54!! 
542 
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SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION: TWO 
dangerous urge to do the forbidden and apparently impossible thing, then he must either go under or become a hero. The mother is thus the daemon who challenges the hero to his deeds and lays in his path the poisonous serpent that will strike him. Accordingly Nokomis, in the ninth canto, calls Hiawatha, points with her hand to the West, where the sun sets in purple splendour, and says to him: 
Yonder dwells the great Pearl-Feather, Megissogwon, the Magician, 
Manito of Wealth and Wampum, Guarded by his fiery serpents, 
Guarded by the black pitch-water. You can see his fiery serpents. Coiling, playing in the water. 
	541 	The danger that dwells in the West is death, whom none, 
not even the mightiest, escapes. The magician, we are told, had killed the father of N okomis. Now she sends her son forth to avenge her father. From the symbols assigned to the magician we can see what he symbolizes. Snake and water are mother attributes. The snake coils protectingly round the maternal rock, lives in the cave, twines itself round the mother-tree, and guards the precious hoard, the secret "treasure." The black Stygian water, like the muddy spring of Dhulqarnein, is the place where the sun sinks down for rebirth, the maternal sea of death and night. On his journey thither Hiawatha takes with him the magic oil of Mishe-Nahma, which helps his canoe through the waters of death (hence it is an immortality philtre, as was the dragon's blood for Siegfried). Thus Hiawatha makes the "night sea journey" over the Stygian waters: 
All night long he sailed upon it, Sailed upon that sluggish water, Covered with its mould of ages, 
Black with rotting water-rushes, 
Rank with flags and leaves of lilies, Stagnant, lifeless, dreary, dismal, Lighted by the shimmering moonlight And by will-o'-the-wisps illumined, Fires by ghosts of dead men kindled In their weary night encampments. 
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This description clearly shows that they are the waters of 
death. The rotting water-plants point to the entwining and devouring motif already mentioned. The dream-book of Jagaddeva 88 says: "Whoever dreams that his body is wrapped round with bast, creepers or cords, with snake-skins, threads or webs, 
will certainly die." 
There is no doubt that the above description refers to the 
realm of the Terrible Mother, represented in this case by the magician, a negative father-figure, or by a masculine principle in the mother herself, just as the secret spiritus rector who impels Hiawatha to his task is represented by N okomis, the mother, who is a feminine principle in the breast of the hero. The latter is Hiawatha's anima, and the former would corre- 
spond to the animus of the Terrible Mother. 
Arrived in the Western Land, the hero challenges the magician to battle, and a terrible struggle begins. Hiawatha is powerless because Megissogwon is invulnerable. In the evening Hiawatha, wounded and despairing, retires for a short rest: 
Paused to rest beneath a pine-tree, From whose branches trailed the mosses, And whose trunk was coated over 
With the Dead Man's Moccasin-leather, With the fungus white and yellow. 
This sheltering tree is described as "coated" with fungus. 
Tree-anthropomorphism is an important factor wherever treeworship prevails, as for instance in India, where every village has its sacred tree (pI. LV), which is clothed and treated exactly like a human being. The trees are anointed with sweet-smelling waters, sprinkled with powder, adorned with garlands and draperies. And just as the people pierce their ears as an apotropaic charm against death, so they pierce the sacred tree. "Of all the trees in India there is none more sacred to the Hindus than the peepul or aswatha (Ficus religiosa). It is known to them as Vriksha Raja (king of trees). Brahma, Vishnu, and Maheswar live in it, and the worship of it is the worship of the Triad. Almost every Indian village has an aswatha." 89 
This well-known "village linden-tree" is clearly character88 Negelein, ed., Der Traumschlilssel des Jaggadeva, p. 256• 
89 Cited from Negelein, p. 256. 
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SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMA nON: TWO 
ized as a mother-symbol: it contains the three gods. So when Hiawatha retires to rest under the pine-tree,90 he is taking a dangerous step, for he is seeking refuge with the mother whose garment is the garment of death. As in the battle with the whaledragon, so here the hero needs the help of a bird, of one of those helpful animals who represent the stirrings or intuitions of the unconscious, the helpful mother: 
Suddenly from the boughs above him Sang the Mama, the woodpecker: 
Aim your arrows, Hiawatha, At the head of Megissogwon, Strike the tuft of hair upon it, 
At their roots the long black tresses; There alone can he be woundedl 
So "Mama"-an amusing touch this, one must own-hastens to his aid. Oddly enough, the woodpecker also happened to be the "mama" of Romulus and Remus, for he put food into their mouths with his beak.91 The woodpecker owes his special significance to the fact that he hammers holes in trees. Hence we can understand why he was honoured in Roman legend as an ancient king of the country, who was the possessor or ruler of the sacred tree, and the prototype of the pater familias. An old fable relates that Circe, the wife of king Picus, changed him into Picus martius, the woodpecker. She killed and magically transformed him into a soul-bird. Picus was also regarded as a wood demon and incubus,92 and a soothsayer.93 He was sometimes equated with Picumnus, the inseparable companion of Pilumnus, both of whom were called infantium diiJ 'gods of small children.' Pilumnus especially was said to protect new-born infants from the wicked attacks of the wood-imp Sylvanus. This helpful little bird now counsels our hero to aim under the 
90 It is the pine-tree that speaks the significant word "Minne-wawa'" 
91 In the story of Cinderella, the helpful bird appears on the tree that grows out of her mother's grave. 
92 Roscher, Lexikon, s.v. "Picus," Ill, 2, 2496, 30. 
93 The father of Picus was called Sterculus or Sterculius, a name which is obviously derived from stercus, 'excrement.' He is also said to have invented manure. The original Creator who fashioned the mother did so in the infantile manner, as we saw earlier. This supreme god laid an egg, his mother, from which he hatched himself out. Excrement in alchemy signifies the prima materia. 
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VII. THE DUAL MOTHER 
magician's topknot, the only vulnerable spot. It is situated on the crown of the head, at the point where the mythical "headbirth" takes place, which even today figures among the birththeories of children. There Hiawatha shoots in three arrows 94 and so makes an end of Megissogwon. He then steals the magic belt of wampum which makes him invisible; the dead magician he leaves lying in the water: 
On the shore he left the body, Half on land and half in water, In the sand his feet were buried, And his face was in the water. 
	548 	The situation is therefore the same as with the fish-king, for 
the magician is the personification of the water of death, which in its turn stands for the devouring mother. This great deed of Hiawatha's, when he conquers the Terrible Mother and death-bringing daemon in the guise of the negative father, is followed by his marriage with Minnehaha. He can only turn to his human side after he has fulfilled his heroic destiny: firstly the transformation of the daemon from an uncontrolled force of nature into a power that is his to command; secondly the final deliverance of ego-consciousness from the deadly threat of the unconscious in the form of the negative parents. The first task signifies the creation of will-power, the second the free use of it. 
	549 	We might mention, from a later canto (the twelfth), a little 
fable which the poet has interpolated: an old man is changed back into a youth by crawling through a hollow oak-tree.95 The fourteenth canto describes how Hiawatha invents writing. I must confine myself here to the description of two hieroglyphs: 
Gitche Manito the Mighty, 
He, the Master of Life, was painted 
94 Spielrein's patient received three arrow wounds from Cod, through her head, breast, and eye, "then came a resurrection of the spirit" (p. 376). In the Tibetan legend of Bogda Cesser Khan, the sun-hero shoots his arrow into the forehead of the demoniacal old woman, who then eats him and spits him out again. In a legend of the Kalmucks, from Siberia, the hero shoots the arrow into the "bull'seye" that grows on the bull's forehead and "emits rays." 
95 This is synonymous with entering into the mother, becoming immersed in oneself, crawling through something, boring, picking the ear, driving in nails, swallowing snakes, etc. 
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SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION: TWO 
As an egg, with points projecting To the four winds of the heavens. Everywhere is the Great Spirit, Was the meaning of this symbol. 
The world is enclosed in the egg (cf. fig. 36) which surrounds it on all sides; it is the cosmic birth-giver, a symbol used by Plato and by the Vedas. This "mother" is omnipresent, like the air. But air is spirit, so the world-mother is a spirit, the anima mundi. The hieroglyph is at the same time a quaternity-symbol, which psychologically always points to the self.D6 It therefore depicts the uttermost circumference and the innermost centre, the infinite and the infinitesimal, corresponding to the Indian idea of the atman, which encompasses the whole world and dwells, "no bigger than a thumb," in the heart of man. The second hieroglyph is as follows: 
Mitche Manito the Mighty, He the dreadful Spirit of Evil, As a serpent was depicted, 
As Kenabeek, the great serpent. 
The spirit of evil is fear, negation, the adversary who opposes life in its struggle for eternal duration and thwarts every great deed, who infuses into the body the poison of weakness and age through the treacherous bite of the serpent; he is the spirit of regression, who threatens us with bondage to the mother and with dissolution and extinction in the unconscious. (Cf. fig. 35 and pI. LXII.) For the hero, fear is a challenge and a task, because only boldness can deliver from fear. And if the risk is not taken, the meaning of life is somehow violated, and the whole future is condemned to hopeless staleness, to a drab grey lit only by will-o'-the-wisps. 
The fifteenth canto describes how Chibiabos, Hiawatha's best friend, the amiable player and singer, the incarnation of all life's joys, was enticed into an ambush by evil spirits, fell through the ice, and was drowned. Hiawatha mourned him so long that, with the help of magicians, he succeeded in calling him back again. But he comes back only as a spirit, and is made master of the Land of Spirits. More battles follow, and then comes the loss of a second friend, Kwasind, the embodiment of 96 Cf. "Psychology and Religion," par. 97 (Swiss edn., p. 104). 
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physical strength. These events are omens of the end, like the death of Eabani in the Gilgamesh Epic. In the twentieth canto comes the famine, followed by the death of Minnehaha, which is foretold by two taciturn guests from the Land of the Dead; and in the twenty-second canto Hiawatha prepares for the final journey to the Western Land: 
I am going, 0 Nokomis, 
On a long and distant journey, To the portals of the Sunset, 
To the regions of the home-wind, 
Of the Northwest Wind, Keewaydin. 
One long track and trail of splendour, Down whose stream, as down a river, Westward, westward, Hiawatha 
Sailed into the fiery sunset, 
Sailed into the purple vapours, 
Sailed into the dusk of evening. 
Thus departed Hiawatha, 
Hiawatha the Beloved, 
	In the glory of the sunset, 	. 
In the purple mists of evening, To the regions of the home-wind, 
Of the Northwest Wind, Keewaydin, To the Islands of the Blessed, 
To the kingdom of Ponemah, 
To the land of the Hereafter! 
The sun, rising triumphant, tears himself from the enveloping womb of the sea, and leaving behind him the noonday zenith and all its glorious works, sinks down again into the maternal depths, into all-enfolding and all-regenerating night. (Cf. figs. 3, 24·) This image is undoubtedly a primordial one, and there was profound justification for its becoming a symbolical expression of human fate: in the morning of life the son tears himself loose from the mother, from the domestic hearth, to rise through battle to his destined heights. Always he imagines his worst enemy in front of him, yet he carries the enemy within himself-a deadly longing for the abyss, a longing to drown in his own source, to be sucked down to the realm of the Mothers. His life is a constant struggle against extinction, a violent yet fleeting deliverance from ever-lurking night. This 
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death is no external enemy, it is his own inner longing for the stillness and profound peace of all-knowing non-existence, for all-seeing sleep in the ocean of coming-to-be and passing away. Even in his highest strivings for harmony and balance, for the profundities of philosophy and the raptures of the artist, he seeks death, immobility, satiety, rest. If, like Peirithous, he tarries too long in this abode of rest and peace, he is overcome by apathy, and the poison of the serpent paralyses him for all time. If he is to live, he must fight and sacrifice his longing for the past in order to rise to his own heights. And having reached the noonday heights, he must sacrifice his love for his own achievement, for he may not loiter. The sun, too, sacrifices its greatest strength in order to hasten onward to the fruits of autumn, which are the seeds of rebirth. The natural course of life demands that the young person should sacrifice his childhood and his childish dependence on the physical parents, lest he remain caught body and soul in the bonds of unconscious incest. This regressive tendency has been consistently opposed from the most primitive times by the great psychotherapeutic systems which we know as the religions. They seek to create an autonomous consciousness by weaning mankind away from the sleep of childhood. The sun breaks from the mists of the horizon and climbs to undimmed brightness at the meridian.97 Once this goal is reached, it sinks down again towards night. This process can be allegorized as a gradual seeping away of the water of life: one has to bend ever deeper to reach the source. When we are feeling on top of the world we find this exceedingly disagreeable; we resist the sunset tendency, especially when we suspect that there is something in ourselves which would like to follow this movement, for behind it we sense nothing good, only an obscure, hateful threat. So, as soon as we feel ourselves slipping, we begin to combat this tendency and erect barriers against the dark, rising flood of the unconscious and its enticements to regression, which all too easily takes on the deceptive guise of sacrosanct ideals, principles, beliefs, ete. If we wish to stay on the heights we have reached, we must struggle all the time to consolidate our consciousness and its attitude. But we soon discover that this praiseworthy and apparently unavoid- 
97 Cf. the MEuOVpaV",. ••.• a. >i"Alov, position of the sun at midday as symbol of the initiate's illumination, in Zosimos (Berthelot, Alchimistes grecs, Ill, v).. 
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VII. THE DUAL MOTHER 
able battle with the years leads to stagnation and desiccation of soul. Our convictions become platitudes ground out on a barrel-organ, our ideals become starchy habits, enthusiasm stiffens into automatic gestures. The source of the water of life seeps away. We ourselves may not notice it, but everybody else does, and that is even more painful. If we should risk a little introspection, coupled perhaps with an energetic attempt to be honest for once with ourselves, we may get a dim idea of all the wants, longings, and fears that have accumulated down therea repulsive and sinister sight. The mind s}.lies away, but life wants to flow down into the depths. Fate itself seems to preserve us from this, because each of us has a tendency to become an immovable pillar of the past. Nevertheless, the daemon throws us down, makes us traitors to our ideals and cherished convictions-traitors to the selves we thought we were. That is an unmitigated catastrophe, because it is an unwilling sacrifice. Things go very differently when the sacrifice is a voluntary one. Then it is no longer an overthrow, a "transvaluation of values," the destruction of all that we held sacred, but transformation and conservation. Everything young grows old, all beauty fades, all heat cools, all brightness dims, and every truth becomes stale and trite. For all these things have taken on shape, and all shapes are worn thin by the working of time; they age, sicken, crumble to dust-unless they change. But change they can, for the invisible spark that generated them is potent enough for infinite generation. No one should deny the danger of the descent, but it can be risked. No one need risk it, but it is certain that some one will. And let those who go down the sunset way do so with open eyes, for it is a sacrifice which daunts even the gods. Yet every descent is followed by an ascent; the vanishing shapes are shaped anew, and a truth is valid in the end only if it suffers change and bears new witness in new images, in new tongues, like a new wine that is put into new bottles. 
The Song of Hiawatha contains material that is well suited to bring into play the vast potentialities for archetypal symbolization latent in the human mind and to stimulate the creation of images. But the products always contain the same old human problems, which rise up again and again in new symbolic guise from the shadowy world of the unconscious. 
Thus it is that Chiwantopel puts Miss Miller in mind of 357 

