Part Ii

CHAPTER I
ASPECTS OF THE LIBIDO

Before I enter upon the contents of this second part, it
seems necessary to cast a backward glance over the singular
train of thought which the analysis of the poem
“The Moth to the Sun” has produced. Although this
poem is very different from the foregoing Hymn of Creation,
closer investigation of the “longing for the sun”
has carried us into the realm of the fundamental ideas of
religion and astral mythology, which ideas are closely
related to those considered in the first poem. The creative
God of the first poem, whose dual nature, moral and
physical, was shown especially clearly to us by Job, has
in the second poem a new qualification of astral-mythological,
or, to express it better, of astrological character.
The God becomes the sun, and in this finds an adequate
natural expression quite apart from the moral division of
the God idea into the heavenly father and the devil.
The sun is, as Renan remarked, really the only rational
representation of God, whether we take the point of
view of the barbarians of other ages or that of the modern
physical sciences. In both cases the sun is the parent God,
mythologically predominantly the Father God, from
whom all living things draw life; He is the fructifier and
128creator of all that lives, the source of energy of our
world. The discord into which the soul of man has fallen
through the action of moral laws^[204] can be resolved
into complete harmony through the sun as the natural
object which obeys no human moral law. The sun is not
only beneficial, but also destructive; therefore the zodiacal
representation of the August heat is the herd-devouring
lion whom the Jewish hero Samson^[205] killed in order to
free the parched earth from this plague. Yet it is the
harmonious and inherent nature of the sun to scorch, and
its scorching power seems natural to men. It shines
equally on the just and on the unjust, and allows useful
living objects to flourish as well as harmful ones. Therefore,
the sun is adapted as is nothing else to represent
the visible God of this world. That is to say, that driving
strength of our own soul, which we call libido, and
whose nature it is to allow the useful and injurious, the
good and the bad to proceed. That this comparison is no
mere play of words is taught us by the mystics. When
by looking inwards (introversion) and going down into
the depths of their own being they find “in their heart”
the image of the Sun, they find their own love or libido,
which with reason, I might say with physical reason, is
called the Sun; for our source of energy and life is the
Sun. Thus our life substance, as an energic process, is
entirely Sun. Of what special sort this “Sun energy”
seen inwardly by the mystic is, is shown by an example
taken from the Hindoo mythology.^[206] From the explanation
of Part III of the “Shvetâshvataropanishad” we
take the following quotation, which relates to the Rudra:^[207]

129(2) “Yea, the one Rudra who all these worlds with ruling
power doth rule, stands not for any second. Behind those that
are born he stands; at ending time ingathers all the worlds he
hath evolved, protector (he).

(3) “He hath eyes on all sides, on all sides surely hath faces,
arms surely on all sides, on all sides feet. With arms, with wings
he tricks them out, creating heaven and earth, the only God.

(4) “Who of the gods is both the source and growth, the Lord
of all, the Rudra. Mighty seer; who brought the shining germ
of old into existence—may he with reason pure conjoin us.”^[208]

These attributes allow us clearly to discern the all-creator
and in him the Sun, which has wings and with a
thousand eyes scans the world.^[209]

The following passages confirm the text and join to it
the idea most important for us, that God is also contained
in the individual creature:

(7) “Beyond this (world) the Brahman beyond, the mighty
one, in every creature hid according to its form, the one encircling
Lord of all, Him having known, immortal they become.

(8) “I know this mighty man, Sun-like, beyond the darkness,
Him (and him) only knowing, one crosseth over death; no other
path (at all) is there to go.

(11) “… spread over the universe is He the Lord therefore
as all-pervader, He’s benign.”

The powerful God, the equal of the Sun, is in that
one, and whoever knows him is immortal.^[210] Going on
further with the text, we come upon a new attribute,
which informs us in what form and manner Rudra lived
in men.

(12) “The mighty monarch, He, the man, the one who doth
the essence start towards that peace of perfect stainlessness, lordly,
exhaustless light.

130(13) “The Man, the size of a thumb, the inner self, sits
ever in the heart of all that’s born, by mind, mind ruling in the
heart, is He revealed. That they who know, immortal they become.

(14) “The Man of the thousands of heads (and) thousands
of eyes (and) thousands of feet, covering the earth on all sides,
He stands beyond, ten finger-breadths.

(15) “The Man is verily this all, (both) what has been and
what will be, Lord (too) of deathlessness which far all else
surpasses.”

Important parallel quotations are to be found in the
“Kathopanishad,” section 2, part 4.

(12) “The Man of the size of a thumb, resides in the midst
within the self, of the past and the future, the Lord.

(13) “The Man of the size of a thumb like flame free from
smoke, of past and of future the Lord, the same is to-day, to-morrow
the same will He be.”

Who this Tom-Thumb is can easily be divined—the
phallic symbol of the libido. The phallus is this hero
dwarf, who performs great deeds; he, this ugly god
in homely form, who is the great doer of wonders,
since he is the visible expression of the creative strength
incarnate in man. This extraordinary contrast is also
very striking in “Faust” (the mother scene):

Mephistopheles:

I’ll praise thee ere we separate: I see
Thou knowest the devil thoroughly:
Here take this key.

Faust:

That little thing!

Mephistopheles:

Take hold of it, not undervaluing!

131Faust:

It glows, it shines, increases in my hand!

Mephistopheles:

How much it is worth, thou soon shalt understand,
The key will scent the true place from all others!
Follow it down!—’twill lead thee to the Mothers!^[211]

Here the devil again puts into Faust’s hand the marvellous
tool, a phallic symbol of the libido, as once before
in the beginning the devil, in the form of the black dog,
accompanied Faust, when he introduced himself with the
words:

“Part of that power, not understood,
Which always wills the bad and always creates the good.”

United to this strength, Faust succeeded in accomplishing
his real life task, at first through evil adventure and
then for the benefit of humanity, for without the evil
there is no creative power. Here in the mysterious
mother scene, where the poet unveils the last mystery of
the creative power to the initiated, Faust has need of the
phallic magic wand (in the magic strength of which he
has at first no confidence), in order to perform the
greatest of wonders, namely, the creation of Paris and
Helen. With that Faust attains the divine power of
working miracles, and, indeed, only by means of this
small, insignificant instrument. This paradoxical impression
seems to be very ancient, for even the Upanishads
could say the following of the dwarf god:

132(19) “Without hands, without feet, He moveth, He graspeth:
Eyeless He seeth, (and) earless He heareth: He knoweth what is
to be known, yet is there no knower of Him. Him call the first,
mighty the Man.

(20) “Smaller than small, (yet) greater than great in the
heart of this creature the self doth repose … etc.”

The phallus is the being, which moves without limbs,
which sees without eyes, which knows the future; and as
symbolic representative of the universal creative power
existent everywhere immortality is vindicated in it. It is
always thought of as entirely independent, an idea current
not only in antiquity, but also apparent in the pornographic
drawings of our children and artists. It is a seer,
an artist and a worker of wonders; therefore it should
not surprise us when certain phallic characteristics are
found again in the mythological seer, artist and sorcerer.
Hephaestus, Wieland the smith, and Mani, the founder
of Manicheism, whose followers were also famous, have
crippled feet. The ancient seer Melampus possessed a
suggestive name (Blackfoot),^[212] and it seems also to be
typical for seers to be blind. Dwarfed stature, ugliness
and deformity have become especially typical for those
mysterious chthonian gods, the sons of Hephaestus, the
Cabiri,^[213] to whom great power to perform miracles was
ascribed. The name signifies “powerful,” and the Samothracian
cult is most intimately united with that of the ithyphallic
Hermes, who, according to the account of Herodotus,
was brought to Attica by the Pelasgians. They are
also called μεγάλοι θεοί, the great gods. Their near
relations are the “Idaean dactyli” (finger or Idaean
133thumb),^[214] to whom the mother of the gods had taught the
blacksmith’s art. (“The key will scent the true place
from all others! follow it down!—’twill lead thee to the
Mothers!”) They were the first leaders, the teachers of
Orpheus, and invented the Ephesian magic formulas and
the musical rhythms.^[215] The characteristic disparity
which is shown above in the Upanishad text, and in
“Faust,” is also found here, since the gigantic Hercules
passed as an Idaean dactyl.

The colossal Phrygians, the skilled servants of Rhea,^[216]
were also Dactyli. The Babylonian teacher of wisdom,
Oannes,^[217] was represented in a phallic fish form.^[218] The
two sun heroes, the Dioscuri, stand in relation to the
Cabiri;^[219] they also wear the remarkable pointed head-covering
(Pileus) which is peculiar to these mysterious
gods,^[220] and which is perpetuated from that time on as a
secret mark of identification. Attis (the elder brother of
Christ) wears the pointed cap, just as does Mithra. It
has also become traditional for our present-day chthonian
infantile gods,^[221] the brownies (Penates), and all the
typical kind of dwarfs. Freud^[222] has already called our attention
to the phallic meaning of the hat in modern phantasies.
A further significance is that probably the pointed
cap represents the foreskin. In order not to go too far
afield from my theme, I must be satisfied here merely
to present the suggestion. But at a later opportunity I
shall return to this point with detailed proof.

The dwarf form leads to the figure of the divine boy,
the puer eternus, the young Dionysus, Jupiter Anxurus,
Tages,^[223] and so on. In the vase painting of Thebes,
134already mentioned, a bearded Dionysus is represented
as ΚΑΒΕΙΡΟΣ, together with a figure of a boy as Παῖς,
followed by a caricatured boy’s figure designated as
ΠΡΑΤΟΛΑΟΣ and then again a caricatured man, which
is represented as ΜΙΤΟΣ.^[224] Μίτος really means thread,
but in orphic speech it stands for semen. It was conjectured
that this collection corresponded to a group of
statuary in the sanctuary of a cult. This supposition is
supported by the history of the cult as far as it is known;
it is an original Phœnician cult of father and son;^[225] of
an old and young Cabir who were more or less assimilated
with the Grecian gods. The double figures of the
adult and the child Dionysus lend themselves particularly
to this assimilation. One might also call this the cult
of the large and small man. Now, under various aspects,
Dionysus is a phallic god in whose worship the phallus
held an important place; for example, in the cult of the
Argivian Bull—Dionysus. Moreover, the phallic herme
of the god has given occasion for a personification of the
phallus of Dionysus, in the form of the god Phales,
who is nothing else but a Priapus. He is called ἑταῖρος
or σύγκωμος Βάκχου^[226].^[227] Corresponding to this state
of affairs, one cannot very well fail to recognize in the previously
mentioned Cabiric representation, and in the
added boy’s figure, the picture of man and his penis.^[228] The
previously mentioned paradox in the Upanishad text
of large and small, of giant and dwarf, is expressed more
mildly here by man and boy, or father and son.^[229] The
motive of deformity which is used constantly by the
135Cabiric cult is present also in the vase picture, while the
parallel figures to Dionysus and Παῖς are the caricatured
Μίτος and Πρατόλαος. Just as formerly the difference
in size gave occasion for division, so does the
deformity here.^[230]

Without first bringing further proof to bear, I may
remark that from this knowledge especially strong sidelights
are thrown upon the original psychologic meaning
of the religious heroes. Dionysus stands in an intimate
relation with the psychology of the early Asiatic God
who died and rose again from the dead and whose manifold
manifestations have been brought together in the
figure of Christ into a firm personality enduring for centuries.
We gain from our premise the knowledge that
these heroes, as well as their typical fates, are personifications
of the human libido and its typical fates. They
are imagery, like the figures of our nightly dreams—the
actors and interpreters of our secret thoughts. And since
we, in the present day, have the power to decipher the
symbolism of dreams and thereby surmise the mysterious
psychologic history of development of the individual,
so a way is here opened to the understanding of
the secret springs of impulse beneath the psychologic
development of races. Our previous trains of thought,
which demonstrate the phallic side of the symbolism of
the libido, also show how thoroughly justified is the term
“libido.”^[231] Originally taken from the sexual sphere,
this word has become the most frequent technical expression
of psychoanalysis, for the simple reason that its
significance is wide enough to cover all the unknown and
136countless manifestations of the Will in the sense of Schopenhauer.
It is sufficiently comprehensive and rich in
meaning to characterize the real nature of the psychical
entity which it includes. The exact classical significance
of the word libido qualifies it as an entirely appropriate
term. Libido is taken in a very wide sense in
Cicero:^[232]

“(Volunt ex duobus opinatis) bonis (nasci) Libidinem et
Lætitiam; ut sit lætitia præsentium bonorum: libido futurorum.—Lætitia
autem et Libido in bonorum opinione versantur, cum
Libido ad id, quod videtur bonum, illecta et inflammata rapiatur.—Natura
enim omnes ea, quæ bona videntur, sequuntur, fugiuntque
contraria. Quamobrem simul objecta species cuiuspiam
est, quod bonum videatur, ad id adipiscendum impellit ipsa natura.
Id cum constanter prudenterque fit, ejusmodi appetitionem stoici
βούλησιν appellant, nos appellamus voluntatem; eam illi putant
in solo esse sapiente, quam sic definiunt; voluntas est quæ quid
cum ratione desiderat: quæ autem ratione adversa incitata est
vehementius, ea libido est, vel cupiditas effrenata, quæ in omnibus
stultis invenitur.”^[233]

The meaning of libido here is “to wish,” and in the
stoical distinction of will, dissolute desire. Cicero^[234] used
“libido” in a corresponding sense:

137“Agere rem aliquam libidine, non ratione.”^[235]

In the same sense Sallust says:

“Iracundia pars est libidinis.”

In another place in a milder and more general sense,
which completely approaches the analytical use:

“Magisque in decoris armis et militaribus equis, quam in
scortis et conviviis libidinem habebant.”^[235]

Also:

“Quod si tibi bona libido fuerit patriæ, etc.”

The use of libido is so general that the phrase “libido
est scire” merely had the significance of “I will, it pleases
me.” In the phrase “aliquam libido urinæ lacessit”
libido had the meaning of urgency. The significance of
sexual desire is also present in the classics.

This general classical application of the conception
agrees with the corresponding etymological context of
the word, libido or lubido (with libet, more ancient
lubet), it pleases me, and libens or lubens = gladly, willingly.
Sanskrit, lúbhyati = to experience violent longing,
lôbhayati = excites longing, lubdha-h = eager, lôbha-h =
longing, eagerness. Gothic = liufs, and Old High German
liob = love. Moreover, in Gothic, lubains was represented
as hope; and Old High German, lobôn = to
praise, lob = commendation, praise, glory; Old Bulgarian,
ljubiti = to love, ljuby = love; Lithuanian, liáupsinti
138= to praise.^[236] It can be said that the conception
of libido as developed in the new work of Freud and of
his school has functionally the same significance in the
biological territory as has the conception of energy since
the time of Robert Mayer in the physical realm.^[237] It
may not be superfluous to say something more at this
point concerning the conception of libido after we have
followed the formation of its symbol to its highest expression
in the human form of the religious hero.

139

CHAPTER II
THE CONCEPTION AND THE GENETIC THEORY OF LIBIDO

The chief source of the history of the analytic conception
of libido is Freud’s “Three Contributions to the
Sexual Theory.” There the term libido is conceived by
him in the original narrow sense of sexual impulse, sexual
need. Experience forces us to the assumption of a
capacity for displacement of the libido, because functions
or localizations of non-sexual force are undoubtedly
capable of taking up a certain amount of libidinous sexual
impetus, a libidinous afflux.^[238] Functions or objects could,
therefore, obtain sexual value, which under normal circumstances
really have nothing to do with sexuality.^[239]
From this fact results the Freudian comparison of the
libido with a stream, which is divisible, which can be
dammed up, which overflows into branches, and so on.^[240]
Freud’s original conception does not interpret “everything
sexual,” although this has been asserted by critics,
but recognizes the existence of certain forces, the nature
of which are not well known; to which Freud, however,
compelled by the notorious facts which are evident to
any layman, grants the capacity to receive “affluxes of
libido.” The hypothetical idea at the basis is the symbol
of the “Triebbündel”^[241] (bundle of impulses), wherein
the sexual impulse figures as a partial impulse of the whole
140system, and its encroachment into the other realms of
impulse is a fact of experience. The theory of Freud,
branching off from this interpretation, according to which
the motor forces of a neurotic system correspond precisely
to their libidinous additions to other (non-sexual)
functional impulses, has been sufficiently proven as correct,
it seems to me, by the work of Freud and his school.^[242]
Since the appearance of the “Three Contributions,” in
1905, a change has taken place^[243] in the libido conception;
its field of application has been widened. An extremely
clear example of this amplification is this present work.
However, I must state that Freud, as well as myself,
saw the need of widening the conception of libido. It
was paranoia, so closely related to dementia præcox,
which seemed to compel Freud to enlarge the earlier
limits of the conception. The passage in question, which
I will quote here, word for word, reads:^[244]

“A third consideration which presents itself, in regard to the
views developed here, starts the query as to whether we should
accept as sufficiently effectual the universal receding of the libido
from the outer world, in order to interpret from that, the end of
the world: or whether in this case, the firmly rooted possession
of the ‘I’ must not suffice to uphold the rapport with the outer
world. Then one must either let that which we call possession
of the libido (interest from erotic sources) coincide with interest
in general, or else take into consideration the possibility that great
disturbance in the disposition of the libido can also induce a corresponding
disturbance in the possession of the ‘I.’ Now, these are
the problems, which we are still absolutely helpless and unfitted
to answer. Things would be different could we proceed from a
safe fund of knowledge of instinct. But the truth is, we have
nothing of that kind at our disposal. We understand instinct
as the resultant of the reaction of the somatic and the psychic.
141We see in it the psychical representation of organic forces and
take the popular distinction between the ‘I’ impulse and the
sexual impulse, which appears to us to be in accord with the
biological double rôle of the individual being who aspires to his
own preservation as well as to the preservation of the species.
But anything beyond this is a structure, which we set up, and
also willingly let fall again in order to orient ourselves in the
confusion of the dark processes of the soul; we expect particularly,
from the psychoanalytic investigations into diseased soul processes,
to have certain decisions forced upon us in regard to questions of
the theory of instinct. This expectation has not yet been fulfilled
on account of the still immature and limited investigations in these
fields. At present the possibility of the reaction of libido disturbance
upon the possession of the ‘I’ can be shown as little
as the reverse; the secondary or induced disturbances of the
libido processes through abnormal changes in the ‘I.’ It is probable
that processes of this sort form the distinctive character of
the psychoses. The conclusions arising from this, in relation to
paranoia, are at present uncertain. One cannot assert that the
paranoiac has completely withdrawn his interest from the outer
world, nor withdrawn into the heights of repression, as one sometimes
sees in certain other forms of hallucinatory psychoses. He
takes notice of the outer world, he takes account of its changes, he
is stirred to explanations by their influence, and therefore I consider
it highly probable that the changed relation to the world is
to be explained, wholly or in great part, by the deficiency of the
libido interest.”

In this passage Freud plainly touches upon the question
whether the well-known longing for reality of the
paranoic dement (and the dementia præcox patients),^[245]
to whom I have especially called attention in my book,
“The Psychology of Dementia Præcox,”^[246] is to be traced
back to the withdrawal of the “libidinous affluxes”
alone, or whether this coincides with the so-called objective
interest in general. It is hardly to be assumed
142that the normal “fonction du réel” (Janet)^[247] is maintained
only through affluxes of libido or erotic interest.
The fact is that in very many cases reality disappears
entirely, so that not a trace of psychological adaptation
or orientation can be recognized. Reality is repressed
under these circumstances and replaced by the contents
of the complex. One must of necessity say that not only
the erotic interest but the interest in general has disappeared,
that is to say, the whole adaptation to reality has
ceased. To this category belong the stuporose and catatonic
automatons.

I have previously made use of the expression “psychic
energy” in my “Psychology of Dementia Præcox” because
I was unable to establish the theory of this psychosis
upon the conception of the displacement of the
affluxes of libido. My experience, at that time chiefly
psychiatric, did not enable me to understand this theory.
However, the correctness of this theory in regard to
neuroses, strictly speaking the transference neuroses, was
proven to me later after increased experience in the field
of hysteria and compulsion neuroses. In the territory
of these neuroses it is mainly a question whether any
portion of the libido which is spared through the specific
repression becomes introverted and regressive into
earlier paths of transference; for example, the path of
the parental transference.^[248] With that, however, the
former non-sexual psychologic adaptation to the environment
remains preserved so far as it does not concern the
erotic and its secondary positions (symptoms). The
reality which is lacking to the patients is just that portion
143of the libido to be found in the neurosis. In dementia
præcox, on the contrary, not merely that portion of libido
which is saved in the well-known specific sexual repression
is lacking for reality, but much more than one could write
down to the account of sexuality in a strict sense. The
function of reality is lacking to such a degree that even
the motive power must be encroached upon in the loss.
The sexual character of this must be disputed absolutely,^[249]
for reality is not understood to be a sexual function.
Moreover, if that were so, the introversion of the libido
in the strict sense must have as a result a loss of reality
in the neuroses, and, indeed, a loss which could be compared
with that of dementia præcox. These facts have
rendered it impossible for me to transfer Freud’s theory
of libido to dementia præcox, and, therefore, I am of
the opinion that Abraham’s investigation^[250] is hardly tenable
theoretically, from the standpoint of the Freudian
theory of libido. If Abraham believes that through the
withdrawal of the libido from the outer world the paranoid
system or the schizophrenic symptomatology results,
then this assumption is not justified from the standpoint
of the knowledge of that time, because a mere libido introversion
and regression leads, speedily, as Freud has
clearly shown, into the neuroses, and, strictly speaking,
into the transference neuroses, and not into dementia
præcox. Therefore, the transference of the libido theory
to dementia præcox is impossible, because this illness
produces a loss of reality which cannot be explained by
the deficiency of the libido defined in this narrow sense.

It affords me especial satisfaction that our teacher also,
144when he laid his hand on the delicate material of the paranoic
psychology, was forced to doubt the applicability of
the conception of libido held by him at that time. The
sexual definition of this did not permit me to understand
those disturbances of function, which affect the vague territory
of the hunger instinct just as much as that of the
sexual instinct. For a long time the theory of libido
seemed to me inapplicable to dementia præcox. With
increasing experience in analytical work, however, I became
aware of a gradual change in my conception of
libido. In place of the descriptive definition of the
“Three Contributions” there gradually grew up a generic
definition of the libido, which rendered it possible for me
to replace the expression “psychic energy” by the term
“libido.” I was forced to ask myself whether indeed the
function of reality to-day does not consist only in its
smaller part of libido sexualis and in the greater part of
other impulses? It is still a very important question
whether phylogenetically the function of reality is not, at
least in great part, of sexual origin. To answer this question
directly in regard to the function of reality is not
possible, but we shall attempt to come to an understanding
indirectly.

A fleeting glance at the history of evolution is sufficient
to teach us that countless complicated functions to which
to-day must be denied any sexual character were originally
pure derivations from the general impulse of
propagation. During the ascent through the animal kingdom
an important displacement in the fundamentals of
the procreative instinct has taken place. The mass of
145the reproductive products with the uncertainty of fertilization
has more and more been replaced by a controlled
impregnation and an effective protection of the offspring.
In this way part of the energy required in the production
of eggs and sperma has been transposed into the creation
of mechanisms for allurement and for protection of the
young. Thus we discover the first instincts of art in animals
used in the service of the impulse of creation, and
limited to the breeding season. The original sexual character
of these biological institutions became lost in their
organic fixation and functional independence. Even if
there can be no doubt about the sexual origin of music,
still it would be a poor, unæsthetic generalization if one
were to include music in the category of sexuality. A
similar nomenclature would then lead us to classify the
cathedral of Cologne as mineralogy because it is built
of stones. It can be a surprise only to those to whom the
history of evolution is unknown to find how few things
there really are in human life which cannot be reduced in
the last analysis to the instinct of procreation. It includes
very nearly everything, I think, which is beloved and dear
to us. We spoke just now of libido as the creative impulse
and at the same time we allied ourselves with the
conception which opposes libido to hunger in the same way
that the instinct of the preservation of the species is
opposed to the instinct of self-preservation. In nature,
this artificial distinction does not exist. Here we see only
a continuous life impulse, a will to live which will attain
the creation of the whole species through the preservation
of the individual. Thus far this conception coincides with
146the idea of the Will in Schopenhauer, for we can conceive
Will objectively, only as a manifestation of an internal
desire. This throwing of psychological perceptions into
material reality is characterized philosophically as “introjection.”
(Ferenczi’s conception of “introjection”
denoted the reverse, that is, the taking of the outer world
into the inner world.)^[251] Naturally, the conception of the
world was distorted by introjection. Freud’s conception
of the principle of desire is a voluntary formulation of the
idea of introjection, while his once more voluntarily conceived
“principle of reality” corresponds functionally to
that which I designate as “corrective of reality,” and R.
Avenarius^[252] designates as “empiriokritische Prinzipialkoordination.”
The conception of power owes its existence
to this very introjection; this has already been said
expressively by Galileo in his remark that its origin is
to be sought in the subjective perception of the muscular
power of the individual. Because we have already arrived
at the daring assumption that the libido, which was employed
originally in the exclusive service of egg and seed
production, now appears firmly organized in the function
of nest-building, and can no longer be employed otherwise;
similarly this conception forces us to relate it to
every desire, including hunger. For now we can no longer
make any essential distinction between the will to build a
nest and the will to eat. This view brings us to a conception
of libido, which extends over the boundaries of the
physical sciences into a philosophical aspect—to a conception
of the will in general. I must give this bit of
psychological “Voluntarismus” into the hands of the
147philosophers for them to manage. For the rest I refer
to the words of Schopenhauer^[253] relating to this. In connection
with the psychology of this conception (by which
I understand neither metapsychology nor metaphysics) I
am reminded here of the cosmogenic meaning of Eros in
Plato and Hesiod,^[254] and also of the orphic figure of
Phanes, the “shining one,” the first created, the “father
of Eros.” Phanes has also orphically the significance of
Priapus; he is a god of love, bisexual and similar to the
Theban Dionysus Lysios.^[255] The orphic meaning of
Phanes is similar to that of the Indian Kâma, the god of
love, which is also the cosmogenic principle. To Plotinus,
of the Neo-Platonic school, the world-soul is the energy
of the intellect.^[256] Plotinus compares “The One,” the creative
primal principle, with light in general; the intellect
with the Sun (♂), the world-soul with the moon (♀).
In another comparison Plotinus compares “The One”
with the Father, the intellect with the Son.^[257] The “One”
designated as Uranus is transcendent. The son as Kronos
has dominion over the visible world. The world-soul
(designated as Zeus) appears as subordinate to him. The
“One,” or the Usia of the whole existence is designated
by Plotinus as hypostatic, also as the three forms of emanation,
also μία οὐσία ἐν τρισὶν ὑποστάσεσιν.^[258] As Drews
observed, this is also the formula of the Christian
Trinity (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Ghost) as it was decided upon at the councils of Nicea
and Constantinople.^[259] It may also be noticed that certain
early Christian sectarians attributed a maternal significance
148to the Holy Ghost (world-soul, moon). (See what
follows concerning Chi of Timæus.) According to Plotinus,
the world-soul has a tendency toward a divided
existence and towards divisibility, the conditio sine qua
non of all change, creation and procreation (also a maternal
quality). It is an “unending all of life” and
wholly energy; it is a living organism of ideas, which
attain in it effectiveness and reality.^[260] The intellect is
its procreator, its father, which, having conceived it,
brings it to development in thought.^[261]

“What lies enclosed in the intellect, comes to development in
the world-soul as logos, fills it with meaning and makes it as if
intoxicated with nectar.”^[262]

Nectar is analogous to soma, the drink of fertility and
of life, also to sperma. The soul is fructified by the
intellect; as oversoul it is called heavenly Aphrodite, as
the undersoul the earthly Aphrodite. “It knows the birth
pangs,”^[263] and so on. The bird of Aphrodite, the dove,
is not without good cause the symbol of the Holy Ghost.

This fragment of the history of philosophy, which may
easily be enlarged, shows the significance of the endopsychic
perception of the libido and of its symbolism in
human thought.

In the diversity of natural phenomena we see the desire,
the libido, in the most diverse applications and forms.
We see the libido in the stage of childhood almost wholly
occupied in the instinct of nutrition, which takes care of
the upbuilding of the body. With the development of the
body there are successively opened new spheres of application
149for the libido. The last sphere of application, and
surpassing all the others in its functional significance, is
sexuality, which seems at first almost bound up with the
function of nutrition. (Compare with this the influence on
procreation of the conditions of nutrition in lower animals
and plants.) In the territory of sexuality, the libido
wins that formation, the enormous importance of which
has justified us in the use of the term libido in general.
Here the libido appears very properly as an impulse of
procreation, and almost in the form of an undifferentiated
sexual primal libido, as an energy of growth, which
clearly forces the individual towards division, budding,
etc. (The clearest distinction between the two forms of
libido is to be found among those animals in whom the
stage of nutrition is separated from the sexual stage by
a chrysalis stage.)

From that sexual primal libido which produced millions
of eggs and seeds from one small creature derivatives
have been developed with the great limitation of the
fecundity; derivatives in which the functions are maintained
by a special differentiated libido. This differentiated
libido is henceforth desexualized because it is dissociated
from its original function of egg and sperma
production; nor is there any possibility of restoring it to
its original function. Thus, in general, the process of
development consists in an increasing transformation of
the primal libido which only produced products of
generation to the secondary functions of allurement and
protection of the young. This now presupposes a very
different and very complicated relation to reality, a true
150function of reality, which, functionally inseparable, is
bound up with the needs of procreation. Thus the altered
mode of procreation carries with it as a correlate a correspondingly
heightened adaptation to reality.^[264]

In this way we attain an insight into certain primitive
conditions of the function of reality. It would be radically
wrong to say that its compelling power is a sexual one.
It was a sexual one to a large extent. The process of
transformation of the primal libido into secondary impulses
always took place in the form of affluxes of sexual
libido, that is to say, sexuality became deflected from its
original destination and a portion of it turned, little by
little, increasing in amount, into the phylogenetic impulse
of the mechanisms of allurement and of protection of the
young. This diversion of the sexual libido from the
sexual territory into associated functions is still taking
place.^[265] Where this operation succeeds without injury to
the adaptation of the individual it is called sublimation.
Where the attempt does not succeed it is called repression.

The descriptive standpoint of psychology accepts the
multiplicity of instincts, among which is the sexual instinct,
as a special phenomenon; moreover, it recognizes certain
affluxes of libido to non-sexual instincts.

Quite otherwise is the genetic standpoint. It regards
the multiplicity of instincts as issuing from a relative
unity, the primal libido;^[266] it recognizes that definite
amounts of the primal libido are split off, as it were, associated
with the newly formed functions and finally merged
in them. As a result of this it is impossible, from the
genetic standpoint, to hold to the strictly limited conception
151of libido of the descriptive standpoint; it leads inevitably
to a broadening of the conception. With this we
come to the theory of libido that I have surreptitiously
introduced into the first part of this work for the purpose
of making this genetic conception familiar to the
reader. The explanation of this harmless deceit I have
saved until the second part.

For the first time, through this genetic idea of libido,
which in every way surpasses the descriptive sexual, the
transference was made possible of the Freudian libido
theory into the psychology of mental disease. The passage
quoted above shows how the present Freudian conception
of libido collides with the problem of the
psychoses.^[267] Therefore, when I speak of libido, I associate
with it the genetic conception which contains not
only the immediate sexual but also an amount of desexualized
primal libido. When I say a sick person takes his
libido away from the outer world, in order to take possession
of the inner world with it, I do not mean that
he takes away merely the affluxes from the function of
reality, but he takes energy away, according to my view,
from those desexualized instincts which regularly and
properly support the function of reality.

With this alteration in the libido conception, certain
parts of our terminology need revision as well. As we
know, Abraham has undertaken the experiment of transferring
the Freudian libido theory to dementia præcox
and has conceived the characteristic lack of rapport and
the cessation of the function of reality as autoerotism.
This conception needs revision. Hysterical introversion
152of the libido leads to autoerotism, since the patient’s erotic
afflux of libido designed for the function of adaptation
is introverted, whereby his ego is occupied by the corresponding
amount of erotic libido. The schizophrenic,
however, shuns reality far more than merely the erotic
afflux would account for; therefore, his inner condition is
very different from that of the hysteric. He is more than
autoerotic, he builds up an intra-psychic equivalent for
reality, for which purpose he has necessarily to employ
other dynamics than that afforded by the erotic afflux.
Therefore, I must grant to Bleuler the right to reject the
conception of autoerotism, taken from the study of hysterical
neuroses, and there legitimate, and to replace it
by the conception of autismus.^[268] I am forced to say that
this term is better fitted to facts than autoerotism. With
this I acknowledge my earlier idea of the identity of
autismus (Bleuler) and autoerotism (Freud) as unjustified,
and, therefore, retract it.^[269] This thorough revision
of the conception of libido has compelled me to this.

From these considerations it follows necessarily that
the descriptive psychologic conception of libido must be
given up in order for the libido theory to be applied to
dementia præcox. That it is there applicable is best
shown in Freud’s brilliant investigation of Schreber’s
phantasies. The question now is whether this genetic
conception of libido proposed by me is suitable for the
neuroses. I believe that this question may be answered
affirmatively. “Natura non fecit saltum”—it is not merely
to be expected but it is also probable that at least temporary
functional disturbances of various degrees appear
153in the neuroses, which transcend the boundaries of the
immediate sexual; in any case, this occurs in psychotic
episodes. I consider the broadening of the conception of
libido which has developed through the most recent analytic
work as a real advance which will prove of especial
advantage in the important field of the introversion psychoses.
Proofs of the correctness of my assumption are
already at hand. It has become apparent through a series
of researches of the Zurich School, which are now published
in part,^[270] that the phantastic substitution products
which take the place of the disturbed function of reality
bear unmistakable traces of archaic thought. This confirmation
is parallel to the postulate asserted above, according
to which reality is deprived, not merely of an
immediate (individual) amount of libido, but also of an
already differentiated or desexualized quantity of libido,
which, among normal people, has belonged to the function
of reality ever since prehistoric times. A dropping away
of the last acquisition of the function of reality (or adaptation)
must of necessity be replaced by an earlier mode of
adaptation. We find this principle already in the doctrines
of the neuroses, that is, that a repression resulting
from the failure of the recent transference is replaced by
an old way of transference, namely, through a regressive
revival of the parent imago. In the transference neurosis
(hysterical), where merely a part of the immediate
sexual libido is taken away from reality by the specific
sexual repression, the substituted product is a phantasy
of individual origin and significance, with only a trace
of those archaic traits found in the phantasies of those
154mental disorders in which a portion of the general human
function of reality organized since antiquity has broken
off. This portion can be replaced only by a generally
valid archaic surrogate. We owe a simple and clear example
of this proposition to the investigation of Honegger.^[271]
A paranoic of good intelligence who has a clear
idea of the spherical form of the earth and its rotation
around the sun replaces the modern astronomical views
by a system worked out in great detail, which one must
call archaic, in which the earth is a flat disc over which
the sun travels.^[272] (I am reminded of the sun-phallus
mentioned in the first part of this book, for which we are
also indebted to Honegger.) Spielrein has likewise furnished
some very interesting examples of archaic definitions
which begin in certain illnesses to overlay the real
meanings of the modern word. For example, Spielrein’s
patient had correctly discovered the mythological significance
of alcohol, the intoxicating drink, to be “an effusion
of seed.”^[273] She also had a symbolism of boiling which I
must place parallel to the especially important alchemistic
vision of Zosimos,^[274] who found people in boiling water
within the cavity of the altar.^[275] This patient used earth
in place of mother, and also water to express mother.^[276] I
refrain from further examples because future work of the
Zurich School will furnish abundant evidence of this sort.

My foregoing proposition of the replacement of the
disturbed function of reality by an archaic surrogate is
supported by an excellent paradox of Spielrein’s. She
says: “I often had the illusion that these patients might
155be simply victims of a folk superstition.” As a matter of
fact, patients substitute phantasies for reality, phantasies
similar to the actually incorrect mental products of the
past, which, however, were once the view of reality. As
the Zosimos vision shows, the old superstitions were symbols^[277]
which permitted transitions to the most remote
territory. This must have been very expedient for certain
archaic periods, for by this means convenient bridges
were offered to lead a partial amount of libido over into
the mental realm. Evidently Spielrein thinks of a similar
biological meaning of the symbols when she says:^[278]

“Thus a symbol seems to me to owe its origin in general to
the tendency of a complex for dissolution in the common totality
of thought…. The complex is robbed by that of the personal
element…. This tendency towards dissolution (transformation)
of every individual complex is the motive for poetry, painting,
for every sort of art.”

When here we replace the formal conception “complex”
by the conception of the quantity of libido (the
total effect of the complex), which, from the standpoint of
the libido theory, is a justified measure, then does Spielrein’s
view easily agree with mine. When primitive man
understands in general what an act of generation is, then,
according to the principle of the path of least resistance,
he never can arrive at the idea of replacing the generative
organs by a sword-blade or a shuttle; but this is the case
with certain Indians, who explain the origin of mankind
by the union of the two transference symbols. He then
must be compelled to devise an analogous thing in order to
bring a manifest sexual interest upon an asexual expression.
156The propelling motive of this transition of the
immediate sexual libido to the non-sexual representation
can, in my opinion, be found only in a resistance which
opposes primitive sexuality.

It appears as if, by this means of phantastic analogy
formation, more libido would gradually become desexualized,
because increasingly more phantasy correlates were
put in the place of the primitive achievement of the sexual
libido. With this an enormous broadening of the world
idea was gradually developed because new objects were
always assimilated as sexual symbols. It is a question
whether the human consciousness has not been brought
to its present state entirely or in great part in this manner.
It is evident, in any case, that an important significance
in the development of the human mind is due to
the impulse towards the discovery of analogy. We must
agree thoroughly with Steinthal when he says that an
absolutely overweening importance must be granted to
the little phrase “Gleich wie” (even as) in the history
of the development of thought. It is easy to believe that
the carryover of the libido to a phantastic correlate has
led primitive man to a number of the most important
discoveries.

157

CHAPTER III
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE LIBIDO. A POSSIBLE SOURCE OF PRIMITIVE HUMAN DISCOVERIES

In the following pages I will endeavor to picture a
concrete example of the transition of the libido. I once
treated a patient who suffered from a depressive catatonic
condition. The case was one of only a slight introversion
psychosis; therefore, the existence of many
hysterical features was not surprising. In the beginning
of the analytic treatment, while telling of a very painful
occurrence she fell into a hysterical-dreamy state, in which
she showed all signs of sexual excitement. For obvious
reasons she lost the knowledge of my presence during this
condition. The excitement led to a masturbative act
(frictio femorum). This act was accompanied by a
peculiar gesture. She made a very violent rotary motion
with the forefinger of the left hand on the left temple,
as if she were boring a hole there. Afterwards there was
complete amnesia for what had happened, and there was
nothing to be learned about the queer gesture with her
hand. Although this act can easily be likened to a boring
into the mouth, nose or ear, now transferred to the
temple, it belongs in the territory of infantile ludus sexualis^[279]—to
the preliminary exercise preparatory to sexual
activity. Without really understanding it, this gesture,
158nevertheless, seemed very important to me. Many weeks
later I had an opportunity to speak to the patient’s
mother, and from her I learned that her daughter had
been a very exceptional child. When only two years old
she would sit with her back to an open cupboard door for
hours and rhythmically beat her head against the door^[280]—to
the distraction of the household. A little later, instead
of playing as other children, she began to bore a hole with
her finger in the plaster of the wall of the house. She
did this with little turning and scraping movements, and
kept herself busy at this occupation for hours. She was
a complete puzzle to her parents. From her fourth year
she practised onanism. It is evident that in this early
infantile activity the preliminary stage of the later trouble
may be found. The especially remarkable features in this
case are, first, that the child did not carry out the action
on its own body, and, secondly, the assiduity with which
it carried on the action.^[281] One is tempted to bring these
two facts into a causal relationship and to say, because the
child does not accomplish this action on her own body,
perhaps that is the reason of the assiduity, for by boring
into the wall she never arrives at the same satisfaction as
if she executed the activity onanistically on her own body.

The very evident onanistic boring of the patient can be
traced back to a very early stage of childhood, which is
prior to the period of local onanism. That time is still
psychologically very obscure, because individual reproductions
and memories are lacking to a great extent, the same
as among animals. The race characteristics (manner of
life) predominate during the entire life of the animal,
159whereas among men the individual character asserts itself
over the race type. Granting the correctness of this
remark, we are struck with the apparently wholly incomprehensible
individual activity of this child at this early
age. We learn from her later life history that her development,
which is, as is always the case, intimately interwoven
with parallel external events, has led to that mental
disturbance which is especially well known on account of
its individuality and the originality of its productions, i. e.
dementia præcox. The peculiarity of this disturbance, as
we have pointed out above, depends upon the predominance
of the phantastic form of thought—of the infantile
in general. From this type of thinking proceed all those
numerous contacts with mythological products, and that
which we consider as original and wholly individual creations
are very often creations which are comparable with
nothing but those of antiquity. I believe that this comparison
can be applied to all formations of this remarkable
illness, and perhaps also to this special symptom of
boring. We have already seen that the onanistic boring
of the patient dated from a very early stage of childhood,
that is to say, it was reproduced from that period of the
past. The sick woman fell back for the first time into
the early onanism only after she had been married many
years, and following the death of her child, with whom
she had identified herself through an overindulgent love.
When the child died the still healthy mother was overcome
by early infantile symptoms in the form of scarcely
concealed fits of masturbation, which were associated with
this very act of boring. As already observed, the primary
160boring appeared at a time which preceded the infantile
onanism localized in the genitals. This fact is of significance
in so far as this boring differs thereby from a similar
later practice which appeared after the genital onanism.
The later bad habits represent, as a rule, a substitution
for repressed genital masturbation, or for an attempt in
this direction. As such these habits (finger-sucking, biting
the nails, picking at things, boring into the ears and nose,
etc.) may persist far into adult life as regular symptoms
of a repressed amount of libido.

As has already been shown above, the libido in youthful
individuals at first manifests itself in the nutritional
zone, when food is taken in the act of suckling with
rhythmic movements and with every sign of satisfaction.
With the growth of the individual and the development
of his organs the libido creates for itself new avenues to
supply its need of activity and satisfaction. The primary
model of rhythmic activity, producing pleasure and satisfaction,
must now be transferred to the zone of other
functions, with sexuality as its final goal. A considerable
part of the “hunger libido” is transferred into the
“sexual libido.” This transition does not take place suddenly
at the time of puberty, as is generally supposed, but
very gradually in the course of the greater part of childhood.
The libido can free itself only with difficulty and
very slowly from that which is peculiar to the function of
nutrition, in order to enter into the peculiarity of the
sexual function. Two periods are to be distinguished in
this state of transition, so far as I can judge—the epoch of
suckling and the epoch of the displaced rhythmic activity.
161Suckling still belongs to the function of nutrition, but
passes beyond it, however, in that it is no longer the function
of nutrition, but rhythmic activity, with pleasure and
satisfaction as a goal, without the taking of nourishment.
Here the hand enters as an auxiliary organ. In the
period of the displaced rhythmic activity the hand appears
still more clearly as an auxiliary organ; the gaining of
pleasure leaves the mouth zone and turns to other regions.
The possibilities are now many. As a rule, other openings
of the body become the objects of the libido interest;
then the skin, and special portions of that. The activity
expressed in these parts, which can appear as rubbing,
boring, picking, and so on, follows a certain rhythm and
serves to produce pleasure. After longer or shorter tarryings
of the libido at these stations, it passes onward until
it reaches the sexual zone, and there, for the first time,
can be occasion for the beginning of onanistic attempts.
In its migration the libido takes more than a little of the
function of nutrition with it into the sexual zone, which
readily accounts for the numerous and innate correlations
between the functions of nutrition and sexuality. If,
after the occupation of the sexual zone, an obstacle arises
against the present form of application of the libido, then
there occurs, according to the well-known laws, a regression
to the nearest station lying behind, to the two above-mentioned
periods. It is now of special importance that
the epoch of the displaced rhythmic activity coincides in
a general way with the time of the development of the
mind and of speech. I might designate the period from
birth until the occupation of the sexual zone as the presexual
162stage of development. This generally occurs between
the third and fifth year, and is comparable to the
chrysalis stage in butterflies. It is distinguished by the
irregular commingling of the elements of nutrition and of
sexual functions. Certain regressions follow directly back
to the presexual stage, and, judging from my experience,
this seems to be the rule in the regression of dementia
præcox. I will give two brief examples. One case concerns
a young girl who developed a catatonic state during
her engagement. When she saw me for the first time, she
came up suddenly, embraced me, and said, “Papa, give
me something to eat.” The other case concerns a young
maidservant who complained that people pursued her
with electricity and that this caused a queer feeling in her
genitals, “as if it ate and drank down there.”

These regressive phenomena show that even from the
distance of the modern mind those early stages of the
libido can be regressively reached. One may assume,
therefore, that in the earliest states of human development
this road was much more easily travelled than it is
to-day. It becomes then a matter of great interest to
learn whether traces of this have been preserved in
history.

We owe our knowledge of the ethnologic phantasy of
boring to the valuable work of Abraham,^[282] who also refers
us to the writings of Adalbert Kuhn.^[283] Through this investigation
we learn that Prometheus, the fire-bringer,
may be a brother of the Hindoo Pramantha, that is to
say, of the masculine fire-rubbing piece of wood. The
Hindoo fire-bringer is called Mâtariçvan, and the activity
163of the fire preparation is always designated in the hieratic
text by the verb “manthâmi,”^[284] which means shaking,
rubbing, bringing forth by rubbing. Kuhn has put this
verb in connection with the Greek μανθάνω, which means
“to learn,” and has explained this conceptual relationship.^[285]
The “tertium comparationis” might lie in the
rhythm, the movement to and fro in the mind. According
to Kuhn, the root “manth” or “math” must be traced
from μανθάνω (μάθημα, μάθησις) to προ-μηθέομαι to
Προμηθεύς,^[286] who is the Greek fire-robber. Through
an unauthorized Sanskrit word “pramâthyus,” which
comes by way of “pramantha,” and which possesses
the double meaning of “Rubber” and “Robber,”
the transition to Prometheus was effected. With that,
however, the prefix “pra” caused special difficulty,
so that the whole derivation was doubted by a series
of authors, and was held, in part, as erroneous. On
the other hand, it was pointed out that as the Thuric Zeus
bore the especially interesting cognomen Προ-μανθεύς,
thus Προ-μηθεύς might not be an original Indo-Germanic
stem word that was related to the Sanskrit “pramantha,”
but might represent only a cognomen. This interpretation
is supported by a gloss of Hesychius, Ἰθάς: ὁ τῶν
Τιτάνων κήρυξ Προμηθεύς.^[287] Another gloss of Hesychius
explains ἰθαίνομαι (ιαίνω) as θερμαίνομαι, through which
Ἰθάς attains the meaning of “the flaming one,” analogous
to Αἴθων or Φλεγύας.^[288] The relation of Prometheus to
164pramantha could scarcely be so direct as Kuhn conjectures.
The question of an indirect relation is not decided
with that. Above all, Προμηθεύς is of great significance
as a surname for Ἰθάς, since the “flaming one” is the
“fore-thinker.” (Pramati = precaution is also an attribute
of Agni, although pramati is of another derivation.)
Prometheus, however, belongs to the line of Phlegians
which was placed by Kuhn in uncontested relationship to
the Indian priest family of Bhṛgu.^[289] The Bhṛgu are like
Mâtariçvan (the “one swelling in the mother”), also
fire-bringers. Kuhn quotes a passage, according to which
Bhṛgu also arises from the flame like Agni. (“In the
flame Bhṛgu originated. Bhṛgu roasted, but did not
burn.”) This view leads to a root related to Bhṛgu,
that is to say, to the Sanskrit bhrây = to light, Latin
fulgeo and Greek φλέγω (Sanskrit bhargas = splendor,
Latin fulgur). Bhṛgu appears, therefore, as “the shining
one.” Φλεγύας means a certain species of eagle, on
account of its burnished gold color. The connection
with φλέγειν, which signifies “to burn,” is clear. The
Phlegians are also the fire eagles.^[290] Prometheus also belongs
to the Phlegians. The path from Pramantha to
Prometheus passes not through the word, but through the
idea, and, therefore, we should adopt this same meaning
for Prometheus as that which Pramantha attains from the
Hindoo fire symbolism.^[291]

The Pramantha, as the tool of Manthana (the fire
sacrifice), is considered purely sexual in the Hindoo; the
Pramantha as phallus, or man; the bored wood underneath
as vulva, or woman.^[292] The resulting fire is the
165child, the divine son Agni. The two pieces of wood are
called in the cult Purûravas and Urvaçî, and were thought
of personified as man and woman. The fire was born
from the genitals of the woman.^[293] An especially interesting
representation of fire production, as a religious
ceremony (manthana), is given by Weber:^[294]

“A certain sacrificial fire was lit by the rubbing together of
two sticks; one piece of wood is taken up with the words: ‘Thou
art the birthplace of the fire,’ and two blades of grass are placed
upon it; ‘Ye are the two testicles,’ to the ‘adhârarani’ (the
underlying wood): ‘Thou art Urvaçî’; then the utarârani (that
which is placed on top) is anointed with butter. ‘Thou art
Power.’ This is then placed on the adhârarani. ‘Thou art
Purûravas’ and both are rubbed three times. ‘I rub thee with
the Gâyatrîmetrum: I rub thee with the Trishtubhmeṭrum: I rub
thee with the Jagatîmetrum.’”

The sexual symbolism of this fire production is unmistakable.
We see here also the rhythm, the metre in its
original place as sexual rhythm, rising above the mating
call into music. A song of the Rigveda^[295] conveys the
same interpretation and symbolism:

“Here is the gear for function, here tinder made ready for the spark.
Bring thou the matron:^[296] we will rub Agni in ancient fashion forth.
In the two fire-sticks Jâtavedas lieth, even as the well-formed germ in pregnant women;
Agni who day by day must be exalted by men who watch and worship with oblations;
Lay this with care on that which lies extended: straight hath she borne the steer when made prolific.
166With his red pillar—radiant in his splendor—in our skilled task is born the son of Ilâ.”^[297]—Book III. xxix: 1–3.

Side by side with the unequivocal coitus symbolism we
see that the Pramantha is also Agni, the created son.
The Phallus is the son, or the son is the Phallus. Therefore,
Agni in the Vedic mythology has the threefold character.
With this we are once more connected with the
above-mentioned Cabiric Father-Son-Cult. In the modern
German language we have preserved echoes of the primitive
symbols. A boy is designated as “bengel” (short,
thick piece of wood). In Hessian as “stift” or “bolzen”
(arrow,^[298] wooden peg or stump). The Artemisia
Abrotanum, which is called in German “Stabwurz”
(stick root), is called in English “Boy’s Love.” (The
vulgar designation of the penis as “boy” was remarked
even by Grimm and others.) The ceremonial production
of fire was retained in Europe as late as the nineteenth
century as a superstitious custom. Kuhn mentions such a
case even in the year 1828, which occurred in Germany.
The solemn, magic ceremony was called the “Nodfyr”—“The
fire of need”^[299]—and the charm was chiefly used
against cattle epidemics. Kuhn cites from the chronicle
of Lanercost of the year 1268 an especially noteworthy
case of the “Nodfyr,”^[300] the ceremonies of which plainly
reveal the fundamental phallic meaning:

“Pro fidei divinæ integritate servanda recolat lector, quod cum
hoc anno in Laodonia pestis grassaretur in pecudes armenti, quam
vocant usetati Lungessouht, quidam bestiales, habitu claustrales
non animo, docebant idiotas patriæ ignem confrictione de lignis
educere et simulacrum Priapi statuere, et per hæc bestiis succurrere.
167Quod cum unus laicus Cisterciensis apud Fentone fecisset
ante atrium aulæ, ac intinctis testiculis canis in aquam benedictam
super animalis sparsisset, etc.”^[301]

These examples, which allow us to recognize a clear
sexual symbolism in the generation of fire, prove, therefore,
since they originate from different times and different
peoples, the existence of a universal tendency to credit
to fire production not only a magical but also a sexual
significance. This ceremonial or magic repetition of this
very ancient, long-outlived observance shows how insistently
the human mind clings to the old forms, and how
deeply rooted is this very ancient reminiscence of fire
boring. One might almost be inclined to see in the sexual
symbolism of fire production a relatively late addition to
the priestly lore. This may, indeed, be true for the ceremonial
elaboration of the fire mysteries, but whether
originally the generation of fire was in general a sexual
action, that is to say, a “coitus-play,” is still a question.
That similar things occur among very primitive
people we learn from the Australian tribe of the Watschandies,^[302]
who in the spring perform the following
magic ceremonies of fertilization: They dig a hole in
the ground, so formed and surrounded with bushes as to
168counterfeit a woman’s genitals. They dance the night
long around this hole; in connection with this they hold
spears in front of themselves in a manner to recall the
penis in erection. They dance around the hole and thrust
their spears into the ditch, while they cry to it, “Pulli
nira, pulli nira, wataka!” (Non fossa, non fossa, sed
cunnus!) Such obscene dances appear among other primitive
races as well.^[303]

In this spring incantation are contained the elements
of the coitus play.^[304] This play is nothing but a coitus
game, that is to say, originally this play was simply a
coitus in the form of sacramental mating, which for a
long time was a mysterious element among certain cults,
and reappeared in sects.^[305] In the ceremonies of Zinzendorf’s
followers echoes of the coitus sacrament may be
recognized; also in other sects.

One can easily think that just as the above-mentioned
Australian bushmen perform the coitus play in this manner
the same performance could be enacted in another
manner, and, indeed, in the form of fire production. Instead
of through two selected human beings, the coitus
was represented by two substitutes, by Purûravas and
Urvaçi, by Phallus and Vulva, by borer and opening.
Just as the primitive thought behind other customs is
really the sacramental coition so here the primal tendency
is really the act itself. For the act of fertilization is the
climax—the true festival of life, and well worthy to become
the nucleus of a religious mystery. If we are justified
in concluding that the symbolism of the hole in the
earth used by the Watschandies for the fertilization of
169the earth takes the place of the coitus, then the generation
of fire could be considered in the same way as a
substitute for coitus; and, indeed, it might be further concluded
as a consequence of this reasoning that the invention
of fire-making is also due to the need of supplying a
symbol for the sexual act.^[306]

Let us return, for a moment, to the infantile symptom
of boring. Let us imagine a strong adult man carrying
on the boring with two pieces of wood with the same perseverance
and the energy corresponding to that of this
child. He may very easily create fire by this play. But
of greatest significance in this work is the rhythm.^[307] This
hypothesis seems to me psychologically possible, although
it should not be said with this that only in this way could
the discovery of fire occur. It can result just as well by
the striking together of flints. It is scarcely possible that
fire was created in only one way. All I want to establish
here is merely the psychologic process, the symbolic indications
of which point to the possibility that in such a
way was fire invented or prepared.

The existence of the primitive coitus play or rite seems
to me sufficiently proven. The only thing that is obscure
is the energy and emphasis of the ritual play. It is well
known that those primitive rites were often of very bloody
seriousness, and were performed with an extraordinary
display of energy, which appears as a great contrast to
the well-known indolence of primitive humanity. Therefore,
the ritual activity entirely loses the character of play,
and wins that of purposeful effort. If certain Negro
races can dance the whole night long to three tones in
170the most monotonous manner, then, according to our idea,
there is in this an absolute lack of the character of play
pastime; it approaches nearer to exercise. There seems
to exist a sort of compulsion to transfer the libido into
such ritual activity. If the basis of the ritual activity is
the sexual act, we may assume that it is really the underlying
thought and object of the exercise. Under these
circumstances, the question arises why the primitive man
endeavors to represent the sexual act symbolically and
with effort, or, if this wording appears to be too hypothetical,
why does he exert energy to such a degree only
to accomplish practically useless things, which apparently
do not especially amuse him?^[308] It may be assumed that
the sexual act is more desirable to primitive man than
such absurd and, moreover, fatiguing exercises. It is
hardly possible but that a certain compulsion conducts the
energy away from the original object and real purpose,
inducing the production of surrogates. The existence of
a phallic or orgiastic cult does not indicate eo ipso a particularly
lascivious life any more than the ascetic symbolism
of Christianity means an especially moral life.
One honors that which one does not possess or that which
one is not. This compulsion, to speak in the nomenclature
formulated above, removes a certain amount of libido
from the real sexual activity, and creates a symbolic and
practically valid substitute for what is lost. This psychology
is confirmed by the above-mentioned Watschandie
ceremony; during the entire ceremony none of the men
may look at a woman. This detail again informs us
from whence the libido is to be diverted. But this gives
171rise to the pressing question, Whence comes this compulsion?
We have already suggested above that the primitive
sexuality encounters a resistance which leads to a
side-tracking of the libido on to substitution actions
(analogy, symbolism, etc.). It is unthinkable that it is a
question of any outer opposition whatsoever, or of a real
obstacle, since it occurs to no savage to catch his elusive
quarry with ritual charms; but it is a question of an internal
resistance; will opposes will; libido opposes libido,
since a psychologic resistance as an energic phenomenon
corresponds to a certain amount of libido. The psychologic
compulsion for the transformation of the libido is
based on an original division of the will. I will return
to this primal splitting of the libido in another place.
Here let us concern ourselves only with the problem of
the transition of the libido. The transition takes place,
as has been repeatedly suggested by means of shifting to
an analogy. The libido is taken away from its proper
place and transferred to another substratum.

