Introduction
In Aztec theology, as long as men
could '...offer blood and the hearts of captives taken in combat, the power
of the sun god would not decline, and he would continue on his course above
the earth.' It was necessary to '...keep the sun moving in its course
so that darkness should not overwhelm the world forever' (cf. Koenigsberg,
2004). Apparently, the world was threatened with destruction and the bloody
carnage must continue uninterrupted, as a preventive measure.
M-L
von Franz says that '...[t]he sun in general represents a male principle of
collective consciousness, the unknown psychological factor which creates
collective consciousness'
Individual consciousness was
not ripe in Aztec civilization. In ancient civilizations there was always a fear
of unconscious invasion and a resultant dissolution of the ego. It comes to
expression in apocalyptic dread and fear of darkness. Indeed, ego
disintegration, to the individual, is no less fatal and terrifying than the
demolition of the world. Collective psychology enveloped the population. The
undeveloped ego consciousness is always identified with the collective. The
Aztec priest did not lie when he said that the Aztec world was threatened with
destruction.
Rites of passage
Mircea Eliade explains that primitive
man, in the initiation rite, attempts to pass beyond and to abolish "natural"
humanity. The rite of passage involves ordeals and symbolic death and
resurrection. Among some peoples candidates are buried, or laid in newly dug
graves. Novices are exposed to physical suffering and sometimes mutilations
occur, like circumcision, tattooing, and scarring. Sometimes teeth are knocked
out or fingers amputated. In this way the novice passes beyond the "natural
man" (Eliade, pp.184-92).
In this manner he enters into the
community of adulthood. It implies that knowledge is now possible, i.e. he is
taught the concepts of collective consciousness: 'During his training in the
bush he learns the sacred secrets: the myths that tell of the gods and the
origin of the world, the true names of the gods, the role and origin of the
ritual instruments employed in the initiation ceremonies...' (ibid.
p.188).
Although the rite of passage is initiatory it seems to
overlap with the blood sacrifice. To a degree, it has the function of
upholding collective consciousness, to keep the sun alive (note
1). Every sacrifice is, to a greater or
lesser extent, a self-sacrifice, pertaining to the natural state of
unconscious identity with the victim. Self-laceration, as a means of
destroying natural man, will vitalize the old sun god, too.
Medieval terror
The medieval flagellant movement is a
case in point. A fourteenth century friar gives an account of his own
experience.
One night this man shut himself up in his cell and stripped himself naked .... and took his scourge with the sharp spikes, and beat himself on the body and on the arms and on the legs, till blood poured off him as from a man that had been cupped. One of the spikes on the scourge was bent crooked, like a hook, and whatever flesh it caught it tore off. He beat himself so hard that the scourge broke into three bits and the points flew against the wall. He stood there bleeding and gazed at himself. It was such a wretched sight that he was reminded in many ways of the appearance of the beloved Christ, when he was fearfully beaten. Out of pity for himself he began to weep bitterly. And he knelt down, naked and covered in blood, in the frosty air, and prayed to God to wipe out his sins from before his gentle eyes (cf. Cohn, p.124).
The flagellants had chiliastic expectations. God threatened the world with apocalyptic destruction if mankind didn't repent. This called for sacrifice.
Each day two complete flagellations were performed in public; and each night a third was performed in the privacy of the bedroom. The flagellants did their work with such thoroughness that often the spikes of the scourge stuck in the flesh and had to be wrenched out. Their blood spurted onto the walls and their bodies turned to swollen masses of blue flesh (ibid., pp.132-3).
The flagellant movement soon turned militant. The German flagellants
in particular ended as uncompromising enemies of the church who condemned the
clergy and denied that the sacrament of the Eucharist had any meaning.
Flagellants would disrupt the sermon at church, and declared that any priest who
contradicted them should be dragged from the pulpit and burnt at stake. At one
occasion two Dominicans ventured to dispute with a band of flagellants, but
they were stoned and one of them died.
As usual the Jews suffered
along with the clergy and on a far greater scale. Through large areas of the Low
Countries the flagellants, aided by the masses of the poor, burnt and drowned
all the Jews they could find,
'because they thought to please God this way.' After the massacres of
1348 and 1349 there were very few Jews left in Germany or the Low Countries
(cf. Cohn, p.132ff).
The flagellants can be denoted a medieval terror
movement. The motif of offering to an angry Germanic god, was brought to
completion in Auschwitz, Belzec and Treblinka. It's like the old sun god demands
human blood to reassert himself.
The Aztec priest
The blood-stained Aztec priest, a
specialist in sophisticated methods of torture, was no less fearful than the
devoted flagellant. There are noteworthy similarities. The priests would always
bellow aloud for more sacrificial victims, and urged on their superstitious
sovereign by the denunciations of celestial wrath.
Every day he must make sacrifices of his own blood to the gods, not only from his ears like the common people, but also by piercing his tongue to offer blood. On all the greater ceremonial occasions he cut the calves of his legs or pierced them with cactus spines, so as to have blood to offer to the gods. His foreskin was pierced by cactus thorns, and torn until his penis was surrounded by a fringe of strips of flesh from which blood could easily be taken. Naturally, this implied, and was meant to assure, a celibate priesthood. The importance of virginity, both for the priests and among the women helpers of the temple, was absolute.
The priest was normally painted with a black, magical ointment from head to foot. On great occasions, his face, at least, was painted with the marks of the god whose festival was being celebrated. Even when going into war the priest would wear his magic black paint. His hair was never cut and it was stained with splashes of blood from human sacrifices. Nor was it ever washed, so these strange, black figures were crowned with untidy masses of of coiling, clotted locks, which apparently smelt horribly, and were infested with insects. Yet, in spite of these horrors, the priest, dressed in his long, black gown with little white crosses on it, was felt to be somebody holy and powerful .... The regime of priestly life involved much fasting. Long periods of living on only three tortillas and a bowl of water a day resulted in an austere and dedicated personality (Burland, pp.105-6).
Tezcatlipoca festival
The following
example is from the religious festival of the black-faced god Tezcatlipoca ("Smoking
Mirror").
A year before the intended sacrifice, a captive, distinguished for his personal beauty, and without a blemish on his body, was selected to represent this deity. Certain tutors took charge of him, and and instructed him how to perform his new part with becoming grace and dignity. He was arrayed in a splendid dress, regaled with incense and with a profusion of sweet-cented flowers .... When he went abroad, he was attended by a train of the royal pages, and, as he halted in the streets to play some favorite melody, the crowd prostrated themselves before him, and did him homage as the representative of their good deity. In this way he led an easy, luxurious life, till within a month of his sacrifice. Four beautiful girls, bearing the names of the principal goddesses, were then selected to share the honors of his bed; and with them he continued to live in idle dalliance, feasted at the banquets of the principal nobles, who paid him all the honours of a divinity.
At length the fatal day of sacrifice arrived .... He was stripped of his gaudy apparel, and bade adieu to the fair partners of his revelries .... As the sad procession wound up the sides of the pyramid, the unhappy victim threw away his gay chaplet of flowers, and broke in pieces the musical instrument with which he had solaced the hours of captivity. On the summit he was received by six priests .... They led him to the sacrificial stone .... On this the prisoner was stretched. [The sixth priest] dexteriously opened the breast of the wretched victim [and] tore out the palpitating heart. The minister of death, first holding this up towards the sun, an object of worship throughout Anahuac, cast it at the feet of the deity to whom the temple was devoted, while the multitudes below prostrated themselves in humble adoration (cf. Prescott, 1974, pp.55-57).
Here, similar to the rite of passage, the original wholeness of
natural man is sacrificed. In other words, it is really the unconsciousness of
natural man which is being sacrificed. The Aztec god-man leads an impulsive and
instinctive life, but it is also a life of cultural and social sophistication,
in short, life in the full. It is this very ideal of a youthful naíveté
and manifold life-style which is sacrificed. When the god thus is stripped of
his regal garment and dies, projections are withdrawn, which should further an
increase in collective consciousness. A stabile standpoint of consciousness is
retained, which promotes industriousness. The threat of instinctual
licentiousness and unconscious invasion are temporarily warded off, but also the
playful individuality.
What lies behind this is an archaic form of
substantive thinking. The divine properties are substantive. When the god-man is
stripped of them they fall to the share of humanity, who can also take part in
divine sonship. His splendour and sovereignty is sacrificed. Stripped of his
divine substance, often symbolized by costly regalia and garments, it will be a
boon for the worshippers, and it will be spiritually ingested by them. Often the
victim is ritually cannibalized. Prometheus was also chained to the rock and
tortured (cmp. the passion of Christ). Victimization is motivated by the idea of
stealing the luck and the virtuous qualities from another person or people. It
is a ritual attempt of the psyche, being stuck in unconsciousness, to acquire
the possessions of the divine, which is the light of consciousness.
Consciousness,
in all its forms, is of divine origin. Prometheus (whose name means forethought)
stole the fire from the gods and brought it to mankind. Prometheus and his fire
are symbolic of consciousness. Its hallmark is an elevated and self-sustaining
condition, which, to the unconscious mind, appears like a luxuriant and godlike
independence. Consequently, to lay hands on and ingest these qualities ritually
attempts at strengthening a feeble consciousness, thus to break out of
unconscious wholeness, a condition which is rooted in the historical infancy of
mankind. Hence when the divinely inspired unconscious man is sacrificed, his
spirit is released, which is the very substance that engenders consciousness.
When unconsciousness wholeness is sacrificed, consciousness is let out like the
spirit from the bottle.
We arrive at the surprising conclusion that
victimization of living beings, including the destruction of any orderly
wholeness containing splendour and riches, is driven by a strong motif of
breaking out of an unconsciousness which imprisons the spirit. For this reason
unconsciousness in human beings is a very dangerous condition. An unawareness of
unconscious motives is what characterizes modern politically correct thinking.
Such people appear like aloof god-men, who are floating on the riches of
Western civilization, trying to avoid contact with reality. This type of
demeanour nurtures the motif of blood-sacrifice. People tend to close their
eye's to the dark shadow of collective mankind, but it is a lesson that must be
learnt if individuation and growth of personality is to succeed. Most
importantly, one must be prepared to swallow uncomfortable truths and rid
oneself of the wet blanket of political correctness, which only serves the
purpose of remaining in a state of unconscious protectiveness.
The sun god
The Aztec citizen would experience the
blood offering as very comforting. This meant that the sun god would prevail
against darkness and rise above the horizon in the next day. The natural man,
the divinely inspired unconscious man inside us all, is offered to the benefit
of collective consciousness. Life in all its spontaneity and instinctuality is
sacrificed, so that the sun of collective consciousness, in all its rigidity,
monotony and boredom, can prevail.
At certain ceremonies a captive
or volunteer would, dressed as the sun god, Tonatiuh, ascend the stairs to the
sacrificial altar (cf. Vaillant, p.196). Victims commonly volunteered during
religious festivals. It was a great honour to die as the dying and
resurrecting sun god. This thinking is not in any sense antiquated. The
sacrificial orgy of World
Sacrifice in the modern world
The practice of ritual human
sacrifice has continued right up to recent days.
In the mid-nineties the sects of
the Solar Temple and the Heaven's Gate performed rituals of deathly
transcendence. By a collective suicide the members would supposedly achieve
heavenly grace. Their mystical theology guaranteed that death in this world
would be succeeded by rebirth in another better and spiritual world.
Self-sacrifice is here expressed as a means of transporting oneself to a "higher
plane", much like the Aztec sacrificial victim was transported to the
heaven of the sun god. But underlying this is really a call for spiritual
renewal, namely to arrive at a higher plane of consciousness.
What
does it mean when Western teenagers are practicing self-mutilation? Young men
and women are cutting themselves, using razor blades or knives to wound their
limbs and bodies. Eliade notes that 'patterns of initiation still survive,
although markedly desacralized, in the modern world' (Eliade, p.188).
By damaging themselves, it seems, they aim to destroy the natural wholeness of
childhood, and relieve themselves of the anxiety that goes together with a
consciousness not yet amputated off its mother, namely the unconscious. As in
the Tezcatlipoca sacrifice, an uncontrolled passion must be curbed. In order to
conform to the monotony of social and societal life, it is necessary to cast
off the ambivalency of primary wholeness (note 2).
The impression of a young woman's wholeness is wrecked when she puts an ugly
tattoo on her beautiful skin. It's like knocking out a tooth.
Comparatively, in order for the Malawian businessman to be prosperous, he
must entertain an hard-working attitude of one-sidedness and directionality,
and not go running off in the tangential direction, something very
characteristic of aboriginal mentality. So he cuts off a limb, i.e. a member
of the family. The horror of this transgression against the natural Law of
primary wholeness is what generates temporary ego wholeness and temporary ego
godlikeness. He need not follow the natural law of wholeness of life, but can
devote time to the monotonous work in his business.
The transgression of the ego means that it is liberated from the
natural law. The vitality which the weak ego tends to lose at every occasion of
misstep or failure is retained while sin is transferred to the victim. The
transgressor is appeased and continues his work without undergoing a regression
to a natural level of life.
Collective identification
With young persons, and citizens of
backward cultures, identification with collective consciousness can be a
necessary evil. If you lack a personal consciousness, then you need a collective
consciousness, similar to the Aztecs:
There was no room for the deviant philosopher in the custom of the Aztecs, or in any of the nations in Central America. It was essential that all worshippers conformed entirely to the official beliefs. Even those individuals who were at the very peak of society might propound important doctrines which favoured one god or another, but it was unheard of that they should deny the system. There was no harsh materialist to 'pervert' the youth of the nation like Socrates in Greek culture, and no great teacher to denigrate the gods as did Plato (Burland, p.107).
