Red Book Reading: Jung's Precognitions of WW1 & The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

July 17, 2024·20 min·1 clip

Jung wrote that because he carried the murder and the war inside himself, he foresaw them both.

MJ Dorian opens by describing a year-long project of recording voiced readings of Carl Jung's Red Book, with original music and sound design, released monthly on Patreon. He explains that the act of voicing the text — rather than simply reading it — forced a much deeper engagement with Jung's intent and emotional experience in each passage. Dorian notes that Jung had no existing psychological framework to interpret his own visionary experiences, which is part of what makes the Red Book remarkable. He distinguishes between Jung's Black Books, which are raw journal transcriptions of active imagination sessions begun in late 1913, and the Red Book, which Jung began compiling around 1915 using calligraphy and illuminated manuscript paintings. The Red Book also includes Jung's retrospective analysis of the visions, meaning the visions and their commentary are often years apart, making it a non-linear text. The Black Books were published in 2020, after the Red Book's 2009 release, adding to reader confusion about chronology. Dorian then focuses on a specific vision from December 12, 1913, found in chapter 7 of the Red Book, titled 'Descent into Hell in the Future.' In this active imagination session, Jung descends into a dark cave, finds black water, a luminous red stone, and witnesses a slain or wounded figure floating in an underground stream, alongside a black scarab, serpents, and a surging river of thick red blood. At a 1925 seminar, Jung recalled being deeply confused by this vision at the time, recognizing archetypal symbols like the scarab and the setting sun but unable to interpret the slain hero. On December 17, 1913, Jung had a follow-up dream in which he killed Siegfried, the legendary Germanic hero, which also disturbed him. Starting in June 1914, Jung experienced a thrice-repeated dream of apocalyptic frost covering the earth. On June 28, 1914, World War I began with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Confronted with this sequence, Jung questioned whether his visions had been precognitive. Over four years, WWI caused approximately 40 million deaths. Dorian notes that this experience confirmed for Jung the existence of deeper, collective layers of the unconscious, which he would later formalize as the theory of the collective unconscious. In the Red Book's commentary on the cave vision, written while WWI was ongoing, Jung connects the slain hero to the assassination, noting that Franz Ferdinand was literally a prince — the royal heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Jung's Red Book text also includes a passage in which he describes an assassin emerging from the depths to strike a prince, and states explicitly that because he carried the murder and the war within himself, he foresaw them. Dorian emphasizes that Jung's interpretation is not simply a claim of literal precognition, but rather a confluence of individual psychology and collective undercurrents — the idea that an individual's unspoken depths can mirror the spirit of their historical moment. The episode closes with Dorian reflecting that the Red Book and Black Books together document a brilliant thinker wrestling with the fabric of reality, and that this process gave rise to theories still informing psychology today.

As heard by us

A patient Jung reading that makes interpretation feel hard-won.

Red Book Reading treats Jung's Red Book as something to be listened to closely. MJ Dorian reads each chapter slowly enough that the strain, hesitation, and emotional weight come through.

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Why you'd press play

You want Jung's Red Book read with care, where the visions stay strange instead of getting rushed past.

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