The resistance against sexuality aims, therefore, at
preventing the sexual act; it also seeks to crowd the libido
away from the sexual function. We see, for example, in
hysteria, how the specific repression blocks the real path
of transference; therefore, the libido is obliged to take
another path, and that an earlier one, namely, the incestuous
road which ultimately leads to the parents. Let
us speak, however, of the incest prohibition, which hindered
the very first sexual transference. Then the situation
changes in so far that no earlier way of transference
is left, except that of the presexual stage of development,
172where the libido was still partly in the function of nutrition.
By a regression to the presexual material the libido
becomes quasi-desexualized. But as the incest prohibition
signifies only a temporary and conditional restriction of
the sexuality, thus only that part of the libido which is
best designated as the incestuous component is now
pushed back to the presexual stage. The repression,
therefore, concerns only that part of the sexual libido
which wishes to fix itself permanently upon the parents.
The sexual libido is only withdrawn from the incestuous
component, repressed upon the presexual stage, and
there, if the operation is successful, desexualized, by
which this amount of libido is prepared for an asexual
application. However, it is to be assumed that this operation
is accomplished only with difficulty, because the
incestuous libido, so to speak, must be artificially separated
from the sexual libido, with which, for ages, through
the whole animal kingdom, it was indistinguishably united.
The regression of the incestuous component must, therefore,
take place, not only with great difficulty, but also
carry with it into the presexual stage a considerable
sexual character. The consequence of this is that the resulting
phenomena, although stamped with the character
of the sexual act, are, nevertheless, not really sexual acts
de facto; they are derived from the presexual stage, and
are maintained by the repressed sexual libido, therefore
possess a double significance. Thus the fire boring is a
coitus (and, to be sure, an incestuous one), but a desexualized
one, which has lost its immediate sexual worth, and
is, therefore, indirectly useful to the propagation of the
173species. The presexual stage is characterized by countless
possibilities of application, because the libido has not
yet formed definite localizations. It therefore appears
intelligible that an amount of libido which reaches this
stage through regression is confronted with manifold possibilities
of application. Above all, it is met with the
possibility of a purely onanistic activity. But as the matter
in question in the regressive component of libido is
sexual libido, the ultimate object of which is propagation,
therefore it goes to the external object (Parents); it will
also introvert with this destination as its essential character.
The result, therefore, is that the purely onanistic
activity turns out to be insufficient, and another object
must be sought for, which takes the place of the incest
object. The nurturing mother earth represents the ideal
example of such an object. The psychology of the presexual
stage contributes the nutrition component; the
sexual libido the coitus idea. From this the ancient symbols
of agriculture arise. In the work of agriculture
hunger and incest intermingle. The ancient cults of
mother earth and all the superstitions founded thereon
saw in the cultivation of the earth the fertilization of the
mother. The aim of the action is desexualized, however,
for it is the fruit of the field and the nourishment contained
therein. The regression resulting from the incest
prohibition leads, in this case, to the new valuation of the
mother; this time, however, not as a sexual object, but
as a nourisher.

The discovery of fire seems to be due to a very similar
regression to the presexual stage, more particularly to the
174nearest stage of the displaced rhythmic manifestation.
The libido, introverted from the incest prohibition (with
the more detailed designation of the motor components
of coitus), when it reaches the presexual stage, meets
the related infantile boring, to which it now gives, in accordance
with its realistic destination, an actual material.
(Therefore the material is fittingly called “materia,”
as the object is the mother as above.) As I sought to
show above, the action of the infantile boring requires
only the strength and perseverance of an adult man and
suitable “material” in order to generate fire. If this is
so, it may be expected that analogous to our foregoing
case of onanistic boring the generation of fire originally
occurred as such an act of quasi-onanistic activity, objectively
expressed. The demonstration of this can never
be actually furnished, but it is thinkable that somewhere
traces of this original onanistic preliminary exercise of
fire production have been preserved. I have succeeded in
finding a passage in a very old monument of Hindoo
literature which contains this transition of the sexual
libido through the onanistic phase in the preparation of
fire. This passage is found in Brihadâranyaka-Upanishad:^[309]

“In truth, he (Âtman)^[310] was as large as a woman and a man,
when they embrace each other. This, his own self, he divided
into two parts, out of which husband and wife were formed.^[311]
With her, he copulated; from this humanity sprang. She, however,
pondered: ‘How may he unite with me after he has created
me from himself? Now I shall hide!’ Then she became a cow;
he, however, became a bull and mated with her. From that
sprang the horned cattle. Then she became a mare; he, however,
175became a stallion; she became a she-ass; he, an ass, and mated with
her. From these sprang the whole-hoofed animals. She became
a goat; he became a buck; she became an ewe; he became a ram,
and mated with her. Thus were created goats and sheep. Thus
it happened that all that mates, even down to the ants, he created—then
he perceived: ‘Truly I myself am Creation, for I have
created the whole world!’ Thereupon he rubbed his hands (held
before the mouth) so that he brought forth fire from his mouth,
as from the mother womb, and from his hands.”

We meet here a peculiar myth of creation which requires
a psychologic interpretation. In the beginning the
libido was undifferentiated and bisexual;^[312] this was followed
by differentiation into a male and a female component.
From then on man knows what he is. Now
follows a gap in the coherence of the thought where
belongs that very resistance which we have postulated
above for the explanation of the urge for sublimation.
Next follows the onanistic act of rubbing or boring (here
finger-sucking) transferred from the sexual zone, from
which proceeds the production of fire.^[313] The libido here
leaves its characteristic manifestation as sexual function
and regresses to the presexual stage, where, in conformity
with the above explanation, it occupies one of the preliminary
stages of sexuality, thereby producing, in the
view expressed in the Upanishad, the first human art,
and from there, as suggested by Kuhn’s idea of the root
“manth,” perhaps the higher intellectual activity in general.
This course of development is not strange to the
psychiatrist, for it is a well-known psychopathological fact
that onanism and excessive activity of phantasy are very
closely related. (The sexualizing-autonomizing of the
176mind through autoerotism^[314] is so familiar a fact that
examples of that are superfluous.) The course of the
libido, as we may conclude from these studies, originally
proceeded in a similar manner as in the child, only in a
reversed sequence. The sexual act was pushed out of its
proper zone and was transferred into the analogous
mouth zone^[315]—the mouth receiving the significance of the
female genitals; the hand and the fingers, respectively, receiving
the phallic meaning.^[316] In this manner the regressively
reoccupied activity of the presexual stage is invested
with the sexual significance, which, indeed, it already
possessed, in part, before, but in a wholly different sense.
Certain functions of the presexual stage are found to be
permanently suitable, and, therefore, are retained later
on as sexual functions. Thus, for example, the mouth
zone is retained as of erotic importance, meaning that its
valuation is permanently fixed. Concerning the mouth,
we know that it also has a sexual meaning among animals,
inasmuch as, for example, stallions bite mares in the sexual
act; also, cats, cocks, etc. A second significance of the
mouth is as an instrument of speech, it serves essentially
in the production of the mating call, which mostly represents
the developed tones of the animal kingdom. As to
the hand, we know that it has the important significance
of the contrectation organ (for example, among frogs).
The frequent erotic use of the hand among monkeys is
well known. If there exists a resistance against the real
sexuality, then the accumulated libido is most likely to
cause a hyperfunction of those collaterals which are most
adapted to compensate for the resistance, that is to say,
177the nearest functions which serve for the introduction of
the act;^[317] on one side the function of the hand, on the
other that of the mouth. The sexual act, however, against
which the opposition is directed is replaced by a similar
act of the presexual stage, the classic case being either
finger-sucking or boring. Just as among apes the foot
can on occasions take the place of the hand, so the child
is often uncertain in the choice of the object to suck, and
puts the big toe in the mouth instead of the finger. This
last movement belongs to a Hindoo rite, only the big toe
was not put in the mouth, but held against the eye.^[318]
Through the sexual significance of the hand and mouth
these organs, which in the presexual stage served to obtain
pleasure, are invested with a procreating power
which is identical with the above-mentioned destination,
which aims at the external object, because it concerns the
sexual or creating libido. When, through the actual
preparation of fire, the sexual character of the libido employed
in that is fulfilled, then the mouth zone remains
without adequate expression; only the hand has now
reached its real, purely human goal in its first art.

The mouth has, as we saw, a further important function,
which has just as much sexual relation to the object
as the hand, that is to say, the production of the mating
call. In opening up the autoerotic ring (hand-mouth),^[319]
where the phallic hand became the fire-producing tool,
the libido which was directed to the mouth zone was
obliged to seek another path of functioning, which naturally
was found in the already existing love call. The
excess of libido entering here must have had the usual
178results, namely, the stimulation of the newly possessed
function; hence an elaboration of the mating call.

We know that from the primitive sounds human speech
has developed. Corresponding to the psychological situation,
it might be assumed that language owes its real
origin to this moment, when the impulse, repressed into
the presexual stage, turns to the external in order to find
an equivalent object there. The real thought as a conscious
activity is, as we saw in the first part of this book,
a thinking with positive determination towards the external
world, that is to say, a “speech thinking.” This
sort of thinking seems to have originated at that moment.
It is very remarkable that this view, which was won by
the path of reasoning, is again supported by old tradition
and other mythological fragments.

In Aitareyopanishad^[320] the following quotation is to
be found in the doctrine of the development of man:
“Being brooded-o’er, his mouth hatched out, like as an
egg; from out his mouth (came) speech, from speech, the
fire.” In Part II, where it is depicted how the newly
created objects entered man, it reads: “Fire, speech becoming,
entered in the mouth.” These quotations allow
us to plainly recognize the intimate connection between
fire and speech.^[321] In Brihadâranyaka-Upanishad is to be
found this passage:

“‘Yayñavalkya,’ thus he spake, ‘when after the death of this
man his speech entereth the fire, his breath into the wind, his eye
into the sun, etc.’”

A further quotation from the Brihadâranyaka-Upanishad
reads:

179“But when the sun is set, O Yayñavalkya, and the moon has
set, and the fire is extinguished, what then serves man as light?
Then speech serves him as light; then, by the light of speech
he sits, and moves, he carries on his work, and he returns home.
But when the sun is set, O Yayñavalkya, and the moon is set,
and the fire extinguished, and the voice is dumb, what then serves
man as light? Then he serves himself (Atman) as light; then,
by the light of himself, he sits and moves, carries on his work
and returns home.”

In this passage we notice that fire again stands in the
closest relation to speech. Speech itself is called a
“light,” which, in its turn, is reduced to the “light” of
the Atman, the creating psychic force, the libido. Thus
the Hindoo metapsychology conceives speech and fire
as emanations of the inner light from which we know
that it is libido. Speech and fire are its forms of manifestation,
the first human arts, which have resulted from
its transformation. This common psychologic origin
seems also to be indicated by certain results of philology.
The Indo-Germanic root bhâ designates the idea of “to
lighten, to shine.” This root is found in Greek, φάω,
φαίνω, φάος^[322]; in old Icelandic bán = white, in New
High German bohnen = to make shining. The same root
bhâ also designates “to speak”; it is found in Sanskrit
bhan = to speak, Armenian ban = word, in New High
German bann = to banish, Greek φᾱ-μί, ἔφαν, φấτις.^[323]
Latin fâ-ri, fânum.

The root bhelso, with the meanings “to ring, to bark,”
is found in Sanskrit bhas = to bark and bhâs = to talk,
180to speak; Lithuanian balsas = voice, tone. Really bhel-sô
= to be bright or luminous. Compare Greek φάλος =
bright, Lithuanian bálti = to become white, Middle High
German blasz = pale.

The root lâ, with the meaning of “to make sound, to
bark,” is found in Sanskrit las, lásati = to resound; and
las, lásati = to radiate, to shine.

The related root lesô, with the meaning “desire,” is
also found in Sanskrit las, lásati = to play; lash, láshati
= to desire. Greek λάσταυρος = lustful, Gothic lustus,
New High German Lust, Latin lascivus.

A further related root, lásô = to shine, to radiate, is
found in las, lásati = to radiate, to shine.

This group unites, as is evident, the meanings of “to
desire, to play, to radiate, and to sound.” A similar
archaic confluence of meanings in the primal libido symbolism
(as we are perhaps justified in calling it) is found
in that class of Egyptian words which are derived from
the closely related roots ben and bel and the reduplication
benben and belbel. The original significance of these
roots is “to burst forth, to emerge, to extrude, to well
out,” with the associated idea of bubbling, boiling and
roundness. Belbel, accompanied by the sign of the obelisk,
of originally phallic nature, means source of light.
The obelisk itself had besides the names of techenu and
men also the name benben, more rarely berber and
belbel.^[324] The libido symbolism makes clear this connection,
it seems to me.

The Indo-Germanic root vel, with the meaning “to
wave, to undulate” (fire), is found in Sanskrit ulunka
181= burning, Greek ἀλέα, Attic ἁλέα = warmth of the
sun, Gothic vulan = to undulate, Old High German and
Middle High German walm = heat, glow.

The related Indo-Germanic root vélkô, with the meaning
of “to lighten, to glow,” is found in Sanskrit ulkă =
firebrand, Greek Ϝελχᾶνος = Vulcan. This same root
vel means also “to sound”; in Sanskrit vâní = tone, song,
music. Tschech volati = to call.

The root svénô = to sound, to ring, is found in Sanskrit
svan, svánati = to rustle, to sound; Zend qanañt,
Latin sonâre, Old Iranian senm, Cambrian sain, Latin
sonus, Anglo-Saxon svinsian = to resound. The related
root svénos = noise, sound, is found in Vedic svánas =
noise, Latin sonor, sonorus. A further related root is
svonós = tone, noise; in Old Iranian son = word.

The root své (n), locative svéni, dative sunéi, means
sun; in Zend qeñg = sun. (Compare above svénô, Zend
qanañt); Gothic sun-na, sunnô.^[325] Here Goethe has preceded
us:

“The sun orb sings in emulation,
’Mid brother-spheres, his ancient round:
His path predestined through Creation,
He ends with step of thunder sound.”
—Faust. Part I.

“Hearken! Hark! the hours careering!
Sounding loud to spirit-hearing,
See the new-born Day appearing!
Rocky portals jarring shatter,
Phœbus’ wheels in rolling clatter,
With a crash the Light draws near!
Pealing rays and trumpet-blazes,
Eye is blinded, ear amazes;
182The Unheard can no one hear!
Slip within each blossom-bell,
Deeper, deeper, there to dwell,—
In the rocks, beneath the leaf!
If it strikes you, you are deaf.”
—Faust. Part II.

We also must not forget the beautiful verse of Hölderlin:

“Where art thou? Drunken, my soul dreams
Of all thy rapture. Yet even now I hearken
As full of golden tones the radiant sun youth
Upon his heavenly lyre plays his even song
To the echoing woods and hills.”

Just as in archaic speech fire and the speech sounds
(the mating call, music) appear as forms of emanation
of the libido, thus light and sound entering the psyche become
one: libido.

Manilius expresses it in his beautiful verses:

“Quid mirum noscere mundum
Si possunt homines, quibus est et mundus in ipsis
Exemplumque dei quisque est in imagine parva?
An quoquam genitos nisi cælo credere fas est
Esse homines?
Stetit unus in arcem
Erectus capitis victorque ad sidera mittit sidereos oculos.”^[326]

The idea of the Sanskrit têjas suggests the fundamental
significance of the libido for the conception of the world
in general. I am indebted to Dr. Abegg, in Zurich, a
183thorough Sanskrit scholar, for the compilation of the
eight meanings of this word.

Têjas signifies:

1. Sharpness, cutting edge.

2. Fire, splendor, light, glow, heat.

3. Healthy appearance, beauty.

4. The fiery and color-producing power of the human
organism (thought to be in the bile).

5. Power, energy, vital force.

6. Passionate nature.

7. Mental, also magic, strength; influence, position,
dignity.

8. Sperma.

This gives us a dim idea of how, for primitive
thought, the so-called objective world was, and had to be,
a subjective image. To this thought must be applied the
words of the “Chorus Mysticus”:

“All that is perishable
Is only an allegory.”

The Sanskrit word for fire is agnis (the Latin ignis);^[327]
the fire personified is the god Agni, the divine mediator,^[328]
whose symbol has certain points of contact with that of
Christ. In Avesta and in the Vedas the fire is the messenger
of the gods. In the Christian mythology certain
parts are closely related with the myth of Agni. Daniel
speaks of the three men in the fiery furnace:

“Then Nebuchadnezar, the King, was astonished, and rose
up in haste and spake, and said unto his counsellors: ‘Did not
we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire?’

184“They answered and said: ‘True, O King!’

“He answered and said: ‘Lo, I see four men loose, walking
in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of
the fourth is like the Son of God.’”

In regard to that the “Biblia pauperum” observes
(according to an old German incunabulum of 1471):

“One reads in the third chapter of the prophet Daniel that
Nebuchadnezar, the King, caused three men to be placed in a
glowing furnace and that the king often went there, looked in,
and that he saw with the three, a fourth, who was like the Son
of God. The three signify for us, the Holy Trinity and the
fourth, the unity of the being. Christ, too, in His explanation
designated the person of the Trinity and the unity of the being.”

According to this mystic interpretation, the legend of
the three men in the fiery furnace appears as a magic
fire ceremony by means of which the Son of God reveals
himself. The Trinity is brought together with the unity,
or, in other words, through coitus a child is produced.
The glowing furnace (like the glowing tripod in
“Faust”) is a mother symbol, where the children are
produced.^[329] The fourth in the fiery furnace appears as
Christ, the Son of God, who has become a visible God
in the fire. The mystic trinity and unity are sexual symbols.
(Compare with that the many references in Inman:
“Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism.”) It
is said of the Saviour of Israel (the Messiah) and of his
enemies, Isaiah x:17:

“And the light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One
for a flame.”

In a hymn of the Syrian Ephrem it is said of Christ:
“Thou who art all fire, have mercy upon me.”

185Agni is the sacrificial flame, the sacrificer, and the sacrificed,
as Christ himself. Just as Christ left behind his
redeeming blood, φάρμακον ἀθανασίας,^[330] in the stimulating
wine, so Agni is the Soma, the holy drink of inspiration,
the mead of immortality.^[331] Soma and Fire
are entirely identical in Hindoo literature, so that in
Soma we easily rediscover the libido symbol, through
which a series of apparently paradoxical qualities of the
Soma are immediately explained. As the old Hindoos
recognized in fire an emanation of the inner libido fire,
so too they recognized, in the intoxicating drink (Firewater,
Soma-Agni, as rain and fire), an emanation of
libido. The Vedic definition of Soma as seminal fluid
confirms this interpretation.^[332] The Soma significance of
fire, similar to the significance of the body of Christ in the
Last Supper (compare the Passover lamb of the Jews,
baked in the form of a cross), is explained by the psychology
of the presexual stage, where the libido was still
in part the function of nutrition. The “Soma” is the
“nourishing drink,” the mythological characterization of
which runs parallel to fire in its origin; therefore, both are
united in Agni. The drink of immortality was stirred by
the Hindoo gods like fire. Through the retreat of the
libido into the presexual stage it becomes clear why so
many gods were either defined sexually or were devoured.

As was shown by our discussion of fire preparation, the
fire tool did not receive its sexual significance as a later
addition, but the sexual libido was the motor power which
led to its discovery, so that the later teachings of the
186priests were nothing but confirmations of its actual origin.
Other primitive discoveries probably have acquired their
sexual symbolism in the same manner, being also derived
from the sexual libido.

In the previous statements, which were based on the
Pramantha of the Agni sacrifice, we have concerned ourselves
only with one significance of the word manthâmi
or mathnâmi, that is to say, with that which expresses
the movement of rubbing. As Kuhn shows, however, this
word also possesses the meaning of tearing off, taking
away by violence, robbing.^[333] As Kuhn points out, this
significance is already extant in the Vedic text. The
legend of its discovery always expresses the production of
fire as a robbery. (In this far it belongs to the motive
widely spread over the earth of the treasure difficult to
attain.) The fact that in many places and not alone in
India the preparation of fire is represented as having its
origin in robbery, seems to point to a widely spread
thought, according to which the preparation of fire was
something forbidden, something usurped or criminal,
which could be obtained only through stratagem or deeds
of violence (mostly through stratagem).^[334] When onanism
confronts the physician as a symptom it does so frequently
under the symbol of secret pilfering, or crafty
imposition, which always signifies the concealed fulfilment
of a forbidden wish.^[335] Historically, this train of
thought probably implies that the ritual preparation of
fire was employed with a magic purpose, and, therefore,
was pursued by official religions; then it became a ritual
mystery,^[336] guarded by the priests and surrounded with
187secrecy. The ritual laws of the Hindoos threaten with
severe punishment him who prepares fire in an incorrect
manner. The fact alone that something is mysterious
means the same as something done in concealment; that
which must remain secret, which one may not see nor do;
also something which is surrounded by severe punishment
of body and soul; therefore, presumably, something
forbidden which has received a license as a religious rite.
After all has been said about the genesis of the preparation
of fire, it is no longer difficult to guess what is the
forbidden thing; it is onanism. When I stated before
that it might be lack of satisfaction which breaks up the
autoerotic ring of the displaced sexual activity transferred
to the body itself, and thus opens wider fields of culture,
I did not mention that this loosely closed ring of the displaced
onanistic activity could be much more firmly closed,
when man makes the other great discovery, that of true
onanism.^[337] With that the activity is started in the proper
place, and this, under certain circumstances, may mean a
satisfaction sufficient for a long time, but at the expense
of cheating sexuality of its real purpose. It is a fraud
upon the natural development of things, because all the
dynamic forces which can and should serve the development
of culture are withdrawn from it through onanism,
since, instead of the displacement, a regression to the local
sexual takes place, which is precisely the opposite of that
which is desirable. Psychologically, however, onanism is
a discovery of a significance not to be undervalued. One
is protected from fate, since no sexual need then has the
power to give one up to life. For with onanism one has
188the greatest magic in one’s hands; one needs only to
phantasy, and with that to masturbate, then one possesses
all the pleasure of the world, and is no longer compelled
to conquer the world of one’s desires through hard labor
and wrestling with reality.^[338] Aladdin rubs his lamp and
the obedient genii stand at his bidding; thus the fairy tale
expresses the great psychologic advantage of the easy regression
to the local sexual satisfaction. Aladdin’s symbol
subtly confirms the ambiguity of the magic fire
preparation.

The close relation of the generation of fire to the onanistic
act is illustrated by a case, the knowledge of which I
owe to Dr. Schmid, in Cery, that of an imbecile peasant
youth who set many incendiary fires. At one of these
conflagrations he drew suspicion to himself by his behavior.
He stood with his hands in his trouser pockets
in the door of an opposite house and gazed with apparent
delight at the fire. Under examination in the insane
asylum, he described the fire in great detail, and made
suspicious movements in his trouser pockets with his
hands. The physical examination undertaken at once
showed that he had masturbated. Later he confessed
that he had masturbated at the time when he had enjoyed
the fire which he had enkindled himself.

The preparation of fire in itself is a perfectly ordinary
useful custom, employed everywhere for many centuries,
which in itself involved nothing more mysterious than
eating and drinking. However, there was always a tendency
from time to time to prepare fire in a ceremonious
and mysterious manner (exactly as with ritual eating and
189drinking), which was to be carried out in an exactly prescribed
way and from which no one dared differ. This
mysterious tendency associated with the technique is the
second path in the onanistic regression, always present
by the side of culture. The strict rules applied to it,
the zeal of the ceremonial preparations and the religious
awe of the mysteries next originate from this source;
the ceremonial, although apparently irrational, is an extremely
ingenious institution from the psychologic standpoint,
for it represents a substitute for the possibility of
onanistic regression accurately circumscribed by law.
The law cannot apply to the content of the ceremony, for
it is really quite indifferent for the ritual act, whether it
is carried out in this way or in that way. On the contrary,
it is very essential whether the restrained libido is
discharged through a sterile onanism or transposed into
the path of sublimation. These severe measures of protection
apply primarily to onanism.^[339]

I am indebted to Freud for a further important reference
to the onanistic nature of the fire theft, or rather
the motive of the treasure difficult of attainment (to
which fire theft belongs). Mythology contains repeated
formulas which read approximately as follows: The
treasure must be plucked or torn off from a taboo tree
(Paradise tree, Hesperides); this is a forbidden and dangerous
act. The clearest example of this is the old barbaric
custom in the service of Diana of Aricia: only he
can become a priest of the goddess who, in her sacred
grove, dares to tear off (“abzureissen”) a bough. The
tearing off has been retained in vulgar speech (besides
190“abreiben,” rubbing) as a symbol of the act of onanism.
Thus “reiben,” to rub, is like “reissen,” to break off,
both of which are contained in manthami and united
apparently only through the myth of the fire theft bound
up in the act of onanism in a deeper stratum wherein
“reiben,” properly speaking, “reissen,” is employed, but
in a transferred sense. Therefore, it might perhaps be
anticipated that in the deepest stratum, namely, the incestuous,
which precedes the autoerotic stage,^[340] the two
meanings coincide, which, through lack of mythological
tradition, can perhaps be traced through etymology only.

191

CHAPTER IV
THE UNCONSCIOUS ORIGIN OF THE HERO

Prepared by the previous chapters, we approach the
personification of the libido in the form of a conqueror,
a hero or a demon. With this, symbolism leaves the impersonal
and neuter realm, which characterizes the astral
and meteorologic symbol, and takes human form: the
figure of a being changing from sorrow to joy, from joy
to sorrow, and which, like the sun, sometimes stands in
its zenith, sometimes is plunged in darkest night, and
arises from this very night to new splendor.^[341] Just as the
sun, guided by its own internal laws, ascends from morn
till noon, and passing beyond the noon descends towards
evening, leaving behind its splendor, and then sinks completely
into the all-enveloping night, thus, too, does mankind
follow his course according to immutable laws, and
also sinks, after his course is completed, into night, in
order to rise again in the morning to a new cycle in his
children. The symbolic transition from sun to man is
easy and practicable. The third and last creation of
Miss Miller’s also takes this course. She calls this piece
“Chiwantopel,” a “hypnagogic poem.” She gives us the
following information about the circumstances surrounding
the origin of this phantasy:

“After an evening of care and anxiety, I lay down to sleep
at about half past eleven. I felt excited and unable to sleep,
192although I was very tired. There was no light in the room. I
closed my eyes, and then I had the feeling that something was
about to happen. The sensation of a general relaxation came
over me, and I remained as passive as possible. Lines appeared
before my eyes,—sparks and shining spirals, followed by a kaleidoscopic
review of recent trivial occurrences.”

The reader will regret with me that we cannot know
the reason for her cares and anxieties. It would have
been of great importance for what follows to have information
on this point. This gap in our knowledge is the
more to be deplored because, between the first poem in
1898 and the time of the phantasy here discussed (1902),
four whole years have passed. All information is lacking
regarding this period, during which the great problem
surely survived in the unconscious. Perhaps this lack has
its advantages in that our interest is not diverted from
the universal applicability of the phantasy here produced
by sympathy in regard to the personal fate of the author.
Therefore, something is obviated which often prevents
the analyst in his daily task from looking away from the
tedious toil of detail to that wider relation which reveals
each neurotic conflict to be involved with human fate as a
whole.

The condition depicted by the author here corresponds
to such a one as usually precedes an intentional somnambulism^[342]
often described by spiritualistic mediums. A certain
inclination to listen to these low nocturnal voices
must be assumed; otherwise such fine and hardly perceptible
inner experiences pass unnoticed. We recognize
in this listening a current of the libido leading inward
193and beginning to flow towards a still invisible, mysterious
goal. It seems that the libido has suddenly discovered an
object in the depths of the unconscious which powerfully
attracts it. The life of man, turned wholly to the external
by nature, does not ordinarily permit such introversion;
there must, therefore, be surmised a certain exceptional
condition, that is to say, a lack of external objects, which
compels the individual to seek a substitute for them in his
own soul. It is, however, difficult to imagine that this
rich world has become too poor to offer an object for
the love of human atoms; nor can the world and its
objects be held accountable for this lack. It offers boundless
opportunities for every one. It is rather the incapacity
to love which robs mankind of his possibilities.
This world is empty to him alone who does not understand
how to direct his libido towards objects, and to
render them alive and beautiful for himself, for Beauty
does not indeed lie in things, but in the feeling that we
give to them. That which compels us to create a substitute
for ourselves is not the external lack of objects,
but our incapacity to lovingly include a thing outside of
ourselves. Certainly the difficulties of the conditions of
life and the adversities of the struggle for existence may
oppress us, yet even adverse external situations would not
hinder the giving out of the libido; on the contrary, they
may spur us on to the greatest exertions, whereby we
bring our whole libido into reality. Real difficulties alone
will never be able to force the libido back permanently
to such a degree as to give rise, for example, to a neurosis.
The conflict, which is the condition of every neurosis,
194is lacking. The resistance, which opposes its unwillingness
to the will, alone has the power to produce
that pathogenic introversion which is the starting point of
every psychogenic disturbance. The resistance against
loving produces the inability to love. Just as the normal
libido is comparable to a steady stream which pours its
waters broadly into the world of reality, so the resistance,
dynamically considered, is comparable, not so much to a
rock rearing up in the river bed which is flooded over
or surrounded by the stream, as to a backward flow
towards the source. A part of the soul desires the outer
object; another part, however, harks back to the subjective
world, where the airy and fragile palaces of
phantasy beckon. One can assume the dualism of the
human will for which Bleuler, from the psychiatric point
of view, has coined the word “ambitendency”^[343] as something
generally present, bearing in mind that even
the most primitive motor impulse is in opposition; as,
for example, in the act of extension, the flexor muscles
also become innervated. This normal ambitendency,
however, never leads to an inhibition or prevention of the
intended act, but is the indispensable preliminary requirement
for its perfection and coördination. For a resistance
disturbing to this act to arise from this harmony of
finely attuned opposition an abnormal plus or minus
would be needed on one or the other side. The resistance
originates from this added third.^[344] This applies also
to the duality of the will, from which so many difficulties
arise for mankind. The abnormal third frees the pair
of opposites, which are normally most intimately united,
195and causes their manifestation in the form of separate
tendencies; it is only thus that they become willingness
and unwillingness, which interfere with each other. The
Bhagavad-Gîtâ says, “Be thou free of the pairs of
opposites.”^[345] The harmony thus becomes disharmony.
It cannot be my task here to investigate whence the unknown
third arises, and what it is. Taken at the roots
in the case of our patients, the “nuclear complex”
(Freud) reveals itself as the incest problem. The sexual
libido regressing to the parents appears as the incest tendency.
The reason this path is so easily travelled is due
to the enormous indolence of mankind, which will relinquish
no object of the past, but will hold it fast forever.
The “sacrilegious backward grasp” of which Nietzsche
speaks reveals itself, stripped of its incest covering,
as an original passive arrest of the libido in its first object
of childhood. This indolence is also a passion, as La
Rochefoucauld^[346] has brilliantly expressed it:

“Of all passions, that which is least known to ourselves is
indolence: it is the most ardent and malignant of them all, although
its violence may be insensible, and the injuries it causes
may be hidden; if we will consider its power attentively, we will
see that it makes itself, upon all occasions, mistress of our sentiments,
of our interests, and of our pleasures; it is the anchor,
which has the power to arrest the largest vessels; it is a calm more
dangerous to the most important affairs than rocks and the worst
tempest. The repose of indolence is a secret charm of the soul
which suddenly stops the most ardent pursuits and the firmest
resolutions; finally to give the true idea of this passion, one
must say that indolence is like a beatitude of the soul which
consoles it for all its losses and takes the place of all its possessions.”

196This dangerous passion, belonging above all others to
primitive man, appears under the hazardous mask of the
incest symbol, from which the incest fear must drive us
away, and which must be conquered, in the first place,
under the image of the “terrible mother.”^[347] It is the
mother of innumerable evils, not the least of which are
neurotic troubles. For, especially from the fogs of the
arrested remnants of the libido, arise the harmful phantasmagoria
which so veil reality that adaptation becomes
almost impossible. However, we will not investigate any
further in this place the foundations of the incest phantasies.
The preliminary suggestion of my purely psychologic
conception of the incest problem may suffice. We
are here only concerned with the question whether resistance
which leads to introversion in our author signifies
a conscious external difficulty or not. If it were an external
difficulty, then, indeed, the libido would be violently
dammed back, and would produce a flood of phantasies,
which can best be designated as schemes, that is to say,
plans as to how the obstacles could be overcome. They
would be very concrete ideas of reality which seek to pave
the way for solutions. It would be a strenuous meditation,
indeed, which would be more likely to lead to anything
rather than to a hypnagogic poem. The passive
condition depicted above in no way fits in with a real external
obstacle, but, precisely through its passive submission,
it indicates a tendency which doubtless scorns real
solutions and prefers phantastic substitutes. Ultimately
and essentially we are, therefore, dealing with an internal
conflict, perhaps after the manner of those earlier conflicts
197which led to the two first unconscious creations.
We, therefore, are forced to conclude that the external
object cannot be loved, because a predominant amount
of libido prefers a phantastic object, which must be
brought up from the depths of the unconscious as a compensation
for the missing reality.

The visionary phenomena, produced in the first stages
of introversion, are grouped among the well-known phenomena^[348]
of hypnagogic vision. They form, as I explained
in an earlier paper, the foundation of the true
visions of the symbolic autorevelations of the libido, as
we may now express it.

Miss Miller continues:

“Then I had the impression that some communication was
immediately impending. It seemed to me as if there were re-echoed
in me the words, ‘Speak, O Lord, for Thy servant listens;
open Thou mine ears!’”

This passage very clearly describes the intention; the
expression “communication” is even a current term in
spiritualistic circles. The Biblical words contain a clear
invocation or “prayer,” that is to say, a wish (libido)
directed towards divinity (the unconscious complex).
The prayer refers to Samuel, i:3, where Samuel at night
was three times called by God, but believed that it was Eli
calling, until the latter informed him that it was God
himself who spoke, and that he must answer if his name
was called again—“Speak, O Lord, for Thy Servant
hears!” The dreamer uses these words really in an inverse
sense, namely, in order to produce God with them.
198With that she directs her desires, her libido, into the
depths of her unconscious.

We know that, although individuals are widely separated
by the differences in the contents of their consciousness,
they are closely alike in their unconscious psychology.
It is a significant impression for one working in
practical psychoanalysis when he realizes how uniform
are the typical unconscious complexes. Difference first
arises from individualization. This fact gives to an essential
portion of the Schopenhauer and Hartmann
philosophies a deep psychologic justification.^[349] The very
evident uniformity of the unconscious mechanism serves
as a psychologic foundation for these philosophic views.
The unconscious contains the differentiated remnants of
the earlier psychologic functions overcome by the individual
differentiation. The reaction and products of the
animal psyche are of a generally diffused uniformity and
solidity, which, among men, may be discovered apparently
only in traces. Man appears as something extraordinarily
individual in contrast with animals.

This might be a tremendous delusion, because we have
the appropriate tendency always to recognize only the
difference of things. This is demanded by the psychologic
adaptation which, without the most minute differentiation
of the impressions, would be absolutely impossible.
In opposition to this tendency we have ever the
greatest difficulty in recognizing in their common relations
the things with which we are occupied in every-day
life. This recognition becomes much easier with
things which are more remote from us. For example, it
199is almost impossible for a European to differentiate the
faces in a Chinese throng, although the Chinese have just
as individual facial formations as the Europeans, but the
similarity of their strange facial expression is much more
evident to the remote onlooker than their individual differences.
But when we live among the Chinese then the
impression of their uniformity disappears more and
more, and finally the Chinese become individuals also.
Individuality belongs to those conditional actualities which
are greatly overrated theoretically on account of their
practical significance. It does not belong to those overwhelmingly
clear and therefore universally obtrusive general
facts upon which a science must primarily be founded.
The individual content of consciousness is, therefore, the
most unfavorable object imaginable for psychology, because
it has veiled the universally valid until it has become
unrecognizable. The essence of consciousness is the
process of adaptation which takes place in the most
minute details. On the other hand, the unconscious is the
generally diffused, which not only binds the individuals
among themselves to the race, but also unites them backwards
with the peoples of the past and their psychology.
Thus the unconscious, surpassing the individual in its
generality, is, in the first place, the object of a true psychology,
which claims not to be psychophysical.

Man as an individual is a suspicious phenomenon, the
right of whose existence from a natural biological standpoint
could be seriously contested, because, from this
point of view, the individual is only a race atom, and
has a significance only as a mass constituent. The ethical
200standpoint, however, gives to the human being an individual
tendency separating him from the mass, which, in
the course of centuries, led to the development of personality,
hand in hand with which developed the hero
cult, and has led to the modern individualistic cult of
personages. The attempts of rationalistic theology to
keep hold of the personal Jesus as the last and most
precious remnant of the divinity which has vanished beyond
the power of the imagination corresponds to this
tendency. In this respect the Roman Catholic Church
was more practical, because she met the general need of
the visible, or at least historically believed hero, through
the fact that she placed upon the throne of worship a
small but clearly perceptible god of the world, namely,
the Roman Pope, the Pater patrum, and at the same time
the Pontifex Maximus of the invisible upper or inner God.
The sensuous demonstrability of God naturally supports
the religious process of introversion, because the human
figure essentially facilitates the transference, for it is not
easy to imagine something lovable or venerable in a spiritual
being. This tendency, everywhere present, has been
secretly preserved in the rationalistic theology with its
Jesus historically insisted upon. This does not mean that
men loved the visible God; they love him, not as he is,
for he is merely a man, and when the pious wished to
love humanity they could go to their neighbors and their
enemies to love them. Mankind wishes to love in God
only their ideas, that is to say, the ideas which they project
into God. By that they wish to love their unconscious,
that is, that remnant of ancient humanity and the centuries-old
201past in all people, namely, the common property
left behind from all development which is given to all
men, like the sunshine and the air. But in loving this
inheritance they love that which is common to all. Thus
they turn back to the mother of humanity, that is to say,
to the spirit of the race, and regain in this way something
of that connection and of that mysterious and irresistible
power which is imparted by the feeling of belonging
to the herd. It is the problem of Antæus, who
preserves his gigantic strength only through contact with
mother earth. This temporary withdrawal into one’s self,
which, as we have already seen, signifies a regression to
the childish bond to the parent, seems to act favorably,
within certain limits, in its effect upon the psychologic
condition of the individual. It is in general to be expected
that the two fundamental mechanisms of the psychoses,
transference and introversion, are to a wide
extent extremely appropriate methods of normal reaction
against complexes; transference as a means of escaping
from the complex into reality; introversion as a means of
detaching one’s self from reality through the complex.

After we have informed ourselves about the general
purposes of prayer, we are prepared to hear more about
the vision of our dreamer. After the prayer, “the head
of a sphinx with an Egyptian headdress” appeared, only
to vanish quickly. Here the author was disturbed, so
that for a moment she awoke. This vision recalls the
previously mentioned phantasy of the Egyptian statue,
whose rigid gesture is entirely in place here as a phenomenon
of the so-called functional category. The light
202stages of the hypnosis are designated technically as
“Engourdissement” (stiffening). The word Sphinx in
the whole civilized world signifies the same as riddle: a
puzzling creature who proposes riddles, like the Sphinx
of Oedipus, standing at the portal of his fate like a
symbolic proclamation of the inevitable. The Sphinx is
a semi-theriomorphic representation of that “mother
image” which may be designated as the “terrible
mother,” of whom many traces are found in mythology.
This interpretation is correct for Oedipus. Here the
question is opened. The objection will be raised that
nothing except the word “Sphinx” justifies the allusion
to the Sphinx of Oedipus. On account of the lack of
subjective materials, which in the Miller text are wholly
lacking in regard to this vision, an individual interpretation
would also be excluded. The suggestion
of an “Egyptian” phantasy (Part I, Chapter II) is
entirely insufficient to be employed here. Therefore we
are compelled, if we wish to venture at all upon an
understanding of this vision, to direct ourselves—perhaps
in all too daring a manner—to the available ethnographic
material under the assumption that the unconscious of the
present-day man coins its symbols as was done in the most
remote past. The Sphinx, in its traditional form, is a half-human,
half-animal creature, which we must, in part,
interpret in the way that is applicable to such phantastic
products. The reader is directed to the deductions in
the first part of this volume where the theriomorphic representations
of the libido were discussed. This manner
of representation is very familiar to the analyst, through
203the dreams and phantasies of neurotics (and of normal
men). The impulse is readily represented as an animal,
as a bull, horse, dog, etc. One of my patients, who had
questionable relations with women, and who began the
treatment with the fear, so to speak, that I would surely
forbid him his sexual adventures, dreamed that I (his
physician) very skilfully speared to the wall a strange
animal, half pig, half crocodile. Dreams swarm with such
theriomorphic representations of the libido. Mixed
beings, such as are in this dream, are not rare. A series
of very beautiful illustrations, where especially the lower
half of the animal was represented theriomorphically,
has been furnished by Bertschinger.^[350] The libido which
was represented theriomorphically is the “animal” sexuality
which is in a repressed state. The history of repression,
as we have seen, goes back to the incest problem,
where the first motives for moral resistance against sexuality
display themselves. The objects of the repressed
libido are, in the last degree, the images of father and
mother; therefore the theriomorphic symbols, in so far
as they do not symbolize merely the libido in general,
have a tendency to present father and mother (for example,
father represented by a bull, mother by a cow).
From these roots, as we pointed out earlier, might probably
arise the theriomorphic attributes of the Divinity.
In as far as the repressed libido manifests itself under
certain conditions, as anxiety, these animals are generally
of a horrible nature. In consciousness we are attached
by all sacred bonds to the mother; in the dream she pursues
us as a terrible animal. The Sphinx, mythologically
204considered, is actually a fear animal, which reveals distinct
traits of a mother derivate. In the Oedipus legend
the Sphinx is sent by Hera, who hates Thebes on account
of the birth of Bacchus; because Oedipus conquers the
Sphinx, which is nothing but fear of the mother, he must
marry Jocasta, his mother, for the throne and the hand
of the widowed queen of Thebes belonged to him who
freed the land from the plague of the Sphinx. The
genealogy of the Sphinx is rich in allusions to the problem
touched upon here. She is a daughter of Echnida, a mixed
being; a beautiful maiden above, a hideous serpent below.
This double creature corresponds to the picture of the
mother; above, the human, lovely and attractive half;
below, the horrible animal half, converted into a fear
animal through the incest prohibition. Echnida is derived
from the All-mother, the mother Earth, Gaea, who,
with Tartaros, the personified underworld (the place of
horrors), brought her forth. Echnida herself is the
mother of all terrors, of the Chimaera, Scylla, Gorgo, of
the horrible Cerberus, of the Nemean Lion, and of the
eagle who devoured the liver of Prometheus; besides this
she gave birth to a number of dragons. One of her sons
is Orthrus, the dog of the monstrous Geryon, who was
killed by Hercules. With this dog, her son, Echnida, in
incestuous intercourse, produced the Sphinx. These materials
will suffice to characterize that amount of libido
which led to the Sphinx symbol. If, in spite of the lack
of subjective material, we may venture to draw an inference
from the Sphinx symbol of our author, we must say
that the Sphinx represents an original incestuous amount
205of libido detached from the bond to the mother. Perhaps
it is better to postpone this conclusion until we have
examined the following visions.

After Miss Miller had concentrated herself again, the
vision developed further:

“Suddenly an Aztec appeared, absolutely clear in every detail;
the hands spread open, with large fingers, the head in profile,
armored, headdress similar to the feather ornaments of the American
Indian. The whole was somewhat suggestive of Mexican
sculpture.”

The ancient Egyptian character of the Sphinx is replaced
here by American antiquity—by the Aztec. The
essential idea is neither Egypt nor Mexico, for the two
could not be interchanged; but it is the subjective factor
which the dreamer produces from her own past. I have
frequently observed in the analysis of Americans that
certain unconscious complexes, i.e. repressed sexuality,
are represented by the symbol of a Negro or an Indian;
for example, when a European tells in his dream, “Then
came a ragged, dirty individual,” for Americans and for
those who live in the tropics it is a Negro. When with
Europeans it is a vagabond or a criminal, with Americans
it is a Negro or an Indian which represents the individual’s
own repressed sexual personality, and the one
considered inferior. It is also desirable to go into the
particulars of this vision, as there are various things
worthy of notice. The feather cap, which naturally had
to consist of eagles’ feathers, is a sort of magic charm.
The hero assumes at the same time something of the sun-like
character of this bird when he adorns himself with
206its feathers, just as the courage and strength of the enemy
are appropriated in swallowing his heart or taking his
scalp. At the same time, the feather crest is a crown
which is equivalent to the rays of the sun. The historical
importance of the Sun identification has been seen in the
first part.^[351]

Especial interest attaches to the hand, which is described
as “open,” and the fingers, which are described
as “large.” It is significant that it is the hand upon which
the distinct emphasis falls. One might rather have expected
a description of the facial expression. It is well
known that the gesture of the hand is significant; unfortunately,
we know nothing about that here. Nevertheless,
a parallel phantasy might be mentioned, which also puts
the emphasis upon hands. A patient in a hypnagogic
condition saw his mother painted on a wall, like a painting
in a Byzantine church. She held one hand up, open wide,
with fingers spread apart. The fingers were very large,
swollen into knobs on the ends, and each surrounded by
a small halo. The immediate association with this picture
was the fingers of a frog with sucking discs at the
ends. Then the similarity to the penis. The ancient setting
of this mother picture is also of importance. Evidently
the hand had, in this phantasy, a phallic meaning.
This interpretation was confirmed by a further very
remarkable phantasy of the same patient. He saw something
like a “sky-rocket” ascending from his mother’s
hand, which at a closer survey becomes a shining bird
with golden wings, a golden pheasant, as it then occurs
to his mind. We have seen in the previous chapter that
207the hand has actually a phallic, generative meaning, and
that this meaning plays a great part in the production
of fire. In connection with this phantasy, there is but one
observation to make: fire was bored with the hand; therefore
it comes from the hand; Agni, the fire, was worshipped
as a golden-winged bird.^[352] It is extremely significant
that it is the mother’s hand. I must deny myself
the temptation to enter more deeply into this. Let it be
sufficient to have pointed out the possible significance of
the hand of the Aztec by means of these parallel hand
phantasies. We have mentioned the mother suggestively
with the Sphinx. The Aztec taking the place of the
Sphinx points, through his suggestive hand, to parallel
phantasies in which the phallic hand really belongs to the
mother. Likewise we encounter an antique setting in
parallel phantasies. The significance of the antique,
which experience has shown to be the symbol for “infantile,”
is confirmed by Miss Miller in this connection in the
annotation to her phantasies, for she says:

“In my childhood, I took a special interest in the Aztec fragments
and in the history of Peru and of the Incas.”

Through the two analyses of children which have been
published we have attained an insight into the child’s
small world, and have seen what burning interests and
questions secretly surround the parents, and that the parents
are, for a long time, the objects of the greatest interest.^[353]
We are, therefore, justified in suspecting that
the antique setting applies to the “ancients,” that is to
say, the parents, and that consequently this Aztec has
208something of the father or mother in himself. Up to this
time indirect hints point only to the mother, which is
nothing remarkable in an American girl, because Americans,
as a result of the extreme detachment from the
father, are characterized by a most enormous mother
complex, which again is connected with the especial social
position of woman in the United States. This position
brings about a special masculinity among capable women,
which easily makes possible the symbolizing into a masculine
figure.^[354]

After this vision, Miss Miller felt that a name formed
itself “bit by bit,” which seemed to belong to this Aztec—“the
son of an Inca of Peru.” The name is “Chi-wan-to-pel.”
As the author intimated, something similar to
this belonged to her childish reminiscences. The act of
naming is, like baptism, something exceedingly important
for the creation of a personality, because, since olden
times, a magic power has been attributed to the name,
with which, for example, the spirit of the dead can be
conjured. To know the name of any one means, in
mythology, to have power over that one. As a well-known
example I mention the fairy tale of “Rumpelstilzchen.”
In an Egyptian myth, Isis robs the Sun god Rê permanently
of his power by compelling him to tell her his real
name. Therefore, to give a name means to give power,
invest with a definite personality.^[355] The author observed,
in regard to the name itself, that it reminded her very
much of the impressive name Popocatepetl, a name which
belongs to unforgettable school memories, and, to the
greatest indignation of the patient, very often emerges
209in an analysis in a dream or phantasy and brings with it
that same old joke which one heard in school, told oneself
and later again forgot. Although one might hesitate
to consider this unhallowed joke as of psychologic importance,
still one must inquire for the reason of its being.
One must also put, as a counter question, Why is it always
Popocatepetl and not the neighboring Iztaccihuatl, or
the even higher and just as clear Orizaba? The last has
certainly the more beautiful and more easily pronounced
name. Popocatepetl is impressive because of its onomatopoetic
name. In English the word is “to pop” (popgun),
which is here considered as onomatopoesy; in German
the words are Hinterpommern, Pumpernickel;
Bombe; Petarde (le pet = flatus). The frequent German
word Popo (Podex) does not indeed exist in English,
but flatus is designated as “to poop” in childish speech.
The act of defecation is often designated as “to pop.”
A joking name for the posterior part is “the bum.”
(Poop also means the rear end of a ship.) In French,
pouf! is onomatopoetic; pouffer = platzen (to explode),
la poupe = rear end of ship, le poupard = the baby in
arms, la poupée = doll. Poupon is a pet name for a
chubby-faced child. In Dutch pop, German Puppe and
Latin puppis = doll; in Plautus, however, it is also used
jokingly for the posterior part of the body; pupus means
child; pupula = girl, little dollie. The Greek word
ποππύζω designates a cracking, snapping or blowing
sound. It is used of kissing; by Theocritus also of the associated
noise of flute blowing. The etymologic parallels
show a remarkable relationship between the part of the
210body in question and the child. This relationship we will
mention here, only to let it drop at once, as this question
will claim our attention later.

One of my patients in his childhood had always connected
the act of defecation with a phantasy that his posterior
was a volcano and a violent eruption took place,
explosion of gases and gushings forth of lava. The
terms for the elemental occurrences of nature are
originally not at all poetical; one thinks, for example, of
the beautiful phenomenon of the meteor, which the German
language most unpoetically calls “Sternschnuppe”
(the smouldering wick of a star). Certain South American
Indians call the shooting star the “urine of the stars.”
According to the principle of the least resistance, expressions
are taken from the nearest source available. (For
example, the transference of the metonymic expression
of urination as Schiffens, “to rain.”)

Now it seems to be very obscure why the mystical
figure of Chiwantopel, whom Miss Miller, in a note,
compares to the control spirit of the spiritualistic medium,^[356]
is found in such a disreputable neighborhood that
his nature (name) was brought into relation with this
particular part of the body. In order to understand this
possibility, we must realize that when we produce from
the unconscious the first to be brought forth is the infantile
material long lost in memory. One must, therefore,
take the point of view of that time in which this infantile
material was still on the surface. If now a much-honored
object is related in the unconscious to the anus, then one
must conclude that something of a high valuation was
211expressed thereby. The question is only whether this
corresponds to the psychology of the child. Before we
enter upon this question, it must be stated that the anal
region is very closely connected with veneration. One
thinks of the traditional fæces of the Great Mogul. An
Oriental tale has the same to say of Christian knights,
who anointed themselves with the excrement of the pope
and cardinals in order to make themselves formidable.
A patient who is characterized by a special veneration
for her father had a phantasy that she saw her father
sitting upon the toilet in a dignified manner, and people
going past greeted him effusively.^[357] The association of
the anal relations by no means excludes high valuation or
esteem, as is shown by these examples, and as is easily
seen from the intimate connection of fæces and gold.^[358]
Here the most worthless comes into the closest relation
with the most valuable. This also happens in religious
valuations. I discovered (at that time to my great astonishment)
that a young patient, very religiously trained,
represented in a dream the Crucified on the bottom of a
blue-flowered chamber pot, namely, in the form of excrements.
The contrast is so enormous that one must assume
that the valuations of childhood must indeed be very
different from ours. This is actually the truth. Children
bring to the act of defecation and the products of this
an esteem and interest^[359] which later on is possible only
to the hypochondriac. We do not comprehend this interest
until we learn that the child very early connects
with it a theory of propagation.^[360] The libido afflux probably
accounts for the enormous interest in this act. The
212child sees that this is the way in which something is produced,
in which something comes out. The same child
whom I reported in the little brochure “Über Konflikte
der kindlichen Seele,” and who had a well-developed anal
theory of birth, like little Hans, whom Freud made known
to us, later contracted a habit of staying a long time on
the toilet. Once the father grew impatient, went to the
toilet and called, “Do come out of there; what are you
making?” Whereupon the answer came from within,
“A little wagon and two ponies.” The child was making
a little wagon and two ponies, that is to say, things which
at that time she especially wished for. In this way one
can make what one wishes, and the thing made is the
thing wished for. The child wishes earnestly for a doll
or, at heart, for a real child. (That is, the child practised
for his future biological task, and in the way in
which everything in general is produced he made the
doll^[361] himself as representative of the child or of the
thing wished for in general.^[362]) From a patient I have
learned a parallel phantasy of her childhood. In the
toilet there was a crevice in the wall. She phantasied that
from this crevice a fairy would come out and present
her with everything for which she wished. The “locus”
is known to be the place of dreams where much was
wished for and created which later would no longer be
suspected of having this place of origin. A pathological
phantasy in place here is told us by Lombroso,^[363] concerning
two insane artists. Each of them considered himself
God and the ruler of the world. They created or produced
the world by making it come forth from the rectum,
213just as the egg of birds originates in the egg canal. One
of these two artists was endowed with a true artistic
sense. He painted a picture in which he was just in the
act of creation; the world came forth from his anus; the
membrum was in full erection; he was naked, surrounded
by women, and with all insignia of his power. The excrement
is in a certain sense the thing wished for, and on that
account it receives the corresponding valuation. When I
first understood this connection, an observation made
long ago, and which disturbed me greatly because I never
rightly understood it, became clear to me. It concerned
an educated patient who, under very tragic circumstances,
had to be separated from her husband and child, and was
brought into the insane asylum. She exhibited a typical
apathy and slovenliness which was considered as
affective mental deterioration. Even at that time I
doubted this deterioration, and was inclined to regard
it as a secondary adjustment. I took especial pains to
ascertain how I could discover the existence of the affect
in this case. Finally, after more than three hours’ hard
work, I succeeded in finding a train of thought which suddenly
brought the patient into a completely adequate and
therefore strongly emotional state. At this moment the
affective connection with her was completely reëstablished.
That happened in the forenoon. When I returned
at the appointed time in the evening to the ward to
see her she had, for my reception, smeared herself from
head to foot with excrement, and cried laughingly, “Do I
please you so?” She had never done that before; it was
plainly destined for me. The impression which I received
214was one of a personal affront and, as a result of
this, I was convinced for years after of the affective deterioration
of such cases. Now we understand this act
as an infantile ceremony of welcome or a declaration of
love.

The origin of Chiwantopel, that is to say, an unconscious
personality, therefore means, in the sense of the
previous explanation, “I make, produce, invent him myself.”
It is a sort of human creation or birth by the anal
route. The first people were made from excrement, potter’s
earth, or clay. The Latin lutum, which really means
“moistened earth,” also has the transferred meaning of
dirt. In Plautus it is even a term of abuse, something
like “You scum.” The birth from the anus also reminds
us of the motive of “throwing behind oneself.” A well-known
example is the oracular command, which Deucalion
and Pyrrha, who were the only survivors from the
great flood, received. They were to throw behind them
the bones of the great mother. They then threw behind
them stones, from which mankind sprang. According to
a tradition, the Dactyli in a similar manner sprang from
dust, which the nymph Anchiale threw behind her. There
is also humorous significance attached to the anal products.
The excrements are often considered in popular
humor as a monument or memorial (which plays a special
part in regard to the criminal in the form of grumus
merdæ); every one knows the humorous story of the man
who, led by the spirit through labyrinthian passages to a
hidden treasure, after he had shed all his pieces of clothing,
deposited excrement as a last guide post on his road.
215In a more distant past a sign of this kind possessed as
great a significance as the dung of animals to indicate
the direction taken. Simple monuments (“little stone
figures”) have taken the place of this perishable mark.

It is noteworthy that Miss Miller quotes another case,
where a name suddenly obtruded itself, parallel to the
emerging into consciousness of Chiwantopel, namely, A-ha-ma-ra-ma,
with the feeling that it dealt with something
Assyrian.^[364] As a possible source of this, there occurred
to her “Asurabama, who made cuneiform bricks,”^[365]
those imperishable documents made from clay: the monuments
of the most ancient history. If it were not emphasized
that the bricks are “cuneiform,” then it might mean
ambiguously “wedged-shaped bricks,” which is more
suggestive of our interpretation than that of the
author.

