The meaning of sacrifice may be understood as follows:
The annual sacrifice of a maiden to the dragon is perhaps the ideal sacrifice on a mythological level. In order to mollify the wrath of the Terrible Mother the most beautiful girl was sacrificed as a symbol of man's concupiscence
CW5 ¶ 671Milder forms were the sacrifice of the first-born and of various domestic animals
CW5 ¶ 671The alternative ideal is self-castration, of which a milder form is circumcision. Here at least only a modicum is sacrificed, which amounts to replacing the sacrifice by a symbolical act
CW5 ¶ 671By sacrificing these valued objects of desire and possession, the instinctive desire, or libido is given up in order that it may be regained in new form. Through sacrifice, man ransoms himself from the fear of death and is reconciled to the demands of Hades
CW5 ¶ 671DEEPENING OF THE
SACRIFICIAL SYMBOLISM
In the late cults in olden times the hero conquered evil and death through his labors, thus becoming the divine protagonist, the priestly self-sacrificer and renewer of life. Since he is now a divine figure and his sacrifice is a transcendental mystery whose meaning far exceeds the value of an ordinary sacrificial gift, this deepening of the sacrificial symbolism is a reversion to the old idea of human sacrifice, because a stronger and more total expression is needed to portray the idea of self-sacrifice
CW5 ¶ 671The relation of Mithras to his bull comes very close to this idea of self-sacrifice. In Christianity it is the hero himself who dies of his own free will
CW5 ¶ 671KRATER WITH A SNAKE
COILED ROUND IT
On the Mithraic monuments we often come across a strange symbol: a krater (mixing-bowl) with a snake coiled round it, and a lion facing the snake like an antagonist (fig. 258.63b) . It looks as if they were fighting for the krater. The krater symbolizes the maternal vessel of rebirth, the snake fear and resistance, and the lion raging desire
CW5 ¶ 671158 CW5 Ser: 12 Par 671 (g) FigNo 258.63b
The snake almost always assists at the bull-sacrifice by gliding towards the blood flowing from the wound. It seems to follow from this that the bull's lifeits bloodis offered to the snake, that it is a sacrificial offering to the powers of the underworld, like the blood drunk by the shades in the nekyia of Odysseus
CW5 ¶ 671We have already seen pointed out the reciprocal relationship between bull and snake, and we saw that the bull symbolizes the living hero, whereas the snake symbolizes the dead, buried, chthonic hero. But as the dead hero is back in the mother, the snake also stands for the devouring mother. The combination of the bull's blood and the snake therefore looks like a union of opposites, and the lion and snake fighting for the krater may mean the same thing. This is probably the cause of the miraculous fertility that results from the sacrifice of the bull
CW5 ¶ 671RITES OF RENEWAL
Even on the primitive level, among the Australian blackfellows, we meet with the idea that the life-force wears out, turns “bad” or gets lost, and must therefore be renewed at regular intervals. Whenever such an abaissement occurs the rites of renewal must be performed
CW5 ¶ 671There is an infinite number of these rites, but even on a much higher level they retain their original meaning. Thus the Mithraic killing of the bull is a sacrifice to the Terrible Mother, to the unconscious, which spontaneously attracts energy from the conscious mind because it has strayed too far from its roots, forgetting the power of the gods, without whom all life withers or ends catastrophically in a welter of perversity
CW5 ¶ 671CONSCIOUSNESS SACRIFICES
ITS POWER AND POSSESSIONS
In the act of sacrifice the consciousness gives up its power and possessions in the interests of the unconscious. This makes possible a union of opposites resulting in a release of energy
CW5 ¶ 671At the same time the act of sacrifice is a fertilization of the mother: the chthonic serpent-demon drinks the blood, i.e., the soul, of the hero. In this way life becomes immortal, for, like the sun, the hero regenerates himself by his self-sacrifice and re-entry into the mother
CW5 ¶ 671SON'S SACRIFICE IN
THE CHRISTIAN MYSTERY
After all this we should have no difficulty in recognizing the son's sacrifice to the mother in the Christian mystery. Just as Attis unmans himself for the sake of his mother and his effigy was hung on the pine-tree in memory of this deed, so Christ hangs on the tree of life, on the wood of martyrdom, theand mother (fig. 258.36) , and ransoms creation from death
CW5 ¶ 671159 CW5 Ser: 24 Par 671 (n) FigNo 258.36
By entering again into the womb of the mother, he pays in death for the sin which the Protanthropos Adam committed in life, and by that deed he regenerates on a spiritual level the life which was corrupted by original sin
CW5 ¶ 671St. Augustine as we have already remarked, actually interprets Christ's death as a hierosgamos with the mother, similar to the feast of Adonis, where Venus and Adonis were laid upon the bridal couch
CW5 ¶ 671EDINGER'S COMMENTARY
TO ANALYSTS IN TRAINING
Jung speaks of the old idea of human sacrifice. If we go back far enough, we find remnants of human sacrifice almost everywhere. This illustrates what a profound impact the archetype of sacrifice had on primitive manthat it could impose the ritual of human sacrifice
TOL ¶ 0Jung speaks of that as meaning fundamentally the renunciation of egohood. Human sacrifice means, then, sacrifice of that which makes one specifically humanthe egowhich is the seat of human consciousness
TOL ¶ 0Human sacrifice is the most brutal, the cruelest aspect of human existence on the lower level of human evolution. On the upper level, it is the symbolic image of the highest consciousness that is able to sacrifice egohood so that the Self, the transpersonal center, can be realized
TOL ¶ 0