The journey of Moses with his servant is a life-journey (eighty years). They grow old and lose their life force (libido), that is, they lose the fish which “pursues its course in a marvellous manner to the sea,” which means the setting of the sun. When the two notice their loss, they discover at the place where the “source of life” is found (where the dead fish revived and sprang into the sea) Chidher wrapped in his mantle,[[391]] sitting on the ground. According to another version, he sat on an island in the sea, or “in the wettest place on earth,” that is, he was just born from the maternal depths. Where the fish vanished Chidher, “the verdant one,” was born as a “son of the deep waters,” his head veiled, a Cabir, a proclaimer of divine wisdom; the old Babylonian Oannes-Ea, who was represented in the form of a fish, and daily came from the sea as a fish to teach the people wisdom.[[392]] His name was brought into connection with John’s. With the rising of the renewed sun all that lived in darkness, as water-animal or fish, surrounded by all terrors of night and death,[[393]] became as the shining fiery firmament of the day. Thus the words of John the Baptist[[394]] gain especial meaning:
“I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear; he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.”
With Vollers we may also compare Chidher and Elias (Moses and his servant Joshua) with Gilgamesh and his brother Eabani. Gilgamesh wandered through the world, driven by anxiety and longing, to find immortality. His path led him across the seas to the wise Utnapishtim (Noah), who knew how to cross the waters of death. There Gilgamesh had to dive down to the bottom of the sea for the magical herb which was to lead him back to the land of men. When he had come again to his native land a serpent stole the magic plant from him (the fish again slid into the sea). But on the return from the land of the blessed an immortal mariner accompanied him, who, banished by a curse of Utnapishtim, was forbidden to return to the land of the blessed. Gilgamesh’s journey had lost its purpose on account of the loss of the magic herb; instead he is accompanied by an immortal, whose fate, indeed, we cannot learn from the fragments of the epic. This banished immortal is the model for Ahasver, as Jensen[[395]] aptly remarked.
Again we encounter the motive of the Dioscuri, mortal and immortal, setting and rising sun. This motive is also represented as if projected from the hero.
The Sacrificium Mithriacum (the sacrifice of the bull) is in its religious representation very often flanked by the two Dadophores, Cautes and Cautopates, one with a raised and the other with a lowered torch. They represent brothers who reveal their character through the symbolic position of the torch. Cumont connects them, not without meaning, with the sepulchral “erotes” who as genii with the reversed torches have traditional meaning. The one is supposed to stand for death and the other for life. I cannot refrain from mentioning the similarity between the Sacrificium Mithriacum (where the sacrificed bull in the centre is flanked on both sides by Dadophores) to the Christian sacrifice of the lamb (ram). The Crucified is also traditionally flanked by the two thieves, one of whom ascends to Paradise, while the other descends to Hell.[[396]] The idea of the mortal and the immortal seems to have passed also into the Christian worship. Semitic gods are often represented as flanked by two Paredroi; for example, Baal of Edessa, accompanied by Aziz and Monimoz (Baal as the Sun, accompanied by Mars and Mercury, as expressed in astronomical teachings). According to the Chaldean view, the gods are grouped into triads. In this circle of ideas belongs also the Trinity, the idea of the triune God, in which Christ must be considered in his unity with the Father and the Holy Ghost. So, too, do the two thieves belong inwardly to Christ. The two Dadophores are, as Cumont points out, nothing but offshoots[[397]] from the chief figure of Mithra, to whom belongs a mysterious threefold character. According to an account of Dionysus Areopagita, the magicians celebrated a festival, “τοῦ τριπλασίου Μίθρου.”[[398]][[399]] An observation likewise referring to the Trinity is made by Plutarch concerning Ormuzd: τρὶς ἑαυτὸν αὐξήσας ἀπέστησε τοῦ ἡλίου.[[400]] The Trinity, as three different states of the unity, is also a Christian thought. In the very first place this suggests a sun myth. An observation by Macrobius 1:18 seems to lend support to this idea:
“Hæ autem ætatum diversitates ad solem referuntur, ut parvulus videatur hiemali solstitio, qualem Aegyptii proferunt ex adyto die certa, ... æquinoctio vernali figura iuvenis ornatur. Postea statuitur ætas ejus plenissima effigie barbæ solstitio æstivo ... exunde per diminutiones veluti senescenti quarta forma deus figuratur.”[[401]][[402]]
As Cumont observes, Cautes and Cautapates occasionally carry in their hands the head of a bull, and a scorpion.[[403]] Taurus and Scorpio are equinoctial signs, which clearly indicate that the sacrificial scene refers primarily to the Sun cycle; the rising Sun, which sacrifices itself at the summer solstice, and the setting Sun. In the sacrificial scene the symbol of the rising and setting Sun was not easily represented; therefore, this idea was removed from the sacrificial image.
We have pointed out above that the Dioscuri represent a similar idea, although in a somewhat different form; the one sun is always mortal, the other immortal. As this entire sun mythology is merely a psychologic projection to the heavens, the fundamental thesis probably is as follows; just as man consists of a mortal and immortal part, so the sun is a pair of brothers,[[404]] one being mortal, the other immortal. This thought lies at the basis of all theology in general. Man is, indeed, mortal, but there are some who are immortal, or there is something in us which is immortal. Thus the gods, “a Chidher or a St. Germain,” are our immortal part, which, though incomprehensible, dwells among us somewhere.
Comparison with the sun teaches us over and over again that the gods are libido. It is that part of us which is immortal, since it represents that bond through which we feel that in the race we are never extinguished.[[405]] It is life from the life of mankind. Its springs, which well up from the depths of the unconscious, come, as does our life in general, from the root of the whole of humanity, since we are indeed only a twig broken off from the mother and transplanted.
Since the divine in us is the libido,[[406]] we must not wonder that we have taken along with us in our theology ancient representations from olden times, which give the triune figure to the God. We have taken this τριπλάσιον Θεόν[[407]] from the phallic symbolism, the originality of which may well be uncontested.[[408]] The male genitals are the basis for this Trinity. It is an anatomical fact that one testicle is generally placed somewhat higher than the other, and it is also a very old, but, nevertheless, still surviving, superstition that one testicle generates a boy and the other a girl.[[409]] A late Babylonian bas-relief from Lajard’s[[410]] collection seems to be in accordance with this view. In the middle of the image stands an androgynous god (masculine and feminine face[[411]]); upon the right, male side, is found a serpent, with a sun halo round its head; upon the left, female side, there is also a serpent, with the moon above its head. Above the head of the god there are three stars. This ensemble would seem to confirm the Trinity[[412]] of the representation. The Sun serpent at the right side is male; the serpent at the left side is female (signified by the moon). This image possesses a symbolic sexual suffix, which makes the sexual significance of the whole obtrusive. Upon the male side a rhomb is found—a favorite symbol of the female genitals; upon the female side there is a wheel or felly. A wheel always refers to the Sun, but the spokes are thickened and enlarged at the ends, which suggests phallic symbolism. It seems to be a phallic wheel, which was not unknown in antiquity. There are obscene bas-reliefs where Cupid turns a wheel of nothing but phalli.[[413]] It is not only the serpent which suggests the phallic significance of the Sun; I quote one especially marked case, from an abundance of proof. In the antique collection at Verona I discovered a late Roman mystic inscription in which are the following representations: