Psychology of the Unconscious A Study of the...

662. Orphic Hymn, 46. Compare Roscher: “Lexicon,” sect. on Iakchos.

663. A winnowing fan used as cradle.

664. A close parallel to this is the Japanese myth of Izanagi, who, following his dead spouse into the underworld, implored her to return. She is ready, but beseeches him, “Do not look at me.” Izanagi produces light with his reed, that is to say, with a masculine piece of wood (the fire-boring Phallus), and thus loses his spouse. (Frobenius: Ibid., p. 343.) Mother must be put in the place of spouse. Instead of the mother, the hero produces fire; Hiawatha, maize; Odin, Runes, when he in torment hung on the tree.

665. Quoted from De Jong: “Das antike Mysterienwesen.” Leiden 1910, p. 22.

666. A son-lover from the Demeter myth is Iasion, who embraces Demeter upon a thrice-ploughed cornfield. (Bridal couch in the pasture.) For that Iasion was struck by lightning by Zeus (Ovid: “Metam.,” IX).

667. In a sunless place.

668. Descend into a sunless desert place.

669. Descent into a cave.

670. See Cumont: “Textes et Monuments,” I, p. 56.

671. “Mithraslit.,” p. 123.

672. For example upon a Campana relief in Lovatelli (“Antichi monumenti,” Roma, 1889, I, IV, Fig. 5). Likewise the Veronese Priapus has a basket filled with phalli.

673. Compare Grimm: II, IV, p. 899: Either by the caressing or kissing of a dragon or a snake, the fearful animal was changed into a beautiful woman whom the hero wins in this way.

674. The mother, the earth, is the distributor of nourishment. The mother in presexual material has this meaning. Therefore St. Dominicus was nourished from the breasts of the mother of God. The sun wife, Namaqua, consists of bacon. Compare with this the megalomanic ideas of my patient, who asserted: “I am Germania and Helvetia made exclusively from ‘sweet butter’” (“Psychology of Dementia Praecox”).

675. He who achieved divinity through the womb.

676. He who achieved divinity through the womb; he is a serpent, and he was drawn through the womb of those who were being initiated.

677. The golden serpent is crowded into the breast of the initiates and is then drawn out through the lowest parts.

678. O Fœtus, he who is in the vagina or womb.

679. Compare the ideas of Nietzsche: “Piercing into one’s own pit,” etc. In a prayer to Hermes in a London papyrus it is said: ἐλθέ μοι, κύρίε Ἑρμῆ, ὡς τὰ βρέφη εἰς τὰς κοιλίας τῶν γυναικῶν (Come to me, Lord Hermes, as the foetus into the womb of the mother). Kenyon: “Greek Papyrus in the British Museum,” 1893, p. 116; Pap. CXXII, Z. 2 ff. Cited by Dieterich: Ibid., p. 97.

680. Compare De Jong: Ibid., p. 22.

681. The typical grain god of antiquity was Adonis, whose death and resurrection was celebrated annually. He was the son-lover of the mother, for the grain is the son and fructifier of the womb of the earth as Robertson very correctly remarks (“Evangelical Myths,” p. 36).

682. De Jong: Ibid., p. 14.

683. On a certain night an image is placed lying down in a litter; there is weeping and lamentations among the people, with beatings of bodies and tears. After a time, when they have become exhausted from the lamentations, a light appears; then the priest anoints the throats of all those who were weeping, and softly whispers, “Take courage, O initiates of the Redeemed Divinity; you shall achieve salvation through your grief.”

684. Faust:

“There whirls the press, like clouds on clouds unfolding,

Then with stretched arm swing high the key thou’rt holding!”

685. As an example among many, I mention here the Polynesian Rata myth cited by Frobenius: Ibid., pp. 64–66: “With a favorable wind the boat was sailing easily away over the Ocean, when Nganaoa called out one day: ‘O Rata, here is a fearful enemy who rises up from the Ocean!’ It was an open mussel of huge dimensions. One shell was in front of the boat, the other behind it, and the vessel was directly between. The next moment the horrible mussel would have clapped its shells together and ground the boat and occupants to pieces in its grip. But Nganaoa was prepared for this possibility. He grasped his long spear and quickly plunged it into the belly of the animal so that the creature, instead of snapping together, at once sank back to the bottom of the sea. After they had escaped from this danger they continued on their way. But after a while the voice of the always watchful Nganaoa was again to be heard. ‘O Rata, once more a terrible enemy rushes upwards from the depths of the ocean.’ This time it was a mighty octopus, whose gigantic tentacles already surrounded the boat, in order to destroy it. At this critical moment, Nganaoa seized his spear, and plunged it into the head of the octopus. The tentacles sank away limp and the dead monster rose to the surface of the water. Once more they continued on their journey, but a yet greater danger awaited them. One day the valiant Nganaoa called out, ‘O Rata, here is a great whale!’ The huge jaws were wide open, the lower jaw was already under the boat, and the upper one over it.

