The Egg of Life

Visual Journaling with CG Jung’s Red Book

Windows to the Soul Art Studios with Rebecca Peterson, MA

San Miguel de Allende, MX

January 16^th, 2015, 1pm – 5:30 pm

And I am the egg that surrounds and nurtures the seed of the God in me.

CG Jung, The Red Book

Jung engaged in a long series of active imaginations which he then painted and reflected upon in his Red Book or Liber Novus (New Book).

In the first mandala to appear in the book (plate 19), the egg becomes the “golden center of an entire self-cosmos” (Thackrey).

In Jung’s Red Book eggs appear in various forms and motifs:

Jung dies on a dung-heap and in an anguished process is reborn three days later, while chickens “amazedly and mindlessly” lay their eggs around him. When he mistakenly wounds the god Izdabar, he uses the power of fantasy to squeeze this giant figure into the size of an egg, so that he can carry the god through a very small door into a welcoming house where the god could be healed. Jung then reopens this egg of rebirth by uttering a series of twelve incancations, each illustrated by a magical painting.

Students will work on their own versions of a “magical re-awakening of the egg” , as a painting or collage, drawing, writing or doodling or…!) in their visual journals. What awakens the creative potential of your own self-cosmos?           

           

In this year’s “Egg” workshop we will work with the mandala image “The Egg of Life” as well as other visual motifs of egg.

Bring a journal to work in; all else provided including delicious snacks and tea!

(Susan Thackrey, p. 74, "Manifesting the Vision: CG Jung's Paintings in the Red Book"  The Red Book: Reflections on CJ Jung's Liber Novus. Kirsch & Hogenson, eds. Routledge.)