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in that position. A knowledge of the universal archetypal background was, in itself, sufficient to give me the courage to treat "that which is believed always, everywhere, by everybody" as a psychological fact which extends far beyond the confines of Christianity, and to approach it as an object of scientific study, as a phenomenon pure and simple, regardless of the "metaphysical" significance that may have been attached to it. I know from my own experience that this latter aspect has never contributed in the slightest to my belief or to my understanding. It told me absolutely nothing. However, I was forced to admit that the "symbolum" possesses the highest degree of actuality inasmuch as it was regarded by countless millions of people, for close on two thousand years, as a valid statement concerning those things which one cannot see with the eyes or touch with the hands. It is this fact that needs to be understood, for of "metaphysical truth" we know only that part which man has made, unless the unbiddable gift of faith lifts us beyond all dubiety and all uneasy investigation. It is dangerous if these matters are only objects of belief;4 for where there is belief there is doubt, and the fiercer and naIver the belief the more devastating the doubt once it begins to dawn. One is then infinitely cleverer than all the benighted heads of the Middle Ages. 
	295 	These considerations have made me extremely cautious in 
my approach to the further metaphysical significance that may possibly underlie archetypal statements. There is nothing to stop their ultimate ramifications from penetrating to the very ground of the universe. We alone are the dumb ones if we fail to notice it. Such being the case, I cannot pretend to myself that the object of archetypal statements has been explained and disposed of merely by our investigation of its psychological aspects. What I have put forward can only be, at best, a more or less successful or unsuccessful attempt to give the inquiring mind some access to one side of the problem-the side that can be approached. It would be presumptuous to expect more than this. If I have merely succeeded in stimulating discussion, then my purpose is more than fulfilled. For it seems to me that the world, if it should lose sight of these archetypal statements, would be threatened with unspeakable impoverishment of mind and soul. 4 I am thinking here of the sola fide standpoint of the Protestants. 
200 

III 
TRANSFORMATION SYMBOLISM IN THE MASS 
(First published as a lecture in Eranos ]ahrbuch /940/4/; later publishe(l in re· vised and expanded form in Von den WUTZeln des Bewusstseins (Zurich, '954). The present translation is made from the 1954 version. It was published in slightly different form in The Mysteries (Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks. 2; New Yor~, 1955; London, 1956).-EDITORS.] 

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1. INTRODUCTION 1 
	296 	The Mass is a still-living mystery, the origins of which go 
back to early Christian times. It is hardly necessary to point out that it owes its vitality partly to its undoubted psychological efficacy, and that it is therefore a fit subject for psychological study. But it should be equally obvious that psychology can only approach the subject from the phenomenological angle, for the realities of faith lie outside the realm of psychology. 
	297 	My exposition falls into four parts: in this introduction I 
indicate some of the New Testament sources of the Mass, with notes on its structure and significance. In section 2, I recapitulate the sequence of events in the rite. In ~, I cite a parallel from pagan antiquity to the Christian symbolism of sacrifice and transformation: the visions of Zosimos. Finally, in 4, I attempt a psychological discussion of the sacrifice and transformation. 
'" 
	298 	The oldest account of the sacrament of the Mass is to be 
found in I Corinthians 11: 23ff.: 
1 The following account and examination of the principal symbol in the Mass is not concerned either with the Mass as a whole. or with its liturgy in particular, but solely with the ritual actions and texts which relate to the transformation process in the strict sense. In order to give the reader an adequate account of this. I had to seek professional help. I am especially indebted to the theologian Dr. Callus Jud for reading through and correcting the first two sections. 
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TRANSFORMATION SYMBOLISM IN THE MASS 

For the tradition which I have received of the Lord and handed down to you is that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and said: This is my body for you; do this in remembrance of me. And after he had supped) he took the chalice also) and said: This chalice is the new testament in my blood. As often as you drink, do this in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the chalice, you declare the death of the Lord, until he comes.2 
299    Similar accounts are to be found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In John the corresponding passage speaks of a "supper," 3 but there it is connected with the washing of the disciples' feet. At this supper Christ utters the words which characterize the meaning and substance of the Mass (John 15: 1, 4, 5)' "I am the true vine." "Abide in me, and I in you." "I am the vine, ye are the branches." The correspondence between the liturgical accounts points to a traditional source outside the Bible. There is no evidence of an actual feast of the Eucharist until after A.D. 150. 
300   The Mass is a Eucharistic feast with an elaborately developed liturgy. It has the following structure: 
	
