The New Birth: Woodcut 17 of the Rosarium Philisophurum, 1550 edition
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rubedo Wholeness, organic interaction, breathing, life, openness, acceptance, and warmth characterise the rubedo. Jung writes, [In the] state of whiteness, one does not live in the true sense of the word. It is a sort of abstract, ideal state. In order to make it come alive it must have ‘blood’, it must have what the alchemists called the rubedo, the ‘redness’ of life. Only the total experience of being can transform this ideal state into a fully human mode of existence. Blood alone can reanimate a glorious state of consciousness in which the last trace of blackness is dissolved… [and] rejoins the profound unity of the psyche. Then the opus magnum is finished: the human soul is completely integrated. (Jung, 1995: 37) Jung understands this stage as fully incorporating the elements that emerged from the unconscious into conscious life. Hypertext fiction offers a suitable balancing-act between these two aspects of the psyche. It requires an investment of intellectual energy, and at the same time the sense of aimlessness that encourages the idle wandering necessary to enjoy a site. It offers the relinquishment of our need to control the process (that is, to have it controlled for us), and an opportunity to interact in a free, seemingly random way, and at the same time demands that we make mental connections between the pages. This is the hypertextual dream-state, active/passive. For postmodernism, especially in its academic forms, this balance is a difficult task; the Western world clings onto the albedo, despite its many experiences of the nigredo.
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The Crowning of the Virgin Woodcut 19 of the Rosarium Philisophurum, 1550 edition
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