There is a connection between a low level of consciousness and the
sacrificial motif. If personal consciousness is weak, then it must be
sustained by sacrifice, on lines of the flagellants. If collective consciousness
is faltering, and lacks a true power of conviction, then it is sustained by
institutionalized sacrifice, pogromes and warfare. What characterizes a weak
conscious function and a feeble ego is that it cannot be questioned, while that
is experienced as a dangerous threat. Totalitarianism, fundamentalism, and the
amazingly strong force of political correctness, all depend on the defensive
collective ego.
The sacrifice is a transgression against the original
law of wholeness. In the way of vicarious suffering, and the transference of
sin, the ego is cut off from the imperfections of wholeness. By identifying
with others and transferring one's own suffering onto them, followed by
destruction, one has built a defensive pattern that relieves the tension for
a while.
What is implied by the term sin? In the vocabulary of the
archer, to "sin" is to miss the goal. Shortcomings and
imperfections, mistakes and even silliness, all belong to the whole picture of
man.
Wisdom says that one should beware of perfect people. In order
to remain perfect such a person is prone to use his neighbour as a scapegoat. A
perfect and narcissistic man happens to tread in a puddle of water. This
mistake is a sin which he experiences as insulting to his perfect and controlled
ego, and his 'unit status' has been questioned. The stain must now be
transferred onto his wife, who is made to suffer from his bad mood.
Comparatively, the flagellant's longing to be free of sin evolved into scapegoat
psychology and victimization of innocent people.
Pathological
self-laceration, as a misguided initiation rite, obtains among youths. What's
even more disturbing is the mobbing and bullying at schools. Instead of
lacerating themselves, youths can find a substitute victim. Young people
often lack the strength to endure the ambiguity of their own nature when
confronted with a diversity of painful and confused experiences. They want to
remain in control and to be "cool". Hence they resort to the
destructive form of ego emancipation.
Arguably, this is the price for
living with an infirm sun god and indistinct fatherly principle. While we do not
appreciate rigid ideologies anymore, an investment in the conscious capacities
of the individual is another, and better, way of solving the problem. Sadly,
psychology and its notion of unconscious motivation is still vastly
undervalued.
The death drive
Sigmund Freud's notion of the 'death
drive' is explicated in 'Why War?' (1933), and 'Thoughts for the Times on War
and Death' (1915), and elsewhere. According to Freud the organism
preserves its own life by destroying an extraneous one. The portion of
the death drive that isn't turned outwards will work destructively inwards.
In an alternative reading, the portion of 'sin' that is not
transferred to the environment will work destructively on ego wholeness and
vitality. Primary wholeness, as opposed to ego wholeness, can keep the
individual in fetters due to the undifferentiated state of conscious and
unconscious. For this reason, ego wholeness (i.e. narcissistic wholeness) can
only be procreated by severing the bond to the unconscious (note
3). So it seems like the crime against the "natural
law" is purposeful in that unconscious wholeness is destroyed (cmp. Cain
and Abel).
Destructive ego emancipation implies that sin and guilt
is cast off, i.e. repressed. The severed limb, or the sacrificial victim, when
destroyed, carries sin and guilt with it, since the content becomes unconscious
and parted from consciousness. It has a temporary emancipative effect on the
weak ego. The narcissistic ego abandons the Law of original man,
replacing it with his own fanatical doctrine. Hence he becomes free of guilt and
acquires a nearly godly stature. The mafioso adheres only to the code
of honour in his mafia group. From this ego position he can commit a murder
without feeling remorse, while he has followed the rules, i.e. the "anti-law"
of one-eyed consciousness.
The Free Spirit movement
We shall see how this came to
expression in the medieval Free Spirit movement. The heresy of the Free
Spirit appeared in the 13th century and survived several centuries. Like the
flagellants, they were fond of interrupting church services, impatient of
ecclesiastical discipline. There was no afterlife of punishment or reward, and
the adepts developed into an élite of amoral supermen. One had only
to recognize one's own divinity and one was resurrected as a Spiritual, a
denizen of heaven on earth. To be ignorant of one's own divinity was the only
sin. The rank-and-file of the movement was made up of people who gave an
oath of absolute obedience to one who already had "become God". In
return they received an assurance that they could do no sin.(cf. Cohn,
p.192). Cohn says:
What distinguished the adepts of the Free Spirit from all other medieval sectarians was, precisely, their total amoralism. For them the proof of salvation was to know nothing of conscience or remorse. Innumerable pronouncements of theirs bear witness to this attitude: 'He who attributes to himself anything that he does, and does not attribute it all to God, is in ignorance, which is hell' .... 'He who recognizes that God does all things in him, he shall not sin. For he must not attribute to himself, but to God, all that he does.' - 'A man who has conscience is himself Devil and hell and purgatory, tormenting himself. He who is free in spirit escapes from all these things.' .... 'One can be so united with God that whatever one may do one cannot sin.' .... 'The free man is quite right to do whatever gives him pleasure.' (cf. p.186f)
Their way to self-deification commenced with various techniques,
ranging from self-denial and self-torture to the cultivation of absolute
passivity and disinterest. Then, after a training which might last for years,
they were transformed. 'The Spirit of Freedom or the Free Spirit',
said one adept, 'is attained when one is wholly transformed into God.'
Sister Catherine calls out to her confessor: 'Rejoice with me, I have
become God!' 'Praise be to God!' he answers. 'Now leave all people,
withdraw again into your state of oneness, for so you shall remain God.'
The woman falls into a deep trance, from which she emerges with the
assurance:
'I am made eternal in my eternal blessedness. Christ has made me his
equal and I can never lose that condition' (cf. Cohn, p.183).
The "state of oneness" attained by Catherine is, in fact, what I have
termed ego (egotistic) wholeness. By casting off the unconscious wholeness
which binds the adept to the natural ideals of humanity and 'original sin', he
or she can attain an ego position above and beyond morality. She may even 'indulge
in sexual promiscuity without 'original sin','
as an infamous libertine made clear.
[O]ne expression of this attitude was [a] promiscuous and mystically coloured eroticism. According to one adept, just as cattle were created for the use of human beings, so women were created to be used by the Brethren of the Free Spirit ....
