Jung is underrated as an artist. There are some fabulous illustrations in The Red Book; indeed there could be less text… There’s an interesting story of how, after his own “breakthrough” experience one of Jung’s female followers had been keenly encouraging his art. Jung heeded this for a while before, presumably judging his pictures wanting, he dismissed the attention as sycophancy and summarily devoted his energy to Analytic Psychology.
These images, the bottom four certainly from The Red Book, all depict the Cosmic Tree. In the catalogue of The Botanical Mind exhibition the curators comment of his interest in it: “The tree was a recurring motif, pictured as both supporting and connecting every aspect of the cosmos. Planted in the earth its roots reach down through the terrestrial realm toward darkness and the shadow realm, whilst its branches stretch up through the celestial, toward the star-filled heavens.”
