Psychology of the Unconscious / A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. A Contribution to the History of the Evolution of Thought

by C. G. Jung

INTRODUCTION

[1]. “Science of Language,” first series, p. 25.

[2]. “Creative Evolution.”

[3]. For a more complete presentation of Jung’s views consult his “Theory of Psychoanalysis” in the Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series, No. 19.

[4]. He is said to have killed himself when he heard that she whom he so passionately adored was his mother.

[5]. “Wish Fulfilment and Symbolism in Fairy Tales.” Tr. by W. A. White, M.D.

[6]. “Dream and Myth.” Deuticke, Wien 1909.

[7]. “The Myth of the Birth of the Hero.”

[8]. “Die Symbolik in den Legenden, Märchen, Gebräuchen und Träumen.” Psychiatrisch.-Neurologische Wochenschrift, X. Jahrgang.

[9]. “On the Nightmare.” Amer. Journ. of Insanity, 1910.

[10]. Jahrbuch, 1910, Pt. II.

[11]. “Die Frömmigkeit des Grafen Ludwig von Zinzendorf. Ein psychoanalytischer Beitrag zur Kenntnis der religiösen Sublimationprozesse und zur Erklärung des Pietismus.” Deuticke, Wien 1910. We have a suggestive hint in Freud’s work, “Eine Kindheitserinnerung des Leonardo da Vinci.” Deuticke, Wien 1910.

[12]. Compare Rank in Jahrbuch, Pt. II, p. 465.

CHAPTER I

[13]. Compare Liepmann, “Über Ideenflucht,” Halle 1904; also Jung, “Diagnost. Assoc. Stud.,” p. 103: “Denken als Unterordnung unter eine herrschende Vorstellung”; compare Ebbinghaus, “Kultur der Gegenwart,” p. 221. Külpe (“Gr. d. Psychologie,” p. 464) expresses himself in a similar manner: “In thinking it is a question of an anticipatory apperception which sometimes governs a greater, sometimes a smaller circle of individual reproductions, and is differentiated from accidental motives of reproduction only by the consequence with which all things outside this circle are held back or repressed.”

[14]. In his “Psychologia empirica meth. scientif. pertract.,” etc., 1732, p. 23, Christian Wolff says simply and precisely: “Cogitatio est actus animae quo sibi rerumque aliarum extra se conscia est.”

[15]. The moment of adaptation is emphasized especially by William James in his definition of reasoning: “Let us make this ability to deal with novel data the technical differentia of reasoning. This will sufficiently mark it out from common associative thinking, and will immediately enable us to say just what peculiarity it contains.”

[16]. “Thoughts are shadows of our experiences, always darker, emptier, simpler than these,” says Nietzsche. Lotze (“Logik,” p. 552) expresses himself in regard to this as follows: “Thought, left to the logical laws of its movement, encounters once more at the end of its regularly traversed course the things suppressed or hidden.”

[17]. Compare the remarks of Baldwin following in text. The eccentric philosopher Johann Georg Hamann (1730–88) even places intelligence and speech as identical (see Hamann’s writings, pub. by Roth, Berlin 1821). With Nietzsche intelligence fares even worse as “speech metaphysics” (Sprachmetaphysik). Friedrich Mauthner goes the furthest in this conception (“Sprache und Psychologie,” 1901). For him there exists absolutely no thought without speech, and speaking is thinking. His idea of the “fetish of the word” governing in science is worthy of notice.

[18]. Compare Kleinpaul: “Das Leben der Sprache,” 3 Bände. Leipzig 1893.

[19]. “Jardin d’Épicure,” p. 80.

[20]. Speech is generated by the intellect and in turn generates intellect.

[21]. It is difficult to calculate how great is the seductive influence of the primitive word-meaning upon a thought. “Anything which has even been in consciousness remains as an affective moment in the unconscious,” says Hermann Paul (“Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte,” 4th ed., 1909, p. 25). The old word-meanings have an after-effect, chiefly imperceptible, “within the dark chamber of the unconscious in the Soul” (Paul). J. G. Hamann, mentioned above, expresses himself unequivocably: “Metaphysics reduces all catchwords and all figures of speech of our empirical knowledge to empty hieroglyphics and types of ideal relations.” It is said that Kant learned some things from Hamann.

[22]. “Grundriss der Psychologie,” p. 365.

[23]. “Lehrbuch der Psychologie,” X, 26.

[24]. James Mark Baldwin: “Thought and Things, or Genetic Logic.”

[25]. In this connection I must refer to an experiment which Eberschweiler (Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, 1908) has made at my request, which discloses the remarkable fact that in an association experiment the intra-psychic association is influenced by phonetic considerations (“Untersuchungen über den Einfluss der sprachlichen Komponente auf die Assoziation,” Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie, 1908).

[26]. So at least this form of thought appears to Consciousness. Freud says in this connection (“The Interpretation of Dreams,” tr. by Brill, p. 418): “It is demonstrably incorrect to state that we abandon ourselves to an aimless course of ideas when we relinquish our reflections, and allow the unwilled ideas to emerge. It can be shown that we are able to reject only those end-presentations known to us, and that immediately upon the cessation of these unknown or, as we inaccurately say, unconscious end-presentations come into play which now determine the course of the unwilled ideas—a thought without end-presentation cannot be produced through any influence we can exert on our own psychic life.”

[27]. “Grundriss der Psychologie,” p. 464.

[28]. Behind this assertion stand, first of all, experiences taken from the field of the normal. The undirected thinking is very far removed from “meditation,” and especially so as far as readiness of speech is concerned. In psychological experiments I have frequently found that the subjects of the investigation—I speak only of cultivated and intelligent people, whom I have allowed to indulge in reveries, apparently unintentionally and without previous instruction—have exhibited affect-expressions which can be registered experimentally. But the basic thought of these, even with the best of intentions, they could express only incompletely or even not at all. One meets with an abundance of similar experiences in association experiments and psychoanalysis—indeed, there is hardly an unconscious complex which has not at some time existed as a phantasy in consciousness.

However, more instructive are the experiences from the domain of psychopathology. But those arising in the field of the hysterias and neuroses, which are characterized by an overwhelming transference tendency, are rarer than the experiences in the territory of the introversion type of neuroses and psychoses, which constitute by far the greater number of the mental derangements, at least the collected Schizophrenic group of Bleuler. As has already been indicated by the term “introversion,” which I briefly introduced in my study, “Konflikte der kindlichen Seele,” pp. 6 and 10, these neuroses lead to an overpowering autoerotism (Freud). And here we meet with this unutterable purely phantastic thinking, which moves in inexpressible symbols and feelings. One gets a slight impression of this when one seeks to examine the paltry and confused expressions of these people. As I have frequently observed, it costs these patients endless trouble and effort to put their phantasies into common human speech. A highly intelligent patient, who interpreted such a phantasy piece by piece, often said to me, “I know absolutely with what it is concerned, I see and feel everything, but it is quite impossible for me to find the words to express it.” The poetic and religious introversion gives rise to similar experiences; for example, Paul, in the Epistle to the Romans viii:26—“For we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession with groanings which cannot be uttered.”

[29]. Similarly, James remarks, “The great difference, in fact, between that simple kind of rational thinking which consists in the concrete objects of past experience merely suggesting each other, and reason distinctively so called, is this, that whilst the empirical thinking is only reproductive, reasoning is productive.”

[30]. Compare the impressive description of Petrarch’s ascent of Mt. Ventoux, by Jacob Burckhardt (“Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien,” 1869, p. 235):

“One now awaits a description of the view, but in vain, not because the poet is indifferent to it, but, on the contrary, because the impression affects him all too strongly. His entire past life, with all its follies, passes before him; he recalls that it is ten years ago to-day that he, as a young man, left Bologna, and he turns a yearning glance toward Italy. He opens a book—‘Confessions of St. Augustine,’ his companion at that time—and his eye falls upon this passage in the tenth chapter: ‘and the people went there and admired the high mountains, the wide wastes of the sea and the mighty downward rushing streams, and the ocean and the courses of the stars, and forgot themselves.’ His brother, to whom he reads these words, cannot comprehend why, at this point, he closes the book and is silent.”