559 
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SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION: TWO 
another hero, who makes his entry in the form of Wagner's Siegfried. Chiwantopel cries out in his monologue: "Alas! Not one who understands me, not one who resembles me or has a soul that is sister to mine." Miss Miller declares that the sentiments expressed in this passage have the greatest analogy with Siegfried's feelings for Briinhilde. This analogy prompts us to cast a glance at the relations between Siegfried and Briinhilde in Wagner. It is well known that Briinhilde, the Valkyrie, looked with favour on the brother-sister incest that gave birth to Siegfried. But whereas Sieglinde is the human mother, Briinhilde acts the part of the symbolic mother, the "spirit-mother" (mother-imago), not as a persecutor, like Hera with the infant Heracles, but as a helper. The sin of incest, of which she makes herself guilty by her complicity, is the reason for her banishment by Wotan. Siegfried's birth from the sister-wife characterizes him as a Horus, the reborn sun, a reincarnation of the aging sun-god. The birth of the young sun, the god-man, stems from human partners, but they are really only vehicles for cosmic symbols. The spirit-mother therefore lends it her protection; she sends Sieglinde forth, with the child in her womb,98 on the night sea journey to the East: 
Away then, hasten; Turn to the East! . Woman, you cherish 
The noblest hero in the world In your sheltering womb! 99 
	556 	The motif of dismemberment recurs in the broken sword of 
Siegmund, which was kept for Siegfried. Life is put together again from the broken pieces (miracle of Medea). Just as a blacksmith welds the broken pieces together, so the dismembered corpse is reconstituted. This comparison also occurs in Plato's Timaeus: the world's parts are joined together with pegs. In the Rig-Veda the world creator Brahmanaspati is a blacksmith: 
This world Brahmanaspati 
Welded together like a blacksmith.loo 
98 Cf. Mary's flight into Egypt, the persecution of Leto. etc. 
99 Die Walkure,li. 1782-83, 1792~4. 
100 Rig-Veda, X, 72. trans. from the German of Deussen, Allgemeine Geschichte der PhilosoPhie, I, p. 145. 
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The sword denotes solar power, therefore a sword goes out 
from the mouth of Christ in the Apocalypse (cf. pI. vb), namely the procreative fire, speech, or the spermatic Word. In the RigVeda, Brahmanaspati is the prayer-word, which is accorded a pre-worldly, creative significance: 
And this prayer of the singer, continually expanding, 
Became a cow that was there before the beginning of the world. The gods are foster-children of the same brood, 
Dwelling together in the womb of this god.lOl 
The Logos becomes a cow, i.e., a mother who bears the gods 
in her womb. The transformation of Logos into mother is not really surprising, since in the Acts of Thomas the Holy Ghost is addressed as the mother, and it is always the mother-imago which proves to be the hero's greatest danger but is for that very reason the prime source of his deeds and of his ascent. His ascent signifies a renewal of the light and hence a rebirth of consciousness from the darkness, i.e., from regression to the unconscious. 
The persecution motif is not connected here with the mother, but with Wotan, as in the Linus legend, where the father is the vengeful pursuer. Briinhilde stands in a peculiar relation to her father Wotan. She says to him: 
You speak to the will of Wotan When you tell me what you wish. Who am I 
If I am not your will? 
WOTAN: I take counsel with myself alone When I speak with you ... 102 
Briinhilde is a sort of "split-off" from Wo tan, part of his personality, just as Pallas Athene was an emanation of Zeus. She is, as it were, Wotan's emissary or agent, and therefore corresponds to the angel of Yahweh, to the "eye of Ahura" or Vohu Manah, God's good thought in Persian legend, or to the Babylonian Nabu, the word of fate, or to Hermes, the messenger of the gods, whom the philosophers equated with Reason and Logos. In Assyria the role of Logos falls to the fire god, GibiI. 101 Rig-Veda, X, 31, trans. from ibid., p. 140. 
102 Die Walkure, H. 900-9<>3, 907-go8. 
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SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION: TWO 
That Wagner should have put the designs of so martial a god as Wotan into the hands of a feminine agent is somewhat remarkable, despite the Greek precedent of Pallas Athene. A very similar figure is the Kore in the Acts of Thomas) of whom Thomas sings: 
Maiden, daughter of the light, 
In whom there abides the majestic splendour of kings On the crown of her head the king is seated, 
Feeding with his own ambrosia those seated beside him. Truth rests upon her head ... 
Her tongue is like the curtain of a door Which is drawn back for them who go in. Her neck rises up like a stairway, 
And the first builder of the world created it. 
Her two hands signify and proclaim the dance of the blessed ages, And her fingers the gates of the city ... 103 
This maiden, according to the Acts of Thomas) is the "Mother of Wisdom." Conversely, the Holy Ghost is worshipped in feminine form in one of the Eucharistic prayers: 
Come, thou that knowest the secrets of the chosen; 
Come, thou that partakest in all the combats of the noble com- 
batant ... 
Come, peace, 
That reveal est the great things of all greatness; Come, thou that layest bare the hidden things, And makest manifest things not to be spoken; Come, holy dove, 
Which hast brought forth the twin nestlings; Come, secret mother .. ,104 
This Eucharistic feast is celebrated at a characteristic moment, immediately after Thomas had delivered a "beautiful woman" from an "unchaste demon" who had been plaguing her for years. This is probably no accident, because the therapeutic meaning of the hymn is the transformation of a sexual obsession into a recognition of the positive qualities of the feminine spirit. 
In line with the Acts of Thomas is the Ophite view that the Holy Ghost is the "first word," the "Mother of All Living," and the Valentinian idea that the Third Person is the "Word ot 
	103 Trans. by Walker, p. 392, modified. 	104 Ibid., p. 416, modified. 
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VII. THE DUAL MOTHER 
the Mother from Above." It is clear from all this that Wagner's Briinhilde is one of the numerous anima-figures who are attributed to masculine deities, and who without exception represent a dissociation in the masculine psyche-a "split-off" with a tendency to lead an obsessive existence of its own. This tendency to autonomy causes the anima to anticipate the thoughts and decisions of the masculine consciousness, with the result that the latter is constantly confronted with unlooked-for situations which it has apparently done nothing to provoke. Such is the situation of Wo tan, and indeed of every hero who is unconscious of his own intriguing femininity. 
Something of the sort must have been in Wagner's mind when he wrote Wo tan's lament for Briinhilde: 
None knew as she my innermost thoughts; N one knew as she the source of my will; She herself was 
The creating womb of my wish; And now she has broken 
That happy bond! 105 
Briinhilde's sin was her support of Siegmund, but behind that lies the incest which was projected into the brother-sister pair Siegmund and Sieglinde. The symbolical meaning, however, is that Wo tan, the father, has entered into his own daughter in order to rejuvenate himself. This archaic fact is expressed here in a rather veiled way. In the legend of the "Entkrist" it is expressed openly by the devil, the father of the Anti-Christ. Wo tan is justly indignant with Briinhilde, for she has taken over the role of Isis and through the birth of a son has deprived the old man of his power. Wotan beats off the first herald of doom, Siegmund, and smashes his sword, but Siegmund rises again in the grandson, Siegfried. And the instrument of fate is always the woman, who knows and reveals his secret thoughts; hence the impotent rage of Wotan, who cannot bring himself to recognize his own contradictory nature. 
At Siegfried's birth Sieglinde dies, as is proper. The fosterparent 106 who brings him up is not a woman, but a chthonic god, Mime, a crippled dwarf who belongs to a race that has 105 Die Walkilre, H. 1867-74. 
106 Grimm mentions the legend that Siegfried was suckled by a doe. 
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SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION: TWO 
abjured love.107 Similarly, the god of the Egyptian underworld, the crippled shadow of Osiris (who underwent a sorry resurrection in Harpocrates), brings up the infant Horus to avenge the death of his father. 
	567 	Meanwhile Briinhilde lies in enchanted slumber 108 on the 
mountain where Wotan has put her to sleep with the magic thorn (Edda), surrounded by a curtain of fire that keeps off all who approach and at the same time symbolizes the fiery longing of the hero for the forbidden goaJ.1°9 Mime, however, becomes Siegfried's enemy and wills his death through Fafner. Here Mime's dynamic nature is revealed: he is a masculine representative of the Terrible Mother who lays the poisonous worm in her son's path,110 Siegfried's longing for the mother- 
107 Cf. Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, I, pp. 379ff. Mime or Mimir is a gigantic being of great wisdom, an "elder nature god" with whom the Norse gods associate. Later fables make him a forest spirit and skilful smith. Like Wotan, who goes to the wise woman for advice, Odin goes to the fountain of Mimir in which wisdom and cunning lie hidden. There he asks for a drink (the drink of immortality), but no sooner does he receive it than he sacrifices his eye to the fountain. The fountain of Mimir is an obvious allusion to the mother-imago. Mimir and his fountain are a condensation of mother and embryo (dwarf, subterranean sun, Harpocrates); but at the same time he is, as the mother, the source of wisdom and art. Just as Bes, the dwarf and teacher, is associated with the Egyptian mother goddess, so Mimir is associated with the maternal fountain. In BarIach's play, Der tote Tag (1912), the demonic mother has a familiar house-spirit called "Steissbart" (Rumpbeard), who is a dwa1'fish figure like Bes. These are all mythological animus-figures. Concerning the animus see "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious," pars. 328ff. 
108 The enchanted sleep also occurs in Homer's celebration of the hieros gamos. 109 Cf. Siegfried's words (li. 2641-50): 
Through burning fire 
I sped toward you; Neither shield nor buckler Guarded my body: 
The flames have broken Through to my breast; My blood races 
Hot through my veins; A raging fire 
Is kindled within me. 
110 The dragon in the cave is the Terrible Mother. In German legend the maiden in distress often appears as a snake or dragon that has to be kissed; then it changes into a beautiful woman. Certain wise women are supposed to have a fish's or a serpent's tail. A king's daughter was immured in the Golden Mount as a 
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VII. THE DUAL MOTHER 
imago drives him away from Mime: 
Away with the imp! 
Let me see him no more. If only I knew 
What my mother was like! 
But that will my thought never tell me! Her eyes' tender light 
Surely did shine 
Like the soft eyes of the doe.ll1 
	568 	Siegfried wants to part from the "imp" who was his mother 
in the past, and longingly he reaches out for the other mother. For him, too, nature acquires a hidden maternal significance ("doe"); he, too, discovers in the sounds of nature a hint of his mother's voice and his mother's speech: 
Sweet little bird! 
Never yet have I heard you; Do you live here in the forest? 
Could I but follow your sweet warbling! Surely it would tell me 
Something of my dear mother? 112 
	569 	But his conversation with the bird lures Fafner out of the 
cave. Siegfried's longing for the mother-imago has unwittingly exposed him to the danger of looking back to his childhood and to the human mother, who immediately changes into the deathdealing dragon. He has conjured up the evil aspect of the unconscious, its devouring nature (cf. pIs. xxxnb, XXXIV), personified by the cave-dwelling terror of the woods. Fafner is the guardian of the treasure; in his cave lies the hoard, the source of life and power. The mother apparently possesses the libido of the son (the treasure she guards so jealously), and this is in fact true so long as the son remains unconscious of himself.113 In psychological terms this means that the "treasure hard to attain" lies hidden in the mother-imago, i.e., in the unconscious. This symbol points to one of life's secrets which is expressed in countless symbolical ways in mythology. When such symbols occur in 
snake. In Oselberg, near Dinkelsbtihl, there is a snake with a woman's head and a bunch of keys round the neck. Grimm, Ill, p. 969. 
III Siegfried, li. 1462-70. 112 Ibid., li. 1482-87. 
113 This problem is dealt with in Barlach's Der tote Tag, which gives a brilliant description of the mother complex. 
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SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION: TWO 
individual dreams, they will be found on examination to be pointing to something like a centre of the total personality, of the psychic totality which consists of both conscious and unconscious. Here I must refer the reader to my later works, where I deal at some length with the symbol of the self.114 The rewards of this battle with Fafner are glowingly described in the Siegfried legend. According to the Edda, Siegfried eats Fafner's heart,115 the seat of life. He wins the magic cap through whose power Alberich had changed himself into a serpent-an allusion to the motif of rejuvenation by casting the skin. Another lucky cap is the caul that is occasionally found over the heads of new-born children. In addition, by drinking the dragon's blood Siegfried learns to understand the language of birds, and thus enjoys a peculiar relationship to nature, which he now dominates by knowledge. Last but not least, he wins the hoard. 
Hort is a Middle High German and Old High German word meaning 'collected and guarded treasure'; Goth. huzd; OIcel. hodd; Germanic '*' hozda, from the pre-Germanic '*' kuzdho-fOl: kudtho-'hidden.' Kluge 116 associates it with Gr. KEV(}W, fKV(}OV, 'to hide, conceal'; also with G. Hiitte, 'hut,' Hut) 'custody,' E. hide, Germanic root '*' hud, from IEur. '*' kuth (possibly related to KE{;(}W and Kvrr(}os, 'cavity, female genitals.' Prellwitz 117 also relates Goth. huzd, OE. hyde, E. hide and hoard to KE{;(}W. Stokes 118 relates E. hide) OE. hydan, G. Hiitte, Lat. cildo) 'helmet,' Skr. kuhara) 'hollow'(?), to Cell. koudo, 'concealment,' Lat. occultatio. In this connection we might also mention the report of Pausanias: 
There was in Athens a sacred precinct [a temenosJ dedicated to Gaia and surnamed Olympia. Here the ground is torn open to the width of a cubit; and they say that the water flowed off here after the flood at the time of Deucalion; and every year they cast into the fissure wheatmeal kneaded with honey,119 
We have already seen that pastries in the form of snakes and phalli were flung into a pit at the Arrhetophoria. We men114 Psychological Types; Jung and Wilhelm, The Secret of the Golden Flower; Psychology and Alchemy; Aion. 
115 Cf. Schlauch, trans., The Saga of the Volsungs, p. 101. 
116 Etymologisches Worterbuch der deutschen Sprache, s.v. "Hort." 117 Etymologisches Worterbuch der griechischen Sprache. 
	118 Urkeltischer Sprachschatz, p. 8g. 	119 DescriPtion of Greece, I, 18, 7· 
364 

