brazen serpent). Mention is also made of the serpent miracle of Moses (2. B. Mos., Kap. IV u. VII).
After Moses has seen the Lord in a vision (Chapt. III) and been called by him to be the Savior of Israel,[1] he desired a miracle from him, so that the people might believe in the vision of the burning bush and that he was chosen. God makes his staff change into a serpent; Aaron repeats this miracle before Pharaoh; we see also the Egyptian magician do it. The staff of Aaron twists about the staff of the Egyptian. Shall we not think here of a dream-like erotic symbolism when it borders upon the previous vision of the burning bush that itself moves upon dream-like ground? The staff becomes a serpent; that is the miracle; and the Israelitish serpent twists about the Egyptian; does not that mean that Israel's men will vanquish the Egyptians?
We learn from Stending[2] of the serpent especially as the soul animal, that is, the animal into which the soul is transformed after its separation from the body by death. Erechtheus (later Erichthonios, another name for Poseidon) of Athens was taken from his mother, the earth, and given over to his false sisters Aglauros, Herse, and Pandrosos to care for, who, at the sight of the serpent-like child, were seized with frenzy and threw themselves down from the castle cliff. Later this God was seen incarnated in the temple serpent maintained in the Erechtheion (according to Stending a proof that, originally residing in the depths of the earth, it was as well the God causing the fruitfulness of the land and also death).
From the same source I take the following about the orgies of the Mainades of the Dionysius cult. The wild round dance, the shaking of the head, the shouting and the deafening music of the flutes brings forth by night time in passionate stimulation
- ↑ A teleological hallucination: like that which we meet commonly as the deciding point in the lives of great and small religious minds; it marks a moment from which they live wholly according to their ideal. One thinks of the conversion and the call of Paul; of the vision of the holy Francis of Assisi; of Goethe's beautiful soul, Susanna von Klettenberg, who, as the conclusion of her oscillation between heavenly and earthly love felt in a vision—not as before, God in general—but specifically the attraction of the man Christ in the body. Here the union with the definite object of love is very clear. In certain sects the producing of such "conversions" is frankly strived for.
- ↑ "Griech. und röm. Mythologie." Leipzig, Göschen, 1905.
