Psychology of the Unconscious A Study of the...

628. A direct unconstrained expression of sexuality is a natural occurrence and as such neither unbeautiful nor repulsive. The “moral” repression makes sexuality on one side dirty and hypocritical, on the other shameless and obtrusive.

629. Compare what is said below concerning the motive of fettering.

630. The sacrilegious assault of Horus upon Isis, at which Plutarch (“De Isis et Osiris”) stands aghast; he expresses himself as follows concerning it. “But if any one wishes to assume and maintain that all this has really happened and taken place with respect to blessed and imperishable nature, which for the most part is considered as corresponding to the divine; then, to speak in the words of Aeschylus, ‘he must spit out and clean his mouth.’” From this sentence one can form a conception of how the well-intentioned people of ancient society may have condemned the Christian point of view, first the hanged God, then the management of the family, the “foundation” of the state. The psychologist is not surprised.

631. Compare the typical fate of Theseus and Peirithoos.

632. Compare the example given for that in Aigremont: “Fuss- und Schuhsymbolik.” Also Part I of this book; the foot of the sun in an Armenian folk prayer. Also de Gubernatis: “Die Tiere in der Indo-Germanischen Mythologie,” Vol. I, p. 220 ff.

633. Rohde: “Psyche.”

634. Porphyrius (“De antro nympharum.” Quoted by Dieterich: “Mithraslit.,” p. 63) says that according to the Mithraic doctrine the souls which pass away at birth are destined for winds, because these souls had taken the breath of the wind into custody and therefore had a similar nature: “ψυχαῖς δ’ εἰς γένεσιν ἰούσαις καὶ ἀπὸ γενέσεως χωριζομέναις εἰκότως ἔταξαν ἀνέμους διὰ τὸ ἐφελκεσθαι καὶ αὐτὰς πνεῦμα καὶ οὐσίαν ἔχειν τοιαύτην—(The souls departing at birth and becoming separated, probably become winds because of inhaling their breath and becoming the same substance).

635. In the Mithraic liturgy the generating breath of the spirit comes from the sun, probably “from the tube of the sun” (see Part I). Corresponding to this idea, in the Rigveda the sun is called the One-footed. Compare with that the Armenian prayer, for the sun to allow its foot to rest upon the face of the suppliant (Abeghian: “Der armenische Volksglaube,” 1899, p. 41).

636. Firmicus Maternus (Mathes., I, 5, 9): “Cui (animo) descensus per orbem solis tribuitur, per orbem vero lunae praeparatur ascensus” (For which soul a descent through the disc of the sun is devised, but the ascent is prepared through the disc of the moon). Lydus (“De mens.,” IV, 3) tells us that the hierophant Praetextatus has said that Janus despatches the diviner souls to the lunar fields: τὰς θειοτέρας ψυχὰς ἐπὶ τὴν σεληνικὸν χόρον ἀποπέμπει. Epiphanius (Haeres LXVI, 52): ὅτι ἐκ τῶν ψυχῶν ὁ δίσκος [τῆς σελήνης] ἀποπίμπλαται. Quoted by Cumont: “Textes et Monuments,” I, I, p. 40. In exotic myths it is the same with the moon. Frobenius: Ibid., p. 352 ff.

637. “The Light of Asia, or The Great Renunciation” (Mahâbhinish-kramana).

638. One sees upon corresponding representations how the elephant presses into Maya’s head with its trunk.

639. Rank: “The Myth of the Birth of the Hero,” translated by W. White.

640. The speedy dying of the mother or the separation from the mother belongs to the myth of the hero. In the myth of the swan maiden which Rank has analyzed very beautifully, there is the wish-fulfilling thought, that the swan maiden can fly away again after the birth of the child, because she has then fulfilled her purpose. Man needs the mother only for rebirth.

641. Indian word for the rustle of the wind in the trees.

642. Means sound of the waves.

643. An introjection of the object into the subject in the sense of Ferenczi, the “gegenwurf” or “widerwurf” (Objektum) of the mystics Eckart and Böhme.

