The infantile and moral danger lies in belief in the symbol because through that we guide the libido to an imaginary reality. The simple negation of the symbol changes nothing, for the entire mental disposition remains the same; we merely remove the dangerous object. But the object is not dangerous; the danger is our own infantile mental state, for love of which we have lost something very beautiful and ingenious through the simple abandonment of the religious symbol. I think belief should be replaced by understanding; then we would keep the beauty of the symbol, but still remain free from the depressing results of submission to belief. This would be the psychoanalytic cure for belief and disbelief.
The vision following upon that of the city is that of a “strange fir tree with gnarled branches.” This vision does not seem extraordinary to us after all that we have learned of the tree of life and its associations with the city and the waters of life. This especial tree seems simply to continue the category of the mother symbols. The attribute “strange” probably signifies, as in dreams, a special emphasis, that is, a special underlying complex material. Unfortunately, the author gives us no individual material for this. As the tree already suggested in the symbolism of the city is particularly emphasized through the further development of Miss Miller’s visions here, I find it necessary to discuss at some length the history of the symbolism of the tree.
It is well known that trees have played a large part in the cult myth from the remotest times. The typical myth tree is the tree of paradise or of life which we discover abundantly used in Babylonian and also in Jewish lore; and in prechristian times, the pine tree of Attis, the tree or trees of Mithra; in Germanic mythology, Ygdrasil and so on. The hanging of the Attis image on the pine tree; the hanging of Marsyas, which became a celebrated artistic motive; the hanging of Odin; the Germanic hanging sacrifices—indeed, the whole series of hanged gods—teaches us that the hanging of Christ on the cross is not a unique occurrence in religious mythology, but belongs to the same circle of ideas as others. In this world of imagery the cross of Christ is the tree of life, and equally the wood of death. This contrast is not astounding. Just as the origin of man from trees was a legendary idea, so there were also burial customs, in which people were buried in hollow trees. From that the German language retains even now the expression “Totenbaum” (tree of death) for a coffin. Keeping in mind the fact that the tree is predominantly a mother symbol, then the mystic significance of this manner of burial can be in no way incomprehensible to us. The dead are delivered back to the mother for rebirth. We encounter this symbol in the Osiris myth, handed down by Plutarch,[[467]] which is, in general, typical in various aspects. Rhea is pregnant with Osiris; at the same time also with Isis; Osiris and Isis mate even in the mother’s womb (motive of the night journey on the sea with incest). Their son is Arueris, later called Horus. It is said of Isis that she was born “in absolute humidity” (τετάρτῃ δὲ τῆν Ἴσιν ἐν πανύγροις γενέσθαι[[468]]). It is said of Osiris that a certain Pamyles in Thebes heard a voice from the temple of Zeus while drawing water, which commanded him to proclaim that Osiris was born μέγας βασιλεὺς εὐεργέτης Ὄσιρις.[[469]] In honor of this the Pamylion were celebrated. They were similar to the phallophorion. Pamyles is a phallic demon, similar to the original Dionysus. The myth reduced reads: Osiris and Isis were generated by phallus from the water (mother womb) in the ordinary manner. (Kronos had made Rhea pregnant, the relation was secret, and Rhea was his sister. Helios, however, observed it and cursed the relation.) Osiris was killed in a crafty manner by the god of the underworld, Typhon, who locked him in a chest. He was thrown into the Nile, and so carried out to sea. Osiris, however, mated in the underworld with his second sister, Nephthys (motive of the night journey to the sea with incest). One sees here how the symbolism is developed. In the mother womb, before the outward existence, Osiris commits incest; in death, the second intrauterine existence, Osiris again commits incest. Both times with a sister who is simply substituted for the mother as a legal, uncensured symbol, since the marriage with a sister in early antiquity was not merely tolerated, but was really commended. Zarathustra also recommended the marriage of kindred. This form of myth would be impossible to-day, because cohabitation with the sister, being incestuous, would be repressed. The wicked Typhon entices Osiris craftily into a box or chest; this distortion of the true state of affairs is transparent. The “original sin” caused men to wish to go back into the mother again, that is, the incestuous desire for the mother, condemned by law, is the ruse supposedly invented by Typhon. The fact is, the ruse is very significant. Man tries to sneak into rebirth through subterfuge in order to become a child again. An early Egyptian hymn[[470]] even raises an accusation against the mother Isis because she destroys the sun-god Rê by treachery. It was interpreted as the ill-will of the mother towards her son that she banished and betrayed him. The hymn describes how Isis fashioned a snake, put it in the path of Rê, and how the snake wounded the sun-god with a poisonous bite, from which wound he never recovered, so that finally he had to retire on the back of the heavenly cow. But this cow is the cow-headed goddess, just as Osiris is the bull Apis. The mother is accused as if she were the cause of man flying to the mother in order to be cured of the wound which she had herself inflicted. This wound is the prohibition of incest.[[471]] Man is thus cut off from the hopeful certainty of childhood and early youth, from all the unconscious, instinctive happenings which permit the child to live as an appendage of his parents, unconscious of himself. There must be contained in this many sensitive memories of the animal age, where there was not any “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not,” but all was just simple occurrence. Even yet a deep animosity seems to live in man because a brutal law has separated him from the instinctive yielding to his desires and from the great beauty of the harmony of the animal nature. This separation manifested itself, among other things, in the incest prohibition and its correlates (laws of marriage, etc.); therefore pain and anger relate to the mother, as if she were responsible for the domestication of the sons of men. In order not to become conscious of his incest wish (his backward harking to the animal nature), the son throws all the burden of the guilt on the mother, from which arises the idea of the “terrible mother.”[[472]] The mother becomes for him a spectre of anxiety, a nightmare.[[473]]
After the completed “night journey to the sea,” the chest of Osiris was cast ashore by Byblos, and lay in the branches of an Erica, which grew around the coffin and became a splendid tree. The king of the land had the tree placed as a column under his roof.[[474]] During this period of Osiris’s absence (the winter solstice) the lament customary during thousands of years for the dead god and his return occurs, and its εὕρεσις is a feast of joy. A passage from the mournful quest of Isis is especially noteworthy:
“She flutters like a swallow lamenting around the column, which encloses the god sleeping in death.”