[31]. Wundt gives a striking description of the scholastic method in his “Philosophische Studien,” XIII, p. 345. The method consists “first in this, that one realizes the chief aim of scientific investigation is the discovery of a comprehensive scheme, firmly established, and capable of being applied in a uniform manner to the most varied problems; secondly, in that one lays an excessive value upon certain general ideas, and, consequently, upon the word-symbols designating these ideas, wherefore an analysis of word-meanings comes, in extreme cases, to be an empty subtlety and splitting of hairs, instead of an investigation of the real facts from which the ideas are abstracted.”

[32]. The concluding passage in “Traumdeutung” was of prophetic significance, and has been brilliantly established since then through investigations of the psychoses. “In the psychoses these modes of operation of the psychic mechanism, normally suppressed in the waking state, again become operative, and then disclose their inability to satisfy our needs in the outer world.” The importance of this position is emphasized by the views of Pierre Janet, developed independently of Freud, and which deserve to be mentioned here, because they add confirmation from an entirely different side, namely, the biological. Janet makes the distinction in this function of a firmly organized “inferior” and “superior” part, conceived of as in a state of continuous transformation.

“It is really on this superior part of the functions, on their adaptation to present circumstances, that the neuroses depend. The neuroses are the disturbances or the checks in the evolution of the functions—the illnesses depending upon the morbid functioning of the organism. These are characterized by an alteration in the superior part of the functions, in their evolution and in their adaptation to the present moment—to the present state of the exterior world and of the individual, and also by the absence or deterioration of the old parts of these same functions.

“In the place of these superior operations there are developed physical, mental, and, above all, emotional disturbances. This is only the tendency to replace the superior operations by an exaggeration of certain inferior operations, and especially by gross visceral disturbances” (“Les Névroses,” p. 383).

The old parts are, indeed, the inferior parts of the functions, and these replace, in a purposeless fashion, the abortive attempts at adaptation. Briefly speaking, the archaic replaces the recent function which has failed. Similar views concerning the nature of neurotic symptoms are expressed by Claparède as well (“Quelques mots sur la définition de l’Hystérie,” Arch. de Psychol., I, VII, p. 169).

He understands the hysterogenic mechanism as a “Tendance à la réversion”—as a sort of atavistic manner of reaction.

[33]. I am indebted to Dr. Abraham for the following interesting communication: “A little girl of three and a half years had been presented with a little brother, who became the object of the well-known childish jealousy. Once she said to her mother, ‘You are two mammas; you are my mamma, and your breast is little brother’s mamma.’ She had just been looking on with great interest at the process of nursing.” It is very characteristic of the archaic thinking of the child for the breast to be designated as “mamma.”

[34]. Compare especially Freud’s thorough investigation of the child in his “Analyse der Phobie eines fünfjährigen Knaben,” 1912 Jahrbuch, Pt. I. Also my study, “Konflikte der kindlichen Seele,” 1912 Jahrbuch, Pt. II, p. 33.

[35]. “Human, All Too Human,” Vol. II, p. 27 and on.

[36]. “Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre,” Pt. II, p. 205.

[37]. “Der Künstler, Ansätze zu einer Sexualpsychologie,” 1907, p. 36.

[38]. Compare also Rank’s later book, “The Myth of the Birth of the Hero.”

[39]. “Wish Fulfilment and Symbolism in Fairy Tales,” 1908.

[40]. “Dreams and Myths.”

[41]. Compare with this “Konflikte der kindlichen Seele,” p. 6, foot.

[42]. Compare Abraham, “Dreams and Myths.” New York 1913. The wish for the future is represented as already fulfilled in the past. Later, the childish phantasy is again taken up regressively in order to compensate for the disillusionment of actual life.

[43]. Rank: “The Myth of the Birth of the Hero.”

[44]. Naturally, it could not be said that because this was an institution in antiquity, the same would recur in our phantasy, but rather that in antiquity it was possible for the phantasy so generally present to become an institution. This may be concluded from the peculiar activity of the mind of antiquity.

[45]. The Dioscuri married the Leucippides by theft, an act which, according to the ideas of higher antiquity, belonged to the necessary customs of marriage (Preller: “Griechische Mythologie,” 1854, Pt. II, p. 68).

[46]. See S. Creuzer: “Symbolik und Mythologie,” 1811, Pt. III, p. 245.

[47]. Compare also the sodomitic phantasies in the “Metamorphoses” of Apuleius. In Herculaneum, for example, corresponding sculptures have been found.

[48]. Ferrero: “Les lois psychologiques du symbolisme.”

[49]. With the exception of the fact that the thoughts enter consciousness already in a high state of complexity, as Wundt says.

[50]. Schelling: “Philosophie der Mythologie,” Werke, Pt. II, considers the “preconscious” as the creative source, also H. Fichte (“Psychologie,” I, p. 508) considers the preconscious region as the place of origin of the real content of dreams.

[51]. Compare, in this connection, Flournoy: “Des Indes à la planète Mars.” Also Jung: “Zur Psychologie und Pathologie sogenannter okkulter Phänomene,” and “Über die Psychologie der Dementia praecox.” Excellent examples are to be found in Schreber: “Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken.” Mutze, Leipzig.

[52]. “Jardin d’Épicure.”

[53]. The figure of Judas acquires a great psychological significance as the priestly sacrificer of the Lamb of God, who, by this act, sacrifices himself at the same time. (Self-destruction.) Compare Pt. II of this work.

[54]. Compare with this the statements of Drews (“The Christ Myth”), which are so violently combated by the blindness of our time. Clear-sighted theologians, like Kalthoff (“Entstehung des Christentums,” 1904), present as impersonal a judgment as Drews. Kalthoff says, “The sources from which we derive our information concerning the origin of Christianity are such that in the present state of historical research no historian would undertake the task of writing the biography of an historical Jesus.” Ibid., p. 10: “To see behind these stories the life of a real historical personage, would not occur to any man, if it were not for the influence of rationalistic theology.” Ibid., p. 9: “The divine in Christ, always considered an inner attribute and one with the human, leads in a straight line backward from the scholarly man of God, through the Epistles and Gospels of the New Testament, to the Apocalypse of Daniel, in which the theological imprint of the figure of Christ has arisen. At every single point of this line Christ shows superhuman traits; nowhere is He that which critical theology wished to make Him, simply a natural man, an historic individual.”

[55]. Compare J. Burckhardt’s letter to Albert Brenner (pub. by Hans Brenner in the Basle Jahrbuch, 1901): “I have absolutely nothing stored away for the special interpretation of Faust. You are well provided with commentaries of all sorts. Hark! let us at once take the whole foolish pack back to the reading-room from whence they have come. What you are destined to find in Faust, that you will find by intuition. Faust is nothing else than pure and legitimate myth, a great primitive conception, so to speak, in which everyone can divine in his own way his own nature and destiny. Allow me to make a comparison: What would the ancient Greeks have said had a commentator interposed himself between them and the Oedipus legend? There was a chord of the Oedipus legend in every Greek which longed to be touched directly and respond in its own way. And thus it is with the German nation and Faust.”

[56]. I will not conceal the fact that for a time I was in doubt whether I dare venture to reveal through analysis the intimate personality which the author, with a certain unselfish scientific interest, has exposed to public view. Yet it seemed to me that the writer would possess an understanding deeper than any objections of my critics. There is always some risk when one exposes one’s self to the world. The absence of any personal relation with Miss Miller permits me free speech, and also exempts me from those considerations due woman which are prejudicial to conclusions. The person of the author is on that account just as shadowy to me as are her phantasies; and, like Odysseus, I have tried to let this phantom drink only enough blood to enable it to speak, and in so doing betray some of the secrets of the inner life.

