Psychology of the Unconscious A Study of the...

473. Compare the “nightmare legends” in which the mare is a beautiful woman.

474. This recalls the phallic columns placed in the temples of Astarte. In fact, according to one version, the wife of the king was named Astarte. This symbol brings to mind the crosses, fittingly called έγκολπια (pregnant crosses), which conceal a secret reliquary.

475. Spielrein (Jahrbuch, Vol. III, p. 358) points out numerous indications of the motive of dismemberment in a demented patient. Fragments of the most varied things and materials were “cooked” or “burnt.” “The ash can become man.” The patient saw children dismembered in glass coffins. In addition, the above-mentioned “washing,” “cleaning,” “cooking” and “burning” has, besides the coitus motive, also the pregnancy motive; the latter probably in a predominating measure.

476. Later offshoots of this primitive theory of the origin of children are contained in the doctrines of Karma, and the conception of the Mendelian theory of heredity is not far off. One only has to realize that all apperceptions are subjectively conditioned.

477. Demeter assembled the limbs of the dismembered Dionysus and from them produced the god anew.

478. Compare Diodorus: III, 62.

479. Yet to be added is the fact that the cynocephalic Anubis as the restorer of the corpse of Osiris (also genius of the dog star) had a compensatory significance. In this significance he appears upon many sarcophagi. The dog is also a regular companion of the healing Asclepius. The following quotation from Petronius best supports the Creuzer hypothesis (“Sat.,” c. 71): “Valde te rogo, ut secundum pedes statuae meae catellam pingas—ut mihi contingat tuo beneficio post mortem vivere” (I beseech you instantly to fasten beside the feet of my statue a dog, so that because of your beneficence I may attain to life after death). See Nork: Ibid., about dog.

Moreover, the relation of the dog to the dog-headed Hecate, the goddess of the underworld, hints at its being the symbol of rebirth. She received as Canicula a sacrificial dog to keep away the pest. Her close relation to Artemis as goddess of the moon permits her opposition to fertility to be glimpsed. Hecate, is also the first to bring to Demeter the news of her stolen child (the rôle of Anubis!). Also the goddess of birth Ilithyia received sacrifices of dogs, and Hecate herself is, on occasions, goddess of marriage and birth.

480. Frobenius (Ibid., p. 393) observes that frequently the gods of fire (sun-heroes) lack a member. He gives the following parallel: “Just as the god wrenches out an arm from the ogre (giant), so does Odysseus pluck out the eye of the noble Polyphemus, whereupon the sun creeps up mysteriously into the sky. Might the fire-making, twisting and wrenching out of the arm be connected?” This question is by this clearly illumined if we assume, corresponding to the train of thought of the ancients, that the wrenching out of the arm is really a castration. (The symbol of the robbery of the force of life.) It is an act corresponding to the Attis castration because of the mother. From this renunciation, which is really a symbolic mother incest, arises the discovery of fire, as previously we have already suspected. Moreover, mention must be made of the fact that to wrench out an arm, means first of all merely “overpowering,” and on that account can happen to the hero as well as to his opponent. (Compare, for examples, Frobenius: Ibid., pp. 112, 395.)

481. Compare especially the description of the cup of Thebes.

482. Professor Freud has expressed in a personal discussion the idea that a further determinate for the motive of the dissimilar brothers is to be found in the elementary observance towards birth and the after-birth. It is an exotic custom to treat the placenta as a child!

483. Brugsch: “Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter,” p. 354.

484. Ibid., p. 310.

485. In the conception of Âtman there is a certain fluid quality in so far as he really can be identified with Purusha of the Rigveda. “Purusha covers all the places of the earth, flowing about it ten fingers high.”

486. Brugsch: Ibid., p. 112.

487. In Thebes, where the chief god is Chnum, the latter represents the breath of the wind in his cosmic component, from which later on “the spirit of God floating over the waters” has developed; the primitive idea of the cosmic parents, who lie pressed together until the son separates them. (Compare the symbolism of Âtman above.)

488. Brugsch: Ibid., p. 128.

489. Servian song from Grimm’s “Mythology,” II, p. 544.

490. Frobenius: Ibid.

491. Compare the birth of the Germanic Aschanes, where rock, tree and water are present at the scene of birth. Chidher too was found sitting on the earth, the ground around covered with flowers.

