slightly changed metaphorically, as compared with the ancient conception of "unio mystica," as cohabitation with the god. Emmerich relates the following of her stigmatization: "I had a contemplation of the sufferings of Christ, and implored him to let me feel with him his sorrows, and prayed five paternosters to the honor of the five sacred wounds. Lying on my bed with outstretched arms, I entered into a great sweetness and into an endless thirst for the torments of Jesus. Then I saw a light descending upon me: it came obliquely from above. It was a crucified body, living and transparent, with arms extended, but without a cross. The wounds shone brighter than the body; they were five circles of glory, coming forth from the whole glory. I was enraptured and my heart was moved with great pain and yet with sweetness from longing to share in the torments of my Saviour. And my longings for the sorrows of the Redeemer increased more and more on gazing on his wounds, and passed from my breast, through my hands, sides and feet to his holy wounds: then from the hands, then from the sides, then from the feet of the figure threefold shining red beams ending below in an arrow, shot forth to my hands, sides and feet." The beams, in accordance with the phallic fundamental thought, are threefold, terminating below in an arrowpoint.28 Like Cupid, the sun, too, has its quiver, full of destroying or fertilizing arrows, sun rays,20 which possess phallic meaning. On this significance evidently rests the Oriental custom of designating brave sons as arrows and javelins of the parents. "To make sharp arrows is an Arabian expression for "to generate brave sons." The Psalms declare (cxxvii :4): "Like as the arrows in the hands of the giant; even so are the young children." (Compare with this the remarks previously made about "boys.") Because of this significance of the arrow it is intelligible why the Scythian king Ariantes, when he wished to prepare a census, demanded an arrow-head from each man. A similar meaning attaches equally to the lance. Men are descended from the lance, because the ash is the mother of lances. Therefore, the men of the Iron Age are derived from her. The marriage custom to which Ovid alludes ("Comat virgineas hasta recurva comas "-Fastorum, lib. ii: 560) has already been mentioned. Kaineus issued a command that his lance be honored. Pindar relates in the legend of this Kaineus: "He descended into the depths, splitting the earth with a straight foot." "0 He is said to have originally been a maiden named Kainis, who, because of her complaisance, was transformed into an invulnerable man by Poseidon. Ovid pictures the battle of the Lapithæ with the invulnerable Kaineus; how at last they covered him completely with trees, because they could not otherwise touch him. Ovid says at this place: "Exitus in dubio est: alii sub inania corpus The result is doubtful: the body borne down by the weight of the forest is carried into empty Tartaros: Ampycides denies this: from out of the midst of the mass, he sees a bird with tawny feathers issue into the liquid air. Roscher considers this bird to be the golden plover (Charadrius pluvialis), which borrows its name from the fact that it lives in the xapadpa, a crevice in the earth. By his song he proclaims the approaching rain. Kaineus was changed into this bird. We see again in this little myth the typical constituents of the libido myth: original bisexuality, immortality (invulnerability) through entrance into the mother (splitting the mother with the foot, and to become covered up) and resurrection as a bird of the soul and a bringer of fertility (ascending sun). When this type of hero causes his lance to be worshipped, it probably means that his lance is a valid and equivalent expression of himself. From our present standpoint, we understand in a new sense that passage in Job, which I mentioned in Chapter IV of the first part of this book: "He has set me up for his mark. "His archers compass me round about, he cleaveth my reins asunder, and doth not spare:-he poureth out my gall upon the ground. "He breaketh me with breach upon breach: he runneth upon me like a giant."-Job xvi: 12-13-14. Now we understand this symbolism as an expression for the soul torment caused by the onslaught of the unconscious desires. The libido festers in his flesh, a cruel god has taken possession of him and pierced him with his painful libidian projectiles, with thoughts, which overwhelmingly pass through him. (As a dementia præcox patient once said to me during his recovery: "To-day a thought suddenly thrust itself through me.") This same idea is found again in Nietzsche in Zarathustra: The Magician Stretched out, shivering Like one half dead whose feet are warmed, Shaken alas! by unknown fevers, Trembling from the icy pointed arrows of frost, Hunted by Thee, O Thought! Unutterable! Veiled! Horrible One! Thou huntsman behind the clouds! Struck to the ground by thee, Thou mocking eye that gazeth at me from the dark! Thus do I lie Bending, writhing, tortured With all eternal tortures, Smitten By thee, cruelest huntsman, Thou unfamiliar God. Smite deeper! Smite once more: Pierce through and rend my heart! What meaneth this torturing With blunt-toothed arrows? Why gazeth thou again, Never weary of human pain, With malicious, God-lightning eyes, Thou wilt not kill, But torture, torture? No long-drawn-out explanation is necessary to enable us to recognize in this comparison the old, universal idea of the martyred sacrifice of God, which we have met previously in the Mexican sacrifice of the cross and in the sacrifice of Odin.31 This same conception faces us in the oft-repeated martyrdom of St. Sebastian, where, in the delicate-glowing flesh of the young god, all the pain of renunciation which has been felt by the artist has been portrayed. An artist always embodies in his artistic work a portion of the mysteries of his time. In a heightened degree the same is true of the principal Christian symbol, the crucified one pierced by the lance, the conception of the man of the Christian era tormented by his wishes, crucified and dying in Christ. This is not torment which comes from without, which befalls mankind; but that he himself is the hunter, murderer, sacrificer and sacrificial knife is shown us in another of Nietzsche's poems, wherein the apparent dualism is transformed into the soul conflict through the use of the same symbolism: "Oh, Zarathustra, Most cruel Nimrod! Now Hunted by thyself Thine own prey Pierced through thyself, Now Alone with thee Twofold in thine own knowledge Mid a hundred mirrors False to thyself, Mid a hundred memories Uncertain Ailing with each wound Shivering with each frost |