[F]or the 'subtle in spirit' sexual intercourse cannot under any circumstances be sinful. And it was held that one of the surest marks of 'subtle in spirit' was, precisely, the ability to indulge in promiscuity without fear of God or qualms of conscience. Some adepts attributed a transcendental, quasi-mystical value to the sexual act itself, when it was performed by such as they. The 'Homines intelligentiae' called the act 'the delight of Paradise' and 'the acclivity' (which was the term used for the ascent to mystical ecstasy); and the Thuringian 'Blood Friends' of 1550 regarded it as a sacrament, which they called 'Christerie'. For all alike adultery possessed a symbolic value as an affirmation of emancipation. As the Ranter Clarkson put it, 'till acted that so-called sin, thou art not delivered from the power of sin' (Cohn, p.189).
Evidently the transgression of the law of God was, in fact, regarded
an "affirmation" of ego emancipation. Primary wholeness is destroyed
to create ego wholeness. Clarkson is explicit in saying that the way of
deliverance from sin is to commit the "so-called sin." The most
abominable among transgressions is murder, and therefore it seems the most
powerful tool of narcissistic emancipation. This accounts for the prevalence of
the blood sacrifice in history.
There exists a description,
written in mid-fourteenth century, of a Beguine reciting her catechism to the
heretical Beghard who is her spiritual director.
'When a man has truly reached the great and high knowledge', she says, 'he is no longer bound to observe any law or any command, for he has become one with God. God created all things to serve such a person, and all that God ever created is the property of such a man .... He shall take from all creatures as much as his nature desires and craves, and shall have no scruples of conscience about it, for all created things are his property .... A man whom all heaven serves, all people and creatures are indeed obliged to serve and to obey; and if any disobeys, it alone is guilty' (cf. Cohn, p.188).
The practise of ritual nakedness and sexual promiscuity implied,
according to one inquisitor, that they believed to be restored to the state of
innocence which had existed before the Fall (cf. Cohn, p.191). Fraudulence,
theft, robbery with violence were all warranted.
The primal transgression
We can better understand, then, why
ego perfection is always connected with the most obnoxious side of the human
soul. The fanatic, the fundamentalist, or the terrorist, upholds ideals of
perfection, cleanliness, and obedience to the rules of collective
consciousness (in literalism, ideologism, etc). Yet at the same time he
endorses the most horrid form of criminality in the victimization of the
innocent. Tezcatlipoca, or the devil, is the dark side of ego wholeness.
A
modern example is the apocalyptic sect,
To administer poa, one required what was called in Aum "a sacred carefree mind," a particularly radical form of Buddhist nonattachment. In Aum practice, it meant an absolute separation from any concern about the outside world and an equally absolute focus on carrying out the will of the guru. In effect, the sacred carefree mind was a form of psychic numbing in which one freed oneself, joyfully, from all moral restraint. As one close observer explained, 'It meant caring nothing if you harm me or if I harm you.' In Aum, the "if I harm you" was the more significant part of this spiritual equation, one of the many ways in which disciples came to withdraw their empathy from the world outside themselves (Lifton, p.67).
In 1994, the guru said in a sermon: 'So we must kill as soon as
possible those opposed to the supreme truth.' This is the well-known formula
of blood sacrifice as a way of upholding collective consciousness. It originates
as a defense against the fear of an overwhelming unconscious. Accordingly,
Lifton explains that '[the] psychological point here is that the guru's
murderous paranoia covered over his terror of personal annihilation.'
(ibid. p.68).
The language of the Beguine Catherine, above, is still
employed in Christian congregations of a more fundamentalist hue. The unredeemed
person, having lived in sin, is in one stroke transformed into "oneness"
with Christ, and becomes a shiningly new person. Again, this conversion is
dependent on total adherence to the doctrines of collective consciousness, i.e.
to yield fully to the will of the congregation and the letter of the bible.
As always, sin is in one stroke sloughed off and the person becomes
shiningly clean. But the oneness attained represents only ego wholeness.
It is achieved by severing the wholeness of personality, by denying parts of the
self which serve to keep personality tied to the unconscious wholeness of life.
The destructive method of ego emancipation will generate psychic energy. It has
temporary redeeming qualities, especially if it should involve an alcoholic, for
instance. But this is not what
In
the rite of passage (see 'Rites of passage' above), the aborigin concedes to the
rules of collective consciousness being taught to him during initiation. The
imparted knowledge involves a transgression of the former law of wholeness. He
leaves the primary state of wholeness behind and becomes a "criminal"
of sorts. (This is not in the sense of a terrorist, of course, but there are
psychological parallels.) He must be capable of cruelly killing an animal in the
hunt, and his fellow human being in war.
The following is the Australian aborigine story named The
Southern Cross, shortened by me:
...the first humans, two men and a woman, walked the earth. They ate only plants. But one day during a famine, one of the men broke the rules of Baiame, the sky king, and killed a kangaroo rat. The woman ate of it, but the other man would not eat though he was famished for food. Weak as he was he walked angrily away towards the sunset, while the other two still ate hungrily. He continued to walk until he fell down dead under a white gum tree. The death spirit Yowi, a black figure with huge fiery eyes, appeared and dropped the man into the hollow centre of the tree. Then was heard a terrific burst of thunder and the gum tree lifted from the earth towards the southern sky where it planted itself where the Southern Cross is now seen. Two of the shining stars are the eyes of the death spirit, and the other two are the eyes of the first man to die. When all nature realized that the passing of this man meant that death had come into the world, there was wailing everywhere. So is the first coming of death remembered by the tribes, to whom the Southern Cross is a reminder (cf. Langloh Parker, p.9f).
The cross is the symbol of the original man who is faithful
to God. The conquistadors were surprised to find that it is the symbol of
Quetzalcoatl, too. His sacrifice coincides with the disobedient act which
creates ego emancipation in its pristine form. With disobedience comes death
into the world. But original man, the god-man, is also the future ideal of
psychic economy. He is the once and future king, the prototype of a new form of
consciousness.
The narcissistic cycle
So it's
like the ego frees itself by breaching the Law. The ego has thereby prepared
its own fall, and will again fall prey to the unconscious. The directivity
created, and the restored ego powers, will in the end lead him into greed and
sexual indulgence, much like the Brethren of the Free Spirit. The foremost
characteristic of the ego is its insatiability. It grows into a voracious
monster, and personality again risks dissolution in liscentiousness.
It
is like the well-known story of the successful man who has managed to acquire a
fortune by hard work. Then he is going to enjoy life. He sets about
squandering his life by splitting up his personality on diverse amusements that
lead nowhere. Then he beats up his wife. The Malawian businessman succeeds in
becoming rich, but then he can afford to be self-indulgent and satisfy all his
needs. Comparatively, Oedipus is to be understood as a tendency in the psyche to
acquire consciousness by the heroic sacrifice of unconscious (divine) wholeness.
The hero sacrificed his father, in a sense, and went on to rescue Thebes whose
people was haunted by the Sphinx. But then he unwittingly married his own
mother. Oedipus is then back at his own beginnings. So the Sphinx got the better
of him, after all. Jocasta sacrifices herself and Oedipus puts out his eyes.