492. Most singularly even in this quotation, V. 288, the description is found of Sleep sitting high up in a pine tree. “There he sat surrounded by branches covered with thorny leaves, like the singing bird, who by night flutters through the mountains.” It appears as if the motive belongs to a hierosgamos. Compare also the magic net with which Hephaestos enfolds Ares and Aphrodite “in flagranti” and kept them for the sport of the gods.

493. The rite of enchaining the statues of Hercules and the Tyrian Melkarth is related to this also. The Cabiri too were wrapt in coverings. Creuzer: “Symbolik,” II, 350.

494. Fick: “Indogermanisches Wörterbuch,” I, p. 132.

495. Compare the “resounding sun.”

496. The motive of the “striking rocks” belongs also to the motive of devouring (Frobenius: Ibid., p. 405). The hero in his ship must pass between two rocks which strike together. (Similar to the biting door, to the tree trunk which snaps together.) In the passage, generally the tail of the bird is pinched off (or the “poop” of the ship, etc.); the castration motive is once more clearly revealed here, for the castration takes the place of mother incest. The castration is a substitution for coitus. Scheffel employs this idea in his well-known poem: “A herring loved an oyster, etc.” The poem ends with the oyster biting off the herring’s head for a kiss. The doves which bring Zeus ambrosia have also to pass through the rocks which strike together. The “doves” bring the food of immortality to Zeus by means of incest (entrance into the mother) very similar to Freya’s apples (breasts). Frobenius also mentions the rocks or caves which open only at a magic word and are very closely connected with the rocks which strike together. Most illuminating in this respect is a South African myth (Frobenius, p. 407): “One must call the rock by name and cry loudly: Rock Utunjambili, open, so that I may enter.” But the rock answers when it will not open to the call. “The rock will not open to children, it will open to the swallows which fly in the air!” The remarkable thing is, that no human power can open the rock, only a formula has that power—or a bird.

This wording merely says that the opening of the rock is an undertaking which cannot really be accomplished, but which one wishes to accomplish.

(In Middle High German, to wish is really “to have the power to create something extraordinary.”) When a man dies, then only the wish that he might live remains, an unfulfilled wish, a fluttering wish, wherefore souls are birds. The soul is wholly only libido, as is illustrated in many parts of this work; it is “to wish.” Thus the helpful bird, who assists the hero in the whale to come again into the light, who opens the rocks, is the wish for rebirth. (For the bird as a wish, see the beautiful painting by Thoma, where the youth longingly stretches out his arms to the birds who pass over his head.)

497. Melian Virgins.

498. Grimm: “Mythology,” I, p. 474.

499. In Athens there was a family of Αἰγειρότομοι = hewn from poplars.

500. Hermann: “Nordische Mythologie,” p. 589.

501. Pregnant.

502. Javanese tribes commonly set up their images of God in an artificial cavity of a tree. This fits in with the “little hole” phantasy of Zinzendorf and his sect. See Pfister: “Frömmigkeit des Grafen von Zinzendorf.” In a Persian myth, the white Haoma is a divine tree, growing in the lake Vourukasha, the fish Khar-mâhî circles protectingly around it and defends it against the toad Ahriman. It gives eternal life, children to women, husbands to girls and horses to men. In the Minôkhired the tree is called “the preparer of the corpse” (Spiegel: “Erân. Altertumskunde,” II, 115).

503. Ship of the sun, which accompanies the sun and the soul over the sea of death to the rising.

504. Brugsch: Ibid., p. 177.

505. Similarly Isaiah li: 1: “... look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged.” Further proof is found in A. von Löwis of Menar: “Nordkaukasische Steingeburtssagen,” Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, XIII, p. 509.

506. Grimm: “Mythology,” I, p. 474.

507. “Das Kreuz Christi. Rel.-hist.-kirchl.-archaeol. Untersuchungen,” 1875.

508. The legend of Seth is found in Jubinal: “Mystères inédits du XV. siècle,” Part II, p. 16. Quoted from Zöckler: Ibid., p. 241.

509. The guilt is as always, whenever possible, thrown upon the mother. The Germanic sacred trees are also under the law of an absolute taboo: no leaf may be taken from them, and nothing may be picked from the ground upon which their shadows fall.