204 
	 301     As this investigation is concerned essentially with the symbol 
of transformation, I must refrain from discussing the Mass as a whole. 
	302	In the sacrifice of the Mass two distinct ideas are blended 
together: the ideas of deiPnon and thysia. Thysia comes from the 'verb 8vEtV, 'to sacrifice' or 'to slaughter'; but it also has the mean2 [This is a translation of [he Karl von Weizsacker version (,875) used here by the author. Elsewhere the Biblical quotations are taken from the A V and occasionally from the RSV and the DV. Following are the Greek and Latin (Vulgate) versions of the italicized portion of this passage.- TRA!':S.] 
H ••• TOVTO J.LOU fUTLV TO UWJ.La TO lnrfp V.u.~v. TDUTO 7rOLELTE El~ ri}v EfJ.1W avap.VTJUl,v. wua.{JTW~ Kat. TO 7rOT7]pWV J.l.era TO OEl.7rvijual. AE"YWV' TaUTO TO 7rOT1,PLOV ~ KaLVt] IhaO'hKTI EU'T'V Ell 7"(~ EJ.L0 ar}laTL" 
" ... hoc est corpus meum, quod pro vobis tradetur: hoc facite in meam commemolationem. Similiter et calicem, postquam coenavit, dicens: Hie calix 
	novum testamentum est in meo sanguine." 	30""'"0", 'coena.' 

TRANSFORMATION SYMBOLISM IN THE MASS 
ing of 'blazing' or 'flaring up.' This refers to the leaping sacrificial fire by which the gift offered to the gods was consumed. Originally the food-offering was intended for the nourishment of the gods; the smoke of the burnt sacrifice carried the food up to their heavenly abode. At a later stage the smoke was conceived as a spiritualized form of food-offering; indeed, all through the Christian era up to the Middle Ages, spirit (or pneuma) continued to be thought of as a fine, vaporous substance.4 
	303 	Deipnon means 'meal.' In the first place it is a meal shared by 
those taking part in the sacrifice, at which the god was believed to be present. It is also a "sacred" meal at which "consecrated" food is eaten, and hence a sacrifice (from sacrificare) 'to make sacred,' 'to consecrate'). 
	304 	The dual meaning of deipnon and thysia is implicitly con- 
tained in the words of the sacrament: "the body which (was given) for you." 5 This may mean either "which was given to you to eat" or, indirectly, "which was given for you to God." The idea of a meal immediately invests the word 'body' with the meaning of (fap~, 'flesh' (as an edible substance). In Paul, (fwp.a and (fap~ are practically identical.6 
	305 	Besides the authentic accounts of the institution of the sacra- 
ment, we must also consider Hebrews 13: 10-15 as a possible 
	source for the Mass: 	' 
We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle. For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach. For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come. By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually .... 
	306 	As a further source we might mention Hebrews 7: 17: "Thou 
art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec." 7 The idea 
4 This of course has nothing to do with the official conception of spirit by the 
	Church. 	5 "TO UWJ.l.Q. TO inrEp UJ.l.Wv." 
6 Kasemann, Leib und Leib Christi, p. 120. 
7 Dr. Jud kindly drew my attention to the equally relevant passage in Malachi 1; 10-11: "Who is there even among you that would shut the doors for nought? neither do ye kindle fire on mine altar for nought .... And in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering .. ." 

	
	
PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION : WEST 
of perpetual sacrifice and of an eternal priesthood is an essential component of the Mass. Melchisedec, who according to Hebrews 7: 3 was "'without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life, but made like unto the Son of God," was believed to be a pre-Christian incarnation of the Logos. 
	307 	The idea of an eternal priesthood and of a sacrifice offered to 
God "continually" brings us to the true mysterium fidei) the transformation of the substances, which is the third aspect of the Mass. The ideas of deipnon and thysia do not in themselves imply or contain a mystery, although, in the burnt offering which is reduced to smoke and ashes by the fire, there is a primitive allusion to a transformation of substance in the sense of its spiritualization. But this aspect is of no practical importance in the Mass, where it only appears in subsidiary form in the censing, as an incense-offering. The mysterium) on the other hand, manifests itself clearly enough in the eternal priest "after the order of Melchisedec" and in the sacrifice which he offers to God "continually." The manifestation of an order outside time involves the idea of a miracle which takes place "vere, real iter, substantialiter" at the moment of transubstantiation, for the substances offered are no different from natural objects, and must in fact be definite commodities whose nature is known to everybody, namely pure wheaten bread and wine. Furthermore, the officiating priest is an ordinary human being who, although he bears the indelible mark of the priesthood upon him and is thus empowered to offer sacrifice, is nevertheless not yet in a position to be the instrument of the divine self-sacrifice enacted in the Mass.s Nor is the congregation standing behind him yet purged from sin, consecrated, and itself transformed into a sacrificial gift. The ritual of the Mass takes this situation and transforms it step by step until the climax is reached-the Conse- 
S That is to say, not before he has accomplished the preparatory part of the service. In offering these gifts the priest is not the "master" of the sacrifice. "Rather that which causes them to be sacrificed in the first place is sanctifying grace. For that is what their sacrifice means: their sanctification. The man who each time performs the sacred act is the servant of grace, and that is why the gifts and their sacrifice are always pleasing to God. The fact that the servant may be bad does not affect them in any way. The priest is only the servant, and even this he has from grace, not from himself." Joseph Kramp, S.J., Die Opferanschauungen der romischen Messliturgie, p. 148. 
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TRANSFORMA TION SYMBOLISM IN THE MASS 
cration, when Christ himself, as sacrificer and sacrificed, speaks the decisive words through the mouth of the priest. At that moment Christ is present in time and space. Yet his presence is not a reappearance, and therefore the inner meaning of the consecration is not a repetition of an event which occurred once in history, but the revelation of something existing in eternity, a rending of the veil of temporal and spatial limitations which separates the human spirit from the sight of the eternal. This event is necessarily a mystery, because it is beyond the power of man to conceive or describe. In other words, the rite is necessarily and in every one of its parts a symbol. Now a symbol is not an arbitrary or intentional sign standing for a known and conceivable fact, but an admittedly anthropomorphic-hence limited and only partly valid-expression for something suprahuman and only partly conceivable. It may be the best expression possible, yet it ranks below the level of the mystery it seeks to describe. The Mass is a symbol in this sense. Here I would like to quote the words of Father Kramp: "It is generally admitted that the sacrifice is a symbolic act, by which I mean that the offering of a material gift to God has no purpose in itself, but merely serves as a means to express an idea. And the choice of this means of expression brings a wide range of anthropomorphism into play: man confronts God as he confronts his own kind, almost as if God were a human being. We offer a gift to God as we offer it to a good friend or to an earthly ruler." 9 
	308 	In so far, then, as the Mass is an anthropomorphic symbol 
standing for something otherworldly and beyond our power to conceive, its symbolism is a legitimate subject for comparative psychology and analytical research. My psychological explanations are, of course, exclusively concerned with the symbolical expression. 
9 Ibid., p. 17. 
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2. THE SEQUENCE OF THE TRANSFORMATION RITE 
	309 	The rite of transformation may be said to begin with the 
Offertory, an antiphon recited during the offering of the sacrificial gifts. Here we encounter the first ritual act relating to the transforma tion.1 
I. OBLATION OF THE BREAD 
	310 	The Host is lifted up towards the cross on the altar, and the 
priest makes the sign of the cross over it with the paten. The bread is thus brought into relation with Christ and his death on the cross; it is marked as a "sacrifice" and thereby becomes sacred. The elevation exalts it into the realm of the spiritual: it is a preliminary act of spiritualization. Justin makes the interesting remark that the presentation of the cleansed lepers in the temple was an image of the Eucharistic bread.2 This links up with the later alchemical idea of the imperfect or "leprous" substance which is made perfect by the opus. (Quod natura relinquit imperfectum, arte perficitur.-"What nature leaves imperfect is perfected by the art.") 
1 In the account that follows I have made extensive use of Brinktrine, Die Hei/ige Messe in ihTem WeTden und Wesen. 
2 "Tv7ros TOU If.prov r;js euxap""rlru." 
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TRANSFORMATION SYMBOLISM IN THE MASS 
II. PREPARATION OF THE CHALICE 
	311 	This is still more solemn than that of the bread, correspond- 
ing to the "spiritual" nature of the wine, which is reserved for the priest.s Some water is mingled with the wine. 
	312 	The mixing of water with the wine originally referred to the 
ancient custom oCnot drinking wine unless mixed with water. A drunkard was therefore called akratopotes, an 'unmixed drinker.' In modern Greek, wine is still called Kparrt (mixture). From the custom of the Monophysite Armenians, who did not add any water to the Eucharistic wine (so as to preserve the exclusively divine nature of Christ), it may be inferred that water has a hylical, or physical, significance and represents man's material nature. The mixing of water and wine in the Roman rite would accordingly signify that divinity is mingled with humanity as indivisibly as the wine with the water.4 St. Cyprian (bishop of Carthage, d. 258) says that the wine refers to Christ, and the water to the congregation as the body of Christ. The significance of the water is explained by an allusion to the Book of Revelation 17: 15: "The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues." (In alchemy, meretrix the whore is a synonym for the prima materia, the corpus imperfectum which is sunk in darkness, like the man who wanders in darkness, unconscious and unredeemed. This idea is foreshadowed in the Gnostic image of Physis, who with passionate arms draws the Nous down from heaven and wraps him in her dark embrace.) As the water is an imperfect or even leprous substance, it has to be blessed and consecrated before being mixed, so that only a purified body may be joined to the wine of the spirit, just as Christ is to be united only with a pure and sanctified congregation. Thus this part of the rite has the special significance of preparing a perfect body-the glorified body of resurrection. 
