[658]. A text on the Pyramids, which treats of the arrival of the dead Pharaoh in Heaven, depicts how Pharaoh takes possession of the gods in order to assimilate their divine nature, and to become the lord of the gods: “His servants have imprisoned the gods with a chain, they have taken them and dragged them away, they have bound them, they have cut their throats, and taken out their entrails, they have dismembered them and cooked them in hot vessels. And the king consumed their force and ate their souls. The great gods form his breakfast, the medium gods his dinner, the little gods his supper—the king consumes everything that comes in his way. Greedily he devours everything and his magic power becomes greater than all magic power. He becomes the heir of the power, he becomes greater than all heirs, he becomes the lord of heaven, he eats all crowns and all bracelets, he eats the wisdom of every god, etc.” (Wiedemann: “Der alte Orient,” II, 2, 1900, p. 18). This impossible food, this “Bulimie,” strikingly depicts the sexual libido in regression to the presexual material, where the mother (the gods) is not the object of sex but of hunger.
[659]. The sacramental sacrifice of Dionysus-Zagreus and the eating of the sacrificial meat produced the “νέος Διόνυσος” the resurrection of the god, as plainly appears from the Cretan fragments of the Euripides quoted by Dieterich (Ibid., p. 105):
ἁγνὸν δὲ βιον τείνων, ἐξ οὐ
Διὸς Ιδαίου μύστης γενόμην
καὶ νυκτιπόλου Ζαγρέως βούτας
τοὺς ὠμοφάγους δαῖτας τελέσας.
(Living a blameless life whereby I became an initiate of the Idaean Zeus, I celebrated the carnivorous banquet of Zagreus, the wandering herdsman of the night.)
The mystics took the god into themselves by eating the uncooked meat of the sacrificial animal.
[660]. Richter: 14, 14.
[661]. Thou boy eternal, thou most beautiful one seen in the heavens, without horns standing, with thy virgin head, etc.