Psychology of the Unconscious A Study of the...

423. Freud: “Dream Interpretation.”

424. I am indebted to Dr. Abegg in Zürich for the knowledge of Indra and Urvarâ, Domaldi and Râma.

425. Medieval Christianity also considered the Trinity as dwelling in the womb of the holy Virgin.

426. “Symbolism,” Plate VII.

427. Another form of the same motive is the Persian idea of the tree of life, which stands in the lake of rain, Vourukasha. The seeds of this tree were mixed with water and by that the fertility of the earth was maintained. “Vendîdâd,” 5, 57, says: The waters flow “to the lake Vourukasha, down to the tree Hvâpa; there my trees of many kinds all grow. I cause these waters to rain down as food for the pure man, as fodder for the well-born cow. (Impregnation, in terms of the presexual stage.) Another tree of life is the white Haoma, which grows in the spring Ardvîçura, the water of life.” Spiegel: “Erân. Altertumskunde,” I, 465, 467.

428. Excellent examples of this are given in the work of Rank, “The Myth of the Birth of the Hero,” translated by Wm. White.

429. Shadows probably mean the soul, the nature of which is the same as libido. Compare with this Part I.

430. But I must mention that Nork (“Realwörterbuch,” sub. Theben und Schiff) pleads that Thebes is the ship city; his arguments are much attacked. From among his arguments I emphasize a quotation from Diodorus (I, 57), according to which Sesostris (whom Nork associates with Xisuthros) had consecrated to the highest god in Thebes a vessel 280 els long. In the dialogue of Lucius (Apuleius: “Metam.,” lib. II, 28), the night journey in the sea was used as an erotic figure of speech: “Hac enim sitarchia navigium Veneris indiget sola, ut in nocte pervigili et oleo lucerna et vino calix abundet” (For the ship of Venus needs this provision in order that during the night the lamp may abound with oil and the goblet with wine). The union of the coitus motive with the motive of pregnancy is to be found in the “night journey on the sea” of Osiris, who in his mother’s womb copulated with his sister.

431. Very illuminating psychologically is the method and the manner in which Jesus treats his mother, when he harshly repels her. Just as strong and intense as this, has the longing for her imago grown in his unconscious. It is surely not an accident that the name Mary accompanies him through life. Compare the utterance of Matthew x: 35: “I have come to set a man at variance with his father, a daughter with her mother. He who loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me.” This directly hostile purpose, which calls to mind the legendary rôle of Bertran de Born, is directed against the incestuous bond and compels man to transfer his libido to the Saviour, who, dying, returning into his mother and rising again, is the hero Christ.

432. Genitals.

433. The horns of the dragon have the following attributes: “They will prey upon woman’s flesh and they will burn with fire.” The horn, a phallic emblem, is in the unicorn the symbol of the Holy Ghost (Logos). The unicorn is hunted by the archangel Gabriel, and driven into the lap of the Virgin, by which was understood the immaculate conception. But the horns are also sun’s rays, therefore the sun-gods are often horned. The sun phallus is the prototype of the horn (sun wheel and phallus wheel), therefore the horn is the symbol of power. Here the horns “burn with fire” and prey upon the flesh; one recognizes in this a representation of the pains of hell where souls were burnt by the fire of the libido (unsatisfied longing). The harlot is “consumed” or burned by unsatisfied longing (libido). Prometheus suffers a similar fate, when the eagle, sun-bird (libido), tears his intestines: one might also say, that he was pierced by the “horn.” I refer to the phallic meaning of the spear.

434. In the Babylonian underworld, for example. The souls have a feathery coat like birds. See the Gilgamesh epic.

435. In a fourteenth-century Gospel at Bruges there is a miniature where the “woman” lovely as the mother of God stands with half her body in a dragon.

436. τὸ ἀρνίον, little ram, diminutive of the obsolete ἀρήν = ram. (In Theophrastus it occurs with the meaning of “young scion.”) The related word ἀρνίς designates a festival annually celebrated in honor of Linos, in which the λίνος, the lament called Linos, was sung as a lamentation for Linos, the new-born son of Psamathe and Apollo, torn to pieces by dogs. The mother had exposed her child out of fear of her father Krotopos. But for revenge Apollo sent a dragon, Poine, into Krotopos’ land. The oracle of Delphi commanded a yearly lament by women and maidens for the dead Linos. A part of the honor was given to Psamathe. The Linos lament is, as Herodotus shows (II, 79), identical with the Phœnician, Cyprian and Egyptian custom of the Adonis-(Tammuz) lament. As Herodotus observes, Linos is called Maneros in Egypt. Brugsch points out that Maneros comes from the Egyptian cry of lamentation, maa-n-chru: “come to the call.” Poine is characterized by her tearing the children from the womb of all mothers. This ensemble of motives is found again in the Apocalypse, xii: 1–5, where it treats of the woman, whose child was threatened by a dragon but was snatched away into the heavens. The child-murder of Herod is an anthropomorphism of this “primitive” idea.

