Chapter III
.)
From 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:
“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 order 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 gives 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 fertility 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 torum (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 animal 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 knife; 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 under the covering of a stubborn resistance against the end.
[Illustration: 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 for 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 results 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.”
NOTES
## PART I
INTRODUCTION
Footnote 1:
“Science of Language,” first series, p. 25.
Footnote 2:
“Creative Evolution.”
Footnote 3:
For a more complete presentation of Jung’s views consult his “Theory of Psychoanalysis” in the Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series, No. 19.
Footnote 4:
He is said to have killed himself when he heard that she whom he so passionately adored was his mother.
Footnote 5:
“Wish Fulfilment and Symbolism in Fairy Tales.” Tr. by W. A. White, M.D.
Footnote 6:
“Dream and Myth.” Deuticke, Wien 1909.
Footnote 7:
“The Myth of the Birth of the Hero.”
Footnote 8:
“Die Symbolik in den Legenden, Märchen, Gebräuchen und Träumen.” _Psychiatrisch.-Neurologische Wochenschrift_, X. Jahrgang.
Footnote 9:
“On the Nightmare.” _Amer. Journ. of Insanity_, 1910.
Footnote 10:
_Jahrbuch_, 1910, Pt. II.
Footnote 11:
“Die Frömmigkeit des Grafen Ludwig von Zinzendorf. Ein psychoanalytischer Beitrag zur Kenntnis der religiösen Sublimationprozesse und zur Erklärung des Pietismus.” Deuticke, Wien 1910. We have a suggestive hint in Freud’s work, “Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci.” Deuticke, Wien 1910.
Footnote 12:
Compare Rank in _Jahrbuch_, Pt. II, p. 465.
##