SYMBOLISM OF THE MOTHER AND OF REBIRTH

Psychology of the Unconscious by C. G. Jung, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. SYMBOLISM OF THE MOTHER AND OF REBIRTH

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. 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.

The 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 shall 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 husband 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. 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. Inman 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. 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. The chest, basket or little basket, with its precious contents, was thought of as floating on the water; a remarkable inversion 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 the 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 one 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 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 typical 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. 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. 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 in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication.

(5) “And upon her forehead was a name written: Mystery. Babylon 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 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 souls; 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, 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, 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.

(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. 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. 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, so that the ancients could say: ἠ θάλασσα—τῆς γενέσεως σύμβολον. From water comes life; therefore, 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, 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. 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). Life believes not in death.

“In the flood of life, in the torrent of deeds,

I toss up and down,

I 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. Tertullian calls an Attic Pallas “crucis stipes,” a wooden pale or mast. The wooden pale is phallic, as the name suggests, 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. 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 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. 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.”

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. 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 a 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. 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 as 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. 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 totality 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 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 religions, 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. 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 πνεύματος πνεῦμά ἐστιν.—Τὸ πνεῦμα ὅπου θέλει πνεῖ, 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, 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 how 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, 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 again and is born into a circle of brothers and sisters; but his mother is 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, arise 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 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 and 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. 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. Also partly in the physicians Sts. Kosma and Damien, who graciously condescended to accept the “membra virilia” in wax at their festival. 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 intentions. 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 emptiness 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 because 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. 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 the 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 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. 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, that 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, 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 delusion 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 here, 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, 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 journey 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). 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. 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 form 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 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. 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 simple 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.” The mother becomes for him a spectre of anxiety, a nightmare.

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. 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.)

Later on Typhon dismembers the corpse and scatters the pieces. We come upon the motive of dismemberment in countless sun myths, namely, the inversion of the idea of the composition of the child in the mother’s womb. 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. 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. 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, equal 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. 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. Osiris as a phantom once more impregnated Isis, but the fruit is Harpocrates, who 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, 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.

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 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, 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 bull 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, is equally of masculine and feminine nature. Nun is, therefore, invoked as Amon, the original water, 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 which was personified by the goddess Nunet. From her Nut sprang, the goddess of heaven, who was represented 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. 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. A 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.”

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 and 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:

“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.

So 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.

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 strong 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. 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, and to will, to wish” (libido!).

The motive of encoiling is mother symbolism. 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 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 is designated as trê = wood, tree. 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. 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.” This function of rebirth of the “world-ash” also helps to elucidate the representation met with in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, 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. I know that tree of emerald green from whose midst Râ rises to the height of the clouds.”

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 near a fountain. 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, 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.

The 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. 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. 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.)

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 the magic of the name of God and hid herself in the sea. Adam forced her back with the help of three angels. 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; 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. 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. 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, as Riklin shows, has already become important for the interpretation of fairy tales through the investigation of Laistner. 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 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 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.”

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 stepped 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. A synonym for nightmare is the “troll” or “treter” (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). 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 declararent, utrum prœlium committi ex usu esset, nec ne.”

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. The Sphingina are the twilight moths; 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. That 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. 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 (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 that the sun-god Ea, the son of the depths of the waters and the god of wisdom, 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). Ea 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,

Then 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,

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. We 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 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.

“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?”

Numerous 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.”

Therefore, the god Nagaga-uer is also called the “great cackler.” (Book of the Dead.) “I cackle like a 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. Herodotus 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. 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 mother. 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. This is the part which belongs to them, while the heroic deed belongs to the god. 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 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. This act is a religiously limited and organized incest. That which grows on the tree is the child, 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 observation 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 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. Whereupon the sluices of heaven open and a fruitful rain pours down upon the earth. 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 by 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; he is overcome by Gilgamesh, whereby Ishtar is won. Thereupon she makes erotic advances towards Gilgamesh. 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 shows 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. 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.

As 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. 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 mentions the Fejervaryian 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; 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. The name of the Mexican cross signifies “tree of our life or flesh.”

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.

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. 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 places, and almost every collection of antiquities possesses one or more specimens.

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. Maurice 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).”

“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. 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 arms slightly raised, wing-shaped, and in front distinct breasts.

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 this 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:

“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. 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, 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 her 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.) 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. 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. 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.”

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 of 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.” 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. 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, 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:

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

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. 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 possible. 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 French 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,” 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!

A 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.

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