Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/528

 phantastic conception that, beside the gods, ordinary "wise men" unite in sacrificing the primitive being, aside from the circumstance that, beside the primitive being, nothing had existed in the beginning (that is to say, before the sacrifice), as we shall soon see. If the great mystery of the mother sacrifice is meant thereby, then all becomes clear:

"From that great general sacrifice The dripping fat was gathered up. He formed the creatures of the air, And animals both wild and tame. From that great general sacrifice Richas and Sama-hymns were born; Therefrom the metres were produced, The Yajus had its birth from it.

"The moon was gendered from his mind And from his eye the Sun had birth; Indra and Agni from his mouth Were born, and Vâyu from his breath.

"Forth from his navel came midair; The sky was fashioned from his head; Earth from his feet, and from his ears The regions. Thus they formed the worlds."

It is evident that by this is meant not a physical, but a psychological cosmogony. The world arises when man discovers it. He discovers it when he sacrifices the mother; that is to say, when he has freed himself from the midst of his unconscious lying in the mother. That which impels him forward to this discovery may be interpreted psychologically as the so-called "Incest bar