Miss Miller remarks that besides the name “Asurabama”
she also thought of “Ahasuerus” or “Ahasverus.”
This phantasy leads to a very different aspect of
the problem of the unconscious personality. While the
previous materials betrayed to us something of the infantile
theory of creation, this phantasy opens up a vista into
the dynamics of the unconscious creation of personality.
Ahasver is, as is well known, the Wandering Jew; he is
characterized by endless and restless wanderings until the
end of the world. The fact that the author has thought
of this particular name justifies us in following this trail.
The legend of Ahasver, the first literary traces of which
belong to the thirteenth century, seems to be of Occidental
origin, and belongs to those ideas which possess indestructible
216vital energy. The figure of the Wandering Jew
has undergone more literary elaboration than the figure
of Faust, and nearly all of this work belongs to the last
century. If the figure is not called Ahasver, still it is there
under another name, perhaps as Count of St. Germain,
the mysterious Rosicrucian, whose immortality was assured,
and whose temporary residence (the land) was
equally known.^[366] Although the stories about Ahasver
cannot be traced back any earlier than the thirteenth century,
the oral tradition can reach back considerably
further, and it is not an impossibility that a bridge to the
Orient exists. There is the parallel figure of Chidr, or
“al Chadir,” the “ever-youthful Chidher” celebrated in
song by Rueckert. The legend is purely Islamitic. The
peculiar feature, however, is that Chidher is not only a
saint, but in Sufic circles^[367] rises even to divine significance.
In view of the severe monotheism of Islam, one is inclined
to think of Chidher as a pre-Islamitic Arabian
divinity who would hardly be officially recognized by the
new religion, but might have been tolerated on political
grounds. But there is nothing to prove that. The first
traces of Chidher are found in the commentaries of the
Koran, Buchâri and Tabare and in a commentary to a
noteworthy passage of the eighteenth sura of the Koran.
The eighteenth sura is entitled “the cave,” that is, after
the cave of the seven sleepers, who, according to the
legend, slept there for 309 years, and thus escaped persecution,
and awoke in a new era. Their legend is recounted
in the eighteenth sura, and divers reflections were
associated with it. The wish-fulfilment idea of the legend
217is very clear. The mystic material for it is the immutable
model of the Sun’s course. The Sun sets periodically,
but does not die. It hides in the womb of the sea or in a
subterranean cave,^[368] and in the morning is “born again,”
complete. The language in which this astronomic occurrence
is clothed is one of clear symbolism; the Sun returns
into the mother’s womb, and after some time is again
born. Of course, this event is properly an incestuous
act, of which, in mythology, clear traces are still retained,
not the least of which is the circumstance that the
dying and resurrected gods are the lovers of their own
mothers or have generated themselves through their own
mothers. Christ as the “God becoming flesh” has generated
himself through Mary; Mithra has done the
same. These Gods are unmistakable Sun-gods, for the
Sun also does this, in order to again renew himself.
Naturally, it is not to be assumed that astronomy came
first and these conceptions of gods afterwards; the process
was, as always, inverted, and it is even true that primitive
magic charms of rebirth, baptism, superstitious usages
of all sorts, concerning the cure of the sick, etc., were
projected into the heavens. These youths were born
from the cave (the womb of mother earth), like the Sun-gods,
in a new era, and this was the way they vanquished
death. In this far they were immortal. It is now interesting
to see how the Koran comes, after long ethical
contemplations in the course of the same sura, to the following
passage, which is of especial significance for the
origin of the Chidher myth. For this reason I quote
the Koran literally:

218“Remember when Moses said to his servant, ‘I will not stop
till I reach the confluence of the two seas, or for eighty years will
I journey on.’

“But when they reached their confluence they forgot their
fish, and it took its way in the sea at will.

“And when they had passed on, Moses said to his servant,
‘Bring us our morning meal, for now we have incurred weariness
from this our journey.’

“He said, ‘What thinkest thou? When we repaired to the
rock for rest, then verily I forgot the fish; and none but Satan
made me forget it, so as not to mention it; and it hath taken its
way in the sea in a wondrous sort.’

“He said, ‘It is this we were in quest of.’ So they both went
back retracing their footsteps.

“Then found they one of our servants to whom we had vouchsafed
our mercy, and whom we had instructed with our knowledge;^[369]

“Moses said to him, ‘Shall I follow thee that thou teach me,
for guidance of that which thou hast been taught?’

“He said, ‘Verily, thou canst by no means have patience with
me; and how canst thou be patient in matters whose meaning thou
comprehendest not?’”—Trans. Rodwell, page 188.

Moses now accompanies the mysterious servant of God,
who does divers things which Moses cannot comprehend;
finally, the Unknown takes leave of Moses, and speaks to
him as follows:

“They will ask thee of Dhoulkarnein (the two-horned).^[370]
Say: ‘I will recite to you an account of him.’

“Verily, we established his power upon the earth and we gave
him a means to accomplish every end, so he followed his way;

“Until when he reached the setting of the sun, he found it
to set in a miry forest; and hard by, he found a people….”

Now follows a moral reflection; then the narrative continues:

219“Then he followed his course further until he came to the place
where the sun rises….”

If now we wish to know who is the unknown servant
of God, we are told in this passage he is Dhulqarnein,
Alexander, the Sun; he goes to the place of setting and
he goes to the place of rising. The passage about the
unknown servant of God is explained by the commentaries
in a well-defined legend. The servant is Chidher, “the
verdant one,” the never-tiring wanderer, who roams for
hundreds and thousands of years over lands and seas, the
teacher and counsellor of pious men; the one wise in
divine knowledge—the immortal.^[371] The authority of the
Tabari associates Chidher with Dhulqarnein; Chidher is
said to have reached the “stream of life” as a follower
of Alexander, and both unwittingly had drunk of it, so
that they became immortal. Moreover, Chidher is identified
by the old commentators with Elias, who also did
not die, but who was taken to Heaven in a fiery chariot.
Elias is Helios.^[372] It is to be observed that Ahasver also
owes his existence to an obscure place in the holy Christian
scriptures. This place is to be found in Matthew xvi:28.
First comes the scene where Christ appoints Peter as the
rock of his church, and nominates him the governor of
his power.^[373] After that follows the prophecy of his
death, and then comes the passage:

“Verily, I say unto you, there be some standing here, which
shall not taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming in his
kingdom.”

Here follows the scene of the transfiguration:

220“And was transfigured before them: and his face did shine
as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.

“And behold there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking
with him.

“Then answered Peter and said unto Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good
for us to be here; if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles;
one for thee and one for Moses and one for Elias.’”^[374]

From these passages it appears that Christ stands on
the same plane as Elias, without being identified with
him,^[375] although the people consider him as Elias. The
ascension places Christ as identical with Elias. The
prophecy of Christ shows that there exist aside from
himself one or more immortals who shall not die until
Parousai. According to John xxi: 22nd verse, the boy
John was considered as one of these immortals, and in
the legend he is, in fact, not dead but merely sleeping
in the ground until Parousai, and breathes so that the
dust swirls round his grave.^[376] As is evident, there are
passable bridges from Christ by way of Elias to Chidher
and Ahasuerus. It is said in an account of this legend^[377]
that Dhulqarnein led his friend Chidher to the “source
of life” in order to have him drink of immortality.^[378]
Alexander also bathed in the stream of life and performed
the ritual ablutions. As I previously mentioned in
a footnote, according to Matthew xvii: 12th verse, John
the Baptist is Elias, therefore primarily identical with
Chidher. Now, however, it is to be noted that in the
Arabian legend Chidher appears rather as a companion
or accompanied (Chidher with Dhulqarnein or with Elias,
“like unto them”; or identified with them^[379]). There are
therefore, two similar figures who resemble each other,
221but who, nevertheless, are distinct. The analogous situation
in the Christian legend is found in the scene by
the Jordan where John leads Christ to the “source of
life.” Christ is there, the subordinate, John the superior,
similar to Dhulqarnein and Chidher, or Chidher and
Moses, also Elias. The latter relation especially is such
that Vollers compares Chidher and Elias, on the one
side, with Gilgamesh and his mortal brother Eabani;
on the other side, with the Dioscuri, one of whom is immortal,
the other mortal. This relation is also found in
Christ and John the Baptist,^[380] on the one hand, and Christ
and Peter, on the other. The last-named parallel only
finds its explanation through comparison with the Mithraic
mysteries, where the esoteric contents are revealed
to us through monuments. Upon the Mithraic marble
relief of Klagenfurt^[381] it is represented how with a halo
Mithra crowns Helios, who either kneels before him or
else floats up to him from below. Mithra is represented
on a Mithraic monument of Osterburken as holding in
his right hand the shoulder of the mystic ox above Helios,
who stands bowed down before him, the left hand resting
on a sword hilt. A crown lies between them on the
ground. Cumont observes about this scene that it probably
represents the divine prototype of the ceremony of
the initiation into the degree of Miles, in which a sword
and a crown were conferred upon the mystic. Helios is,
therefore, appointed the Miles of Mithra. In a general
way, Mithra seems to occupy the rôle of patron to Helios,
which reminds us of the boldness of Hercules towards
Helios. Upon his journey towards Geryon, Helios burns
222too hotly; Hercules, full of anger, threatens him with his
never-failing arrows. Therefore, Helios is compelled to
yield, and lends to the hero his Sun ship, with which he
was accustomed to journey across the sea. Thus Hercules
returns to Erythia, to the cattle herds of Geryon.^[382] On
the monument at Klagenfurt, Mithra is furthermore represented
pressing Helios’s hand, either in farewell or as
a ratification. In a further scene Mithra mounts the
Chariot of Helios, either for the ascension or the “Sea
Journey.”^[383] Cumont is of the opinion that Mithra gives
to Helios a sort of ceremonious investiture and consecrates
him with his divine power by crowning him with
his own hands. This relation corresponds to that of
Christ to Peter. Peter, through his symbol, the cock, has
the character of a sun-god. After the ascension (or
sea journey) of Christ, he is the visible pontiff of the
divinity; he suffers, therefore, the same death (crucifixion)
as Christ, and becomes the great Roman
deity (Sol invictus), the conquering, triumphant Church
itself, embodied in the Pope. In the scene of Malchus
he is always shown as the miles of Christ, to whom the
sword is granted, and as the rock upon which the Church
is founded. The crown^[384] is also given to him who possesses
the power to bind and to set free. Thus, Christ,
like the Sun, is the visible God, whereas the Pope, like
the heir of the Roman Cæsars, is solis invicti comes.
The setting sun appoints a successor whom he invests
with the power of the sun.^[385] Dhulqarnein gives Chidher
eternal life. Chidher communicates his wisdom to
Moses.^[386] There even exists a report according to which
223the forgetful servant of Joshua drinks from the well of
life, whereupon he becomes immortal, and is placed in a
ship by Chidher and Moses, as a punishment, and is cast
out to sea, once more a fragment of a sun myth, the
motive of the “sea journey.”^[387]

The primitive symbol, which designates that portion
of the Zodiac in which the Sun, with the Winter Solstice,
again enters upon the yearly course, is the goat, fish sign,
the αἰγωκέρως. The Sun mounts like a goat to the
highest mountain, and later goes into the water as a fish.
The fish is the symbol of the child,^[388] for the child before
his birth lives in the water like a fish, and the Sun, because
it plunges into the sea, becomes equally child and fish.
The fish, however, is also a phallic symbol,^[389] also a symbol
for the woman.^[390] Briefly stated, the fish is a libido
symbol, and, indeed, as it seems predominately for the
renewal of the libido.

The journey of Moses with his servant is a life-journey
(eighty years). They grow old and lose their life force
(libido), that is, they lose the fish which “pursues its
course in a marvellous manner to the sea,” which means
the setting of the sun. When the two notice their loss,
they discover at the place where the “source of life” is
found (where the dead fish revived and sprang into the
sea) Chidher wrapped in his mantle,^[391] sitting on the
ground. According to another version, he sat on an
island in the sea, or “in the wettest place on earth,” that
is, he was just born from the maternal depths. Where
the fish vanished Chidher, “the verdant one,” was born
as a “son of the deep waters,” his head veiled, a Cabir,
224a proclaimer of divine wisdom; the old Babylonian
Oannes-Ea, who was represented in the form of a fish,
and daily came from the sea as a fish to teach the people
wisdom.^[392] His name was brought into connection with
John’s. With the rising of the renewed sun all that lived
in darkness, as water-animal or fish, surrounded by all
terrors of night and death,^[393] became as the shining fiery
firmament of the day. Thus the words of John the Baptist^[394]
gain especial meaning:

“I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but he that
cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy
to bear; he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.”

With Vollers we may also compare Chidher and Elias
(Moses and his servant Joshua) with Gilgamesh and
his brother Eabani. Gilgamesh wandered through the
world, driven by anxiety and longing, to find immortality.
His path led him across the seas to the wise Utnapishtim
(Noah), who knew how to cross the waters of death.
There Gilgamesh had to dive down to the bottom of the
sea for the magical herb which was to lead him back to
the land of men. When he had come again to his native
land a serpent stole the magic plant from him (the fish
again slid into the sea). But on the return from the
land of the blessed an immortal mariner accompanied
him, who, banished by a curse of Utnapishtim, was forbidden
to return to the land of the blessed. Gilgamesh’s
journey had lost its purpose on account of the loss of the
magic herb; instead he is accompanied by an immortal,
whose fate, indeed, we cannot learn from the fragments
225of the epic. This banished immortal is the model for
Ahasver, as Jensen^[395] aptly remarked.

Again we encounter the motive of the Dioscuri, mortal
and immortal, setting and rising sun. This motive is also
represented as if projected from the hero.

The Sacrificium Mithriacum (the sacrifice of the bull)
is in its religious representation very often flanked by
the two Dadophores, Cautes and Cautopates, one with
a raised and the other with a lowered torch. They represent
brothers who reveal their character through the symbolic
position of the torch. Cumont connects them, not
without meaning, with the sepulchral “erotes” who as
genii with the reversed torches have traditional meaning.
The one is supposed to stand for death and the other for
life. I cannot refrain from mentioning the similarity between
the Sacrificium Mithriacum (where the sacrificed
bull in the centre is flanked on both sides by Dadophores)
to the Christian sacrifice of the lamb (ram). The
Crucified is also traditionally flanked by the two thieves,
one of whom ascends to Paradise, while the other descends
to Hell.^[396] The idea of the mortal and the immortal
seems to have passed also into the Christian
worship. Semitic gods are often represented as flanked
by two Paredroi; for example, Baal of Edessa, accompanied
by Aziz and Monimoz (Baal as the Sun, accompanied
by Mars and Mercury, as expressed in astronomical
teachings). According to the Chaldean view,
the gods are grouped into triads. In this circle of ideas
belongs also the Trinity, the idea of the triune God, in
which Christ must be considered in his unity with the
226Father and the Holy Ghost. So, too, do the two thieves
belong inwardly to Christ. The two Dadophores are, as
Cumont points out, nothing but offshoots^[397] from the chief
figure of Mithra, to whom belongs a mysterious threefold
character. According to an account of Dionysus
Areopagita, the magicians celebrated a festival, “τοῦ
τριπλασίου Μίθρου.”^[398][399] An observation likewise referring
to the Trinity is made by Plutarch concerning Ormuzd:
τρὶς ἑαυτὸν αὐξήσας ἀπέστησε τοῦ ἡλίου.^[400] The
Trinity, as three different states of the unity, is also a
Christian thought. In the very first place this suggests
a sun myth. An observation by Macrobius 1:18 seems to
lend support to this idea:

“Hæ autem ætatum diversitates ad solem referuntur, ut parvulus
videatur hiemali solstitio, qualem Aegyptii proferunt ex
adyto die certa, … æquinoctio vernali figura iuvenis ornatur.
Postea statuitur ætas ejus plenissima effigie barbæ solstitio æstivo … exunde per diminutiones veluti senescenti quarta forma deus
figuratur.”^[401][402]

As Cumont observes, Cautes and Cautapates occasionally
carry in their hands the head of a bull, and a scorpion.^[403]
Taurus and Scorpio are equinoctial signs, which
clearly indicate that the sacrificial scene refers primarily
to the Sun cycle; the rising Sun, which sacrifices itself at
227the summer solstice, and the setting Sun. In the sacrificial
scene the symbol of the rising and setting Sun was
not easily represented; therefore, this idea was removed
from the sacrificial image.

We have pointed out above that the Dioscuri represent
a similar idea, although in a somewhat different form;
the one sun is always mortal, the other immortal. As
this entire sun mythology is merely a psychologic projection
to the heavens, the fundamental thesis probably is
as follows; just as man consists of a mortal and immortal
part, so the sun is a pair of brothers,^[404] one being mortal,
the other immortal. This thought lies at the basis of all
theology in general. Man is, indeed, mortal, but there
are some who are immortal, or there is something in us
which is immortal. Thus the gods, “a Chidher or a St.
Germain,” are our immortal part, which, though incomprehensible,
dwells among us somewhere.

Comparison with the sun teaches us over and over
again that the gods are libido. It is that part of us
which is immortal, since it represents that bond through
which we feel that in the race we are never extinguished.^[405]
It is life from the life of mankind. Its springs, which well
up from the depths of the unconscious, come, as does our
life in general, from the root of the whole of humanity,
since we are indeed only a twig broken off from the
mother and transplanted.

Since the divine in us is the libido,^[406] we must not wonder
that we have taken along with us in our theology
ancient representations from olden times, which give the
triune figure to the God. We have taken this τριπλάσιον
228Θεόν^[407] from the phallic symbolism, the originality of
which may well be uncontested.^[408] The male genitals are
the basis for this Trinity. It is an anatomical fact that
one testicle is generally placed somewhat higher than
the other, and it is also a very old, but, nevertheless,
still surviving, superstition that one testicle generates a
boy and the other a girl.^[409] A late Babylonian bas-relief
from Lajard’s^[410] collection seems to be in accordance with
this view. In the middle of the image stands an androgynous
god (masculine and feminine face^[411]); upon the
right, male side, is found a serpent, with a sun halo round
its head; upon the left, female side, there is also a serpent,
with the moon above its head. Above the head of
the god there are three stars. This ensemble would seem
to confirm the Trinity^[412] of the representation. The Sun
serpent at the right side is male; the serpent at the left
side is female (signified by the moon). This image possesses
a symbolic sexual suffix, which makes the sexual
significance of the whole obtrusive. Upon the male side
a rhomb is found—a favorite symbol of the female genitals;
upon the female side there is a wheel or felly. A
wheel always refers to the Sun, but the spokes are thickened
and enlarged at the ends, which suggests phallic
symbolism. It seems to be a phallic wheel, which was
not unknown in antiquity. There are obscene bas-reliefs
where Cupid turns a wheel of nothing but phalli.^[413] It is
not only the serpent which suggests the phallic significance
of the Sun; I quote one especially marked case, from an
abundance of proof. In the antique collection at Verona
229I discovered a late Roman mystic inscription in which are
the following representations:

These symbols are easily read: Sun—Phallus, Moon—Vagina
(Uterus). This interpretation is confirmed by
another figure of the same collection. There the same
representation is found, only the vessel^[414] is replaced by
the figure of a woman. The impressions on coins, where
in the middle a palm is seen encoiled by a snake, flanked
by two stones (testicles), or else in the middle a stone
encircled by a snake; to the right a palm, to the left a
shell (female genitals^[415]), should be interpreted in a
similar manner. In Lajard’s “Researches” (“The Cult
of Venus”) there is a coin of Perga, where Artemis of
Perga is represented by a conical stone (phallic) flanked
by a man (claimed to be Men) and by a female figure
(claimed to be Artemis). Men (the so-called Lunus) is
found upon an Attic bas-relief apparently with the spear
but fundamentally a sceptre with a phallic significance,
flanked by Pan with a club (phallus) and a female
figure.^[416] The traditional representation of the Crucified
flanked by John and Mary is closely associated with this
circle of ideas, precisely as is the Crucified with the
thieves. From this we see how, beside the Sun, there
emerges again and again the much more primitive comparison
230of the libido with the phallus. An especial trace
still deserves mention here. The Dadophor Cautapates,
who represents Mithra, is also represented with the cock^[417]
and the pineapple. But these are the attributes of the
Phrygian god Men, whose cult was widely diffused. Men
was represented with Pileus,^[418] the pineapple and the cock,
also in the form of a boy, just as the Dadophores are
boyish figures. (This last-named property relates them
with Men to the Cabiri.) Men has a very close connection
with Attis, the son and lover of Cybele. In the time
of the Roman Cæsars, Men and Attis were entirely identified,
as stated above. Attis also wears the Pileus like
Men, Mithra and the Dadophores. As the son and lover
of his mother he again leads us to the source of this
religion-creating incest libido, namely, to the mother.
Incest leads logically to ceremonial castration in the
Attic-Cybele cult, for the Hero, driven insane by his
mother, mutilates himself.^[419] I must at present forego
entering more deeply into this matter, because the incest
problem is to be discussed at the close. Let this suggestion
suffice—that from different directions the analysis
of the libido symbolism always leads back again to the
mother incest. Therefore, we may surmise that the longing
of the libido raised to God (repressed into the unconscious)
is a primitive, incestuous one which concerns
the mother. Through renouncing the virility to the first
beloved, the mother, the feminine element becomes extremely
predominant; hence the strongly androgynous
character of the dying and resurrected Redeemer. That
these heroes are nearly always wanderers^[420] is a psychologically
231clear symbolism. The wandering is a representation
of longing,^[421] of the ever-restless desire, which
nowhere finds its object, for, unknown to itself, it seeks
the lost mother. The wandering association renders the
Sun comparison easily intelligible; also, under this aspect,
the heroes always resemble the wandering Sun, which
seems to justify the fact that the myth of the hero is a
sun myth. But the myth of the hero, however, is, as it
appears to me, the myth of our own suffering unconscious,
which has an unquenchable longing for all the
deepest sources of our own being; for the body of the
mother, and through it for communion with infinite life
in the countless forms of existence. Here I must introduce
the words of the Master who has divined the deepest
roots of Faustian longings:

“Unwilling, I reveal a loftier mystery.—
In solitude are throned the Goddesses,
No Space around them, Place and Time still less:
Only to speak of them embarrasses.
They are THE MOTHERS!

“Goddesses unknown to ye,
The Mortals,—named by us unwillingly.
Delve in the deepest depths must thou to reach them:
’Tis thine own fault that we for help beseech them.

“Where is the way?

“No way! To the Unreachable,
Ne’er to be trodden! A way to the Unbeseechable,
Never to be besought! Art thou prepared?
There are no locks, no latches to be lifted!
Through endless solitudes shalt thou be drifted!
Hast thou through solitudes and deserts dared?
232And hadst thou swum to farthest verge of ocean
And there the boundless space beheld,
Still hadst thou seen wave after wave in motion,
Even though impending doom thy fear compelled.
Thou hadst seen something—in the beryl dim
Of peace-lulled seas, the sportive dolphins swim;
Hadst seen the flying clouds, sun, moon and star;
Nought shalt thou see in endless Void afar—
Not hear thy footstep fall, nor meet
A stable spot to rest thy feet.

“Here, take this key!
The Key will scent the true place from all others;
Follow it down! ‘Twill lead thee to the Mothers.

“Descend then! I could also say: Ascend!
’Twere all the same. Escape from the Created
To shapeless forms in liberated spaces!
Enjoy what long ere this was dissipated!
There whirls the press, like clouds on clouds unfolding;
Then with stretched arm swing high the key thou’rt holding!

“At last a blazing tripod,^[422] tells thee this,
That there the utterly deepest bottom is.
Its light to thee will then the Mothers show,
Some in their seats, the others stand or go,
At their own will: Formation, Transformation,
The Eternal Mind’s eternal recreation,
Forms of all Creatures,—there are floating free.
They’ll see thee not! for only wraiths they see.
So pluck up heart,—the danger then is great.
Go to the tripod ere thou hesitate,
And touch it with the key.”

233

CHAPTER V
SYMBOLISM OF THE MOTHER AND OF REBIRTH

The vision following the creation of the hero is described
by Miss Miller as a “throng of people.” This
representation is known to us from dream interpretation
as being, above all, the symbol of mystery.^[423] Freud
thinks that this choice of symbol is determined on account
of its possibility of representing the idea. The
bearer of the mystery is placed in opposition to the multitude
of the ignorant. The possession of the mystery cuts
one off from intercourse with the rest of mankind. For
a very complete and smooth rapport with the surroundings
is of great importance for the management of the
libido and the possession of a subjectively important
secret generally creates a great disturbance. It may be
said that the whole art of life shrinks to the one problem
of how the libido may be freed in the most harmless way
possible. Therefore, the neurotic derives special benefit
in treatment when he can at last rid himself of his various
secrets. The symbol of the crowd of people, chiefly the
streaming and moving mass, is, as I have often seen,
substituted for the great excitement in the unconscious,
especially in persons who are outwardly calm.

234The vision of the “throng” develops further; horses
emerge; a battle is fought. With Silberer, I might accept
the significance of this vision as belonging, first of all, in
the “functional category,” because, fundamentally, the
conception of the intermingling crowds is nothing but the
symbol of the present onrush of the mass of thought;
likewise the battle, and possibly the horses, which illustrate
the movement. The deeper significance of the appearance
of the horses will be seen for the first time in
the further course of our treatment of the mother symbolism.
The following vision has a more definite and
significantly important character. Miss Miller sees a
City of Dreams (“Cité de Rêves”). The picture is
similar to one she saw a short time before on the cover
of a magazine. Unfortunately, we learn nothing further
about it. One can easily imagine under this “Cité de
Rêves” a fulfilled wish dream, that is to say, something
very beautiful and greatly longed for; a sort of heavenly
Jerusalem, as the poet of the Apocalypse has dreamed it.
The city is a maternal symbol, a woman who fosters the
inhabitants as children. It is, therefore, intelligible that
the two mother goddesses, Rhea and Cybele, both
wear the wall crown. The Old Testament treats the
cities of Jerusalem, Babel, etc., as women (Isaiah
xlvii:1–5):

“Come down and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon,
sit on the ground: there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans;
for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate. Take
the millstones and grind meal; uncover thy locks, make bare the
leg, uncover the thigh, pass over the rivers. That thy nakedness
235shall be uncovered, yea, thy shame shall be seen; sit thou silent,
and get thee into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans; for
thou shalt no more be called the lady of the kingdoms.”

Jeremiah says of Babel (I:12):

“Your mother shall be sore confounded; she that bare you shall
be ashamed.”

Strong, unconquered cities are virgins; colonies are
sons and daughters. Cities are also whores. Isaiah says
of Tyre (xxiii:16):

“Take an harp, go about the city, thou harlot; thou hast been
forgotten.”

And:

“How does it come to pass that the virtuous city has become
an harlot?”

We come across a similar symbolism in the myth of
Ogyges, the mythical king who rules in Egyptian Thebes
and whose wife was appropriately named Thebe. The
Bœotian Thebes founded by Cadmus received on that
account a surname, “Ogygian.” This surname was also
given to the great flood, as it was called “Ogygian” because
it occurred under Ogyges. This coincidence will be
found later on to be hardly accidental. The fact that
the city and the wife of Ogyges bear the same name indicates
that somewhere a relation must exist between the
city and the woman, which is not difficult to understand,
for the city is identical with the woman. We meet a
similar idea in Hindoo lore where Indra appears as the
236husband of Urvara, but Urvara means “the fertile
land.” In a similar way the occupancy of a country by
the king was understood as marriage with the ploughed
land. Similar representations must have prevailed in
Europe as well. Princes had to guarantee, for example,
a good harvest at their accession. The Swedish King
Domaldi was actually killed on account of the failure of
the harvest (Ynglinga sâga 18). In the Rama sâga the
hero Rama marries Sîtâ, the furrow of the field.^[424] To
the same group of ideas belongs the Chinese custom of
the Emperor ploughing a furrow at his ascension to the
throne. This idea of the soil being feminine also embraces
the idea of continual companionship with the
woman, a physical communication. Shiva, the Phallic
God, is, like Mahadeva and Parwati, male and female.
He has even given one-half of his body to his consort
Parwati as a dwelling place.^[425] Inman^[426] gives us a drawing
of a Pundite of Ardanari-Iswara; one-half of the god
is masculine, the other half feminine, and the genitals
are in continuous cohabitation. The motive of continuous
cohabitation is expressed in a well-known lingam
symbol, which is to be found everywhere in Indian
temples; the base is a female symbol, and within that is
the phallus.^[427] The symbol approaches very closely the
Grecian mystic phallic basket and chests. (Compare with
this the Eleusinian mysteries.) The chest or box is here
a female symbol, that is, the mother’s womb. This is a
very well-known conception in the old mythologies.^[428] The
chest, basket or little basket, with its precious contents,
was thought of as floating on the water; a remarkable
237inversion of the natural fact that the child floats in the
amniotic fluid and that this is in the uterus.

This inversion brings about a great advantage for sublimation,
for it creates enormous possibilities of application
for the myth-weaving phantasy, that is to say, for
the annexation to the sun cycle. The Sun floats over the
sea like an immortal god, which every evening is immersed
in the maternal water and is born again renewed
in the morning. Frobenius says:

“Perhaps in connection with the blood-red sunrise, the idea
occurs that here a birth takes place, the birth of a young son; the
question then arises inevitably, whence comes the paternity? How
has the woman become pregnant? And since this woman symbolizes
the same idea as the fish, which means the sea, (because
we proceed from the assumption that the Sun descends into the
sea as well as arises from it) thus the curious primitive answer
is that this sea has previously swallowed the old Sun. Consequently
the resulting myth is, that the woman (sea) has formerly
devoured the Sun and now brings a new Sun into the world, and
thus she has become pregnant.”

All these sea-going gods are sun symbols. They are
enclosed in a chest or an ark for the “night journey on
the sea” (Frobenius), often together with a woman
(again an inversion of the actual situation, but in support
of the motive of continuous cohabitation, which we
have met above). During the night journey on the sea
the Sun-god is enclosed in the mother’s womb, oftentimes
threatened by dangers of all kinds. Instead of
many individual examples, I will content myself with reproducing
238the scheme which Frobenius has constructed
from numberless myths of this sort:

Frobenius gives the following legend to illustrate this:

“A hero is devoured by a water monster in the West (to
devour). The animal carries him within him to the East (sea
journey). Meanwhile, he kindles a fire in the belly of the
monster (to set on fire) and since he feels hungry he cuts off a piece
of the hanging heart (to cut off the heart). Soon after he notices
that the fish glides upon the dry land (to land); he immediately
begins to cut open the animal from within outwards (to open)
then he slides out (to slip out). In the fish’s belly, it had been
so hot, that all his hair had fallen out (heat-hair). The hero
frequently frees all who were previously devoured (to devour all)
and all now slide out (slip out).”

A very close parallel is Noah’s journey during the
flood, in which all living creatures die; only he and the life
guarded by him are brought to a new birth. In a Melapolynesian
legend (Frobenius) it is told that the hero in
the belly of the King Fish took his weapon and cut open
the fish’s belly. “He slid out and saw a splendor, and
he sat down and reflected. ‘I wonder where I am,’ he
said. Then the sun rose with a bound and turned from
239one side to the other.” The Sun has again slipped out.
Frobenius mentions from the Ramayana the myth of
the ape Hanuman, who represents the Sun-hero. The
sun in which Hanuman hurries through the air throws a
shadow upon the sea. The sea monster notices this and
through this draws Hanuman toward itself; when the latter
sees that the monster is about to devour him, he stretches
out his figure immeasurably; the monster assumes the
same gigantic proportions. As he does that Hanuman
becomes as small as a thumb, slips into the great body
of the monster and comes out on the other side. In another
part of the poem it is said that he came out from
the right ear of the monster (like Rabelais’ Gargantua,
who also was born from the mother’s ear). “Hanuman
thereupon resumes his flight, and finds a new obstacle in
another sea monster, which is the mother of Rahus, the
sun-devouring demon. The latter draws Hanuman’s
shadow^[429] to her in the same way. Hanuman again has
recourse to the earlier stratagem, becomes small and slips
into her body, but hardly is he there than he grows to a
gigantic mass, swells up, tears her, kills her, and in that
way makes his escape.”

Thus we understand why the Indian fire-bringer Mâtariçvan
is called “the one swelling in the mother”; the
ark (little box, chest, cask, vessel, etc.) is a symbol of
the womb, just as is the sea, into which the Sun sinks
for rebirth. From this circle of ideas we understand the
mythologic statements about Ogyges; he it is who possesses
the mother, the City, who is united with the mother;
therefore under him came the great flood, for it is a
240typical fragment of the sun myth that the hero, when
united with the woman attained with difficulty, is exposed
in a cask and thrown into the sea, and then lands for a
new life on a distant shore. The middle part, the “night
journey on the sea” in the ark, is lacking in the tradition
of Ogyges.^[430] But the rule in mythology is that the typical
parts of a myth can be united in all conceivable variations,
which adds greatly to the extraordinary difficulty
of the interpretation of a particular myth without knowledge
of all the others. The meaning of this cycle of
myths mentioned here is clear; it is the longing to attain
rebirth through the return to the mother’s womb, that is
to say, to become as immortal as the sun. This longing
for the mother is frequently expressed in our holy scriptures.^[431]
I recall, particularly the place in the epistle
to the Galatians, where it is said (iv:26):

(26) “But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the
mother of us all.

(27) “For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that beareth not:
break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath
many more children than she which hath an husband.

(28) “Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of
promise.

(29) “But as he that was born after the flesh persecuted him
that was born after the spirit, even so it is now.

(30) “Nevertheless, what sayeth the scripture? Cast out the
bondwoman and her son; for the son of a bondwoman shall not
be heir with the son of a freewoman.

(31) “So, then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman,
but of the free.”

Chapter v:

241(1) “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ
has made us free.”

The Christians are the children of the City Above, a
symbol of the mother, not sons of the earthly city-mother,
who is to be cast out; for those born after the flesh are
opposed to those born after the spirit, who are not born
from the mother in the flesh, but from a symbol for
the mother. One must again think of the Indians at this
point, who say the first people proceeded from the sword-hilt
and a shuttle. The religious thought is bound up with
the compulsion to call the mother no longer mother, but
City, Source, Sea, etc. This compulsion can be derived
from the need to manifest an amount of libido bound up
with the mother, but in such a way that the mother is
represented by or concealed in a symbol. The symbolism
of the city we find well-developed in the revelations of
John, where two cities play a great part, one of which
is insulted and cursed by him, the other greatly desired.
We read in Revelation (xvii:1):

(1) “Come hither: I will shew unto thee the judgment of
the great whore that sitteth on many waters.

(2) “With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication
and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk
with the wine of her fornication.

(3) “So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness:
and I saw a woman sit on a scarlet colored beast, full of the
names of blasphemy, and having seven heads and ten horns.

(4) “And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colors,
and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a
golden cup^[432] in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of
her fornication.

(5) “And upon her forehead was a name written: Mystery.
242Babylon the great. The Mother of Harlots and Abominations
of the Earth.

(6) “And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of saints,
and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her
I wondered with a great admiration.”

Here follows an interpretation of the vision unintelligible
to us, from which we can only emphasize the point
that the seven heads^[433] of the dragon means the seven
hills upon which the woman sits. This is probably a distinct
allusion to Rome, the city whose temporal power
oppressed the world at the time of the Revelation. The
waters upon which the woman “the mother” sits are
“peoples and throngs and nations and tongues.” This
also seems to refer to Rome, for she is the mother of
peoples and possessed all lands. Just as in common
speech, for example, colonies are called daughters, so
the people subject to Rome are like members of a family
subject to the mother. In another version of the picture,
the kings of the people, namely, the fathers, commit
fornication with this mother. Revelation continues
(xviii: 2):

(2) “And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon
the Great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of
devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every
unclean and hateful bird.

(3) “For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath
of her fornication.”

Thus this mother does not only become the mother of
all abominations, but also in truth the receptacle of all
that is wicked and unclean. The birds are images of
243souls;^[434] therefore, this means all souls of the condemned
and evil spirits. Thus the mother becomes Hecate, the
underworld, the City of the damned itself. We recognize
easily in the ancient idea of the woman on the
dragon,^[435] the above-mentioned representation of Echnida,
the mother of the infernal horrors. Babylon is the idea
of the “terrible” mother, who seduces all people to
whoredom with devilish temptation, and makes them
drunk with her wine. The intoxicating drink stands in
the closest relation to fornication, for it is also a libido
symbol, as we have already seen in the parallel of fire
and sun. After the fall and curse of Babylon, we find in
Revelation (xix:6–7) the hymn which leads from the
under half to the upper half of the mother, where now
everything is possible which would be impossible without
the repression of incest:

(6) “Alleluia, the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.

(7) “Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to him: for
the marriage of the Lamb is come,^[436] and his wife hath made
herself ready.

(8) “And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in
fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness
of saints.

(9) “And he saith unto me, ‘Write, Blessed are they which
are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb.’”

The Lamb is the son of man who celebrates his marriage
with the “woman.” Who the “woman” is remains
obscure at first. But Revelation (xxi:9) shows us
which “woman” is the bride, the Lamb’s wife:

(9) “Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the Lamb’s
wife.^[437]

244(10) “And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and
high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem,
descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God.”

It is evident from this quotation, after all that goes before,
that the City, the heavenly bride, who is here
promised to the Son, is the mother.^[438] In Babylon the
impure maid was cast out, according to the Epistle to the
Galatians, so that here in heavenly Jerusalem the mother-bride
may be attained the more surely. It bears witness
to the most delicate psychologic perception that the
fathers of the church who formulated the canons preserved
this bit of the symbolic significance of the Christ
mystery. It is a treasure house for the phantasies and
myth materials which underlie primitive Christianity.^[439]
The further attributes which were heaped upon the heavenly
Jerusalem make its significance as mother overwhelmingly
clear:

(1) “And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear
as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.

(2) “In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of
the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner
of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month, and the leaves of
the tree were for the healing of nations.

(3) “And there shall be no more curse.”

In this quotation we come upon the symbol of the
waters, which we found in the mention of Ogyges in connection
with the city. The maternal significance of water
belongs to the clearest symbolism in the realm of mythology,^[440]
so that the ancients could say: ἠ θάλασσα—τῆς
γενέσεως σύμβολον.^[441] From water comes life;^[442]
245therefore, of the two gods which here interest us the most,
Christ and Mithra, the latter was born beside a river,
according to representations, while Christ experienced his
new birth in the Jordan; moreover, he is born from the
Πηγή,^[443] the “sempiterni fons amoris,” the mother of
God, who by the heathen-Christian legend was made a
nymph of the Spring. The “Spring” is also found in
Mithracism. A Pannonian dedication reads, “Fonti
perenni.” An inscription in Apulia is dedicated to the
“Fons Aeterni.” In Persia, Ardvîçûra is the well of the
water of life. Ardvîçûra-Anahita is a goddess of water
and love (just as Aphrodite is born from foam). The
neo-Persians designate the Planet Venus and a nubile girl
by the name “Nahid.” In the temples of Anaitis there
existed prostitute Hierodules (harlots). In the Sakaeen
(in honor of Anaitis) there, occurred ritual combats as
in the festival of the Egyptian Ares and his mother. In
the Vedas the waters are called Mâtritamâh—the most
maternal.^[443] All that is living rises as does the sun, from
the water, and at evening plunges into the water. Born
from the springs, the rivers, the seas, at death man arrives
at the waters of the Styx in order to enter upon the
“night journey on the sea.” The wish is that the black
water of death might be the water of life; that death,
with its cold embrace, might be the mother’s womb, just
as the sea devours the sun, but brings it forth again out
of the maternal womb (Jonah motive^[444]). Life believes
not in death.

“In the flood of life, in the torrent of deeds,
I toss up and down,
246I am blown to and fro!
Cradle and grave,
An eternal sea;
A changing web,
A glowing life.” —Goethe: Faust.

That ξύλον ζωῆς, the wood of life, or the tree of life, is
a maternal symbol would seem to follow from the previous
deductions. The etymologic connection of ὕο,
ὕλε, υἱός, in the Indo-Germanic root suggests the blending
of the meanings in the underlying symbolism of
mother and of generation. The tree of life is probably,
first of all, a fruit-bearing genealogical tree, that is, a
mother-image. Countless myths prove the derivation of
man from trees; many myths show how the hero is enclosed
in the maternal tree—thus dead Osiris in the
column, Adonis in the myrtle, etc. Numerous female
divinities were worshipped as trees, from which resulted
the cult of the holy groves and trees. It is of transparent
significance when Attis castrates himself under a pine
tree, i. e. he does it because of the mother. Goddesses
were often worshipped in the form of a tree or of a
wood. Thus Juno of Thespiæ was a branch of a tree,
Juno of Samos was a board. Juno of Argos was a
column. The Carian Diana was an uncut piece of wood.
Athene of Lindus was a polished column. Tertullian
calls Ceres of Pharos “rudis palus et informe lignum
sine effigie.” Athenaeus remarks of Latona at Dalos that
she is ξὐλινον ἄμορφον, a shapeless piece of wood.^[445]
Tertullian calls an Attic Pallas “crucis stipes,” a wooden
pale or mast. The wooden pale is phallic, as the name
247suggests, φάλης, Pallus. The φαλλός is a pale, a ceremonial
lingam carved out of figwood, as are all Roman
statues of Priapus. Φάλος means a projection or centrepiece
on the helmet, later called κῶνος just as ἀναφαλ-αντίασις
signifies baldheadedness on the forepart
of the head, and φαλακρός signifies baldheadedness in regard
to the φάλος-κῶνος of the helmet; a semi-phallic
meaning is given to the upper part of the head as well.^[446]
Φάλληνος has, besides φαλλός, the significance of
“wooden”; φαλ-άγγωμα, “cylinder”; φάλαγξ, “a round
beam.” The Macedonian battle array, distinguished by
its powerful impetus, is called φάλαγξ; moreover, the
finger-joint^[447] is called φάλαγξ. φάλλαινα or φάλαινα
is a whale. Now φαλός appears with the meaning
“shining, brilliant.” The Indo-Germanic root is bhale
= to bulge, to swell.^[448] Who does not think of Faust?

“It grows, it shines, increases in my hand!”

That is primitive libido symbolism, which shows how
immediate is the connection between phallic libido and
light. The same relations are found in the Rigveda in
Rudra’s utterances.

Rigveda 1, 114, 3:

“May we obtain your favor, thou man ruling, Oh urinating
Rudra.”

I refer here to the previously mentioned phallic symbolism
of Rudra in the Upanishads:

(4) “We call for help below to the flaming Rudra, to the
one bringing the sacrifice; him who encircles and wanders (wandering
in the vault of Heaven) to the seer.”

2482, 33, 5:

“He who opens up the sweet, who listens to our calls, the
ruddy one, with the beautiful helmet, may he not give us over
to the powers of jealousy.

(6) “I have been rejoiced by the bull connected with Marut,
the supplicating one with strong force of life.

(8) “Sound the powerful song of praise to the ruddy bull to
the white shining one; worship the flaming one with honor, we
sing of the shining being Rudra.

“May Rudra’s missile (arrow) not be used on us, may the
great displeasure of the shining one pass us by: Unbend the firm
(bow or hard arrow?) for the princes, thou who blessest with
the waters of thy body (generative strength), be gracious to our
children and grandchildren.”^[449]

In this way we pass from the realm of mother symbolism
imperceptibly into the realm of male phallic
symbolism. This element also lies in the tree, even in
the family tree, as is distinctly shown by the mediæval
family trees. From the first ancestor there grows upward,
in the place of the “membrum virile,” the trunk
of the great tree. The bisexual symbolic character of the
tree is intimated by the fact that in Latin trees have a
masculine termination and a feminine gender.^[450] The
feminine (especially the maternal) meaning of the forest
and the phallic significance of trees in dreams is well
known. I mention an example.

It concerns a woman who had always been nervous,
and who, after many years of marriage, became ill as a
result of the typical retention of the libido. She had the
following dream after she had learned to know a young
man of many engaging free opinions who was very pleasing
to her: She found herself in a garden where stood
249a remarkable exotic tree with strange red fleshy flowers
or fruits. She picked them and ate them. Then, to her
horror, she felt that she was poisoned. This dream idea
may easily be understood by means of the antique or
poetic symbolism, so I can spare information as to the
analytic material.

The double significance of the tree is readily explained
by the fact that such symbols are not to be understood
“anatomically” but psychologically as libido symbols;
therefore, it is not permissible to interpret the tree on
account of its similar form as directly phallic; it can also
be called a woman or the uterus of the mother. The
uniformity of the significance lies alone in the similarity
to the libido.^[451] One loses one’s way in one “cul de sac”
after another by saying that this is the symbol substituted
for the mother and that for the penis. In this realm
there is no fixed significance of things. The only reality
here is the libido, for which “all that is perishable is
merely a symbol.” It is not the physical actual mother,
but the libido of the son, the object of which was once
the mother. We take mythologic symbols much too concretely
and wonder at every step about the endless contradictions.
These contradictions arise only because we
constantly forget that in the realm of phantasy “feeling
is all.” Whenever we read, therefore, “his mother was
a wicked sorcerer,” the translation is as follows: The
son is in love with her, namely, he is unable to detach his
libido from the mother-imago; he therefore suffers from
incestuous resistance.

The symbolism of water and trees, which are met with
250as further attributes in the symbol of the City, also refer
to that amount of libido which unconsciously is fastened
to the mother-imago. In certain parts of Revelation
the unconscious psychology of religious longing is revealed,
namely, the longing for the mother.^[452] The expectation
of Revelation ends in the mother: καὶ πᾶν
κατάθεμα οὐκ ἔσται ἔτι (“and there shall be no more
curse”). There shall be no more sins, no repression, no
disharmony with one’s self, no guilt, no fear of death and
no pain of separation more!

Thus Revelation echoes that same radiant mystical
harmony which was caught again 2,000 years later and
expressed poetically in the last prayer of Dr. Marianus:

“Penitents, look up, elate,
Where she beams salvation;
Gratefully to blessed fate
Grow, in recreation!
Be our souls, as they have been,
Dedicate to thee!
Virgin Holy, Mother, Queen,
Goddess, gracious be!” —Goethe: Faust.

One principal question arises at the sight of this beauty
and greatness of feeling, that is, whether the primary
tendency compensated by religion is not too narrowly
understood as incestuous. I have previously observed in
regard to this that I consider the “resistance opposed to
libido” as in a general way coincident with the incest prohibition.
I must leave open for the present the definition
of the psychological incest conception. However, I will
here emphasize the point that it is most especially the
251totality of the sun myth which proves to us that the
fundamental basis of the “incestuous” desire does not
aim at cohabitation, but at the special thought of becoming
a child again, of turning back to the parent’s protection,
of coming into the mother once more in order to be
born again. But incest stands in the path to this goal,
that is to say, the necessity of in some way again gaining
entrance into the mother’s womb. One of the simplest
ways would be to impregnate the mother, and to reproduce
one’s self identically. But here the incest prohibition
interferes; therefore, the myths of the sun or of rebirth
teem with all possible proposals as to how incest can be
evaded. A very simple method of avoidance is to transform
the mother into another being or to rejuvenate^[453]
her after birth has occurred, to have her disappear again
or have her change back. It is not incestuous cohabitation
which is desired, but the rebirth, which now is attained
most readily through cohabitation. But this is
not the only way, although perhaps the original one. The
resistance to the incest prohibition makes the phantasy
inventive; for example, it was attempted to impregnate
the mother by means of a magic charm of fertility (to
wish for a child). Attempts in this respect remain in
the stage of mythical phantasies; but they have one result,
and that is the exercise of the phantasy which
gradually produces paths through the creation of phantastic
possibilities, in which the libido, taking an active
part, can flow off. Thus the libido becomes spiritualized
in an imperceptible manner. The power “which always
wishes evil” thus creates a spiritual life. Therefore, in
252religions, this course is now raised to a system. On that
account it is exceedingly instructive to see how religion
takes pains to further these symbolic transferences.^[454]
The New Testament furnishes us with an excellent example
in regard to this. Nicodemus, in the speech regarding
rebirth, cannot forbear understanding the matter
very realistically.

John iii:4:

(4) “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter
a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?”

But Jesus endeavors to raise into purity the sensuous
view of Nicodemus’s mind moulded in materialistic
heaviness, and announces to him—really the same—and
yet not the same:

(5) “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of
water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of
God.

(6) “That which is born of the flesh is flesh: and that which
is born of the spirit is spirit.

(7) “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born
again.

(8) “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the
sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither
it goeth; so is everyone that is born of the spirit.”

To be born of water means simply to be born from the
mother’s womb. To be born of the spirit means to be
born from the fructifying breath of the wind; this we
learn from the Greek text (where spirit and wind are expressed
by the same word, πνεῦμα) τὸ γεγεννημένον
ἐκ τῆς σαρκος σάρξ ἐστιν, καὶ τὸ γεγεννημένον ἐκ τοῦ
253πνεύματος πνεῦμά ἐστιν.—Τὸ πνεῦμα ὅπου θέλει πνεῖ,^[455]
etc.

This symbolism rose from the same need as that which
produced the Egyptian legend of the vultures, the mother
symbol. They were only females and were fertilized by
the wind. One recognizes very clearly the ethical demand
as the foundation of these mythologic assertions:
thou must say of the mother that she was not impregnated
by a mortal in the ordinary way, but by a spiritual
being in an unusual manner. This demand stands in
strict opposition to the real truth; therefore, the myth
is a fitting solution. One can say it was a hero who died
and was born again in a remarkable manner, and in this
way attained immortality. The need which this demand
asserts is evidently a prohibition against a definite phantasy
concerning the mother. A son may naturally think
that a father has generated him in a carnal way, but not
that he himself impregnated the mother and so caused
himself to be born again into renewed youth. This incestuous
phantasy which for some reason possesses an
extraordinary strength,^[456] and, therefore, appears as a
compulsory wish, is repressed and, conforming to the
above demand, under certain conditions, expresses itself
again, symbolically, concerning the problem of birth, or
rather concerning individual rebirth from the mother.
In Jesus’s challenge to Nicodemus we clearly recognize
this tendency: “Think not carnally or thou art carnal,
but think symbolically, then art thou spirit.” It is evident
254how extremely educative and developing this compulsion
toward symbolism can be. Nicodemus would remain fixed
in low commonplaces if he did not succeed in raising himself
through symbols above this repressed incestuous
desire. As a righteous philistine of culture, he probably
was not very anxious for this effort, because men seem
really to remain satisfied in repressing the incestuous
libido, and at best to express it by some modest religious
exercises. Yet it seems to be important, on the other
side, that man should not merely renounce and repress
and thereby remain firmly fixed in the incestuous bond,
but that he should redeem those dynamic forces which
lie bound up in incest, in order to fulfil himself. For man
needs his whole libido, to fill out the boundaries of his
personality, and then, for the first time, he is in a condition
to do his best. The paths by which man may manifest
his incestuously fixed libido seem to have been
pointed out by the religious mythologic symbols. On this
account Jesus teaches Nicodemus: “Thou thinkest of
thy incestuous wish for rebirth, but thou must think that
thou art born from the water and that thou art generated
by the breath of the wind,^[457] and in this way thou shalt
share in eternal life.”

Thus the libido which lies inactive in the incestuous
bond repressed and in fear of the law and the avenging
Father God can be led over into sublimation through the
symbol of baptism (birth from water) and of generation
(spiritual birth) through the symbol of the descent of the
Holy Ghost. Thus man becomes a child^[458] again and is
born into a circle of brothers and sisters; but his mother
255is the “communion of the saints,” the church, and his
circle of brothers and sisters is humanity, with whom he is
united anew in the common inheritance of the primitive
symbol.

It seems that at the time in which Christianity had its
origin this process was especially necessary; for that
period, as the result of the incredible contrast between
slavery and the freedom of the citizens and masters, had
entirely lost the consciousness of the common bond of
mankind. One of the next and most essential reasons for
the energetic regression to the infantile in Christianity,
which goes hand in hand with the revival of the incest
problem, was probably to be found in the far-reaching
depreciation of women. At that time sexuality was so
easily attainable that the result could only be a very excessive
depreciation of the sexual object. The existence
of personal values was first discovered by Christianity,
and there are many people who have not discovered it
even in the present day. However, the depreciation of
the sexual object hinders the outflow of that libido which
cannot be satisfied by sexual activity, because it belongs
to an already desexualized higher order. (If it were
not so, a Don Juan could never be neurotic; but the contrary
is the case.) For how might those higher valuations
be given to a worthless, despised object? Therefore,
the libido, after having seen a “Helen in every
woman” for so long a time, sets out on a search for the
difficult to obtain, the worshipped, but perhaps unattainable,
goal, and which in the unconscious is the mother.
Therefore the symbolic needs, based on the incest resistance,
256arise again in an increased degree, which promptly
transforms the beautiful, sinful world of the Olympian
Gods into incomprehensible, dreamlike, dark mysteries,
which, with their accessions of symbols and obscure meaningful
texts, remove us very far from the religious
feelings of that Roman-Græco world. When we see
how much trouble Jesus took to make acceptable to Nicodemus
the symbolic perception of things, that is to say,
really a repression and veiling over of the actual facts,
and how important it was for the history of civilization
in general, that people thought and still think in this
way, then we understand the revolt which is raised everywhere
against the psychologic discovery of the true background
of the neurotic or normal symbolism. Always
and everywhere we encounter the odious realm of sexuality,
which represents to all righteous people of to-day
something defiled. However, less than 2,000 years have
passed since the religious cult of sexuality was more or
less openly in full bloom. To be sure, they were heathen
and did not know better, but the nature of religious power
does not change from cycle to cycle. If one has once received
an effectual impression of the sexual contents of
the ancient cults, and if one realizes oneself that the religious
experience, that is, the union^[459] with the God of
antiquity, was understood by antiquity as a more or less
concrete coitus, then truly one can no longer fancy that
the motor forces of a religion have suddenly become
wholly different since the birth of Christ. Exactly the
same thing has occurred as with the hysteric who at first
indulges in some quite unbeautiful, infantile sexual manifestations
257and afterwards develops a hyperæsthetic negation
in order to convince every one of his special purity.
Christianity, with its repression of the manifest sexual, is
the negative of the ancient sexual cult. The original cult
has changed its tokens.^[460] One only needs to realize how
much of the gay paganism, even to the inclusion of unseemly
Gods, has been taken into the Christian church.
Thus the old indecent Priapus celebrated a gay festival of
resurrection in St. Tychon.^[461] Also partly in the physicians
Sts. Kosma and Damien, who graciously condescended to
accept the “membra virilia” in wax at their festival.^[462]
St. Phallus of old memories emerges again to be worshipped
in country chapels, to say nothing of the rest of
the paganism!

There are those who have not yet learned to recognize
sexuality as a function equivalent to hunger and who,
therefore, consider it as disgraceful that certain taboo
institutions which were considered as asexual refuges are
now recognized as overflowing with sexual symbolism.
Those people are doomed to the painful realization that
such is still the case, in spite of their great revolt. One
must learn to understand that, opposed to the customary
habit of thought, psychoanalytic thinking reduces and
resolves those symbolic structures which have become
more and more complicated through countless elaboration.
This means a course of reduction which would
be an intellectual enjoyment if the object were different.
But here it becomes distressing, not only æsthetically, but
apparently also ethically, because the repressions which
are to be overcome have been brought about by our best
258intentions. We must commence to overcome our virtuousness
with the certain fear of falling into baseness on
the other side. This is certainly true, for virtuousness is
always inwardly compensated by a great tendency towards
baseness; and how many profligates are there who inwardly
preserve a mawkish virtue and moral megalomania?
Both categories of men turn out to be snobs
when they come in contact with analytic psychology, because
the moral man has imagined an objective and cheap
verdict on sexuality and the unmoral man is entirely unaware
of the vulgarity of his sexuality and of his incapacity
for an unselfish love. One completely forgets that
one can most miserably be carried away, not only by a
vice, but also by a virtue. There is a fanatic orgiastic
self-righteousness which is just as base and which entails
just as much injustice and violence as a vice.

At this time, when a large part of mankind is beginning
to discard Christianity, it is worth while to understand
clearly why it was originally accepted. It was accepted
in order to escape at last from the brutality of
antiquity. As soon as we discard it, licentiousness returns,
as impressively exemplified by life in our large
modern cities. This step is not a forward step, but a
backward one. It is as with individuals who have laid
aside one form of transference and have no new one.
Without fail they will occupy regressively the old path
of transference, to their great detriment, because the
world around them has since then essentially changed.
He who is repelled by the historical and philosophical
weakness of the Christian dogmatism and the religious
259emptiness of an historical Jesus, of whose person we know
nothing and whose religious value is partly Talmudic,
partly Hellenic wisdom, and discards Christianity, and
therewith Christian morality, is certainly confronted with
the ancient problem of licentiousness. To-day the individual
still feels himself restrained by the public hypocritical
opinion, and, therefore, prefers to lead a secret,
separate life, but publicly to represent morality. It
might be different if men in general all at once found the
moral mask too dull, and if they realized how dangerously
their beasts lie in wait for each other, and then
truly a frenzy of demoralization might sweep over humanity.
This is the dream, the wish dream, of the
morally limited man of to-day; he forgets necessity, which
strangles men and robs them of their breath, and which
with a stern hand interrupts every passion.

It must not be imputed to me that I am wishing to
refer the libido back by analytical reduction to the primitive,
almost conquered, stages, entirely forgetting the fearful
misery this would entail for humanity. Indeed, some
individuals would let themselves be transported by the
old-time frenzy of sexuality, from which the burden of
guilt has been removed, to their own greatest detriment.

But these are the ones who under other circumstances
would have prematurely perished in some other way.
However, I well know the most effectual and most inexorable
regulator of human sexuality. This is necessity.
With this leaden weight human lust will never fly too
high.

To-day there are countless neurotics who are so simply
260because they do not know how to seek happiness in their
own manner. They do not even realize where the lack
lies. And besides these neurotics there are many more
normal people—and precisely people of the higher type—who
feel restricted and discontented. For all these reduction
to the sexual elements should be undertaken, in
order that they may be reinstated into the possession of
their primitive self, and thereby learn to know and value
its relation to the entire personality. In this way alone
can certain requirements be fulfilled and others be repudiated
as unfit because of their infantile character. In
this way the individual will come to realize that certain
things are to be sacrificed, although they are accomplished,
but in another sphere. We imagine that we have
long renounced, sacrificed and cut off our incest wish,
and that nothing of it is left. But it does not occur to us
that this is not true, but that we unconsciously commit
incest in another territory. In religious symbols, for
example, we come across incest.^[463] We consider the incestuous
wish vanished and lost, and then rediscover it
in full force in religion. This process or transformation
has taken place unconsciously in secular development.
Just as in Part I it is shown that a similar unconscious
transformation of the libido is an ethically worthless pose,
and with which I compared the Christianity of early
Roman antiquity, where evidently licentiousness and brutality
were strongly resisted, so here I must remark in
regard to the sublimation of the incestuous libido, that
the belief in the religious symbol has ceased to be an
ethical ideal; but it is an unconscious transformation of
261the incest wish into symbolic acts and symbolic concepts
which cheat men, as it were, so that heaven appears to
them as a father and earth as a mother and the people
upon it children and brothers and sisters. Thus man can
remain a child for all time and satisfy his incest wish all
unawares. This state would doubtless be ideal^[464] if it were
not infantile and, therefore, merely a one-sided wish, which
maintains a childish attitude. The reverse is anxiety.
Much is said of pious people who remain unshaken in
their trust in God and wander unswervingly safe and
blessed through the world. I have never seen this Chidher
yet. It is probably a wish figure. The rule is great
uncertainty among believers, which they drown with
fanatical cries among themselves or among others; moreover,
they have religious doubts, moral uncertainty,
doubts of their own personality, feelings of guilt and,
deepest of all, great fear of the opposite aspect of reality,
against which the most highly intelligent people struggle
with all their force. This other side is the devil, the
adversary or, expressed in modern terms, the corrective
of reality, of the infantile world picture, which has been
made acceptable through the predominating pleasure
principle.^[465] But the world is not a garden of God, of
the Father, but a place of terrors. Not only is heaven
no father and earth no mother and the people not
brothers nor sisters, but they represent hostile, destroying
powers, to which we are abandoned the more surely,
the more childishly and thoughtlessly we have entrusted
ourselves to the so-called Fatherly hand of God. One
should never forget the harsh speech of the first Napoleon,
262that the good God is always on the side of the
heaviest artillery.