Psychoanalytic authors have thoroughly researched motifs of
victimization, self-laceration and idealization in the narcissistic (NPD)
patient (vid. Kernberg, et al.). Pathological narcissism implies that a man,
for instance, might treat his spouse as a princess, and then turn to
victimizing her (vid. Forward & Torres, 1986). The first phase relates to
the symbiotic condition of identification. It will strengthen the effect of the
sacrificial act, as in the Tezcatlipoca festival. Without identification the
subject would suffer no real loss, and the psychological reward of
self-sacrifice is not forthcoming. The idealizing form of identification
corresponds to the oedipal symbiosis with the Mother. Such immoral
relationships employ the well-known patterns of vicarious suffering and
projective identification, and always need to be renewed by way of a new
idealization and destruction.
In the above example from the
Tezcatlipoca festival the sacrificial victim was being idealized. With the
reservation that these phenomena are far from identical, certain religious
sacrificial acts seem, in part, to institute a form of narcissistic
victimization. From a psychoanalytic point of view it appears like the
well-known patterns in the interpersonal domain repeat themselves on a
collective level. Pagan religion places the transformative mystery in a
cosmographical context (see also my discussion, below: The
metaphysics of destruction).
Ego wholeness
I have argued that the solution of ego wholeness
is self-defeating, and therefore the sacrifice must be repeated anew. The
liberation of power of consciousness accomplished by the Aztecs explains their
rapid rise, from very humble origins, to immense power. But their greed and
grandiose delusions precipitated their downfall, something which they tried to
delay by repeated rituals of blood sacrifice.
Ego wholeness implies
either unconscious or conscious identity with God, as exemplified in the Free
Spirit movement. It means that they have a collective ego, strongly identified
with group consciousness. Psychoanalyst
One cannot make the psychic
wholeness conscious and anchor it in ego consciousness. In that case, the
abnormal ego would harbour opposites that really should be located in the
unconscious wholeness of personality. The individual is then forced to transfer
the internal conflict upon others, and to sacrifice the very people he has
identified with.
Winnicott, almost like an Aztec priest, upholds the 'unit
personality' as an ideal. In order to attain unit status the symbiotic
subject-object relation must be broken by way of destruction of the object, when
hatred is experienced. The process is cyclical. On a theoretical level, he
creates the same programme of sacrifice to strengthen the weak ego as did the
Aztec priest, although the latter performed on a collective scale whereas
Winnicott functions in the analytic setting (vid. Winnicott, 1999 and
elsewhere).
I contend that Tezcatlipoca, the god of destruction, is the
god of ego wholeness, or the 'unit personality.' He demands human sacrifice and
thereby violates the founding civilizational law of Quetzalcoatl ("Feathered
Serpent"). Thus he maintains ego power in a form which is wholly
identified with collective consciousness. Tezcatlipoca, very fittingly, is a
one-legged god. The leg was sacrificed in the jaws of the Earth Monster (the
unconscious) whose back never again sunk back into the water, and on which all
the tribes of men now live (cf. Burland, p.55f). In the Tezcatlipoca myth is
demonstrated how the sacrifice of a limb will conquer the unconscious and
acquire conscious territory. Thus Tezcatlipoca is a cripple, while he has
forfeited original unconscious wholeness.
Mental amputation
and physical
Interestingly, there exists a much debated personality
disorder with an obsessive desire for a limb amputation, one that drives people
to cut off healthy arms and legs, and sometimes even both legs. It goes under
different denominations, such as apotemnophilia or body integrity
identity disorder. It involves an amputation fetishism and frequently an
erotic target preference for amputees. Alternatively, the person pretends to be
an amputee, i.e. is using wheelchairs or crutches. The most common wish is to
amputate the left leg above the knee, the least common is a finger or toe (cmp.
'Rites of passage') (cf. Marantz Henig, 2005, and elsewhere).
The "Tezcatlipoca
syndrome" would be a fitting name for this disease. A disciple is eager to
follow the example of Tezcatlipoca, when the wholeness of natural man is
ritually destroyed in an attempt to discard sin and acquire conscious territory.
The underlying motif would correspond to the rite of passage, above. I am not
saying that this wholly explains the disorder, but the symbol of leg amputation
carries such associations.
What is signified is really the "mental
amputation" occurring in people when they forfeit wholeness and
consciousness of sin, and when they repress their own pain and unsuitable sides
of personality. Arguably, pathological self-laceration and amputation disorder
would occur when the person is incapable of achieving a "mental amputation,"
as it were. At the same time, culture, on both a social and societal plane,
would expect of the individual a streetwise worldliness and directionality, so
typical of the one-sided and narcissistic ideal. A person in this predicament,
who is not capable of harming others, might harm himself instead, following the
principle of Freud's death drive.
As a representative of the ideal
among pagan germanic tribes, the war god Wotan (Odin) sacrificed his eye.
Regardless of the mythological differences, it mirrors the achievement of
Tezcatlipoca. The sacrificial act to bring about one-eyedness is performed in
order to confer conscious directionality and ego power on humanity. Crippled
gods, whether one-legged or one-eyed, would represent the ideal of ego
wholeness. The ideal is the riddance of sin, because this is the enemy of ego
wholeness.
Powerful as it is, it is not true wholeness achieved. From
a bad painting one can cut out the part which is good, but to do the same
operation in the psyche is a different can of worms. It is a crippled psyche,
although swift and capable in its limited range. Overestimating himself, to the
border of megalomania, he refuses to see his own crippled nature. Due to the
repressed contents the unconscious has a higher potentiality, and the ego
creates a bulwark against the unconscious by blowing itself up.
By the
formula of sin transference, deliverance from sin is achieved by making the very
transgression which causes the moral pain. In a marriage a woman so disposed can
temporarily rid herself of the pain caused by her husbands extramarital affair
by taking part in the same sinful experience. A person whose asset has been
stolen can thieve something from a third party, thus transferring sin to this
person. Similarly, if grief is caused by someone's death, then obtains an
impetus to violate and kill a preferably innocent person. Accordingly, rape and
murder, ever so topical, was institutionalized as an holy sacrificial act among
the Pawnees (cf. Frazer, ch. XLVII.§3) and among the Vikings. In both cases
a girl would walk from tent to tent and have sexual intercourse with the men. In
case of the Vikings six men would thereafter violate her jointly. After this
ordeal she was brutally sacrificed (vid.
Arguably,
in a multi-faceted, multi-cultural (multi-whatnot) society, especially the young
individual is under great strain while it is not easy to be "slick" in
a multitude of life-styles, social mores and customs. Any person will be a
misfit in a multifarious society. Awkwardness is a sin which the weak ego cannot
sustain. But unfitting sides of personality can be sloughed off. Hence, archaic
motives are activated, such as "cutting off the left leg," and to
dispose of it. The most extreme reaction is the victimization of innocents in
the terrorist deed. In Sweden today it has become customary among people in
immigrant housing areas to attack and maul the ambulance personnel, or firemen,
coming to salvage the residents' relatives and friends. The authorities have
started investigations into this wholly irrational behaviour, as usual
disregarding the archaic motives.