572 

VII. THE DUAL MOTHER 
tioned this in connection with the earth fertilization ceremonies. It is significant that the deadly flood flowed off into the fissure, back into the mother again, for it was from the mother that death came into the world in the first place. The Deluge is simply the counterpart of the all-vivifying and all-producing water, of "the ocean, which is the origin of all things." 120 Honeycakes are offered to the mother that she may spare one from death. In Rome money-offerings were thrown every year into the lacus Curtius, formerly a chasm that had been closed through the sacrificial death of Curtius. He ,vas the hero who went down to the underworld in order to conquer the danger that threatened the Roman state after the opening of the chasm. In the Amphiaraion at Oropos those healed through incubation in the temple threw their money-offerings into the sacred well. Pausanias says: 
If anyone is cured of a sickness through a saying of the oracle, it is customary for him to throw a silver or gold coin into the well; for they say that this was where Amphiaraos rose up as a god,121 
Presumably this Oropian well was also the scene of his katabasis. There were any number of entrances to Hades in antiquity. Thus, near Eleusis, there was a gorge through which Aidoneus came up and into which he descended after kidnapping the Kore. There were crevasses in the rocks where the souls could ascend to the upper world. Behind the temple of Chthonia in Hermione lay a spot sacred to Pluto, with a chasm through which Heracles came up with Cerberus. There was also an "Acherusian" lake.122 This chasm, therefore, was the entrance to the place where death had been conquered. The chasm on the Areopagus in Athens was believed to be the seat of the dwellers in the underworld.123 Similar ideas are suggested by an old Greek custom: 124 girls used to be sent for a virginity test to a cave where there lived a poisonous serpent. If they were bitten, it was a sign that they were no longer chaste. We find the same motif in the Roman legend of St. Sylvester, dating from the end of the fifth century: 
There used to be a huge dragon inside the Tarpeian Hill, where the Capitol stands. Once a month magicians and wanton girls went 
	120 Iliad, XIV, 246. 	121 Ibid. I, 34, 4. 	122 Rohde, Psyche, p. 162- 
	123 Ibid. 	124 Maehly, Die Schlange im My thus und Kultus, p. 13. 
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SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION: TWO 
down the 365 steps to this dragon, as though into the underworld, bearing with them sacrifices and purificatory offerings from which the great dragon could be given his food. Then the dragon would suddenly rise up, and though he did not come out he poisoned the air with his breath, so that men died and much sorrow was occasioned by the deaths of children. When, therefore, St. Sylvester was fighting the pagans in defence of truth, the pagans challenged him, saying: Sylvester, go down to the dragon, and in the name of thy God make him desist, if only for a year, from this slaughter of human lives.12~ 
	573 	St. Peter then appeared to Sylvester in a dream, and coun- 
selled him to close this door to the underworld with a chain, as in the vision of the Apocalypse: 
And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. 
And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him.126 
	574 	Writing at the beginning of the fifth century, the anonymous 
author of a treatise entitled "De promissionibus" mentions a very similar legend: 
N ear the city of Rome there was a certain cavern in which could be seen a frightful and terrible dragon of marvellous size, a mechanical contrivance that brandished a sword in its mouth 127 and had shin125 "Erat draco immanissimus in monte Tarpeio, in quo est Capitolium collocatum. Ad hunc draconem per CCCLXV gradus, quasi ad in{ernum, magi cum virginibus sacrilegis descendebant semel in mense cum sacrificiis et lustris, ex quibus esca poterat tanto draconi inferri. Hie draco subito ex improviso ascendebat et licet non egrederetur vicinos tarn en aeres flatu suo vitiabat. Ex quo mol'talitas hominum et maxima luctus de morte veniebat infantum. Sanctus itaque Silvester cum haberet cum pagan is pro defensione veritatis conflictum, ad hoc venit ut dicerent ei pagani: Silvester descende ad draconem et fac eum in nomine Dei tui vel uno anno ab interfectione generis humani cessare." Duchesne, Liber Pontificalis, I, p. eXI; cited in Cumont, Textes, I, p. 351. 
126 Revelation 20: 1-2. 
127 Cf. Revelation 20: 3. We find the same motif of the armed dragon who pierces the women with a sword in a myth of the Oyster Bay tribe, of Tasmania: 
"A devil fish lay hidden in the hollow of a rock-a huge devil fish 1 The devilfish was enormous and he had a very long spear. From his hole he espied the women; he saw them dive into the water, he pierced them with his spear, he killed them, he carried them away. For a time they were no longer to be seen." The monster was then killed by the two heroes. They made a fire and brought the women back to life again. Frobenius, Zeitalter, p. 77· 
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VII. THE DUAL MOTHER 
ing red jewels for eyes.128 Every year girls were consecrated and adorned with flowers, and then given to the dragon in sacrifice. For, as they descended with their gifts, they unwittingly touched the step to which this devilish mechanism of a dragon was attached, and were instantly pierced through with the sword that sprang out, so that innocent blood was shed. A certain monk, who was known to Stilicho the patrician on account of his good deeds, destroyed the dragon in the following manner: he carefully examined each step with a rod and with his hand until he discovered the diabolical fraud. Then, stepping over it, he went down, smote the dragon and cut it to pieces, thus showing that they are not true gods who are made by the hands of men.129 
	575 	The hero has much in common with the dragon he fights- 
or rather, he takes over some of its qualities, invulnerability, snake's eyes, etc. Man and dragon might be a pair of brothers, even as Christ identified himself with the serpent which-similia similibus-conquered the plague of fiery serpents in the wilderness (John 3: 14 and Numbers 21: 6f.). As a serpent he is to be "lifted up" on the cross; that is to say, as a man with merely human thoughts and desires, who is ever striving back to childhood and the mother, he must die on the mother-tree, his gaze fixed on the past. This formulation is not to be taken as anything more than a psychological interpretation of the crucifixion symbol, which, because of its long-lasting effects over the centuries, must somehow be an idea that accords with the nature of the human soul. If this were not so, the symbol would long since have perished. Here, as everywhere else in this book when discussing the psychology of religious figures, I am not concerned with the theological point of view. I would like to state this categorically, for I am aware that my comparative 
128 The eyes of the Son of Man are like a "flame of fire." Rev. 1 : 14. 
129 "Apud urbem Romam specus quidam fuit in quo draco mirae magnitudinis mechanica arte formatus, gladium ore gestans, oculis rutilantibus gemmis metuendus ac terribilis apparebat. Huic annuae devotae virgines floribus exornatae, eo modo in sacrificio dabantur, quatenus inscias munera deferentes gradum scalae, quo certe ille arte diaboli draco pendebat, contingentes impetus venientis gladii perimeret, ut sanguinem funderet innocentem. Et hunc quidam monachus, bene ob meritum cognitus Stiliconi tunc patricio, eo modo subvertit; baculo, manu, singulos gradus palpandos inspiciens, statim ut illum tangens fraudem diabolicam repperit, eo transgresso descendens, draconem scidit, misitque in partes; ostendens et hie deos non esse qui manu fiunt."-Cited in Cumont. Textes, I. p. 351. 
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SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION: TWO 
procedure often juxtaposes figures which from another point of view can hardly be compared at all. It is clear to me that such comparisons might easily give offence to the newcomer to psychology. On the other hand, anyone who has to do with the phenomena of the unconscious knows with what hair-raising irrationalism and with what shocking tactlessness and ruthlessness the unconscious "mind" dismisses our logical concepts and moral values. The unconscious, it appears, does not obey the same laws as the conscious-indeed, if it did, it would not be able to fulfil its compensatory function. 
	576 	Christ, as a hero and god-man, signifies psychologically the 
self; that is, he represents the projection of this most important and most central of archetypes. (Cf. pI. LX.) The archetype of the self has, functionally, the significance of a ruler of the inner world, i.e., of the collective unconscious.13o The self, as a symbol of wholeness, is a coincidentia oppositorum) and therefore contains light and darkness simultaneously. (Cf. pI. LVI, also fig. 39·) In the Christ-figure the opposites which are united in the archetype are polarized into the "light" son of God on the one hand and the devil on the other. The original unity of opposites is still discernible in the original unity of Satan and Yahweh. Christ and the dragon of the Anti-Christ lie very close together so far as their historical development and cosmic significance are concerned.131 The dragon legend concealed under the myth of the Anti-Christ is an essential part of the hero's life 132 and is therefore immortal. Nowhere in the latter-day myths are the paired opposites so palpably close together as in the figures of Christ and Anti-Christ. (Here I would refer the reader to Merezhkovsky's admirable account of this problem in his novel Leonardo da Vinci.) It is a convenient rationalistic conceit to say that the dragon is only "artificial," thus banishing the mysterious gods with a word. Schizophrenic patients often make use of this mechanism for apotropaic purposes. "It's all a fake," they say, "all artificially made up." The following dream of a 
130 Cf. "The Psychology of Eastern Meditation" (Swiss edn., pp. 469ff.). 
131 Cf. Bousset, The Antichrist Legend. 
132 How very much Christ is the archetypal hero can be deduced from Cyril of Jerusalem (d. 386), who was of "the opinion that Christ's body was a bait for the devil. On swallowing the bait, however, the devil found it so indigestible that he had to yield it up again, as the whale spewed forth Jonah. 
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VII. THE DUAL MOTHER 
schizophrenic is typical: He is sitting in a dark room which has only one small window) through which he can see the sky. The sun and moon appear) but they are made of oiled paper. Sun and moon, as divine equivalents of the parent archetype, possess a tremendous psychic power that has to be weakened apotropaically, because the patient is already far too much under the power of the unconscious. 
	577 	The descent of the 365 steps refers to the course of the sun, 
and hence to the cavern of death and rebirth. That this cavern is in fact related to the subterranean mother of death can be seen from a note in Malalas, the historian of Antioch,133 who says that in that city Diocletian dedicated a crypt to Hecate, with 365 steps leading down to it. Cave mysteries in her honour seem also to have been celebrated in Samothrace. The Hecate mysteries flourished in Rome towards the end of the fourth century, so that the two legends quoted above might well refer to her cult. Hecate 134 is a real spook-goddess of night and phantoms, a nightmare; she is sometimes shown riding a horse, and in Hesiod she is counted the patron goddess of riders. It is she who sends that horrible and fearful night-time apparition, the Empusa, which Aristophanes says comes wrapped in a bladder swollen with blood. According to Libanius, the mother of Aischines was also called Empusa, because she EK CTKOTet1JW1J Tlnrw1J Tois 7ra~(Jt1J Kat rais 'Yv1Ja~~t1J wp,uiiTo-"rushed out upon women and children from dark places." The Empusa had peculiar feet: one foot was of brass, the other of ass's dung. In Tralles, Hecate appears side by side with Priapus; there is also a Hecate Aphrodisias. Her symbols are the key,135 the whip,m the dagger, and the torch (pI. LVIII). As the deadly mother, her attributes are dogs, whose significance we have already discussed at some length. As guardian of the gate of Hades and as the triplebodied goddess of dogs, she is more or less identical with Cerberus. Thus, in bringing up Cerberus, Heracles was really bringing the vanquished mother of death to the upper world. 
	133 Cited in Cumont, Textes, I, p. 352. 	134 Cf. Roscher, Lexikon, I, 1885ff. 
135 Faust, Part 11, "The Mothers." The key belongs to Hecate as the guardian of Hades and divine psychopomp. Cf. Janus, Peter, and Aion. 
136 An attribute of the Terrible Mother. Ishtar "chastised the horse with goad and whip and tortured him to death." Jensen, Gilgamesch-Epos, p. 18. [ct Speiser trans., in Pritchard, p. 84.] 
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SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION: TWO 
As the "spirit-mother" she sends madness, the moonsickness. This idea is perfectly sensible, because most forms of lunacy consist of affections which amount to an invasion by the unconscious and an inundation of the conscious mind. In the Hecate mysteries a wand, named the AEVKOcpVAAOS ('white-leaved'), was broken. This wand protected the purity of virgins and caused madness in anyone who touched it. We recognize here the motif of the sacred tree, the mother who might not be touched. Only a madman would attempt to do so. As an incubus or vampire she appears in the form of Empusa, or as a man-eating lamia (cf. pI. xxxvma), or again in that more beautiful guise, the "Bride of 
Fig. 34. Hecate of Sampthrace Gnostic gem 
Corinth." She is the mother of all witchcraft and witches, the patron goddess of Medea, because the power of the Terrible Mother is irresistible, coming as it does from the unconscious. She plays an important part in Greek syncretism, being confused with Artemis, who was also called ~KaT'1/, the 'far-hitting,' or 'she who hits at will,' a name that once more reveals her superordinate power. Artemis is the huntress with hounds, and Hecate too is the wild huntress prowling at night. She has her name in common with Apollo: EKaTos, ~KaEP'Yos. The identification of Hecate with Brimo as the underworldly mother is understandable, also her identification with Persephone and Rhea, the primitive All-Mother. Her maternal significance also explains her confusion with Eilithyia, the goddess of childbirth. Hecate is a birth-goddess (KOVpOTPOCPOS), the multiplier of cattle and goddess of marriage. In Orphic cosmogony she occupies the centre of the world as Aphrodite and Gaia, if not as the worldsoul itself. On a carved gem she is shown with a cross on her head (fig. 34). The pillory where criminals were scourged was also known as the ~KaT'1/; and to her, as to the Roman Trivia, were dedicated junctions of three roads, forked roads, and cross, 
87° 

VII. THE DUAL MOTHER 
roads. Where the roads branch off or meet, dog-sacrifices were offered to her, and there too were thrown the bodies of the executed: the sacrifice occurs at the point of union. Where the roads cross and enter into one another, thereby symbolizing the union of opposites, there is the "mother," the object and epitome of all union. Where the roads divide) where there is parting, separation, splitting, there we find the "division," the cleft 137-the symbol of the mother and at the same time the essence of what the mother means for us, namely cleavage and farewell. Accordingly, the meaning of a sacrifice on this spot would be: propitiation of the mother in both senses. The temenos of Gaia, the fissure and the well, can easily be understood as the doors of life and death,138 "past which man's steps have ever flinching trod," 139 sacrificing there his obolus or his 1I'EAavo[ instead of his body, just as Heracles pacified Cerberus with the honey-cakes. Thus the crevice at Delphi with the Castalian spring was the habitation of the chthonic Python who was vanquished by the sun-hero Apollo. The Python, incited by Hera, had pursued Apollo's mother, Leto, when he was still in her womb; but she fled to the floating island of Delos on a "night sea journey" and was there safely delivered of her child, 
137 [The relation of these words to one another and to the "mother" is etymologically apparent in the German: Scheidung, 'parting' in the sense of 'division'; Abschied, 'parting' in the sense of 'farewell'; Scheide, 'parting' in the sense of 'line of separation,' as in Wasserscheide, 'watershed'; hence 'sheath, scabbard.' Scheide also means 'vagina.'- TRANs.] 
138 Cf. the symbolism in the Melk hymn to Mary (12th century): 
Sancta Maria, Closed gate 
Opened at God's commandSealed fountain, 
Locked garden, 
Gate of Paradise. (Cf. Song of Solomon 4: 12.) 
There is the same symbolism in the erotic verse: 
Maiden, let me enter with you Into your rose garden 
Where the red rosebuds grow, Those delicate and tender rosebuds, With a tree nearby 
Rustling to and fro, 
And the deep cool well 
That lies below. 
139 Faust; cf. above, p. 272. 
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SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION: TWO 
who later slew the Python. In Hierapolis (Edessa) a temple was built over the crack in the earth where the flood subsided, and in Jerusalem the foundation-stone of the temple was laid over the great abyss, 140 in the same way that Christian churches are often built over caves, grottoes, wells, etc. We find the same motif in the Grotto of Mithras 141 and the various other cavecults, including the Christian catacombs, which owe their importance not to legendary persecutions but to the cult of the dead.142 Even the burial of the dead in consecrated ground ("garden of the dead," cloisters, crypts, etc.) is a rendering back to the mother with the hope of resurrection which such burials presuppose. In olden times, the dragon in the cave who represented the devouring mother had to be propitiated with human sacrifices, later with gifts. Hence the Attic custom of giving the dead man the J.lEALTOVTTa (same as J.lCita, honey-cakes), with which to pacify the hound of hell, the three-headed monster guarding the door of the underworld. A substitute for the gifts seems to have been the obolus given to Charon, which is why Rohde calls him the second Cerberus, akin to the jackal-headed Anubis of the Egyptians.143 (Cf. pI. xxxna.) The dog and the underworld serpent are identical. In the Greek tragedies the Erinyes are serpents as well as dogs; the monsters Typhon and Echidna are parents of the Hydra, of the dragon of the Hesperides, and of the Gorgon (cf. pI. xlvb); they also spawned the dogs Cerberus, Orthros, and Scylla.144 Snakes and dogs are guardians of the treasure. The chthonic god was in all probability a snake that was housed in a cave and was fed with 7r~AaVOL (pI. Lvub). In the Asclepieia of the later period the sacred snakes were hardly ever visible, so they ~ay have existed only figuratively.145 Nothing was left but the hole in which the snake was said to dwell. There the 7r~AaVOL were placed and the obolus thrown in. The sacred cave in the temple at Cos consisted of a rectangular pit covered by a stone slab with a square hole in it. This arrange140 Herzog. "Aus dem Asklepieion von Kos," pp. 2191£. 
141 A Mithraic sanctuary was, whenever possible, an underground grotto, and the cave was often only an imitation one. It is possible that the Christian crypts and underground churches had a similar meaning. (Cl. pI. XXXIIl.) 
142 Cf. Schultze, Die Katakomben, pp. 91£. 
143 Rohde, Psyche, p. 247. Further evidence in Herzog, p. 224. 144 Further evidence in ibid., p. 225. 
145 Sacred snakes were, however, kept for display and other purposes. 
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VII. THE DUAL MOTHER 
ment served the purpose of a treasure-house: the snake-pit had become a slot for money, a "poor-box," and the cave a "hoard." That this development is fully in accord with the archaeological evidence is proved by a discovery in the temple of Aesculapius and Hygeia at Ptolema'is: 
A coiled granite snake with an arched neck was found. In the middle of the coils there is a narrow slit, polished by use, just large enough to allow a coin of at most 4 cm. diameter to drop through. At the sides are holes for handles to lift this heavy object, the lower half of which could be inserted as a Iid,146 
	578 	Here the serpent lies on the treasury as protector of the 
hoard. Fear of the deadly maternal womb has become the guardian of the treasure of life. That the snake really is a death-symbol is evident from the fact that the souls of the dead, like the chthonic gods, appear as serpents, as dwellers in the kingdom of the deadly mother.14T 
	579 	The development of this symbol, showing how the crevice 
in the earth, interpreted on the primitive level as the "mother," came to signify the place of the treasure, therefore corresponds to the etymology of G. Hort) 'hoard,' as suggested by Kluge. KEUlJOS (from KEV(JW) means the innermost womb of the earth (Hades), and Kvrr(Jos, which he associates with it, has a similar meaning: 'cavity' or 'womb.' Prellwitz makes no mention of this connection. On the other hand, Fick 148 connects Hort) Goth. huzd) with Armen. kust (Lat. venter) 'belly'), Slav. cista) Ved, kostha) 'abdomen,' from the IEur. root ""koustho-s) 'viscera, abdome'n, chamber, storeroom: 149 Prellwitz connects Kvrr(Jos with Kvrrm and KvrrT7/, 'bladder, bag,' Skr. kustha-s) 'hollow of the loins'; also with KVTOS, 'cavity, vault'; KVTLs, 'casket,' from KVELV, 'to be pregnant: Whence also KVTOS, 'hollow vessel, skin'; Kvap, 'hole'; Kva(Jos, 'cup'; KVAa, 'depression under the eye'; Kvp.a, 'swelling, wave, billow: The basic IEur. root 150 is "" kevo) 'to swell, be strong'; whence the above-mentioned KVEZV, Kvap and Lat. cavus) 'hollow, arched, cave, hole'; cavea) 'cavity, enclosure, 
	H6 HerlOg, p. 212. 	HT Rohde, Psyche, p. 163. 
148 Vergleichendes Worterbuch der indogermanischen Grundsprache, I, p. 28. 149 Also Lat. cuturnium, the vessel into which wine was poured for sacrifice. 150 Fick, I, p. 424. 
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SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION: TWO 
cage, scene, stage, assembly'; caulae) 'cavity, aperture, stable'; 151 IEur. *kueyo) 'I swell: part. *kueyonts) 'swelling'; *en-kueyontsJ 'enceinte'; E-yKVEWlI, Lat. inciens) 'pregnant'; cf. Skr. vi-svayan) 'swelling.' 152 
	580 	The treasure which the hero fetches from the dark cavern 
is life: it is himself, new-born from the dark maternal cave of the unconscious where he was stranded by the introversion or regression of libido. Hence the Hindu fire-bringer is called Matarisvan, he who swells in the mother. The hero who clings to the mother is the dragon, and when he is reborn from the mother he becomes the conqueror of the dragon. (PI. LIxa.) He shares this paradoxical nature with the snake. According to Philo the snake is the most spiritual of all creatures; it is of a fiery nature, and its swiftness is terrible. It has a long life and sloughs off old age with its skin.153 In actual fact the snake is a cold-blooded creature, unconscious and unrelated. It is both toxic and prophylactic, equally a symbol of the good and bad daemon (the Agathodaemon), of Christ and the devil. Among the Gnostics it was regarded as an emblem of the brain-stem and spinal cord, as is consistent with its predominantly reflex psyche. It is an excellent symbol for the unconscious, perfectly expressing the latter's sudden and unexpected manifestations, its painful and dangerous intervention in our affairs, and its frightening effects. Taken purely as a psychologem the hero represents the positive, favourable action of the unconscious, while the dragon is its negative and unfavourable action-not birth, but a devouring; not a beneficial and constructive deed, 