The religious myth meets us here as one of the greatest
and most significant human institutions which, despite
misleading symbols, nevertheless gives man assurance and
strength, so that he may not be overwhelmed by the
monsters of the universe. The symbol, considered from
the standpoint of actual truth, is misleading, indeed, but
it is psychologically true,^[466] because it was and is the bridge
to all the greatest achievements of humanity.

But this does not mean to say that this unconscious
way of transformation of the incest wish into religious
exercises is the only one or the only possible one. There
is also a conscious recognition and understanding with
which we can take possession of this libido which is
bound up in incest and transformed into religious exercises
so that we no longer need the stage of religious
symbolism for this end. It is thinkable that instead of
doing good to our fellow-men, for “the love of Christ,”
we do it from the knowledge that humanity, even as ourselves,
could not exist if, among the herd, the one could
not sacrifice himself for the other. This would be the
course of moral autonomy, of perfect freedom, when man
could without compulsion wish that which he must do,
and this from knowledge, without delusion through belief
in the religious symbols.

It is a positive creed which keeps us infantile and,
therefore, ethically inferior. Although of the greatest
significance from the cultural point of view and of imperishable
beauty from the æsthetic standpoint, this
263delusion can no longer ethically suffice humanity striving
after moral autonomy.

The infantile and moral danger lies in belief in the
symbol because through that we guide the libido to an
imaginary reality. The simple negation of the symbol
changes nothing, for the entire mental disposition remains
the same; we merely remove the dangerous object.
But the object is not dangerous; the danger is our own
infantile mental state, for love of which we have lost
something very beautiful and ingenious through the
simple abandonment of the religious symbol. I think
belief should be replaced by understanding; then we
would keep the beauty of the symbol, but still remain
free from the depressing results of submission to belief.
This would be the psychoanalytic cure for belief and disbelief.

The vision following upon that of the city is that of a
“strange fir tree with gnarled branches.” This vision
does not seem extraordinary to us after all that we have
learned of the tree of life and its associations with the
city and the waters of life. This especial tree seems
simply to continue the category of the mother symbols.
The attribute “strange” probably signifies, as in dreams,
a special emphasis, that is, a special underlying complex
material. Unfortunately, the author gives us no individual
material for this. As the tree already suggested
in the symbolism of the city is particularly emphasized
through the further development of Miss Miller’s visions
264here, I find it necessary to discuss at some length the history
of the symbolism of the tree.

It is well known that trees have played a large part in
the cult myth from the remotest times. The typical myth
tree is the tree of paradise or of life which we discover
abundantly used in Babylonian and also in Jewish lore;
and in prechristian times, the pine tree of Attis, the tree
or trees of Mithra; in Germanic mythology, Ygdrasil
and so on. The hanging of the Attis image on the pine
tree; the hanging of Marsyas, which became a celebrated
artistic motive; the hanging of Odin; the Germanic hanging
sacrifices—indeed, the whole series of hanged gods—teaches
us that the hanging of Christ on the cross is not
a unique occurrence in religious mythology, but belongs
to the same circle of ideas as others. In this world of
imagery the cross of Christ is the tree of life, and equally
the wood of death. This contrast is not astounding.
Just as the origin of man from trees was a legendary idea,
so there were also burial customs, in which people were
buried in hollow trees. From that the German language
retains even now the expression “Totenbaum” (tree of
death) for a coffin. Keeping in mind the fact that the
tree is predominantly a mother symbol, then the mystic
significance of this manner of burial can be in no way
incomprehensible to us. The dead are delivered back to
the mother for rebirth. We encounter this symbol in
the Osiris myth, handed down by Plutarch,^[467] which is, in
general, typical in various aspects. Rhea is pregnant with
Osiris; at the same time also with Isis; Osiris and Isis
mate even in the mother’s womb (motive of the night
265journey on the sea with incest). Their son is Arueris,
later called Horus. It is said of Isis that she was born
“in absolute humidity” (τετάρτῃ δὲ τῆν Ἴσιν ἐν πανύγροις
γενέσθαι^[468]). It is said of Osiris that a certain Pamyles
in Thebes heard a voice from the temple of Zeus
while drawing water, which commanded him to proclaim
that Osiris was born μέγας βασιλεὺς εὐεργέτης Ὄσιρις.^[469]
In honor of this the Pamylion were celebrated. They
were similar to the phallophorion. Pamyles is a phallic
demon, similar to the original Dionysus. The myth reduced
reads: Osiris and Isis were generated by phallus
from the water (mother womb) in the ordinary manner.
(Kronos had made Rhea pregnant, the relation was
secret, and Rhea was his sister. Helios, however, observed
it and cursed the relation.) Osiris was killed in
a crafty manner by the god of the underworld, Typhon,
who locked him in a chest. He was thrown into the Nile,
and so carried out to sea. Osiris, however, mated in the
underworld with his second sister, Nephthys (motive of
the night journey to the sea with incest). One sees here
how the symbolism is developed. In the mother womb,
before the outward existence, Osiris commits incest; in
death, the second intrauterine existence, Osiris again commits
incest. Both times with a sister who is simply substituted
for the mother as a legal, uncensured symbol,
since the marriage with a sister in early antiquity was not
merely tolerated, but was really commended. Zarathustra
also recommended the marriage of kindred. This
266form of myth would be impossible to-day, because cohabitation
with the sister, being incestuous, would be
repressed. The wicked Typhon entices Osiris craftily
into a box or chest; this distortion of the true state of
affairs is transparent. The “original sin” caused men to
wish to go back into the mother again, that is, the incestuous
desire for the mother, condemned by law, is the
ruse supposedly invented by Typhon. The fact is, the
ruse is very significant. Man tries to sneak into rebirth
through subterfuge in order to become a child again.
An early Egyptian hymn^[470] even raises an accusation
against the mother Isis because she destroys the sun-god
Rê by treachery. It was interpreted as the ill-will of the
mother towards her son that she banished and betrayed
him. The hymn describes how Isis fashioned a snake,
put it in the path of Rê, and how the snake wounded the
sun-god with a poisonous bite, from which wound he
never recovered, so that finally he had to retire on the
back of the heavenly cow. But this cow is the cow-headed
goddess, just as Osiris is the bull Apis. The
mother is accused as if she were the cause of man flying
to the mother in order to be cured of the wound which
she had herself inflicted. This wound is the prohibition
of incest.^[471] Man is thus cut off from the hopeful certainty
of childhood and early youth, from all the unconscious,
instinctive happenings which permit the child to
live as an appendage of his parents, unconscious of himself.
There must be contained in this many sensitive
memories of the animal age, where there was not any
“thou shalt” and “thou shalt not,” but all was just
267simple occurrence. Even yet a deep animosity seems to
live in man because a brutal law has separated him from
the instinctive yielding to his desires and from the great
beauty of the harmony of the animal nature. This separation
manifested itself, among other things, in the incest
prohibition and its correlates (laws of marriage, etc.);
therefore pain and anger relate to the mother, as if she
were responsible for the domestication of the sons of
men. In order not to become conscious of his incest wish
(his backward harking to the animal nature), the son
throws all the burden of the guilt on the mother, from
which arises the idea of the “terrible mother.”^[472] The
mother becomes for him a spectre of anxiety, a nightmare.^[473]

After the completed “night journey to the sea,” the
chest of Osiris was cast ashore by Byblos, and lay in the
branches of an Erica, which grew around the coffin and
became a splendid tree. The king of the land had the
tree placed as a column under his roof.^[474] During this
period of Osiris’s absence (the winter solstice) the lament
customary during thousands of years for the dead god
and his return occurs, and its εὕρεσις is a feast of joy.
A passage from the mournful quest of Isis is especially
noteworthy:

“She flutters like a swallow lamenting around the column,
which encloses the god sleeping in death.”

(This same motive returns in the Kyffhäuser saga.)

FRUCTIFICATION FOLLOWING UPON THE MITHRAIC SACRIFICE

268Later on Typhon dismembers the corpse and scatters
the pieces. We come upon the motive of dismemberment in countless sun myths,^[475] namely, the inversion of
the idea of the composition of the child in the mother’s
womb.^[476] In fact, the mother Isis collects the pieces of
the body with the help of the jackal-headed Anubis. (She
finds the corpse with the help of dogs.) Here the nocturnal
devourers of bodies, the dogs and jackals, become
the assistants of the composition, of the reproduction.^[477]
The Egyptian vulture owes its symbolic meaning as
mother to this necrophagic habit. In Persian antiquity the
corpses were thrown out for the dogs to devour, just as
to-day in the Indian funeral pyres the removal of the
carcasses is left to the vultures. Persia was familiar with
the custom of leading a dog to the bed of one dying,
whereupon the latter had to present the dog with a morsel.^[478]
The custom, on its surface, evidently signifies that
the morsel is to belong to the dog, so that he will spare
the body of the dead, precisely as Cerberus was soothed
by the honey-cakes which Hercules gave to him in the
journey to hell. But when we bear in mind the jackal-headed
Anubis who rendered his good services in the
gathering together of the dismembered Osiris, and the
mother significance of the vulture, then the question arises
whether something deeper was not meant by this ceremony.
Creuzer has also concerned himself with this idea,
and has come to the conclusion that the astral form of
the dog ceremony, that is, the appearance of Sirius, the
dog star, at the period of the sun’s highest position, is
related to this in that the introduction of the dog has a
compensatory significance, death being thereby made, reversedly,
269equal to the sun’s highest position. This is
quite in conformity with psychologic thought, which results
from the very general fact that death is interpreted
as entrance into the mother’s womb (rebirth). This interpretation
would seem to be supported by the otherwise
enigmatic function of the dog in the Sacrificium
Mithriacum. In the monuments a dog always leaps up
upon the bull killed by Mithra. However, this sacrifice
is probably to be interpreted through the Persian legend,
as well as through the monument, as the moment of the
highest fecundity. The most beautiful expression of this
is seen upon the magnificent Mithra relief of Heddernheim.
Upon one side of a large stone slab (formerly
probably rotating) is seen the stereotyped overthrowing
and sacrifice of the bull, but upon the other side stands
Sol, with a bunch of grapes in his hand, Mithra with
the cornucopia, the Dadophores with fruits, corresponding
to the legend that all fecundity proceeds from the
dead bull of the world, fruits from the horns, wine from
its blood, grain from the tail, cattle from its sperma, leek
from its nose, and so on. Silvanus stands above this
scene with the animals of the forest arising from him.
The significance suspected by Creuzer might very easily
belong to the dog in this connection.^[479] Let us now turn
back to the myth of Osiris. In spite of the restoration of
the corpse accomplished by Isis, the resuscitation succeeds
only incompletely in so far as the phallus of Osiris cannot
again be produced, because it was eaten by the fishes;
the power of life was wanting.^[480] Osiris as a phantom
once more impregnated Isis, but the fruit is Harpocrates,
270who was feeble in τοῖς κάτωθεν γυίοις (in the lower
limbs), that is, corresponding to the significance of
γυῖον (at the feet). (Here, as is plainly evident, foot
is used in the phallic meaning.) This incurability of the
setting sun corresponds to the incurability of Rê in the
above-mentioned older Egyptian sun hymn. Osiris, although
only a phantom, now prepares the young sun, his
son Horus, for a battle with Typhon, the evil spirit of
darkness. Osiris and Horus correspond to the father-son
symbolism mentioned in the beginning, which symbolic
figure, corresponding again to the above formulation,^[481]
is flanked by the well-formed and ugly figures of
Horus and Harpocrates, the latter appearing mostly as a
cripple, often represented distorted to a mere caricature.^[482]

He is confused in the tradition very much with Horus,
with whom he also has the name in common. Hor-pi-chrud,
as his real name^[483] reads, is composed from chrud,
“child,” and Hor, from the adjective hri = up, on top,
and signifies the up-coming child, as the rising sun, and
opposed to Osiris, who personifies the setting sun—the
sun of the west. Thus Osiris and Horpichrud or Horus
are one being, both husband and son of the same mother,
Hathor-Isis. The Chnum-Ra, the sun god of lower
Egypt, represented as a ram, has at his side, as the female
divinity of the land, Hatmehit, who wears the fish on her
head. She is the mother and wife of Bi-neb-did (Ram,
local name of Chnum-Ra). In the hymn of Hibis,^[484]
Amon-ra was invoked:

“Thy (Chum-Ram) dwells in Mendes, united as the quadruple
god Thmuis. He is the phallus, the lord of the gods. The
271bull of his mother rejoices in the cow (ahet, the mother) and
man fructifies through his semen.”

In further inscriptions Hatmehit was directly referred
to as the “mother of Mendes.” (Mendes is the Greek
form of Bi-neb-did: ram.) She is also invoked as the
“Good,” with the additional significance of ta-nofert, or
“young woman.” The cow as symbol of the mother is
found in all possible forms and variations of Hathor-Isis,
and also in the female Nun (parallel to this is the
primitive goddess Nit or Neith), the protoplasm which,
related to the Hindoo Atman,^[485] is equally of masculine
and feminine nature. Nun is, therefore, invoked as
Amon,^[486] the original water,^[487] which is in the beginning.
He is also designated as the father of fathers, the mother
of mothers. To this corresponds the invocation to the
female side of Nun-Amon, of Nit or Neith.

“Nit, the ancient, the mother of god, the mistress of Esne,
the father of fathers, the mother of mothers, who is the beetle
and the vulture, the being in its beginning.

“Nit, the ancient, the mother who bore the light god, Râ,
who bore first of all, when there was nothing which brought forth.

“The cow, the ancient, which bore the sun, and then laid the
germ of gods and men.”

The word “nun” has the significance of young, fresh,
new, also the on-coming waters of the Nile flood. In a
transferred sense “nun” was also used for the chaotic
primitive waters; in general for the primitive generating
matter^[488] which was personified by the goddess Nunet.
From her Nut sprang, the goddess of heaven, who was
272represented with a starry body, and also as the heavenly
cow with a starry body.

When the sun-god, little by little, retires on the back
of the heavenly cow, just as poor Lazarus returns into
Abraham’s bosom, each has the same significance; they
return into the mother, in order to rise as Horus. Thus
it can be said that in the morning the goddess is the
mother, at noon the sister-wife and in the evening again
the mother, who receives the dying in her lap, reminding
us of the Pietà of Michelangelo. As shown by the illustration
(from Dideron’s “Iconographie Chrétienne”),
this thought has been transferred as a whole into Christianity.

Thus the fate of Osiris is explained: he passes into
the mother’s womb, the chest, the sea, the tree, the
column of Astartes; he is dismembered, re-formed, and
reappears again in his son, Hor-pi-chrud.

Before entering upon the further mysteries which the
beautiful myth reveals to us, there is still much to be said
about the symbol of the tree. Osiris lies in the branches
of the tree, surrounded by them, as in the mother’s womb.
The motive of embracing and entwining is often found
in the sun myths, meaning that it is the myth of rebirth.
A good example is the Sleeping Beauty, also the legend
of the girl who is enclosed between the bark and the
trunk, but who is freed by a youth with his horn.^[489] The
horn is of gold and silver, which hints at the sunbeam in
the phallic meaning. (Compare the previous legend of
the horn.) An exotic legend tells of the sun-hero, how he
must be freed from the plant entwining around him.^[490]
273A girl dreams of her lover who has fallen into the water;
she tries to save him, but first has to pull seaweed and
sea-grass from the water; then she catches him. In an
African myth the hero, after his act, must first be disentangled
from the seaweed. In a Polynesian myth the
hero’s ship was encoiled by the tentacles of a gigantic
polyp. Rê’s ship is encoiled by a night serpent on its
night journey on the sea. In the poetic rendering of the
history of Buddha’s birth by Sir Edwin Arnold (“The
Light of Asia,” p. 5) the motive of an embrace is also
found:

“Queen Maya stood at noon, her days fulfilled,
Under a Palso in the palace grounds,
A stately trunk, straight as a temple shaft,
With crown of glossy leaves and fragrant blooms;
And knowing the time come—for all things knew—
The conscious tree bent down its boughs to make
A bower about Queen Maya’s majesty:
And earth put forth a thousand sudden flowers
To spread a couch: while ready for the bath
The rock hard by gave out a limpid stream
Of crystal flow. So brought she forth the child.”^[491]

We come across a very similar motive in the cult legend
of the Samian Hera. Yearly it was claimed that the
image disappeared from the temple, was fastened somewhere
on the seashore on a trunk of a Lygos tree and
wound about with its branches. There it was “found,”
and was treated with wedding-cake. This feast is undoubtedly
a ἱερὸς γάμος (ritual marriage), because in
Samos there was a legend that Zeus had first had a long-continued
secret love relation with Hera. In Plataea
274and Argos, the marriage procession was represented with
bridesmaids, marriage feast, and so on. The festival took
place in the wedding month “Γαμηλιών” (beginning of
February). But in Plataea the image was previously
carried into a lonely place in the wood; approximately
corresponding to the legend of Plutarch that Zeus had
kidnapped Hera and then had hidden her in a cave of
Cithaeron. According to our deductions, previously
made, we must conclude from this that there is still another
train of thought, namely, the magic charm of a
rejuvenation, which is condensed in the Hierosgamos.
The disappearance and hiding in the wood, in the cave,
on the seashore, entwined in a willow tree, points to the
death of the sun and rebirth. The early springtime
Γαμηλιών (the time of Marriage) in February fits in
with that very well. In fact, Pausanias informs us that
the Argivian Hera became a maiden again by a yearly
bath in the spring of Canathos. The significance of the
bath is emphasized by the information that in the
Plataeian cult of Hera Teleia, Tritonian nymphs appeared
as water-carriers. In a tale from the Iliad, where the
conjugal couch of Zeus upon Mount Ida is described, it is
said:^[492]

“The son of Saturn spake, and took his wife
Into his arms, while underneath the pair,
The sacred Earth threw up her freshest herbs:
The dewy lotos, and the crocus-flower,
And thick and soft the hyacinth. All these
Upbore them from the ground. Upon this couch
They lay, while o’er them a bright golden cloud
Gathered and shed its drops of glistening dew.
275So slumbered on the heights of Gargarus
The All-Father overcome by sleep and love,
And held his consort in his arms.”
—Trans. by W. C. Bryant.

Drexler recognizes in this description an unmistakable
allusion to the garden of the gods on the extreme western
shore of the ocean, an idea which might have been taken
from a Prehomeric Hierosgamos hymn. This western
land is the land of the setting sun, whither Hercules,
Gilgamesh, etc., hasten with the sun, in order to find
there immortality, where the sun and the maternal sea
unite in an eternally rejuvenating intercourse. Our supposition
of a condensation of the Hierosgamos with the
myth of rebirth is probably confirmed by this. Pausanias
mentions a related myth fragment where the statue of
Artemis Orthia is also called Lygodesma (chained with
willows), because it was found in a willow tree; this tale
seems to be related to the general Greek celebration of
Hierosgamos with the above-mentioned customs.^[493]

The motive of the “devouring” which Frobenius has
shown to be a regular constituent of the sun myths is
closely related to this (also metaphorically). The
“whale dragon” (mother’s womb) always “devours”
the hero. The devouring may also be partial instead of
complete.

A six-year-old girl, who goes to school unwillingly,
dreams that her leg is encircled by a large red worm.
She had a tender interest for this creature, contrary to
what might be expected. An adult patient, who cannot
separate from an older friend on account of an extraordinarily
276strong mother transference, dreams that “she had
to get across some deep water (typical idea!) with this
friend; her friend fell in (mother transference); she
tries to drag her out, and almost succeeds, but a large
crab seizes on the dreamer by the foot and tries to pull
her in.”

Etymology also confirms this conception: There is an
Indo-Germanic root vélu-, vel-, with the meaning of “encircling,
surrounding, turning.” From this is derived
Sanskrit val, valati = to cover, to surround, to encircle,
to encoil (symbol of the snake); vallî = creeping plant;
ulûta = boa-constrictor = Latin volûtus, Lithuanian velù,
velti = wickeln (to roll up); Church Slavonian vlina =
Old High German, wella = Welle (wave or billow). To
the root vélu also belongs the root vlvo, with the meaning
“cover, corium, womb.” (The serpent on account of
its casting its skin is an excellent symbol of rebirth.)
Sanskrit ulva, ulba has the same meaning; Latin volva,
volvula, vulva. To vélu also belongs the root ulvorâ,
with the meaning of “fruitful field, covering or husk
of plants, sheath.” Sanskrit urvárâ = sown field. Zend
urvara = plant. (See the personification of the ploughed
furrow.) The same root vel has also the meaning of
“wallen” (to undulate). Sanskrit ulmuka = conflagration.
Ϝαλέα, Ϝέλα, Gothic vulan = wallen (to undulate).
Old High German and Middle High German walm =
heat, glow.^[494] It is typical that in the state of “involution”
the hair of the sun-hero always falls out from the
heat. Further the root vel is found with the meaning
“to sound,^[495] and to will, to wish” (libido!).

277The motive of encoiling is mother symbolism.^[496] This
is verified by the fact that the trees, for example, bring
forth again (like the whale in the legend of Jonah).
They do that very generally, thus in the Greek legend
the Μελίαι νύμφαι^[497] of the ash trees are the mothers of
the race of men of the Iron Age. In northern mythology,
Askr, the ash tree, is the primitive father. His wife,
Embla, is the “Emsige,” the active one, and not, as was
earlier believed, the aspen. Askr probably means, in the
first place, the phallic spear of the ash tree. (Compare
the Sabine custom of parting the bride’s hair with the
lance.) The Bundehesh symbolizes the first people,
Meschia and Meschiane, as the tree Reivas, one part of
which places a branch in a hole of the other part. The
material which, according to the northern myth, was animated
by the god when he created men^[498] is designated
as trê = wood, tree.^[499] I recall also ὕλη = wood, which in
Latin is called materia. In the wood of the “world-ash,”
Ygdrasil, a human pair hid themselves at the end of the
world, from whom sprang the race of the renewed
world.^[500] The Noah motive is easily recognized in this
conception (the night journey on the sea); at the same
time, in the symbol of Ygdrasil, a mother idea is again
apparent. At the moment of the destruction of the world
the “world-ash” becomes the guardian mother, the tree
of death and life, one “ἐγκόλπιον.”^[501][502] This function of
rebirth of the “world-ash” also helps to elucidate the
representation met with in the Egyptian Book of the
278Dead, which is called “the gate of knowledge of the
soul of the East”:

“I am the pilot in the holy keel, I am the steersman who allows
no rest in the ship of Râ.^[503] I know that tree of emerald green
from whose midst Râ rises to the height of the clouds.”^[504]

Ship and tree of the dead (death ship and death tree)
are here closely connected. The conception is that Râ,
born from the tree, ascends (Osiris in the Erika). The
representation of the sun-god Mithra is probably explained
in the same way. He is represented upon the
Heddernheim relief, with half his body arising from the
top of a tree. (In the same way numerous other monuments
show Mithra half embodied in the rock, and illustrate
a rock birth, similar to Men.) Frequently there is
a stream near the birthplace of Mithra. This conglomeration
of symbols is also found in the birth of
Aschanes, the first Saxon king, who grew from the Harz
rocks, which are in the midst of the wood^[505] near a fountain.^[506]
Here we find all the mother symbols united—earth,
wood, water, three forms of tangible matter. We
can wonder no longer that in the Middle Ages the tree
was poetically addressed with the title of honor, “mistress.”
Likewise it is not astonishing that the Christian
legend transformed the tree of death, the cross, into
the tree of life, so that Christ was often represented on
a living and fruit-bearing tree. This reversion of the
cross symbol to the tree of life, which even in Babylon
was an important and authentic religious symbol, is also
considered entirely probable by Zöckler,^[507] an authority
on the history of the cross. The pre-Christian meaning
of the symbol does not contradict this interpretation; on
the contrary, its meaning is life. The appearance of the
cross in the sun worship (here the cross with equal arms,
and the swastika cross, as representative of the sun’s
rays), as well as in the cult of the goddess of love (Isis
with the crux ansata, the rope, the speculum veneris ♀,
etc.), in no way contradicts the previous historical meaning.
The Christian legend has made abundant use of this
symbolism.

CHRIST ON THE TREE OF LIFE

279The student of mediæval history is familiar with the
representation of the cross growing above the grave of
Adam. The legend was that Adam was buried on Golgotha.
Seth had planted on his grave a branch of the
“paradise tree,” which became the cross and tree of
death of Christ.^[508] We all know that through Adam’s
guilt sin and death came into the world, and Christ
through his death has redeemed us from the guilt. To
the question in what had Adam’s guilt consisted it is said
that the unpardonable sin to be expiated by death was
that he dared to pick a fruit from the paradise tree.^[509]
The results of this are described in an Oriental legend.
One to whom it was permitted to cast one look into
Paradise after the fall saw the tree there and the four
streams. But the tree was withered, and in its branches
lay an infant. (The mother had become pregnant.^[510])

This remarkable legend corresponds to the Talmudic
tradition that Adam, before Eve, already possessed a
demon wife, by name Lilith, with whom he quarrelled for
mastership. But Lilith raised herself into the air through
280the magic of the name of God and hid herself in the sea.
Adam forced her back with the help of three angels.^[511]
Lilith became a nightmare, a Lamia, who threatened those
with child and who kidnapped the new-born child. The
parallel myth is that of the Lamias, the spectres of the
night, who terrified the children. The original legend is
that Lamia enticed Zeus, but the jealous Hera, however,
caused Lamia to bring only dead children into the world.
Since that time the raging Lamia is the persecutor of
children, whom she destroys wherever she can. This
motive frequently recurs in fairy tales, where the mother
often appears directly as a murderess or as a devourer
of men;^[512] a German paradigm is the well-known tale of
Hansel and Gretel. Lamia is actually a large, voracious
fish, which establishes the connection with the whale-dragon
myth so beautifully worked out by Frobenius, in
which the sea monster devours the sun-hero for rebirth
and where the hero must employ every stratagem to conquer
the monster. Here again we meet with the idea of
the “terrible mother” in the form of the voracious fish,
the mouth of death.^[513] In Frobenius there are numerous
examples where the monster has devoured not only men
but also animals, plants, an entire country, all of which
are redeemed by the hero to a glorious rebirth.

The Lamias are typical nightmares, the feminine nature
of which is abundantly proven.^[514] Their universal peculiarity
is that they ride upon their victims. Their counterparts
are the spectral horses which bear their riders
along in a mad gallop. One recognizes very easily in
these symbolic forms the type of anxious dream which,
281as Riklin shows,^[515] has already become important for the
interpretation of fairy tales through the investigation of
Laistner.^[516] The typical riding takes on a special aspect
through the results of the analytic investigation of infantile
psychology; the two contributions of Freud and
myself^[517] have emphasized, on one side, the anxiety significance
of the horse, on the other side the sexual meaning
of the phantasy of riding. When we take these experiences
into consideration, we need no longer be surprised
that the maternal “world-ash” Ygdrasil is called in German
“the frightful horse.” Cannegieter^[518] says of nightmares:

“Abigunt eas nymphas (matres deas, mairas) hodie rustici osse
capitis equini tectis injecto, cujusmodi ossa per has terras in
rusticorum villis crebra est animadvertere. Nocte autem ad concubia
equitare creduntur et equos fatigare ad longinqua itinera.”^[519]

The connection of nightmare and horse seems, at first
glance, to be present also etymologically—nightmare and
mare. The Indo-Germanic root for märe is mark.
Märe is the horse, English mare; Old High German
marah (male horse) and meriha (female horse); Old
Norse merr (mara = nightmare); Anglo-Saxon myre
(maira). The French “cauchmar” comes from calcare
= to tread, to step (of iterative meaning, therefore, “to
tread” or press down). It was also said of the cock who
282stepped upon the hen. This movement is also typical for
the nightmare; therefore, it is said of King Vanlandi,
“Mara trad han,” the Mara trod on him in sleep even to
death.^[520] A synonym for nightmare is the “troll” or
“treter”^[521] (treader). This movement (calcare) is
proven again by the experience of Freud and myself with
children, where a special infantile sexual significance is
attached to stepping or kicking.

The common Aryan root mar means “to die”; therefore,
mara the “dead” or “death.” From this results
mors, μόρος = fate (also μοῖρα^[522]). As is well known,
the Nornes sitting under the “world-ash” personify fate
like Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos. With the Celts the
conception of the Fates probably passes into that of
matres and matronæ, which had a divine significance
among the Germans. A well-known passage in Julius
Cæsar (“De Bello Gallico,” i: 50) informs us of this
meaning of the mother:

“Ut matres familias eorum sortibus et vaticinationibus^[523] declararent,
utrum prœlium committi ex usu esset, nec ne.”^[524]

In Slav mara means “witch”; poln. mora = demon,
nightmare; mōr or mōre (Swiss-German) means “sow,”
also as an insult. The Bohemian mura means “nightmare”
and “evening moth, Sphinx.” This strange connection
is explained through analysis where it often
occurs that animals with movable shells (Venus shell) or
wings are utilized for very transparent reasons as symbols
of the female genitals.^[525] The Sphingina are the twilight
283moths; they, like the nightmare, come in the darkness.
Finally, it is to be observed that the sacred olive
tree of Athens is called “μορία” (that was derived from
μόρος). Halirrhotios wished to cut down the tree, but
killed himself with the axe in the attempt.

The sound resemblance of mar, mère with meer = sea
and Latin mare = sea is remarkable, although etymologically
accidental. Might it refer back to “the great primitive
idea of the mother” who, in the first place, meant to
us our individual world and afterwards became the symbol
of all worlds? Goethe said of the mothers: “They
are encircled by images of all creatures.” The Christians,
too, could not refrain from reuniting their mother
of God with water. “Ave Maris stella” is the beginning
of a hymn to Mary. Then again it is the horses
of Neptune which symbolize the waves of the sea. It is
probably of importance that the infantile word ma-ma
(mother’s breast) is repeated in its initial sound in all
possible languages, and that the mothers of two religious
heroes are called Mary and Maya. That the mother is
the horse of the child is to be seen most plainly in the
primitive custom of carrying the child on the back or letting
it ride on the hip. Odin hung on the “world-ash,”
the mother, his “horse of terror.” The Egyptian
sun-god sits on the back of his mother, the heavenly
cow.

We have already seen that, according to Egyptian conceptions,
Isis, the mother of god, played an evil trick on
the sun-god with the poisonous snake; also Isis behaved
treacherously toward her son Horus in Plutarch’s tradition.
284That is, Horus vanquished the evil Typhon, who
murdered Osiris treacherously (terrible mother = Typhon).
Isis, however, set him free again. Horus thereupon
rebelled, laid hands on his mother and tore the regal
ornaments from her head, whereupon Hermes gave her
a cow’s head. Then Horus conquered Typhon a second
time. Typhon, in the Greek legend, is a monstrous
dragon. Even without this confirmation it is evident that
the battle of Horus is the typical battle of the sun-hero
with the whale-dragon. Of the latter we know that it is
a symbol of the “dreadful mother,” of the voracious
jaws of death, where men are dismembered and ground
up.^[526] Whoever vanquishes this monster has gained a new
or eternal youth. For this purpose one must, in spite of
all dangers, descend into the belly of the monster^[527] (journey
to hell) and spend some time there. (Imprisonment
by night in the sea.)

The battle with the night serpent signifies, therefore,
the conquering of the mother, who is suspected of an infamous
crime, that is, the betrayal of the son. A full
confirmation of the connection comes to us through the
fragment of the Babylonian epic of the creation, discovered
by George Smith, mostly from the library of Asurbanipal.
The period of the origin of the text was probably
in the time of Hammurabi (2,000 B.C.). We
learn from this account of creation^[528] that the sun-god Ea,
the son of the depths of the waters and the god of wisdom,^[529]
had conquered Apsû. Apsû is the creator of the
great gods (he existed in the beginning in a sort of trinity
with Tiâmat—the mother of gods and Mumu, his vizier).
285Ea conquered the father, but Tiâmat plotted revenge.
She prepared herself for battle against the gods.

“Mother Hubur, who created everything,
Procured invincible weapons, gave birth to giant snakes
With pointed teeth, relentless in every way;
Filled their bellies with poison instead of blood,
Furious gigantic lizards, clothed them with horrors,
Let them swell with the splendor of horror, formed them rearing,
Whoever sees them shall die of terror.
Their bodies shall rear without turning to escape.
She arrayed the lizards, dragons and Laḫamen,
Hurricanes, mad dogs, scorpion men,
Mighty storms, fishmen and rams.
With relentless weapons, without fear of conflict,
Powerful are Tiâmat’s commands, irresistible are they.

“After Tiâmat had powerfully done her work
She conceived evil against the gods, her descendants;
In order to revenge Apsu, Tiâmat did evil.
When Ea now heard this thing
He became painfully anxious, sorrowfully he sat himself.
He went to the father, his creator, Ans̆ar,
To relate to him all that Tiâmat plotted.
Tiâmat, our mother, has taken an aversion to us,
Has prepared a riotous mob, furiously raging.”

The gods finally opposed Marduk, the god of spring,
the victorious sun, against the fearful host of Tiâmat.
Marduk prepared for battle. Of his chief weapon, which
he created, it is said:

“He created the evil wind, Imḫullu, the south storm and the hurricane,
The fourth wind, the seventh wind, the whirlwind and the harmful wind,
Then let he loose the winds, which he had created, the seven:
To cause confusion within Tiâmat, they followed behind him,
286Then the lord took up the cyclone, his great weapon;
For his chariot he mounted the stormwind, the incomparable, the terrible one.”

His chief weapon is the wind and a net, with which he
will entangle Tiâmat. He approaches Tiâmat and challenges
her to a combat.

“Then Tiâmat and Marduk, the wise one of the gods, came together,
Rising for the fight, approaching to the battle:
Then the lord spread out his net and caught her.
He let loose the Imḫullu in his train at her face,
Then Tiâmat now opened her mouth as wide as she could.
He let the Imḫullu rush in so that her lips could not close;
With the raging winds he filled her womb.
Her inward parts were seized and she opened wide her mouth.
He touched her with the spear, dismembered her body,
He slashed her inward parts, and cut out her heart,
Subdued her and put an end to her life.
He threw down her body and stepped upon it.”

After Marduk slew the mother, he devised the creation
of the world.

“There the lord rested contemplating her body,
Then divided he the Colossus, planning wisely.
He cut it apart like a flat fish, into two parts,^[530]
One half he took and with it he covered the Heavens.”

In this manner Marduk created the universe from the
mother. It is clearly evident that the killing of the
mother-dragon here takes place under the idea of a wind
fecundation with negative accompaniments.

The world is created from the mother, that is to say,
from the libido taken away from the mother through sacrifice.
287We shall have to consider this significant formula
more closely in the last chapter. The most interesting
parallels to this primitive myth are to be found in the
literature of the Old Testament, as Gunkel^[531] has brilliantly
pointed out. It is worth while to trace the psychology
of these parallels.

Isaiah li:9:

(9) “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord;
awake as in the ancient days, in the generation of old. Art thou
not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?

(10) “Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of
the great deep, that hath made the depths of the sea a way for
the ransomed to pass over?”

The name of Rahab is frequently used for Egypt in
the Old Testament, also dragon. Isaiah, chapter xxx,
verse 7, calls Egypt “the silent Rahab,” and means,
therefore, something evil and hostile. Rahab is the well-known
whore of Jericho, who later, as the wife of Prince
Salma, became the ancestress of Christ. Here Rahab
appeared as the old dragon, as Tiâmat, against whose
evil power Marduk, or Jehovah, marched forth. The
expression “the ransomed” refers to the Jews freed
from bondage, but it is also mythological, for the hero
again frees those previously devoured by the whale.
(Frobenius.)

Psalm, lxxxix:10:

“Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces, as one that is slain.”

Job xxvi:12–13:

“He divideth the sea with his power, and by his understanding
he smiteth through the proud.

288“By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens, his hand hath
formed the crooked serpent.”

Gunkel places Rahab as identical with Chaos, that is,
the same as Tiâmat. Gunkel translates “the breaking to
pieces” as “violation.” Tiâmat or Rahab as the mother
is also the whore. Gilgamesh treats Ishtar in this way
when he accuses her of whoredom. This insult towards
the mother is very familiar to us from dream analysis.
The dragon Rahab appears also as Leviathan, the water
monster (maternal sea).

Psalm lxxiv:

(13) “Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou brakest
the heads of the dragons in the waters.

(14) “Thou brakest the heads of Leviathan in pieces and
gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness.

(15) “Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood: thou
didst dry up mighty rivers.”

While only the phallic meaning of the Leviathan was
emphasized in the first part of this work, we now discover
also the maternal meaning. A further parallel is:

Isaiah xxvii:1:

“In that day, the Lord with his cruel and great and strong
sword shall punish Leviathan, the piercing serpent, even Leviathan
that crooked serpent, and he shall slay the dragon that is in the
sea.”

We come upon a special motive in Job, chap. xli, v. 1:

“Canst thou draw out Leviathan with an hook? or his tongue
with a cord which thou lettest down? Canst thou put an hook
in his nose? or bore his jaw through with a thorn?”

289Numerous parallels to this motive are to be found
among exotic myths in Frobenius, where the maternal sea
monster was also fished for. The comparison of the
mother libido with the elementary powers of the sea
and the powerful monsters borne by the earth show how
invincibly great is the power of that libido which we designate
as maternal.

We have already seen that the incest prohibition prevents
the son from reproducing himself through the
mother. But this must be done by the god, as is shown
with remarkable clearness and candor in the pious Egyptian
mythology, which has preserved the most ancient and
simple concepts. Thus Chnum, the “moulder,” the
“potter,” the “architect,” moulds his egg upon the potter’s
wheel, for he is “the immortal growth,” “the reproduction
of himself and his own rebirth, the creator of
the egg, which emerged from the primitive waters.” In
the Book of the Dead it says:

“I am the sublime falcon (the Sun-god), which has come
forth from his egg.”

Another passage in the Book of the Dead reads:

“I am the creator of Nun, who has taken his place in the
underworld. My nest is not seen and my egg is not broken.”

A further passage reads:

“that great and noble god in his egg: who is his own originator
of that which has arisen from him.”^[532]

Therefore, the god Nagaga-uer is also called the
“great cackler.” (Book of the Dead.) “I cackle like
290a goose and I whistle like a falcon.” The mother is reproached
with the incest prohibition as an act of wilful
maliciousness by which she excludes the son from immortality.
Therefore, a god must at least rebel, overpower
and chastise the mother. (Compare Adam and Lilith,
above.) The “overpowering” signifies incestuous
rape.^[533] Herodotus^[534] has preserved for us a valuable
fragment of this religious phantasy.

“And how they celebrate their feast to Isis in the city of
Busiris, I have already previously remarked. After the sacrifice,
all of them, men and women, full ten thousand people, begin to
beat each other. But it would be sin for me to mention for whom
they do beat each other.

“But in Papremis they celebrated the sacrifice with holy actions,
as in the other places. About the time when the sun sets, some
few priests are busy around the image; most of them stand at
the entrance with wooden clubs, and others who would fulfil a
vow, more than a thousand men, also stand in a group with
wooden cudgels opposite them.

“Now on the eve of the festival, they take the image out in
a small and gilded temple into another sacred edifice. Then the
few who remain with the image draw a four-wheeled chariot upon
which the temple stands with the image which it encloses. But
the others who stand in the anterooms are not allowed to enter.
Those under a vow, who stand by the god, beat them off. Now
occurs a furious battle with clubs, in which they bruise each other’s
bodies and as I believe, many even die from their wounds: notwithstanding
this, the Egyptians consider that none die.

“The natives claim that this festival gathering was introduced
for the following reason: in this sanctuary lived the mother of
Ares.^[535] Now Ares was brought up abroad and when he became
a man he came to have intercourse with his mother. The servants
of his mother who had seen him did not allow him to enter peacefully,
but prevented him; at which he fetched people from another
city, who mistreated the servants and had entrance to his
291mother. Therefore, they asserted that this slaughter was introduced
at the feast for Ares.”

It is evident that the pious here fight their way to a share
in the mystery of the raping of the mother.^[536] This is the
part which belongs to them,^[537] while the heroic deed belongs
to the god.^[538] By Ares is meant the Egyptian Typhon,
as we have good reasons to suppose. Thus Typhon represents
the evil longing for the mother with which other
myth forms reproach the mother, according to the well-known
example. The death of Balder, quite analogous
to the death of Osiris (attack of sickness of Rê), because
of the wounding by the branch of the mistletoe, seems to
need a similar explanation. It is recounted in the myth
how all creatures were pledged not to hurt Balder, save
only the mistletoe, which was forgotten, presumably because
it was too young. This killed Balder. Mistletoe
is a parasite. The female piece of wood in the fire-boring
ritual was obtained^[539] from the wood of a parasitical or
creeping plant, the fire mother. The “mare” rests upon
“Marentak,” in which Grimm suspects the mistletoe.
The mistletoe was a remedy against barrenness. In Gaul
the Druid alone was allowed to climb the holy oak amid
solemn ceremonies after the completed sacrifice, in order
to cut off the ritual mistletoe.^[540] This act is a religiously
limited and organized incest. That which grows on the
tree is the child,^[541] which man might have by the mother;
then man himself would be in a renewed and rejuvenated
form; and precisely this is what man cannot have, because
the incest prohibition forbids it. As the Celtic custom
shows, the act is performed by the priest only, with the
292observation of certain ceremonies; the hero god and the
redeemer of the world, however, do the unpermitted, the
superhuman thing, and through it purchase immortality.
The dragon, who must be overcome for this purpose,
means, as must have been for some time clearly seen, the
resistance against the incest. Dragon and serpent, especially
with the characteristic accumulation of anxiety attributes,
are the symbolic representations of anxiety
which correspond to the repressed incest wish. It is,
therefore, intelligible, when we come across the tree with
the snake again and again (in Paradise the snake even
tempts to sin). The snake or dragon possesses in particular
the meaning of treasure guardian and defender.
The phallic, as well as the feminine, meaning of the
dragon^[542] indicates that it is again a symbol of the sexual
neutral (or bisexual) libido, that is to say, a symbol of the
libido in opposition. In this significance the black horse,
Apaosha, the demon of opposition, appears in the old
Persian song, Tishtriya, where it obstructs the sources
of the rain lake. The white horse Tishtriya makes two
futile attempts to vanquish Apaosha; at the third attempt,
with the help of Ahuramazda, he is successful.^[543] Whereupon
the sluices of heaven open and a fruitful rain pours
down upon the earth.^[544] In this song one sees very beautifully
in the choice of symbol how libido is opposed to
libido, will against will, the discordance of primitive man
with himself, which he recognizes again in all the adversity
and contrasts of external nature.

The symbol of the tree encoiled by the serpent may
also be translated as the mother defended from incest
293by resistance. This symbol is by no means rare upon
Mithraic monuments. The rock encircled by a snake is
to be comprehended similarly, because Mithra is one
born from a rock. The menace of the new-born by the
snake (Mithra, Hercules) is made clear through the
legend of Lilith and Lamia. Python, the dragon of Leto,
and Poine, who devastates the land of Crotopus, are sent
by the father of the new-born. This idea indicates the
localization, well known in psychoanalysis, of the incest
anxiety in the father. The father represents the active
repulse of the incest wish of the son. The crime, unconsciously
wished for by the son, is imputed to the father
under the guise of a pretended murderous purpose, this
being the cause of the mortal fear of the son for the
father, a frequent neurotic symptom. In conformity with
this idea, the monster to be overcome by the young hero
is frequently a giant, the guardian of the treasure or the
woman. A striking example is the giant Chumbaba in
the Gilgamesh epic, who protected the garden of
Ishtar;^[545] he is overcome by Gilgamesh, whereby Ishtar
is won. Thereupon she makes erotic advances towards
Gilgamesh.^[546] This data should be sufficient to render
intelligible the rôle of Horus in Plutarch, especially the
violent usage of Isis. Through overpowering the mother
the hero becomes equal to the sun; he reproduces himself.
He wins the strength of the invincible sun, the
power of eternal rejuvenation. We thus understand a
series of representations from the Mithraic myth on the
Heddernheim relief. There we see, first of all, the birth
of Mithra from the top of the tree; the next representation
294shows him carrying the conquered bull (comparable
to the monstrous bull overcome by Gilgamesh). This
bull signifies the concentrated significance of the monster,
the father, who as giant and dangerous animal embodies
the incest prohibition, and agrees with the individual
libido of the sun-hero, which he overcomes by self-sacrifice.
The third picture represents Mithra, when he
grasps the head ornament of the sun, the nimbus. This
act recalls to us, first of all, the violence of Horus towards
Isis; secondly, the Christian basic thought, that those who
have overcome attain the crown of eternal life. On the
fourth picture Sol kneels before Mithra. These last two
representations show plainly that Mithra has taken to
himself the strength of the sun, so that he becomes the
lord of the sun as well. He has conquered “his animal
nature,” the bull. The animal knows no incest prohibition;
man is, therefore, man because he conquers the
incest wish, that is, the animal nature. Thus Mithra has
sacrificed his animal nature, the incest wish, and with that
has overcome the mother, that is to say, “the terrible
death-bringing mother.” A solution is already anticipated
in the Gilgamesh epic through the formal renunciation
of the horrible Ishtar by the hero. The overcoming
of the mother in the Mithraic sacrifice, which had almost
an ascetic character, took place no longer by the archaic
overpowering, but through the renunciation, the sacrifice
of the wish. The primitive thought of incestuous reproduction
through entrance into the mother’s womb had
already been displaced, because man was so far advanced
in domestication that he believed that the eternal life of
the sun is reached, not through the perpetration of incest,
but through the sacrifice of the incest wish. This important
change expressed in the Mithraic mystery finds its
full expression for the first time in the symbol of the
crucified God. A bleeding human sacrifice was hung on
the tree of life for Adam’s sins.^[547] The first-born sacrifices
its life to the mother when he suffers, hanging on the
branch, a disgraceful and painful death, a mode of death
which belongs to the most ignominious forms of execution,
which Roman antiquity had reserved for only the lowest
criminal. Thus the hero dies, as if he had committed the
most shameful crime; he does this by returning into the
birth-giving branch of the tree of life, at the same time
paying for his guilt with the pangs of death. The animal
nature is repressed most powerfully in this deed of the
highest courage and the greatest renunciation; therefore,
a greater salvation is to be expected for humanity, because
such a deed alone seems appropriate to expiate
Adam’s guilt.

BULL-SACRIFICE OF MITHRA

295As has already been mentioned, the hanging of the
sacrifice on the tree is a generally widespread ritual custom,
Germanic examples being especially abundant. The
ritual consists in the sacrifice being pierced by a spear.^[548]
Thus it is said of Odin (Edda, Havamal):

“I know that I hung on the windswept tree
Nine nights through,
Wounded by a spear, dedicated to Odin
I myself to myself.”

The hanging of the sacrifice to the cross also occurred
in America prior to its discovery. Müller^[549] mentions the
296Fejervaryian manuscript (a Mexican hieroglyphic kodex),
at the conclusion of which there is a colossal cross, in the
middle of which there hangs a bleeding divinity. Equally
interesting is the cross of Palenque;^[550] up above is a
bird, on either side two human figures, who look at the
cross and hold a child against it either for sacrifice or
baptism. The old Mexicans are said to have invoked the
favor of Centeotls, “the daughter of heaven and the
goddess of wheat,” every spring by nailing upon the cross
a youth or a maiden and by shooting the sacrifice with
arrows.^[551] The name of the Mexican cross signifies
“tree of our life or flesh.”^[552]

An effigy from the Island of Philae represents Osiris
in the form of a crucified god, wept over by Isis and
Nephthys, the sister consort.^[553]

The meaning of the cross is certainly not limited to
the tree of life, as has already been shown. Just as the
tree of life has also a phallic sub-meaning (as libido symbol),
so there is a further significance to the cross than
life and immortality.^[554] Müller uses it as a sign of rain
and of fertility, because it appears among the Indians
distinctly as a magic charm of fertility. It goes without
saying, therefore, that it plays a rôle in the sun cult. It
is also noteworthy that the sign of the cross is an important
sign for the keeping away of all evil, like the ancient
gesture of Manofica. The phallic amulets also serve the
same purpose. Zöckler appears to have overlooked the
fact that the phallic Crux Ansata is the same cross which
has flourished in countless examples in the soil of antiquity.
Copies of this Crux Ansata are found in many
297places, and almost every collection of antiquities possesses
one or more specimens.^[555]

Finally, it must be mentioned that the form of the
human body is imitated in the cross as of a man with
arms outspread. It is remarkable that in early Christian
representations Christ is not nailed to the cross, but
stands before it with arms outstretched.^[556] Maurice^[557]
gives a striking basis for this interpretation when he says:

“It is a fact not less remarkable than well attested, that the
Druids in their groves were accustomed to select the most stately
and beautiful tree as an emblem of the deity they adored, and
cutting off the side branches, they affixed two of the largest of
them to the highest part of the trunk, in such a manner that those
branches extended on each side like the arms of a man, and together
with the body presented the appearance of a huge cross;
and in the bark in several places was also inscribed the letter Τ
(tau).”^[558]

“The tree of knowledge” of the Hindoo Dschaina
sect assumes human form; it was represented as a mighty,
thick trunk in the form of a human head, from the top
of which grew out two longer branches hanging down at
the sides and one short, vertical, uprising branch crowned
by a bud or blossom-like thickening.^[559] Robertson in
his “Evangelical Myths” mentions that in the Assyrian
system there exists the representation of the divinity in
the form of a cross, in which the vertical beam corresponds
to a human form and the horizontal beam to a
pair of conventionalized wings. Old Grecian idols such,
for example, as were found in large numbers in Aegina
have a similar character, an immoderately long head and
298arms slightly raised, wing-shaped, and in front distinct
breasts.^[560]

I must leave it an open question as to whether the
symbol of the cross has any relation to the two pieces
of wood in the religious fire production, as is frequently
claimed. It does appear, however, as if the cross symbol
actually still possessed the significance of “union,” for
this idea belongs to the fertility charm, and especially to
the thought of eternal rebirth, which is most intimately
bound up with the cross. The thought of “union,” expressed
by the symbol of the cross, is met with in
“Timaios” of Plato, where the world soul is conceived
as stretched out between heaven and earth in the form
of an X (Chi); hence in the form of a “St. Andrew’s
cross.” When we now learn, furthermore, that the
world soul contains in itself the world as a body, then this
picture inevitably reminds us of the mother.

(Dialogues of Plato. Jowett, Vol. II, page 528.)

“And in the center he put the soul, which he diffused through
the whole, and also spread over all the body round about, and
he made one solitary and only heaven, a circle moving in a circle,
having such excellence as to be able to hold converse with itself,
and needing no other friendship or acquaintance. Having these
purposes in view he created the world to be a blessed god.”

This highest degree of inactivity and freedom from
desire, symbolized by the being enclosed within itself, signifies
divine blessedness. The only human prototype of
this conception is the child in the mother’s womb, or
rather more, the adult man in the continuous embrace of
the mother, from whom he originates. Corresponding to
299this mythologic-philosophic conception, the enviable Diogenes
inhabited a tub, thus giving mythologic expression
to the blessedness and resemblance to the Divine in his
freedom from desire. Plato says as follows of the bond
of the world soul to the world body:

“Now God did not make the soul after the body, although we
have spoken of them in this order; for when he put them together
he would never have allowed that the elder should serve the
younger, but this is what we say at random, because we ourselves
too are very largely affected by chance. Whereas he made the
soul in origin and excellence prior to and older than the body,
to be the ruler and mistress, of whom the body was to be the
subject.”

It seems conceivable from other indications that the
conception of the soul in general is a derivative of the
mother-imago, that is to say, a symbolic designation for
the amount of libido remaining in the mother-imago.
(Compare the Christian representation of the soul as the
bride of Christ.) The further development of the world
soul in “Timaios” takes place in an obscure fashion in
mystic numerals. When the mixture was completed the
following occurred:

“This entire compound he divided lengthways into two parts,
which he joined to one another at the center like the figure of
an X.”

This passage approaches very closely the division and
union of Atman, who, after the division, is compared to
a man and a woman who hold each other in an embrace.
Another passage is worth mentioning:

300“After the entire union of the soul had taken place, according
to the master’s mind, he formed all that is corporeal within this,
and joined it together so as to penetrate it throughout.”

Moreover, I refer to my remarks about the maternal
meaning of the world soul in Plotinus, in Chapter II.

A similar detachment of the symbol of the cross from a
concrete figure we find among the Muskhogean Indians,
who stretch above the surface of the water (pond or
stream) two ropes crosswise and at the point of intersection
throw into the water fruits, oil and precious stones as
a sacrifice.^[561] Here the divinity is evidently the water, not
the cross, which designates the place of sacrifice only,
through the point of intersection. The sacrifice at the
place of union indicates why this symbol was a primitive
charm of fertility,^[562] why we meet it so frequently in the
prechristian era among the goddesses of love (mother
goddesses), especially among the Egyptians in Isis and
the sun-god. We have already discussed the continuous
union of these two divinities. As the cross (Tau [Τ],
Crux Ansata) always recurs in the hand of Tum, the
supreme God, the hegemon of the Ennead, it may not be
superfluous to say something more of the destination of
Tum. The Tum of On-Heliopolis bears the name “the
father of his mother”; what that means needs no explanation;
Jusas or Nebit-Hotpet, the goddess joined to
him, was called sometimes the mother, sometimes the
daughter, sometimes the wife of the god. The day of
the beginning of autumn is designated in the Heliopolitan
inscriptions as the “festival of the goddess Jusasit,” as
“the arrival of the sister for the purpose of uniting with
301her father.” It is the day in which “the goddess Mehnit
completes her work, so that the god Osiris may enter
into the left eye.” (By which the moon is meant.^[563])
The day is also called the filling up of the sacred eye
with its needs. The heavenly cow with the moon eye,
the cow-headed Isis, takes to herself in the autumn
equinox the seed which procreates Horus. (Moon as
keeper of the seed.) The “eye” evidently represents
the genitals, as in the myth of Indra, who had to bear
spread over his whole body the likeness of Yoni (vulva),
on account of a Bathsheba outrage, but was so far pardoned
by the gods that the disgraceful likeness of Yoni
was changed into eyes.^[564] The “pupil” in the eye is a
child. The great god becomes a child again; he enters
the mother’s womb in order to renew himself.^[565] In a
hymn it is said:

“Thy mother, the heavens, stretches forth her arms to thee.”

In another place it is said:

“Thou shinest, oh father of the gods, upon the back of thy
mother, daily thy mother takes thee in her arms. When thou
illuminatest the dwelling of night, thou unitest with thy mother,
the heavens.”^[566]

The Tum of Pitum-Heliopolis not only bears the Crux
Ansata as a symbol, but also has this sign as his most
frequent surname, that is, ānχ or ānχi, which means
“life” or “the living.” He is chiefly honored as the
demon serpent, Agatho, of whom it is said, “The holy
demon serpent Agatho goes forth from the city Nezi.”
The snake, on account of casting its skin, is the symbol
302of renewal, as is the scarabæus, a symbol of the sun, of
whom it is said that he, being of masculine sex only, reproduces
himself.

The name Chnum (another name for Tum, always
meaning “the sun-god”) comes from the verb χnum,
which means “to bind together, to unite.”^[567] Chnum
appears chiefly as the potter, the moulder of his egg.
The cross seems, therefore, to be an extraordinarily condensed
symbol; its supreme meaning is that of the tree
of life, and, therefore, is a symbol of the mother. The
symbolization in a human form is, therefore, intelligible.
The phallic forms of the Crux Ansata belong to the abstract
meaning of “life” and “fertility,” as well as to
the meaning of “union,” which we can now very properly
interpret as cohabitation with the mother for the purpose
of renewal.^[568] It is, therefore, not only a very touching
but also a very significant naïve symbolism when Mary,
in an Old English lament of the Virgin,^[569] accuses the cross
of being a false tree, which unjustly and without reason
destroyed “the pure fruit of her body, her gentle birdling,”
with a poisonous draught, the draught of death,
which is destined only for the guilty descendants of the
sinner Adam. Her son was not a sharer in that guilt.
(Compare with this the cunning of Isis with the fatal
draught of love.) Mary laments:

“Cross, thou art the evil stepmother of my son, so high hast
thou hung him that I cannot even kiss his feet! Cross, thou art
my mortal enemy, thou hast slain my little blue bird!”

The holy cross answers:

303“Woman, I thank thee for my honor: thy splendid fruit, which
now I bear, shines as a red blossom.^[570] Not alone to save thee
but to save the whole world this precious flower blooms in thee.”^[571]

Santa Crux says of the relation to each other of the
two mothers (Isis in the morning and Isis in the evening):

“Thou hast been crowned as Queen of Heaven on account of
the child, which thou hast borne. But I shall appear as the shining
relic to the whole world, at the day of judgment. I shall then
raise my lament for thy divine son innocently slain upon me.”

Thus the murderous mother of death unites with the
mother of life in bringing forth a child. In their lament
for the dying God, and as outward token of their union,
Mary kisses the cross, and is reconciled to it.^[572] The
naïve Egyptian antiquity has preserved for us the union
of the contrasting tendencies in the mother idea of Isis.
Naturally this imago is merely a symbol of the libido of
the son for the mother, and describes the conflict between
love and incest resistance. The criminal incestuous
purpose of the son appears projected as criminal cunning
in the mother-imago. The separation of the son from
the mother signifies the separation of man from the
generic consciousness of animals, from that infantile
archaic thought characterized by the absence of individual
consciousness.

It was only the power of the incest prohibition which
created the self-conscious individual, who formerly had
been thoughtlessly one with the tribe, and in this way
alone did the idea of individual and final death become
304possible. Thus through the sin of Adam death came into
the world. This, as is evident, is expressed figuratively,
that is, in contrast form. The mother’s defence against
the incest appears to the son as a malicious act, which
delivers him over to the fear of death. This conflict faces
us in the Gilgamesh epic in its original freshness and
passion, where also the incest wish is projected onto the
mother.

The neurotic who cannot leave the mother has good
reasons; the fear of death holds him there. It seems as
if no idea and no word were strong enough to express
the meaning of this. Entire religions were constructed
in order to give words to the immensity of this conflict.
This struggle for expression which continued down
through the centuries certainly cannot have its source
in the restricted realm of the vulgar conception of incest.
Rather one must understand the law which is ultimately
expressed as “Incest prohibition” as coercion to domestication,
and consider the religious systems as institutions
which first receive, then organize and gradually sublimate,
the motor forces of the animal nature not immediately
available for cultural purposes.

We will now return to the visions of Miss Miller.
Those now following need no further detailed discussion.
The next vision is the image of a “purple bay.” The
symbolism of the sea connects smoothly with that which
precedes. One might think here in addition of the
reminiscences of the Bay of Naples, which we came across
in Part I. In the sequence of the whole, however, we
must not overlook the significance of the “bay.” In
305French it is called une baie, which probably corresponds
to a bay in the English text. It might be worth
while here to glance at the etymological side of this
idea. Bay is generally used for something which is open,
just as the Catalonian word badia (bai) comes from
badar, “to open.” In French bayer means “to have the
mouth open, to gape.” Another word for the same is
Meerbusen, “bay or gulf”; Latin sinus, and a third word
is golf (gulf), which in French stands in closest relation
to gouffre = abyss. Golf is derived from “κόλπος,”^[573]
which also means “bosom” and “womb,” “mother-womb,”
also “vagina.” It can also mean a fold of a
dress or pocket; it may also mean a deep valley between
high mountains. These expressions clearly show what
primitive ideas lie at their base. They render intelligible
Goethe’s choice of words at that place where Faust wishes
to follow the sun with winged desire in order in the everlasting
day “to drink its eternal light”:

“The mountain chain with all its gorges deep,
Would then no more impede my godlike motion;
And now before mine eyes expands the ocean,
With all its bays, in shining sleep!”

Faust’s desire, like that of every hero, inclines towards
the mysteries of rebirth, of immortality; therefore, his
course leads to the sea, and down into the monstrous
jaws of death, the horror and narrowness of which at
the same time signify the new day.

“Out on the open ocean speeds my dreaming:
The glassy flood before my feet is gleaming,
A new day beckons to a newer shore!
306A fiery chariot borne on buoyant pinions,
Sweeps near me now! I soon shall ready be
To pierce the ether’s high, unknown dominions,
To reach new spheres of pure activity!
This Godlike rapture, this supreme existence….

       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

“Yes, let me dare those gates to fling asunder,
Which every man would fain go slinking by!
’Tis time, through deeds this word of truth to thunder;
That with the height of God’s Man’s dignity may vie!
Nor from that gloomy gulf to shrink affrighted,
Where fancy doth herself to self-born pangs compel,—
To struggle toward that pass benighted,
Around whose narrow mouth flame all the fires of Hell:—
To take this step with cheerful resolution,
Though Nothingness should be the certain swift conclusion!”

It sounds like a confirmation, when the succeeding vision
of Miss Miller’s is une falaise à pic, “a steep, precipitous
cliff.” (Compare gouffre.) The entire series of
individual visions is completed, as the author observes,
by a confusion of sounds, somewhat resembling “wa-ma,
wa-ma.” This has a very primitive, barbaric sound.
Since we learn from the author nothing of the subjective
roots of this sound, nothing is left us but the suspicion
that this sound might be considered, taken in connection
with the whole, as a slight mutilation of the well-known
call ma-ma.

307

CHAPTER VI
THE BATTLE FOR DELIVERANCE FROM THE MOTHER

There now comes a pause in the production of visions
by Miss Miller; then the activity of the unconscious is
resumed very energetically.

A forest with trees and bushes appears.

After the discussions in the preceding chapter, there is
need only of a hint that the symbol of the forest coincides
essentially with the meaning of the holy tree. The holy
tree is found generally in a sacred forest enclosure or in
the garden of Paradise. The sacred grove often takes
the place of the taboo tree and assumes all the attributes
of the latter. The erotic symbolism of the garden is
generally known. The forest, like the tree, has mythologically
a maternal significance. In the vision which now
follows, the forest furnishes the stage upon which the
dramatic representation of the end of Chiwantopel is
played. This act, therefore, takes place in or near the
mother.

First, I will give the beginning of the drama as it is in
the original text, up to the first attempt at sacrifice. At
the beginning of the next chapter the reader will find the
continuation, the monologue and the sacrificial scene.
The drama begins as follows:

308“The personage Chiwantopel, came from the south, on horseback;
around him a cloak of vivid colors, red, blue and white. An
Indian in a costume of doe skin, covered with beads and ornamented
with feathers advances, squats down and prepares to let fly an
arrow at Chiwantopel. The latter presents his breast in an attitude
of defiance, and the Indian, fascinated by that sight, slinks away
and disappears within the forest.”

The hero, Chiwantopel, appears on horseback. This
fact seems of importance, because as the further course
of the drama shows (see Chapter VIII) the horse plays
no indifferent rôle, but suffers the same death as the hero,
and is even called “faithful brother” by the latter.
These allusions point to a remarkable similarity between
horse and rider. There seems to exist an intimate connection
between the two, which guides them to the same
destiny. We already have seen that the symbolization of
“the libido in resistance” through the “terrible mother”
in some places runs parallel with the horse.^[574] Strictly
speaking, it would be incorrect to say that the horse is, or
means, the mother. The mother idea is a libido symbol,
and the horse is also a libido symbol, and at some points
the two symbols intersect in their significances. The common
feature of the two ideas lies in the libido, especially
in the libido repressed from incest. The hero and the
horse appear to us in this setting like an artistic formation
of the idea of humanity with its repressed libido, whereby
the horse acquires the significance of the animal unconscious,
which appears domesticated and subjected to the
will of man. Agni upon the ram, Wotan upon Sleipneir,
Ahuramazda upon Angromainyu,^[575] Jahwe upon the monstrous
seraph, Christ upon the ass,^[576] Dionysus upon the
309ass, Mithra upon the horse, Men upon the human-footed
horse, Freir upon the golden-bristled boar, etc., are
parallel representations. The chargers of mythology are
always invested with great significance; they very often
appear anthropomorphized. Thus, Men’s horse has
human forelegs; Balaam’s ass, human speech; the retreating
bull, upon whose back Mithra springs in order to
strike him down, is, according to a Persian legend, actually
the God himself. The mock crucifix of the Palatine
represents the crucified with an ass’s head, perhaps in
reference to the ancient legend that in the temple of
Jerusalem the image of an ass was worshipped. As
Drosselbart (horse’s mane) Wotan is half-human,
half-horse.^[577] An old German riddle very prettily shows
this unity between horse and horseman.^[578] “Who are the
two, who travel to Thing? Together they have three
eyes, ten feet^[579] and one tail; and thus they travel over
the land.” Legends ascribe properties to the horse, which
psychologically belong to the unconscious of man; horses
are clairvoyant and clairaudient; they show the way when
the lost wanderer is helpless; they have mantic powers.
In the Iliad the horse prophesies evil. They hear the
words which the corpse speaks when it is taken to the
grave—words which men cannot hear. Cæsar learned
from his human-footed horse (probably taken from the
identification of Cæsar with the Phrygian Men) that he
was to conquer the world. An ass prophesied to Augustus
the victory of Actium. The horse also sees phantoms.
All these things correspond to typical manifestations of
the unconscious. Therefore, it is perfectly intelligible
310that the horse, as the image of the wicked animal component
of man, has manifold connections with the devil.
The devil has a horse’s foot; in certain circumstances a
horse’s form. At crucial moments he suddenly shows a
cloven foot (proverbial) in the same way as in the abduction
of Hadding, Sleipneir suddenly looked out from behind
Wotan’s mantle.^[580] Just as the nightmare rides on
the sleeper, so does the devil, and, therefore, it is said
that those who have nightmares are ridden by the devil.
In Persian lore the devil is the steed of God. The devil,
like all evil things, represents sexuality. Witches have
intercourse with him, in which case he appears in the
form of a goat or horse. The unmistakably phallic
nature of the devil is communicated to the horse as well;
hence this symbol occurs in connections where this is the
only meaning which would furnish an explanation. It is
to be mentioned that Loki generates in the form of a
horse, just as does the devil when in horse’s form, as an
old fire god. Thus the lightning was represented theriomorphically
as a horse.^[581] An uneducated hysteric told me
that as a child she had suffered from extreme fear of
thunder, because every time the lightning flashed she saw
immediately afterwards a huge black horse reaching upwards
as far as the sky.^[582] It is said in a legend that the
devil, as the divinity of lightning, casts a horse’s foot
(lightning) upon the roofs. In accordance with the
primitive meaning of thunder as fertilizer of the earth,
the phallic meaning is given both to lightning and the
horse’s foot. In mythology the horse’s foot really has
the phallic function as in this dream. An uneducated
311patient who originally had been violently forced to coitus
by her husband very often dreams (after separation)
that a wild horse springs upon her and kicks her in the
abdomen with his hind foot. Plutarch has given us the
following words of a prayer from the Dionysus orgies:

ἐλθεῖν ἥρως Διόνυσε Ἄλιον ἐς ναὸν ἁγνὸν σὺν Χαρίτεσσιν
ἐς ναὸν τῷ βοέῳ ποδὶ θύων, ἄξιε ταῦρε, ἄξιε ταῦρε.^[583][584]

Pegasus with his foot strikes out of the earth the
spring Hippocrene. Upon a Corinthian statue of Bellerophon,
which was also a fountain, the water flowed out
from the horse’s hoof. Balder’s horse gave rise to a
spring through his kick. Thus the horse’s foot is the
dispenser of fruitful moisture.^[585] A legend of lower
Austria, told by Jaehns, informs us that a gigantic man
on a white horse is sometimes seen riding over the mountains.
This means a speedy rain. In the German legend
the goddess of birth, Frau Holle, appears on horseback.
Pregnant women near confinement are prone to give oats
to a white horse from their aprons and to pray him to
give them a speedy delivery. It was originally the custom
for the horse to rub against the woman’s genitals. The
horse (like the ass) had in general the significance of a
priapic animal.^[586] Horse’s tracks are idols dispensing
blessing and fertility. Horse’s tracks established a claim,
and were of significance in determining boundaries, like
the priaps of Latin antiquity. Like the phallic Dactyli,
a horse opened the mineral riches of the Harz Mountains
312with his hoof. The horseshoe, an equivalent for
horse’s foot,^[587] brings luck and has apotropaic meaning.
In the Netherlands an entire horse’s foot is hung up in
the stable to ward against sorcery. The analogous effect
of the phallus is well known; hence the phalli at the
gates. In particular the horse’s leg turned lightning aside,
according to the principle “similia similibus.”

Horses also symbolize the wind, that is to say, the
tertium comparationis is again the libido symbol. The
German legend recognizes the wind as the wild huntsman
in pursuit of the maiden. Stormy regions frequently
derive their names from horses, as the White Horse
Mountain of the Lüneburger heath. The centaurs are
typical wind gods, and have been represented as such by
Böcklin’s artistic intuition.^[588]

Horses also signify fire and light. The fiery horses of
Helios are an example. The horses of Hector are called
Xanthos (yellow, bright), Podargos (swift-footed),
Lampos (shining) and Aithon (burning). A very pronounced
fire symbolism was represented by the mystic
Quadriga, mentioned by Dio Chrysostomus. The supreme
God always drives his chariot in a circle. Four
horses are harnessed to the chariot. The horse driven
on the periphery moves very quickly. He has a shining
coat, and bears upon it the signs of the planets and the
Zodiac.^[589] This is a representation of the rotary fire of
heaven. The second horse moves more slowly, and is
illuminated only on one side. The third moves still more
slowly, and the fourth rotates around himself. But once
the outer horse set the second horse on fire with his fiery
313breath, and the third flooded the fourth with his streaming
sweat. Then the horses dissolve and pass over into
the substance of the strongest and most fiery, which now
becomes the charioteer. The horses also represent the
four elements. The catastrophe signifies the conflagration
of the world and the deluge, whereupon the division
of the God into many parts ceases, and the divine unity
is restored.^[590] Doubtless the Quadriga may be understood
astronomically as a symbol of time. We already saw in
the first part that the stoic representation of Fate is a
fire symbol. It is, therefore, a logical continuation of
the thought, when time, closely related to the conception
of destiny, exhibits this same libido symbolism. Brihadâranyaka-Upanishad,
i: 1, says:

“The morning glow verily is the head of the sacrificial horse,
the sun his eye, the wind his breath, the all-spreading fire his
mouth, the year is the belly of the sacrificial horse. The sky is
his back, the atmosphere the cavern of his body, the earth the vault
of his belly. The poles are his sides, in between the poles his ribs,
the seasons his limbs, the months and fortnights his joints. Days
and nights are his feet, stars his bones, clouds his flesh. The food
he digests is the deserts, the rivers are his veins, the mountains his
liver and lungs, the herbs and trees his hair; the rising sun is his
fore part, the setting sun his after part. The ocean is his kinsman,
the sea his cradle.”

The horse undoubtedly here stands for a time symbol,
and also for the entire world. We come across in the
Mithraic religion, a strange God of Time, Aion,
called Kronos or Deus Leontocephalus, because his
stereotyped representation is a lion-headed man, who,
standing in a rigid attitude, is encoiled by a snake, whose
314head projects forward from behind over the lion’s
head. The figure holds in each hand a key, on the chest
rests a thunderbolt, upon his back are the four wings of
the wind; in addition to that, the figure sometimes bears
the Zodiac on his body. Additional attributes are a cock
and implements. In the Carolingian psalter of Utrecht,
which is based upon ancient models, the Sæculum-Aion is
represented as a naked man with a snake in his hand. As
is suggested by the name of the divinity, he is a symbol
of time, most interestingly composed from libido
symbols. The lion, the zodiac sign of the greatest summer
heat,^[591] is the symbol of the most mighty desire.
(“My soul roars with the voice of a hungry lion,” says
Mechthild of Magdeburg.) In the Mithra mystery the
serpent is often antagonistic to the lion, corresponding to
that very universal myth of the battle of the sun with the
dragon.

In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Tum is even designated
as a he-cat, because as such he fought the snake,
Apophis. The encoiling also means the engulfing, the
entering into the mother’s womb. Thus time is defined
by the rising and setting of the sun, that is to say, through
the death and renewal of the libido. The addition of the
cock again suggests time, and the addition of implements
suggests the creation through time. (“Durée créatrice,”
Bergson.) Oromazdes and Ahriman were produced
through Zrwanakarana, the “infinitely long duration.”
Time, this empty and purely formal concept, is expressed
in the mysteries by transformations of the creative power,
the libido. Macrobius says:

315“Leonis capite monstratur praesens tempus—quia conditio
ejus valida fervensque est.”^[592]

Philo of Alexandria has a better understanding:

“Tempus ab hominibus pessimis putatur deus volentibus Ens essentiale
abscondere—pravis hominibus tempus putatur causa rerum
mundi, sapientibus vero et optimis non tempus sed Deus.”^[593][594]

In Firdusi^[595] time is often the symbol of fate, the
libido nature of which we have already learned to recognize.
The Hindoo text mentioned above includes still
more—its symbol of the horse contains the whole world;
his kinsman and his cradle is the sea, the mother, similar
to the world soul, the maternal significance of which we
have seen above. Just as Aion represents the libido in
an embrace, that is to say, in the state of death and of
rebirth, so here the cradle of the horse is the sea, i. e.
the libido is in the mother, dying and rising again, like
the symbol of the dying and resurrected Christ, who
hangs like ripe fruit upon the tree of life.

We have already seen that the horse is connected
through Ygdrasil with the symbolism of the tree. The
horse is also a “tree of death”; thus in the Middle Ages
the funeral pyre was called St. Michael’s horse, and the
neo-Persian word for coffin means “wooden horse.”^[596]
The horse has also the rôle of psycho-pompos; he is the
steed to conduct the souls to the other world—horsewomen
316fetch the souls (Valkyries). Neo-Greek songs
represent Charon on a horse. These definitions obviously
lead to the mother symbolism. The Trojan horse was
the only means by which the city could be conquered; because
only he who has entered the mother and been reborn
is an invincible hero. The Trojan horse is a magic
charm, like the “Nodfyr,” which also serves to overcome
necessity. The formula evidently reads, “In order to
overcome the difficulty, thou must commit incest, and
once more be born from thy mother.” It appears that
striking a nail into the sacred tree signifies something very
similar. The “Stock im Eisen” in Vienna seems to have
been such a palladium.

Still another symbolic form is to be considered. Occasionally
the devil rides upon a three-legged horse. The
Goddess of Death, Hel, in time of pestilence, also rides
upon a three-legged horse.^[597] The gigantic ass, which is
three-legged, stands in the heavenly rain lake Vourukasha;
his urine purifies the water of the lake, and from
his roar all useful animals become pregnant and all harmful
animals miscarry. The Triad further points to the
phallic significance. The contrasting symbolism of Hel is
blended into one conception in the ass of Vourukasha.
The libido is fructifying as well as destroying.

These definitions, as a whole, plainly reveal the fundamental
features. The horse is a libido symbol, partly of
phallic, partly of maternal significance, like the tree. It
represents the libido in this application, that is, the libido
repressed through the incest prohibition.

317In the Miller drama an Indian approaches the hero,
ready to shoot an arrow at him. Chiwantopel, however,
with a proud gesture, exposes his breast to the enemy.
This idea reminds the author of the scene between Cassius
and Brutus in Shakespeare’s “Julius Cæsar.” A misunderstanding
has arisen between the two friends, when
Brutus reproaches Cassius for withholding from him the
money for the legions. Cassius, irritable and angry,
breaks out into the complaint:

“Come, Antony, and young Octavius, come,
Revenge yourselves alone on Cassius,
For Cassius is a-weary of the world:
Hated by one he loves: braved by his brother:
Check’d like a bondman; all his faults observed:
Set in a note-book, learn’d and conn’d by rote,
To cast into my teeth. O I could weep
My spirit from mine eyes!—There is my dagger,
And here my naked breast; within, a heart
Dearer than Plutus’ mine, richer than gold:
If that thou beest a Roman, take it forth:
I, that denied thee gold, will give my heart.
Strike, as thou didst at Cæsar; for I know
When thou didst hate him worst, thou lov’dst him better
Than ever thou lov’dst Cassius.”

The material here would be incomplete without mentioning
the fact that this speech of Cassius shows many
analogies to the agonized delirium of Cyrano (compare
Part I), only Cassius is far more theatrical and overdrawn.
Something childish and hysterical is in his manner.
Brutus does not think of killing him, but administers
a very chilling rebuke in the following dialogue:

318Brutus: Sheathe your dagger:
Be angry when you will, it shall have scope:
Do what you will, dishonor shall be humor.
O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb
That carries anger as the flint bears fire:
Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark,
And straight is cold again.

Cassius: Hath Cassius liv’d
To be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus
When grief and blood ill-tempered vexeth him?

Brutus: When I spoke that, I was ill-tempered too.

Cassius: Do you confess so much? Give me your hand.

Brutus: And my heart too.

Cassius: O Brutus!

Brutus: What’s the matter?

Cassius: Have not you love enough to bear with me
When that rash humor which my mother gave me
Makes me forgetful?

Brutus: Yes, Cassius, and from henceforth
When you are over earnest with your Brutus,
He’ll think your mother chides and leave you so.

The analytic interpretation of Cassius’s irritability
plainly reveals that at these moments he identifies himself
with the mother, and his conduct, therefore, is truly feminine,
as his speech demonstrates most excellently. For his
womanish love-seeking and desperate subjection under
the proud masculine will of Brutus calls forth the friendly
remark of the latter, that Cassius is yoked with a lamb,
that is to say, has something very weak in his character,
319which is derived from the mother. One recognizes in
this without any difficulty the analytic hall-marks of an
infantile disposition, which, as always, is characterized
by a prevalence of the parent-imago, here the mother-imago.
An infantile individual is infantile because he has
freed himself insufficiently, or not at all, from the childish
environment, that is, from his adaptation to his
parents. Therefore, on one side, he reacts falsely towards
the world, as a child towards his parents, always demanding
love and immediate reward for his feelings; on the
other side, on account of the close connection to the parents,
he identifies himself with them. The infantile individual
behaves like the father and mother. He is not in
a condition to live for himself and to find the place to
which he belongs. Therefore, Brutus very justly takes
it for granted that the “mother chides” in Cassius, not
he himself. The psychologically valuable fact which we
gather here is the information that Cassius is infantile
and identified with the mother. The hysterical behavior
is due to the circumstance that Cassius is still, in part, a
lamb, and an innocent and entirely harmless child. He
remains, as far as his emotional life is concerned, still far
behind himself. This we often see among people who,
as masters, apparently govern life and fellow-creatures;
they have remained children in regard to the demands of
their love nature.

The figures of the Miller dramas, being children of the
creator’s phantasy, depict, as is natural, those traits of
character which belong to the author. The hero, the wish
figure, is represented as most distinguished, because the
320hero always combines in himself all wished-for ideals.
Cyrano’s attitude is certainly beautiful and impressive;
Cassius’s behavior has a theatrical effect. Both heroes
prepare to die effectively, in which attempt Cyrano succeeds.
This attitude betrays a wish for death in the unconscious
of our author, the meaning of which we have
already discussed at length as the motive for her poem
of the moth. The wish of young girls to die is only an
indirect expression, which remains a pose, even in case
of real death, for death itself can be a pose. Such an
outcome merely adds beauty and value to the pose under
certain conditions. That the highest summit of life is
expressed through the symbolism of death is a well-known
fact; for creation beyond one’s self means personal death.
The coming generation is the end of the preceding one.
This symbolism is frequent in erotic speech. The lascivious
speech between Lucius and the wanton servant-maid
in Apuleius (“Metamorphoses,” lib. ii: 32) is one of the
clearest examples:

“Proeliare, inquit, et fortiter proeliare: nec enim tibi cedam,
nec terga vortam. Cominus in aspectum, si vir es, dirige; et
grassare naviter, et occide moriturus. Hodierna pugna non habet
missionem.—Simul ambo corruimus inter mutuos amplexus animas
anhelantes.”^[598]

This symbolism is extremely significant, because it
shows how easily a contrasting expression originates and
321how equally intelligible and characteristic such an expression
is. The proud gesture with which the hero offers
himself to death may very easily be an indirect expression
which challenges the pity or sympathy of the other, and
thus is doomed to the calm analytic reduction to which
Brutus proceeds. The behavior of Chiwantopel is also
suspicious, because the Cassius scene which serves as its
model betrays indiscreetly that the whole affair is merely
infantile and one which owes its origin to an overactive
mother imago. When we compare this piece with the
series of mother symbols brought to light in the previous
chapter, we must say that the Cassius scene merely confirms
once more what we have long supposed, that is to
say, that the motor power of these symbolic visions arises
from an infantile mother transference, that is to say,
from an undetached bond to the mother.

In the drama the libido, in contradistinction to the inactive
nature of the previous symbols, assumes a threatening
activity, a conflict becoming evident, in which the one
part threatens the other with murder. The hero, as the
ideal image of the dreamer, is inclined to die; he does not
fear death. In accordance with the infantile character of
this hero, it would most surely be time for him to take his
departure from the stage, or, in childish language, to die.
Death is to come to him in the form of an arrow-wound.
Considering the fact that heroes themselves are very
often great archers or succumb to an arrow-wound (St.
Sebastian, as an example), it may not be superfluous to
inquire into the meaning of death through an arrow.

We read in the biography of the stigmatized nun Katherine
322Emmerich^[599] the following description of the evidently
neurotic sickness of her heart:

“When only in her novitiate, she received as a Christmas
present from the holy Christ a very tormenting heart trouble for
the whole period of her nun’s life. God showed her inwardly
the purpose; it was on account of the decline of the spirit of the
order, especially for the sins of her fellow-sisters. But what
rendered this trouble most painful was the gift which she had
possessed from youth, namely, to see before her eyes the inner
nature of man as he really was. She felt the heart trouble
physically as if her heart was continually pierced by arrows.^[600]
These arrows—and this represented the still worse mental suffering—she
recognized as the thoughts, plots, secret speeches,
misunderstandings, scandal and uncharitableness, in which her
fellow-sisters, wholly without reason and unscrupulously, were
engaged against her and her god-fearing way of life.”

It is difficult to be a saint, because even a patient and
long-suffering nature will not readily bear such a violation,
and defends itself in its own way. The companion
of sanctity is temptation, without which no true saint can
live. We know from analytic experience that these
temptations can pass unconsciously, so that only their
equivalents would be produced in consciousness in the
form of symptoms. We know that it is proverbial that
heart and smart (Herz and Schmerz) rhyme. It is a
well-known fact that hysterics put a physical pain in place
of a mental pain. The biographer of Emmerich has comprehended
that very correctly. Only her interpretation of
the pain is, as usual, projected. It is always the others
who secretly assert all sorts of evil things about her, and
this she pretended gave her the pains.^[601] The case, however,
323bears a somewhat different aspect. The very difficult
renunciation of all life’s joys, this death before the
bloom, is generally painful, and especially painful are the
unfulfilled wishes and the attempts of the animal nature to
break through the power of repression. The gossip and
jokes of the sisters very naturally centre around these
most painful things, so that it must appear to the saint
as if her symptoms were caused by this. Naturally, again,
she could not know that gossip tends to assume the rôle
of the unconscious, which, like a clever adversary, always
aims at the actual gaps in our armor.

A passage from Gautama Buddha embodies this idea:^[602]

“A wish earnestly desired
Produced by will, and nourished
When gradually it must be thwarted,
Burrows like an arrow in the flesh.”

The wounding and painful arrows do not come from
without through gossip, which only attacks externally,
but they come from ambush, from our own unconscious.
This, rather than anything external, creates the defenseless
suffering. It is our own repressed and unrecognized
desires which fester like arrows in our flesh.^[603] In another
connection this was clear to the nun, and that most literally.
It is a well-known fact, and one which needs no
further proof to those who understand, that these mystic
scenes of union with the Saviour generally are intermingled
with an enormous amount of sexual libido.^[604] Therefore,
it is not astonishing that the scene of the stigmata
is nothing but an incubation through the Saviour, only
324slightly changed metaphorically, as compared with the
ancient conception of “unio mystica,” as cohabitation
with the god. Emmerich relates the following of her
stigmatization:

“I had a contemplation of the sufferings of Christ, and implored
him to let me feel with him his sorrows, and prayed five
paternosters to the honor of the five sacred wounds. Lying on
my bed with outstretched arms, I entered into a great sweetness
and into an endless thirst for the torments of Jesus. Then I saw
a light descending upon me: it came obliquely from above. It
was a crucified body, living and transparent, with arms extended,
but without a cross. The wounds shone brighter than the body;
they were five circles of glory, coming forth from the whole glory.
I was enraptured and my heart was moved with great pain and
yet with sweetness from longing to share in the torments of my
Saviour. And my longings for the sorrows of the Redeemer
increased more and more on gazing on his wounds, and passed
from my breast, through my hands, sides and feet to his holy
wounds: then from the hands, then from the sides, then from
the feet of the figure threefold shining red beams ending below
in an arrow, shot forth to my hands, sides and feet.”

The beams, in accordance with the phallic fundamental
thought, are threefold, terminating below in an arrow-point.^[605]
Like Cupid, the sun, too, has its quiver, full of
destroying or fertilizing arrows, sun rays,^[606] which possess
phallic meaning. On this significance evidently rests the
Oriental custom of designating brave sons as arrows and
javelins of the parents. “To make sharp arrows” is an
Arabian expression for “to generate brave sons.” The
Psalms declare (cxxvii:4):

“Like as the arrows in the hands of the giant; even so are the
young children.”

325(Compare with this the remarks previously made
about “boys.”) Because of this significance of the arrow
it is intelligible why the Scythian king Ariantes, when he
wished to prepare a census, demanded an arrow-head
from each man. A similar meaning attaches equally to
the lance. Men are descended from the lance, because
the ash is the mother of lances. Therefore, the men of
the Iron Age are derived from her. The marriage custom
to which Ovid alludes (“Comat virgineas hasta
recurva comas”—Fastorum, lib. ii: 560) has already
been mentioned. Kaineus issued a command that his
lance be honored. Pindar relates in the legend of this
Kaineus:

“He descended into the depths, splitting the earth with a
straight foot.”^[607]

He is said to have originally been a maiden named
Kainis, who, because of her complaisance, was transformed
into an invulnerable man by Poseidon. Ovid
pictures the battle of the Lapithæ with the invulnerable
Kaineus; how at last they covered him completely with
trees, because they could not otherwise touch him. Ovid
says at this place:

“Exitus in dubio est: alii sub inania corpus
Tartara detrusum silvarum mole ferebant,
Abnuit Ampycides: medioque ex aggere fulvis
Vidit avem pennis liquidas exire sub auras.”^[608]

326Roscher considers this bird to be the golden plover
(Charadrius pluvialis), which borrows its name from the
fact that it lives in the χαράδρα, a crevice in the earth.
By his song he proclaims the approaching rain. Kaineus
was changed into this bird.

We see again in this little myth the typical constituents
of the libido myth: original bisexuality, immortality (invulnerability)
through entrance into the mother (splitting
the mother with the foot, and to become covered up)
and resurrection as a bird of the soul and a bringer of
fertility (ascending sun). When this type of hero causes
his lance to be worshipped, it probably means that his
lance is a valid and equivalent expression of himself.

From our present standpoint, we understand in a new
sense that passage in Job, which I mentioned in Chapter
IV of the first part of this book:

“He has set me up for his mark.

“His archers compass me round about, he cleaveth my reins
asunder, and doth not spare:—he poureth out my gall upon the ground.

“He breaketh me with breach upon breach: he runneth upon
me like a giant.”—Job xvi:12–13–14.

Now we understand this symbolism as an expression
for the soul torment caused by the onslaught of the unconscious
desires. The libido festers in his flesh, a cruel
god has taken possession of him and pierced him with
his painful libidian projectiles, with thoughts, which overwhelmingly
pass through him. (As a dementia præcox
patient once said to me during his recovery: “To-day a
327thought suddenly thrust itself through me.”) This same
idea is found again in Nietzsche in Zarathustra:

The Magician

Stretched out, shivering
Like one half dead whose feet are warmed,
Shaken alas! by unknown fevers,
Trembling from the icy pointed arrows of frost,
Hunted by Thee, O Thought!
Unutterable! Veiled! Horrible One!
Thou huntsman behind the clouds!
Struck to the ground by thee,
Thou mocking eye that gazeth at me from the dark!
—————— Thus do I lie
Bending, writhing, tortured
With all eternal tortures,
Smitten
By thee, crudest huntsman,
Thou unfamiliar God.

Smite deeper!
Smite once more:
Pierce through and rend my heart!
What meaneth this torturing
With blunt-toothed arrows?
Why gazeth thou again,
Never weary of human pain,
With malicious, God-lightning eyes,
Thou wilt not kill,
But torture, torture?

No long-drawn-out explanation is necessary to enable
us to recognize in this comparison the old, universal idea
of the martyred sacrifice of God, which we have met previously
in the Mexican sacrifice of the cross and in the
sacrifice of Odin.^[609] This same conception faces us in
328the oft-repeated martyrdom of St. Sebastian, where, in
the delicate-glowing flesh of the young god, all the pain
of renunciation which has been felt by the artist has been
portrayed. An artist always embodies in his artistic work
a portion of the mysteries of his time. In a heightened
degree the same is true of the principal Christian symbol,
the crucified one pierced by the lance, the conception of
the man of the Christian era tormented by his wishes,
crucified and dying in Christ.

This is not torment which comes from without, which
befalls mankind; but that he himself is the hunter, murderer,
sacrificer and sacrificial knife is shown us in another
of Nietzsche’s poems, wherein the apparent dualism is
transformed into the soul conflict through the use of the
same symbolism:

“Oh, Zarathustra,
Most cruel Nimrod!
Whilom hunter of God
The snare of all virtue,
An arrow of evil!
Now
Hunted by thyself
Thine own prey
Pierced through thyself,
Now
Alone with thee
Twofold in thine own knowledge
Mid a hundred mirrors
False to thyself,
Mid a hundred memories
Uncertain
Ailing with each wound
Shivering with each frost
329Caught in thine own snares,
Self knower!
Self hangman!

“Why didst thou strangle thyself
With the noose of thy wisdom?
Why hast thou enticed thyself
Into the Paradise of the old serpent?
Why hast thou crept
Into thyself, thyself?…”

The deadly arrows do not strike the hero from without,
but it is he himself who, in disharmony with himself,
hunts, fights and tortures himself. Within himself will
has turned against will, libido against libido—therefore,
the poet says, “Pierced through thyself,” that is to say,
wounded by his own arrow. Because we have discerned
that the arrow is a libido symbol, the idea of “penetrating
or piercing through” consequently becomes clear to
us. It is a phallic act of union with one’s self, a sort of
self-fertilization (introversion); also a self-violation, a
self-murder; therefore, Zarathustra may call himself his
own hangman, like Odin, who sacrifices himself to Odin.

The wounding by one’s own arrow means, first of all,
the state of introversion. What this signifies we already
know—the libido sinks into its “own depths” (a well-known
comparison of Nietzsche’s) and finds there below,
in the shadows of the unconscious, the substitute for the
upper world, which it has abandoned: the world of memories
(“’mid a hundred memories”), the strongest and
most influential of which are the early infantile memory
pictures. It is the world of the child, this paradise-like
330state of earliest childhood, from which we are separated
by a hard law. In this subterranean kingdom slumber
sweet feelings of home and the endless hopes of all that
is to be. As Heinrich in the “Sunken Bell,” by Gerhart
Hauptmann, says, in speaking of his miraculous work:

“There is a song lost and forgotten,
A song of home, a love song of childhood,
Brought up from the depths of the fairy well,
Known to all, but yet unheard.”

However, as Mephistopheles says, “The danger is
great.” These depths are enticing; they are the mother
and—death. When the libido leaves the bright upper
world, whether from the decision of the individual or
from decreasing life force, then it sinks back into its own
depths, into the source from which it has gushed forth,
and turns back to that point of cleavage, the umbilicus,
through which it once entered into this body. This point
of cleavage is called the mother, because from her comes
the source of the libido. Therefore, when some great
work is to be accomplished, before which weak man recoils,
doubtful of his strength, his libido returns to that
source—and this is the dangerous moment, in which the
decision takes place between annihilation and new life.
If the libido remains arrested in the wonder kingdom of
the inner world,^[610] then the man has become for the world
above a phantom, then he is practically dead or desperately
ill.^[611] But if the libido succeeds in tearing itself
loose and pushing up into the world above, then a miracle
appears. This journey to the underworld has been a
331fountain of youth, and new fertility springs from his apparent
death. This train of thought is very beautifully
gathered into a Hindoo myth: Once upon a time, Vishnu
sank into an ecstasy (introversion) and during this state
of sleep bore Brahma, who, enthroned upon the lotus
flower, arose from the navel of Vishnu, bringing with
him the Vedas, which he diligently read. (Birth of creative
thought from introversion.) But through Vishnu’s
ecstasy a devouring flood came upon the world. (Devouring
through introversion, symbolizing the danger of entering
into the mother of death.) A demon taking advantage
of the danger, stole the Vedas from Brahma and
hid them in the depths. (Devouring of the libido.)
Brahma roused Vishnu, and the latter, transforming
himself into a fish, plunged into the flood, fought with
the demon (battle with the dragon), conquered him and
recaptured the Vedas. (Treasure obtained with difficulty.)

Self-concentration and the strength derived therefrom
correspond to this primitive train of thought. It also
explains numerous sacrificial and magic rites which we
have already fully discussed. Thus the impregnable Troy
falls because the besiegers creep into the belly of a wooden
horse; for he alone is a hero who is reborn from the
mother, like the sun. But the danger of this venture is
shown by the history of Philoctetes, who was the only
one in the Trojan expedition who knew the hidden sanctuary
of Chryse, where the Argonauts had sacrificed already,
and where the Greeks planned to sacrifice in order
to assure a safe ending to their undertaking. Chryse
332was a nymph upon the island of Chryse; according
to the account of the scholiasts in Sophocles’s “Philoctetes,”
this nymph loved Philoctetes, and cursed him because
he spurned her love. This characteristic projection,
which is also met with in the Gilgamesh epic, should be
referred back, as suggested, to the repressed incest wish
of the son, who is represented through the projection as if
the mother had the evil wish, for the refusal of which the
son was given over to death. In reality, however, the son
becomes mortal by separating himself from the mother.
His fear of death, therefore, corresponds to the repressed
wish to turn back to the mother, and causes him to believe
that the mother threatens or pursues him. The
teleological significance of this fear of persecution is evident;
it is to keep son and mother apart.

The curse of Chryse is realized in so far that Philoctetes,
according to one version, when approaching his
altar, injured himself in his foot with one of his own
deadly poisonous arrows, or, according to another version^[612]
(this is better and far more abundantly proven),
was bitten in his foot by a poisonous serpent.^[613] From
then on he is ailing.^[614]

This very typical wound, which also destroyed Rê, is
described in the following manner in an Egyptian hymn:

“The ancient of the Gods moved his mouth,
He cast his saliva upon the earth,
And what he spat, fell upon the ground.
With her hands Isis kneaded that and the soil
Which was about it, together:
From that she created a venerable worm,
And made him like a spear.
333She did not twist him living around her face,
But threw him coiled upon the path,
Upon which the great God wandered at ease
Through all his lands.

“The venerable God stepped forth radiantly,
The gods who served Pharaoh accompanied him,
And he proceeded as every day.
Then the venerable worm stung him….
The divine God opened his mouth
And the voice of his majesty echoed even to the sky.
And the gods exclaimed: Behold!
Thereupon he could not answer,
His jaws chattered,
All his limbs trembled
And the poison gripped his flesh,
As the Nile seizes upon the land.”

In this hymn Egypt has again preserved for us a primitive
conception of the serpent’s sting. The aging of the
autumn sun as an image of human senility is symbolically
traced back to the mother through the poisoning by the
serpent. The mother is reproached, because her malice
causes the death of the sun-god. The serpent, the primitive
symbol of fear,^[615] illustrates the repressed tendency to
turn back to the mother, because the only possibility of
security from death is possessed by the mother, as the
source of life.

Accordingly, only the mother can cure him, sick unto
death, and, therefore, the hymn goes on to depict how the
gods were assembled to take counsel:

“And Isis came with her wisdom:
Her mouth is full of the breath of life,
Her words banish sorrow,
And her speech animates those who no longer breathe.
334She said: ‘What is that; what is that, divine father?
Behold, a worm has brought you sorrow——’

“‘Tell me thy name, divine father,
Because the man remains alive, who is called by his name.’”

Whereupon Rê replied:

“‘I am he, who created heaven and earth, and piled up the hills,
And created all beings thereon.
I am he, who made the water and caused the great flood,
Who produced the bull of his mother,
Who is the procreator,’ etc.

“The poison did not depart, it went further,
The great God was not cured.
Then said Isis to Rê:
‘Thine is not the name thou hast told me.
Tell me true that the poison may leave thee,
For he whose name is spoken will live.’”

Finally Rê decides to speak his true name. He is approximately
healed (imperfect composition of Osiris);
but he has lost his power, and finally he retreats to the
heavenly cow.

The poisonous worm is, if one may speak in this way,
a “negative” phallus, a deadly, not an animating, form
of libido; therefore, a wish for death, instead of a wish
for life. The “true name” is soul and magic power;
hence a symbol of libido. What Isis demands is the retransference
of the libido to the mother goddess. This
request is fulfilled literally, for the aged god turns back
to the divine cow, the symbol of the mother.^[616] This symbolism
is clear from our previous explanations. The
onward urging, living libido which rules the consciousness
335of the son, demands separation from the mother.
The longing of the child for the mother is a hindrance
on the path to this, taking the form of a psychologic resistance,
which is expressed empirically in the neurosis by
all manners of fears, that is to say, the fear of life. The
more a person withdraws from adaptation to reality, and
falls into slothful inactivity, the greater becomes his
anxiety (cum grano salis), which everywhere besets him
at each point as a hindrance upon his path. The fear
springs from the mother, that is to say, from the longing
to go back to the mother, which is opposed to the adaptation
to reality. This is the way in which the mother has
become apparently the malicious pursuer. Naturally, it
is not the actual mother, although the actual mother, with
the abnormal tenderness with which she sometimes pursues
her child, even into adult years, may gravely injure
it through a willful prolonging of the infantile state in
the child. It is rather the mother-imago, which becomes
the Lamia. The mother-imago, however, possesses its
power solely and exclusively from the son’s tendency not
only to look and to work forwards, but also to glance
backwards to the pampering sweetness of childhood, to
that glorious state of irresponsibility and security with
which the protecting mother-care once surrounded him.^[617]

The retrospective longing acts like a paralyzing poison
upon the energy and enterprise; so that it may well be
compared to a poisonous serpent which lies across our
path. Apparently, it is a hostile demon which robs us
of energy, but, in reality, it is the individual unconscious,
the retrogressive tendency of which begins to overcome
336the conscious forward striving. The cause of this can
be, for example, the natural aging which weakens the
energy, or it may be great external difficulties, which
cause man to break down and become a child again, or
it may be, and this is probably the most frequent cause,
the woman who enslaves the man, so that he can no
longer free himself, and becomes a child again.^[618] It may
be of significance also that Isis, as sister-wife of the sun-god,
creates the poisonous animal from the spittle of the
god, which is perhaps a substitute for sperma, and, therefore,
is a symbol of libido. She creates the animal from
the libido of the god; that means she receives his power,
making him weak and dependent, so that by this means
she assumes the dominating rôle of the mother. (Mother
transference to the wife.) This part is preserved in the
legend of Samson, in the rôle of Delilah, who cut off
Samson’s hair, the sun’s rays, thus robbing him of his
strength.^[619] Any weakening of the adult man strengthens
the wishes of the unconscious; therefore, the decrease of
strength appears directly as the backward striving towards
the mother.

There is still to be considered one more source of the
reanimation of the mother-imago. We have already met
it in the discussion of the mother scene in “Faust,” that
is to say, the willed introversion of a creative mind, which,
retreating before its own problem and inwardly collecting
its forces, dips at least for a moment into the source of
life, in order there to wrest a little more strength from
the mother for the completion of its work. It is a mother-child
play with one’s self, in which lies much weak selfadmiration
337and self-adulation (“Among a hundred mirrors”—Nietzsche);
a Narcissus state, a strange spectacle,
perhaps, for profane eyes. The separation from
the mother-imago, the birth out of one’s self, reconciles all
conflicts through the sufferings. This is probably meant
by Nietzsche’s verse:

“Why hast thou enticed thyself
Into the Paradise of the old serpent?
Why hast thou crept
Into thyself, thyself?…

“A sick man now
Sick of a serpent’s poison,^[620]
A captive now
Whom the hardest destiny befell
In thine own pit;
Bowed down as thou workest
Encaved within thyself,
Burrowing into thyself,
Helpless,
Stiff,
A corpse.
Overwhelmed with a hundred burdens,
Overburdened by thyself.
A wise man,
A self-knower,
The wise Zarathustra;
Thou soughtest the heaviest burden
And foundest thou thyself….”

The symbolism of this speech is of the greatest richness.
He is buried in the depths of self, as if in the earth;
really a dead man who has turned back to mother
earth;^[621] a Kaineus “piled with a hundred burdens” and
pressed down to death; the one who groaning bears the
338heavy burden of his own libido, of that libido which
draws him back to the mother. Who does not think of
the Taurophoria of Mithra, who took his bull (according
to the Egyptian hymn, “the bull of his mother”),
that is, his love for his mother, the heaviest burden upon
his back, and with that entered upon the painful course
of the so-called Transitus!^[622] This path of passion led to
the cave, in which the bull was sacrificed. Christ, too, had
to bear the cross,^[623] the symbol of his love for the mother,
and he carried it to the place of sacrifice where the lamb
was slain in the form of the God, the infantile man, a
“self-executioner,” and then to burial in the subterranean
sepulchre.^[624]

That which in Nietzsche appears as a poetical figure of
speech is really a primitive myth. It is as if the poet
still possessed a dim idea or capacity to feel and reactivate
those imperishable phantoms of long-past worlds of
thought in the words of our present-day speech and in
the images which crowd themselves into his phantasy.
Hauptmann also says: “Poetic rendering is that which
allows the echo of the primitive word to resound through
the form.”^[625]

The sacrifice, with its mysterious and manifold meaning,
which is rather hinted at than expressed, passes unrecognized
in the unconscious of our author. The arrow
is not shot, the hero Chiwantopel is not yet fatally
poisoned and ready for death through self-sacrifice. We
now can say, according to the preceding material, this
sacrifice means renouncing the mother, that is to say, renunciation
339of all bonds and limitations which the soul
has taken with it from the period of childhood into the
adult life. From various hints of Miss Miller’s it appears
that at the time of these phantasies she was still
living in the circle of the family, evidently at an age
which was in urgent need of independence. That is to
say, man does not live very long in the infantile environment
or in the bosom of his family without real danger
to his mental health. Life calls him forth to independence,
and he who gives no heed to this hard call because
of childish indolence and fear is threatened by a neurosis,
and once the neurosis has broken out it becomes more and
more a valid reason to escape the battle with life and to
remain for all time in the morally poisoned infantile
atmosphere.

The phantasy of the arrow-wound belongs in this
struggle for personal independence. The thought of this
resolution has not yet penetrated the dreamer. On the
contrary, she rather repudiates it. After all the preceding,
it is evident that the symbolism of the arrow-wound
through direct translation must be taken as a coitus
symbol. The “Occide moriturus” attains by this means
the sexual significance belonging to it. Chiwantopel naturally
represents the dreamer. But nothing is attained and
nothing is understood through one’s reduction to the
coarse sexual, because it is a commonplace that the unconscious
shelters coitus wishes, the discovery of which
signifies nothing further. The coitus wish under this
aspect is really a symbol for the individual demonstration
of the libido separated from the parents, of the conquest
340of an independent life. This step towards a new life
means, at the same time, the death of the past life.^[626]
Therefore, Chiwantopel is the infantile hero^[627] (the son,
the child, the lamb, the fish) who is still enchained by
the fetters of childhood and who has to die as a symbol
of the incestuous libido, and with that sever the retrogressive
bond. For the entire libido is demanded for
the battle of life, and there can be no remaining behind.
The dreamer cannot yet come to this decision, which will
tear aside all the sentimental connections with father
and mother, and yet it must be made in order to follow
the call of the individual destiny.

341

CHAPTER VII
THE DUAL MOTHER RÔLE

After the disappearance of the assailant, Chiwantopel
begins the following monologue:

“From the extreme ends of these continents, from the farthest
lowlands, after having forsaken the palace of my father, I have
been wandering aimlessly during a hundred moons, always pursued
by my mad desire to find ‘her who will understand.’ With
jewels I have tempted many fair ones, with kisses I have tried
to snatch the secret of their hearts, with acts of bravery I have
conquered their admiration. (He reviews the women he has
known.) Chita, the princess of my race … she is a little fool,
vain as a peacock, having nought in her head but jewels and
perfume. Ta-nan, the young peasant, … bah, a mere sow, no
more than a breast and a stomach, caring only for pleasure. And
then Ki-ma, the priestess, a true parrot, repeating hollow phrases
learnt from the priests; all for show, without real education or
sincerity, suspicious poseur and hypocrite!… Alas! Not one
who understands me, not one who resembles me, not one who
has a soul sister to mine. There is not one among them all who
has known my soul, not one who could read my thought; far
from it; not one capable of seeking with me the luminous summits,
or of spelling with me the superhuman word, love.”

Here Chiwantopel himself says that his journeying and
wandering is a quest for that other, and for the meaning
of life which lies in union with her. In the first part of
this work we merely hinted gently at this possibility. The
fact that the seeker is masculine and the sought-for of
342feminine sex is not so astonishing, because the chief object
of the unconscious transference is the mother, as has
probably been seen from that which we have already
learned. The daughter takes a male attitude towards the
mother. The genesis of this adjustment can only be suspected
in our case, because objective proof is lacking.
Therefore, let us rather be satisfied with inferences.
“She who will understand” means the mother, in the infantile
language. At the same time, it also means the life
companion. As is well known, the sex contrast concerns
the libido but little. The sex of the object plays a surprisingly
slight rôle in the estimation of the unconscious.
The object itself, taken as an objective reality, is but of
slight significance. (But it is of greatest importance
whether the libido is transferred or introverted.) The
original concrete meaning of erfassen, “to seize,”
begreifen, “to touch,” etc., allows us to recognize clearly
the under side of the wish—to find a congenial person.
But the “upper” intellectual half is also contained in it,
and is to be taken into account at the same time. One
might be inclined to assume this tendency if it were not
that our culture abused the same, for the misunderstood
woman has become almost proverbial, which can only be
the result of a wholly distorted valuation. On the one
side, our culture undervalues most extraordinarily the importance
of sexuality; on the other side, sexuality breaks
out as a direct result of the repression burdening it at
every place where it does not belong, and makes use of
such an indirect manner of expression that one may expect
to meet it suddenly almost anywhere. Thus the
343idea of the intimate comprehension of a human soul,
which is in reality something very beautiful and pure, is
soiled and disagreeably distorted through the entrance
of the indirect sexual meaning.^[628] The secondary meaning
or, better expressed, the misuse, which repressed and
denied sexuality forces upon the highest soul functions,
makes it possible, for example, for certain of our opponents
to scent in psychoanalysis prurient erotic confessionals.
These are subjective wish-fulfilment deliria
which need no contra arguments. This misuse makes the
wish to be “understood” highly suspicious, if the natural
demands of life have not been fulfilled. Nature has first
claim on man; only long afterwards does the luxury of
intellect come. The mediæval ideal of life for the sake
of death needs gradually to be replaced by a natural conception
of life, in which the normal demands of men are
thoroughly kept in mind, so that the desires of the animal
sphere may no longer be compelled to drag down into
their service the high gifts of the intellectual sphere in
order to find an outlet. We are inclined, therefore, to
consider the dreamer’s wish for understanding, first of
all, as a repressed striving towards the natural destiny.
This meaning coincides absolutely with psychoanalytic
experience, that there are countless neurotic people who
apparently are prevented from experiencing life because
they have an unconscious and often also a conscious repugnance
to the sexual fate, under which they imagine
all kinds of ugly things. There is only too great an inclination
to yield to this pressure of the unconscious sexuality
and to experience the dreaded (unconsciously hoped
344for) disagreeable sexual experience, so as to acquire by
that means a legitimately founded horror which retains
them more surely in the infantile situation. This is the
reason why so many people fall into that very state
towards which they have the greatest abhorrence.

That we were correct in our assumption that, in Miss
Miller, it is a question of the battle for independence
is shown by her statement that the hero’s departure from
his father’s house reminds her of the fate of the young
Buddha, who likewise renounced all luxury to which he
was born in order to go out into the world to live out
his destiny to its completion. Buddha gave the same
heroic example as did Christ, who separated from his
mother, and even spoke bitter words (Matthew, chap.
x. v. 34):

“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came
not to send peace, but a sword.

(35) “For I am come to set a man at variance against his
father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law
against her mother-in-law.

(36) “And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.

(37) “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not
worthy of me.”

Or Luke, chap. xii, v. 51:

“Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you,
Nay: but rather division.

(52) “For from henceforth there shall be five in one house
divided, three against two, and two against three.

(53) “The father shall be divided against the son, and the son
against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the
daughter against the mother; the mother-in-law against the
345daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”

Horus snatched from his mother her head adornment,
the power. Just as Adam struggled with Lilith, so he
struggles for power. Nietzsche, in “Human, All Too
Human,” expressed the same in very beautiful words:

“One may suppose that a mind, in which the ‘type of free
mind’ is to ripen and sweeten at maturity, has had its decisive
crisis in a great detachment, so that before this time it was just
so much the more a fettered spirit and appeared chained forever
to its corner and its pillar.^[629] What binds it most firmly?
What cords are almost untearable? Among human beings of a
high and exquisite type, it would be duties: that reverence, which
is suitable for youth, that modesty and tenderness for all the old
honored and valued things, that thankfulness for the earth from
which they grew, for the hand which guided them, for the shrine
where they learnt to pray:—their loftiest moments themselves
come to bind them the firmest, to obligate them the most permanently.
The great detachment comes suddenly for people so
bound.

“‘Better to die than to live here,’—thus rings the imperative
voice of seduction: and this here, this ‘at home’ is all, that it (the
soul) has loved until now! A sudden terror and suspicion against
that which it has loved, a lightning flash of scorn towards that
which is called ‘duty,’ a rebellious, arbitrary, volcanic, impelling
desire for travelling, for strange countries, estrangements, coolness,
frigidity, disillusionments, a hatred of love, perhaps a sacrilegious
touch and glance backwards^[630] there where just now it
adored and loved, perhaps a blush of shame over what it has just
done, and at the same time an exultation over having done it, an
intoxicating internal joyous thrill, in which a victory reveals itself—a
victory? Over what? Over whom? An enigmatic, doubtful,
questioning victory, but the first triumph. Of such woe and
pain is formed the history of the great detachment. It is like a
disease which can destroy men,—this first eruption of strength
and will towards self-assertion.”^[631]

346The danger lies, as is brilliantly expressed by Nietzsche,
in isolation in one’s self:

“Solitude surrounds and embraces him ever more threatening,
ever more constricting, ever more heart-strangling, the terrible
Goddess and Mater sæva cupidinum.”

The libido taken away from the mother, who is abandoned
only reluctantly, becomes threatening as a serpent,
the symbol of death, for the relation to the mother must
cease, must die, which itself almost causes man’s death.
In “Mater sæva cupidinum” the idea attains rare, almost
conscious, perfection.

I do not presume to try to paint in better words than
has Nietzsche the psychology of the wrench from childhood.

Miss Miller furnishes us with a further reference to
a material which has influenced her creation in a more
general manner; this is the great Indian epic of Longfellow,
“The Song of Hiawatha.”

If my readers have had patience to read thus far, and
to reflect upon what they have read, they frequently must
have wondered at the number of times I introduce for
comparison such apparently foreign material and how
often I widen the base upon which Miss Miller’s creations
rest. Doubts must often have arisen whether it is
justifiable to enter into important discussions concerning
the psychologic foundations of myths, religions and culture
in general on the basis of such scanty suggestions.
It might be said that behind the Miller phantasies such a
347thing is scarcely to be found. I need hardly emphasize
the fact that I, too, have sometimes been in doubt. I
had never read “Hiawatha” until, in the course of my
work, I came to this part. “Hiawatha,” a poetical compilation
of Indian myths, gives me, however, a justification
for all preceding reflections, because this epic contains
an unusual number of mythologic problems. This
fact is probably of great importance for the wealth of
suggestions in the Miller phantasies. We are, therefore,
compelled to obtain an insight into this epic.

Nawadaha sings the songs of the epic of the hero
Hiawatha, the friend of man:

“There he sang of Hiawatha,
Sang the songs of Hiawatha,
Sang his wondrous birth and being,
How he prayed and how he fasted,
How he lived and toiled and suffered,
That the tribes of men might prosper,
That he might advance his people.”

The teleological meaning of the hero, as that symbolic
figure which unites in itself libido in the form of admiration
and adoration, in order to lead to higher sublimations
by way of the symbolic bridges of the myths, is
anticipated here. Thus we become quickly acquainted
with Hiawatha as a savior, and are prepared to hear all
that which must be said of a savior, of his marvellous
birth, of his early great deeds, and his sacrifice for his
fellow-men.

The first song begins with a fragment of evangelism:
Gitche Manito, the “master of life,” tired of the quarrels
348of his human children, calls his people together and makes
known to them the joyous message:

“I will send a prophet to you,
A Deliverer of the nations,
Who shall guide you and shall teach you,
Who shall toil and suffer with you.
If you listen to his counsels,
You will multiply and prosper.
If his warnings pass unheeded,
You will fade away and perish!”

Gitche Manito, the Mighty, “the creator of the nations,”
is represented as he stood erect “on the great Red
Pipestone quarry.”

“From his footprints flowed a river,
Leaped into the light of morning,
O’er the precipice plunging downward
Gleamed like Ishkoodah, the comet.”

The water flowing from his footsteps sufficiently
proves the phallic nature of this creator. I refer to the
earlier utterances concerning the phallic and fertilizing
nature of the horse’s foot and the horse’s steps, and especially
do I recall Hippocrene and the foot of Pegasus.^[632]
We meet with the same idea in Psalm lxv, vv. 9 to 11:

“Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it; thou makest it very
plenteous.

“The river of God is full of water; thou preparest their corn,
for so thou providest for the earth.

“Thou waterest her furrows: thou sendest rain into the little
valleys thereof; thou makest it soft with the drops of rain, and
blessest the increase of it.

“Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths
drop fatness.”

349Wherever the fertilizing God steps, there is fruitfulness.
We already have spoken of the symbolic meaning
of treading in discussing the nightmares. Kaineus passes
into the depths, “splitting the earth with a foot outstretched.”
Amphiaraus, another chthonic hero, sinks
into the earth, which Zeus has opened for him by a stroke
of lightning. (Compare with that the above-mentioned
vision of a hysterical patient, who saw a black horse after
a flash of lightning: identity of horse’s footstep and flash
of lightning.) By means of a flash of lightning heroes
were made immortal.^[633] Faust attained the mothers when
he stamped his foot.