I have not undertaken this analysis, for which the author owes me but little thanks, for the pleasure of revealing private and intimate matters, with the accompanying embarrassment of publicity, but because I wished to show the secret of the individual as one common to all.

CHAPTER II

[57]. A very beautiful example of this is found in C. A. Bernoulli: “Franz Overbeck und Friedrich Nietzsche. Eine Freundschaft,” 1908 (Pt. I, p. 72). This author depicts Nietzsche’s behavior in Basle society: “Once at a dinner he said to the young lady at his side, ‘I dreamed a short time ago that the skin of my hand, which lay before me on the table, suddenly became like glass, shiny and transparent, through which I saw distinctly the bones and the tissues and the play of the muscles. All at once I saw a toad sitting on my hand and at the same time I felt an irresistible compulsion to swallow the beast. I overcame my terrible aversion and gulped it down.’ The young lady laughed. ‘And do you laugh at that?’ Nietzsche asked, his deep eyes fixed on his companion, half questioning, half sorrowful. The young lady knew intuitively that she did not wholly understand that an oracle had spoken to her in the form of an allegory and that Nietzsche had revealed to her a glimpse into the dark abyss of his inner self.” On page 166 Bernoulli continues as follows: “One can perhaps see, behind that harmless pleasure of faultless exactness in dress, a dread of contamination arising from some mysterious and tormenting disgust.”

Nietzsche went to Basle when he was very young; he was then just at the age when other young people are contemplating marriage. Seated next to a young woman, he tells her that something terrible and disgusting is taking place in his transparent hand, something which he must take completely into his body. We know what illness caused the premature ending of Nietzsche’s life. It was precisely this which he would tell the young lady, and her laughter was indeed discordant.

[58]. A whole series of psychoanalytic experiences could easily be produced here to illustrate this statement.

[59]. Ferenczi: “Introjektion und Übertragung,” Jahrbuch, Pt. I (1912).

CHAPTER III

[60]. The choice of words and comparisons is always significant. A psychology of travels and the unconscious forces co-operating with them is yet to be written.

[61]. This mental disturbance had until recently the very unfortunate designation, Dementia Praecox, given by Kraepelin. It is extremely unfortunate that this malady should have been discovered by the psychiatrists, for its apparently bad prognosis is due to this circumstance. Dementia praecox is synonymous with therapeutic hopelessness. How would hysteria appear if judged from the standpoint of psychiatry! The psychiatrist naturally sees in the institutions only the worst cases of dementia praecox, and as a consequence of his therapeutic helplessness he must be a pessimist. How deplorable would tuberculosis appear if the physician of an asylum for the incurable described the nosology of this disease! Just as little as the chronic cases of hysteria, which gradually degenerate in insane asylums, are characteristic of real hysteria, just so little are the cases of dementia praecox in asylums characteristic of those early forms so frequent in general practice, and which Janet has described under the name of Psychasthenia. These cases fall under Bleuler’s description of Schizophrenia, a name which connotes a psychological fact, and might easily be compared with similar facts in hysteria. The term which I use in my private work for these conditions is Introversion Neurosis, by which, in my opinion, the most important characteristic of the condition is given, namely, the predominance of introversion over transference, which latter is the characteristic feature of hysteria.

In my “Psychology of Dementia Praecox” I have not made any study of the relationship of the Psychasthenia of Janet. Subsequent experience with Dementia Praecox, and particularly the study of Psychasthenia in Paris, have demonstrated to me the essential relationship of Janet’s group with the Introversion Neuroses (the Schizophrenia of Bleuler).

[62]. Compare the similar views in my article, “Über die Psychologie der Dementia praecox,” Halle 1907; and “Inhalt der Psychose,” Deuticke, Wien 1908. Also Abraham: “Die psychosexuellen Differenzen der Hysterie und der Dementia praecox,” Zentralblatt für Nervenheilkunde und Psychiatrie, 1908. This author, in support of Freud, defines the chief characteristic of dementia praecox as Autoerotism, which as I have asserted is only one of the results of Introversion.

[63]. Freud, to whom I am indebted for an essential part of this view, also speaks of “Heilungsversuch,” the attempt toward cure, the search for health.

[64]. Miss Miller’s publication gives no hint of any knowledge of psychoanalysis.

[65]. Here I purposely give preference to the term “Imago” rather than to the expression “Complex,” in order, by the choice of terminology, to invest this psychological condition, which I include under “Imago,” with living independence in the psychical hierarchy, that is to say, with that autonomy which, from a large experience, I have claimed as the essential peculiarity of the emotional complex. (Compare “The Psychology of Dementia Praecox.”) My critics, Isserlin especially, have seen in this view a return to medieval psychology, and they have, therefore, rejected it utterly. This “return” took place on my part consciously and intentionally because the phantastic, projected psychology of ancient and modern superstition, especially demonology, furnishes exhaustive evidence for this point of view. Particularly interesting insight and confirmation is given us by the insane Schreber in an autobiography (“Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken,” Mutze, Leipzig), where he has given complete expression to the doctrine of autonomy.

“Imago” has a significance similar on the one hand to the psychologically conceived creation in Spitteler’s novel “Imago,” and upon the other hand to the ancient religious conception of “imagines et lares.”

[66]. Compare my article, “Die Bedeutung des Vaters für das Schicksal des Einzelnen.”

[67]. As is well known, Anaxagoras developed the conception that the living primal power (Urpotenz) of νοῦς (mind) imparts movement, as if by a blast of wind, to the dead primal power (Urpotenz) of matter. There is naturally no mention of sound. This νοῦς, which is very similar to the later conception of Philo, the λόγος σπερματικός of the Gnostics and the Pauline πνεῦμα (spirit) as well as to the πνεῦμα of the contemporary Christian theologians, has rather the old mythological significance of the fructifying breath of the winds, which impregnated the mares of Lusitania, and the Egyptian vultures. The animation of Adam and the impregnation of the Mother of God by the πνεῦμα are produced in a similar manner. The infantile incest phantasy of one of my patients reads: “the father covered her face with his hands and blew into her open mouth.”

[68]. Haydn’s “Creation” might be meant.

[69]. See Job xvi: 1–11.

[70]. I recall the case of a young insane girl who continually imagined that her innocence was suspected, from which thought she would not allow herself to be dissuaded. Gradually there developed out of her defensive attitude a correspondingly energetic positive erotomania.

[71]. Compare the preceding footnote with the text of Miss Miller’s.

[72]. The case is published in “Zur Psychologie und Pathologie sogenannter okkulter Phänomene.” Mutze, Leipzig 1902.

[73]. Compare Freud’s “Analyse der Phobie eines fünfjährigen Knaben,” Jahrbuch, Vol. I, 1st half; also Jung: “Konflikte der kindlichen Seele,” Jahrbuch, II, Vol. I.

[74]. Others do not make use of this step, but are directly carried away by Eros.

[75]. The heaven above, the heaven below, the sky above, the sky below, all things above, all things below, decline and rise.

[76]. “La sagesse et la destinée.”

[77]. This time I shall hardly be spared the reproach of mysticism. But perhaps the facts should be further considered; doubtless the unconscious contains material which does not rise to the threshold of consciousness. The analysis dissolves these combinations into their historical determinants, for it is one of the essential tasks of analysis to render impotent by dissolution the content of the complexes competing with the proper conduct of life. Psychoanalysis works backwards like the science of history. Just as the largest part of the past is so far removed that it is not reached by history, so too the greater part of the unconscious determinants is unreachable. History, however, knows nothing of two kinds of things, that which is hidden in the past and that which is hidden in the future. Both perhaps might be attained with a certain probability; the first as a postulate, the second as an historical prognosis. In so far as to-morrow is already contained in to-day, and all the threads of the future are in place, so a more profound knowledge of the past might render possible a more or less far-reaching and certain knowledge of the future. Let us transfer this reasoning, as Kant has already done, to psychology. Then necessarily we must come to the same result. Just as traces of memory long since fallen below the threshold of consciousness are accessible in the unconscious, so too there are certain very fine subliminal combinations of the future, which are of the greatest significance for future happenings in so far as the future is conditioned by our own psychology. But just so little as the science of history concerns itself with the combinations for the future, which is the function of politics, so little, also, are the psychological combinations for the future the object of analysis; they would be much more the object of an infinitely refined psychological synthesis, which attempts to follow the natural current of the libido. This we cannot do, but possibly this might happen in the unconscious, and it appears as if from time to time, in certain cases, significant fragments of this process come to light, at least in dreams. From this comes the prophetic significance of the dream long claimed by superstition.