	313 	At the time of St. Cyprian the communion was generally cele- 
brated with water.5 And, still later, St. Ambrose (bishop of 
S That is, in the Roman rite. In the Greek Uniate rites, communion is received in bread and wine. 
4 This is the interpretation of Yves, bishop of Chartres (d. 1116). 
6 Cyprian attacks this heretical custom in his letter to Caecilius. Letter 63 to Caecilius, Migne, P.L., vol. 4, cols. 372ff. (trans. by Carey, pp. 18df.). 
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Milan, d. 397) says: "In the shadow there was water from the rock, as it were the blood of Christ." 6 The water communion is prefigured in John 7:37-39: "If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly flow rivers of living water. (But this he spake of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)" And also in John 4: 14: "But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." The words "as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water" do not occur anywhere in the Old Testament. They must therefore come from a writing which the author of the Johannine gospel obviously regarded as holy, but which is not known to us. It is just possible that they are based on Isaiah 58: I I: "And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not." Another possibility is Ezekiel 47: I: "Afterward he brought me again unto the door of the house; and, behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward ... and the waters came down from under from the right side of the house, at the south side of the altar," In the Church Order of Hippolytus (d. c. 235) the water chalice is associated with the baptismal font, where the inner man is renewed as well as the body.7 This interpretation comes very close to the baptismal hater of Poimandres 8 and to the Hermetic basin filled with nous which God gave to those seeking ~1I110La. 9 Here the water signifies the pneuma} i.e., the spirit of prophecy, and also the doctrine which a man receives 
6 "In umbra erat aqua de petrOl quasi sanguis ex Christo." The umbra, 'shadow,' refers to the foreshadowing in the Old Testament, in accordance with the saying: 
"Umbra in lege, imago in evangelio, veritas in coelestibus" (The shadow in the Law, the image in the Gospel, the truth in Heaven). Note that this remark of Ambrose does not refer to the Eucharist but to the water symbolism of early Christianity in general; and the same is true of the passages from John. St. Augustine himself says: "There the rock was Christ; for to us that is Christ which is placed on the altar of God," Tractatus in Joannem, XLV, 9 (trans. by Innes). 7 Connolly, ed., The So-called Egyptian Church Order and Derived Documents. 
8 Berthelot, Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs, nI, li. 8. 
9 Corpus Herl1leticul1l, Lib. IV, 4, in Hermetica, I, p. 151. 
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TRANSFORMATlO:--: SYMBOLISM 1:<1 THE MASS 
and passes on to others.lo The same image of the spiritual water occurs in the "Odes of Solomon": 11 
For there went forth a stream, and became a river great and broad; ... and all the thirsty upon earth were given to drink of it; and thirst was relieved and quenched; for from the Most High the draught was give~. Blessed then are the ministers of that draught who are entrusteCl with that water of His; they have assuaged the dry lips, and the will that had fainted they have raised up; and souls that were near departing they have caught back from death; and limbs that had fallen they straightened and set up; they gave strength for their feebleness and light to their eyes. For everyone knew them in the Lord, and they lived by the water of life for ever,12 
	314 	The fact that the Eucharist was also celebrated with water 
shows that the early Christians were mainly interested in the symbolism of the mysteries and not in the literal observance of the sacrament. (There were several other variants-"galactophagy," for instance-which all bear out this view.) 
	315 	Another, very graphic, interpretation of the wine and water 
is the reference to John 19: 34: "And forthwith came there out blood and water." Deserving of special emphasis is the remark of St. John Chrysostom (patriarch of Constantinople, d. 407), that in drinking the wine Christ drank his own blood. (See Section 3, on Zosimos.) 
	1P6 	In this section of the Mass we meet the important prayer: 
o God, who in creating human nature, didst wonderfully dignify it, and hast still more wonderfully renewed it; grant that, by the mystery of this water and wine, we may be made partakers of his divinity who vouchsafed to become partaker of our humanity, Jesus Christ ... ,13 
10 Strack and Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und 
	Midrasch, n, p. 492. 	11 A collection of Gnostic hymns from the 2nd cent. 
12 Ode VI in The Odes of Solomon, ed. Bernard, p. 55, after the J. Rendel Harris version. Cf. the vowp I)'LOY, the aqua permanens of early alchemy, also the treatise of Komarius (Berthelot, IV, xx). 
13 "Deus, qui humanae substantiae dignitatem mirabiliter condidisti, et mirabilius reformasti; dOl nobis per huius aquae et vini mysterium, eius divinitatis esse consortes, qui humanitatis nostrae fieri dignatus est particeps, Jesus Christ us ... " [Here and throughout this essay the English translation is taken from The Small Missal, London, 1924.-TRANS.] 
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317 
The lifting up of the chalice in the air prepares the spiritualization (i.e., volatilization) of the wine.14 This is confirmed by the invocation to the Holy Ghost which immediately follows (Veni sanctificator), and it is even more evident in the Mozarabic liturgy, which has "Veni spiritus sanctificator." 15 The invocation serves to infuse the wine with holy spirit, for it is the Holy Ghost who begets, fulfils, and transforms (cf. the "Obumbratio Mariae," Pentecostal fire). After the elevation, the chalice was, in former times, set down to the right of the Host, to correspond with the blood that flowed from the right side of Christ. 
320 
TRANSFORMATION SYMBOLISM IN THE MASS prayer-hence the Dirigatur) Domine) oratio mea) sicut tncensum) in conspectu tuO.18 
The censing brings the preparatory, spiritualizing rites to an end. The gifts have been sanctified and prepared for the actual transubstantiation. Priest and congregation are likewise purified by the prayers Accendat in nobis Dominus ignemsui amoris and Lavabo inter .fnnocentes/9 and are made ready to enter into the mystic union of the sacrificial act which now follows. 

PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION : WEST 
Ill. ELEVATION OF THE CHALICE 
V. THE EPICLESIS 

IV. CENSING OF THE SUBSTANCES AND THE ALTAR 
	321 	The Suscipe) sancta Trinitas) like the Orate) fratres, the Sanc- 
tus, and the Te igitur, is a propitiatory prayer which seeks to insure the acceptance of the sacrifice. Hence the Preface that comes after the Secret is called lllatio in the Mozarabic rite (the equivalent of the Greek o.lIa~opa.), and in the old Gallican liturgy is known as lmmolatio (in the sense of oblatio), with reference to the presentation of the gifts. The words of the Sanctus, "Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini," 20 point to the expected appearance of the Lord which has already been prepared, on the ancient principle that a "naming" has the force of a "summons." After the Canon there follows the "Commemoration of the Living," together with the prayers Hanc igitur and Quam oblationemo In the Mozarabic Mass these are followed by the Epiclesis (invocation): "Adesto, adesto ]esu, bone Pontifex, in medio nostri: sicut fuisti in medio discipulorum tuorum." 21 This naming likewise has the original force of a summons. It is an intensification of the Benedictus qui venit, and it may be, and sometimes was, regarded as the actual manifestation of the Lord, and hence as the culminating point of the Mass. 
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	318 	The priest makes the sign of the cross three times over the 
substances with the thurible, twice from right to left and once from left to right.16 The counterclockwise movement (from right to left) corresponds psychologically to a circumambulation downwards, in the direction of the unconscious, while the clockwise (left-to-right) movement goes in the direction of consciousness. There is also a complicated censing of the altarY 
	1119 	The censing has the significance of an incense offering and is 
therefore a relic of the original thysia. At the same time it signifies a transformation of the sacrificial gifts and of the altar, a spiritualization of all the physical substances subserving the rite. Finally, it is an apotropaic ceremony to drive away any demonic forces that may be present, for it fills the air with the fragrance of the pneuma and renders it uninhabitable by evil spirits. The vapour also suggests the sublimated body, the corpus volatile sive sPirituale) or wraithlike "subtle body." Rising up as a "spiritual" substance, the incense implements and represents the ascent of 
213 

14 This is my interpretation and not that of the Church, which sees in this only an act of devotion. 
15 "Mozarabic" from Arabic musta'rib, 'Arabianized,' with reference to the Visigothic-Spanish form of ritual. [The Latin phrases: "Come, 0 sanctifying one." "Come, 0 sanctifying spirit."-EDITORS.] 
16 The circumambulation from left to right is strictly obsel'Ved in Buddhism. 17 The censing is only performed at High Mass. 
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18 ["Let my prayer, 0 Lord, ascend like incense in thy sight."] 
19 ["May the Lord enkindle in us the fire of his love." / "I will wash my hands among the innocent. "] 
20 ["Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord."] 
21 ["Be present, be present in our midst, 0 Jesus, great High Priest: as thOll wert in the midst of thy disciples."] 

	

PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION : WEST 
VI. THE CONSECRA nON 
	322 	This, in the Roman Mass, is the climax, the transubstantia- 
tion of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. The formula for the consecration of the bread runs: 22 
Qui pridie quam pateretur, accepit panem in sanctas ac venerabiles manus suas, et elevatis oculis in caelum ad te Deum, Patrem suum omnipotentem, tibi gratias agens, benedixit, fregit, deditque discipulis suis, dicens: Accipite, et manducate ex hoc omnes. Hoc est enim Corpus meum. 
And for the consecration of the chalice: 
Simili modo postquam coenatum est, accipiens et hunc praeclarum Calicem in sanctas ac venerabiles manus suas, item tibi gratias agens, benedixit, deditque discipulis suis, dicens: Accipite, et bibite ex eo omnes. Hie est enim Calix Sanguinis mei, novi et aeterni testamenti: mysterium fidei: qui pro vobis et pro multis effundetur in remission;em peccatorum. Haec quotiescumque £eceritis, in mei memoriam 
facietis. 
	1123 	The priest and congregation, as well as the substances and 
the altar, have now been progressively purified, consecrated, exalted, and spiritualized by means of the prayers and rites which began with the Preliminaries and ended with the Canon, and are thus prepared as a mystical unity for the divine epiphany. Hence the uttering of the words of the consecration signifies Christ himself speaking in the first person, his living presence in the corjJus mysticum of priest, congregation, bread, wine, and incense, which together form the mystical unity offered for sacrific.e. At this moment the eternal character of the one divine sacrifice is made evident: it is experienced at a particular time and a particular place, as if a window or a door had been opened upon that which lies beyond space and time. It is in this sense that we have to understand the words of St. Chrysostom: "And this word once uttered in any church, at any altar, makes perfect the sacrifice from that day to this, and till his Second Coming-." It is clear that only by our Lord's presence in his words, and by their virtue, is the imperfect body of the sacrifice made perfect, 22 According to the edict of the Church these words ought not. on account of their sacredness. to be translated into any profane tongue. Although there are missals that sin against this wise edict. I would prefer the Latin text to stand untrans- 
lated. 
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TRANSFORMATION SYMBOLISM IN THE MASS 
and not by the preparatory action of the priest. Were this the efficient cause, the rite would be no different from common magic. The priest is only the causa ministerialis of the transubstantiation. The real cause is the living presence of Christ which operates spontaneously, as an act of divine grace. 
	1124 	Accordingly, John of Damascus (d. 754) says that the words 
have a consecrating effect no matter by what priest they be spoken, as if Christ were present and uttering them himself. And Duns Scotus (d. 1308) remarks that, in the sacrament of the Last Supper, Christ, by an act of will, offers himself as a sacrifice in every Mass, through the agency of the priest.23 This tells us plainly enough that the sacrificial act is not performed by the priest, but by Christ himself. The agent of transformation is nothing less than the divine will working through Christ. The Council of Trent declared that in the sacrifice of the Mass "the selfsame Christ is contained and bloodlessly sacrificed," 24 although this is not a repetition of the historical sacrifice but a bloodless renewal of it. As the sacramental words have the power to accomplish the sacrifice, being an expression of God's will, they can be described metaphorically as the sacrificial knife or sword which, guided by his will, consummates the thysia. This comparison was first drawn by the Jesuit father Lessius (d. 1623), and has since gained acceptance as an ecclesiastical figure of speech. It is based on Hebrews 4: 12: "For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword," and perhaps even more on the Book of Revelation 1: 16: "And out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword." The "mactation theory" first appeared in the sixteenth century. Its originator, Cuesta, bishop of Leon (d. 1560), declared that Christ was slaughtered by the priest. So the sword metaphor followed quite naturally.25 Nicholas Cabasilas, archbishop of Thessalonica (d. 
23 Klug. in Theologie und Glaube, XVIII (1926). 335f. Cited by Brinktrine, p. 192. 24 "idem ille Christus continetur et incruente immolatur." Sessio XXII. Denzinger and Bannwart. Enchiridion Symbolorum, p. 312. 
25 "Missa est sacrificium hac ratione quia Christus aliquo modo moritur et a sacerdote mactatur" (The Mass is a sacrifice for the reason that in it Christ dies after a certain manner, and is slain by the priest). Hauck, Realenzyhlopiidie, XII, p. 693· The question of the mac/alio had already been raised by Nicholas Cabasilas of Thessalonica: "De divino altaris sacrificio," in Migne, P.G., vo!. 150, cols. 363fI. The sword as a sacrificial instrument also occurs in the Zosimos visions (see section 3). 
215 

