Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/546

 gives himself to death both willingly and unwillingly. Upon the monuments of the Mithraic religion we often meet a strange symbol: a crater (mixing bowl) encoiled by a serpent, sometimes with a lion, who as antagonist opposes the serpent.[49] It appears as if the two were fighting for the crater. The crater symbolizes, as we have seen, the mother, the serpent the resistance defending her, and the lion the greatest strength and strongest will.[50] The struggle is for the mother. The serpent takes part almost regularly in the Mithraic sacrifice of the bull, moving towards the blood flowing from the wound. It seems to follow from that that the life of the bull (blood) is sacrificed to the serpent. Previously we have pointed out the mutual relationship between serpent and bull, and found there that the bull symbolizes the living hero, the shining sun, but that the serpent symbolizes the dead, buried or chthonic hero, the invisible sun. As the hero is in the mother in the state of death, the serpent is also, as the symbol of the fear of death, the sign of the devouring mother. The sacrifice of the bull to the serpent, therefore, signifies a willing renunciation of life, in order to win it from death. Therefore, after the sacrifice of the bull, wonderful fertility results. The antagonism between serpent and lion over the crater is to be interpreted as a battle over the fruitful mother's womb, somewhat comparable to the more simple symbolism of the Tishtriya song, where the demon Apaosha, the black horse, has possession of the rain lake, and the white horse, Tishtriya, must banish him from it. Death from time to time lays its destroying hand upon life and