For decades, one of the most talked-about books of the twentieth century was a book almost nobody had seen. It was large, bound in red leather and filled with calligraphy and painted images. It was kept in a Swiss bank vault, and Carl Jung's family guarded it closely. Scholars knew it existed, and some had glimpsed pages, but for most readers it remained a rumor. In 2009 that changed. The book appeared in print under the title Liber Novus , "The New Book," better known as The Red Book . The historian who made it possible was Sonu Shamdasani. A Book Kept Under Lock Jung began the work in 1913, shortly after his painful break with Freud. In those months he allowed himself to enter his own inner images deliberately, writing down what he saw and heard and then, for years afterward, copying it with great care into a large volume in a medieval manuscript style. He kept working on it, on and off, until about 1930. He never published it. After his death in 1961 it stayed in...

For nearly a century, one of the most mysterious and mythic manuscripts in modern intellectual history sat locked inside a secure vault in a Swiss bank. Bound in thick red leather and written in calligraphic script adorned with luminous paintings, the book was known simply as Liber Novus — The Red Book .

To the modern rational mind, ancient and medieval alchemy appears to be little more than a primitive, misguided precursor to chemistry—a failed attempt by greedy sorcerers to turn lead into gold.

Bryn Athyn Cathedral: A physical echo of the 'Celestial Architecture' described by Emanuel Swedenborg.