325 
PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION : WEST 
c. 1363), gives a vivid description of the corresponding rite in the Greek Orthodox Church: 
The priest cuts a piece of bread from the loaf, reciting the text: "As a lamb he was led to the slaughter." Laying it on the table he says: 
"The lamb of God is slain." Then a sign of the cross is imprinted on the bread and a small lance is stabbed into its side, to the text: 
"And one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water." With these words water and wine are mixed in the chalice, which is placed beside the bread. 
The OWpOll (gift) also represents the giver; that is to say, Christ is both the sacrificer and the sacrificed. 
Kramp writes: "Sometimes the fractio and sometimes the elevatio which precedes the Pater noster was taken as symboliz. ing the death of Christ, sometimes the sign of the cross at the end of the Supplices, and sometimes the consecratio; but no one ever thought of taking a symbol like the 'mystical slaughter' as a sacrifice which constitutes the essence of the Mass. So it is not surprising that there is no mention of any 'slaughter' in the 
liturgy." 26 
VII. THE GREATER ELEVATION 
326 
The consecrated substances are lifted up and shown to the congregation. The Host in particular represents a beatific vision of heaven, in fulfilment of Psalm 27: 8: "Thy face, Lord, will I seek," for in it the Divine Man is present. 
VIII. THE POST-CONSECRATION 
	327 	There now follows the significant prayer Unde et memoresJ 
which I give in full together with the Supra quae and Supplices: 
Wherefore, 0 Lord, we thy servants, as also thy holy people, calling to mind the blessed passion of the same Christ thy Son our Lord, his resurrection from hell, and glorious ascension into heaven, offer unto thy most excellent majesty, of thy gifts and grants, a pure Host, a holy Host, an immaculate Host, the holy bread of eternal life, and the chalice of everlasting salvation. 
26 Kramp, p. 56. 
216 
TRANSFORMATION SYMBOLISM IN THE MASS 
Upon which vouchsafe to look down with a, propitious and serene countenance, and to accept them, as thou wert graciously pleased to accept the gifts of thy just servant Abel, and the sacrifice of our patriarch Abraham, and that which thy high priest Me1chisedec offered to thee, a holy sacrifice, an immaculate Host. 
We most humbly beseech thee, almighty God, command these things to be carried by the hands of thy holy angel to thy altar on high, in the sight of thy divine majesty, that as many of us as, by partici pation at this altar, shall receive the most sacred body and blood of thy Son, may be filled with all heavenly benediction and grace. Through the same Christ, our Lord. Amen.27 
328 
The first prayer shows that in the transformed substances there is an allusion to the resurrection and glorification of our Lord, and the second prayer recalls the sacrifices prefigured in the Old Testament. Abel sacrificed a lamb; Abraham was to sacrifice. his son, but a ram was substituted at the last moment. Melchisedec offers no sacrifice, but comes to meet Abraham with bread and wine. This sequence is probably not accidental-it forms a sort of crescendo. Abel is essentially the son, and sacrifices an animal; Abraham is essentially the father-indeed, the "tribal father"-and therefore on a higher level. He does not offer a choice possession merely, but is ready to sacrifice the best and dearest thing he has-his only son. Melchisedec ("teacher of righteousness"), is, according to Hebrews 7: 1, king of Salem and "priest of the most high God," El 'Elyon. Philo Byblius mentions a 'EALOVlI 0 vYItCJ'TOS as a Canaanite deity,28 but he cannot be identical with Yahweh. Abraham nevertheless acknowledges the 
27 "Unde et memo res, Domine, nos servi tui, sed et plebs tua sancta, eiusdem Christi Filii tui, Domini nostri, tarn beatae passion is, nec non et ab inferis resurrectionis, sed et in caelos gloriosae ascension is: offerimus praec1arae majestati tuae de tuis donis ac datis, hostiam puram, hostiam sanctam, hostiam immaculatam, Panem sanctum vitae aeternae, et Calicem salutis perpetuae. 
"Supra quae propitio ac sereno vultu respicere digneris: et accepta habere, sicuti accepta habere dignatus es munera pueri tui justi Abel, et sacrificium Patriarchae nostri Abrahae: et quod tibi obtulit summus sacerdos tuus Melchisedech, sanctum sacrificium, immaculatam hostiam. 
"Supplices te rogamus, omnipotens Deus: jube haec perferri per manus sancti Angeli tui in sublime altare tuum, in conspectu divinae majestatis tuae: ut, quotquot ex hac altaris participatione sacrosanctum Filii tui corpus, et sanguinem sumpserimus, omni benedictione caelesti et gratia repleamur. Per eundem Christum, Dominum nostrum. Amen." 
28 Eusebius, Evangelica praeparatio, I, 10, 11 (Migne, P.G., vol. 21, col. 30). 
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PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION : WEST 
TRA;\lSFORMATlO~ SYMBOLISM IN THE MASS 

