Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/481

 the sight of a serpent hanging on a pole. From it was derived the cure.

"The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread, and one body; for we are all partakers of one bread."—I Corinthians x: 16, 17.

Bread and wine are the body and the blood of Christ; the food of the immortals who are brothers with Christ, [Greek: a)delphoi/], those who come from the same womb. We who are reborn again from the mother are all heroes together with Christ, and enjoy immortal food. As with the Jews, so too with the Christians, there is imminent danger of unworthy partaking, for this mystery, which is very closely related psychologically with the subterranean Hierosgamos of Eleusis, involves a mysterious union of man in a spiritual sense,[102] which was constantly misunderstood by the profane and was retranslated into his language, where mystery is equivalent to orgy and secrecy to vice.[103] A very interesting blasphemer and sectarian of the beginning of the nineteenth century named Unternährer has made the following comment on the last supper:

"The communion of the devil is in this brothel. All they sacrifice here, they sacrifice to the devil and not to God. There they have the devil's cup and the devil's dish; there they have sucked the head of the snake,[104] there they have fed upon the iniquitous bread and drunken the wine of wickedness."[105]

Unternährer is an adherent or a forerunner of the "theory of living one's own nature." He dreams of himself as a sort of priapic divinity; he says of himself: