As this text tells us, the offerers of the sacrificial horse come in that narrowest fissure between the shells of the egg of the world, at that place, where the shells unite and where they are divided. The fissure (vagina) in the maternal world soul is designated by Plato in “Timaeus” by Χ, the symbol of the cross. Indra, who as a falcon has stolen the soma (the treasure attainable with difficulty), brings, as Psychopompos, the souls to the wind, to the generating pneuma, which carries them forward to the fissure or vagina, to the point of union, to the entrance into the maternal egg. This train of thought of the Hindoo philosophy briefly and concisely summarizes the sense of innumerable myths; at the same time it is a striking example of the fact that philosophy is internally nothing else but a refined and sublimated mythology. It is brought to this refined state by the influence of the corrector of reality.[[818]] We have emphasized the fact that in the Miller drama the horse is the first to die, as the animal brother of the hero. (Corresponding to the early death of the half-animal Eabani, the brother friend of Gilgamesh.) This sacrificial death recalls the whole category of mythological animal sacrifices. Volumes could be filled with parallels, but we must limit ourselves here to suggestions. The sacrificial animal, where it has lost the primitive meaning of the simple sacrificial gift, and has taken a higher religious significance, stands in a close relation to both the hero and the divinity. The animal represents the god himself;[[819]] thus the bull[[820]] represents Zagreus, Dionysus and Mithra; the lamb represents Christ,[[821]] etc. As we are aware, the animal symbols represent the animal libido. The sacrifice of the animal means, therefore, the sacrifice of the animal nature. This is most clearly expressed in the religious legend of Attis. Attis is the son lover of the divine mother, Agdistis Cybele. Agdistis was characteristically androgynous,[[822]] as symbol of the mother-libido, like the tree; really a clear indication that the mother-imago has in addition to the significance of the likeness of the real mother the meaning of the mother of humanity, the libido in general. Driven mad by the insanity-breeding mother enamored of him, he emasculates himself, and that under a pine tree. (The pine tree plays an important rôle in his service. Every year a pine tree was wreathed about and upon it an image of Attis was hung, and then it was cut down, which represents the castration.) The blood, which spurted to the earth, was transformed into budding violets. Cybele now took this pine tree, bore it into her cavern and there wept over it. (Pietà.) The chthonic mother takes her son with her into the cavern—namely, into the womb—according to another version. Attis was transformed into the pine tree. The tree here has an essentially phallic meaning; on the contrary, the attaching of the image of Attis to the tree refers also to the maternal meaning. (“To be attached to the mother.”) In Ovid (“Metamorphoses,” Book X) the pine tree is spoken of as follows:
“Grata deum matri, siquidem Cybeleius Attis
Exuit hac hominem, truncoque induruit illo.”[[823]]
The transformation into the pine tree is evidently a burial in the mother, just as Osiris was overgrown by the heather. Upon the Attis bas-relief of Coblenz Attis appears growing out of a tree, which is interpreted by Mannhardt as the “life-principle” of vegetation inherent in the tree. It is probably a tree birth, just as with Mithra. (Relief of Heddernheim.) As Firmicus observes, in the Isis and Osiris cult and also in the cult of the virgin Persephone, tree and image had played a rôle.[[824]] Dionysus had the surname Dendrites, and in Boeotia he is said to have been called ἔνδενδρος, meaning “in a tree.” (At the birth of Dionysus, Megaira planted the pine tree on the Kithairon.) The Pentheus myth bound up with the Dionysus legend furnishes the remarkable and supplementary counterpart to the death of Attis, and the subsequent lamentation. Pentheus,[[825]] curious to espy the orgies of the Maenades, climbed upon a pine tree, but he was observed by his mother; the Maenades cut down the tree, and Pentheus, taken for an animal, was torn by them in frenzy,[[826]] his own mother being the first to rush upon him. In this myth the phallic meaning of the tree (cutting down, castration) and its maternal significance (mounting and the sacrificial death of the son) is present; at the same time the supplementary counterpart to the Pietà is apparent, the “terrible mother.” The feast of Attis was celebrated as a lamentation and then as a joy in the spring. (Good Friday and Easter.) The priests of Attis-Cybele worship were often eunuchs, and were called Galloi.[[827]] The archigallus was called Atys (Attis).[[828]] Instead of the animal castration, the priests merely scratched their arms until they bled. (Arm in place of phallus, “the twisting of arms.”) A similar symbolism of the sacrificial impulse is met in the Mithraic religion, where essential parts of the mysteries consist in the catching and the subduing of the bull.
A parallel figure to Mithra is the primitive man Gayomard. He was created together with his bull, and the two lived for six thousand years in a blissful state. But when the world came into the cycle of the seventh sign of the Zodiac (Libra) the evil principle entered. Libra is astrologically the so-called positive domicile of Venus; the evil principle, therefore, came under the dominion of the goddess of love (destruction of the sun-hero through the mother-wife—snake, whore, etc). As a result, after thirty years, Gayomard and his bull died. (The trials of Zartusht lasted also thirty years; compare the span of Christ’s life.) Fifty-five species of grain came from the dead bull, twelve kinds of salubrious plants, etc. The sperma of the bull entered into the moon for purification, but the sperma of Gayomard entered into the sun. This circumstance possibly suggests a rather feminine meaning of bull. Gosh or Drvâçpa is the soul of the bull, and was worshipped as a female divinity. She would not, at first, from diffidence, become the goddess of the herds, until the coming of Zarathustra was announced to her as consolation. This has its parallel in the Hindoo Purâna, where the coming of Krishna was promised the earth. (A complete analogy to Christ.[[829]]) She, too, travels in her chariot, like Ardvîçûra, the goddess of love. The soul of the bull is, therefore, decidedly feminine. This myth of Gayomard repeats only in an altered form the primitive conception of the closed ring of a male-female divinity, self-begetting and forth-bringing.
Like the sacrificial bull, the fire, the sacrifice of which we have already discussed in Chapter III, has a feminine nature among the Chinese, according to the commentaries[[830]] of the philosopher Tschwang-Tse:
“The spirit of the hearth is called Ki. He is clad in bright red, which resembles fire, and appears as a lovely, attractive maiden.”
In the “Book of Rites” it is said:
“Wood is burned in the flames for the spirit of Au. This sacrifice to Au is a sacrifice to old departed women.”
These spirits of the hearth and fire are the souls of departed cooks and, therefore, are called “old women.” The kitchen god develops from this pre-Buddhistic tradition and becomes later (male sex) the ruler of the family and the mediator between family and god. Thus the old feminine fire spirit becomes a species of Logos. (Compare with this the remarks in Chapter III.)