The precious substance of
life
Historians are clueless as to the causes of World War I,
except the commonplace notions of "glory and honour". I have proposed
that the killing industry served the purpose of extracting the precious
substances of consciousness and lifeblood from the young men. If the substance
of consciousness, and the substance of health and youth, are withdrawn from
millions of people, then the same substances must finally befall the remaining
people, hence promoting the conscious life-principle of the living. In the
theologies of ancient Central America, the lifeblood of the sacrificed victims
went back to the gods. This was a payback for the life-principle of
consciousness which they had generously granted humanity. But the replenished
abundance of this substance gave the gods the opportunity to distribute it again
over the world. The human sacrifices thus served the purpose of keeping the sun
on its route, and the daylight principle of consciousness was being
consolidated. The young men sacrificed in WWI ensured that the sun would rise
again.
The incentive to a redistribution of the life-substance is the
imminent threat posed by the unconscious against the conscious system. The
healthy ego system depends on a relative differentiation from collective
identity. But in crowded social circumstances where people live on top of each
other, and there is not much psychological space for the individual, people show
a tendency to regress into collective identity. Thence the unconscious is given
the upper hand, something which gives rise to a subjectively experienced anxiety
of annihilation. The archaic remedy against this is to annihilate the other,
steal the victim's lifeblood, and thus magically increase one's own conscious
power against an encroaching unconscious.
Such an unconscious archaism is what underlies bullying at schools
and workplaces. It is also what underlies fundamentalist ideology. As soon as
people begin to loose their individual identity and fall back on the collective,
the motif of the murder of the innocent, and the motif of stealing their power
of independency, flares up in the thoughtways of the collective. The shining
substance of gold is especially suitable as a symbol of this precious asset of
the living soul. Thus it is necessary to steal the victims' gold and belongings,
and to put them into concentration camps (cmp.
The argument builds on the idea that the same archaic complexes are at
work in the unconscious. Obviously, in Aztec civilization and in WWI, the
grounds for the massive bloodshed are not exactly the same. There are factors of
politics and economy involved, conscious notions of ideology, and also the
collective form of inferiority complex. The last is not least significant. My
argument builds on the deepest and most archaic aspect of the blood-sacrifice.
Without this foundational motif the incentive for massive bloodshed would be
lacking. Intellectual ideological motives, alone, aren't capable of making
people throw away all concern for human life, including their own. There can
exist problems in society and in individuals which actuates the solution of
victimization. This calls up the monster, which in the Mezoamerican religions
was the man-eating earth god, and the dark shadow of humanity.
A
recurrent argument, among modern politicians and debaters, is to increase
collective identity as a bulwark against destructive tendencies. They want to
promote the feeling of identity of the youth with their own schoolmates,
including their countrymen of all races. This will temporarily ensure unity in
the neighbourhood. However, it also enhances collective identity. Accordingly,
we are only paving the way for the very evil that we intend to remedy.
Comparatively, among North American Indians, young men were obliged to go away
into the wilderness and live alone for a time. This represented an initiation
into adulthood, when the old identity of adolescence was cast off. The evils
that threatened society could be met by the shedding of a youthful collective
identity. But in the crowded civilization of Central America this method was no
more available. At a Stone Age cultural level men were destined to fall prey to
the utmost evil, and the institutionalization of war, torture, and
blood-sacrifice.
Although many a modern citizen is partly immune, the mass-societies
of the Western world are facing the same problem of regression into collective
identity. The dark shadow of mankind can overhaul civilization again. I argue
that the only defence against this is to reinforce individual psychology.
Individuation is the answer. Young people should learn to withdraw into
loneliness, and they must be allowed space for this. For a young person, a time
in isolation, when he must fend for himself, is equally beneficent today as it
was for the American Indian.
Beyond legalism and sacrifice
Quetzalcoatl, founder of
culture and the once and future king, represents primary wholeness but also the
advanced phase of the strong ego to supersede Tezcatlipoca and the reign of the
'unit personality'. The modern psychological notion of 'ego strength' implies
integrity to be confused, that is, a capacity to endure conflict and
pain in consciousness without risk of dissolution and regression. The human
being, while becoming a true individual, acquires the capacity to live in two
worlds, the inner and the outer. The true individual will always find resort in
an inner world when he cannot fully cope with the outer. So he has found an
inner space that is a place of refuge (cf. Winther, 2003,
here & 2006, here).
The struggle of Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca can be compared with
the struggle of Christ and Satan.
Accordingly, Tezcatlipoca represents destructive ego
emancipation whereas the later Quetzalcoatl personifies constructive
emancipation, what is intellectually formulated by
Following St Paul, the strong individual is
prepared to carry sin instead of transferring it to others. This includes
'original sin', and what is regarded as transgressions according to our inner
human nature. In today's Western world it appears like sexuality doesn't pose a
moral problem anymore, an attitude frighteningly similar to the Brethren of the
Free Spirit.
The enlightened individual has the capacity to carry
moral pain. In this, he leaves the psychology of sacrifice and collective
identification behind. He can shoulder personal failures by always relating to
the wholeness of personality, without trying to repress sides which are dark,
weak, or unsuitable. But, as is depicted in the aboriginal story of the Southern
Cross, the man who refuses to commit the transgression walks towards his death
on the tree. The wages of sin is death. This implies, as
The
strong ego is capable of carrying the suffering which is always linked with a
true wholeness of personality. It is another form of wholeness radically
different from notions of ego purity and the egotistic form of wholeness.
Instead, it builds on the individual's relation to the unconscious. The
individual realizes the double nature of his own mind, that he is both ego and
psychic wholeness, and that the Christ lives inside him. When he refuses to cede
with sin he allows the old personality to go under. In carrying the sin
transferred to him by other people, he is crucified with Christ.
Woe to you when all people speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets. But I say to you who are listening, love your enemies, treat well the ones hating you, bless the ones cursing you, pray for the ones insulting you. To the one striking you on the cheek, offer the other cheek also. And the person taking your cloak do not prevent him from taking your coat as well (Luke 06:26-29).
In terms of Paul, personality will conquer spiritual death and
acquire a new vitality whose wellspring is the new form of wholeness. In the
realization of sanctity here and now the split between outer and inner
worlds are overcome, '...for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you'
(Luke 17:21).
The split between subject and external world is
painfully obvious in the modern narcissistic man, who is always afraid of his
own shadow, always looking over his shoulder. The split is what lies behind
overcompensations in the form of collectivistic political and religious ideals
of the symbiotic kind, where "otherness" is simply removed. According
to this ideal, what should remain is only one giant ego. It is the inferior
solution of Tezcatlipoca, which Quetzalcoatl swore to destroy and supersede.