151 Cf. the cleaning of the Augean stables. The stable, like the cave, is a place of birth; e.g., the cave and stable in which Christ was born. (See Robertson, Christ and Krishna.) Birth in a stable is also found in a Basuto myth (Frobenius, Zeitalter). It belongs to the sphere of animal fables; hence the story of how the barren Sarah conceived is prefigured in the Egyptian fable of the Apis bull. Herodotus says; "This Apis-or Epaphus-is the calf of a cow which is never afterwards able to have another. The Egyptian belief is that a flash of light descends upon the cow from heaven, and this causes her to conceive Apis." (Ill, 28; trans. by Selincourt, p. 186.) Apis is the sun, and his distinguishing marks are a white patch on the forehead, on his back the figure of an eagle, and on his tongue a beetle. 
152 Some authorities connect <"pas, 'supreme power,' KUP'as, 'lord,' with OIran. caur, cur, 'hero,' Skr. sura-s, 'strong, hero.' But the connection is regarded as doubtful or improbable. 
153 Maehly, Die Schlange im My thus und Kultus, p. 7. 
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VII. THE DUAL MOTHER 
but greedy retention and destruction. (Fig. 35; cf. also pI. XXXIV and fig. 30.) 
	581 	Every psychological extreme secretly contains its own op- 
posite or stands in some sort of intimate and essential relation to it.154 Indeed, it is from this tension that it derives its peculiar 

Fig. 35. The assault by the dragon 
From Vitruvius, De architectura, Venice, I5II 
dynamism. There is no hallowed custom that cannot on occasion turn into its opposite, and the more extreme a position is, the more easily may we expect an enantiodromia, a conversion of something into its opposite. The best is the most threat, ened with some devilish perversion just because it has done the most to suppress evil. This peculiar relationship to the opposite 154 A good example of this is the Yang-Yin doctrine in classical Chinese philosophy. 
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SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION: TWO 
can also be seen in the vagaries of language, as for instance in the comparison of 'good, better, best.' 'Better,' however, derives from the old word bass) meaning 'good.' The related English word is 'bad'; its comparative would therefore be 'better' (badder!). What happens everywhere in language happens also in mythology: in one version of a fairytale we find God, in another the devil.155 And how often has it happened iri the history of religion that its rites, orgies and mysteries degenerate into vicious debauches! 156 Thus a blasphemer who arose at the beginning of the nineteenth century says of the Communion: 
The communion of the devil is in the brothels. Everything that they sacrifice there they sacrifice to the devil and not to God. There they have the devil's cup and the devil's board; there they have sucked the head of the snake,157 there they have fed on the bread of iniquity and drunk the wine of fornication. 
	58~ 	Anton Unternahrer, as this man was called, fancied himself 
a sort of priapic divinity. He says of himself: 
Black-haired, very charming withal and of handsome countenance, everyone enjoys listening to thee because of the graceful speeches which flow from thy mouth; therefore do the virgins love thee.158 
155 [Etymologically, 'devil' and 'divinity' are both related to Skr. deva, 'demon.' -TRANs.] 
156 Cf. the account of the orgies practised by certain Russian sects in Merezhkovsky, Peter and Alexis. The orgiastic cult of Anahita or Anaitis, the Asiatic goddess of love, is still practised among the Ali Illahija, the self-styled "extinguishers of the light," and the Yezidis and Dushik Kurds, who indulged nightly in religious orgies ending in a wild sexual debauch during which incestuous unions occur. (Spiegel, Eranische Altertumsku71de, ll, p. 64.) Further examples in Stoll, Das 
	Geschlechtsleben in der Volkerpsychologie. 	J 
157 Concerning the snake-kiss, see Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, Ill, p. 969. By this means a beautiful woman was set free. Spielrein's patient (pp. 344f.) says: 
"Wine is the blood of Jesus.- The water must be blessed and was blessed by him.-He who is buried alive becomes a vineyard.- That wine turns to blood.The water is mingled with childishness because God says 'Become like children.' -There is also a spermatic water that can be steeped in blood. Maybe that is the water of Jesus." This hotch-potch of ideas is characteristic. Wiedemann ("Die Toten und ihre Reiche," p. 51, cited from Dieterich, p. 101) documents the Egyptian idea that man could drink immortality by sucking the breast of a goddess. Cf. the myth of Heracles, who became immortal after a single sip at the breast of Hera. 
158 From the Geheimes ReskriPt (18lU) of Unternahrer. I have to thank the Rev. O. Pfister for calling my attention to this document. 
376 

VII. THE DUAL MOTHER 
	583 	He continues: 
Ye fools and blind men, behold God has created man in his own image, as male and female, and has blessed them and said: "Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it," Therefore has he given the greatest honour to these poor members, and placed them naked in the garden ... 
Now are the fig-leaves and the covering removed, because ye have turned to the Lord, for the Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,159 there is the brightness of the Lord mirrored with uncovered countenance. This is precious before God, and is the glory of the Lord and the adornment of our God, when ye stand in the image and honour of God as God created you, naked and unashamed. 
Who shall ever praise sufficiently in the sons and daughters of the living God those members of the body which are appointed for procreation? 
In the lap of the daughters of Jerusalem is the gate of the Lord, and the righteous shall there go into the temple, even to the altar. And in the lap of the sons of the living God is the water-pipe of the upper part, which is a tube, like a rod with which to measure the temple and the altar. And underneath the water-pipe are erected the sacred stones, as a sign and testimony 160 of the Lord, who has taken to himself the seed of Abraham. 
Out of the seed in the chamber of the mother God creates with his hand a man, formed in his own image. Then is the house of the mother and the chamber of the mother opened for the daughters of the living God, and God himself brings forth the child through them. Thus God creates children from stones, for the seed comes from the stones. 
	584 	History has numerous examples of how easily the mystery 
can turn into a sexual orgy just because it grew out of the opposite of the orgy. It is characteristic that this fanatic should return again to the symbol of the snake, which in the mystery religions entered into the faithful, fecundating and spiritualizing them, though all the time keeping its phallic significance. In the mysteries of the Ophites, the festival was celebrated with 
159 Nietzsche: "And this parable I also give unto you: not a few who sought to cast out their devil, themselves entered into the swine" (Zamthustra). 
160 Testis originally had the double meaning of 'testicle' and 'testimony.' [C£. the Biblical custom of swearing an oath by placing the hand "under the thigh"; Genesis 24: 2f and 47: 29f.-EDITORS.] 
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SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION: TWO 
live snakes, and the creatures were even kissed. (Cf. the kissing of the Demeter serpent in the Eleusinian mysteries.) This kiss plays a not unimportant part in the sexual orgies of certain modern Christian sects. 
	585 	One of my patients dreamt that a snake shot out of a cave 
and bit him in the genital region. This dream occurred at the moment when the patient was convinced of the truth of the analysis and was beginning to free himself from the bonds of his mother-complex. He felt that he was making progress and that he had more control over himself. But the moment he felt the impulse to go forward he also felt the pull of the bond to the mother. Being bitten in the genital region by a snake (cf. pIs. LXlb, LXIV), reminds us of Attis, whose self-castration was occasioned by his mother's jealousy. Another patient had the following dream after a relapse into neurosis: she was completely filled inside with an enormous snake. Only the end of its tail stuck out from her arm. She tried to seize hold of it, but it slithered away. A third patient complained that a snake was stuck in her throat.161 Nietzsche uses this symbolism in his "vision" of the shepherd and the snake: 
And verily, what I saw was like nothing I ever saw before. I saw a young shepherd, writhing, choking, twitching, with distorted countenance, and with a heavy black serpent hanging out of his mouth. 
Did ever I see so much loathing and pale horror on a human countenance? 162 Perhaps he had been asleep, and the serpent had crawled into his mouth-and bitten fast. 
My hand tugged at the serpent, and tugged in vain. I could not pull the serpent out of his throat. Then a cry broke from me: "Bite -its head off! Bite hard!" My horror, my hatred, my loathing, my pity, all my good and bad broke from me in one cry. 
You valiant ones about me ... , you lovers of mysteries, solve me the riddle I then saw, interpret for me the vision of the loneliest man! 
For a vision it was, and a foresight: what did I then see in a semblance? And who is it that is to come? 
161 Cl. Nietzsche's poem: "Why hast thou enticed thyself / Into the old serpent's Paradise?" [Cf. par. 459, above.] 
162 Nietzsche himself seems to have shown at times a certain predilection for loathsome animals. Cl. BernouIIi, Franz Overbeck und' Friedrich Nietzsche, !, p.166. 
378 

VII. THE DUAL MOTHER 
Who is the shepherd into whose mouth the serpent crawled? Who is the man into whose throat all the heaviest and blackest must crawl? 163 
But the shepherd bit, as my cry bade him-he bit with a strong bite! Far off he spat the head of the serpent and leapt to his feet. 
No longer a shepherd, no longer a man, but a transfigured being with light all about him, who laughed! Never yet on earth did a human being laugh as he laughed! 
o my brothers, I heard a laughter which was no human laughter -and now a thirst consumes me, a longing that is never allayed. 
My longing for that laughter consumes me: 0 how can I bear to live, and how could I bear to die! 164 
	586 	The experience described here by Nietzsche can be inter- 
preted as follows with the help of what we said above: the snake represents the unconscious psyche which, like the snakegod in the Sabazios mysteries, crawls into the mouth of the celebrant, i.e., N ietzsche himself as the 7rOtJ.lTJl' or 7rotJ.la/loP7Js, the shepherd of souls and preacher, firstly to stop him from talking too much, and secondly to make him ~/l8EOS-' "enthused," filled with God.' The snake had already bitten fast, but fear was swifter and more violent: it bit off the snake's head and spat it out. If you want the snake to bruise your heel you have only to tread on its head. The shepherd laughed on getting rid of the snake-a wild hysterical laughter, because he had dished the compensation from the unconscious. He could now reckon without his host, and with the well-known consequences: one has only to read the passages in Zarathustra where Nietzsche speaks of laughing and laughter. Unfortunately, everything happened afterwards just as if the whole German nation had paid heed to Nietzsche's sermon. 
	587 	The unconscious insinuates itself in the form of a snake if 
the conscious mind is afraid of the compensating tendency of the unconscious, as is generally the case in regression. But if the compensation is accepted in principle, there is no regression, and the unconscious can be met half-way through introversion. 
163 Cl. Nietzsche's dream, quoted at p. 34, n. 1, above. 
164 Thus SPake Zarathustra (in Wel'ke, VI, pp. 233l.). This image is reminiscent of the myth of Dietrich of Bern: he was wounded in the forehead by an arrow, and because a piece remained lodged there, he was called the "immortal." Similarly, half of Hrungnir's stone club embedded itself in Thor's skull. Grimm, I, pp. 371-']2. 
379 

SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION: TWO 
It must be admitted, however, that the problem as it presented itself to Nietzsche was insoluble, for nobody could expect the shepherd to swallow down a snake under such circumstances. We are confronted here with one of those fatal cases, by no means uncommon, where the compensation appears in a form that cannot be accepted and could only be overcome by something that is equally impossible for the patient. Cases of this kind occur when the unconscious has been resisted for too long on principle, and a wedge violently driven between instinct and the conscious mind. 
	588 	Through introversion, as numerous historical witnesses tes- 
tify, one is fertilized, inspired, regenerated, and reborn. In Indian philosophy this idea of creative spiritual activity has even acquired a cosmogonic significance. According to the Rig-Veda (X, 121), the unknown creator of all things is Prajapati, "Lord of Creation." His cosmogonic activity is described as follows in the various Brahmanas: 
Prajapati desired: I will propagate myself, I will be many. He practised tap as} and after he had practised tapas he created these worlds.165 
	589 	The term tapas is to be translated, according to Deussen,166 
as "he heated himself with his own heat," 167 in the sense that "he brooded his own brooding," brooder and brooded being conceived not as separate, but as one and the same thing. As Hiranyagarbha (the Golden Germ), Prajapati is the self-begotten egg, the cosmic egg from which he hatches himself (fig. 36). He creeps into himself, becomes his own womb, makes himself pregnant with himself in order to hatch forth the world of multiplicity. Thus Prajapati transforms himself by introversion into something new, into the multiplicity of the world. It is particularly interesting to note the gradual approximation of widely divergent ideas. Deussen says: 
Just as, in a hot country like India, the idea of tap as became the symbol of strenuous effort and suffering, so the idea of tapo atapyata gradually acquired the meaning of self-castigation, and became associated with the view ... that creation is an act of self-abnegation on the part of the creator,168 
165 Rig-Veda, x, 121, trans. from Deussen, Geschichte, I, p. 181. 
	166 Ibid., pp. 181£. 	167 Sa tapo atapyata. 	168 Geschichte, I, p. 182. 
380 

VII. THE DUAL MOTHER 
	59° 	Self-incubation, 169 self-castigation, and introversion are closely 
related ideas. Immersion in oneself (introversion) is a penetration into the unconscious and at the same time asceticism. The result, for the philosophy of the Brahmanas, is the creation of the world, and for the mystic the regeneration and spiritual rebirth of the individual, who is born into a new world of the 

Fig. 36. Prajapati with the world-egg India 
spirit. Indian philosophy also assumes that creativity as such springs from introversion. Rig-Veda X, 129 says: 
Then the One, that was hidden in the shell, Was born through the force of fiery torment. 
169 The Stoic conception of creative heat, which we have already recognized as libido (p. 67, n. 51, above), is a kindred idea, like the birth of Mithras from a stone "through the sole heat of libido." 
381 

SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION: TWO 
From it there arose in the beginning love,170 Which is the germ and the seed of knowledge. The wise found the root of being in not-being 
By investigating the impulses of the human heart.l71 
	591 	This philosophical view conceives the world as an emana- 
tion of libido. When therefore the insane Schreber brought about the end of the world through his introversion, he was withdrawing libido from the world about him, thereby making it unreal.172 Schopenhauer tried in exactly the same way to abolish through negation (the equivalent of holiness and asceticism) the cardinal error of the Primal Will in creating the world at all. Does not Goethe also say: "Is not the core of nature in the heart of man?" 
	592 	The hero who sets himself the task of renewing the world 
and conquering death personifies the world-creating power which, brooding on itself in introversion, coiled round its mm egg like a snake, threatens life with its poisonous bite, so that the living may die and be born again from the darkness. The same idea is found in Nietzsche: 
How long already have you sat on your misfortune? Give heed, lest you hatch me 
An egg, 
A basilisk egg 
From your long travaiJ.173 
	593 	The hero is himself the snake, himself the sacrificer and the 
sacrificed, which is why Christ rightly compares himself with the healing Moses-serpent (cf. pI. Ixb), and why the saviour of the Christian Ophites was a serpent, too. It is both Agathodaimon (fig. 37) and Cacodaimon. In German legend we are told that the heroes have snake's eyes. 174 
	594 	Clear traces of the original identity of hero and snake are 
to be found in the myth of Cecrops. Cecrops was half snake, half man. In primitive times he was probably the snake of the Athenian citadel itself. As a buried god he was, like Erechtheus, a chthonic snake-deity. Above his subterranean dwelling rose 
	170 Kama = Eros, and = the libido. 	171 Trans. from Deussen, I, p. 123. 
172 Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. 
173 "Glory and Eternity" ("Ruhm und Ewigkeit," in Werke, VIII, I, p. 425). 174 Grimm, IV, p. 1395. Sigurd was called "Ormr 1 Auga" (Snake's Eyes). 
382 

VII. THE DUAL MOTHER 
the Parthenon, the temple of the virgin goddess. The flaying of the god, which we have already touched on in connection with the flaying-ceremonies of the Aztecs, is intimately bound up with the snake-like nature of the hero. It is reported of Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, that he was killed, flayed, stuffed, and hung up.m The hanging up of the god has an unmistakable symbolic value, since suspension is the symbol of unfulfilled longing or tense expectation ("suspense"). Christ, Odin, Attis, and others all hung upon trees. Jesus ben Pandira suffered such 
Fig. 37. Agathodaimon serpent Antique gem 
a death on the eve of the feast of the Passover, in the reign of Alexander Jannaeus (106-79 B.C.). This Jesus is supposed to have been the founder of the Essene sect,176 which had certain links with the Christianity that came afterwards. The Jesus ben Stada who was identified with the earlier Jesus but was later supposed to have lived in the second century A.D., was also hanged. Both were first stoned, a punishment which was, so to speak, a bloodless one like hanging. This may not be without significance in the light of a strange ceremony reported from Uganda: 
When a king of Uganda wished to live for ever, he went to a place in Busiro, where a feast was given by the chiefs. At the feast the Mamba clan 177 was especially held in honour, and during the 175 Galatians 3: 27 contains an allusion to this primitive idea: "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ" (RSV). The word used here, EVO{JELV (induere), means literally to 'put on, clothe oneself, insinuate oneself 
	into.' 	176 Cf. Robertson, Christianity and Mythology, p. 395. 
177 The mamba is the African cobra. 
383 

SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION: TWO 
festivities a member of this clan was secretly chosen by his fellows, caught by them, and beaten to death with their fists; no stick or other weapon might be used by the men appointed to do the deed. After death, the victim's body was flayed and the skin made into a special whip .... After the ceremony of the feast in Busiro, with its strange sacrifice, the king of Uganda was supposed to live for ever, but from that day he was never allowed to see his mother again.178 
	595 	Marsyas, who seems to have been a substitute for Attis, the 
son-lover of Cybele, was also skinned,179 Whenever a Scythian king died, his slaves and horses were slaughtered, skinned, and stuffed, and then set up again.180 In Phrygia, the representatives of the father-god were killed and skinned. The same was done in Athens with an ox, which was skinned and stuffed and afterwards hitched to the plough. In this way the renewal of the earth's fertility was celebrated.1s1 
	596 	The god-hero, symbolized by the spring zodion (Aries, 
Taurus), descends to the lowest point in winter, overcomes it, and having passed beyond the summer solstice is himself overcome as if by an unconscious longing for death. Nevertheless he is divided within himself, and his descent and approaching end therefore seem to him like evil designs of the sinister mother who secretly lays a poisonous snake in his path to undo him. The mysteries, however, hold out the consoling promise that there is no contradiction 182 and no disharmony when life changes into death: "The bull is the father of the dragon and the dragon is the father of the bull." 183 
178 Frazer, The Golden Bough, Part IV, p. 405. 
	179 Ibid., p. 242. 	180 Ibid., p. 246. 
181 Ibid., p. 249. Concerning the flaying motif, see my "Transformation Symbolism in the Mass," par. 348 (1955/56 edn., p. 296). 
182 Another attempt at a solution seems to be the Dioscuri motif: two brothers who resemble one another, one mortal, the other immortal. This motif is found in Indian mythology as the two Asvins, though here they are not differentiated. It appears very clearly in Shvetashvatara Upanishad (4, 6) as the companion birds who "clasp the selfsame tree," i.e., as the personal and suprapersonal atman. In the Mithraic cult, Mithras is the father, Sol the son, and yet both are one as (, Ji.E-yas Ihos "HALOsMLepas: "the great god Helios Mithras." (Cf. Dieterich, p. 68.) That is to say, man does not change at death into his immortal part, but is mortal and immortal even in life, being both ego and self. 
183 ravpos opaKovros Kat ravpou opaKWV 7ranlP.-Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanan:m religionum, XXVI, 1, p. 67. 
384 