One moment more and the whale would have devoured them. Now Nganaoa ‘the dragon slayer’ broke his spear into two parts, and at the moment when the whale was about to devour them, he stuck the two pieces into the jaws of the foe so that he could not close his jaws. Nganaoa quickly sprang into the jaws of the great whale (devouring of the hero) and looked into its belly, and what did he see? There sat both his parents, his father, Tairitokerau, and his mother, Vaiaroa, who had been gulped down into the depths of this monster. The oracle has come true. The voyage has come to its end. Great was the joy of the parents of Nganaoa when they saw their son. They were convinced that their freedom was at hand. And Nganaoa resolved upon revenge. He took one of the two pieces from the jaws of the animal—one was enough to make it impossible for the whale to close his jaws and so keep a passage free for Nganaoa and his parents. He broke this part of the spear in two, in order to use them as wood to produce fire by rubbing. He commanded his father to hold one firmly below, while he himself managed the upper one, until the fire began to glimmer (production of fire). Now when he blew this into flames, he hastened to heat the fatty part (heart) of the belly with the fire. The monster, writhing with pain, sought help swimming to the nearest land (journey in the sea). As soon as he reached the sandbank (land) father, mother and son walked onto the land through the open jaws of the dying whale (slipping out of the hero).”

686. In the New Zealand Maui myth (quoted by Frobenius: Ibid., p. 66 ff.) the monster to be conquered is the grandmother Hine-nui-te-po. Maui, the hero, says to the birds who assist him: “My little friends, now when I creep into the jaws of the old woman, you must not laugh, but when I have been in and come out again, from her mouth, then you may greet me with jubilant laughter.” Then Maui actually creeps into the mouth of the sleeping old woman.

687. Published and prepared by Julius v. Negelein, in “Relig. Geschichte.” Vers. u. Vorarb. von Dieterich und Wünsch, Vol. XI. Giessen 1912.

688. Quoted, J. v. Negelein: “Der Traumschlüssel des Jagaddeva,” p. 256.

689. The pine-tree speaks the significant word, “Minne-wawa!”

690. In a fairy tale, the bird comes to the tree which grows upon the grave of the mother in order to give help.

691. Roscher: s. “Picus,” Sp. 2494, 62. Probably a symbol of rebirth.

692. The father of Picus is called Sterculus or Sterculius, a name which is clearly derived from stercus = excrementum; he is also said to be the devisor of manure. The primitive creator who also created the mother did so in the manner of infantile creation, which we have previously learned. The supreme god laid an egg, his mother, from which he was again produced—this is an analogous train of thought.

693. Introversion = to enter the mother; to sink into one’s own inner-world, or source of the libido, is symbolized by creeping in, passing through, boring. (Scratching behind the ear = making fire.) Boring into the ear, scratching with the nails, swallowing serpents. Thus the Buddhist legend is understandable. When Gautama had spent the whole day sitting in deep reflection under the sacred tree, at evening he became Buddha, the illumined one.

694. Compare φαλλός (phallus) above and its etymological connection.

695. Spielrein’s patient received from God three wounds through her head, breast and eye. “Then there came a resurrection of the Spirit” (Jahrbuch, III, p. 376).

In the Tibetan myth of Bogda Gesser Khan the sun-hero shoots his arrow into the forehead of the demoniacal old woman, who devours it and spits it up again. In a Calmuc myth, the hero shoots the arrow into the eye emitting rays, which is found on the forehead of the bull. Compare with that the victory of Polyphemus, whose character is signified upon an Attic vase because with it there is also a snake (as symbol of the mother. See the explanation of the sacrificium Mithriacum).

696. In the form of the father, for Megissogwon is the demon of the west, like Mudjekeewis.

697. Compare Deussen: “Geschichte der Philosophie,” Vol. I, p. 14.