The aversion of the scientific man of to-day to this type of thinking, hardly to be called phantastic, is merely an overcompensation to the very ancient and all too great inclination of mankind to believe in prophesies and superstitions.

[78]. Dreams seem to remain spontaneously in the memory just so long as they give a correct résumé of the psychologic situation of the individual.

[79]. How paltry are the intrinsic ensemble and the detail of the erotic experience, is shown by this frequently varied love song which I quote in its epirotic form:

Epirotic Love Song

(Zeitschrift des Vereines für Volkskunde, XII, p. 159.)

O Maiden, when we kissed, then it was night; who saw us?

A night Star saw us, and the moon,

And it leaned downward to the sea, and gave it the tidings,

Then the Sea told the rudder, the rudder told the sailor,

The sailor put it into song, then the neighbor heard it,

Then the priest heard it and told my mother,

From her the father heard it, he got in a burning anger,

They quarrelled with me and commanded me and they have forbidden me

Ever to go to the door, ever to go to the window.

And yet I will go to the window as if to my flowers,

And never will I rest till my beloved is mine.

[80]. Job xli: 13 (Leviathan).

“21. His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth.

“22. In his neck remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned into joy before him.

“24. His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the nether millstone.

“25. When he raiseth up himself, the mighty are afraid: by reason of breakings they purify themselves.

“33. Upon earth there is not his like who is made without fear.

“34. He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride.”

Chapter xlii.

“1. Then Job answered the Lord, and said,

“2. I know that thou canst do everything, and that no thought can be withholden from thee.”

[81]. The theriomorphic attributes are lacking in the Christian religion except as remnants, such as the Dove, the Fish and the Lamb. The latter is also represented as a Ram in the drawings in the Catacombs. Here belong the animals associated with the Evangelists which particularly need historical explanation. The Eagle and the Lion were definite degrees of initiation in the Mithraic mysteries. The worshippers of Dionysus called themselves βόες because the god was represented as a bull; likewise the ἄρκτοι of Artemis, conceived of as a she-bear. The Angel might correspond to the ἡλιόδρομοι of the Mithras mysteries. It is indeed an exquisite invention of the Christian phantasy that the animal coupled with St. Anthony is the pig, for the good saint was one of those who were subjected to the devil’s most evil temptations.

[82]. Compare Pfister’s notable article: “Die Frömmigkeit des Grafen Ludwig von Zinzendorf.” Wien 1910.

[83]. The Book of Job, originating at a later period under non-Jewish influences, is a striking presentation of individual projection psychology.

[84]. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (I John i: 8).

[85]. “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah liii: 4).

[86]. “Bear ye one another’s burdens” (Galatians vi: 2).

[87]. God is Love, corresponding to the platonic “Eros” which unites humanity with the transcendental.

[88]. Compare Reitzenstein (“Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen,” Leipzig and Berlin 1910, p. 20): “Among the various forms with which a primitive people have represented the highest religious consecration, union with God, belongs necessarily that of the sexual union, in which man attributes to his semen the innermost nature and power of God. That which was in the first instance wholly a sensual act becomes in the most widely separated places, independently, a sacred act, in which the god is represented by a human deputy or his symbol the Phallus.”

[89]. Take as an example among many others the striking psychologic description of the fate of Alypius, in the “Confessions” of St. Augustine (Bk. VI, Ch. 7): “Only the moral iniquity of Carthage, expressed in the absolute wildness of its worthless spectacles, had drawn him down into the whirlpool of this misery. [Augustine, at that time a teacher of Logic, through his wisdom had converted Alypius.] He rose up after those words from the depths of the mire, into which he had willingly let himself be submerged, and which had blinded him with fatal pleasure. He stripped the filth from off his soul with courageous abstemiousness. All the snares of the Hippodrome no longer perplexed him. Thereupon Alypius went to Rome in order to study law; there he became a backslider. He was transported to an unbelievable degree by an unfortunate passion for gladiatorial shows. Although in the beginning he abominated and cursed these shows, one evening some of his friends and fellow-students, whom he met after they had dined, in spite of his passionate refusals and the exertion of all the power of his resistance, dragged him with friendly violence to the Amphitheatre on the occasion of a cruel and murderous exhibition. At the time he said to them, ‘If you drag my body to that place and hold it there, can you turn my mind and my eyes to that spectacle?’ In spite of his supplications they dragged him with them, eager to know if he would be able to resist the spectacle. When they arrived they sat down where place was still left, and all glowed with inhuman delight. He closed his eyes and forbade his soul to expose itself to such danger. O, if he had also stopped up his ears! When some one fell in combat and all the people set up a mighty shout, he stifled his curiosity and prepared proudly to scorn the sight, confident that he could view the spectacle if he so desired. And his soul was overcome with terrible wounds, like the wounds of the body which he desired to see, and souls more miserable than the one whose fall had caused the outcry, which pressing through his ears, had opened his eyes, so that his weakness had been bared. Through this he could be struck and thrown down, for he had the feeling of confidence more than strength, and he was the weaker because he trusted himself to this and not to Thee. When he saw the blood, then at the same time he drew in the desire for blood, and no longer turned away but directed his looks thither. The fury took possession of him and yet he did not know it; he took delight in the wicked combat and was intoxicated by the bloody pleasure. Now he was no longer the same as when he had come, and he was the true accomplice of those who first had dragged him there. What more is there to say? He saw, he cried out, he was inflamed, and he carried away with him the insane longing, which enticed him again to return, not only in the company of those who first had dragged him with them, but going ahead of all and leading others.”

[90]. Destiny.

[91]. Compare the prayer of the so-called Mithraic Liturgy (pub. by Dieterich). There, characteristic places are to be found, such for instance as: τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης μου ψυχικῆς δυνάμεως ἤν ἐγὼ πάλιν μεταπαραλήμψομαι μετὰ τὴν ἐνεστῶσαν καὶ κατεπείγουσάν με πικρὰν ἀνάγκην ἁχρεοκόπητον (The human soul force which I, weighed down by guilt, would again attain, because of the present bitter need oppressing me), ἐπικαλοῦμαι ἕνεκα τῆς κατεπειγούσης καὶ πικρᾶς ἀπαραιτήτου ἀνάγκης (On account of the oppressing bitter and inexorable need).

From the speech of the High Priest (Apuleius: “Metamorphoses,” lib. XI, 248) a similar train of thought may be gathered. The young philosopher Lucius was changed into an ass, that continuously rutting animal which Isis hated. Later he was released from the enchantment and initiated into the mysteries of Isis. When he was freed from the spell the priest speaks as follows: “Lubrico virentis aetatulae, ad serviles delapsus voluptates, curiositatis improsperae sinistrum praemium reportasti.—Nam in eos, quorum sibi vitas servitium Deae nostrae majestas vindicavit, non habet locum casus infestus—in tutelam jam receptus es Fortunae, sed videntis” (But falling into the slavery of pleasure, in the wantonness of buxom youth, you have reaped the inauspicious reward of your ill-fated curiosity—for direful calamity has no power over those whose lives the majesty of our Goddess has claimed for her own service.—You are now received under the guardianship of fortune, but of a fortune who can see). In the prayer to the Queen of Heaven, Isis, Lucius says: “Qua fatorum etiam inextricabiliter contorta retractas licia et Fortunae tempestates mitigas, et stellarum noxios meatus cohibes” (By which thou dost unravel the inextricably entangled threads of the fates, and dost assuage the tempests of fortune and restrain the malignant influences of the stars).—Generally it was the purpose of the rite to destroy the “evil compulsion of the star” by magic power.