“Stamp and descend, stamping thou’lt rise again.”

The heroes in the sun-devouring myths often stamp at
or struggle in the jaws of the monster. Thus Tor
stamped through the ship’s bottom in battle with the
monster, and went as far as the bottom of the sea.
(Kaineus.) (Concerning “kicking” as an infantile
phantasy, see above.) The regression of the libido to
the presexual stage makes this preparatory action of
treading either a substitution for the coitus phantasy or
for the phantasy of re-entrance into the mother’s womb.
The comparison of water flowing from the footsteps with
a comet is a light symbolism for the fructifying moisture
(sperma). According to an observation by Humboldt
(Kosmos), certain South American Indian tribes call the
meteors “urine of the stars.” Mention is also made of
how Gitche Manito makes fire. He blows upon a forest,
so that the trees, rubbing upon each other, burst into
350flame. This demon is, therefore, an excellent libido symbol;
he also produced fire.

After this prologue in the second song, the hero’s previous
history is related. The great warrior, Mudjekeewis
(Hiawatha’s father), has cunningly overcome the great
bear, “the terror of the nations,” and stolen from him
the magic “belt of wampum,” a girdle of shells. Here
we meet the motive of the “treasure attained with difficulty,”
which the hero rescues from the monster. Who
the bear is, is shown by the poet’s comparisons. Mudjekeewis
strikes the bear on his head after he has robbed
him of the treasure.

“With the heavy blow bewildered
Rose the great Bear of the mountains,
But his knees beneath him trembled,
And he whimpered like a woman.”

Mudjekeewis said derisively to him:

“Else you would not cry, and whimper,
Like a miserable woman!

       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

But you, Bear! sit here and whimper,
And disgrace your tribe by crying,
Like a wretched Shaugodaya,
Like a cowardly old woman!”

These three comparisons with a woman are to be
found near each other on the same page. Mudjekeewis
has, like a true hero, once more torn life from the jaws
of death, from the all-devouring “terrible mother.”
This deed, which, as we have seen, is also represented as
351a journey to hell, “night journey through the sea,” the
conquering of the monster from within, signifies at the
same time entrance into the mother’s womb, a rebirth,
the results of which are perceptible also for Mudjekeewis.
As in the Zosimos vision, here too the entering one becomes
the breath of the wind or spirit. Mudjekeewis
becomes the west wind, the fertilizing breath, the father
of winds.^[634] His sons become the other winds. An intermezzo
tells of them and of their love stories, of which I
will mention only the courtship of Wabuns, the East
Wind, because here the erotic wooing of the wind is pictured
in an especially beautiful manner. Every morning
he sees a beautiful girl in a meadow, whom he eagerly
courts:

“Every morning, gazing earthward,
Still the first thing he beheld there
Was her blue eyes looking at him,
Two blue lakes among the rushes.”

The comparison with water is not a matter of secondary
importance, because “from wind and water”
shall man be born anew.

“And he wooed her with caresses,
Wooed her with his smile of sunshine,
With his flattering words he wooed her,
With his sighing and his singing,
Gentlest whispers in the branches,
Softest music, sweetest odors,” etc.

In these onomatopoetic verses the wind’s caressing
courtship is excellently expressed.^[635]

352The third song presents the previous history of
Hiawatha’s mother. His grandmother, when a maiden,
lived in the moon. There she once swung upon a liana,
but a jealous lover cut off the liana, and Nokomis,
Hiawatha’s grandmother, fell to earth. The people, who
saw her fall downwards, thought that she was a shooting
star. This marvellous descent of Nokomis is more
plainly illustrated by a later passage of this same song;
there little Hiawatha asks the grandmother what is the
moon. Nokomis teaches him about it as follows: The
moon is the body of a grandmother, whom a warlike
grandson has cast up there in wrath. Hence the moon is
the grandmother. In ancient beliefs, the moon is also
the gathering place of departed souls,^[636] the guardian of
seeds; therefore, once more a place of the origin of life
of predominantly feminine significance. The remarkable
thing is that Nokomis, falling upon the earth, gave birth
to a daughter, Wenonah, subsequently the mother of
Hiawatha. The throwing upwards of the mother, and
her falling down and bringing forth, seems to contain
something typical in itself. Thus a story of the seventeenth
century relates that a mad bull threw a pregnant
woman as high as a house, and tore open her womb, and
the child fell without harm upon the earth. On account
of his wonderful birth, this child was considered a hero
or doer of miracles, but he died at an early age. The
belief is widespread among lower savages that the sun is
feminine and the moon masculine. Among the Namaqua,
a Hottentot tribe, the opinion is prevalent that the sun
consists of transparent bacon.

353“The people, who journey on boats, draw it down by magic
every evening, cut off a suitable piece and then give it a kick so
that it flies up again into the sky.”—Waitz: “Anthropologie,”
II, 342.

The infantile nourishment comes from the mother. In
the Gnostic phantasies we come across a legend of the
origin of man which possibly belongs here: the female
archons bound to the vault of Heaven are unable, on
account of its quick rotation, to keep their young within
them, but let them fall upon the earth, from which men
arise. Possibly there is here a connection with barbaric
midwifery, the letting fall of the parturient. The assault
upon the mother is already introduced with the adventure
of Mudjekeewis, and is continued in the violent handling
of the “grandmother,” Nokomis, who, as a result of the
cutting of the liana and the fall downwards, seems in
some way to have become pregnant. The “cutting of
the branch,” the plucking, we have already recognized as
mother incest. (See above.) That well-known verse,
“Saxonland, where beautiful maidens grow upon trees,”
and phrases like “picking cherries in a neighbor’s garden,”
allude to a similar idea. The fall downwards of
Nokomis deserves to be compared to a poetical figure in
Heine.

“A star, a star is falling
Out of the glittering sky!
The star of Love! I watch it
Sink in the depths and die.

“The leaves and buds are falling
From many an apple-tree;
354I watch the mirthful breezes
Embrace them wantonly…”

Wenonah later was courted by the caressing West
Wind, and becomes pregnant. Wenonah, as a young
moon-goddess, has the beauty of the moonlight. Nokomis
warns her of the dangerous courtship of Mudjekeewis, the
West Wind. But Wenonah allows herself to become infatuated,
and conceives from the breath of the wind,
from the πνεῦμα, a son, our hero.

“And the West-Wind came at evening,

       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

Found the beautiful Wenonah,
Lying there amid the lilies,
Wooed her with his words of sweetness,
Wooed her with his soft caresses,
Till she bore a son in sorrow,
Bore a son of love and sorrow.”

Fertilization through the breath of the spirit is already
a well-known precedent for us. The star or comet
plainly belongs to the birth scene as a libido symbol; Nokomis,
too, comes to earth as a shooting star. Mörike’s
sweet poetic phantasy has devised a similar divine origin.

“And she who bore me in her womb,
And gave me food and clothing.
She was a maid—a wild, brown maid,
Who looked on men with loathing.

“She fleered at them and laughed out loud,
And bade no suitor tarry;
‘I’d rather be the Wind’s own bride
Than have a man and marry.’

355“Then came the Wind and held her fast
His captive, love-enchanted;
And lo, by him a merry child
Within her womb was planted.”

Buddha’s marvellous birth story, retold by Sir Edwin
Arnold, also shows traces of this.^[637]

“Maya, the Queen …
Dreamed a strange dream, dreamed that a star from heaven—
Splendid, six-rayed, in color rosy-pearl,
Whereof the token was an Elephant
Six-tusked and white as milk of Kamadhuk—
Shot through the void; and shining into her,
Entered her womb upon the right.”^[638]

During Maya’s conception a wind blows over the land:

“A wind blew
With unknown freshness over lands and seas.”

After the birth the four genii of the East, West, South
and North come to render service as bearers of the
palanquin. (The coming of the wise men at Christ’s
birth.) We also find here a distinct reference to the
“four winds.” For the completion of the symbolism
there is to be found in the Buddha myth, as well as in
the birth legend of Christ, besides the impregnation by
star and wind, also the fertilization by an animal, here
an elephant, which with its phallic trunk fulfilled in Maya
the Christian method of fructification through the ear or
the head. It is well known that, in addition to the dove,
the unicorn is also a procreative symbol of the Logos.

Here arises the question why the birth of a hero always
356had to take place under such strange symbolic circumstances?
It might also be imagined that a hero arose
from ordinary surroundings and gradually grew out of
his inferior environment, perhaps with a thousand troubles
and dangers. (And, indeed, this motive is by no
means strange in the hero myth.) It might be said that
superstition demands strange conditions of birth and generation;
but why does it demand them?

The answer to this question is: that the birth of the
hero, as a rule, is not that of an ordinary mortal, but is
a rebirth from the mother-spouse; hence it occurs under
mysterious ceremonies. Therefore, in the very beginning,
lies the motive of the two mothers of the hero. As
Rank^[639] has shown us through many examples, the hero
is often obliged to experience exposure, and upbringing
by foster parents, and in this manner he acquires the two
mothers. A striking example is the relation of Hercules
to Hera. In the Hiawatha epic Wenonah dies after the
birth and Nokomis takes her place. Maya dies after the
birth^[640] and Buddha is given a stepmother. The stepmother
is sometimes an animal (the she-wolf of Romulus
and Remus, etc.). The twofold mother may be replaced
by the motive of twofold birth, which has attained a
lofty significance in the Christian mythology; namely,
through baptism, which, as we have seen, represents rebirth.
Thus man is born not merely in a commonplace
manner, but also born again in a mysterious manner, by
means of which he becomes a participator of the kingdom
of God, of immortality. Any one may become a hero
in this way who is generated anew through his own
357mother, because only through her does he share in immortality.
Therefore, it happened that the death of
Christ on the cross, which creates universal salvation, was
understood as “baptism”; that is to say, as rebirth
through the second mother, the mysterious tree of death.
Christ says:

“But I have a baptism to be baptized with: and how am I
straitened till it be accomplished!”—Luke xii: 50.

He interprets his death agony symbolically as birth
agony.

The motive of the two mothers suggests the thought
of self-rejuvenation, and evidently expresses the fulfilment
of the wish that it might be possible for the mother
to bear me again; at the same time, applied to the heroes,
it means one is a hero who is borne again by her who has
previously been his mother; that is to say, a hero is he
who may again produce himself through his mother.

The countless suggestions in the history of the procreation
of the heroes indicate the latter formulations. Hiawatha’s
father first overpowered the mother under the
symbol of the bear; then himself becoming a god, he procreates
the hero. What Hiawatha had to do as hero,
Nokomis hinted to him in the legend of the origin of the
moon; he is forcibly to throw his mother upwards (or
throw downwards?); then she would become pregnant
by this act of violence and could bring forth a daughter.
This rejuvenated mother would be allotted, according to
the Egyptian rite, as a daughter-wife to the sun-god, the
father of his mother, for self-reproduction. What action
358Hiawatha takes in this regard we shall see presently.
We have already studied the behavior of the pre-Asiatic
gods related to Christ. Concerning the pre-existence of
Christ, the Gospel of St. John is full of this thought.
Thus the speech of John the Baptist:

“This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is
preferred before me; for he was before me.”—John i: 30.

Also the beginning of the gospel is full of deep mythologic
significance:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning
with God.

(3) “All things were made by him, and without him was not
anything made that was made.

(4) “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

(5) “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehendeth
it not.

(6) “There was a man sent from God whose name was John.

(7) “The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the
Light.

(8) “He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of
that Light.

(9) “That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that
cometh into the world.”

This is the proclamation of the reappearing light, the
reborn sun, which formerly was, and which will be again.
In the baptistry at Pisa, Christ is represented bringing
the tree of life to man; his head is surrounded by a sun
halo. Over this relief stand the words Introitus Solis.

Because the one born was his own procreator, the history
of his procreation is strangely concealed under symbolic
359events, which are meant to conceal and deny it;
hence the extraordinary assertion of the virgin conception.
This is meant to hide the incestuous impregnation.
But do not let us forget that this naïve assertion plays an
unusually important part in the ingenious symbolic bridge,
which is to guide the libido out from the incestuous bond
to higher and more useful applications, which indicate a
new kind of immortality; that is to say, immortal work.

The environment of Hiawatha’s youth is of importance:

“By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.
Dark behind it rose the forest,
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
Rose the firs with cones upon them.
Bright before it beat the water,
Beat the clear and sunny water,
Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.”

In this environment Nokomis brought him up. Here
she taught him the first words, and told him the first fairy
tales, and the sounds of the water and the wood were
intermingled, so that the child learned not only to understand
man’s speech, but also that of Nature:

“At the door on summer evenings
Sat the little Hiawatha;
Heard the whispering of the pine-trees,
Heard the lapping of the water,
Sounds of music, words of wonder:
‘Minne-wawa!’^[641] said the pine-trees,
‘Mudway-aushka!’^[642] said the water.”

360Hiawatha hears human speech in the sounds of Nature;
thus he understands Nature’s speech. The wind
says, “Wawa.” The cry of the wild goose is “Wawa.”
Wah-wah-taysee means the small glowworm which enchants
him. Thus the poet paints most beautifully the
gradual gathering of external nature into the compass of
the subjective,^[643] and the intimate connection of the primary
object to which the first lisping words were applied,
and from which the first sounds were derived, with the
secondary object, the wider nature which usurps imperceptibly
the mother’s place, and takes possession of those
sounds heard first from the mother, and also of those
feelings which we all discover later in ourselves in all
the warm love of Mother Nature. The later blending,
whether pantheistic-philosophic or æsthetic, of the sentimental,
cultured man with nature is, looked at retrospectively,
a reblending with the mother, who was our primary
object, and with whom we truly were once wholly one.^[644]
Therefore, it is not astonishing when we again see
emerging in the poetical speech of a modern philosopher,
Karl Joël, the old pictures which symbolize the unity with
the mother, illustrated by the confluence of subject and
object. In his recent book, “Seele und Welt” (1912),
Joël writes as follows, in the chapter called “Primal Experience”^[645]:

“I lay on the seashore, the shining waters glittering in my
dreamy eyes; at a great distance fluttered the soft breeze; throbbing,
shimmering, stirring, lulling to sleep comes the wave beat to
the shore—or to the ear? I know not. Distance and nearness
become blurred into one; without and within glide into each
361other. Nearer and nearer, dearer and more homelike sounds the
beating of the waves; now, like a thundering pulse in my head it
strikes, and now it beats over my soul, devours it, embraces it,
while it itself at the same time floats out like the blue waste of
waters. Yes, without and within are one. Glistening and foaming,
flowing and fanning and roaring, the entire symphony of the
stimuli experienced sounds in one tone, all thought becomes one
thought, which becomes one with feeling; the world exhales in
the soul and the soul dissolves in the world. Our small life is
encircled by a great sleep—the sleep of our cradle, the sleep of our
grave, the sleep of our home, from which we go forth in the morning,
to which we again return in the evening; our life but the
short journey, the interval between the emergence from the original
oneness and the sinking back into it! Blue shimmers the
infinite sea, wherein dreams the jelly fish of the primitive life,
toward which without ceasing our thoughts hark back dimly
through eons of existence. For every happening entails a change
and a guarantee of the unity of life. At that moment when they
are no longer blended together, in that instant man lifts his head,
blind and dripping, from the depths of the stream of experience,
from the oneness with the experience; at that moment of parting
when the unity of life in startled surprise detaches the Change
and holds it away from itself as something alien, at this moment
of alienation the aspects of the experience have been substantialized
into subject and object, and in that moment consciousness is
born.”

Joël paints here, in unmistakable symbolism, the confluence
of subject and object as the reunion of mother
and child. The symbols agree with those of mythology,
even in their details. The encircling and devouring motive
is distinctly suggested. The sea, devouring the sun
and giving birth to it anew, is already an old acquaintance.
The moment of the rise of consciousness, the separation
of subject and object is a birth; truly philosophical
362thought hangs with lame wings upon the few great primitive
pictures of human speech, above the simple, all-surpassing
greatness of which no thought can rise. The idea
of the jelly fish is not “accidental.” Once when I was
explaining to a patient the maternal significance of water
at this contact with the mother complex, she experienced
a very unpleasant feeling. “It makes me squirm,” she
said, “as if I touched a jelly fish.” Here, too, the same
idea! The blessed state of sleep before birth and after
death is, as Joël observed, something like old shadowy
memories of that unsuspecting, thoughtless state of early
childhood, where as yet no opposition disturbed the peaceful
flow of dawning life, to which the inner longing
always draws us back again and again, and from which
the active life must free itself anew with struggle and
death, so that it may not be doomed to destruction. Long
before Joël, an Indian chieftain had said the same thing
in similar words to one of the restless wise men:

“Ah, my brother, you will never learn to know the happiness
of thinking nothing and doing nothing: this is next to sleep; this
is the most delightful thing there is. Thus we were before birth,
thus we shall be after death.”^[646]

We shall see in Hiawatha’s later fate how important
his early impressions are in his choice of a wife. Hiawatha’s
first deed was to kill a roebuck with his arrow:

“Dead he lay there in the forest,
By the ford across the river.”

This is typical of Hiawatha’s deeds. Whatever he
kills, for the most part, lies next to or in the water, sometimes
363half in the water and half on the land.^[647] It seems
that this must well be so. The later adventures will
teach us why this must be so. The buck was no ordinary
animal, but a magic one; that is to say, one with an additional
unconscious significance. Hiawatha made for himself
gloves and moccasins from its hide; the gloves imparted
such strength to his arms that he could crumble
rocks to dust, and the moccasins had the virtue of the
seven-league boots. By enwrapping himself in the buck’s
skin he really became a giant. This motive, together with
the death of the animal at the ford,^[648] in the water, reveals
the fact that the parents are concerned, whose
gigantic proportions as compared with the child are of
great significance in the unconscious. The “toys of
giants” is a wish inversion of the infantile phantasy.
The dream of an eleven-year-old girl expresses this:

“I am as high as a church steeple; then a policeman comes. I
tell him, ‘If you say anything, I will cut off your head.’”

The “policeman,” as the analysis brought out, referred
to the father, whose gigantic size was over-compensated
by the church steeple. In Mexican human sacrifices,
the gods were represented by criminals, who were
slaughtered, and flayed, and the Corybantes then clothed
themselves in the bloody skins, in order to illustrate the
resurrection of the gods.^[649] (The snake’s casting of his
skin as a symbol of rejuvenation.)

Hiawatha has, therefore, conquered his parents, primarily
the mother, although in the form of a male animal
(compare the bear of Mudjekeewis); and from that
364comes his giant’s strength. He has taken on the parent’s
skin and now has himself become a great man. Now he
started forth to his first great battle to fight with the
father Mudjekeewis, in order to avenge his dead mother
Wenonah. Naturally, under this figure of speech hides
the thought that he slays the father, in order to take possession
of the mother. Compare the battle of Gilgamesh
with the giant Chumbaba and the ensuing conquest of
Ishtar. The father, in the psychologic sense, merely represents
the personification of the incest prohibition; that
is to say, resistance, which defends the mother. Instead
of the father, it may be a fearful animal (the great bear,
the snake, the dragon, etc.) which must be fought and
overcome. The hero is a hero because he sees in every
difficulty of life resistance to the forbidden treasure, and
fights that resistance with the complete yearning which
strives towards the treasure, attainable with difficulty, or
unattainable, the yearning which paralyzes and kills the
ordinary man.

Hiawatha’s father is Mudjekeewis, the west wind; the
battle, therefore, takes place in the west. Thence came
life (impregnation of Wenonah); thence also came
death (death of Wenonah). Hiawatha, therefore,
fights the typical battle of the hero for rebirth in the
western sea, the battle with the devouring terrible
mother, this time in the form of the father. Mudjekeewis,
who himself had acquired a divine nature, through
his conquest of the bear, now is overpowered by his son:

“Back retreated Mudjekeewis,
Rushing westward o’er the mountains,
365Stumbling westward down the mountains,
Three whole days retreated fighting,
Still pursued by Hiawatha
To the doorways of the West-Wind,
To the portals of the Sunset,
To the earth’s remotest border,
Where into the empty spaces
Sinks the sun, as a flamingo
Drops into her nest at nightfall.”

The “three days” are a stereotyped form representing
the stay in the sea prison of night. (Twenty-first
until twenty-fourth of December.) Christ, too, remained
three days in the underworld. “The treasure, difficult
to attain,” is captured by the hero during this struggle
in the west. In this case the father must make a great
concession to the son; he gives him divine nature,^[650] that
very wind nature, the immortality of which alone protected
Mudjekeewis from death. He says to his son:

“I will share my kingdom with you,
Ruler shall you be henceforward,
Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin,
Of the home-wind, the Keewaydin.”

That Hiawatha now becomes ruler of the home-wind
has its close parallel in the Gilgamesh epic, where Gilgamesh
finally receives the magic herb from the wise old
Utnapishtim, who dwells in the West, which brings him
safe once more over the sea to his home; but this, when
he is home again, is retaken from him by a serpent.

When one has slain the father, one can obtain possession
of his wife, and when one has conquered the mother,
one can free one’s self.

366On the return journey Hiawatha stops at the clever
arrow-maker’s, who possesses a lovely daughter:

“And he named her from the river,
From the water-fall he named her,
Minnehaha, Laughing Water.”

When Hiawatha, in his earliest childhood dreaming,
felt the sounds of water and wind press upon his ears,
he recognized in these sounds of nature the speech of his
mother. The murmuring pine trees on the shore of the
great sea, said “Minnewawa.” And above the murmuring
of the winds and the splashing of the water he found
his earliest childhood dreams once again in a woman,
“Minnehaha,” the laughing water. And the hero, before
all others, finds in woman the mother, in order to
become a child again, and, finally, to solve the riddle of
immortality.

The fact that Minnehaha’s father is a skilful arrow-maker
betrays him as the father of the hero (and the
woman he had with him as the mother). The father of
the hero is very often a skilful carpenter, or other
artisan. According to an Arabian legend, Tare,^[651] Abraham’s
father, was a skilful master workman, who could
carve arrows from any wood; that is to say, in the
Arabian form of speech, he was a procreator of splendid
sons.^[652] Moreover, he was a maker of images of gods.
Tvashtar, Agni’s father, is the maker of the world, a
smith and carpenter, the discoverer of fire-boring. Joseph,
the father of Jesus, was also a carpenter; likewise
Kinyras, Adonis’s father, who is said to have invented
367the hammer, the lever, roofing and mining. Hephaestus,
the father of Hermes, is an artistic master workman and
sculptor. In fairy tales, the father of the hero is very
modestly the traditional wood-cutter. These conceptions
were also alive in the cult of Osiris. There the divine
image was carved out of a tree trunk and then placed
within the hollow of the tree. (Frazer: “Golden
Bough,” Part IV.) In Rigveda, the world was also hewn
out of a tree by the world-sculptor. The idea that the
hero is his own procreator^[653] leads to the fact that he is
invested with paternal attributes, and reversedly the heroic
attributes are given to the father. In Mânî there
exists a beautiful union of the motives. He accomplishes
his great labors as a religious founder, hides himself for
years in a cave, he dies, is skinned, stuffed and hung up
(hero). Besides he is an artist, and has a crippled foot.
A similar union of motives is found in Wieland, the
smith.

Hiawatha kept silent about what he saw at the old
arrow-maker’s on his return to Nokomis, and he did
nothing further to win Minnehaha. But now something
happened, which, if it were not in an Indian epic, would
rather be sought in the history of a neurosis. Hiawatha
introverted his libido; that is to say, he fell into an extreme
resistance against the “real sexual demand”
(Freud); he built a hut for himself in the wood, in order
to fast there and to experience dreams and visions. For
the first three days he wandered, as once in his earliest
youth, through a forest and looked at all the animals
and plants:

368“‘Master of life!’ he cried, desponding,
‘Must our lives depend on these things?’”

The question whether our lives must depend upon
“these things” is very strange. It sounds as if life were
derived from these things; that is to say, from nature
in general. Nature seems suddenly to have assumed a
very strange significance. This phenomenon can be explained
only through the fact that a great amount of
libido was stored up and now is given to nature. As is
well known, men of even dull and prosy minds, in the
springtime of love, suddenly become aware of nature,
and even make poems about it. But we know that libido,
prevented from an actual way of transference, always reverts
to an earlier way of transference. Minnehaha, the
laughing water, is so clearly an allusion to the mother
that the secret yearning of the hero for the mother is
powerfully touched. Therefore, without having undertaken
anything, he goes home to Nokomis; but there again
he is driven away, because Minnehaha already stands in
his path.

He turns, therefore, even further away, into that early
youthful period, the tones of which recall Minnehaha
most forcibly to his thoughts, where he learnt to hear
the mother-sounds in the sounds of nature. In this very
strange revival of the impressions of nature we recognize
a regression to those earliest and strongest nature impressions
which stand next to the subsequently extinguished,
even stronger, impressions which the child received
from the mother. The glamour of this feeling for
her is transferred to other objects of the childish environment
369(father’s house, playthings, etc.), from which later
those magic blissful feelings proceed, which seem to be
peculiar to the earliest childish memories. When, therefore,
Hiawatha hides himself in the lap of nature, it is
really the mother’s womb, and it is to be expected that he
will emerge again new-born in some form.

Before turning to this new creation arising from introversion,
there is still a further significance of the preceding
question to be considered: whether life is dependent
upon “these things”? Life may depend upon
these things in the degree that they serve for nourishment.
We must infer in this case that suddenly the question
of nutrition came very near the hero’s heart. (This
possibility will be thoroughly proven in what follows.)
The question of nutrition, indeed, enters seriously into
consideration. First, because regression to the mother
necessarily revives that special path of transference;
namely, that of nutrition through the mother. As soon
as the libido regresses to the presexual stage, there we
may expect to see the function of nutrition and its symbols
put in place of the sexual function. Thence is derived
an essential root of the displacement from below
upwards (Freud), because, in the presexual stage, the
principal value belongs not to the genitals, but to
the mouth. Secondly, because the hero fasted, his
hunger becomes predominant. Fasting, as is well known,
is employed to silence sexuality; also, it expresses symbolically
the resistance against sexuality, translated into
the language of the presexual stage. On the fourth day
of his fast the hero ceased to address himself to nature;
370he lay exhausted, with half-closed eyes, upon his couch,
sunk deep in dreams, the picture of extreme introversion.

We have already seen that, in such circumstances, an
infantile internal equivalent for reality appears, in the
place of external life and reality. This is also the case
with Hiawatha:

“And he saw a youth approaching,
Dressed in garments green and yellow,
Coming through the purple twilight,
Through the splendor of the sunset;
Plumes of green bent o’er his forehead,
And his hair was soft and golden.”

This remarkable apparition reveals himself in the following
manner to Hiawatha:

“From the Master of Life descending,
I, the friend of man, Mondamin,
Come to warn you and instruct you,
How by struggle and by labor
You shall gain what you have prayed for.
Rise up from your bed of branches;
Rise, O youth, and wrestle with me!”

Mondamin is the maize: a god, who is eaten, arising
from Hiawatha’s introversion. His hunger, taken in a
double sense, his longing for the nourishing mother, gives
birth from his soul to another hero, the edible maize, the
son of the earth mother. Therefore, he again arises at
sunset, symbolizing the entrance into the mother, and in
the western sunset glow he begins again the mystic struggle
with the self-created god, the god who has originated
entirely from the longing for the nourishing mother.
371The struggle is again the struggle for liberation from this
destructive and yet productive longing. Mondamin is,
therefore, equivalent to the mother, and the struggle with
him means the overpowering and impregnation of the
mother. This interpretation is entirely proven by a
myth of the Cherokees, “who invoke it (the maize)
under the name of ‘The Old Woman,’ in allusion to a
myth that it sprang from the blood of an old woman
killed by her disobedient sons”:^[654]

“Faint with famine, Hiawatha
Started from his bed of branches,
From the twilight of his wigwam
Forth into the flush of sunset
Came, and wrestled with Mondamin;
At his touch he felt new courage
Throbbing in his brain and bosom,
Felt new life and hope and vigor
Run through every nerve and fibre.”

The battle at sunset with the god of the maize gives
Hiawatha new strength; and thus it must be, because the
fight for the individual depths, against the paralyzing
longing for the mother, gives creative strength to men.
Here, indeed, is the source of all creation, but it demands
heroic courage to fight against these forces and to wrest
from them the “treasure difficult to attain.” He who
succeeds in this has, in truth, attained the best. Hiawatha
wrestles with himself for his creation.^[655] The struggle
lasts again the charmed three days. The fourth day, just
as Mondamin prophesied, Hiawatha conquers him, and
Mondamin sinks to the ground in death. As Mondamin
372previously desired, Hiawatha digs his grave in mother
earth, and soon afterwards from this grave the young
and fresh maize grows for the nourishment of mankind.

Concerning the thought of this fragment, we have
therein a beautiful parallel to the mystery of Mithra,
where first the battle of the hero with his bull occurs.
Afterwards Mithra carries in “transitus” the bull into
the cave, where he kills him. From this death all fertility
grows, all that is edible.^[656] The cave corresponds
to the grave. The same idea is represented in the Christian
mysteries, although generally in more beautiful
human forms. The soul struggle of Christ in Gethsemane,
where he struggles with himself in order to complete
his work, then the “transitus,” the carrying of the
cross,^[657] where he takes upon himself the symbol of the
destructive mother, and therewith takes himself to the
sacrificial grave, from which, after three days, he triumphantly
arises; all these ideas express the same fundamental
thoughts. Also, the symbol of eating is not lacking
in the Christian mystery. Christ is a god who is eaten
in the Lord’s Supper. His death transforms him into
bread and wine, which we partake of in grateful memory
of his great deed.^[658] The relation of Agni to the Somadrink
and that of Dionysus to wine^[659] must not be omitted
here. An evident parallel is Samson’s rending of the
lion, and the subsequent inhabitation of the dead lion by
honey bees, which gives rise to the well-known German
riddle:

“Speise ging von dem Fresser und Süssigkeit von dem Starken
(Food went from the glutton and sweet from the strong).”^[660]

373In the Eleusinian mysteries these thoughts seem to
have played a rôle. Besides Demeter and Persephone,
Iakchos is a chief god of the Eleusinian cult; he was the
“puer æternus,” the eternal boy, of whom Ovid says the
following:

“Tu puer æternus, tu formosissimus alto
Conspiceris cœlo tibi, cum sine cornibus astas,
Virgineum caput est,” etc.^[661]

In the great Eleusinian festival procession the image
of Iakchos was carried. It is not easy to say which god
is Iakchos, possibly a boy, or a new-born son, similar to
the Etrurian Tages, who bears the surname “the freshly
ploughed boy,” because, according to the myth, he arose
from the furrow of the field behind the peasant, who was
ploughing. This idea shows unmistakably the Mondamin
motive. The plough is of well-known phallic meaning;
the furrow of the field is personified by the Hindoos as
woman. The psychology of this idea is that of a coitus,
referred back to the presexual stage (stage of nutrition).
The son is the edible fruit of the field. Iakchos
passes, in part, as son of Demeter or of Persephone,
also appropriately as consort of Demeter. (Hero as procreator
of himself.) He is also called τῆς Δήμητρος
δαίμων (Δαίμων equals libido, also Mother libido.) He
was identified with Dionysus, especially with the Thracian
Dionysus-Zagreus, of whom a typical fate of rebirth was
related. Hera had goaded the Titans against Zagreus,
374who, assuming many forms, sought to escape them, until
they finally took him when he had taken on the form of a
bull. In this form he was killed (Mithra sacrifice) and
dismembered, and the pieces were thrown into a cauldron;
but Zeus killed the Titans by lightning, and swallowed
the still-throbbing heart of Zagreus. Through this
act he gave him existence once more, and Zagreus as
Iakchos again came forth.

Iakchos carries the torch, the phallic symbol of procreation,
as Plato testifies. In the festival procession, the
sheaf of corn, the cradle of Iakchos, was carried.
(λῖκνον, mystica vannus Iacchi.) The Orphic legend^[662]
relates that Iakchos was brought up by Persephone, when,
after three years’ slumber in the λῖκνον,^[663] he awoke. This
statement distinctly suggests the Mondamin motive. The
20th of Boedromion (the month Boedromion lasts from
about the 5th of September to the 5th of October) is
called Iakchos, in honor of the hero. On the evening
of this day the great torchlight procession took place on
the seashore, in which the quest and lament of Demeter
was represented. The rôle of Demeter, who, seeking
her daughter, wanders over the whole earth without food
or drink, has been taken over by Hiawatha in the Indian
epic. He turns to all created things without obtaining an
answer. As Demeter first learns of her daughter from
the subterranean Hecate, so does Hiawatha first find the
one sought for, Mondamin,^[664] in the deepest introversion
(descent to the mother). Hiawatha produces from himself,
Mondamin, as a mother produces the son. The
375longing for the mother also includes the producing
mother (first devouring, then birth-giving). Concerning
the real contents of the mysteries, we learn through
the testimony of Bishop Asterius, about 390 A.D., the
following:

“Is not there (in Eleusis) the gloomiest descent, and the most
solemn communion of the hierophant and the priestess; between
him and her alone? Are the torches not extinguished, and does
not the vast multitude regard as their salvation that which takes
place between the two in the darkness?”^[665]

That points undoubtedly to a ritual marriage, which was
celebrated subterraneously in mother earth. The Priestess
of Demeter seems to be the representative of the earth
goddess, perhaps the furrow of the field.^[666] The descent
into the earth is also the symbol of the mother’s womb,
and was a widespread conception under the form of
cave worship. Plutarch relates of the Magi that they
sacrificed to Ahriman, εἰς τόπον ἀνήλιον.^[667] Lukian lets
the magician Mithrobarzanes εἰς χωρίον ἔρημον καὶ
ὑλῶδες καὶ ἀνήλιον,^[668] descend into the bowels of the earth.
According to the testimony of Moses of the Koran, the
sister Fire and the brother Spring were worshipped in
Armenia in a cave. Julian gave an account from the
Attis legend of a κατάβασις εἰς ἄντρον,^[669] from whence
Cybele brings up her son lover, that is to say, gives birth
to him.^[670] The cave of Christ’s birth, in Bethlehem
(‘House of Bread’), is said to have been an Attis
spelæum.

376A further Eleusinian symbolism is found in the festival
of Hierosgamos, in the form of the mystic chests, which,
according to the testimony of Clemens of Alexandria,
may have contained pastry, salt and fruits. The synthema
(confession) of the mystic transmitted by Clemens is suggestive
in still other directions:

“I have fasted, I have drunk of the barleydrink, I have taken
from the chest and after I have labored, I have placed it back in
the basket, and from the basket into the chest.”

The question as to what lay in the chest is explained
in detail by Dieterich.^[671] The labor he considers a phallic
activity, which the mystic has to perform. In fact, representations
of the mystic basket are given, wherein lies
a phallus surrounded by fruits.^[672] Upon the so-called
Lovatelli tomb vase, the sculptures of which are understood
to be Eleusinian ceremonies, it is shown how a
mystic caressed the serpent entwining Demeter. The
caressing of the fear animal indicates a religious conquering
of incest.^[673] According to the testimony of Clemens of
Alexandria, a serpent was in the chest. The serpent in
this connection is naturally of phallic nature, the phallus
which is forbidden in relation to the mother. Rohde
mentions that in the Arrhetophories, pastry, in the form
of phalli and serpents, were thrown into the cave near
the Thesmophorion. This custom was a petition for the
bestowal of children and harvest.^[674] The snake also plays
a large part in initiations under the remarkable title
ὁ διὰ κόλπου θεός.^[675] Clemens observes that the symbol
377of the Sabazios mysteries is ὁ διὰ κόλπων θεός, δράκων
δὲ ἐστι καὶ οὗτος διελκόμενος τοῦ κόλπου τῶν τελουμένων.^[676]

Through Arnobius we learn:

“Aureus coluber in sinum demittitur consecratis et eximitur
rursus ab inferioribus partibus atque imis.”^[677]

In the Orphic Hymn 52, Bacchus is invoked by
ὑποκόλπιε,^[678] which indicates that the god enters into
man as if through the female genitals.^[679] According to
the testimony of Hippolytus, the hierophant in the mystery
exclaimed ἱερον ἔτεκε πότνια κοῦρον, Βριμὼ βριμόν
(the revered one has brought forth a holy boy, Brimos
from Brimo). This Christmas gospel, “Unto us a son
is born,” is illustrated especially through the tradition^[680]
that the Athenians “secretly show to the partakers in
the Epoptia, the great and wonderful and most perfect
Epoptic mystery, a mown stalk of wheat.”^[681]

The parallel for the motive of death and resurrection
is the motive of losing and finding. The motive appears
in religious rites in exactly the same connection, namely,
in spring festivities similar to the Hierosgamos, where
the image of the god was hidden and found again. It is
an uncanonical tradition that Moses left his father’s
house when twelve years old to teach mankind. In a
similar manner Christ is lost by his parents, and they
find him again as a teacher of wisdom, just as in the Mohammedan
378legend Moses and Joshua lose the fish, and
in his place Chidher, the teacher of wisdom, appears
(like the boy Jesus in the temple); so does the corn god,
lost and believed to be dead, suddenly arise again from
his mother into renewed youth. (That Christ was laid
in the manger is suggestive of fodder. Robertson, therefore,
places the manger as parallel to the liknon.)

We understand from these accounts why the Eleusinian
mysteries were for the mystic so rich in comfort for
the hope of a better world. A beautiful Eleusinian epitaph
shows this:

“Truly, a beautiful secret is proclaimed by the blessed Gods!
Mortality is not a curse, but death a blessing!”

The hymn to Demeter^[682] in the mysteries also says the
same:

“Blessed is he, the earth-born man, who hath seen this!
Who hath not shared in these divine ceremonies,
He hath an unequal fate in the obscure darkness of death.”

Immortality is inherent in the Eleusinian symbol; in a
church song of the nineteenth century by Samuel Preiswerk
we discover it again:

“The world is yours, Lord Jesus,
The world, on which we stand,
Because it is thy world
It cannot perish.
Only the wheat, before it comes
Up to the light in its fertility,
Must die in the bosom of the earth
First freed from its own nature.

379“Thou goest, O Lord, our chief,
To heaven through thy sorrows,
And guide him who believes
In thee on the same path.
Then take us all equally
To share in thy sorrows and kingdoms,
Guide us through thy gate of death,
Bring thy world into the light.”

Firmicus relates concerning the Attis mysteries:

“Nocte quadam simulacrum in lectica supinum ponitur et per
numeros digestis fletibus plangitur; deinde cum se ficta lamentatione
satiaverint, lumen infertur: tunc a sacerdote omnium qui
flebant fauces unguentur, quibus perunctis sacerdos hoc lento murmure
susurrat: ‘Θαρρεῖτε μύσται τοῦ Θεοῦ σεσωσμένου ἔσται γὰρ ἡμῖν ἐκ πόνου
σωτηρία.’”^[683]

Such parallels show how little human personality and
how much divine, that is to say, universally human, is
found in the Christ mystery. No man is or, indeed, ever
was, a hero, for the hero is a god, and, therefore, impersonal
and generally applicable to all. Christ is a
“spirit,” as is shown in the very early Christian interpretation.
In different places of the earth, and in the
most varied forms and in the coloring of various periods,
the Savior-hero appears as a fruit of the entrance of the
libido into the personal maternal depths. The Bacchian
consecrations represented upon the Farnese relief contain
380a scene where a mystic wrapped in a mantle, drawn over
his head, was led to Silen, who holds the “λῖχνον”
(chalice), covered with a cloth. The covering of the
head signifies death. The mystic dies, figuratively, like
the seed corn, grows again and comes to the corn harvest.
Proclus relates that the mystics were buried up to
their necks. The Christian church as a place of religious
ceremony is really nothing but the grave of a hero (catacombs).
The believer descends into the grave, in order
to rise from the dead with the hero. That the meaning
underlying the church is that of the mother’s womb can
scarcely be doubted. The symbols of Mass are so distinct
that the mythology of the sacred act peeps out
everywhere. It is the magic charm of rebirth. The veneration
of the Holy Sepulchre is most plain in this respect.
A striking example is the Holy Sepulchre of St.
Stefano in Bologna. The church itself, a very old polygonal
building, consists of the remains of a temple to Isis.
The interior contains an artificial spelæum, a so-called
Holy Sepulchre, into which one creeps through a very
little door. After a long sojourn, the believer reappears
reborn from this mother’s womb. An Etruscan ossuarium
in the archeological museum in Florence is at the same
time a statue of Matuta, the goddess of death; the clay
figure of the goddess is hollowed within as a receptacle
for the ashes. The representations indicate that Matuta
is the mother. Her chair is adorned with sphinxes, as a
fitting symbol for the mother of death.

THE SO-CALLED HOLY SEPULCHRE OF S. STEFANO AT BOLOGNA

381Only a few of the further deeds of Hiawatha can interest
us here. Among these is the battle with Mishe-Nahma, the fish-king, in the eighth song. This deserves
to be mentioned as a typical battle of the sun-hero.
Mishe-Nahma is a fish monster, who dwells at the bottom
of the waters. Challenged by Hiawatha to battle, he devours
the hero, together with his boat:

“In his wrath he darted upward,
Flashing leaped into the sunshine,
Opened his great jaws, and swallowed
Both canoe and Hiawatha.

“Down into that darksome cavern
Plunged the headlong Hiawatha,
As a log on some black river
Shoots and plunges down the rapids,
Found himself in utter darkness,
Groped about in helpless wonder,
Till he felt a great heart beating,
Throbbing in that utter darkness.
And he smote it in his anger,
With his fist, the heart of Nahma,
Felt the mighty king of fishes
Shudder through each nerve and fibre.

       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

Crosswise then did Hiawatha
Drag his birch-canoe for safety,
Lest from out the jaws of Nahma,
In the turmoil and confusion,
Forth he might be hurled, and perish.”

It is the typical myth of the work of the hero, distributed
over the entire world. He takes to a boat, fights
with the sea monster, is devoured, he defends himself
against being bitten or crushed^[684] (resistance or stamping
motive); having arrived in the interior of the “whale
dragon,” he seeks the vital organ, which he cuts off
382or in some way destroys. Often the death of the
monster occurs as the result of a fire which the hero
secretly makes within him; he mysteriously creates in the
womb of death life, the rising sun. Thus dies the fish,
which drifts ashore, where, with the assistance of
“birds,” the hero again attains the light of day.^[685] The
bird in this sense probably means the reascent of the sun,
the longing of the libido, the rebirth of the phœnix.
(The longing is very frequently represented by the symbol
of hovering.) The sun symbol of the bird rising from
the water is (etymologically) contained in the singing
swan. “Swan” is derived from the root sven, like
sun and tone. (See the preceding.) This act signifies
rebirth, and the bringing forth of life from the mother,^[686]
and by this means the ultimate destruction of death,
which, according to a Negro myth, has come into the
world, through the mistake of an old woman, who, at
the time of the general casting of skins (for men renewed
their youth through casting their skin like
snakes), drew on, through absent-mindedness, her old
skin instead of a new one, and as a result died. But the
effect of such an act could not be of any duration. Again
and again troubles of the hero are renewed, always under
the symbol of deliverance from the mother. Just as Hera
(as the pursuing mother) is the real source of the great
deeds of Hercules, so does Nokomis allow Hiawatha no
rest, and raises up new difficulties in his path, in form of
desperate adventures in which the hero may perhaps conquer,
but also, perhaps, may perish. The libido of mankind
is always in advance of his consciousness; unless his
libido calls him forth to new dangers he sinks into slothful
inactivity or, on the other hand, childish longing for
the mother overcomes him at the summit of his existence,
and he allows himself to become pitifully weak, instead
of striving with desperate courage towards the highest.
The mother becomes the demon, who summons the hero
to adventure, and who also places in his path the poisonous
serpent, which will strike him. Thus Nokomis, in the
ninth song, calls Hiawatha, points with her hand to the
west, where the sun sets in purple splendor, and says to
him:

MATUTA, AN ETRUSCAN PIETÀ

383“Yonder dwells the great Pearl-Feather,
Megissogwon, the Magician,
Manito of Wealth and Wampum,
Guarded by his fiery serpents,
Guarded by the black pitch-water.
You can see his fiery serpents,
The Kenabeek, the great serpents,
Coiling, playing in the water.”

This danger lurking in the west is known to mean
death, which no one, even the mightiest, escapes. This
magician, as we learn, also killed the father of Nokomis.
Now she sends her son forth to avenge the father
(Horus). Through the symbols attributed to the magician
it may easily be recognized what he symbolizes.
Snake and water belong to the mother, the snake as a
symbol of the repressed longing for the mother, or, in
other words, as a symbol of resistance, encircles protectingly
and defensively the maternal rock, inhabits the cave,
winds itself upwards around the mother tree and guards
384the precious hoard, the “mysterious” treasure. The
black Stygian water is, like the black, muddy spring of
Dhulqarnein, the place where the sun dies and enters into
rebirth, the maternal sea of death and night. On his
journey thither Hiawatha takes with him the magic oil
of Mishe-Nahma, which helps his boat through the waters
of death. (Also a sort of charm for immortality, like
the dragon’s blood for Siegfried, etc.)

First, Hiawatha slays the great serpent. Of the
“night journey in the sea” over the Stygian waters it is
written:

“All night long he sailed upon it,
Sailed upon that sluggish water,
Covered with its mould of ages,
Black with rotting water-rushes,
Rank with flags, and leaves of lilies,
Stagnant, lifeless, dreary, dismal,
Lighted by the shimmering moonlight
And by will-o’-the-wisps illumined,
Fires by ghosts of dead men kindled,
In their weary night encampments.”

The description plainly shows the character of a water
of death. The contents of the water point to an already
mentioned motive, that of encoiling and devouring. It is
said in the “Key to Dreams of Jagaddeva”:^[687]

“Whoever in dreams surrounds his body with bast, creepers or
ropes, with snake-skins, threads, or tissues, dies.”

I refer to the preceding arguments in regard to this.
Having come into the west land, the hero challenges the
magician to battle. A terrible struggle begins. Hiawatha
385is powerless, because Megissogwon is invulnerable.
At evening Hiawatha retires wounded, despairing
for a while, in order to rest:

“Paused to rest beneath a pine-tree,
From whose branches trailed the mosses,
And whose trunk was coated over
With the Dead-man’s Moccasin-leather,
With the fungus white and yellow.”

This protecting tree is described as coated over with
the moccasin leather of the dead, the fungus. This investing
of the tree with anthropomorphic attributes is also
an important rite wherever tree worship prevails, as, for
example, in India, where each village has its sacred tree,
which is clothed and in general treated as a human being.
The trees are anointed with fragrant waters, sprinkled
with powder, adorned with garlands and draperies. Just
as among men, the piercing of the ears was performed
as an apotropaic charm against death, so does it occur
with the holy tree. Of all the trees of India there is none
more sacred to the Hindoos than the Aswatha (Ficus religiosa).
It is known to them as Vriksha Raja (king of
trees), Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesvar live in it, and the
worship of it is the worship of the triad. Almost every
Indian village has an Aswatha,^[688] etc. This “village
linden tree,” well known to us, is here clearly characterized
as the mother symbol; it contains the three gods.

Hence, when Hiawatha retires to rest under the pine-tree,^[689]
it is a dangerous step, because he resigns himself
to the mother, whose garment is the garment of death
(the devouring mother). As in the whale-dragon, the
386hero also in this situation needs a “helpful bird”; that
is to say, the helpful animals, which represent the benevolent
parents:

“Suddenly from the boughs above him
Sang the Mama, the woodpecker;
‘Aim your arrows, Hiawatha,
At the head of Megissogwon,
Strike the tuft of hair upon it,
At their roots the long black tresses;
There alone can he be wounded.’”

Now, amusing to relate, Mama hurried to his help.
It is a peculiar fact that the woodpecker was also the
“Mama” of Romulus and Remus, who put nourishment
into the mouths of the twins with his beak.^[690] (Compare
with that the rôle of the vulture in Leonardo’s dream.
The vulture is sacred to Mars, like the woodpecker.)
With the maternal significance of the woodpecker, the
ancient Italian folk-superstition agrees: that from the
tree upon which this bird nested any nail which has been
driven in will soon drop out again.^[691] The woodpecker
owes its special significance to the circumstance that he
hammers holes into trees. (“To drive nails in,” as
above!) It is, therefore, understandable that he was
made much of in the Roman legend as an old king of
the country, a possessor or ruler of the holy tree, the
primitive image of the Paterfamilias. An old fable relates
how Circe, the spouse of King Picus, transformed
him into the Picus Martius, the woodpecker. The sorceress
is the “new-creating mother,” who has “magic influence”
upon the sun-husband. She kills him, transforms
387him into the soul-bird, the unfulfilled wish. Picus
was also understood as the wood demon and incubus, as
well as the soothsayer, all of which fully indicate the
mother libido.^[692] Picus was often placed on a par with
Picumnus by the ancients. Picumnus is the inseparable
companion of Pilumnus, and both are actually called infantium
dii, “the gods of little children.” Especially it
was said of Pilumnus that he defended new-born children
against the destroying attacks of the wood demon, Silvanus.
(Good and bad mother, the motive of the two
mothers.)

The benevolent bird, a wish thought of deliverance
which arises from introversion,^[693] advises the hero to shoot
the magician under the hair, which is the only vulnerable
spot. This spot is the “phallic” point,^[694] if one may
venture to say so; it is at the top of the head, at the place
where the mystic birth from the head takes place, which
even to-day appears in children’s sexual theories. Into
that Hiawatha shoots (one may say, very naturally)
three arrows^[695] (the well-known phallic symbol), and thus
kills Megissogwon. Thereupon he steals the magic wampum
armor, which renders him invulnerable (means of
immortality). He significantly leaves the dead lying in
the water—because the magician is the fearful mother:

“On the shore he left the body,
Half on land and half in water,
In the sand his feet were buried,
And his face was in the water.”

Thus the situation is the same as with the fish king,
because the monster is the personification of the water
388of death, which in its turn represents the devouring
mother. This great deed of Hiawatha’s, where he has
vanquished the mother as the death-bringing demon,^[696]
is followed by his marriage with Minnehaha.

A little fable which the poet has inserted in the later
song is noteworthy. An old man is transformed into a
youth, by crawling through a hollow oak tree.

In the fourteenth song is a description of how Hiawatha
discovers writing. I limit myself to the description
of two hieroglyphic tokens:

“Gitche Manito the Mighty,
He, the Master of Life, was painted
As an egg, with points projecting
To the four winds of the heavens.
Everywhere is the Great Spirit,
Was the meaning of this symbol.”

The world lies in the egg, which encompasses it at
every point; it is the cosmic woman with child, the symbol
of which Plato as well as the Vedas has made use of.
This mother is like the air, which is everywhere. But air
is spirit; the mother of the world is a spirit:

“Mitche Manito the Mighty,
He the dreadful Spirit of Evil,
As a serpent was depicted,
As Kenabeek, the great serpent.”

But the spirit of evil is fear, is the forbidden desire,
the adversary who opposes not only each individual heroic
deed, but life in its struggle for eternal duration as well,
and who introduces into our body the poison of weakness
389and age through the treacherous bite of the serpent.
It is all that is retrogressive, and as the model of our
first world is our mother, all retrogressive tendencies are
towards the mother, and, therefore, are disguised under
the incest image.

In both these ideas the poet has represented in mythologic
symbols the libido arising from the mother and
the libido striving backward towards the mother.

There is a description in the fifteenth song how Chibiabos,
Hiawatha’s best friend, the amiable player and singer,
the embodiment of the joy of life, was enticed by the evil
spirits into ambush, fell through the ice and was drowned.
Hiawatha mourns for him so long that he succeeds, with
the aid of the magician, in calling him back again. But the
revivified friend is only a spirit, and he becomes master of
the land of spirits. (Osiris, lord of the underworld; the
two Dioscuri.) Battles again follow, and then comes the
loss of a second friend, Kwasind, the embodiment of
physical strength.

In the twentieth song occur famine and the death of
Minnehaha, foretold by two taciturn guests from the
land of death; and in the twenty-second song Hiawatha
prepares for a final journey to the west land:

“I am going, O Nokomis,
On a long and distant journey,
To the portals of the Sunset,
To the regions of the home-wind,
Of the Northwest-Wind Keewaydin.

“One long track and trail of splendor,
Down whose stream, as down a river,
390Westward, westward, Hiawatha
Sailed into the fiery sunset,
Sailed into the purple vapors,
Sailed into the dusk of evening.

“Thus departed Hiawatha,
Hiawatha the Beloved,
In the glory of the sunset,
In the purple mists of evening,
To the regions of the home-wind,
Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin,
To the Islands of the Blessed,
To the kingdom of Ponemah,
To the land of the Hereafter!”

The sun, victoriously arising, tears itself away from
the embrace and clasp, from the enveloping womb of
the sea, and sinks again into the maternal sea, into night,
the all-enveloping and the all-reproducing, leaving behind
it the heights of midday and all its glorious works. This
image was the first, and was profoundly entitled to become
the symbolic carrier of human destiny; in the morning
of life man painfully tears himself loose from the
mother, from the domestic hearth, to rise through battle
to his heights. Not seeing his worst enemy in front of
him, but bearing him within himself as a deadly longing
for the depths within, for drowning in his own source,
for becoming absorbed into the mother, his life is a constant
struggle with death, a violent and transitory delivery
from the always lurking night. This death is no external
enemy, but a deep personal longing for quiet and for the
profound peace of non-existence, for a dreamless sleep
in the ebb and flow of the sea of life. Even in his highest
endeavor for harmony and equilibrium, for philosophic
391depths and artistic enthusiasm, he seeks death, immobility,
satiety and rest. If, like Peirithoos, he tarries too
long in this place of rest and peace, he is overcome by
torpidity, and the poison of the serpent paralyzes him for
all time. If he is to live he must fight and sacrifice his
longing for the past, in order to rise to his own heights.
And having reached the noonday heights, he must also
sacrifice the love for his own achievement, for he may not
loiter. The sun also sacrifices its greatest strength in
order to hasten onwards to the fruits of autumn, which
are the seeds of immortality; fulfilled in children, in
works, in posthumous fame, in a new order of things, all
of which in their turn begin and complete the sun’s
course over again.

The “Song of Hiawatha” contains, as these extracts
show, a material which is very well adapted to bring into
play the abundance of ancient symbolic possibilities,
latent in the human mind, and to stimulate it to the creation
of mythologic figures. But the products always contain the
same old problems of humanity, which rise again and again
in new symbolic disguise from the shadowy world of the
unconscious. Thus Miss Miller is reminded through the
longing of Chiwantopel, of another mythic cycle which
appeared in the form of Wagner’s “Siegfried.” Especially
is this shown in the passage in Chiwantopel’s monologue,
where he exclaims, “There is not one who understands
me, not one who resembles me, not one who has a
soul sister to mine.” Miss Miller observes that the
sentiment of this passage has the greatest analogy with
the feelings which Siegfried experienced for Brunhilde.

392This analogy causes us to cast a glance at the song of
Siegfried, especially at the relation of Siegfried and
Brunhilde. It is a well-recognized fact that Brunhilde,
the Valkyr, gives protection to the birth (incestuous)
of Siegfried, but while Sieglinde is the human mother,
Brunhilde has the rôle of “spiritual mother” (mother-imago);
however, unlike Hera towards Hercules, she is
not a pursuer, but benevolent. This sin, in which she is
an accomplice, by means of the help she renders, is the
reason for her banishment by Wotan. The strange birth
of Siegfried from the sister-wife distinguishes him as
Horus, as the reborn son, a reincarnation of the retreating
Osiris—Wotan. The birth of the young son, of the
hero, results, indeed, from mankind, who, however, are
merely the human bearers of the cosmic symbolism. Thus
the birth is protected by the spirit mother (Hera, Lilith):
she sends Sieglinde with the child in her womb (Mary’s
flight) on the “night journey on the sea” to the east:

“Onward, hasten;
Turn to the East.

       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

O woman, thou cherishest
The sublimest hero of the world
In thy sheltering womb.”

The motive of dismemberment is found again in the
broken sword of Siegmund, which was kept for Siegfried.
From the dismemberment life is pieced together
again. (The Medea wonder.) Just as a smith forges
the pieces together, so is the dismembered dead again
put together. (This comparison is also found in
393“Timaios” of Plato: the parts of the world joined
together with pegs.) In the Rigveda, 10, 72, the creator
of the world, Brahmanaspati, is a smith.

“Brahmanaspati, as a blacksmith,
Welded the world together.”

The sword has the significance of the phallic sun power;
therefore, a sword proceeds from the mouth of the
apocalyptic Christ; that is to say, the procreative fire, the
word, or the procreative Logos. In Rigveda, Brahmanaspati
is also a prayer-word, which possessed an ancient
creative significance:^[697]

“And this prayer of the singers, expanding from itself,
Became a cow, which was already there before the world,
Dwelling together in the womb of this god,
Foster-children of the same keeper are the gods.”

—Rigveda x: 31.

The Logos became a cow; that is to say, the mother,
who is pregnant with the gods. (In Christian uncanonical
phantasies, where the Holy Ghost has feminine significance,
we have the well-known motive of the two
mothers, the earthly mother, Mary, and the spiritual
mother, the Holy Ghost.) The transformation of the
Logos into the mother is not remarkable in itself, because
the origin of the phenomenon fire-speech seems to be the
mother-libido, according to the discussion in the earlier
chapter. The spiritual is the mother-libido. The significance
of the sword, in the Sanskrit conception, têjas,
is probably partly determined by its sharpness, as is
shown above, in its connection with the libido conception.
394The motive of pursuit (the pursuing Sieglinde, analogous
to Leto) is not here bound up with the spiritual mother,
but with Wotan, therefore corresponding to the Linos
legend, where the father of the wife is also the pursuer.
Wotan is also the father of Brunhilde. Brunhilde stands
in a peculiar relation to Wotan. Brunhilde says to
Wotan:

“Thou speakest to the will of Wotan
By telling me what thou wishest:
Who … am I
Were I not thy will?”