Conclusion
In the sacrifice, natural wholeness
in man is repressed and collective consciousness reinforced, directionality and
one-sidedness amplified. The blood sacrifice can be viewed as an ever recurrent
rite of passage, the severing of limbs from the body of the collective. It is
demonstrated that the individual has not much value compared to the spirit of
the collective. The victim plays the role of the part of the unconscious
wholeness which is sacrificed, i.e. the part which must be cut off to create ego
perfection.
Victimization and bullying (also at workplaces and in
school) means that the transgressor's unconscious suffering is transferred
to the victim. The inability, on part of the weak ego, to sustain a moral
conflict, leads to the repression of any painful moral issue, including personal
failures and weaknesses. As anything unconscious is immediately projected, the
theme of vicarious suffering will invariably surface. The combination of a
Yet, the victim also represents a god. The acts of
deicide and ritual cannibalism symbolically represent the integration of an
unconscious content with consciousness. It points at an inner urge of conscious
expansion. But a drive toward individual consciousness is a disruptive power
which is being placated when the motif of integration is ritually manifested,
rather than experienced in the individual psyche, something which would pave the
way for an individual personality proper. Thus the stability of an unconscious
lifestyle is maintained.
The blood sacrifice represents two
complementary perspectives: firstly, it is a perspective from the unconscious,
as if viewed from the eyes of the god. Secondly, it derives its significance
from the conscious perspective, i.e. the way in which it represents a sacrifice
of unconscious wholeness. It is as if the unconscious archetype, when undergoing
integration with consciousness, experiences this as death. However, from the
conscious perspective, new life is born. When the Mayan maize god dies, the
plant of maize is also brought into the world.
The mythic concept of
killing as a recreative instrument to gain new life remains influential to this
day. The notorious suicide sects, such as
I argue that modern man's capacity for individual
consciousness can put an end to the vicious circle of victimization. Unlike
historical mankind he can be in a personal relation to the unconscious. But the
notion of the unconscious and its ramifications in all human life, including
world politics, is being repressed (sacrificed), while it is experienced as a
threat to the sun god of the collective.
Should the individual learn
that he is larger than himself, and extends far beyond the borders of his
conscious personality, then the blood sacrifice has lost its impetus. The
experience, although vague, of myself as larger than my everyday personality,
is immensely wholesome, because this is what produces individual consciousness.
The danger of collective identification is reduced, and the person will be
able to carry much more of suffering and personal failures, without passing
the burden onto the neighbour.
Mats Winther, June 2008
Notes
1. The practice of circumcision in the
male is connected with the rites of passage among primitives, which might
include scarring, etc. In amputation disorder, cutting off a leg has the same
castrative quality, I believe. To do damage to one's original nature is to die
to the old life of youthful wholeness and to emerge into the life of culture,
where one is bound to be maimed, and where one cannot give full expression to
one's potential, but must submit to the societal ideals. It's like the deity
wants his own devotees to damage themselves so they can fit into male society.
2. When I discuss primary wholeness,
etc, I don't simply mean a "biological" state of being. I believe that
mankind in its pristine condition is equally spiritual as instinctual, although
the sacred and the profane are very much amalgamated on a primitive level of
culture.
3. Much has been written
about "splitting" in the Freudian and Kleinian sense, but then it
typically regards splitting and repression of ego contents. It can also refer to
internal objects, however, when they are attributed to objects in the
environment. But I want to steer clear of the theoretical pother in this paper.
| Discussion Part I: Thanatos In examining the Aztec culture of violence, it seems logical to think of this as culture doing violence to natural, biological man. But we have found that this is exactly what the primitives do, too, when victimizing themselves in the rite of passage. It seems like man is "dismembering" himself in an attempt to reshape his own original nature; in Eliade's words, to abolish natural humanity. The phenomenon has its counterpart in the man who suffers from amputation disorder, and who cuts off his left leg. We damage ourselves by cutting off our unconscious wholeness, thus acquiring conscious power in exchange. I have argued that this is the primitive means of effectuating the formation of ego consciousness. We are doing this to ourselves. But why is violence there in the first place (psychological or physical), and why does it grow out of hand time after time? When violence is institutionalized then we can say, along with Freud, that culture and natural man are antagonists, especially when discussing the Aztecs, the Soviets, Mao's China, etc. But what would happen if we removed this overlay of culture? The answer is that we would soon begin, anew, and sacrifice blood, cut scars, cut off fingertips, knock out teeth, and organize ourselves in antagonistic clans. Violence belongs in the human psyche from times immemorial. It's the mark of Cain. Only the individual can conquer this state of being, and leave behind the economy of blood sacrifice. While investigating "natural impulses" in primitive man, we will also discover self-laceration and blood sacrifice. Clearly, then, it is too simplistic to say that this is imparted to him from culture. One gets the impression that the wholeness of natural man is sacrificed in the interests of culture. Perhaps this is true, but is this culture really situated outside man? It appears like the primary wholeness of man is sacrificed in the interest of man himself. The aboriginal mythic man of sorrows, who wanders away and dies, must be understood as the personification of the primordial and unconscious psychic wholeness that must suffer death as a result of the primal transgression. Mankind thus loses his innocence (cmp. Tezcatlipoca festival). The disturbed man cuts off his left leg in a ritual attempt at destroying original wholeness, thus to disengage the ego from Mother Nature. It's too simplistic to argue that this is predicated on instinct, i.e. Freud's death drive. The act depends on an autonomous mental formulation taking place in the unconscious. Actually, the blood sacrifice is an integral part of the paradigmatic Oedipus story. Oedipus kills his father who is the old king of Thebes. In the sacred kingdom the patricide was institutionalized as a ritual (see Frazer, The Golden Bough). The old king was sacrificed and the young and healthy one took his place. It is this killing which much precede Oedipus's kingship. By the sacrifice of the old king (the old wholeness) the haunting unconscious, in the form of the Sphinx, is overcome. The Oedipus is also paradigmatic of a psychic economy of sacrifice. In the paradisal myth, or in The Southern Cross story (above), the principle of death (Thanatos) comes into the world at the very moment when the ego breaks loose from original wholeness. It is portrayed as a criminal act, in itself. A culture of criminality, the mark of Cain on our foreheads, is inbuilt in our nature. The process of destruction starts from inside, and then it goes out of hand, but why? Is it due to a culture who fails in relating to the wholeness of man? Or is it when culture acquires a level of complexity and puts demands on the individual, which his level of consciousness cannot live up to? I have maintained that the Christian myth cannot be circumvented, nor what is related by When the first humans disobeyed God the ego broke lose, and death came into the world. At this occasion all the existence wailed. While Thanatos (the "death drive") is involved in ego formation it constitutes an inner factor that obtains only in humans. The reason why Freud could not discover a death instinct (see Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle) on the animal level is, arguably, because animals do not form an ego. Thanatos has a biological foundation in so far as we are prepared for ego formation. Nevertheless, it is a factor that prevails in adult life and in culture, and causes destruction on a massive scale. It is not the case of a biological drive that wreaks havoc. Thanatos has become an autonomous force and an end in itself. The appearance of Thanatos in myth cannot be said to represent "knowledge of death" and the angst it produces, although this is relevant, too. When that 'black figure with huge fiery eyes' enters the world it means that the principle of destruction has become autonomous, and acquired an agenda of its own. Earlier it was part of the wholeness of life. It was fit into the natural system of life and never made havoc in the earth's cycle of life and death. In the first transgression against Baiame, the sky king, the ego started to break free, and in this process the Spirit of Death emerged on earth. That's why all the trees and all the animals lamented because now they knew that they would be sacrificed to the death spirit. The ego in its relentless quest of proving itself would exterminate the majority of the big land animals. On the Australian continent many big marsupials, like the giant kangaroo, would become extinct. The trees lamented because the aborigines would burn off most of the woodland and the shrub land. Earlier it was not clear whether this mass-extinction of mammoths, etc, depended on climate changes or human pursual. Today we know that the human race is the culprit. In the era of hunter-gatherers, mass-extinction of living beings became the order of the day. Thanatos had come into the world, and the bigger the animals the better it was, and the prouder the emancipated ego felt. It is a tragedy and a crime of monumental proportions. It is so vast that researchers earlier found it hard to believe that humans alone could have caused this. When the Spirit of Death comes into existence, it means that Thanatos has become an autonomous force and an end in itself. This goes on to this day, with meaningless wars (what was the WWI all about?), mass murder, ethnic cleansing, holocaust, overfishing, deforestation, followed by extermination of thousands of species. Most conspicuous of all is the violence we do to ourselves and our peers (see Davis's articles and his notion of "death-work," etc, here and here). Yowi, the Spirit of Death and Destruction, is a force that exists among us today, ever demanding blood sacrifice. Thanatos is the generic name for the dialectics involved in the psychology of destructivity. It signifies a certain psychological dynamic, including the interrelations between individual and the world. It would be understood as having a psychic function, a meaning of its own, largely explainable (but not wholly, of course) within the psychological framework. The psychology of death and destruction is one of the most formidable of all the forces on earth. It seems to have emerged with the advent of modern mankind, sometime in the hunter-gatherer epoch. Part II: the metaphysics of destruction When Montezuma, king of the Aztec, was asked, "why he had suffered the republic of Tlaxcala to maintain her independence on his borders", he replied, "that she might furnish him with victims for his gods!" (cf. Prescott, 1974, p.59). In the ceaseless wars between the two states, prisoners were taken on both sides that the angry gods may be pacified. The Tlaxcalans were later to join the Spanish campaign under Cortez. How does the mutual consent to war and victimization, in the Tenoctitlan-Tlaxcalan relation, reflect on the modern Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Is there a genuine wish for peace among the two peoples? I suggest that, underlying the conflict, lurks the same archaic thinking that became institutionalized in the Mesoamerican civilizations. The status quo of mutual victimization and scapegoating fulfils the archaic need of transferring and abolishing one's own sins, thus to impart suffering to the other party so that one may oneself avoid suffering. The primitive way of thought implies that suffering, life and death, happiness and beauty, are substantive in a metaphysical sense. In a manner which is hard for present-day people to grasp, the Pythagoreans thought of numbers as metaphysical entities, i.e. as "4-things" and "5-things", etc. In the Mayan civilization the numbers were regarded as divine entities, i.e. as gods. Archaic logic says that if the "one" has shown up repeatedly in the latest dice throws, then the risk of throwing a "six" is greater. The "one" has fulfilled its quota and this particular number god is appeased. (However, if it has only shown up once, then one could suppose that the "number one" god is still present, because his appetite has been whetted). Correspondingly, if another person is subjected to suffering and death, then the risk of "me" coming to harm is lessened. The death god has been appeased, for today. If you think that such archaisms find no place in modern society, then you should make a visit to a casino. By the theology and rituals of destruction the Aztec kept the world alive and made sure that the sun would rise in the next morning. In fulfilling the quota of destruction, they made sure that destruction would not strike uncontrollably in the cosmos and in the Aztec kingdom. The Aztec state could be perpetuated this way, underpinned by the bones of sacrificial victims. By the efforts of sacrificial priests the forces of destruction were kept in control. The way in which people today tend to gather around a gruesome and bloody scene, when an accident has occured, depends perhaps on an unconscious conception of a cruel god that must eat his fill. Arguably, in the Israeli and the Palestinian collective unconscious, an archaic thinking subsists according to which the state must be replenished and invigorated by sacrifice, much like the Aztec temples were built over mass graves, and inaugurated by blood sacrifice. There is no genuine wish for peace because, similar to the Tenoctitlan-Tlaxcalan relation, the state can only be maintained, and its glory in the future can only be attained, by way of fulfilling the quota of suffering and destruction. The Israeli state could not get along without the Palestinians. They are bound to impersonate the losers that throw a "one" so that the Israelis can throw a "six". Psychologically, the Palestinians could not bear life without the Jews, thanks to whom they can transfer their own faults, incompetence, corruption and shortcomings. A people living in collective identification, where there is no real sense of personal responsibility, is dependent on a nation of scapegoats. The archaic unconscious rules in the Middle East. Futile peace initiatives will have no effect while the parties have no real wish to make peace. That's why it's necessary to openly admit the underlying unconscious rationale. The unconscious complex is exposed to conscious realization. The mad thoughtway that unconsciously controls the collective can thus be challenged. |
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_funeral#Ibn_Fadlan.27s_account
(here)
Marvin, C., Ingle, D.W. (1996) 'Blood Sacrifice and the Nation:
Revisiting Civil Religion'. J of the American Academy of Religion, 1996
LXIV(4):767-780
http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/fcm/jaar.htm (here)
Tacey,
D.J. (2005) 'Spiritual Perspectives on Suicidal Impulses in Young Adults'.
In Cox, et al. (Eds). Spirituality and Psychological Health. Colorado School,
107-128.
http://www.jungianstudies.org/publications/taceyd2.pdf (here)
On issues of the "death drive", etc, see
Davis, W.A.
(2001). Deracination: Historicity, Hiroshima, and the Tragic Imperative. Albany:
State University of New York Press (Excerpt
here)
Davis, W.A. (2006). Death's Dream Kingdom. London: Pluto Press.
http://www.walteradavis.com
(Excerpt
here)
A Wikipedia article on human sacrifice is
here
© M. Winther, June 2008