The power of fate makes itself felt unpleasantly only when everything goes against our will; that is to say when we no longer find ourselves in harmony with ourselves. As I endeavored to show in my article, “Die Bedeutung des Vaters,” etc., the most dangerous power of fate lies in the infantile libido fixation, localized in the unconscious. The power of fate reveals itself at closer range as a compulsion of the libido; wherefore Maeterlinck justly says that a Socrates could not possibly be a tragic hero of the type of Hamlet. In accordance with this conception the ancients had already placed εἱμαρμένη (destiny) in relation to “Primal Light,” or “Primal Fire.” In the Stoic conception of the primal cause, the warmth spread everywhere, which has created everything and which is therefore Destiny. (Compare Cumont: “Mysterien des Mithra,” p. 83.) This warmth is, as will later be shown, a symbol of the libido. Another conception of the Ananke (necessity) is, according to the Book of Zoroaster, περὶ φύσεως (concerning nature), that the air as wind had once a connection with fertility. I am indebted to Rev. Dr. Keller of Zurich for calling my attention to Bergson’s conception of the “durée créatrice.”

[92]. Power for putting in motion.

[93]. Schiller says in “Wallenstein”: “In your breast lie the constellations of your fate.” “Our fates are the result of our personality,” says Emerson in his “Essays.” Compare with this my remarks in “Die Bedeutung des Vaters.”

[94]. The ascent to the “Idea” is described with unusual beauty in Augustine (Bk. X, Ch. 8). The beginning of Ch. 8 reads: “I will raise myself over this force of my nature, step by step ascending to Him who has made me. I will come to the fields and the spacious palaces of my memory.”

[95]. The followers of Mithra also called themselves Brothers. In philosophical speech Mithra was Logos emanating from God. (Cumont: “Myst. des Mithra,” p. 102.)

Besides the followers of Mithra there existed many Brotherhoods which were called Thiasai and probably were the organizations from which the Church developed later. (A. Kalthoff: “Die Entstehung des Christentums.”)

[96]. Augustine, who stood in close relation to that period of transition not only in point of time but also intellectually, writes in his “Confessions” (Bk. VI, Ch. 16):

“Nor did I, unhappy, consider from what source it sprung, that even on these things, foul as they were, I with pleasure discoursed with my carnal pleasures. And yet these friends I loved for themselves only, and friends; nor could I, even according to the notions I then had of happiness, be happy without friends, amid what abundance soever of I felt that I was beloved of them for myself only. O, crooked paths! Woe to the audacious soul, which hoped, by forsaking Thee, to gain some better thing! Turned it hath, and turned again, upon back, sides, and belly, yet all was painful, and Thou alone rest!” (Trans. by Pusey.)

It is not only an unpsychologic but also an unscientific method of procedure to characterize offhand such effects of religion as suggestion. Such things are to be taken seriously as the expression of the deepest psychologic need.

[97]. Both religions teach a pronounced ascetic morality, but at the same time a morality of action. The last is true also of Mithracism. Cumont says that Mithracism owed its success to the value of its morale: “This stimulated to action in an extraordinary degree” (“Myst. des Mithra”). The followers of Mithra formed a “sacred legion” for battle against evil, and among them were virgins (nuns) and continents (ascetics). Whether these brotherhoods had another meaning—that is, an economic-communistic one—is something I will not discuss now. Here only the religious-psychologic aspects interest us. Both religions have in common the idea of the divine sacrifice. Just as Christ sacrificed himself as the Lamb of God, so did Mithra sacrifice his Bull. This sacrifice in both religions is the heart of the Mysteries. The sacrificial death of Christ means the salvation of the world; from the sacrifice of the bull of Mithra the entire creation springs.

[98]. This analytic perception of the roots of the Mystery Religions is necessarily one-sided, just as is the analysis of the basis of the religious poem. In order to understand the actual causes of the repression in Miss Miller one must delve into the moral history of the present; just as one is obliged to seek in the ancient moral and economic history the actual causes of repression which have given rise to the Mystery cults. This investigation has been brilliantly carried out by Kalthoff. (See his book, “Die Entstehung des Christentums,” Leipzig 1904.) I also refer especially to Pohlmann’s “Geschichte des antiken Kommunismus und Sozialismus”; also to Bücher: “Die Aufstände der unfreien Arbeiter 143 bis 129 v. Chr.,” 1874.

The other cause of the enormous introversion of the libido in antiquity is probably to be found in the fact that an unbelievably large part of the people suffered in the wretched state of slavery. It is inevitable that finally those who bask in good fortune would be infected in the mysterious manner of the unconscious, by the deep sorrow and still deeper misery of their brothers, through which some were driven into orgiastic furies. Others, however, the better ones, sank into that strange world-weariness and satiety of the intellectuals of that time. Thus from two sources the great introversion was made possible.

[99]. Compare Freud: “The Interpretation of the Dream.”

[100]. Compare Freud: “Sublimation,” in “Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory.”

[101]. In a manner which is closely related to my thought, Kalthoff (“Entstehung des Christentums”) understands the secularizing of the religious interest as a new incarnation of the λόγος (word). He says: “The profound grasp of the soul of nature evidenced in modern painting and poetry, the living intuitive feeling which even science in its most austere works can no longer do without, enables us easily to understand how the Logos of Greek philosophy which assigned its place in the world to the old Christ type, clothed in its world-to-come significance celebrated a new incarnation.”

[102]. It seems, on account of the isolation of the cult, that this fact was the cause of its ruin as well, because the eyes of that time were blinded to the beauty of nature. Augustine (Bk. X, Ch. 6) very justly remarks: “But they [men] were themselves undone through love for her [creation].”

[103]. Augustine (ibid.): “But what do I love when I love Thee, Oh God? Not the bodily form, nor the earthly sweetness, nor the splendor of the light, so dear to these eyes; nor the sweet melodies of the richly varied songs; not the flowers and the sweet scented ointments and spices of lovely fragrance; not manna and honey; not the limbs of the body whose embraces are pleasant to the flesh. I do not love these when I love my God, and yet the light, the voice, the fragrance, the food, the embrace of my inner man; when these shine into my soul, which no space contains, which no time takes away, where there is a fragrance which the wind does not blow away, where there is a taste which no gluttony diminishes and where harmony abides which no satiety can remove—that is what I love, when I love my God.” (Perhaps a model for Zarathustra: “Die sieben Siegel,” Nietzsche’s works, VI, p. 33 ff.)

[104]. Cumont: “Die Mysterien des Mithra. Ein Beitrag zur Religionsgeschichte der römischen Kaiserzeit.” Übersetzt von Gehrich, Leipzig 1903, p. 109.

[105]. 41st Letter to Lucilius.

[106]. Ibid.

CHAPTER IV

[107]. Complexes are apt to be of the greatest stability, although their outward forms of manifestation change kaleidoscopically. A large number of experimental studies have entirely convinced me of this fact.

[108]. Julian the Apostate made the last, unsuccessful attempt to cause the triumph of Mithracism over Christianity.

[109]. This solution of the libido problem was brought about in a similar manner by the flight from the world during the first Christian century. (The cities of the Anchorites in the deserts of the Orient.) People mortified themselves in order to become spiritual and thus escape the extreme brutality of the decadent Roman civilization. Asceticism is forced sublimation, and is always to be found where the animal impulses are still so strong that they must be violently exterminated. The masked self-murder of the ascetic needs no further biologic proof.

Chamberlain (“Foundations of the Nineteenth Century”) sees in the problem a biologic suicide because of the enormous amount of illegitimacy among Mediterranean peoples at that time. I believe that illegitimacy tends rather to mediocrity and to living for pleasure. It appears after all that there were, at that time, fine and noble people who, disgusted with the frightful chaos of that period which was merely an expression of the disruption of the individual, put an end to their lives, and thus caused the death of the old civilization with its endless wickedness.