VII. THE DUAL MOTHER 
	597 	Nietzsche voices the same mysterious truth: 
Here I sit, Or rather, 
Here I am swallowed down By this smallest oasis. Yawning it opened 
Its lovely lips- 
All hail to that whale If he provides thus For his guest's welfarel 
Hail to his belly, 
If it is 
Such a lovely oasis belly! 
The desert grows; woe to him who hides deserts! Stone grinds on stone, the desert gulps and strangles. Monstrous Death, glowing under his tan, 
Stares and chews ... his life is his chewing ... o man burnt out by lust, do not forget: 
You are the stone, the desert, the death's-head! 184 
	598 	After slaying the dragon, Siegfried meets father Wotan, who 
is plagued by gloomy cares because the earth-mother Erda has laid the old serpent in his path in order to enfeeble him. He says to Erda: 
All-knowing one, Care's piercing sting By thee was planted 
In Wotan's dauntless heart: 
With fear of shameful Ruin and downfall 
Thy knowledge filled him; The fearful tidings Choked his breast! 
Art thou the world's wisest woman? Then tell me: 
How may a god conquer his care? 
ERDA: Thy name 
Is not as thou sayest! 184 Werke, VIII, p. 413,' 
385 

SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION: TWO 
	599 	With poisoned sting the mother has robbed her son of the 
joy of life and deprived him of the power which lies in the secret name. Just as Isis demanded the secret name of Ra, so Erda says: "Thy name is not as thou sayestl" But the Wanderer has found a way to conquer the fatal charm of the mother: 
The gods' downfall 
No more dismays me Since I willed their doom I 
To the loveliest Walsung I leave my heritage; 
To the eternally young Joyously yields the god I 185 
	600 	These wise words contain in fact the saving thought: it is 
not the mother who lays the poisonous worm in our path, but life itself, which wills itself to complete the sun's course, to mount from morn to noon, and then, crossing the meridiafJ., to hasten towards evening, no more at odds with itself, but desiring the descent and the end.186 
	601 	N ietzsche's Zarathustra says: 
I praise my death, the free death whid: comes to me because I desire it. 
185 Wagner, Siegfried, li. 2088-2101, 2117-19, 2126-27, 2248-49. 
186 It is a striking fact that the lion-killing heroes Samson and HeracIes fight without weapons. (Cf. fig. 17.) The lion is a symbol of the fierce heat of midsummer; astrologically he is the domicilium soUs. Steinthal ("Die Sage von Simson," p. 133) reasons as follows: "When, therefore, the sun-god fights the summer heat, he is fighting himself; if he kills it, he kills himself .... The Phoenicians and Assyrians and Lydians believed that their sun-god was committing suicide, for only as suicide could they comprehend how the sun's heat could grow less. Therefore, when the sun stood at its height in summer and burnt everything with its scorching rays, they thought: thus the god burns himself, but he does not die, he only rejuvenates himself .... HeracIes burns himself too, but mounts to Olympus in the flames. This is the contradiction in the pagan gods: as forces of nature they are both helpful and harmful to men. So, in order to do good and rescue mankind, they must work against themselves. The contradiction is mitigated if each of the two sides of the force of nature is personified as a separate god, or if both are conceived as a single divine person, the beneficent and injurious sides each being assigned a separate symbol. The symbol becomes more and more autonomous and in the end becomes a god itself; and whereas originally the god worked against himself and destroyed himself, now symbol fights against symbol, god against god, or the god against the symbol." The hero has no weapons precisely because he fights himself. 
386 

VII. THE DUAL MOTHER 
And when shall I desire it? 
He who has a goal and an heir desires death at the proper time for the goal and the heir.18T 
	602 	Nietzsche's amor fati is somewhat overdone, and like an ail- 
ing Superman he tries to be always one jump ahead of fate. Siegfried is more cautious: he conquers father ''''otan and sets out to win Briinhilde. The first thing he sees is her horse; then he thinks he espies a man sleeping in armour. He cuts off the coat of mail, and when he sees that it is a woman he is seized wi th terror: 
My heart doth faint and falter! On whom shall I call for help? Mother! Mother! 
Remember me .. 
Can this be fear? 
o Mother, Mother! 
Thy dauntless childl 
A woman lies sleeping 
And she has taught him to fearl 
Awake, awake! Holiest maid! 
So shall I suck life From sweetest lips, 
Even though I die in a kiss! 
	603 	In the duet which immediately follows the mother is Ill- 
voked: 
o mother, hail, Who gave me birth. 
	604 	Briinhilde's avowal is particularly significant: 
Didst thou but know, o joy of the world, 
How I have ever loved thee! Thou wert my gladness, Thou wert my care! 
Thy tender life I sheltered Before it was thine; 
187 "Voluntary Death,," in Zarathustra. [Cf. trans. by Common, p. 125.] 
387 

SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION: TWO 
Before thou wert born 
My shield was thy guard.188 
	605 	Briinhilde, standing to Wotan in a daughter-anima relation- 
ship, is clearly revealed here as the symbolical or spiritual mother of Siegfried, thus confirming the psychological rule that the first carrier of the anima-image is the mother. Siegfried says: 
Then death took not my mother? Was the loved one but sleeping? 
	606 	The mother-imago, at first identical with the anima, repre- 
sents the feminine aspect of the hero himself. Briinhilde tells him as much in the words: 
Thine own self am I In the bliss of thy love! 
	607 	As the anima she is the mother-sister-wife, and as the pre- 
existent archetype she has always loved him: 
o Siegfried, Siegfriedl Conquering light! 
Always I have loved thee, For I alone divined Wotan's hidden thoughtThe thought which I never Dared to name, 
Which I dared not think, Which I only felt, 
For which I fought, Struggled and strove, 
For which I defied 
Him who conceived it. Canst thou not guess? 
It was naught but my love for theel 
	608 	The anima-image brings with it still other aspects of the 
mother-imago, amongst others those of water and submersion: 
A glorious flood Before me rolls. With all my senses 
188 Siegfried, H. 2478-82, 2496-25°0, 2511-16,2542-43,2552-59, It was an Etruscan custom to bury the cinerary urn of the dead man in the earth and cover it with a shield. 
388 

VII. THE DUAL MOTHER 
I only see 
Its buoyant, gladdening billows. I long to plunge 
My burning heat 
In the water's balm; Just as I am 
To sink in the flood. o that its billows 
Might drown me in bliss! 
	609 	The water represents the maternal depths and the place of 
rebirth; in short, the unconscious in its positive and negative aspects. But the mystery of regeneration is of an awe-inspiring nature: it is a deadly embrace. There is an allusion to the terrible mother of heroes, who teaches them fear, in the words of Briinhilde, the horse-woman who conducts the dead to the other side: 
Fearest thou, Siegfried? Fearest thou not 
The wild, raging woman? 
	610 	The orgiastic "Occide moriturus" from the love-scene in the 
metamorphosis of Apuleius resounds in Briinhilde's words: 
Laughing let us be lost, Laughing go down to death! 
	611 	And in the cry 
Light-giving love, Laughing death! 189 
we find the same significant contrast. These orgiastic frenzies and barbaric extremes are in the very nature of the Mater saeva cupidinum and determine the fate of the hero. Luck must stand unbidden and unforeseen at his side if he is not to perish of exaggerated self-confidence at the very first undertaking. But his mother-anima is blind, and his fate overtakes him sooner or later regardless of his luck-in most cases sooner. The subsequent fate of Siegfried is the fate of every archetypal hero: the spear of the one-eyed Hagen, the Dark One, strikes his vulnerable spot. In the shape of Hagen the one-eyed Wotan slays the son. The hero is the ideal masculine type: leaving the mother, 189 Siegfried, H. 2561-62, 2565-66. 2571-90, 2738-50. 2797-99. 2818-19. 2862-611' 
389 

SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION: TWO 
the source of life, behind him, he is driven by an unconscious desire to find her again, to return to her womb. Every obstacle that rises in his path and hampers his ascent wears the shadowy features of the Terrible Mother, who saps his strength with the poison of secret doubt and retrospective longing; and in every conquest he wins back again the smiling, loving and life-giving mother. This image, taken as a kind of musical figure, a contrapuntal modulation of feeling, is extremely simple and its meaning is obvious. To the intellect, however, it presents an almost insuperable difficulty, particularly as regards logical exposition. The reason for this lies in the fact that no part of the hero-myth is single in meaning, and that, at a pinch, all the figures are interchangeable. The only certain and reliable thing is that the myth exists and shows unmistakable analogies with other myths. Myth-interpretation is a tricky business and there is some justification for looking at it askance. Hitherto the myth-interpreter has found himself in a somewhat unenviable position, because he only had exceedingly doubtful points for orientation at his disposal, such as astronomical and meteorological data. Modern psychology has the distinct advantage of having opened up a field of psychic phenomena which are themselves the matrix of all mythology-I mean dreams, visions, fantasies, and delusional ideas. Here the psychologist not only finds numerous points of correspondence with myth-motifs, but also has an invaluable opportunity to observe how such contents arise and to analyse their function in a living organism. We can in fact discover the same multiplicity of meanings and the same apparently limitless interchangeability of figures in dreams. On the other hand we are now in a position to establish certain laws, or at any rate rules, which make dream interpretation rather more certain. Thus, we know that dreams generally compensate the conscious situation, or supply what is lacking to it.190 This very important principle of dream-interpretation also applies to myths. Furthermore, investigation of the products of the unconscious yields recognizable traces of archetypal structures which coincide with the myth-motifs, 
190 Although the unconscious is, in general, complementary to consciousness, the complementing is not of a mechanical nature that can be clearly predicted, but acts in each case purposiveIy and intelligently, so that it is better to think of it as compensation. 
390 

612 

VII. THE DUAL MOTHER 
among them certain types which deserve the name of dominants. These are archetypes like the anima, animus, wise old man, witch, shadow, earth-mother, etc., and the organizing dominants, the self, the circle, and the quaternity, i.e., the four functions or aspects of the self (cf. pIs. LVI, LX) or of consciousness. It 

Fig. 38. World plan From an Aztec codex 
is evident (figs. 38 and 39; pI. LIxb) that knowledge of these types makes myth interpretation considerably easier and at the same time puts it where it belongs, that is, on a psychic basis. 
Looked at in this light, the hero myth is an unconscious drama seen only in projection, like the happenings in Plato's parable of the cave. The hero himself appears as a being of more than human stature. He is distinguished from the very beginning by his godlike characteristics. Since he is psychologically 
391 

SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION: TWO 
an archetype of the self, his divinity only confirms that the self is numinous, a sort of god, or having some share in the divine nature. In this mythologem may lie the root of the argument in favour of "homoousia." For psychology it makes a vast difference whether the self is to be considered "of the same nature" as the Father (6,LLOOV(lLOS), or merely "of a similar nature" (O,LLOLOV(lLOS). The decision in favour of homoousia was of great psychological importance, for it asserted that Christ is of the same nature as 
Fig. 39. The four corners of the zodiac: sun and moon in centre Coptic emblem 
God. But Christ, from the point of view' of psychology and comparative religion, is a typical manifestation of the self. For psychology the self is an imago Dei and cannot be distinguished from it empirically. (Cf. pI. LX.) The two ideas are therefore of the same nature. The hero is the protagonist of God's transformation in man; he corresponds to what I call the "mana personality." 191 The latter has such an immense fascination for the conscious mind that the ego all too easily succumbs to the temptation to identify with the hero, thus bringing on a psychic inflation with all its consequences. For this reason the repugnance felt by certain ecclesiastical circles for the "inner Christ" is understandable enough, at least as a preventive measure against the danger of psychic inflation which threatens the Christian European. Although the religion and philosophy of India are largely dominated by the idea of homoousia,192 there 
191 See "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious," Ch. IV. 
192 Identity of the personal and the suprapersonal atman. 
392 

