[218] Religion of the Semites, pp. 412-413. “The mourning is not a spontaneous expression of sympathy with the divine tragedy, but obligatory and enforced by fear of supernatural anger. And a chief object of the mourners is to disclaim responsibility for the god’s death—a point which has already come before us in connexion with theanthropic sacrifices, such as the ‘ox-murder at Athens.’”
[219] The fear of castration plays an extraordinarily big rôle in disturbing the relations to the father in the case of our youthful neurotics. In Ferenczi’s excellent study we have seen how the boy recognized his totem in the animal which snaps at his little penis. When children learn about ritual circumcision they identify it with castration. To my knowledge the parallel in the psychology of races to this attitude of our children has not yet been drawn. The circumcision which was so frequent in primordial times among primitive races belongs to the period of initiation in which its meaning is to be found; it has only secondarily been relegated to an earlier time of life. It is very interesting that among primitive men circumcision is combined with or replaced by the cutting off of the hair and the drawing of teeth, and that our children, who cannot know anything about this, really treat these two operations as equivalents to castration when they display their fear of them.
[220] Reinach, Cultes, Mythes, et Religions, II, p. 75.
[221] “Une sorte de péché proethnique,” l.c., p. 76.
[222] The suicidal impulses of our neurotics regularly prove to be self-punishments for death wishes directed against others.
[223] Eating the God, p. 51.... Nobody familiar with the literature on this subject will assume that the tracing back of the Christian communion to the totem feast is an idea of the author of this book.
[224] Ariel in The Tempest:
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange....
[225] La Mort d’Orphée, Cultes, Mythes, et Religions, Vol. II, p. 100.
[226] That is to say, the parent complex.