Wotan:

I take counsel only with myself,
When I speak with thee….

Brunhilde is also somewhat the “angel of the face,”
that creative will or word,^[698] emanating from God, also
the Logos, which became the child-bearing woman. God
created the world through his word; that is to say, his
mother, the woman who is to bring him forth again.
(He lays his own egg.) This peculiar conception, it
seems to me, can be explained by assuming that the libido
overflowing into speech (thought) has preserved its
sexual character to an extraordinary degree as a result
of the inherent inertia. In this way the “word” had to
execute and fulfil all that was denied to the sexual wish;
namely, the return into the mother, in order to attain
eternal duration. The “word” fulfils this wish by itself
becoming the daughter, the wife, the mother of the God,
who brings him forth anew.^[699]

395Wagner has this idea vaguely in his mind in Wotan’s
lament over Brunhilde:

“None as she knew my inmost thought;
None knew the source of my will
As she;
She herself was
The creating womb of my wish;
And so now she has broken
The blessed union!”

Brunhilde’s sin is the favoring of Siegmund, but, behind
this, lies incest: this is projected into the brother-sister
relation of Siegmund and Sieglinde; in reality, and
archaically expressed, Wotan, the father, has entered into
his self-created daughter, in order to rejuvenate himself.
But this fact must, of course, be veiled. Wotan is rightly
indignant with Brunhilde, for she has taken the Isis rôle
and through the birth of the son has deprived the old
man of his power. The first attack of the death serpent
in the form of the son, Siegmund, Wotan has repelled;
he has broken Siegmund’s sword, but Siegmund
rises again in a grandson. This inevitable fate is always
helped by the woman; hence the wrath of Wotan.

At Siegfried’s birth Sieglinde dies, as is proper. The
foster-mother^[700] is apparently not a woman, but a chthonic
god, a crippled dwarf, who belongs to that tribe which
renounces love.^[701] The Egyptian god of the underworld,
the crippled shadow of Osiris (who celebrated a melancholy
resurrection in the sexless semi-ape Harpocrates),
is the tutor of Horus, who has to avenge the death of his
father.

396Meanwhile Brunhilde sleeps the enchanted sleep, like a
Hierosgamos, upon a mountain, where Wotan has put her
to sleep^[702] with the magic thorn (Edda), surrounded by
the flames of Wotan’s fire (equal to libido^[703]), which
wards off every one. But Mime becomes Siegfried’s
enemy and wills his death through Fafner. Here Mime’s
dynamic nature is revealed; he is a masculine representation
of the terrible mother, also a foster-mother of demoniac
nature, who places the poisonous worm (Typhon)
in her son’s (Horus’s) path. Siegfried’s longing for the
mother drives him away from Mime, and his travels begin
with the mother of death, and lead through vanquishing
the “terrible mother”^[704] to the woman:

Siegfried:

Off with the imp!
I ne’er would see him more!
Might I but know what my mother was like
That will my thought never tell me!
Her eyes’ tender light
Surely did shine
Like the soft eyes of the doe!

Siegfried decides to separate from the demon which
was the mother in the past, and he gropes forward with
the longing directed towards the mother. Nature acquires
a hidden maternal significance for him (“doe”);
in the tones of nature he discovers a suggestion of the
maternal voice and the maternal language:

Siegfried:

Thou gracious birdling,
Strange art thou to me!
397Dost thou in the wood here dwell?
Ah, would that I could take thy meaning!
Thy song something would say—
Perchance—of my loving mother!

This psychology we have already encountered in Hiawatha.
By means of his dialogue with the bird (bird,
like wind and arrow, represents the wish, the winged
longing) Siegfried entices Fafner from the cave. His
desires turn back to the mother, and the chthonic demon,
the cave-dwelling terror of the woods, appears. Fafner
is the protector of the treasure; in his cave lies the hoard,
the source of life and power. The mother possesses the
libido of the son, and jealously does she guard it. Translated
into psychological language, this means the positive
transference succeeds only through the release of the
libido from the mother-imago, the incestuous object in
general. Only in this manner is it possible to gain one’s
libido, the incomparable treasure, and this requires a
mighty struggle, the whole battle of adaptation.^[705] The
Siegfried legend has abundantly described the outcome of
this battle with Fafner. According to the Edda, Siegfried
eats Fafner’s heart, the seat of life. He wins the
magic cap, through whose power Alberich had changed
himself into a serpent. This refers to the motive of casting
the skin, rejuvenation. By means of the magic cap
one can vanish and assume different shapes. The vanishing
probably refers to dying and to the invisible presence;
that is, existence in the mother’s womb. A luck-bringing
cap, amniotic covering, the new-born child occasionally
wears over his head (the caul). Moreover,
398Siegfried drinks the dragon’s blood, which makes it possible
for him to understand the language of birds, and
consequently he enters into a peculiar relation with Nature,
a dominating position, the result of his knowledge,
and finally wins the treasure.

Hort is a mediæval and Old High German word with
the meaning of “collected and guarded treasure”;
Gothic, huzd; Old Scandinavian, hodd; Germanic hozda,
from pre-Germanic kuzdhó—for kudtho—“the concealed.”
Kluge^[706] adds to this the Greek κεύθω,
έκυθον = “to hide, to conceal.” Also hut (hut, to
guard; English, hide), Germanic root hud, from Indo-Germanic
kuth (questionable), to Greek κεύθω and
κύσθος, “cavity,” feminine genitals. Prellwitz,^[707] too,
traces Gothic huzd, Anglo-Saxon hyde, English hide and
hoard, to Greek κεύθω. Whitley Stokes traces English
hide, Anglo-Saxon hydan, New High German Hütte,
Latin cûdo = helmet; Sanskrit kuhara (cave?) to primitive
Celtic koudo = concealment; Latin, occultatio.

The assumption of Kluge is also supported in other
directions; namely, from the point of view of the primitive
idea:

“There exists in Athens^[708] a sacred place (a Temenos) of Ge,
with the surname Olympia. Here the ground is torn open for
about a yard in width; and they say, after the flood at the time
of Deucalion, that the water receded here; and every year they
throw into the fissure wheatmeal, kneaded with honey.”

We have observed previously that among the Arrhetophorian,
pastry in the form of snakes and phalli, was
thrown into a crevice in the earth. This was mentioned
399in connection with the ceremonies of fertilizing the earth.
We have touched slightly already upon the sacrifice in
the earth crevice among the Watschandies. The flood
of death has passed characteristically into the crevice of
the earth; that is, back into the mother again; because
from the mother the universal great death has come in
the first place. The flood is simply the counterpart of the
vivifying and all-producing water: Ὠκεανοῦ, ὅσπερ γένεσις
πάντεσσι τέτυκται.^[709] One sacrifices the honey cake
to the mother, so that she may spare one from death.
Thus every year in Rome a gold sacrifice was thrown
into the lacus Curtius, into the former fissure in the earth,
which could only be closed through the sacrificial death
of Curtius. He was the typical hero, who has journeyed
into the underworld, in order to conquer the danger
threatening the Roman state from the opening of the
abyss. (Kaineus, Amphiaraos.) In the Amphiaraion of
Oropos those healed through the temple incubation threw
their gifts of gold into the sacred well, of which Pausanias
says:

“If any one is healed of a sickness through a saying of the
oracle, then it is customary to throw a silver or gold coin into the
well; because here Amphiaraos has ascended as a god.”

It is probable that this oropic well is also the place of
his “Katabasis” (descent into the lower world). There
were many entrances into Hades in antiquity. Thus near
Eleusis there was an abyss, through which Aidoneus
passed up and down, when he kidnapped Cora. (Dragon
400and maiden: the libido overcome by resistance, life replaced
by death.) There were crevices in the rocks,
through which souls could ascend to the upper world. Behind
the temple of Chthonia in Hermione lay a sacred
district of Pluto, with a ravine through which Hercules
had brought up Cerberus; in addition, there was an
“Acherusian” lake.^[710] This ravine was, therefore, the
entrance to the place where death was conquered. The
lake also belongs here as a further mother symbol, for
symbols appear massed together, as they are surrogates,
and, therefore, do not afford the same satisfaction of desire
as accorded by reality, so that the unsatisfied remnant
of the libido must seek still further symbolic outlets.
The ravine in the Areopagus in Athens was considered
the seat of inhabitants of the lower world. An old
Grecian custom^[711] suggests a similar idea. Girls were
sent into a cavern, where a poisonous snake dwelt, as a
test of virginity. If they were bitten by the snake, it was
a token that they were no longer chaste. We find this
same motive again in the Roman legend of St. Silvester,
at the end of the fifth century:^[712]

“Erat draco immanissimus in monte Tarpeio, in quo est Capitolium
collocatum. Ad hunc draconem per CCCLXV gradus,
quasi ad infernum, magi cum virginibus sacrilegis descendebant
semel in mense cum sacrificiis et lustris, ex quibus esca poterat
tanto draconi inferri. Hic draco subito ex improviso ascendebat
et licet non ingrederetur vicinos tamen aeres flatu suo vitiabat.
Ex quo mortalitas hominum et maxima luctus de morte veniebat
infantum. (Lilith motive.) Sanctus itaque Silvester cum haberet
cum paganis pro defensione veritatis conflictum, ad hoc venit ut
dicerent ei pagani: ‘Silvester descende ad draconem et fac eum
401in nomine Dei tui vel uno anno ab interfectione generis humani
cessare.’”^[713]

St. Peter appeared to Silvester in a dream and advised
him to close his door to the underworld with chains, according
to the model in Revelation, chap, xx:

(1) “And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the
key of the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand.

(2) “And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which
is the Devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand years.

(3) “And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up,
and set a seal upon him.”

The anonymous author of a writing, “De Promissionibus,”^[714]
of the beginning of the fifth century, mentions a
very similar legend:

“Apud urbem Romam specus quidam fuit in quo draco miræ
magnitudinis mechanica arte formatus, gladium ore gestans,^[715]
oculis rutilantibus gemmis^[716] metuendus ac terribilis apparebat.
Hinc annuæ devotæ virgines floribus exornatæ, eo modo in sacrificio
dabantur, quatenus inscias munera deferentes gradum
scalæ, quo certe ille arte diaboli draco pendebat, contingentes impetus
venientis gladii perimeret, ut sanguinem funderet innocentem.
Et hunc quidam monachus, bene ob meritum cognitus
Stiliconi tunc patricio, eo modo subvertit; baculo, manu, singulos
gradus palpandos inspiciens, statim ut illum tangens fraudem
402diabolicam repperit, eo transgresso descendens, draconem scidit,
misitque in partes: ostendens et hie deos non esse qui manu
fiunt.”^[717]

The hero battling with the dragon has much in common
with the dragon, and also he takes over his qualities; for
example, invulnerability. As the footnotes show, the similarity
is carried still further (sparkling eyes, sword in his
mouth). Translated psychologically, the dragon is
merely the son’s repressed longing, striving towards the
mother; therefore, the son is the dragon, as even
Christ is identified with the serpent, which, once upon a
time, similia similibus, had controlled the snake plague
in the Wilderness. John iii: 14. As a serpent he is
to be crucified; that is to say, as one striving backwards
towards the mother, he must die hanging or suspended
on the mother tree. Christ and the dragon of the Antichrist
are in the closest contact in the history of their
appearance and their cosmic meaning. (Compare Bousset,
the Antichrist.) The legend of the dragon concealed
403in the Antichrist myth belongs to the life of the hero,
and, therefore, is immortal. In none of the newer forms
of myth are the pairs of opposites so perceptibly near as
in that of Christ and Antichrist. (I refer to the remarkable
psychologic description of this problem in Mereschkowski’s
romance, “Leonardo da Vinci.”) That the
dragon is only an artifice is a useful and delightfully
rationalistic conceit, which is most significant for that
period. In this way the dismal gods were effectually vulgarized.
The schizophrenic insane readily make use of this
mechanism, in order to depreciate efficient personalities.
One often hears the stereotyped lament, “It is all a play,
artificial, made up,” etc. A dream of a “schizophrenic”
is most significant; he is sitting in a dark room, which
has only a single small window, through which he can see
the sky. The sun and moon appear, but they are only
made artificially from oil paper. (Denial of the deleterious
incest influence.)

The descent of the three hundred and sixty-five steps
refers to the sun’s course, to the cavern of death and rebirth.
That this cavern actually stands in a relation to
the subterranean mother of death can be shown by a note
in Malalas, the historian of Antioch,^[718] who relates that
Diocletian consecrated there a crypt to Hecate, to which
one descends by three hundred and sixty-five steps. Cave
mysteries seem to have been celebrated for Hecate in
Samothrace as well. The serpent also played a great part
as a regular symbolic attribute in the service of Hecate.
The mysteries of Hecate flourished in Rome towards the
end of the fourth century, so that the two foregoing
404legends might indeed relate to her cult. Hecate^[719] is a
real spectral goddess of night and phantoms, a Mar; she
is represented as riding, and in Hesiod occurs as the
patron of riders. She sends the horrible nocturnal fear
phantom, the Empusa, of whom Aristophanes says that
she appears inclosed in a bladder swollen with blood.
According to Libanius, the mother of Aischines is also
called Empusa, for the reason that “ἐκ σκοτεινῶν τόπων
τοῖς παισὶν καὶ ταῖς γυναιξίν ὡρμᾶτο.”^[720]

Empusa, like Hecate, has peculiar feet; one foot is
made of brass, the other of ass’ dung. Hecate has snakelike
feet, which, as in the triple form ascribed to Hecate,
points to her phallic libido nature.^[721] In Tralles, Hecate
appears next to Priapus; there is also a Hecate Aphrodisias.
Her symbols are the key,^[722] the whip,^[723] the snake,^[724]
the dagger^[725] and the torch.^[726] As mother of death, dogs
accompany her, the significance of which we have previously
discussed at length. As guardian of the door of
Hades and as Goddess of dogs, she is of threefold form,
and really identified with Cerberus. Thus Hercules, in
bringing up Cerberus, brings the conquered mother of
death into the upper world. As spirit mother (moon!),
she sends madness, lunacy. (This mythical observation
states that “the mother” sends madness; by far the majority
of the cases of insanity consist, in fact, in the domination
of the individual by the material of the incest
phantasy.) In the mysteries of Cerberus, a rod,
called λευκόφυλλος,^[727] was broken off. This rod protected
405the purity of virgins, and caused any one who touched
the plant to become insane. We recognize in this the
motive of the sacred tree, which, as mother, must not
be touched, an act which only an insane person would
commit. Hecate, as nightmare, appears in the form of
Empusa, in a vampire rôle, or as Lamia, as devourer of
men; perhaps, also, in that more beautiful guise, “The
Bride of Corinth.” She is the mother of all charms and
witches, the patron of Medea, because the power of the
“terrible mother” is magical and irresistible (working
upward from the unconscious). In Greek syncretism,
she plays a very significant rôle. She is confused with
Artemis, who also has the surname ἑκάτη,^[728] “the one
striking at a distance” or “striking according to her
will,” in which we recognize again her superior power.
Artemis is the huntress, with hounds, and so Hecate,
through confusion with her, becomes κυνηγετική, the
wild nocturnal huntress. (God, as huntsman, see above.)
She has her name in common with Apollo, ἕκατος
ἑκάεργος.^[729] From the standpoint of the libido theory,
this connection is easily understandable, because Apollo
merely symbolizes the more positive side of the same
amount of libido. The confusion of Hecate with Brimo
as subterranean mother is understandable; also with
Persephone and Rhea, the primitive all-mother. Intelligible
through the maternal significance is the confusion
with Ilithyia, the midwife. Hecate is also the direct
goddess of births, κουροτρόφος,^[730] the multiplier of cattle,
406and goddess of marriage. Hecate, orphically, occupies
the centre of the world as Aphrodite and Gaia,
even as the world soul in general. On a carved gem^[731]
she is represented carrying the cross on her head. The
beam on which the criminal was scourged is called
ἑκάτη.^[732] To her, as to the Roman Trivia, the triple roads,
or Scheideweg, “forked road,” or crossways were dedicated.
And where roads branch off or unite sacrifices of
dogs were brought her; there the bodies of the executed
were thrown; the sacrifice occurs at the point of crossing.
Etymologically, scheide, “sheath”; for example, sword-sheath,
sheath for water-shed and sheath for vagina, is
identical with scheiden, “to split,” or “to separate.” The
meaning of a sacrifice at this place would, therefore, be
as follows: to offer something to the mother at the place
of junction or at the fissure. (Compare the sacrifice to
the chthonic gods in the abyss.) The Temenos of Ge, the
abyss and the well, are easily understood as the gates of
life and death,^[733] “past which every one gladly creeps”
(Faust), and sacrifices there his obolus or his πελανοί,^[734]
instead of his body, just as Hercules soothes Cerberus
with the honey cakes. (Compare with this the mythical
significance of the dog!) Thus the crevice at Delphi,
with the spring, Castalia, was the seat of the chthonic
dragon, Python, who was conquered by the sun-hero,
Apollo. (Python, incited by Hera, pursued Leta, pregnant
with Apollo; but she, on the floating island of Delos
[nocturnal journey on the sea], gave birth to her child,
who later slew the Python; that is to say, conquered in
407it the spirit mother.) In Hierapolis (Edessa) the temple
was erected above the crevice through which the flood
had poured out, and in Jerusalem the foundation stone
of the temple covered the great abyss,^[735] just as Christian
churches are frequently built over caves, grottoes, wells,
etc. In the Mithra grotto,^[736] and all the other sacred
caves up to the Christian catacombs, which owe their
significance not to the legendary persecutions but to the
worship of the dead,^[737] we come across the same fundamental
motive. The burial of the dead in a holy place
(in the “garden of the dead,” in cloisters, crypts, etc.)
is restitution to the mother, with the certain hope of resurrection
by which such burial is rightfully rewarded.
The animal of death which dwells in the cave had to be
soothed in early times through human sacrifices; later
with natural gifts.^[738] Therefore, the Attic custom gives
to the dead the μελιτοῦττα, to pacify the dog of hell,
the three-headed monster at the gate of the underworld.
A more recent elaboration of the natural gifts seems to be
the obolus for Charon, who is, therefore, designated by
Rohde as the second Cerberus, corresponding to the
Egyptian dog-faced god Anubis.^[739] Dog and serpent of
the underworld (Dragon) are likewise identical. In
the tragedies, the Erinnyes are serpents as well as dogs;
the serpents Tychon and Echnida are parents of the serpents—Hydra,
the dragon of the Hesperides, and Gorgo;
and of the dogs, Cerberus, Orthrus, Scylla.^[740] Serpents
and dogs are also protectors of the treasure. The
chthonic god was probably always a serpent dwelling in a
cave, and was fed with πελανοί.^[741] In the Asclepiadean of
408the later period, the sacred serpents were scarcely visible,
meaning that they probably existed only figuratively.^[742]
Nothing was left but the hole in which the snake was
said to dwell. There the πελανοί^[743] were placed; later
the obolus was thrown in. The sacred cavern in the
temple of Kos consisted of a rectangular pit, upon which
was laid a stone lid, with a square hole; this arrangement
serves the purpose of a treasure house. The snake hole
had become a slit for money, a “sacrificial box,” and the
cave had become a “treasure.” That this development,
which Herzog traces, agrees excellently with the actual
condition is shown by a discovery in the temple of Asclepius
and Hygieia in Ptolemais:

“An encoiled granite snake, with arched neck, was found. In
the middle of the coil is seen a narrow slit, polished by usage,
just large enough to allow a coin of four centimeters diameter at
most to fall through. At the side are holes for handles to lift the
heavy pieces, the under half of which is used as a cover.”—Herzog,
Ibid., p. 212.

The serpent, as protector of the hoard, now lies on the
treasure house. The fear of the maternal womb of
death has become the guardian of the treasure of life.
That the snake in this connection is really a symbol of
death, that is to say, of the dead libido, results from the
fact that the souls of the dead, like the chthonic gods, appear
as serpents, as dwellers in the kingdom of the mother
of death.^[744] This development of symbol allows us to recognize
easily the transition of the originally very primitive
significance of the crevice in the earth as mother to the
409meaning of treasure house, and can, therefore, support the
etymology of Hort, “hoard, treasure,” as suggested by
Kluge, κεύθω, belonging to κὲῦθος, means the innermost
womb of the earth (Hades); κύσθος, that Kluge adds,
is of similar meaning, cavity or womb. Prellwitz does
not mention this connection. Fick,^[745] however, compares
New High German hort, Gothic huzd, to Armenian kust,
“abdomen”; Church Slavonian čista, Vedic kostha =
abdomen, from the Indo-Germanic root koustho -s =
viscera, lower abdomen, room, store-room. Prellwitz
compares κύσθος κύστις = urinary bladder, bag, purse;
Sanskrit kustha-s = cavity of the loins; then κύτος =
cavity, vault; κύτις = little chest, from κυέω = I am
pregnant. Here, from κύτος = cave, κύυαρ = hole,
κύαθος = cup, κύλα – depression under the eye,
κῦμα = swelling, wave, billow, κῦρος = power, force,
κύριος = lord, Old Iranian caur, cur = hero; Sanskrit
çura -s = strong, hero. The fundamental Indo-Germanic
roots^[746] are kevo = to swell, to be strong. From that
the above-mentioned κυέω, κύαρ, κῦρος and Latin
cavus = hollow, vaulted, cavity, hole; cavea = cavity,
enclosure, cage, scene and assembly; caulæ = cavity,
opening, enclosure, stall^[747]; kuéyô = swell; participle,
kueyonts = swelling; en-kueyonts = pregnant, ἐγηυέων
= Latin inciens = pregnant; compare Sanskrit vi-çvá-yan
= swelling; kûro -s (kevaro -s), strong, powerful
hero.

The treasure which the hero fetches from the dark
cavern is swelling life; it is himself, the hero, new-born
from the anxiety of pregnancy and the birth throes.
410Thus the Hindoo fire-bringer is called Mâtariçvan, meaning
the one swelling in the mother. The hero striving
towards the mother is the dragon, and when he separates
from the mother he becomes the conqueror of the
dragon.^[748] This train of thought, which we have already
hinted at previously in Christ and Antichrist, may be
traced even into the details of Christian phantasy. There
is a series of mediæval pictures^[749] in which the communion
cup contains a dragon, a snake or some sort of
small animal.^[750]

The cup is the receptacle, the maternal womb, of the
god resurrected in the wine; the cup is the cavern where
the serpent dwells, the god who sheds his skin, in the
state of metamorphosis; for Christ is also the serpent.
These symbolisms are used in an obscure connection in
I Corinthians, verse 10: Paul writes of the Jews who
“were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the
sea” (also reborn) and “did all drink the same spiritual
drink; for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed
them, and that rock was Christ.” They drank from the
mother (the generative rock, birth from the rock) the
milk of rejuvenation, the mead of immortality, and this
Rock was Christ, here identified with the mother, because
he is the symbolic representative of the mother libido.
When we drink from the cup, then we drink from the
mother’s breast immortality and everlasting salvation.
Paul wrote of the Jews that they ate and then rose up
to dance and to indulge in fornication, and then twenty-three
thousand of them were swept off by the plague of
serpents. The remedy for the survivors, however, was
the sight of a serpent hanging on a pole. From it was
derived the cure.

THE DRAGON IN THE GOBLET

411“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of
the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the
communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one
bread, and one body; for we are all partakers of one bread.”—I
Corinthians x: 16, 17.

Bread and wine are the body and the blood of Christ;
the food of the immortals who are brothers with Christ,
ἀδελφοί, those who come from the same womb. We
who are reborn again from the mother are all heroes
together with Christ, and enjoy immortal food. As with
the Jews, so too with the Christians, there is imminent
danger of unworthy partaking, for this mystery, which is
very closely related psychologically with the subterranean
Hierosgamos of Eleusis, involves a mysterious union of
man in a spiritual sense,^[751] which was constantly misunderstood
by the profane and was retranslated into his
language, where mystery is equivalent to orgy and
secrecy to vice.^[752] A very interesting blasphemer and sectarian
of the beginning of the nineteenth century named
Unternährer has made the following comment on the
last supper:

“The communion of the devil is in this brothel. All they sacrifice
here, they sacrifice to the devil and not to God. There they
have the devil’s cup and the devil’s dish; there they have sucked
the head of the snake,^[753] there they have fed upon the iniquitous
bread and drunken the wine of wickedness.”^[754]

Unternährer is an adherent or a forerunner of the
“theory of living one’s own nature.” He dreams of himself
as a sort of priapic divinity; he says of himself:

412“Black-haired, very charming and handsome in countenance,
and every one enjoys listening to thee on account of the amiable
speeches which come from thy mouth; therefore the maids love
thee.”

He preaches “the cult of nakedness.”

“Ye fools and blind men, behold God has created man in his
image, as male and female, and has blessed them and said, ‘Be
fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and make it subject to
thee.’ Therefore, he has given the greatest honor to these poor
members and has placed them naked in the garden,” etc.

“Now are the fig leaves and the covering removed, because
thou hast turned to the Lord, for the Lord is the Spirit, and where
the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom,^[755] there the clearness
of the Lord is mirrored with uncovered countenance. This is
precious before God, and this is the glory of the Lord, and the
adornment of our God, when you stand in the image and honor
of your God, as God created you, naked and not ashamed.

“Who can ever praise sufficiently in the sons and daughters
of the living God those parts of the body which are destined to
procreate?

“In the lap of the daughters of Jerusalem is the gate of the
Lord, and the Just will go into the temple there, to the altar.^[756]
And in the lap of the sons of the living God is the water-pipe of
the upper part, which is a tube, like a rod, to measure the temple
and altar. And under the water-tube the sacred stones are placed,
as a sign and testimony of the Lord, who has taken to himself the
seed of Abraham.

“Out of the seeds in the chamber of the mother, God creates
a man with his hands, as an image of himself. Then the mother
house and the mother chamber is opened in the daughters of the
Living God, and God himself brings forth a child through them.
Thus God creates children from the stones, for the seed comes
from the stones.”^[757]

History teaches in manifold examples how the religious
mysteries are liable to change suddenly into sexual orgies
413because they have originated from an overvaluation of the
orgy. It is characteristic that this priapic divinity^[758] returns
again to the old symbol of the snake, which in the
mystery enters into the faithful, fertilizing and spiritualizing
them, although it originally possessed a phallic significance.
In the mysteries of the Ophites, the festival
was really celebrated with serpents, in which the animals
were even kissed. (Compare the caressing of the snake
of Demeter in the Eleusinian mysteries.) In the sexual
orgies of the modern Christian sects the phallic kiss plays
a very important rôle. Unternährer was an uncultivated,
crazy peasant, and it is unlikely that the Ophitic religious
ceremonies were known to him.

The phallic significance is expressed negatively or mysteriously
through the serpent, which always points to a
secret related thought. This related thought connects
with the mother; thus, in a dream a patient found the
following imagery: “A serpent shot out from a moist
cave and bit the dreamer in the region of the genitals.”
This dream took place at the instant when the patient
was convinced of the truth of the analysis, and began
to free himself from the bond of his mother complex.
The meaning is: I am convinced that I am inspired and
poisoned by the mother. The contrary manner of expression
is characteristic of the dream. At the moment
when he felt the impulse to go forwards he perceived the
attachment to the mother. Another patient had the following
dream during a relapse, in which the libido was
again wholly introverted for a time: “She was entirely
filled within by a great snake; only one end of the tail
414peeped out from her arm. She wanted to seize it, but it
escaped her.” A patient with a very strong introversion
(catatonic state) complained to me that a snake was
stuck in her throat.^[759] This symbolism is also used by
Nietzsche in the “vision” of the shepherd and the
snake:^[760]

“And verily, what I saw was like nothing I ever saw before.
I saw a young shepherd, writhing, choking, twitching with a convulsed
face, from whose mouth hung a black, heavy serpent.

“Did I ever see so much disgust and pallid fear upon a countenance?^[761]
Might he have been sleeping, and the snake crept
into his mouth—there it bit him fast?

“My hand tore at the serpent and tore—in vain!—I failed to
tear the serpent out of his mouth. Then there cried out of me:
‘Bite! Bite! Its head off! Bite!’ I exclaimed; all my horror,
my hate, my disgust, my compassion, all the good and bad cried
out from me in one voice.

“Ye intrepid ones around me! solve for me the riddle which I
saw, make clear to me the vision of the lonesomest one.

“For it was a vision and a prophecy; what did then I behold
in parable? And who is it who is still to come?

“Who is the shepherd into whose mouth crept the snake? Who
is the man into whose throat all the heaviness and the blackest
would creep?^[762]

“But the shepherd bit, as my cry had told him; he bit with a
huge bite! Far away did he spit the head of the serpent—and
sprang up.

“No longer shepherd, no longer man, a transfigured being, an
illuminated being, who laughed! Never yet on earth did a man
laugh as he laughed!

“O my brethren, I heard a laugh which was no human
laughter—and now a thirst consumeth me, a longing that is never
allayed.

“My longing for this laugh eats into me. Oh, how can I
suffer still to live! And how now can I bear to die!”^[763]

415The snake represents the introverting libido. Through
introversion one is fertilized, inspired, regenerated and
reborn from the God. In Hindoo philosophy this idea of
creative, intellectual activity has even cosmogenic significance.
The unknown original creator of all things is, according
to Rigveda 10, 121, Prajâpati, the “Lord of
Creation.” In the various Brahmas, his cosmogenic
activity was depicted in the following manner

“Prajâpati desired: ‘I will procreate myself, I will be manifold.’
He performed Tapas; after he had performed Tapas he created
these worlds.”

The strange conception of Tapas is to be translated,
according to Deussen,^[764] as “he heated himself with his
own heat,^[765] with the sense of ‘he brooded, he hatched.’”
Here the hatcher and the hatched are not two, but one
and the same identical being. As Hiranyagarbha,
Prajâpati is the egg produced from himself, the world-egg,
from which he hatches himself. He creeps into himself,
he becomes his own uterus, becomes pregnant with
himself, in order to give birth to the world of multiplicity.
Thus Prajâpati through the way of introversion
changed into something new, the multiplicity of the world.
It is of especial interest to note how the most remote
things come into contact. Deussen observes:

“In the degree that the conception of Tapas (heat) becomes in
hot India the symbol of exertion and distress, the ‘tapo atapyata’
began to assume the meaning of self-castigation and became related
to the idea that creation is an act of self-renunciation on the part
of the Creator.”

416Self-incubation and self-castigation and introversion
are very closely connected ideas.^[766] The Zosimos vision
mentioned above betrays the same train of thought, where
it is said of the place of transformation: ὁ τόπος τῆς
ἀσκήσεως.^[767] We have already observed that the place
of transformation is really the uterus. Absorption in
one’s self (introversion) is an entrance into one’s own
uterus, and also at the same time asceticism. In the
philosophy of the Brahmans the world arose from this
activity; among the post-Christian Gnostics it produced
the revival and spiritual rebirth of the individual, who
was born into a new spiritual world. The Hindoo philosophy
is considerably more daring and logical, and assumes
that creation results from introversion in general, as in
the wonderful hymn of Rigveda, 10, 29, it is said:

“What was hidden in the shell,
Was born through the power of fiery torments.
From this first arose love,
As the germ of knowledge,
The wise found the roots of existence in non-existence,
By investigating the hearts impulses.”^[768]

This philosophical view interprets the world as an
emanation of the libido, and this must be widely accepted
from the theoretic as well as the psychologic standpoint,
for the function of reality is an instinctive function, having
the character of biological adaptation. When the insane
Schreber brought about the end of the world through
his libido-introversion, he expressed an entirely rational
psychologic view, just as Schopenhauer wished to abolish
417through negation (holiness, asceticism) the error of the
primal will, through which the world was created. Does
not Goethe say:

“You follow a false trail;
Do not think that we are not serious;
Is not the kernel of nature
In the hearts of men?”

The hero, who is to accomplish the rejuvenation of
the world and the conquest of death, is the libido, which,
brooding upon itself in introversion, coiling as a snake
around its own egg, apparently threatens life with a poisonous
bite, in order to lead it to death, and from that
darkness, conquering itself, gives birth to itself again.
Nietzsche knows this conception:^[769]

“How long have you sat already upon your misfortune.
Give heed! lest you hatch an egg,
A basilisk egg
Of your long travail.”

The hero is himself a serpent, himself a sacrificer and
a sacrificed. The hero himself is of serpent nature;
therefore, Christ compares himself with the serpent;
therefore, the redeeming principle of the world of that
Gnostic sect which styled itself the Ophite was the serpent.
The serpent is the Agatho and Kako demon. It
is, indeed, intelligible, when, in the Germanic saga, they
say that the heroes had serpents’ eyes.^[770] I recall the
parallel previously drawn between the eyes of the Son of
man and those of the Tarpeian dragon. In the already
mentioned mediæval pictures, the dragon, instead of the
418Lord, appeared in the cup; the dragon who with changeful,
serpent glances^[771] guarded the divine mystery of renewed
rebirth in the maternal womb. In Nietzsche the old, apparently
long extinct idea is again revived:^[772]

“Ailing with tenderness, just as the thawing wind,
Zarathustra sits waiting, waiting on his hill,
Sweetened and cooked in his own juice,
Beneath his summits,
Beneath his ice he sits,
Weary and happy,
A Creator on his seventh day.
Silence!
It is my truth!
From hesitating eyes—
From velvety shadows
Her glance meets mine,
Lovely, mischievous, the glance of a girl.
She divines the reason of my happiness,
She divines me—ha! what is she plotting?
A purple dragon lurks
In the abyss of her maiden glance.^[773]
Woe to thee, Zarathustra,
Thou seemest like some one
Who has swallowed gold,
Thy belly will be slit open.”^[774]

In this poem nearly all the symbolism is collected which
we have elaborated previously from other connections.
Distinct traces of the primitive identity of serpent and
hero are still extant in the myth of Cecrops. Cecrops
is himself half-snake, half-man. Originally, he probably
was the Athenian snake of the citadel itself. As a buried
god, he is like Erechtheus, a chthonic snake god. Above
his subterranean dwelling rises the Parthenon, the temple
419of the virgin goddess (compare the analogous idea of the
Christian church). The casting of the skin of the god,
which we have already mentioned in passing, stands in
the closest relation to the nature of the hero. We have
spoken already of the Mexican god who casts his skin.
It is also told of Mani, the founder of the Manichaean
sect, that he was killed, skinned, stuffed and hung up.^[775]
That is the death of Christ, merely in another mythological
form.^[776]

Marsyas, who seems to be a substitute for Attis, the
son-lover of Cybele, was also skinned.^[777] Whenever a
Scythian king died, slaves and horses were slaughtered,
skinned and stuffed, and then set up again.^[778] In Phrygia,
the representatives of the father-god were killed and
skinned. The same was done in Athens with an ox, who
was skinned and stuffed and again hitched to the plough.

In this manner the revival of the fertility of the earth
was celebrated.^[779]

This readily explains the fragment from the Sabazios
mysteries, transmitted to us by Firmicus:^[780] Ταῦρος δράκοντος
καὶ πατὴρ ταύρου δράκων^[781].

The active fructifying (upward striving) form of the
libido is changed into the negative force striving downwards
towards death. The hero as zodion of spring
(ram, bull) conquers the depths of winter; and beyond
the summer solstice is attacked by the unconscious longing
for death, and is bitten by the snake. However, he
himself is the snake. But he is at war with himself, and,
therefore, the descent and the end appear to him as the
420malicious inventions of the mother of death, who in this
way wishes to draw him to herself. The mysteries, however,
consolingly promise that there is no contradiction^[782]
or disharmony when life is changed into death: ταῦρος
δράκοντος καὶ πατήρ ταύρου δράκων.

Nietzsche, too, gives expression to this mystery:^[783]

“Here do I sit now,
That is, I’m swallowed down
By this the smallest oasis—
—It opened up just yawning,
Its loveliest maw agape.
Hail! hail! to that whalefish,
When he for his guests’ welfare
Provided thus!

       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

Hail to his belly
If he had also
Such a lovely oasis belly—
The desert grows, woe to him
Who hides the desert!
Stone grinds on stone, the desert
Gulps and strangles.
The monstrous death gazes, glowing brown,
And chews—his life is his chewing …
Forget not, O man, burnt out by lust,
Thou art the stone, the desert,
Thou art death!”

The serpent symbolism of the Last Supper is explained
by the identification of the hero with the serpent: The
god is buried in the mother: as fruit of the field, as food
coming from the mother and at the same time as drink
of immortality he is received by the mystic, or as a serpent
he unites with the mystic. All these symbols represent
421the liberation of the libido from the incestuous
fixation through which new life is attained. The liberation
is accomplished under symbols, which represent the
activity of the incest wish.

It might be justifiable at this place to cast a glance
upon psychoanalysis as a method of treatment. In practical
analysis it is important, first of all, to discover the
libido lost from the control of consciousness. (It often
happens to the libido as with the fish of Moses in the
Mohammedan legend; it sometimes “takes its course in
a marvellous manner into the sea.”) Freud says in his
important article, “Zur Dynamik der Übertragung”:^[784]

“The libido has retreated into regression and again revives the
infantile images.”

This means, mythologically, that the sun is devoured
by the serpent of the night, the treasure is concealed and
guarded by the dragon: substitution of a present mode
of adaptation by an infantile mode, which is represented
by the corresponding neurotic symptoms. Freud continues:

“Thither the analytic treatment follows it and endeavors to
seek out the libido again, to render it accessible to consciousness,
and finally to make it serviceable to reality. Whenever the
analytic investigation touches upon the libido, withdrawn into its
hiding-place, a struggle must break out; all the forces, which have
caused the regression of the libido, will rise up as resistance against
the work, in order to preserve this new condition.”

Mythologically this means: the hero seeks the lost sun,
the fire, the virgin sacrifice, or the treasure, and fights the
422typical fight with the dragon, with the libido in resistance.
As these parallels show, psychoanalysis mobiles a part of
the life processes, the fundamental importance of which
properly illustrates the significance of this process.

After Siegfried has slain the dragon, he meets the
father, Wotan, plagued by gloomy cares, for the primitive
mother, Erda, has placed in his path the snake, in
order to enfeeble his sun. He says to Erda:

Wanderer:

All-wise one,
Care’s piercing sting by thee was planted
In Wotan’s dauntless heart
With fear of shameful ruin and downfall.
Filled was his spirit by tidings
Thou didst foretell.
Art thou the world’s wisest of women?
Tell to me now
How a god may conquer his care.

Erda:

Thou art not
What thou hast said.

It is the same primitive motive which we meet
Wagner: the mother has robbed her son, the sun-god, of
the joy of life, through a poisonous thorn, and deprives
him of his power, which is connected with the name. Isis
demands the name of the god; Erda says, “Thou art not
what thou hast said.” But the “Wanderer” has found
the way to conquer the fatal charm of the mother, the
fear of death:

“The eternals’ downfall
No more dismays me,
Since their doom I willed.

423“I leave to thee, loveliest Wälsung,
Gladly my heritage now.
To the ever-young
In gladness yieldeth the god!”

These wise words contain, in fact, the saving thought.
It is not the mother who has placed the poisonous worm
in our path, but our libido itself wills to complete the
course of the sun to mount from morn to noon, and, passing
beyond noon, to hasten towards evening, not at war
with itself, but willing the descent and the end.^[785]

Nietzsche’s Zarathustra teaches:

“I praise thee, my death, the free death, which comes to me because
I want it.

“And when shall I want it?

“He who has a goal and an heir wants death at the proper
time for his goal and his heir.

“And this is the great noonday, when man in the middle of
his course stands between man and superman, and celebrates his
path towards evening as his highest hope: because it is the path to
a new morning.

“He who is setting will bless his own going down because it
is a transition: and the sun of his knowledge will be at high noon.”

Siegfried conquers the father Wotan and takes possession
of Brunhilde. The first object that he sees is her
horse; then he believes that he beholds a mail-clad man.
He cuts to pieces the protecting coat of mail of the
sleeper. (Overpowering.) When he sees it is a woman,
terror seizes him:

“My heart doth falter and faint;
On whom shall I call
That he may help me?
424Mother! Mother!
Remember me!

“Can this be fearing?
Oh, mother! Mother!
Thy dauntless child!
A woman lieth asleep:—
And she now has taught him to fear!

“Awaken! Awaken!
Holiest maid!
Then life from the sweetness of lips
Will I win me—
E’en tho’ I die in a kiss.”

In the duet which follows the mother is invoked:

“O mother, hail!
Who gave thee thy birth!”

The confession of Brunhilde is especially characteristic:

“O knewest thou—joy of the world,
How I have ever loved thee!
Thou wert my gladness,
My care wert thou!
Thy life I sheltered;
Or ere it was thine,
Or ere thou wert born,
My shield was thy guard.”^[786]

The pre-existence of the hero and the pre-existence of
Brunhilde as his wife-mother are clearly indicated from
this passage.

Siegfried says in confirmation:

“Then death took not my mother?
Bound in sleep did she lie?”

425The mother-imago, which is the symbol of the dying
and resurrected libido, is explained by Brunhilde to the
hero, as his own will:

“Thyself am I
If blest I be in thy love.”

The great mystery of the Logos entering into the
mother for rebirth is proclaimed with the following words
by Brunhilde:

“O Siegfried, Siegfried,
Conquering light!
I loved thee ever,
For I divined
The thought that Wotan had hidden—
The thought that I dared
Not to whisper—^[787]
That all unclearly
Glowed in my bosom
Suffered and strove;
For which I flouted
Him, who conceived it:^[787]
For which in penance
Prisoned I lay,
While thinking it not
And feeling only,
For, in my thought,
Oh, should you guess it?
Was only my love for thee.”

The erotic similes which now follow distinctly reveal
the motive of rebirth:

Siegfried:
“A glorious flood
Before me rolls.
426With all my senses
I only see
Its buoyant, gladdening billows.
Though in the deep
I find not my face,
Burning, I long
For the water’s balm;
And now as I am,
Spring in the stream.^[788]
O might its billows
Engulf me in bliss.”

The motive of plunging into the maternal water of rebirth
(baptism) is here fully developed. An allusion to
the “terrible mother” imago, the mother of heroes, who
teaches them fear, is to be found in Brunhilde’s words
(the horse-woman, who guides the dead to the other
side):

“Fearest thou, Siegfried?
Fearest thou not
The wild, furious woman?”

The orgiastic “Occide moriturus” resounds in Brunhilde’s
words:

“Laughing let us be lost—
Laughing go down to death!”

And in the words

“Light-giving love,
Laughing death!”

is to be found the same significant contrast.

The further destinies of Siegfried are those of the Invictus:
427the spear of the gloomy, one-eyed Hagen strikes
Siegfried’s vulnerable spot. The old sun, who has become
the god of death, the one-eyed Wotan, smites his offspring,
and once again ascends in eternal rejuvenation.
The course of the invincible sun has supplied the mystery
of human life with beautiful and imperishable symbols; it
became a comforting fulfilment of all the yearning for
immortality, of all desire of mortals for eternal life.

Man leaves the mother, the source of libido, and is
driven by the eternal thirst to find her again, and to drink
renewal from her; thus he completes his cycle, and returns
again into the mother’s womb. Every obstacle
which obstructs his life’s path, and threatens his ascent,
wears the shadowy features of the “terrible mother,”
who paralyzes his energy with the consuming poison of
the stealthy, retrospective longing. In each conquest he
wins again the smiling love and life-giving mother—images
which belong to the intuitive depths of human feeling,
the features of which have become mutilated and
irrecognizable through the progressive development of
the surface of the human mind. The stern necessity of
adaptation works ceaselessly to obliterate the last traces
of these primitive landmarks of the period of the origin
of the human mind, and to replace them along lines
which are to denote more and more clearly the nature of
real objects.

428

CHAPTER VIII
THE SACRIFICE

After this long digression, let us return to Miss Miller’s
vision. We can now answer the question as to
the significance of Siegfried’s longing for Brunhilde. It
is the striving of the libido away from the mother
towards the mother. This paradoxical sentence may be
translated as follows: as long as the libido is satisfied
merely with phantasies, it moves in itself, in its own
depths, in the mother.^[789] When the longing of our author
rises in order to escape the magic circle of the incestuous
and, therefore, pernicious, object, and it does not succeed
in finding reality, then the object is and remains irrevocably
the mother. Only the overcoming of the obstacles
of reality brings the deliverance from the mother, who is
the continuous and inexhaustible source of life for the
creator, but death for the cowardly, timid and sluggish.

Whoever is acquainted with psychoanalysis knows how
often neurotics cry out against their parents. To be sure,
such complaints and reproaches are often justified on account
of the common human imperfections, but still more
often they are reproaches which should really be directed
towards themselves. Reproach and hatred are always
futile attempts to free one’s self apparently from the parents,
but in reality from one’s own hindering longing for
429the parents. Our author proclaims through the mouth
of her infantile hero Chiwantopel a series of insults
against her own family. We can assume that she must
renounce all these tendencies, because they contain an unrecognized
wish. This hero, of many words, who performs
few deeds and indulges in futile yearnings, is the
libido which has not fulfilled its destiny, but which turns
round and round in the kingdom of the mother, and, in
spite of all its longing, accomplishes nothing. Only he
can break this magic circle who possesses the courage of
the will to live and the heroism to carry it through.
Could this yearning hero-youth, Chiwantopel, but put an
end to his existence, he would probably rise again in the
form of a brave man seeking real life. This necessity
imposes itself upon the dreamer as a wise counsel and
hint of the unconscious in the following monologue of
Chiwantopel. He cries sadly:

“In all the world, there is not a single one! I have sought
among a hundred tribes. I have watched a hundred moons, since
I began. Can it be that there is not a solitary being who will
ever know my soul? Yes, by the sovereign God, yes! But ten
thousand moons will wax and wane before that pure soul is born.
And it is from another world that her parents will come to this
one. She will have pale skin and pale locks. She will know sorrow
before her mother bears her. Suffering will accompany her;
she will seek also, and she will find, no one who understands her.
Temptation will often assail her soul—but she will not yield.
In her dreams, I will come to her, and she will understand. I have
kept my body inviolate. I have come ten thousand moons before
her epoch, and she will come ten thousand moons too late. But
she will understand! There is only once in all the ten thousand
moons that a soul like hers is born.”

430Thereupon a green serpent darts from the bushes,
glides towards him and stings him on the arm, then attacks
the horse, which succumbs first. Then Chiwantopel
says to his horse:

“‘Adieu, faithful brother! Enter into rest! I have loved you,
and you have served me well. Adieu. Soon I will rejoin you!’
Then to the snake: ‘Thanks, little sister, you have put an end to
my wanderings.’”

Then he cried with grief and spoke his prayer:

“‘Sovereign God, take me soon! I have tried to know thee,
and to keep thy law! O, do not suffer my body to fall into corruption
and decay, and to furnish the vultures with food!’ A
smoking crater is perceived at a distance, the rumbling of an
earthquake is heard, followed by a trembling of the ground.”

Chiwantopel cries in the delirium of suffering, while
the earth covers his body:

“I have kept my body inviolate. Ah! She understands. Ja-ni-wa-ma,
Ja-ni-wa-ma, thou who comprehendeth me.”

Chiwantopel’s prophecy is a repetition of Longfellow’s
“Hiawatha,” where the poet could not escape sentimentality,
and at the close of the career of the hero, Hiawatha,
he brings in the Savior of the white people, in the
guise of the arriving illustrious representatives of the
Christian religion and morals. (One thinks of the work
of redemption of the Spaniards in Mexico and Peru!)
With this prophecy of Chiwantopel, the personality of the
author is again placed in the closest relation to the hero,
and, indeed, as the real object of Chiwantopel’s longing.
431Most certainly the hero would have married her, had she
lived at his time; but, unfortunately, she comes too late.
The connection proves our previous assertion that the
libido moves round in a circle. The author loves herself;
that is to say, she, as the hero, is sought by one who comes
too late. This motive of coming too late is characteristic
of the infantile love: the father and the mother cannot
be overtaken. The separation of the two personalities
by ten thousand moons is a wish fulfilment; with that
the incest relation is annulled in an effectual manner.
This white heroine will seek without being understood.
(She is not understood, because she cannot understand
herself rightly.) And she will not find. But in dreams,
at least, they will find each other, “and she will understand.”
The next sentence of the text reads:

“I have kept my body inviolate.”

This proud sentence, which naturally only a woman can
express, because man is not accustomed to boast in that
direction, again confirms the fact that all enterprises have
remained but dreams, that the body has remained “inviolate.”
When the hero visits the heroine in a dream, it is
clear what is meant. This assertion of the hero’s, that he
has remained inviolate, refers back to the unsuccessful
attempt upon his life in the previous chapter (huntsman
with the arrow), and clearly explains to us what was
really meant by this assault; that is to say, the refusal
of the coitus phantasy. Here the wish of the unconscious
obtrudes itself again, after the hero had repressed it the
first time, and thereupon he painfully and hysterically
432utters this monologue. “Temptation will often assail
her soul—but it will not yield.” This very bold assertion
reduces—noblesse oblige—the unconscious to an enormous
infantile megalomania, which is always the case when the
libido is compelled, through similar circumstances, to regressions.
“Only once in all the ten thousand moons is
a soul born like mine!” Here the unconscious ego expands
to an enormous degree, evidently in order to cover
with its boastfulness a large part of the neglected duty
of life. But punishment follows at its heels. Whoever
prides himself too much on having sustained no wound
in the battle of life lays himself open to the suspicion that
his fighting has been with words only, whilst actually he
has remained far away from the firing-line. This spirit is
just the reverse of the pride of those savage women,
who point with satisfaction to the countless scars which
were given them by their men in the sexual fight for
supremacy. In accordance with this, and in logical
continuation of the same, all that follows is expressed in
figurative speech. The orgiastic “Occide moriturus” in
its admixture with the reckless laughter of the Dionysian
frenzy confronts us here in sorry disguise with a sentimental
stage trickery worthy of our posthumous edition
of “Christian morals.” In place of the positive phallus,
the negative appears, and leads the hero’s horse (his
libido animalis), not to satisfaction, but into eternal
peace—also the fate of the hero. This end means that
the mother, represented as the jaws of death, devours the
libido of the daughter. Therefore, instead of life and
procreative growth, only phantastic self-oblivion results.
433This weak and inglorious end has no elevating or illuminating
meaning so long as we consider it merely as the solution
of an individual erotic conflict. The fact that the
symbols under which the solution takes place have actually
a significant aspect, reveals to us that behind the individual
mask, behind the veil of “individuation,” a primitive idea
stands, the severe and serious features of which take from
us the courage to consider the sexual meaning of the Miller
symbolism as all-sufficient.

It is not to be forgotten that the sexual phantasies of
the neurotic and the exquisite sexual language of dreams
are regressive phenomena. The sexuality of the unconscious
is not what it seems to be; it is merely a symbol;
it is a thought bright as day, clear as sunlight, a decision,
a step forward to every goal of life—but expressed in the
unreal sexual language of the unconscious, and in the
thought form of an earlier stage; a resurrection, so to
speak, of earlier modes of adaptation. When, therefore,
the unconscious pushes into the foreground the coitus
wish, negatively expressed, it means somewhat as follows:
under similar circumstances primitive man acted in such
and such a manner. The mode of adaptation which to-day
is unconscious for us is carried on by the savage
Negro of the present day, whose undertakings beyond
those of nutrition appertain to sexuality, characterized by
violence and cruelty. Therefore, in view of the archaic
mode of expression of the Miller phantasy, we are justified
in assuming the correctness of our interpretation for
the lowest and nearest plane only. A deeper stratum of
meaning underlies the earlier assertion that the figure of
434Chiwantopel has the character of Cassius, who has a lamb
as a companion. Therefore, Chiwantopel is the portion
of the dreamer’s libido bound up with the mother (and,
therefore, masculine); hence he is her infantile personality,
the childishness of character, which as yet is unable
to understand that one must leave father and mother,
when the time is come, in order to serve the destiny of the
entire personality. This is outlined in Nietzsche’s words:

“Free dost thou call thyself? Thy dominant thought would
I hear and not that thou hast thrown off a yoke. Art thou one
who had the right to throw off a yoke? There are many who
throw away their last value when they throw away their servitude.”

Therefore, when Chiwantopel dies, it means that herein
is a fulfilment of a wish, that this infantile hero, who
cannot leave the mother’s care, may die. And if with that
the bond between mother and daughter is severed, a
great step forward is gained both for inner and outer
freedom. But man wishes to remain a child too long; he
would fain stop the turning of the wheel, which, rolling,
bears along with it the years; man wishes to keep his
childhood and eternal youth, rather than to die and suffer
corruption in the grave. (“O, do not suffer my body to
fall into decay and corruption.”) Nothing brings the
relentless flight of time and the cruel perishability of all
blossoms more painfully to our consciousness than an inactive
and empty life. Idle dreaming is the mother of
the fear of death, the sentimental deploring of what has
been and the vain turning back of the clock. Although
man can forget in the long- (perhaps too long) guarded
435feelings of youth, in the dreamy state of stubbornly
held remembrances, that the wheel rolls onward, nevertheless
mercilessly does the gray hair, the relaxation of
the skin and the wrinkles in the face tell us, that whether
or not we expose the body to the destroying powers of
the whole struggle of life, the poison of the stealthily
creeping serpent of time consumes our bodies, which,
alas! we so dearly love. Nor does it help if we cry out
with the melancholy hero Chiwantopel, “I have kept my
body inviolate”; flight from life does not free us from
the law of age and death. The neurotic who seeks to
get rid of the necessities of life wins nothing and lays
upon himself the frightful burden of a premature age
and death, which must appear especially cruel on account
of the total emptiness and meaninglessness of his life. If
the libido is not permitted to follow the progressive life,
which is willing to accept all dangers and all losses, then
it follows the other road, sinking into its own depths,
working down into the old foreboding regarding the immortality
of all life, to the longing for rebirth.

Hölderlin exemplifies this path in his poetry and his
life. I leave the poet to speak in his song:

To the Rose.

“In the Mother-womb eternal,
Sweetest queen of every lea,
Still the living and supernal
Nature carries thee and me.

“Little rose, the storm’s fierce power
Strips our leaves and alters us;
Yet the deathless germ will tower
To new blooms, miraculous.”

436The following comments may be made upon the parable
of this poem: The rose is the symbol of the beloved
woman (“Haidenröslein,” heather rose of Goethe).
The rose blooms in the “rose-garden” of the maiden;
therefore, it is also a direct symbol of the libido. When
the poet dreams that he is with the rose in the mother-womb
of nature, then, psychologically, the fact is that his
libido is with the mother. Here is an eternal germination
and renewal. We have come across this motive already
in the Hierosgamos hymn (Iliad XIV): The nuptials
in the blessed West; that is to say, the union in and with
the mother. Plutarch shows us this motive in naïve form
in his tradition of the Osiris myth; Osiris and Isis copulating
in the mother’s womb. This is also perceived by
Hölderlin as the enviable prerogative of the gods—to
enjoy everlasting infancy. Thus, in Hyperion, he says:

“Fateless, like the sleeping nursling,
Breathe the Heavenly ones;
Chastely guarded in modest buds,
Their spirits blossom eternally,
And their quiet eyes
Gaze out in placid
Eternal serenity.”

This quotation shows the meaning of heavenly bliss.
Hölderlin never was able to forget this first and greatest
happiness, the dreamy picture of which estranged him
from real life. Moreover, in this poem, the ancient
motive of the twins in the mother’s womb is intimated.
(Isis and Osiris in the mother’s womb.) The motive is
archaic. There is a legend in Frobenius of how the great
437serpent (appearing from the little serpent in the hollow
tree, through the so-called stretching out of the serpent)
has finally devoured all men (devouring mother—death),
and only a pregnant woman remains alive; she digs a
ditch, covers it with a stone (grave—mother’s womb),
and, living there, she gives birth to twins, the subsequent
dragon-killers (the hero in double form, man and phallus,
man and woman, man with his libido, the dying and rising
sun).

This existence together in the mother is to be found
also very beautifully expressed in an African myth (Frobenius):

“In the beginning, Obatala, the heaven, and Odudua, the earth,
his wife, lay pressed firmly together in a calabas.”

The guarding “in a modest bud” is an idea which has
appeared already in Plutarch, where it is said that the
sun was born in the morning from a flower bud. Brahma,
too, comes from the bud, which also gave birth in Assam
to the first human pair.

Humanity.

(An unfinished poem.)

“Scarcely sprouted from the waters, O Earth,
Are thy old mountain tops and diffuse odors,
While the first green islands, full of young woods, breathe delight
Through the May air over the Ocean.

“And joyfully the eye of the Sun-god looked down
Upon the firstlings of the trees and flowers;
Laughing children of his youth, born from thee;
When on the fairest of the islands….

       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·
438Once lay thy most beautiful child under the grapes;
Lay after a mild night; in the dawn,
In the daybreak a child born to thee, O Earth!
And the boy looks up familiarly
To his Father, Helios,
And, tasting the sweet grapes,
He picked the sacred vine for his nurse,
And soon he is grown; the beasts
Fear him, for he is different from them:
This man; he is not like thee, the father,
For the lofty soul of the father,
Is in him boldly united with thy pleasures,
And thy sadness, O Earth,
He may resemble the eternal Nature,
The mother of Gods, the terrible Mother.

“Ah! therefore, O Earth,
His presumption drives him away from thy breast,
And thy gifts are vain, the tender ones;
Ever and ever too high does the proud heart beat.

“Out from the sweet meadow of his shores
Man must go into the flowerless waters,
And tho his groves shine with golden fruit,
Like the starry night, yet he digs,
He digs caves in the mountains, and seeks in the mines,
Far from the sacred rays of his father,
Faithless also to the Sun-god,
Who does not love weaklings, and mocks at cares.

“Ah! freer do the birds of the wood breathe:
Although the breast of man heaves wilder and more proudly,
His pride becomes fear, and the tender flowers
Of his peace do not bloom for long.”

