4 See Cumont: Ibid., p. 100.

50 The Zodiacal sign of the sun's greatest heat.

"This solution apparently concerns only the dogmatic symbolism. I merely intimate that this sacrificial death was related to a festival of vegetation or of Spring, from which the religious legend originated. The folk customs contain in variations these same fundamental thoughts. (Compare with that Drews: "Christusmythe," I, p. 37).

53 A similiar sacrificial death is that of Prometheus. He was chained to a rock. In another version his chains were drawn through a pillar, which hints at the enchainment to a tree. That punishment was his which Christ took upon himself willingly. The fate of Prometheus therefore recalls the misfortune of Theseus and Perithoos, who remain bound to the rock, the chthonic mother. According to Athenaeus, Jupiter commanded Prometheus, after he had freed him, to wear a willow crown and an iron ring, by which his lack of freedom and slavery was symbolically represented. (Phoroneus, who in Argos was worshipped as the bringer of fire, was the son of Melia, the ash, therefore tree-enchained.) Robertson compares the crown of Prometheus to the crown of thorns of Christ. The devout carry crowns in honor of Prometheus, in order to represent the captivity ("Evangelical Myths," p. 126). In this connection, therefore, the crown means the same as the betrothal ring. These are the requisites of the old Hierosgamos with the mother; the crown of thorns (which is of Egyptian derivation according to Athenaeus) has the significance of the painful ascetic betrothal.

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The spear wound given by Longinus to Christ is the substitute for the dagger thrust in the Mithraic bull sacrifice: "The jagged tooth of the brazen wedge" was driven through the breast of the enchained and sacrificed Prometheus (Aeschylus: "Prometheus").

54 Mention must also be made of the fact that North German mythology was acquainted with similar thoughts regarding the fruitfulness of the sacrificial death on the mother: Through hanging on the tree of life, Odin obtained knowledge of the Runes and the inspiring, intoxicating drink which invested him with immortality.

55 I have refrained in the course of this merely orienting investigating from referring to the countless possibilities of relationship between dream symbolism and the material disclosed in these connections. That is a matter of a special investigation. But I cannot forbear mentioning here a simple dream, the first which a youthful patient brought to me in the beginning of her analysis. "She stands between high walls of snow upon a railroad track with her small brother. A train comes, she runs before it in deadly fear and leaves her brother behind upon the track. She sees him run over, but after the train has passed, the little fellow stands up again uninjured." The meaning of the dream is clear: the inevitable approach of the "impulse." The leaving behind of the little brother is the repressed willingness to accept her destiny. The acceptance is symbolized by the sacrifice of the little brother (the infantile personality) whose apparently certain death becomes, however, a resurrection. Another patient makes use of classical forms: she dreamed of a mighty eagle, which is wounded in beak and neck by an arrow. If we go into the actual transference phantasy (eagle = physician, arrow = erotic wish of the patient), then the material concerning the eagle (winged lion of St. Mark, the past splendor of Venice; beak remembrances of

certain perverse actions of childhood) leads us to understand the eagle as a composition of infantile memories, which in part are grouped around the father. The eagle, therefore, is an infantile hero who is wounded in a characteristic manner on the phallic point (beak). The dream also says: I renounce, the infantile wish, I sacrifice my infantile personality (which is synonymous with: I paralyze it, castrate the father or the physician). In the Mithra mysteries, in the introversion the mystic himself becomes aerós, the eagle, this being the highest degree of initiation. The identification with the unconscious libido animal goes very far in this cult, as Augustine relates: "alii autem sicut aves alas percutiunt vocem coracis imitantes, alii vero leonum more fremunt (Some move the arms like birds the wings, imitating the voice of the raven, some groan like lions).

56

Miss Miller's snake is green. The snake of my patient is also green. In "Psychology of Dementia Praecox," p. 161, she says: "Then a little green snake came into my mouth; it had the finest, loveliest sense, as if it had human understanding; it wanted to say something to me, almost as if it had wished to kiss me." Spielrein's patient says of the snake: "It is an animal of God, which has such wonderful colors, green, blue and white. The rattlesnake is green; it is very dangerous. The snake can have a human mind, it can have God's judgment; it is a friend of children. It will save those children who are necessary for the preservation of human life" (Jahrbuch, Vol. III, p. 366). Here the phallic meaning is unmistakable. The snake as the transformed prince in the fairy tale has the same meaning. See Riklin: "Wish Fulfilment and Symbolism in Fairy Tales."

"A patient had the phantasy that she was a serpent which coiled around the mother and finally crept into her.

"The serpent of Epidaurus is, in contrast, endowed with healing power. Similia similibus.

89

This Bleuler has designated as Ambivalence or ambitendency. Stekel as "Bi-polarity of all psychic phenomena " ("Sprache des Traumes," p. 535).

"I am indebted for permission to publish a picture of this statuette to the kindness of the director of the Veronese collection of antiques.

"The "Deluge" is of one nature with the serpent. In the Wöluspa it is said that the flood is produced when the Midgard serpent rises up for universal destruction. He is called "Jörmungandr," which means, literally, "the all-pervading wolf." The destroying Fenris wolf has also a connection with the sea. Fen is found in Fensalir (Meersäle), the dwelling of Frigg, and originally meant sea (Frobenius: Ibid., p. 179). In the fairy stories of Red Riding Hood, a wolf is substituted in place of a serpent or fish.

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Compare the longing of Hölderlin expressed in his poem Empedocles." Also the journey to hell of Zarathustra through the crater of the volcano. Death is the entrance into the mother, therefore the Egyptian king, Mykerinos, buried his daughter in a gilded wooden cow. That was the guarantee of rebirth. The cow stood in a state apartment and sacrifices were brought to it. In another apartment near the cow were placed the images of the concubines of Mykerinos (Herodotus, II, p. 129 f). "Kluge: "Deutsche Etymologie."

INDEX