The lamb means the son. (See Brugsch: “Die Adonisklage und das Linoslied,” Berlin 1852.) Dieterich (Abraxas: “Studien zur Religionsgeschichte des späteren Altertums,” 1891) refers for an explanation of this passage to the myth of Apollo and Python, which he reproduces as follows: “To Python, the son of earth, the great dragon, it was prophesied that the son of Leto would kill him; Leto was pregnant by Zeus: but Hera brought it about that she could give birth only there where the sun did not shine. When Python saw that Leto was pregnant, he began to pursue her in order to kill her, but Boreas brought Leto to Poseidon. The latter brought her to Ortygia and covered the island with the waves of the sea. When Python did not find Leto, he returned to Parnassus. Leto brought forth upon the island thrown up by Poseidon. The fourth day after the birth, Apollo took revenge and killed the Python.” The birth upon the hidden island belongs to the motive of the “night journey on the sea.” The typical character of the “island phantasy” has for the first time been correctly perceived by Riklin (1912 Jahrbuch, Vol. II, p. 246). A beautiful parallel for this is to be found, together with the necessary incestuous phantasy material, in H. de Vere Stacpool: “The Blue Lagoon.” A parallel to “Paul and Virginia.”

437. Revelation xxi: 2: “And the holy city, the new Jerusalem, I saw coming down from the heaven of God, prepared as a bride adorned for her bridegroom.”

438. The legend of Saktideva, in Somadeva Bhatta, relates that the hero, after he had escaped from being devoured by a huge fish (terrible mother), finally sees the golden city and marries his beloved princess (Frobenius, p. 175).

439. In the Apocryphal acts of St. Thomas (2nd century) the church is taken to be the virgin mother-spouse of Christ. In an invocation of the apostle, it is said:

Come, holy name of Christ, thou who art above all names.

Come, power of the highest and greatest mercy,

Come, dispenser of the greatest blessings,

Come, gracious mother.

Come, economy of the masculine.

Come, woman, thou who disclosest the hidden mysteries....

In another invocation it is said:

Come, greatest mercy,

Come, spouse (literally community) of the male,

Come, woman, thou who knowest the mystery of the elect,

Come, woman, thou who showest the hidden things

And who revealest the unspeakable things, holy

Dove, thou who bringest forth the twin nestling,

Come, mysterious mother, etc.

F. C. Conybeare: “Die jungfräuliche Kirche und die jungfräuliche Mutter.” Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, IX, 77. The connection of the church with the mother is not to be doubted, also the conception of the mother as spouse. The virgin is necessarily introduced to hide the incest idea. The “community with the male” points to the motive of the continuous cohabitation. The “twin nestlings” refer to the old legend, that Jesus and Thomas were twins. It plainly expresses the motive of the Dioscuri. Therefore, doubting Thomas had to place his finger in the wound at the side. Zinzendorf has correctly perceived the sexual significance of this symbol that hints at the androgynous nature of the primitive being (the libido). Compare the Persian legend of the twin trees Meschia and Mechiane, as well as the motive of the Dioscuri and the motive of cohabitation.

440. Compare Freud: “Dream Interpretation.” Also Abraham: “Dreams and Myths,” pp. 22 f.

441. The sea is the symbol of birth.

442. Isaiah xlviii:1. “Hear ye this, O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of Israel and are come forth out of the waters of Judah.”

443. Wirth: “Aus orientalischen Chroniken.”—The Greek “Materia” is ὕλη, which means wood and forest; it really means moist, from the Indo-Germanic root sū in ὕω, “to make wet, to have it rain”; ὑετός = rain; Iranian suth = sap, fruit, birth; Sanscrit súrā = brandy; sutus = pregnancy; sūte, sūyate = to generate; sutas = son; sūras = soma; υἱός = son; (Sanscrit, sūnús; gothic, sunus).

444. Κοίμημα means cohabitation, κοιμητήριον bedchamber, hence coemeterium = cemetery, enclosed fenced place.

445. Nork: “Realwörterbuch.”

446. In a myth of Celebes, a dove maiden who was caught in the manner of the swan maiden myth, was called Utahagi after a white hair which grew on its crown and in which there was magic strength. Frobenius, p. 307.