Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/243

 Agni is the sacrificial flame, the sacrificer, and the sacrificed, as Christ himself. Just as Christ left behind his redeeming blood, [Greek: pha/rmakon a)thanasi/as], in the stimulating wine, so Agni is the Soma, the holy drink of inspiration, the mead of immortality.[46] Soma and Fire are entirely identical in Hindoo literature, so that in Soma we easily rediscover the libido symbol, through which a series of apparently paradoxical qualities of the Soma are immediately explained. As the old Hindoos recognized in fire an emanation of the inner libido fire, so too they recognized, in the intoxicating drink (Fire-*water, Soma-Agni, as rain and fire), an emanation of libido. The Vedic definition of Soma as seminal fluid confirms this interpretation.[47] The Soma significance of fire, similar to the significance of the body of Christ in the Last Supper (compare the Passover lamb of the Jews, baked in the form of a cross), is explained by the psychology of the presexual stage, where the libido was still in part the function of nutrition. The "Soma" is the "nourishing drink," the mythological characterization of which runs parallel to fire in its origin; therefore, both are united in Agni. The drink of immortality was stirred by the Hindoo gods like fire. Through the retreat of the libido into the presexual stage it becomes clear why so many gods were either defined sexually or were devoured.

As was shown by our discussion of fire preparation, the fire tool did not receive its sexual significance as a later addition, but the sexual libido was the motor power which led to its discovery, so that the later teachings of the