In another place it is said:
“Thou shinest, oh father of the gods, upon the back of thy mother, daily thy mother takes thee in her arms. When thou illuminatest the dwelling of night, thou unitest with thy mother, the heavens.”[[566]]
The Tum of Pitum-Heliopolis not only bears the Crux Ansata as a symbol, but also has this sign as his most frequent surname, that is, ānχ or ānχi, which means “life” or “the living.” He is chiefly honored as the demon serpent, Agatho, of whom it is said, “The holy demon serpent Agatho goes forth from the city Nezi.” The snake, on account of casting its skin, is the symbol of renewal, as is the scarabæus, a symbol of the sun, of whom it is said that he, being of masculine sex only, reproduces himself.
The name Chnum (another name for Tum, always meaning “the sun-god”) comes from the verb χnum, which means “to bind together, to unite.”[[567]] Chnum appears chiefly as the potter, the moulder of his egg. The cross seems, therefore, to be an extraordinarily condensed symbol; its supreme meaning is that of the tree of life, and, therefore, is a symbol of the mother. The symbolization in a human form is, therefore, intelligible. The phallic forms of the Crux Ansata belong to the abstract meaning of “life” and “fertility,” as well as to the meaning of “union,” which we can now very properly interpret as cohabitation with the mother for the purpose of renewal.[[568]] It is, therefore, not only a very touching but also a very significant naïve symbolism when Mary, in an Old English lament of the Virgin,[[569]] accuses the cross of being a false tree, which unjustly and without reason destroyed “the pure fruit of her body, her gentle birdling,” with a poisonous draught, the draught of death, which is destined only for the guilty descendants of the sinner Adam. Her son was not a sharer in that guilt. (Compare with this the cunning of Isis with the fatal draught of love.) Mary laments:
“Cross, thou art the evil stepmother of my son, so high hast thou hung him that I cannot even kiss his feet! Cross, thou art my mortal enemy, thou hast slain my little blue bird!”
The holy cross answers:
“Woman, I thank thee for my honor: thy splendid fruit, which now I bear, shines as a red blossom.[[570]] Not alone to save thee but to save the whole world this precious flower blooms in thee.”[[571]]
Santa Crux says of the relation to each other of the two mothers (Isis in the morning and Isis in the evening):
“Thou hast been crowned as Queen of Heaven on account of the child, which thou hast borne. But I shall appear as the shining relic to the whole world, at the day of judgment. I shall then raise my lament for thy divine son innocently slain upon me.”
Thus the murderous mother of death unites with the mother of life in bringing forth a child. In their lament for the dying God, and as outward token of their union, Mary kisses the cross, and is reconciled to it.[[572]] The naïve Egyptian antiquity has preserved for us the union of the contrasting tendencies in the mother idea of Isis. Naturally this imago is merely a symbol of the libido of the son for the mother, and describes the conflict between love and incest resistance. The criminal incestuous purpose of the son appears projected as criminal cunning in the mother-imago. The separation of the son from the mother signifies the separation of man from the generic consciousness of animals, from that infantile archaic thought characterized by the absence of individual consciousness.