[110]. .sp 1

“The last age of Cumean prophecy has come already!

Over again the great series of the ages commences:

Now too returns the Virgin, return the Saturnian kingdoms;

Now at length a new progeny is sent down from high Heaven.

Only, chaste Lucina, to the boy at his birth be propitious,

In whose time first the age of iron shall discontinue,

And in the whole world a golden age arise: now rules thy Apollo.

“Under thy guidance, if any traces of our guilt continue,

Rendered harmless, they shall set the earth free from fear forever,

He shall partake of the life of the gods, and he shall see

Heroes mingled with gods, and he too shall be seen by them.

And he shall rule a peaceful world with his father’s virtues.”

[111]. Δίκη (Justice), daughter of Zeus and Themis, who, after the Golden Age, forsook the degenerate earth.

[112]. Thanks to this eclogue, Virgil later attained the honor of being a semi-Christian poet. To this he owes his position as guide to Dante.

[113]. Both are represented not only as Christian, but also as Pagan. Essener and Therapeuten were quasi orders of the Anchorites living in the desert. Probably, as, for instance, may be learned from Apuleius (“Metamorphoses,” lib. XI), there existed small settlements of mystics or consecrated ones around the sacred shrines of Isis and Mithra. Sexual abstinence and celibacy were also known.

[114]. .sp 1

“Below the hills, a marshy plain

Infects what I so long have been retrieving:

This stagnant pool likewise to drain

Were now my latest and my best achieving.

To many millions following let me furnish soil.”

The analogy of this expression with the quotation above is striking.

[115]. Compare Breuer and Freud: “Studien über Hysterie”; also Bleuler: “Die Psychoanalyse Freuds,” Jahrbuch, 1910, Vol. II, 2nd half.

[116]. Faust (in suicide monologue):

“Out on the open ocean speeds my dreaming!

The glassy flood before my feet is gleaming!

A new day beckons to a newer shore!

A fiery chariot, borne on buoyant pinions,

Sweeps near me now; I soon shall ready be

To pierce the ether’s high, unknown dominions,

To reach new spheres of pure activity!

This godlike rapture, this supreme existence

Do I, but now a worm, deserve to track?

Yes, resolute to reach some brighter distance;

On Earth’s fair sun I turn my back!

· · · · ·

Ah, that no wing can lift me from the soil,

Upon its tract to follow, follow soaring!

Then would I see eternal Evening gild

The silent world beneath me glowing.

· · · · ·

And now before mine eyes expands the ocean,

With all its bays in shining sleep!

· · · · ·

The new-born impulse fires my mind,

I hasten on, his beams eternal drinking.”

We see it is the same longing and the same sun.

[117]. Compare Jung: “Diagnost. Assoc. Stud.”; also “The Psychology of Dementia Praecox,” Chs. II and III.

[118]. According to the Christian conception God is Love.

[119]. Apuleius (“Met.,” lib. XI, 257): “At manu dextera gerebam flammis adultam facem: et caput decora corona cinxerat palmae candidae foliis in modum radiorum prosistentibus. Sic ad instar solis exornato et in vicem simulacri constituto” (Then in my right hand I carried a burning torch; while a graceful chaplet encircled my head, the shining leaves of the palm tree projecting from it like rays of light. Thus arrayed like the sun, and placed so as to resemble a statue).

[120]. The parallel in the Christian mysteries is the crowning with the crown of thorns, the exhibition and mocking of the Savior.

[121]. Sacred word.

[122]. I am a star wandering about with you, and flaming up from the depths.

[123]. In the same way the Sassanian Kings called themselves “Brothers of the Sun and of the Moon.” In Egypt the soul of every ruler was a reduplication of the Sun Horus, an incarnation of the sun.

[124]. “The rising at day out of the Underworld.” Erman: “Aegypten,” p. 409.

[125]. Compare the coronation above. Feather, a symbol of power. Feather crown, a crown of rays, halo. Crowning, as such, is an identification with the sun. For example, the spiked crown upon the Roman coins made its appearance at the time when the Cæsars were identified with Sol invictus (“Solis invicti comes”). The halo is the same, that is to say, an image of the sun, just as is the tonsure. The priests of Isis had smooth-shaven heads like stars. (See Apuleius, “Metamorphoses.”)

[126]. Compare with this my statements in “Über die Bedeutung des Vaters für das Schicksal des Einzelnen.” Deuticke, Wien.

[127]. In the text of the so-called Mithra Liturgy are these lines: “Εγώ εἴμι σύμπλανος ὑμῖν ἀστὴρ καὶ ἐκ τοῦ βάθους ἀναλάμπων—ταῦτά σον εἰπόντος εὐθέως ὁ δίσκος ἁπλωθήσεται” (I am a star wandering about with you and flaming up from the depths. When thou hast said this, immediately the disc of the sun will unfold). The mystic through his prayers implored the divine power to cause the disc of the sun to expand. In the same way Rostand’s “Chantecler” causes the sun to rise by his crowing.

“For verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you” (Matthew xvii: 20).

[128]. Compare especially the words of the Gospel of John: “I and my Father are one” (John x: 30). “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John xiv: 9). “Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me” (John xiv: 11). “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world; again, I leave the world, and go to the Father” (John xvi: 28). “I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God” (John xx: 17).

[129]. See the footnote on p. 137 of text.

[130]. Hear me, grant me my prayer—Binding together the fiery bolts of heaven with spirit, two-bodied fiery sky, creator of humanity, fire-breathing, fiery-spirited, spiritual being rejoicing in fire, beauty of humanity, ruler of humanity of fiery body, light-giver to men, fire-scattering, fire-agitated, life of humanity, fire-whirled, mover of men who confounds with thunder, famed among men, increasing the human race, enlightening humanity, conqueror of stars.

[131]. Two-bodied: an obscure epithet, if one does not admit that the dual life of the redeemed, taught in the mysteries of that time, was attributed to God, that is to say, to the libido. Compare the Pauline conception of the σῶμα σαρκικόν and πνευματικόν (carnal and spiritual body). In the Mithraic worship, Mithra seems to be the divine spirit, while Helios is the material god; to a certain extent the visible lieutenant of the divinity. Concerning the confusion between Christ and Sol, see below.

[132]. Compare Freud: “Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory.”

[133]. Renan (“Dialogues et fragments philosophiques,” p. 168) says: “Before religion had reached the stage of proclaiming that God must be put into the absolute and ideal, that is to say, beyond this world, one worship alone was reasonable and scientific: that was the worship of the sun.”

[134]. The path of the visible Gods will appear through the sun, the God my father.

[135]. Buber: “Ekstat. Konfess.,” p. 51 and on.

[136]. “Liebesgesänge an Gott,” cited by Buber: “Ekstat. Konfess.,” p. 40. An allied symbolism is found in Carlyle: “The great fact of existence is great to him. Fly as he will, he can not get out of the awful presence of this reality. His mind is so made; he is great by that first of all. Fearful and wonderful, real is life, real is death, is this universe to him. Though all men should forget its truth, and walk in a vain show, he can not. At all moments the Flame-image glares in upon him” (“Heroes and Hero-Worship”).

One can select from literature at random. For example, S. Friedländer (Berlin-Halensee) says in Jugend, 1910, No. 35, p. 823: “Her longing demands from the beloved only the purest. Like the sun, it burns to ashes with the flame of excessive life, which refuses to be light,” and so on.

[137]. Buber: Ibid., p. 45.

[138]. I emphasize this passage because its idea contains the psychological root of the “Wandering of the soul in Heaven,” the conception of which is very ancient. It is a conception of the wandering sun which from its rising to its setting wanders over the world. The wandering gods are representations of the sun, that is, symbols of the libido. This comparison is indelibly impressed in the human phantasy as is shown by the poem of Wesendonck:

Grief.