(This same motive returns in the Kyffhäuser saga.)
FRUCTIFICATION FOLLOWING UPON THE MITHRAIC SACRIFICE
Later on Typhon dismembers the corpse and scatters the pieces. We come upon the motive of dismemberment in countless sun myths,[[475]] namely, the inversion of the idea of the composition of the child in the mother’s womb.[[476]] In fact, the mother Isis collects the pieces of the body with the help of the jackal-headed Anubis. (She finds the corpse with the help of dogs.) Here the nocturnal devourers of bodies, the dogs and jackals, become the assistants of the composition, of the reproduction.[[477]] The Egyptian vulture owes its symbolic meaning as mother to this necrophagic habit. In Persian antiquity the corpses were thrown out for the dogs to devour, just as to-day in the Indian funeral pyres the removal of the carcasses is left to the vultures. Persia was familiar with the custom of leading a dog to the bed of one dying, whereupon the latter had to present the dog with a morsel.[[478]] The custom, on its surface, evidently signifies that the morsel is to belong to the dog, so that he will spare the body of the dead, precisely as Cerberus was soothed by the honey-cakes which Hercules gave to him in the journey to hell. But when we bear in mind the jackal-headed Anubis who rendered his good services in the gathering together of the dismembered Osiris, and the mother significance of the vulture, then the question arises whether something deeper was not meant by this ceremony. Creuzer has also concerned himself with this idea, and has come to the conclusion that the astral form of the dog ceremony, that is, the appearance of Sirius, the dog star, at the period of the sun’s highest position, is related to this in that the introduction of the dog has a compensatory significance, death being thereby made, reversedly, equal to the sun’s highest position. This is quite in conformity with psychologic thought, which results from the very general fact that death is interpreted as entrance into the mother’s womb (rebirth). This interpretation would seem to be supported by the otherwise enigmatic function of the dog in the Sacrificium Mithriacum. In the monuments a dog always leaps up upon the bull killed by Mithra. However, this sacrifice is probably to be interpreted through the Persian legend, as well as through the monument, as the moment of the highest fecundity. The most beautiful expression of this is seen upon the magnificent Mithra relief of Heddernheim. Upon one side of a large stone slab (formerly probably rotating) is seen the stereotyped overthrowing and sacrifice of the bull, but upon the other side stands Sol, with a bunch of grapes in his hand, Mithra with the cornucopia, the Dadophores with fruits, corresponding to the legend that all fecundity proceeds from the dead bull of the world, fruits from the horns, wine from its blood, grain from the tail, cattle from its sperma, leek from its nose, and so on. Silvanus stands above this scene with the animals of the forest arising from him. The significance suspected by Creuzer might very easily belong to the dog in this connection.[[479]] Let us now turn back to the myth of Osiris. In spite of the restoration of the corpse accomplished by Isis, the resuscitation succeeds only incompletely in so far as the phallus of Osiris cannot again be produced, because it was eaten by the fishes; the power of life was wanting.[[480]] Osiris as a phantom once more impregnated Isis, but the fruit is Harpocrates, who was feeble in τοῖς κάτωθεν γυίοις (in the lower limbs), that is, corresponding to the significance of γυῖον (at the feet). (Here, as is plainly evident, foot is used in the phallic meaning.) This incurability of the setting sun corresponds to the incurability of Rê in the above-mentioned older Egyptian sun hymn. Osiris, although only a phantom, now prepares the young sun, his son Horus, for a battle with Typhon, the evil spirit of darkness. Osiris and Horus correspond to the father-son symbolism mentioned in the beginning, which symbolic figure, corresponding again to the above formulation,[[481]] is flanked by the well-formed and ugly figures of Horus and Harpocrates, the latter appearing mostly as a cripple, often represented distorted to a mere caricature.[[482]]
He is confused in the tradition very much with Horus, with whom he also has the name in common. Hor-pi-chrud, as his real name[[483]] reads, is composed from chrud, “child,” and Hor, from the adjective hri = up, on top, and signifies the up-coming child, as the rising sun, and opposed to Osiris, who personifies the setting sun—the sun of the west. Thus Osiris and Horpichrud or Horus are one being, both husband and son of the same mother, Hathor-Isis. The Chnum-Ra, the sun god of lower Egypt, represented as a ram, has at his side, as the female divinity of the land, Hatmehit, who wears the fish on her head. She is the mother and wife of Bi-neb-did (Ram, local name of Chnum-Ra). In the hymn of Hibis,[[484]] Amon-ra was invoked: