CHAPTER VIII THE SACRIFICE (continued 1)
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav) and Hinkle, Beatrice M.
Much could be said of it—
How his triumphant glance,
The happiest of all,
Was seen by his companions, even at the last.
· · · · ·
Therefore he sent the Spirit unto them,
And the house trembled, solemnly;
And, with distant thunder,
The storm of God rolled over the cowering heads
Where, deep in thought,
The heroes of death were assembled....
Now, when he, in parting,
Appeared once more before them,
Then the kingly day, the day of the sun, was put out,
And the gleaming sceptre, formed of his rays,
Was broken—and suffered like a god itself.
Yet it shall return and glow again
When the right time comes.”
The fundamental pictures are the sacrificial death and the resurrection of Christ, like the self-sacrifice of the sun, which voluntarily breaks its sceptre, the fructifying rays, in the certain hope of resurrection. The following comments are to be noted in regard to “the sceptre of rays”: Spielrein’s patient says, “God pierces through the earth with his rays.” The earth, in the patient’s mind, has the meaning of woman. She also comprehends the sunbeam in mythologic fashion as something solid: “Jesus Christ has shown me his love, by striking against the window with a sunbeam.” Among other insane patients I have come across the same idea of the solid substance of the sunbeam. Here there is also a hint of the phallic nature of the instrument which is associated with the hero. Thor’s hammer, which, cleaving the earth, penetrates deeply into it, may be compared to the foot of Kaineus. The hammer is retained in the interior of the earth, like the treasure, and, in the course of time, it gradually comes again to the surface (“the treasure blooms”), meaning that it was born again from the earth. (Compare what has been said concerning the etymology of “swelling.”) On many monuments Mithra holds a peculiar object in his hands, which Cumont compares to a half-filled tube. Dieterich proves from his papyrus text that the object is the shoulder of the bull, the bear constellation. The shoulder has an indirect phallic meaning, for it is the part which is wanting in Pelops. Pelops was slaughtered by his father, Tantalus, dismembered, and boiled in a kettle, to make a meal for the gods.
Demeter had unsuspectingly eaten the shoulder from this feast, when Zeus discovered the outrage. He had the pieces thrown back into the kettle, and, with the help of the life-dispensing Clotho, Pelops was regenerated, and the shoulder which was missing was replaced by an ivory one. This substitution is a close parallel to the substitution of the missing phallus of Osiris. Mithra is represented in a special ceremony, holding the bull’s shoulder over Sol, his son and vice-regent. This scene may be compared to a sort of dedication, or accolade (something like the ceremony of confirmation). The blow of the hammer as a generating, fructifying, inspiring function is retained as a folk-custom and expressed by striking with the twig of life, which has the significance of a charm of fertility. In the neuroses, the sexual meaning of castigation plays an important part, for among many children castigation may elicit a sexual orgasm. The ritual act of striking has the same significance of generating (fructifying), and is, indeed, merely a variant of the original phallic ceremonial. Of similar character to the bull’s shoulder is the cloven hoof of the devil, to which a sexual meaning also appertains. The ass’s jawbone wielded by Samson has the same worth. In the Polynesian Maui myth the jawbone, the weapon of the hero, is derived from the man-eating woman, Muriranga-whenua, whose body swells up enormously from lusting for human flesh (Frobenius). Hercules’ club is made from the wood of the maternal olive tree. Faust’s key also “knows the mothers.”
The libido springs from the mother, and with this weapon alone can man overcome death.
It corresponds to the phallic nature of the ass’s jawbone, that at the place where Samson threw it God caused a spring to gush forth[800] (springs from the horse’s tread, footsteps, horse’s hoof). To this relation of meanings belongs the magic wand, the sceptre in general. Σκῆτρον belongs to σκᾶπος, σκηπάνων, σκήπων = staff; σκηπτός = stormwind; Latin scapus = shaft, stock, scapula, shoulder; Old High German Scaft = spear, lance.[801] We meet once more in this compilation those connections which are already well known to us: Sun-phallus as tube of the winds, lance and shoulder-blade.
The passage from Asia through Patmos to the Christian mysteries in the poem of Hölderlin is apparently a superficial connection, but in reality a very ingenious train of thought; namely, the entrance into death and the land beyond as a self-sacrifice of the hero, for the attainment of immortality. At this time, when the sun has set, when love is apparently dead, man awaits in mysterious joy the renewal of all life:
“... And Joy it was
From now on
To live in the loving night and see
The eyes of innocence hold the unchanging
Depths of all wisdom.”
Wisdom dwells in the depths, the wisdom of the mother: being one with it, insight is obtained into the meaning of deeper things, into all the deposits of primitive times, the strata of which have been preserved in the soul. Hölderlin, in his diseased ecstasy, feels once more the greatness of the things seen, but he does not care to bring up to the light of day that which he had found in the depths—in this he differs from Faust.
“And it is not an evil, if a few
Are lost and never found, and if the speech
Conceals the living sound;
Because each godly work resembles ours;
And yet the Highest does not plan it all—
The great pit bears two irons,
And the glowing lava of Aetna....
Would I had the power
To build an image and see the Spirit—
See it as it was!”
He allows only one hope to glimmer through, formed in scanty words: