It corresponds to the phallic nature of the ass’s jawbone, that at the place where Samson threw it God caused a spring to gush forth[[800]] (springs from the horse’s tread, footsteps, horse’s hoof). To this relation of meanings belongs the magic wand, the sceptre in general. Σκῆτρον belongs to σκᾶπος, σκηπάνων, σκήπων = staff; σκηπτός = stormwind; Latin scapus = shaft, stock, scapula, shoulder; Old High German Scaft = spear, lance.[[801]] We meet once more in this compilation those connections which are already well known to us: Sun-phallus as tube of the winds, lance and shoulder-blade.
The passage from Asia through Patmos to the Christian mysteries in the poem of Hölderlin is apparently a superficial connection, but in reality a very ingenious train of thought; namely, the entrance into death and the land beyond as a self-sacrifice of the hero, for the attainment of immortality. At this time, when the sun has set, when love is apparently dead, man awaits in mysterious joy the renewal of all life:
“... And Joy it was
From now on
To live in the loving night and see
The eyes of innocence hold the unchanging
Depths of all wisdom.”
Wisdom dwells in the depths, the wisdom of the mother: being one with it, insight is obtained into the meaning of deeper things, into all the deposits of primitive times, the strata of which have been preserved in the soul. Hölderlin, in his diseased ecstasy, feels once more the greatness of the things seen, but he does not care to bring up to the light of day that which he had found in the depths—in this he differs from Faust.
“And it is not an evil, if a few
Are lost and never found, and if the speech