VII. THE DUAL MOTHER 
is less danger in this direction because the Indian has an equally homoousian idea of God (Brahman), which is very definitely not the case with the Christian. The latter has far too little introspection to be able to realize what modifications in his present conception of God the homoousia of the self (Atman) would involve. I hope my reader will pardon these reflections, which may seem very remote from our theme. I add them here only to put the numinosity of the hero archetype in the right perspective.193 
193 Cf. Psychological Types (1923 edn., pp. 24SfI.), and Aion, the chapters on the symbolism of the self. 
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VIII 
THE SACRIFICE 1 
	61!l 	Let us now turn back to the Miller fantasies and watch the 
last act of the drama. Chiwantopel cries out with painful emotion: 
"In all the world there is not a single one! I have searched among a hundred tribes. I have aged a hundred moons since I began. Will there never be anyone who will know my soul?-Yes, by almighty God, yes!-But ten thousand moons will wax and wane before her pure soul is born. And it is from another world that her parents will come to this one. She will be fair of skin and fair-haired. She will know sorrow even before her mother bears her. Suffering will be her companion; she too will seek-and will find no one who understands her. Many a suitor will wish to pay court to her, but not one of them will know how to understand her. Temptation will often assail her soul, but she will not yield .... In her dreams I shall come to her, and she will understand. I have kept my body inviolate. I have come ten thousand moons before her time, and she will come ten thousand moons too late. But she will understand! It is but once in ten thousand moons that a soul like hers is born!" 
(A lacuna.)-A green viper darts out of the bushes, glides towards him, and stings him in the arm; then it attacks his horse, which is the first to succumb. Then Chi-wan-to-pel says to his horse: "Farewell, faithful brother 1 Enter into your rest! I have loved you and you have served me well. Farewell, I shall rejoin you soon!" Then to the serpent: "Thanks, little sister, you have put an end to my wanderings!" Now he shrieks with pain and calls out in prayer. "Almighty God, take me soonl I have sought to know thee and to keep thy law. Oh, suffer not my body to fall into corruption and decay, and become carrion for the eagles!" A smoking volcano appears in the distance, the rumbling of an earthquake is heard, 1 [In the Swiss edition, Ch. VII, "Das Opfer" ("The Sacrifice"), embraces all of the text composing Chs. VII and VIII of the present edition. It contains a break in the text at this point, but no heading. The present arrangement corresponds to that of the original Swiss edition and its English trans.-EDlTORS.] 
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VIII. THE SACRIFICE 
followed by a landslide. Chi-wan-to-pel cries out in an extremity of anguish as the earth closes over his body: "Ah, she will understandl ]a-ni-wa-ma, ]a-ni-wa-ma, thou that understandest me." 
	614 	Chiwantopel's prophecy is an echo from Longfellow's Hia- 
wathaJ where, at the end of the hero's career, the poet could not resist the sentimentality of dragging in the white man's Saviour in the guise of the supreme representative of Christianity and Christian morals. (One thinks ruefully of the work of salvation accomplished by the Spaniards in Mexico and Peru, and of the Indian wars in North America.) With this prophecy the personality of our author is again brought into closest relationship with the hero as the real object of Chiwantopel's longing. The hero would undoubtedly have married her had she only lived in his time, but unfortunately she comes too late-ten thousand moons too late. This very considerable time-gap points to a gap in another sense: Miss Miller's ego is separated by a gulf from the figure of Chiwantopel. He is wholly "on the other side." She will seek him in vain, just as he seeks her; in other words, there will never be any possibility of a meeting or union of conscious and unconscious, the one thing needful to compensate the conscious attitude and create wholeness. She or he will be able at most to dream of such a meeting, and only so will their souls be able to understand one another, to love and embrace. But this love will never become a conscious fact. In this respect the situation holds no favourable prognosis for Miss Miller; for every real love-relationship consists ultimately in the girl finding her hero, and the hero his soul, not in dreams, but in palpable reality. 
	615 	The next passage runs: "I have kept my body inviolate." 
This proud sentence, which naturally only a woman could utter, since a man is not given to boasting about such matters, confirms yet again that all enterprises have remained but dreams. The hero's assertion that he is inviolate refers back to the abortive attempt on his life in the preceding chapter and explains what exactly it meant. He tells us in the words: "Temptation will often assail her soul-but she will not yield." This statement expresses the "touch me not" attitude of our author, which is as it were dictated by her "ghostly lover." 2 At all 
2 Cf. Harding, The Way of All Women. 
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SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION: TWO 
events the awakening of this hero-figure-the animus-usually has some such consequences for the conscious mind. It is as if a new instinct were aroused, and the soul were seized by a hitherto unknown longing: the image of earthly love pales before that of the heavenly, which turns the heart and mind away from their "natural" destination. I use the word "natural" here in the sense given it by the Age of Enlightenment. In reality of course the world-spurning passion of the "spirit" is just as natural as the marriage-flight of insects. Love for the "heavenly bridegroom" or for Sophia is a phenomenon that is by no means confined to the sphere of Christianity. It is in fact that "other," equally natural instinct to cleave to the realities of the soul. These are not makeshift inventions, as certain theories would have us believe, but facts and figures which can fill a man with passion and enchantment, and turn his head as easily as the creatures of this world. "You are conscious only of the single urge," 3 says Faust to Wagner. But Miss Miller seems to be on the point of forgetting this urge for the sake of the other. By so doing she does not escape the danger of one-sidedness, but only changes its sign. Whoever loves the earth and its glory, and forgets the "dark realm," or confuses the two (which is mostly what happens), has spirit for his enemy; and whoever flees from the earth and falls into the "eternal arms" has life for an enemy. This is what happens to the hero Chiwantopel, who personifies Miss Miller's otherworldliness: he falls foul of the green snake.4 Green is the colour of the vegetation numen ("green is life's golden tree"), and the snake is the representative of the world of instinct, especially of those vital processes which are psychologically the least accessible of all. Snake dreams always indicate a discrepancy between the attitude of the conscious mind and instinct, the snake being a personification of the threatening aspect of that conflict. The appearance of the green viper therefore means: "Look out! Danger ahead!" 
	616 	We know from the rest of the story that Chiwantopel is elim- 
inated very thoroughly indeed: first he is fatally bitten by the snake, then the snake kills his horse, his animal vitality, and finally he is engulfed in a volcanic eruption. This solution of the problem represents an attempt on the partof the unconscious 
3 [Cf. MacNeice trans., p. 40.] 
4 Cf. Jaffe's study of E. T. A. Hoffmann's "Golden Bowl." 
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VIII. THE SACRIFICE 
to compensate and help the dangerous situation of the conscious mind. So far this situation has only been hinted at. But if it requires so drastic an annihilation of the hero, in contradiction to his usual mythological role, we may justifiably conclude that the human personality of the author is threatened in the highest degree by an invasion from the unconscious (euphemistically conceived as a "creative fantasy"). If only the fascinating Chiwantopel could be got out of the way, then there would at least be some hope of her interest turning again to the earth and its greenness, the other way being barred by the death of her lover. An invasion from the unconscious is very dangerous for the conscious mind when the latter is not in a position to understand and integrate the contents that have irrupted into it. One certainly does not have the feeling that Miss Miller is the "one who understands," though it is perfectly plain that "she who will understand" is meant for her. Since she has in fact not the slightest idea of what is happening, her situation is critical, because in these circumstances there is a very good chance of the conscious being overwhelmed by the unconscious, as indeed actually happened a little later, with fatal results.5 
	617 	When such an invasion happens, we are often faced with a 
situation in which the unconscious overtakes or "takes over" the conscious mind. The latter has somehow got stuck, with the result that the unconscious takes over the forward-striving function, the process of transformation in time, and breaks the deadlock. The contents then pouring into consciousness are archetypal representations of what the conscious mind should have experienced if deadlock was to be avoided. The tendency to stand still can easily be seen from the special emphasis laid on the inviolateness of the body, as well as from the wish to preserve it from corruption in the grave. She wants to stop the turning wheel that rolls the years along with it-wants to hang on to childhood and eternal youth rather than die and rot in the earth. But although we can forget, in the long-cherished feelings of youth, in the dreamy recollection of memories stubbornly hung on to, that the wheel rolls onward, yet the greying hair, the lax skin, the lined face are pitiless reminders that whether or not we expose ourselves to the destructive forces of life, the poison of the stealthily creeping serpent of time con/; See my foreword to the 2nd (1925) edn. of the present work. 
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SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION: TWO 
sumes our bodies nonetheless. Flight from life does not exempt us from the law of age and death. The neurotic who tries to wriggle out of the necessity of living wins nothing and only burdens himself with a constant foretaste of aging and dying, which must appear especially cruel on account of the total emptiness and meaninglessness of his life. If it is not possible for the libido to strive forwards, to lead a life that willingly accepts all dangers and ultimate decay, then it strikes back along the other road and sinks into its own depths, working down to the old intimation of the immortality of all that lives, to the old longing for rebirth. 
	618 	Holderlin follows this path in his poetry and in his life. I 
will let the poet speak for himself: 
To a Rose 
In the mother-womb eternal, Sweetest queen of every lea, Still the living and supernal Nature carries thee and me. 
Little rose, the tempest dire Strips our petals, ages us; Yet the deathless seeds aspire 
To new blooms, miraculous.6 
	619 	The following comments may be made on the imagery of 
this poem. The rose is a symbol of the beloved.7 So when the poet dreams that he and the rose are in the womb of nature, it means psychologically that he is still in the mother. There he finds eternal germination and renewal, a potential life that has everything before it, containing in itself all possibilities of realization without his having to submit to the labour of giving them shape. Plutarch records the same motif in the naIve myth of Osiris and Isis mating in their mother's womb. Holderlin likewise feels that it is the enviable prerogative of the gods to enjoy everlasting infancy. He says in "Hyperion's Song of Fate"; 
6 Gedichte, p. 53. [As trans. in the Hinkle (1916) edn.] 
7 It is, indeed, the essence of the beloved and a designation for the Virgin Mary (mystical rose). Cf. Jung and Wilhelm, The Secret ot the Golden Flower (1931 edn., p. 98), and the mandala symbolism in Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 99 and 139; also Hartlaub, Giorgiones Geheimnis. 
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VIII. THE SACRIFICE 
Fateless, like the sleeping 
Infant, breathe the heavenly ones, Chastely guarded 
In modest bud; 
Their spirits 
Blossom eternally, 
And the quiet eyes 
Gaze out in placid 
Eternal serenity.s 
	620 	This quotation shows what he means by heavenly bliss. 
HOlderlin was never able to forget this first and greatest happiness whose haunting presence estranged him from real life. The motif of the twins in the mother's womb is found in the African legend, recorded by Frobenius,9 of the Big Snake, which grew out of a little snake in a hollow tree ("stretching forth of the serpent"), and which devoured all human beings (devouring mother = death) until only one pregnant woman remained. She dug a ditch, covered it with a stone, and there gave birth to twins who afterwards became dragon-killers. The mating in the mother also occurs in the following West African legend: "In the beginning, Obatala the Sky and Odudua the Earth, his wife, lay pressed close together in a calabash." 10 Being "guarded in modest bud" is an image that is found in Plutarch, where it is said that the sun is born at dawn from a flower bud. Brahma, too, comes out of a bud (cf. pI. XLVW), and in Assam a bud gave birth to the first human pair. 
Man 
Scarcely had the ancient mountain tops Sprouted from the waters, 0 earth, And the first green islands, redolent With young saplings, breathed delight Through the May air over the ocean, And the joyful eye of the sun-god 
Looked down on his firstlings, the trees and flowers, Laughing children of his youth, your offspring: 
When, on the fairest of those islands, 
Born after a warm night, in the dawn-light long ago, Earth's most beautiful child 
S Gedichte, p. 315. [Based on the trans. in the Hinkle (1916) edn.] 
	9 Zeitalter, p. 68. 	10 Ibid., p. 269. 
399