This poem betrays to us the beginning of the discord
between the poet and nature; he begins to be estranged
from reality, the natural actual existence. It is a remarkable
439idea how the little child chooses “the vine for
his nurse.” This Dionysian allusion is very old. In the
significant blessing of Jacob it is said of Judah (Genesis,
chap. xlix, verse 11):

“Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass’s colt unto the
choice vine.”

A Gnostic gem has been preserved upon which there
is a representation of an ass suckling her foal, above
which is the symbol of Cancer, and the circumscription
D.N.I.H.Y.X.P.S.: Dominus Noster Jesus Christus, with
the supplement Dei filius. As Justinus Martyr indignantly
observes, the connections of the Christian legend with that
of Dionysus are unmistakable. (Compare, for example,
the miracle of the wine.) In the last-named legend the
ass plays an important rôle. Generally speaking, the ass
has an entirely different meaning in the Mediterranean
countries than with us—an economic one. Therefore, it
is a benediction when Jacob says (Genesis, chap. xlix,
verse 14):

“Issachar is a strong ass couching down between two burdens.”

The above-mentioned thought is altogether Oriental.
Just as in Egypt the new-born sun is a bull-calf, in the
rest of the Orient it can easily be an ass’s foal, to whom
the vine is the nurse. Hence the picture in the blessing
of Jacob, where it is said of Judah:

“His eyes are ruddy with wine and his teeth white with milk.”

The mock crucifix of the Palatine, with an ass’s head,
evidently alludes to a very significant background.

440To Nature.

“While about thy veil I lingered, playing,
And, like any bud, upon thee hung,^[790]
Still I felt thy heart in every straying
Sound about my heart that shook and clung.
While I groped with faith and painful yearning,
To your picture, glowing and unfurled,
Still I found a place for all my burning
Tears, and for my love I found a world!

“To the Sun my heart, before all others,
Turned and felt its potent magicry;
And it called the stars its little brothers,^[791]
And it called the Spring, God’s melody;
And each breeze in groves or woodlands fruity
Held thy spirit—and that same sweet joy
Moved the well-springs of my heart with beauty—
Those were golden days without alloy.

“Where the Spring is cool in every valley,^[792]
And the youngest bush and twig is green,
And about the rocks the grasses rally,
And the branches show the sky between,
There I lay, imbibing every flower
In a rapt, intoxicated glee,
And, surrounded by a golden shower,
From their heights the clouds sank down to me.^[793]

“Often, as a weary, wandering river
Longs to join the ocean’s placid mirth,
I have wept and lost myself forever
In the fulness of thy love, O Earth!
Then—with all the ardor of my being—
Forth I rushed from Time’s slow apathy,
Like a pilgrim home from travel, fleeing
To the arms of rapt Eternity.

“Blessed be childhood’s golden dreams, their power
Hid from me Life’s dismal poverty:
441All the heart’s rich germs ye brought to flower;
Things I could not reach, ye gave to me!^[794]
In thy beauty and thy light, O Nature,
Free from care and from compulsion free,
Fruitful Love attained a kingly stature,
Rich as harvests reaped in Arcady.

“That which brought me up, is dead and riven,
Dead the youthful world which was my shield;
And this breast, which used to harbor heaven,
Dead and dry as any stubble-field.
Still my Springlike sorrows sing and cover
With their friendly comfort every smart—
But the morning of my life is over
And the Spring has faded from my heart….

“Shadows are the things that once we cherished;
Love itself must fade and cannot bide;
Since the golden dreams of youth have perished,
Even friendly Nature’s self has died.
Heart, poor heart, those days could never show it—
How far-off thy home, and where it lies …
Now, alas, thou nevermore wilt know it
If a dream of it does not suffice.”

Palinodia.

“What gathers about me, Earth, in your dusky, friendly green?
What are you blowing towards me, Winds, what do you bring again?
There is a rustling in all the tree-tops….

       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

“Why do you wake my soul?
Why do ye stir in me the past, ye Kind ones?
Oh, spare me, and let them rest; oh, do not mock
Those ashes of my joy….

“O change your changeless gods—
And grow in your youth over the old ones.
442And if you would be akin to the mortals
The young girls will blossom for you.
And the young heroes will shine;
And, sweeter than ever,
Morning will play upon the cheeks of the happy ones;
And, ravishing-sweet, you will hear
The songs of those who are without care….

“Ah, once the living waves of song
Surged out of every bush to me;
And still the heavenly ones glanced down upon me,
Their eyes shining with joy.”

       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

The separation from the blessedness of childhood,
from youth even, has taken the golden glamour from
nature, and the future is hopeless emptiness. But what
robs nature of its glamour, and life of its joy, is the
poison of the retrospective longing, which harks back, in
order to sink into its own depths:

Empedocles.

“Thou seekest life—and a godly fire springs to thee,
Gushing and gleaming, from the deeps of the earth;
And, with shuddering longing,
Throws thee down into the flames of Aetna.

“So, through a queen’s wanton whim,
Pearls are dissolved in wine—restrain her not!
Didst thou not throw thy riches, Poet,
Into the bright and bubbling cup!

“Still thou art holy to me, as the Power of Earth
Which took thee away, lovely assassin!…
And I would have followed the hero to the depths,
Had Love not held me.”

443This poem betrays the secret longing for the maternal
depths.^[795]

He would like to be sacrificed in the chalice, dissolved
in wine like pearls (the “crater” of rebirth), yet love
holds him within the light of day. The libido still has
an object, for the sake of which life is worth living. But
were this object abandoned, then the libido would sink
into the realm of the subterranean, the mother, who
brings forth again:

Obituary.

(Unfinished poem.)

“Daily I go a different path.
Sometimes into the green wood, sometimes to the bath in the spring;
Or to the rocks where the roses bloom.
From the top of the hill I look over the land,
Yet nowhere, thou lovely one, nowhere in the light do I find thee;
And in the breezes my words die away,
The sacred words which once we had.

“Aye, thou art far away, O holy countenance!
And the melody of thy life is kept from me,
No longer overheard. And, ah, where are
Thy magic songs which once soothed my heart
With the peace of Heaven?
How long it is, how long!
The youth is aged; the very earth itself, which once smiled on me,
Has grown different.

“Oh, farewell! The soul of every day departs, and, departing, turns to thee—
And over thee there weeps
The eye that, becoming brighter,
Looks down,
There where thou tarriest.”

444This distinctly suggests a renunciation, an envy of one’s
own youth, that time of freedom which one would like
to retain through a deep-rooted dislike to all duty and
endeavor which is denied an immediate pleasure reward.
Painstaking work for a long time and for a remote object
is not in the nature of child or primitive man. It is difficult
to say if this can really be called laziness, but it
seems to have not a little in common with it, in so far as
the psychic life on a primitive stage, be it of an infantile
or archaic type, possesses an extreme inertia and irresponsibility
in production and non-production.

The last stanza portends evil, a gazing towards the
other land, the distant coast of sunrise or sunset; love no
longer holds the poet, the bonds with the world are torn
and he calls loudly for assistance to the mother:

Achilles.

“Lordly son of the Gods! Because you lost your loved one,
You went to the rocky coast and cried aloud to the flood,
Till the depths of the holy abyss heard and echoed your grief,
From the far reaches of your heart. Down, deep down, far from the clamor of ships,
Deep under the waves, in a peaceful cave,
Dwelt the beautiful Thetis, she who protected you, the Goddess of the Sea,
Mother of the youth was she; the powerful Goddess,
She who once had lovingly nursed him,
On the rocky shore of his island; she who had made him a hero
With the might of her strengthening bath and the powerful song of the waves.
And the mother, mourning, hearkened to the cry of her child,
And rose, like a cloud, from the bed of the sea,
Soothing with tender embraces the pains of her darling;
And he listened, while she, caressing, promised to soften his grief.

445“Son of the Gods! Oh, were I like you, then could I confidently
Call on the Heavenly Ones to hearken to my secret grief.
But never shall I see this—I shall bear the disgrace
As if I never belonged to her, even though she thinks of me with tears.
Beneficent Ones! And yet Ye hear the lightest prayers of men.
Ah, how rapt and fervently I worshipped you, holy Light,
Since I have lived, the Earth and its fountains and woodlands,
Father Ether—and my heart has felt you about me, so ardent and pure—
Oh, soften my sorrows, ye Kind Ones,
That my soul may not be silenced, may not be struck dumb too early;
That I may live and thank Ye, O Heavenly Powers,
With joyful songs through all the hurrying days.
Thank ye for gifts of the past, for the joys of vanished Youth—
And then, pray, take me, the lonely one,
Graciously, unto yourselves.”

These poems describe more plainly than could be depicted
with meagre words the persistent arrest and the
constantly growing estrangement from life, the gradual
deep immersion into the maternal abyss of the individual
being. The apocalyptic song of Patmos is strangely related
to these songs of retrogressive longing. It enters
as a dismal guest surrounded by the mist of the depths,
the gathering clouds of insanity, bred through the mother.
In it the primitive thoughts of the myth, the suggestion
clad in symbols, of the sun-like death and resurrection of
life, again burst forth. Similar things are to be found in
abundance among sick people of this sort.

I reproduce some significant fragments from Patmos:

“Near is the God
And hard to comprehend,
446But where Danger threatens
The Rescuer appears.”

These words mean that the libido has now sunk to the
lowest depths, where “the danger is great.” (Faust,
Part II, Mother scene.) There “the God is near”;
there man may find the inner sun, his own nature, sun-like
and self-renewing, hidden in the mother-womb like
the sun in the nighttime:

“… In Chasms
And in darkness dwell
The eagles; and fresh and fearlessly
The Sons of the Alps pass swiftly over the abyss
Upon lightly swinging bridges.”

With these words the dark phantastic poem passes on.
The eagle, the bird of the sun, dwells in darkness—the
libido has hidden itself, but high above it the inhabitants
of the mountains pass, probably the gods (“Ye are walking
above in the light”), symbols of the sun wandering
across the sky, like the eagle flying over the depths:

“… Above and around are reared
The summits of Time,
And the loved ones, though near,
Live on deeply separated mountains.
So give us waters of innocence,
And give us wings of true understanding,
With which to pass across and to return again.”

The first is a gloomy picture of the mountains and of
time—although caused by the sun wandering over the
mountains, the following picture a nearness, and at the
447same time separation, of the lovers, and seems to hint at
life in the underworld,^[796] where he is united with all that
once was dear to him, and yet cannot enjoy the happiness
of reunion, because it is all shadows and unreal and devoid
of life. Here the one who descends drinks the waters of
innocence, the waters of childhood, the drink of rejuvenation,^[797]
so wings may grow, and, winged, he may soar up
again into life, like the winged sun, which arises like a
swan from the water (“Wings, to pass across and to
return again”):

“… So I spoke, and lo, a genie
Carried me off, swifter than I had imagined,
And farther than ever I had thought
From my own house!
It grew dark
As I went in the twilight.
The shadowy wood,
And the yearning brooks of my home-land
Grew vague behind me—
And I knew the country no longer.”

After the dark and obscure words of the introduction,
wherein the poet expresses the prophecy of what is to
come, the sun journey begins (“night journey in the
sea”) towards the east, towards the ascent, towards the
mystery of eternity and rebirth, of which Nietzsche also
dreams, and which he expressed in significant words:

“Oh, how could I not be ardent for eternity, and for the nuptial
ring of rings—the ring of the return! Never yet have I
found the woman from whom I wish children, unless she would
be this woman whom I love; for I love thee, O eternity.”

448Hölderlin expresses this same longing in a beautiful
symbol, the individual traits of which are already familiar
to us:

“… But soon in a fresh radiance
Mysteriously
Blossoming in golden smoke,
With the rapidly growing steps of the sun,
Making a thousand summits fragrant,
Asia arose!
And, dazzled,
I sought one whom I knew;
For unfamiliar to me were the broad roads,
Where from Tmolus
Comes the gilded Pactol,
And Taurus stands and Messagis—
And the gardens are full of flowers.
But high up in the light
The silvery snow gleams, a silent fire;
And, as a symbol of eternal life,
On the impassable walls,
Grows the ancient ivy.^[798]
And carried by columns of living cedars and laurels
Are the solemn, divinely built palaces.”

The symbol is apocalyptic, the maternal city in the
land of eternal youth, surrounded by the verdure and
flowers of imperishable spring.^[799] The poet identifies himself
here with John, who lived on Patmos, who was once
associated with “the sun of the Highest,” and saw him
face to face:

“There at the Mystery of the Vine they met,
There at the hour of the Holy Feast they gathered,
And—feeling the approach of Death in his great, quiet soul,
449The Lord, pouring out his last love, spoke,
And then he died.
Much could be said of it—
How his triumphant glance,
The happiest of all,
Was seen by his companions, even at the last.

       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

Therefore he sent the Spirit unto them,
And the house trembled, solemnly;
And, with distant thunder,
The storm of God rolled over the cowering heads
Where, deep in thought,
The heroes of death were assembled….
Now, when he, in parting,
Appeared once more before them,
Then the kingly day, the day of the sun, was put out,
And the gleaming sceptre, formed of his rays,
Was broken—and suffered like a god itself.
Yet it shall return and glow again
When the right time comes.”

The fundamental pictures are the sacrificial death and
the resurrection of Christ, like the self-sacrifice of the
sun, which voluntarily breaks its sceptre, the fructifying
rays, in the certain hope of resurrection. The following
comments are to be noted in regard to “the sceptre of
rays”: Spielrein’s patient says, “God pierces through
the earth with his rays.” The earth, in the patient’s mind,
has the meaning of woman. She also comprehends the
sunbeam in mythologic fashion as something solid:
“Jesus Christ has shown me his love, by striking against
the window with a sunbeam.” Among other insane patients
I have come across the same idea of the solid substance
of the sunbeam. Here there is also a hint of the
450phallic nature of the instrument which is associated with
the hero. Thor’s hammer, which, cleaving the earth,
penetrates deeply into it, may be compared to the foot of
Kaineus. The hammer is retained in the interior of the
earth, like the treasure, and, in the course of time, it
gradually comes again to the surface (“the treasure
blooms”), meaning that it was born again from the
earth. (Compare what has been said concerning the
etymology of “swelling.”) On many monuments Mithra
holds a peculiar object in his hands, which Cumont compares
to a half-filled tube. Dieterich proves from his
papyrus text that the object is the shoulder of the bull,
the bear constellation. The shoulder has an indirect
phallic meaning, for it is the part which is wanting in
Pelops. Pelops was slaughtered by his father, Tantalus,
dismembered, and boiled in a kettle, to make a meal for
the gods. Demeter had unsuspectingly eaten the shoulder
from this feast, when Zeus discovered the outrage. He
had the pieces thrown back into the kettle, and, with the
help of the life-dispensing Clotho, Pelops was regenerated,
and the shoulder which was missing was replaced
by an ivory one. This substitution is a close parallel to
the substitution of the missing phallus of Osiris. Mithra
is represented in a special ceremony, holding the bull’s
shoulder over Sol, his son and vice-regent. This scene
may be compared to a sort of dedication, or accolade
(something like the ceremony of confirmation). The
blow of the hammer as a generating, fructifying, inspiring
function is retained as a folk-custom and expressed
by striking with the twig of life, which has the significance
451of a charm of fertility. In the neuroses, the sexual meaning
of castigation plays an important part, for among
many children castigation may elicit a sexual orgasm.
The ritual act of striking has the same significance of
generating (fructifying), and is, indeed, merely a variant
of the original phallic ceremonial. Of similar character
to the bull’s shoulder is the cloven hoof of the devil, to
which a sexual meaning also appertains. The ass’s jawbone
wielded by Samson has the same worth. In the
Polynesian Maui myth the jawbone, the weapon of the
hero, is derived from the man-eating woman, Muriranga-whenua,
whose body swells up enormously from
lusting for human flesh (Frobenius). Hercules’ club is
made from the wood of the maternal olive tree. Faust’s
key also “knows the mothers.” The libido springs from
the mother, and with this weapon alone can man overcome
death.

It corresponds to the phallic nature of the ass’s jawbone,
that at the place where Samson threw it God caused
a spring to gush forth^[800] (springs from the horse’s tread,
footsteps, horse’s hoof). To this relation of meanings
belongs the magic wand, the sceptre in general.
Σκῆτρον belongs to σκᾶπος, σκηπάνων, σκήπων =
staff; σκηπτός = stormwind; Latin scapus = shaft,
stock, scapula, shoulder; Old High German Scaft =
spear, lance.^[801] We meet once more in this compilation
those connections which are already well known to us:
Sun-phallus as tube of the winds, lance and shoulder-blade.

The passage from Asia through Patmos to the Christian
452mysteries in the poem of Hölderlin is apparently a
superficial connection, but in reality a very ingenious train
of thought; namely, the entrance into death and the land
beyond as a self-sacrifice of the hero, for the attainment
of immortality. At this time, when the sun has set, when
love is apparently dead, man awaits in mysterious joy
the renewal of all life:

“… And Joy it was
From now on
To live in the loving night and see
The eyes of innocence hold the unchanging
Depths of all wisdom.”

Wisdom dwells in the depths, the wisdom of the mother:
being one with it, insight is obtained into the meaning
of deeper things, into all the deposits of primitive times,
the strata of which have been preserved in the soul.
Hölderlin, in his diseased ecstasy, feels once more the
greatness of the things seen, but he does not care to bring
up to the light of day that which he had found in the
depths—in this he differs from Faust.

“And it is not an evil, if a few
Are lost and never found, and if the speech
Conceals the living sound;
Because each godly work resembles ours;
And yet the Highest does not plan it all—
The great pit bears two irons,
And the glowing lava of Aetna….
Would I had the power
To build an image and see the Spirit—
See it as it was!”

453He allows only one hope to glimmer through, formed
in scanty words:

“He wakes the dead;
They who are not enchained and bound,
They who are not unwrought.
… And if the Heavenly Ones
Now, as I believe, love me—
… Silent is his sign^[802]
In the dusky sky. And one stands under it
His whole life long—for Christ still lives.”

But, as once Gilgamesh, bringing back the magic herb
from the west land, was robbed of his treasure by the
demon serpent, so does Hölderlin’s poem die away in a
painful lament, which betrays to us that no victorious resurrection
will follow his descent to the shadows:

“… Ignominiously
A power tears our heart away,
For sacrifices the heavenly ones demand.”

This recognition, that man must sacrifice the retrogressive
longing (the incestuous libido) before the
“heavenly ones” tear away the sacrifice, and at the same
time the entire libido, came too late to the poet. Therefore,
I take it to be a wise counsel which the unconscious
gives our author, to sacrifice the infantile hero. This
sacrifice is best accomplished, as is shown by the most
obvious meaning, through a complete devotion to life,
in which all the libido unconsciously bound up in familial
bonds, must be brought outside into human contact. For
it is necessary for the well-being of the adult individual,
454who in his childhood was merely an atom revolving in
a rotary system, to become himself the centre of a new
system. That such a step implies the solution or, at least,
the energetic treatment of the individual sexual problem
is obvious, for unless this is done the unemployed libido
will inexorably remain fixed in the incestuous bond, and
will prevent individual freedom in essential matters. Let
us keep in mind that Christ’s teaching separates man from
his family without consideration, and in the talk with
Nicodemus we saw the specific endeavor of Christ to procure
activation of the incest libido. Both tendencies serve
the same goal—the liberation of man; the Jew from his
extraordinary fixation to the family, which does not imply
higher development, but greater weakness and more uncontrolled
incestuous feeling, produced the compensation
of the compulsory ceremonial of the cult and the religious
fear of the incomprehensible Jehovah. When
man, terrified by no laws and no furious fanatics or
prophets, allows his incestuous libido full play, and does
not liberate it for higher purposes, then he is under the
influence of unconscious compulsion. For compulsion is
the unconscious wish. (Freud.) He is under the dominance
of the libido εἱμαρμένη^[803] and his destiny does not
lie in his own hands; his adventures, Τύχαι καὶ Μοῖραι,^[804]
fall from the stars. His unconscious incestuous libido,
which thus is applied in its most primitive form, fixes the
man, as regards his love type, in a corresponding primitive
stage, the stage of ungovernableness and surrender
to the emotions. Such was the psychologic situation of
455the passing antiquity, and the Redeemer and Physician
of that time was he who endeavored to educate man to
the sublimation of the incestuous libido.^[805] The destruction
of slavery was the necessary condition of that sublimation,
for antiquity had not yet recognized the duty
of work and work as a duty, as a social need of fundamental
importance. Slave labor was compulsory work,
the counterpart of the equally disastrous compulsion of
the libido of the privileged. It was only the obligation
of the individual to work which made possible in the
long run that regular “drainage” of the unconscious,
which was inundated by the continual regression of the
libido. Indolence is the beginning of all vice, because
in a condition of slothful dreaming the libido has
abundant opportunity for sinking into itself, in order to
create compulsory obligations by means of regressively reanimated
incestuous bonds. The best liberation is
through regular work.^[806] Work, however, is salvation
only when it is a free act, and has in itself nothing
of infantile compulsion. In this respect, religious
ceremony appears in a high degree as organized inactivity,
and at the same time as the forerunner of modern
work.

Miss Miller’s vision treats the problem of the sacrifice
of the infantile longing, in the first place, as an individual
problem, but if we cast a glance at the form of
this presentation, then we will become aware that here it
must concern something, which is also a problem of humanity
in general. For the symbols employed, the serpent
which killed the horse^[807] and the hero voluntarily
456sacrificing himself, are primitive figures of phantasies
and religious myths streaming up from the unconscious.

In so far as the world and all within it is, above all,
a thought, which is credited with transcendental “substance”
through the empirical need of the same, there
results from the sacrifice of the regressive libido the creation
of the world; and, psychologically speaking, the world
in general. For him who looks backward the world, and
even the infinite starry sky, is the mother^[808] who bends
over and encloses him on all sides, and from the renunciation
of this idea and from the longing for this idea
arises the image of the world. From this most simple
fundamental thought, which perhaps appears strange to
us only because it is conceived according to the principle
of desire and not the principle of reality,^[809] results the
significance of the cosmic sacrifice. A good example of
this is the slaying of the Babylonian primitive mother
Tiâmat, the dragon, whose body is destined to form the
heaven and the earth. We come upon this thought in its
most complete form in Hindoo philosophy of the most
ancient date; namely, in songs of Rigveda. In Rigveda
10: 81, 4, the song inquires:

“What was the tree, what wood in sooth produced it, from which they fashioned out the earth and heaven?
Ye thoughtful men inquire within your spirit, whereon he stood when he established all things.”

Viçvakarman, the All-Creator, who created the world
from the unknown tree, did so as follows:

457“He who, sacrificing, entered into all these beings
As a wise sacrificer, our Father, who,
Striving for blessings through prayer,
Hiding his origin,
Entered this lowly world,
What and who has served him
As a resting-place and a support?”^[810]

Rigveda 10: 90, gives answer to these questions.
Purusha is the primal being who

“… covered earth on every side and
Spread ten fingers’ breadth beyond.”

One sees that Purusha is a sort of Platonic world soul,
who surrounds the world from without. Of Purusha it
is said:

“Being born he overtopped the earth
Before, behind, and in all places.”

The mother symbolism is plain, it seems to me, in the
idea of Purusha. He represents the mother-imago and
the libido of the child clinging to her. From this assumption
all that follows is very easily explained:

“As sacrificial animal on the bed of straw
Was dedicated the Purusha,
Who was born on the straw,
Whom the Gods, the Blest, and the Wise,
Meeting there, sacrificed.”

This verse is very remarkable; if one wishes to stretch
this mythology out on the procrustean bed of logic, sore
violence would have to be committed. It is an incredibly
458phantastic conception that, beside the gods, ordinary
“wise men” unite in sacrificing the primitive being, aside
from the circumstance that, beside the primitive being,
nothing had existed in the beginning (that is to say, before
the sacrifice), as we shall soon see. If the great mystery
of the mother sacrifice is meant thereby, then all becomes
clear:

“From that great general sacrifice
The dripping fat was gathered up.
He formed the creatures of the air,
And animals both wild and tame.
From that great general sacrifice
Richas and Sama-hymns were born;
Therefrom the metres were produced,
The Yajus had its birth from it.

“The moon was gendered from his mind
And from his eye the Sun had birth;
Indra and Agni from his mouth
Were born, and Vâyu from his breath.

“Forth from his navel came midair;
The sky was fashioned from his head;
Earth from his feet, and from his ears
The regions. Thus they formed the worlds.”

It is evident that by this is meant not a physical, but a
psychological cosmogony. The world arises when man
discovers it. He discovers it when he sacrifices the
mother; that is to say, when he has freed himself from
the midst of his unconscious lying in the mother. That
which impels him forward to this discovery may be interpreted
psychologically as the so-called “Incest barrier”
459of Freud. The incest prohibition places an end to
the childish longing for the food-giving mother, and compels
the libido, gradually becoming sexual, into the path
of the biological aim. The libido forced away from the
mother by the incest prohibition seeks for the sexual object
in the place of the forbidden mother. In this wider
psychologic sense, which expresses itself in the allegoric
language of the “incest prohibition,” “mother,” etc.,
must be understood Freud’s paradoxical sentence, “Originally
we have known only sexual objects.”^[811] This sentence
must be understood psychologically throughout, in
the sense of a world image created from within outwards,
which has, in the first place, nothing to do with
the so-called “objective” idea of the world. This is to
be understood as a new edition of the subjective idea of
the world corrected by reality. Biology, as a science of
objective experience, would have to reject unconditionally
Freud’s proposition, for, as we have made clear
above, the function of reality can only be partly sexual;
in another equally important part it is self-preservation.
The matter appears different for that thought which accompanies
the biological function as an epiphenomenon.
As far as our knowledge reaches, the individual act of
thought is dependent wholly or in greatest part on the
existence of a highly differentiated brain, whereas the
function of reality (adaptation to reality) is something
which occurs in all living nature as wholly independent
from the act of thought. This important proposition of
Freud’s applies only to the act of thought, for thinking,
as we may recognize from manifold traces, arose dynamically
460from the libido, which was split off from the original
object at the “incest barrier” and became actual when
the first budding sexual emotions began to flow in the
current of the libido which goes to the mother. Through
the incest barrier the sexual libido is forced away from the
identification with the parents, and introverted for lack
of adequate activity. It is the sexual libido which forces
the growing individual slowly away from his family. If
this necessity did not exist, then the family would always
remain clustered together in a solid group. Hence the
neurotic always renounces a complete erotic experience,^[812]
in order that he may remain a child. Phantasies seem to
arise from the introversion of the sexual libido. Since the
first childish phantasies most certainly do not attain the
quality of a conscious plan, and as phantasies likewise (even
among adults) are almost always the direct derivates of
the unconscious, it is, therefore, highly probable that the
first phantastic manifestations arise from an act of regression.
As we illustrated earlier, the regression goes
back to the presexual stage, as many traces show. Here
the sexual libido obtains again, so to speak, that universal
capacity of application, or capacity for displacement,
which it actually possessed at that stage when the sexual
application was not yet discovered. Naturally, no adequate
object is found in the presexual stage for the regressive
sexual libido, but only surrogates, which always leave
a wish; namely, the wish to have the surrogate as similar
as possible to the sexual goal. This wish is secret, however,
for it is really an incest wish. The unsatisfied unconscious
wish creates innumerable secondary objects,
461symbols for the primitive object, the mother (as the
Rigveda says, the creator of the world, “hiding his
origin,” enters into things). From this the thought or
the phantasies proceed, as a desexualized manifestation
of an originally sexual libido.

From the standpoint of the libido, the term “incest
barrier” corresponds to one aspect, but the matter, however,
may be considered from another point of view.

The time of undeveloped sexuality, about the third
and the fourth year, is, at the same time, considered externally,
the period when the child finds himself confronted
with increased demands from the world of reality. He
can walk, speak and independently attend to a number
of other things. He sees himself in a relation to a
world of unlimited possibilities, but in which he dares
to do little or nothing, because he is as yet too much of
a baby and cannot get on without his mother. At this
time mother should be exchanged for the world. Against
this the past rises as the greatest resistance; this is
always so whenever man would undertake a new adaptation.
In spite of all evidence and against all conscious
resolutions, the unconscious (the past) always enforces
its standpoint as resistance. In this difficult position, precisely
at this period of developing sexuality, we see the
dawning of the mind. The problem of the child at this
period is the discovery of the world and of the great transsubjective
reality. For that he must lose the mother;
every step out into the world means a step away from
the mother. Naturally, all that which is retrogressive in
men rebels against this step, and energetic attempts are
462made against this adaptation in the first place. Therefore,
this period of life is also that in which the first
clearly developed neuroses arise. The tendency of this
age is one directly opposed to that of dementia præcox.
The child seeks to win the world and to leave the mother
(this is a necessary result). The dementia præcox patient,
however, seeks to leave the world and to regain the
subjectivity of childhood. We have seen that in dementia
præcox the recent adaptation to reality is replaced
by an archaic mode of adaptation; that is to say, the
recent idea of the world is rejected in favor of an archaic
idea of the world. When the child renounces his task of
adaptation to reality, or has considerable difficulties in
this direction, then we may expect that the recent adaptation
will again be replaced by archaic modes of adaptation.
It would, therefore, be conceivable that through
regression in children archaic products would naturally
be unearthed; that is to say, old ways of functioning of
the thought system, which is inborn with the brain differentiation,
would be awakened.

According to my available but as yet unpublished material,
a remarkably archaic and at the same time generally
applicable character seems to appertain to infantile
phantasy, quite comparable with the products of dementia
præcox. It does not seem improbable that through
regression at this age those same associations of elements
and analogies are reawakened which formerly constituted
the archaic idea of the world. When we now attempt to
investigate the nature of these elements, a glance at the
psychology of myths is sufficient to show us that the
463archaic idea was chiefly sexual anthropomorphism. It appears
that these things in the unconscious childish phantasy
play an extraordinary rôle, as we can recognize
from examples taken at random. Just as the sexualism of
neuroses is not to be taken literally but as regressive phantasy
and symbolic compensation for a recent unachieved
adaptation, so is the sexualism of the early infantile
phantasy, especially the incest problem, a regressive
product of the revival of the archaic modes of function,
outweighing actuality. On this account I have expressed
myself very vaguely in this work, I am sure, in regard to
the incest problem. This is done in order not to be responsible
for the idea that I understand by it a gross
sexual inclination towards the parents. The true facts
of the case are much more complicated, as my investigations
point out. Originally incest probably never possessed
particularly great significance as such, because
cohabitation with an old woman for all possible motives
could hardly be preferred to mating with a young woman.
It seems that the mother has acquired incestuous significance
only psychologically. Thus, for example, the
incestuous unions of antiquity were not a result of a love
inclination, but of a special superstition, which is most
intimately bound up with the mythical ideas here treated.
A Pharaoh of the second dynasty is said to have married
his sister, his daughter and his granddaughter; the
Ptolemies were accustomed also to marriage with sisters;
Kambyses married his sister; Artaxerxes married
his two daughters; Qobad I (sixth century A. D.) married
his daughter. The Satrap Sysimithres married his
464mother. These incestuous unions are explained by the
circumstance that in the Zend Avesta the marriage of relatives
was directly commanded;^[813] it emphasized the resemblance
of rulers to the divinity, and, therefore, was
more of an artificial than a natural arrangement, because
it originated more from a theoretical than from a biological
inclination. (A practical impetus towards that lay
often in the peculiar laws of inheritance left over from the
Mutter recht, “maternal right” [matriarchal], period.)
The confusion which certainly frequently involved the
barbarians of antiquity in regard to the choice of their
sexual objects cannot very well be measured by the standard
of present-day love psychology. In any case, the
incest of the semi-animal past is in no way proportionate
to the enormous significance of the incest phantasy among
civilized people. This disproportion enforces the assumption
that the incest prohibition which we meet even
amongst relatively lower races concerns rather the mythical
ideas than the biological damage; therefore, the
ethnical prohibition almost always concerns the mother
and seldom the father. Incest prohibition can be understood,
therefore, as a result of regression, and as the
result of a libidinous anxiety, which regressively attacks
the mother. Naturally, it is difficult or impossible to
say from whence this anxiety may have come. I merely
venture to suggest that it may have been a question of a
primitive separation of the pairs of opposites which are
hidden in the will of life: the will for life and for death.
It remains obscure what adaptation the primitive man
tried to evade through introversion and regression to the
465parents; but, according to the analogy of the soul life
in general, it may be assumed that the libido, which disturbed
the initial equilibrium of becoming and of ceasing
to be, had been stored up in the attempt to make an
especially difficult adaptation, and from which it recedes
even to-day.

After this long digression, let us turn back to the song
of the Rigveda. Thinking and a conception of the world
arose from a shrinking back from stern reality, and
it is only after man has regressively assured himself
again of the protective parental power^[814] that he enters
life wrapped in a dream of childhood shrouded in magic
superstitions; that is to say, “thinking,”^[815] for he, timidly
sacrificing his best and assuring himself of the favor
of the invisible powers, step by step develops to greater
power, in the degree that he frees himself from his retrogressive
longing and the original lack of harmony in his
being.

Rigveda 10, 90, concludes with the exceedingly significant
verse, which is of greatest importance for the
Christian mysteries as well:

“Gods, sacrificing, rendered homage to the sacrifice: these were the earliest holy ordinances,
The mighty ones attained the height of heaven, there where the Sâdhyas, goddesses of old, are dwelling.”

Through the sacrifice a fulness of power was attained,
which extends up to the power of the “parents.” Thus
the sacrifice has also the meaning of a psychologic maturation
process.

466In the same manner that the world originated through
sacrifice, through the renunciation of the retrospective
mother libido, thus, according to the teachings of the
Upanishads, is produced the new condition of man, which
may be termed the immortal. This new condition is
again attained through a sacrifice; namely, through the
sacrificial horse which is given a cosmic significance in the
teaching of the Upanishads. What the sacrificial horse
means is told by Brihadâranyaka-Upanishad 1: 1:

“Om!

“1. The dawn is truly the head of the sacrificial horse, the sun
his eye, the wind his breath, his mouth the all-spreading fire, the
year is the body of the sacrificial horse. The sky is his back, the
atmosphere his body cavity, the earth the vault of his belly, the
poles are his sides, the space between the poles his ribs, the seasons
his limbs, the months and half-months his joints, day and night
his feet, the stars his bones, the clouds his flesh, the food, which he
digests, are the deserts; the rivers, his veins; liver and lungs, the
mountains; the herbs and trees, his hair; the rising sun is his forepart,
the setting sun his hind-part. When he shows his teeth, that
is lightning; when he trembles, that is thunder; when he urinates,
that is rain; his voice is speech.

“2. The day, in truth, has originated for the horse as the
sacrificial dish, which stands before him; his cradle is in the world-sea
towards the East; the night has originated for him as the sacrificial
dish, which stands behind him; its cradle is in the world-sea
of the evening; these two dishes originated in order to surround
the horse. As a charger he generated the gods, as champion he
produced the Gandharvas, as a racer the demons, as horse mankind.
The Ocean is his relative, the ocean his cradle.”

As Deussen remarks, the sacrificial horse has the significance
of a renunciation of the universe. When the
horse is sacrificed, then the world is sacrificed and destroyed,
467as it were—a train of thought which Schopenhauer
also had in mind, and which appears as a product of
a diseased mind in Schreber.^[816] The horse in the above
text stands between two sacrificial vessels, from one of
which it comes and to the other of which it goes, just as
the sun passes from morning to evening. The horse,
therefore, signifies the libido, which has passed into the
world. We previously saw that the “mother libido”
must be sacrificed in order to produce the world; here the
world is destroyed by the repeated sacrifice of the same
libido, which once belonged to the mother. The horse
can, therefore, be substituted as a symbol for this libido,
because, as we saw, it had manifold connections with
the mother.^[817] The sacrifice of the horse can only
produce another state of introversion, which is similar
to that before the creation of the world. The
position of the horse between the two vessels, which represent
the producing and the devouring mother, hint at
the idea of life enclosed in the ovum; therefore, the vessels
are destined to “surround” the horse. That this
is actually so the Brihadâranyaka-Upanishad 3: 3 proves:

“1. From where have the descendants of Parikshit come, that
I ask thee, Yâjñavalkya! From where came the descendants of
Parikshit?

“2. Yâjñavalkya spake: ‘He has told thee, they have come
from where all come, who offer up the sacrificial horse. That is
to say, this world extends so far as two and thirty days of the
chariot of the Gods (the sun) reach. This (world) surrounds
the earth twice around. This earth surrounds the ocean twice
around. There is, as broad as the edge of a razor or as the wing
of a fly, a space between (the two shells of the egg of the world).
468These were brought by Indra as a falcon to the wind: and the
wind took them up into itself and carried them where were the
offerers of the sacrificial horse. Somewhat like this he spoke
(Gandharva to thee) and praised the wind.’

“Therefore is the wind the special (vyashti) and the wind the
universal (samashti). He, who knows this, defends himself from
dying again.”

As this text tells us, the offerers of the sacrificial horse
come in that narrowest fissure between the shells of the
egg of the world, at that place, where the shells unite and
where they are divided. The fissure (vagina) in the maternal
world soul is designated by Plato in “Timaeus” by
Χ, the symbol of the cross. Indra, who as a falcon has
stolen the soma (the treasure attainable with difficulty),
brings, as Psychopompos, the souls to the wind, to the
generating pneuma, which carries them forward to the
fissure or vagina, to the point of union, to the entrance
into the maternal egg. This train of thought of the
Hindoo philosophy briefly and concisely summarizes the
sense of innumerable myths; at the same time it is a
striking example of the fact that philosophy is internally
nothing else but a refined and sublimated mythology. It
is brought to this refined state by the influence of the corrector
of reality.^[818] We have emphasized the fact that
in the Miller drama the horse is the first to die, as the
animal brother of the hero. (Corresponding to the early
death of the half-animal Eabani, the brother friend of
Gilgamesh.) This sacrificial death recalls the whole
category of mythological animal sacrifices. Volumes
could be filled with parallels, but we must limit ourselves
here to suggestions. The sacrificial animal, where it has
469lost the primitive meaning of the simple sacrificial gift,
and has taken a higher religious significance, stands in a
close relation to both the hero and the divinity. The
animal represents the god himself;^[819] thus the bull^[820] represents
Zagreus, Dionysus and Mithra; the lamb represents
Christ,^[821] etc. As we are aware, the animal symbols
represent the animal libido. The sacrifice of the animal
means, therefore, the sacrifice of the animal nature. This
is most clearly expressed in the religious legend of Attis.
Attis is the son lover of the divine mother, Agdistis Cybele.
Agdistis was characteristically androgynous,^[822] as symbol
of the mother-libido, like the tree; really a clear indication
that the mother-imago has in addition to the significance
of the likeness of the real mother the meaning
of the mother of humanity, the libido in general. Driven
mad by the insanity-breeding mother enamored of him,
he emasculates himself, and that under a pine tree. (The
pine tree plays an important rôle in his service. Every
year a pine tree was wreathed about and upon it an
image of Attis was hung, and then it was cut down, which
represents the castration.) The blood, which spurted to
the earth, was transformed into budding violets. Cybele
now took this pine tree, bore it into her cavern and there
wept over it. (Pietà.) The chthonic mother takes her
son with her into the cavern—namely, into the womb—according
to another version. Attis was transformed into
the pine tree. The tree here has an essentially phallic
meaning; on the contrary, the attaching of the image of
Attis to the tree refers also to the maternal meaning.
(“To be attached to the mother.”) In Ovid (“Metamorphoses,”
470Book X) the pine tree is spoken of as
follows:

“Grata deum matri, siquidem Cybeleius Attis
Exuit hac hominem, truncoque induruit illo.”^[823]

The transformation into the pine tree is evidently a
burial in the mother, just as Osiris was overgrown by the
heather. Upon the Attis bas-relief of Coblenz Attis appears
growing out of a tree, which is interpreted by
Mannhardt as the “life-principle” of vegetation inherent
in the tree. It is probably a tree birth, just as with
Mithra. (Relief of Heddernheim.) As Firmicus observes,
in the Isis and Osiris cult and also in the cult of
the virgin Persephone, tree and image had played a
rôle.^[824] Dionysus had the surname Dendrites, and in
Boeotia he is said to have been called ἔνδενδρος,
meaning “in a tree.” (At the birth of Dionysus, Megaira
planted the pine tree on the Kithairon.) The Pentheus
myth bound up with the Dionysus legend furnishes
the remarkable and supplementary counterpart to the
death of Attis, and the subsequent lamentation. Pentheus,^[825]
curious to espy the orgies of the Maenades,
climbed upon a pine tree, but he was observed by his
mother; the Maenades cut down the tree, and Pentheus,
taken for an animal, was torn by them in frenzy,^[826] his
own mother being the first to rush upon him. In this
myth the phallic meaning of the tree (cutting down, castration)
and its maternal significance (mounting and the
471sacrificial death of the son) is present; at the same time
the supplementary counterpart to the Pietà is apparent,
the “terrible mother.” The feast of Attis was celebrated
as a lamentation and then as a joy in the spring.
(Good Friday and Easter.) The priests of Attis-Cybele
worship were often eunuchs, and were called Galloi.^[827]
The archigallus was called Atys (Attis).^[828] Instead of
the animal castration, the priests merely scratched their
arms until they bled. (Arm in place of phallus, “the
twisting of arms.”) A similar symbolism of the sacrificial
impulse is met in the Mithraic religion, where essential
parts of the mysteries consist in the catching and
the subduing of the bull.

A parallel figure to Mithra is the primitive man Gayomard.
He was created together with his bull, and the
two lived for six thousand years in a blissful state. But
when the world came into the cycle of the seventh sign
of the Zodiac (Libra) the evil principle entered. Libra
is astrologically the so-called positive domicile of Venus;
the evil principle, therefore, came under the dominion
of the goddess of love (destruction of the sun-hero
through the mother-wife—snake, whore, etc). As a result,
after thirty years, Gayomard and his bull died.
(The trials of Zartusht lasted also thirty years; compare
the span of Christ’s life.) Fifty-five species of grain
came from the dead bull, twelve kinds of salubrious
plants, etc. The sperma of the bull entered into the moon
for purification, but the sperma of Gayomard entered
into the sun. This circumstance possibly suggests a rather
feminine meaning of bull. Gosh or Drvâçpa is the soul
472of the bull, and was worshipped as a female divinity. She
would not, at first, from diffidence, become the goddess
of the herds, until the coming of Zarathustra was announced
to her as consolation. This has its parallel in
the Hindoo Purâna, where the coming of Krishna was
promised the earth. (A complete analogy to Christ.^[829])
She, too, travels in her chariot, like Ardvîçûra, the goddess
of love. The soul of the bull is, therefore, decidedly
feminine. This myth of Gayomard repeats only in an
altered form the primitive conception of the closed ring
of a male-female divinity, self-begetting and forth-bringing.

Like the sacrificial bull, the fire, the sacrifice of which
we have already discussed in Chapter III, has a feminine
nature among the Chinese, according to the commentaries^[830]
of the philosopher Tschwang-Tse:

“The spirit of the hearth is called Ki. He is clad in bright red,
which resembles fire, and appears as a lovely, attractive maiden.”

In the “Book of Rites” it is said:

“Wood is burned in the flames for the spirit of Au. This
sacrifice to Au is a sacrifice to old departed women.”

These spirits of the hearth and fire are the souls of departed
cooks and, therefore, are called “old women.”
The kitchen god develops from this pre-Buddhistic tradition
and becomes later (male sex) the ruler of the
family and the mediator between family and god. Thus
the old feminine fire spirit becomes a species of Logos.
(Compare with this the remarks in Chapter III.)

473From the bull’s sperma the progenitors of the cattle
came, as well as two hundred and seventy-two species of
useful animals. According to Mînôkhired, Gayomard
had destroyed the Dév Azûr, who was considered the
demon of evil appetites.^[831] In spite of the efforts of Zarathustra,
this demon remained longest on the earth. He
was destroyed at last at the resurrection, like Satan in the
Apocalypse of John. In another version it is said that
Angromainyus and the serpent were left until the last,
so as to be destroyed by Ahuramazda himself. According
to a surmise by Kern, Zarathustra may mean “golden-star”
and be identical with Mithra. Mithra’s name is
connected with neo-Persian Mihr, which means “sun and
love.”

In Zagreus we see that the bull is also identical with
the god; hence the bull sacrifice is a god sacrifice, but on
a primitive stage. The animal symbol is, so to speak,
only a part of the hero; he sacrifices only his animal;
therefore, symbolically, renounces only his animal nature.
The internal participation in the sacrifice^[832] is expressed
excellently in the anguished ecstatic countenance of the
bull-slaying Mithra. He does it willingly and unwillingly^[833]
hence the somewhat hysterical expression which
has some similarity to the well-known mawkish countenance
of the Crucified of Guido Reni. Benndorf says:^[834]

“The features, which, especially in the upper portion, bear an
absolutely ideal character, have an extremely morbid expression.”

Cumont^[835] himself says of the facial expression of the
Tauroctonos:

474“The countenance, which may be seen in the best reproductions,
is that of a young man of an almost feminine beauty; the
head has a quantity of curly hair, which, rising up from the forehead,
surrounds him as with a halo; the head is slightly tilted
backwards, so that the glance is directed towards the heavens, and
the contraction of the brows and the lips give a strange expression
of sorrow to the face.”^[836]

The Ostian head of Mithra Tauroctonos, illustrated
in Cumont, has, indeed, an expression which we recognize
in our patients as one of sentimental resignation. Sentimentality
is repressed brutality. Hence the exceedingly
sentimental pose, which had its counterpart in the
symbolism of the shepherd and the lamb of contemporaneous
Christianity, with the addition of infantilism.^[837]

Meanwhile, it is only his animal nature which the god
sacrifices; that is to say, his sexuality,^[838] always in close
analogy to the course of the sun. We have learned in
the course of this investigation that the part of the libido
which erects religious structures is in the last analysis
fixed in the mother, and really represents that tie through
which we are permanently connected with our origin.
Briefly, we may designate this amount of libido as
“Mother Libido.” As we have seen, this libido conceals
itself in countless and very heterogeneous symbols, also
in animal images, no matter whether of masculine or feminine
nature—differences of sex are at bottom of a secondary
value and psychologically do not play the part
which might be expected from a superficial observation.

The annual sacrifice of the maiden to the dragon probably
represented the most ideal symbolic situation. In
475order to pacify the anger of the “terrible mother” the
most beautiful woman was sacrificed as symbol of man’s
libido. Less vivid examples are the sacrifice of the first-born
and various valuable domestic animals. A second
ideal case is the self-castration in the service of the mother
(Dea Syria, etc.), a less obvious form of which is circumcision.
By that at least only a portion is sacrificed.^[839]
With these sacrifices, the object of which in ideal cases
is to symbolize the libido drawing away from the mother,
life is symbolically renounced in order to regain it. By
the sacrifice man ransoms himself from the fear of death
and reconciles the destroying mother. In those later religions,
where the hero, who in olden times overcomes all
evil and death through his labors, has become the divine
chief figure, he becomes the priestly sacrificer and the
regenerator of life. But as the hero is an imaginary
figure and his sacrifice is a transcendental mystery, the
significance of which far exceeds the value of an ordinary
sacrificial gift, this deepening of the sacrificial
symbolism regressively resumes the idea of the human
sacrifice. This is partly due to the preponderance of
phantastic additions, which always take their subject-matter
from greater depths, and partly due to the higher
religious occupation of the libido, which demanded a more
complete and equivalent expression. Thus the relation
between Mithra and his bull is very close. It is the hero
himself in the Christian mysteries who sacrifices himself
voluntarily. The hero, as we have sufficiently shown, is
the infantile personality longing for the mother, who as
Mithra sacrifices the wish (the libido), and as Christ
476gives himself to death both willingly and unwillingly.
Upon the monuments of the Mithraic religion we often
meet a strange symbol: a crater (mixing bowl) encoiled
by a serpent, sometimes with a lion, who as antagonist
opposes the serpent.^[840] It appears as if the two were
fighting for the crater. The crater symbolizes, as we
have seen, the mother, the serpent the resistance defending
her, and the lion the greatest strength and strongest
will.^[841] The struggle is for the mother. The serpent takes
part almost regularly in the Mithraic sacrifice of the
bull, moving towards the blood flowing from the wound.
It seems to follow from that that the life of the bull
(blood) is sacrificed to the serpent. Previously we have
pointed out the mutual relationship between serpent and
bull, and found there that the bull symbolizes the living
hero, the shining sun, but that the serpent symbolizes the
dead, buried or chthonic hero, the invisible sun. As the
hero is in the mother in the state of death, the serpent
is also, as the symbol of the fear of death, the sign of
the devouring mother. The sacrifice of the bull to the
serpent, therefore, signifies a willing renunciation of life,
in order to win it from death. Therefore, after the sacrifice
of the bull, wonderful fertility results. The antagonism
between serpent and lion over the crater is to
be interpreted as a battle over the fruitful mother’s
womb, somewhat comparable to the more simple symbolism
of the Tishtriya song, where the demon Apaosha,
the black horse, has possession of the rain lake, and the
white horse, Tishtriya, must banish him from it. Death
from time to time lays its destroying hand upon life and
477fertility and the libido disappears, by entering into the
mother, from whose womb it will be born renewed. It,
therefore, seems very probable that the significance of
the Mithraic bull sacrifice is also that of the sacrifice of
the mother who sends the fear of death. As the contrary
of the Occide moriturus is also intended here, so is the
act of sacrifice an impregnating of the mother; the
chthonic snake demon drinks the blood; that is to say, the
libido (sperma) of the hero committing incest. Life is
thus immortalized for the hero because, like the sun, he
generates himself anew. After all the preceding materials,
it can no longer be difficult to recognize in the
Christian mysteries the human sacrifice, or the sacrifice
of the son to the mother.^[842] Just as Attis emasculates
himself on account of the mother, so does Christ himself
hang upon the tree of life,^[843] the wood of martyrdom,
the ἑκάτη,^[844] the chthonic mother, and by that redeems
creation from death. By entering again into the mother’s
womb (Matuta, Pietà of Michelangelo) he redeems in
death the sin in life of the primitive man, Adam, in
order symbolically through his deed^[845] to procure for the
innermost and most hidden meaning of the religious
libido its highest satisfaction and most pronounced expression.
The martyrdom of Christ has in Augustine as
well actually the meaning of a Hierosgamos with the
mother (corresponding to the Adonis festival, where
Venus and Adonis were laid upon the nuptial couch):

“Procedit Christus quasi sponsus de thalamo suo, præsagio
nuptiarum exiit ad campum sæculi; pervenit usque ad crucis
478torum (torus has the meaning of bed, pillow, concubine, bier) et
ibi firmavit ascendendo conjugium: ubi cum sentiret anhelantem
in suspiriis creaturam commercio pietatis se pro conjuge dedit ad
pœnam et copulavit sibi perpetuo iure matronam.”

This passage is perfectly clear. A similar death overtakes
the Syrian Melcarth, who, riding upon a sea horse,
was annually burned. Among the Greeks he is called
Melicertes, and was represented riding upon a dolphin.
The dolphin is also the steed of Arion. We have learned
to recognize previously the maternal significance of
dolphin, so that in the death of Melcarth we can once
more recognize the negatively expressed Hierosgamos
with the mother. (Compare Frazer “Golden Bough,”
IV, p. 87.) This figurative expression is of the greatest
teleological significance. Through its symbol it leads
that libido which inclines backward into the original,
primitive and impulsive upwards to the spiritual by investing
it with a mysterious but fruitful function. It is
superfluous to speak of the effect of this symbol upon
the unconscious of Occidental humanity. A glance over
history shows what creative forces were released in this
symbol.^[846]

The comparison of the Mithraic and the Christian
sacrifice plainly shows wherein lies the superiority of the
Christian symbol; it is the frank admission that not only
are the lower wishes to be sacrificed, but the whole personality.
The Christian symbol demands complete devotion;
it compels a veritable self-sacrifice to a higher
purpose, while the Sacrificium Mithriacum, remaining
fixed on a primitive symbolic stage, is contented with an
479animal sacrifice. The religious effect of these symbols
must be considered as an orientation of the unconscious
by means of imitation.

In Miss Miller’s phantasy there is internal compulsion,
in that she passes from the horse sacrifice to the
self-sacrifice of the hero. Whereas the first symbolizes
renunciation of the sexual wishes, the second has the
deeper and ethically more valuable meaning of the sacrifice
of the infantile personality. The object of psychoanalysis
has frequently been wrongly understood to mean
the renunciation or the gratification of the ordinary sexual
wish, while, in reality, the problem is the sublimation of
the infantile personality, or, expressed mythologically, a
sacrifice and rebirth of the infantile hero.^[847] In the Christian
mysteries, however, the resurrected one becomes a
supermundane spirit, and the invisible kingdom of God,
with its mysterious gifts, are obtained by his believers
through the sacrifice of himself on the mother. In
psychoanalysis the infantile personality is deprived of its
libido fixations in a rational manner; the libido which is
thus set free serves for the building up of a personality
matured and adapted to reality, who does willingly and
without complaint everything required by necessity. (It
is, so to speak, the chief endeavor of the infantile personality
to struggle against all necessities and to create coercions
for itself where none exist in reality.)

The serpent as an instrument of sacrifice has already
been abundantly illustrated. (Legend of St. Silvester,
trial of the virgins, wounding of Rê and Philoctetes, symbolism
of the lance and arrow.) It is the destroying
480knife; but, according to the principle of the “Occide
moriturus” also the phallus, the sacrificial act represents
a coitus act as well.^[848] The religious significance of the
serpent as a cave-dwelling, chthonic animal points to a
further thought; namely, to the creeping into the
mother’s womb in the form of a serpent.^[849] As the horse
is the brother, so the serpent is the sister of Chiwantopel.
This close relation refers to a fellowship of these animals
and their characters with the hero. We know of the
horse that, as a rule, he is not an animal of fear, although,
mythologically, he has at times this meaning. He signifies
much more the living, positive part of the libido,
the striving towards continual renewal, whereas the serpent,
as a rule, represents the fear, the fear of death,^[850]
and is thought of as the antithesis to the phallus. This
antithesis between horse and serpent, mythologically between
bull and serpent, represents an opposition of the
libido within itself, a striving forwards and a striving
backwards at one and the same time.^[851] It is not only
as if the libido might be an irresistible striving forward,
an endless life and will for construction, such as Schopenhauer
has formulated in his world will, death and every
end being some malignancy or fatality coming from without,
but the libido, corresponding to the sun, also wills
the destruction of its creation. In the first half of life
its will is for growth, in the second half of life it hints,
softly at first, and then audibly, at its will for death.
And just as in youth the impulse to unlimited growth often
lies under the enveloping covering of a resistance against
life, so also does the will of the old to die frequently lie
481under the covering of a stubborn resistance against the
end.

PRIAPUS AND SERPENT

This apparent contrast in the nature of the libido is
strikingly illustrated by a Priapic statuette in the antique
collection at Verona.^[852] Priapus smilingly points with his
finger to a snake biting off his “membrum.” He carries
a basket on his arm, filled with oblong objects, probably
phalli, evidently prepared as substitutes.

A similar motive is found in the “Deluge” of Rubens
(in the Munich Art Gallery), where a serpent emasculates
a man. This motive explains the meaning of the
“Deluge”; the maternal sea is also the devouring
mother.^[853] The phantasy of the world conflagration, of
the cataclysmic end of the world in general, is nothing
but a mythological projection of a personal individual
will for death; therefore, Rubens could represent the
essence of the “Deluge” phantasy in the emasculation
by the serpent; for the serpent is our own repressed will
482for the end, for which we find an explanation only with
the greatest difficulty.

Concerning the symbolism of the serpent in general, its
significance is very dependent upon the time of life and
circumstances. The repressed sexuality of youth is symbolized
by the serpent, because the arrival of sexuality
puts an end to childhood. To age, on the contrary, the
serpent signifies the repressed thought of death. With
our author it is the insufficiently expressed sexuality
which as serpent assumes the rôle of sacrificer and delivers
the hero over to death and rebirth.

As in the beginning of our investigation the hero’s
name forced us to speak of the symbolism of Popocatepetl
as belonging to the creating part of the human body,
so at the end does the Miller drama again give us an
opportunity of seeing how the volcano assists in the
death of the hero and causes him to disappear by means
of an earthquake into the depths of the earth. As the
volcano gave birth and name to the hero, so at the end of
the day it devours him again.^[854] We learn from the last
words of the hero that his longed-for beloved, she who
alone understands him, is called Ja-ni-wa-ma. We find
in this name those lisped syllables familiar to us from
the early childhood of the hero, Hiawatha, Wawa, wama,
mama. The only one who really understands us is the
mother. For verstehen, “to understand” (Old High
German firstân), is probably derived from a primitive
Germanic prefix fri, identical with περὶ, meaning “roundabout.”
The Old High German antfristôn, “to interpret,”
is considered as identical with firstân. From that
483results a fundamental significance of the verb verstehen,
“to understand,” as “standing round about something.”^[855]
Comprehendere and κατασυλλαμβάνειν express
a similar idea as the German erfassen, “to grasp,
to comprehend.” The thing common to these expressions
is the surrounding, the enfolding. And there is no
doubt that there is nothing in the world which so completely
enfolds us as the mother. When the neurotic
complains that the world has no understanding, he says
indirectly that he misses the mother. Paul Verlaine has
expressed this thought most beautifully in his poem,
“Mon Rêve Familier”:

My Familiar Dream.

“Often I have that strange and poignant dream
Of some unknown who meets my flame with flame—
Who, with each time, is never quite the same,
Yet never wholly different does she seem.
She understands me! Every fitful gleam
Troubling my heart, she reads aright somehow:
Even the sweat upon my pallid brow
She soothes with tears, a cool and freshening stream.

“If she is dark or fair? I do not know—
Her name? Only that it is sweet and low,
Like those of loved ones who have long since died.
Her look is like a statue’s, kind and clear;
And her calm voice, distant and dignified,
Like those hushed voices that I loved to hear.”

485