The sun, every evening weeping,

Reddens its beautiful eyes for you;

When early death seizes you,

Bathing in the mirror of the sea.

Still in its old splendor

The glory rises from the dark world;

You awaken anew in the morning

Like a proud conqueror.

Ah, why then should I lament,

When my heart, so heavy, sees you?

Must the sun itself despair?

Must the sun set?

And does death alone bear life?

Do griefs alone give joys?

O, how grateful I am that

Such pains have given me nature!

Another parallel is in the poem of Ricarda Huch:

As the earth, separating from the sun,

Withdraws in quick flight into the stormy night,

Starring the naked body with cold snow,

Deafened, it takes away the summer joy.

And sinking deeper in the shadows of winter,

Suddenly draws close to that which it flees,

Sees itself warmly embraced with rosy light

Leaning against the lost consort.

Thus I went, suffering the punishment of exile,

Away from your countenance, into the ancient place.

Unprotected, turning to the desolate north,

Always retreating deeper into the sleep of death;

And then would I awake on your heart,

Blinded by the splendor of the dawn.

[139]. Translated by Dr. T. G. Wrench.

[140]. After you have said the second prayer, when silence is twice commanded; then whistle twice and snap twice,[^[856]] and straightway you will see many five-pointed stars coming down from the sun and filling the whole lower air. But say once again—Silence! Silence! and you, Neophyte, will see the Circle and fiery doors cut off from the opening disc of the sun.

[141]. Five-fingered stars.

[142]. “Ecce Homo,” translated by A. M. Ludovici.

[143]. The water-god Sobk, appearing as a crocodile, was identified with Rê.

[144]. Erman: “Aegypten,” p. 354.

[145]. Erman: Ibid., p. 355.

[146]. Compare above ἀστέρας πενταδακτυλιαίους (“five-fingered stars”).

[147]. The bull Apis is a manifestation of Ptah. The bull is a well-known symbol of the sun.

[148]. Amon.

[149]. Sobk of Faijum.

[150]. The God of Dedu in the Delta, who was worshipped as a piece of wood. (Phallic.)

[151]. This reformation, which was inaugurated with much fanaticism, soon broke down.

[152]. Apuleius, “Met.,” lib. XI, p. 239.

[153]. It is noteworthy that the humanists too (I am thinking of an expression of the learned Mutianus Rufus) soon perceived that antiquity had but two gods, that is, a masculine god and a feminine god.

[154]. Not only was the light- or fire-substance ascribed to the divinity but also to the soul; as for example in the system of Mâni, as well as among the Greeks, where it was characterized as a fiery breath of air. The Holy Ghost of the New Testament appears in the form of flames around the heads of the Apostles, because the πνεῦμα was understood to mean “fiery” (Dieterich: Ibid., p. 116). Very similar is the Iranian conception of Hvarenô, by which is meant the “Grace of Heaven” through which a monarch rules. By “Grace” is understood a sort of fire or shining glory, something very substantial (Cumont: Ibid., p. 70). We come across conceptions allied in character in Kerner’s “Seherin von Prevorst,” and in the case published by me, “Psychologie und Pathologie sogenannter occulter Phänomene.” Here not only the souls consist of a spiritual light-substance, but the entire world is constructed according to the white-black system of the Manichæans—and this by a fifteen-year-old girl! The intellectual over-accomplishment which I observed earlier in this creation, is now revealed as a consequence of energetic introversion, which again roots up deep historical strata of the soul and in which I perceive a regression to the memories of humanity condensed in the unconscious.

[155]. In like manner the so-called tube, the origin of the ministering wind, will become visible. For it will appear to you as a tube hanging down from the sun.

[156]. I add to this a quotation from Firmicus Maternus (Mathes. I, 5, 9, cit. by Cumont: “Textes et Monuments,” I, p. 40): “Cui (animo) descensus per orbem solis tribuitur” (To this spirit the descent through the orb of the sun is attributed).

[157]. St. Hieronymus remarks, concerning Mithra who was born in a miraculous manner from a rock, that this birth was the result of “solo aestu libidinis” (merely through the heat of the libido) (Cumont: “Textes et Monuments,” I, p. 163).

[158]. Mead: “A Mithraic Ritual.” London 1907, p. 22.

[159]. I am indebted to my friend and co-worker, Dr. Riklin, for the knowledge of the following case which presents an interesting symbolism. It concerns a paranoic who passed over into a manifest megalomaniac in the following way: She suddenly saw a strong light, a wind blew upon her, she felt as if “her heart turned over,” and from that moment she knew that God had visited her and was in her.

I wish to refer here to the interesting correlation of mythological and pathological forms disclosed in the analytical investigation of Dr. S. Spielrein, and expressly emphasize that she has discovered the symbolisms presented by her in the Jahrbuch, through independent experimental work, in no way connected with my work.

[160]. “You will see the god youthful, graceful, with glowing locks, in a white garment and a scarlet cloak, with a fiery helmet.”

[161]. “You will see a god very powerful, with a shining countenance, young, with golden hair, clothed in white vestments, with a golden crown, holding in his right hand a bullock’s golden shoulder, that is, the bear constellation, which wandering hourly up and down, moves and turns the heavens: then out of his eyes you will see lightning spring forth and from his body, stars.”

[162]. According to the Chaldean teaching the sun occupies the middle place in the choir of the seven planets.

[163]. The Great Bear consists of seven stars.

[164]. Mithra is frequently represented with a knife in one hand and a torch in the other. The knife as an instrument of sacrifice plays an important rôle in his myth.

[165]. Ibid.

[166]. Compare with this the scarlet mantle of Helios in the Mithra liturgy. It was a part of the rites of the various cults to be dressed in the bloody skins of the sacrificial animals, as in the Lupercalia, Dionysia and Saturnalia, the last of which has bequeathed to us the Carnival, the typical figure of which, in Rome, was the priapic Pulcinella.

[167]. Compare the linen-clad retinue of Helios. Also the bull-headed gods wear white περιζώματα (aprons).

[168]. The title of Mithra in Vendidad XIX, 28; cit. by Cumont: “Textes et Monuments,” p. 37.

[169]. The development of the sun symbol in Faust does not go as far as an anthropomorphic vision. It stops in the suicide scene at the chariot of Helios (“A fiery chariot borne on buoyant pinions sweeps near me now”). The fiery chariot comes to receive the dying or departing hero, as in the ascension of Elijah or of Mithra. (Similarly Francis of Assisi.) In his flight Faust passes over the sea, just as does Mithra. The ancient Christian pictorial representations of the ascension of Elijah are partly founded upon the corresponding Mithraic representations. The horses of the sun-chariot rushing upwards to Heaven leave the solid earth behind, and pursue their course over a water god, Oceanus, lying at their feet. (Cumont: “Textes et Monuments.” Bruxelles 1899, I, p. 178.)

[170]. Compare my article, “Psych. und Path. sog. occ. Phän.”

[171]. Quoted from Pitra: “Analecta sacra,” cit. by Cumont: “Textes et Monuments,” p. 355.

[172]. Helios, the rising sun—the only sun rising from heaven!

[173]. Cited from Usener: “Weihnachtsfest,” p. 5.

[174]. “O, how remarkable a providence that Christ should be born on the same day on which the sun moves onward, V. Kal. of April the fourth holiday, and for this reason the prophet Malachi spoke to the people concerning Christ: ‘Unto you shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings,’ this is the sun of righteousness in whose wings healing shall be displayed.”

[175]. The passage from Malachi is found in chap. iv, 2: “But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in His wings” (feathers). This figure of speech recalls the Egyptian sun symbol.

[176]. Cumont: “Textes et Monuments,” t. I, p. 355. περὶ ἀστρονόμων.

[177]. “Moreover the Lord is born in the month of December in the winter on the 8th Kal. of January when the ripe olives are gathered, so that the oil, that is the chrism, may be produced, moreover they call it the birthday of the Unconquered One. Who in any case is as unconquered as our Lord, who conquered death itself? Or why should they call it the birthday of the sun; he himself is the sun of righteousness, concerning whom Malachi, the prophet, spoke: ‘The Lord is the author of light and of darkness, he is the judge spoken of by the prophet as the Sun of righteousness.’”

[178]. “Ah! woe to the worshippers of the sun and the moon and the stars. For I know many worshippers and prayer sayers to the sun. For now at the rising of the sun, they worship and say, ‘Have mercy on us,’ and not only the sun-gnostics and the heretics do this, but also Christians who leave their faith and mix with the heretics.”

[179]. The pictures in the Catacombs contain much symbolism of the sun. The Swastika cross, for example—a well-known image of the sun, wheel of the sun, or sun’s feet—is found upon the garment of Fossor Diogenes in the cemetery of Peter and Marcellinus. The symbols of the rising sun, the bull and the ram, are found in the Orpheus fresco of the cemetery of the holy Domitilla. Similarly the ram and the peacock (which, like the phœnix, is the symbol of the sun) is found upon an epitaph of the Callistus Catacomb.

[180]. Compare the countless examples in Görres: “Die christliche Mystik.”

[181]. Compare Leblant: “Sarcophages de la Gaule,” 1880. In the “Homilies” of Clement of Rome (“Hom.,” II, 23, cit. by Cumont) it is said: Τῷ κυρίῳ γεγονάσιν δώδεκα ἀπόστολοι τῶν τοῦ ἡλίου δώδεκα μηνῶν φέροντες τὸν ἀριθμόν (The twelve apostles of the Lord, having the number of the twelve months of the sun). As is apparent, this idea is concerned with the course of the sun through the Zodiac. Without wishing to enter upon an interpretation of the Zodiac, I mention that, according to the ancient view (probably Chaldean), the course of the sun was represented by a snake which carried the signs of the Zodiac on its back (similarly to the Leontocephalic God of the Mithra mysteries). This view is proven by a passage from a Vatican Codex edited by Cumont in another connection (190, saec. XIII, p. 229, p. 85): “τότε ὁ πάνσοφος δημιουργὸς ἄκρῳ νεύματι ἐκίνησε τὸν μέγαν δράκοντα σὺν τῷ κεκοσμημένῳ στεφάνῳ, λέγω δὴ τὰ ἰβ’ ζῴδια, βαστάζοντα ἐπὶ τοῦ νώτου αὐτοῦ” (The all-wise maker of the world set in motion the great dragon with the adorned crown, with a command at the end. I speak now of the twelve images borne on the back of this).

This inner connection of the ζῴδια (small images) with the zodiacal snake is worthy of notice and gives food for thought. The Manichæan system attributes to Christ the symbol of the snake, and indeed of the snake on the tree of Paradise. For this the quotation from John gives far-reaching justification (John iii:14): “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the son of man be lifted up.” An old theologian, Hauff (“Biblische Real- und Verbalkonkordanz,” 1834), makes this careful observation concerning this quotation: “Christ considered the Old Testament story an unintentional symbol of the idea of the atonement.” The almost bodily connection of the followers with Christ is well known. (Romans xii:4): “For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office, so we being many are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.” If confirmation is needed that the zodiacal signs are symbols of the libido, then the sentence in John i:29, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,” assumes a significant meaning.

[182]. According to an eleventh-century manuscript in Munich; Albrecht Wirth: “Aus orientalischen Chroniken,” p. 151. Frankfurt 1894.

[183]. “To Zeus, the Great Sun God, the King, the Saviour.”

[184]. Abeghian: “Der armenische Volksglaube,” p. 41, 1899.

[185]. Compare Aigremont: “Fuss- und Schuhsymbolik,” Leipzig 1909.

[186]. Attis was later assimilated with Mithra. Like Mithra he was represented with the Phrygian cap (Cumont: “Myst. des Mith.,” p. 65). According to the testimony of Hieronymus, the manger (Geburtshöhle) at Bethlehem was originally a sanctuary (Spelæum) of Attis (Usener: “Weihnachtsfest,” p. 283).

[187]. Cumont (“Die Mysterien des Mithra,” p. 4) says of Christianity and Mithracism: “Both opponents perceived with astonishment how similar they were in many respects, without being able to account for the causes of this similarity.”

[188]. Our present-day moral views come into conflict with this wish in so far as it concerns the erotic fate. The erotic adventures necessary for so many people are often all too easily given up because of moral opposition, and one willingly allows himself to be discouraged because of the social advantages of being moral.

[189]. The poetical works of Lord Byron.

[190]. Edmond Rostand: “Cyrano de Bergerac,” Paris 1898.

[191]. The projection into the “cosmic” is the primitive privilege of the libido, for it enters into our perception naturally through all the avenues of the senses, apparently from without, and in the form of pain and pleasure connected with the objects. This we attribute to the object without further thought, and we are inclined, in spite of our philosophic considerations, to seek the causes in the object, which often has very little concern with it. (Compare this with the Freudian conception of Transference, especially Firenczi’s remarks in his paper, “Introjektion und Übertragung,” Jahrbuch, Vol. I, p. 422.) Beautiful examples of direct libido projection are found in erotic songs:

“Down on the strand, down on the shore,

A maiden washed the kerchief of her lover;

And a soft west wind came blowing over the shore,

Lifted her skirt a little with its breeze

And let a little of her ankles be seen,

And the seashore became as bright as all the world.”

(Neo-Grecian Folksong from Sanders: “Das Volksleben der Neugriechen,” 1844, p. 81, cit. Zeitschrift des Vereines für Volkskunde, Jahrgang XII, 1902, p. 166.)

“In the farm of Gymir I saw

A lovely maiden coming toward me;

From the brilliance of her arm glowed

The sky and all the everlasting sea.”

(From the Edda, tr. (into Ger.) by H. Gering, p. 53; Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, Jahrgang XII, 1902, p. 167.)

Here, too, belong all the miraculous stories of cosmic events, phenomena occurring at the birth and death of heroes. (The Star of Bethlehem; earthquakes, the rending asunder of the temple hangings, etc., at the death of Christ.) The omnipotence of God is the manifest omnipotence of the libido, the only actual doer of wonders which we know. The symptom described by Freud, as the “omnipotence of thought” in Compulsion Neuroses arises from the “sexualizing” of the intellect. The historical parallel for this is the magical omnipotence of the mystic, attained by introversion. The “omnipotence of thought” corresponds to the identification with God of the paranoic, arrived at similarly through introversion.

[192]. Comparable to the mythological heroes who after their greatest deeds fall into spiritual confusion.

[193]. Here I must refer you to the blasphemous piety of Zinzendorf, which has been made accessible to us by the noteworthy investigation of Pfister.

[194]. Anah is really the beloved of Japhet, the son of Noah. She leaves him because of the angel.

[195]. The one invoked is really a star. Compare Miss Miller’s poem.

[196]. Really an attribute of the wandering sun.

[197]. Compare Miss Miller’s poem.

“My poor life is gone,

· · · · ·

then having gained

One raptured glance, I’ll die content,

For I the source of beauty, warmth and life

Have in his perfect splendor once beheld.”

[198]. The light-substance of God.

[199]. The light-substance of the individual soul.

[200]. The bringing together of the two light-substances shows their common origin; they are the symbols of the libido. Here they are figures of speech. In earlier times they were doctrines. According to Mechthild von Magdeburg the soul is made out of love (“Das fliessende Licht der Gottheit,” herausgegeben von Escherich, Berlin 1909).

[201]. Compare what is said above about the snake symbol of the libido. The idea that the climax means at the same time the end, even death, forces itself here.

[202]. Compare the previously mentioned pictures of Stuck: Vice, Sin and Lust, where the woman’s naked body is encircled by the snake. Fundamentally it is a symbol of the most extreme fear of death. The death of Cleopatra may be mentioned here.

[203]. Encircling by the serpent.