such as law, philosophy and religion’. Moreover, Mars in Sagittarius ‘gives a sharp tongue and a quarrelsome disposition’.²⁵ The Red One’s p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Images
• A note on references
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: close encounters of the daimonic kind
• 1 Martial matters
• 2 The ‘central spiritual sun’
• 3 The anima, the moon, and the serpent
• 4 Saturn in the hermitage, part one: the solitaries
• 5 Saturn in the hermitage, part two: ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ and the ‘personal daimon’
• 6 ΦΑΝΗΣ, THE ‘ONE WHO BROUGHT THE SUN’
• 7 The Systema Munditotius and Jung’s natal horoscope
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index