644. Karl Joël (“Seele und Welt,” Jena 1912) says (p. 153): “Life does not diminish in artists and prophets, but is enhanced. They are the leaders into the lost Paradise, which now for the first time becomes Paradise through rediscovery. It is no more the old dull unity of life towards which the artist strives and leads, it is the sentient reunion, not the empty but the full unity, not the unity of indifference but the unity of difference.” “All life is the raising of the equilibrium and the pulling backwards into equilibrium. Such a return do we find in religion and art.”

645. By the primal experience must be understood that first human differentiation between subject and object, that first conscious placing of object, which is not psychologically conceivable without the presupposition of an inner division of the animal “man” from himself, by which precisely is he separated from nature which is at one with itself.

646. Crêvecoeur: “Voyage dans la Haute Pensylvanie,” I, 362.

647. The dragons of the Greek (and Swiss) legends live in or near springs or other waters of which they are often the guardians.

648. Compare the discussion above about the encircling and devouring motive. Water as a hindrance in dreams seems to refer to the mother, longing for the mother instead of positive work. The crossing of water—overcoming of the resistance; that is to say the mother, as a symbol of the longing for inactivity like death or sleep.

649. Compare also the Attic custom of stuffing a bull in spring, the customs of the Lupercalia, Saturnalia, etc. I have devoted to this motive a separate investigation, therefore I forego further proof.

650. In the Gilgamesh epic, it is directly said that it is immortality which the hero goes to obtain.

651. Sepp: “Das Heidentum und dessen Bedeutung für das Christentum,” Vol. III, 82.

652. Compare the symbolism of the arrow above.

653. This thought is generally organized in the doctrine of pre-existence. Thus in any case man is his own generator, immortal and a hero, whereby the highest wishes are fulfilled.

654. Frazer: “Golden Bough,” IV, 297.

655. “Thou seekest the heaviest burden, there findest thou thyself” (Nietzsche: “Zarathustra”).

656. It is an unvarying peculiarity, so to speak, that in the whale-dragon myth, the hero is very hungry in the belly of the monster and begins to cut off pieces from the animal, so as to feed himself. He is in the nourishing mother “in the presexual stage.” His next act, in order to free himself, is to make a fire. In a myth of the Eskimos of the Behring Straits, the hero finds a woman in the whale’s belly, the soul of the animal, which is feminine (Ibid, p. 85). (Compare Frobenius: Ibid, passim.)

657. The carrying of the tree played an important part, as is evident from a note in Strabo X, in the cult of Dionysus and Ceres (Demeter).

658. A text on the Pyramids, which treats of the arrival of the dead Pharaoh in Heaven, depicts how Pharaoh takes possession of the gods in order to assimilate their divine nature, and to become the lord of the gods: “His servants have imprisoned the gods with a chain, they have taken them and dragged them away, they have bound them, they have cut their throats, and taken out their entrails, they have dismembered them and cooked them in hot vessels. And the king consumed their force and ate their souls. The great gods form his breakfast, the medium gods his dinner, the little gods his supper—the king consumes everything that comes in his way. Greedily he devours everything and his magic power becomes greater than all magic power. He becomes the heir of the power, he becomes greater than all heirs, he becomes the lord of heaven, he eats all crowns and all bracelets, he eats the wisdom of every god, etc.” (Wiedemann: “Der alte Orient,” II, 2, 1900, p. 18). This impossible food, this “Bulimie,” strikingly depicts the sexual libido in regression to the presexual material, where the mother (the gods) is not the object of sex but of hunger.

659. The sacramental sacrifice of Dionysus-Zagreus and the eating of the sacrificial meat produced the “νέος Διόνυσος” the resurrection of the god, as plainly appears from the Cretan fragments of the Euripides quoted by Dieterich (Ibid., p. 105):

ἁγνὸν δὲ βιον τείνων, ἐξ οὐ

Διὸς Ιδαίου μύστης γενόμην

καὶ νυκτιπόλου Ζαγρέως βούτας

τοὺς ὠμοφάγους δαῖτας τελέσας.

(Living a blameless life whereby I became an initiate of the Idaean Zeus, I celebrated the carnivorous banquet of Zagreus, the wandering herdsman of the night.)

The mystics took the god into themselves by eating the uncooked meat of the sacrificial animal.

660. Richter: 14, 14.

661. Thou boy eternal, thou most beautiful one seen in the heavens, without horns standing, with thy virgin head, etc.