priesthood of Melchisedec 29 by paying him "a tenth part of all." By virtue of his priesthood, Melchisedec stands above the patriarch, and his feasting of Abraham has the significance of a priestly act. We must therefore attach a symbolical meaning to it, as is in fact suggested by the bread and wine. Consequently the symbolical offering ranks even higher than the sacrifice of a son, which is still the sacrifice of somebody else. Melchisedec's offering is thus a prefiguration of Christ's sacrifice of himself. 
	329 	In the prayer Supplices te rogamus we beseech God to bring 
the gifts "by the hands of thy holy angel to thy altar on high." This singular request derives from the apocryphal EPistolae Apostolorum) where there is a legend that Christ, before he became incarnate, bade the archangels take his place at God's altar during his absence.3o This brings out the idea of the eternal priesthood which links Christ with Melchisedec. 
infernal power. The breaking of the bread that now follows is symbolic of Christ's death. The Host is broken in two over the chalice. A small piece, the particula) is broken off from the left half and used for the rite of consignatio and commixtio. In the Byzantine rite the bread is divided into four, the four pieces being marked with letters as follows: 
I~ 
NI 
RA 
332 
X~ 
This means "'I7)(TOVS XpL(TTOS 1JLK~"-']esus Christ is victorious.' The peculiar arrangement of the letters obviously represents a quaternity, which as we know always has the character of wholeness. This quaternity, as the letters show, refers to Christ glorified, king of glory and Pantokrator. 
Still more complicated is the Mozarabic fractio: the Host is first broken into two, then the left half into five parts, and the right into four. The five are named corporatio (incarnatio), nativitas) circumcisio) apparitio) and passio; and the four mors) resurrectio) gloria) regnum. The first group refers exclusively to the human life of our Lord, the second to his existence beyond this world. According to the old view, five is the number of the natural ("hylical") man, whose outstretched arms and legs form, with the head, a pentagram. Four, on the other hand, signifies eternity and totality (as shown for instance by the Gnostic name "Barbelo," which is translated as "fourness is God"). This symbol, I "'ould add in passing, seems to indicate that extension in space signifies God's suffering (on the cross) and, on the other hand, his dominion over the universe. 

IX. END OF THE CANON 
~ 
	330 	Taking up the Host, the priest makes the sign of the cross 
three times over the chalice, and says: "Through Him, and with Him, and in Him." Then he makes the sign of the cross twice between himself and the chalice. This establishes the identity of Host, chalice, and priest, thus affirming once more the unity of all parts of the sacrifice. The union of Host and chalice signifies the union of the body and blood, i.e., the quickening of the body with a soul, for blood is equivalent to soul. Then follows the Pater noster. 
X. BREAKING OF THE HOST ("FRACTIO") 
XI. CONSIGNATIO 
331 
The prayer "Deliver us, 0 Lord, we beseech thee, from all evils, past, present, and to come" lays renewed emphasis on the petition made in the preceding Pater noster: "but deliver us from evil." The connection between this and the sacrificial death of Christ lies in the descent into hell and the breaking of the 
333 
The sign of the cross is made over the chalice with the particula, and then the priest drops it into the wine. 
XII. CO;\IMIXTIO 
334 
This is the mingling of bread and wine, as explained by Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 428?): " ... he combines them into one, whereby it is made manifest to everybody that although 2]9 
29 "Sidik" is a Phoenician name for God. Sir Leonard Woolley gives a very interesting explanation of this in his report on the excavations at Ur: Abraham: Re- 
	cent Discoveries and Hebrew Origins_ 	30 Kramp, p. 98. 
218 

XIII. CONCLUSION 
On careful examination we find that the sequence of ritual actions in the Mass contains, sometimes clearly and sometimes by subtle allusions, a representation in condensed form of the life and sufferings of Christ. Certain phases overlap or are so close together that there can be no question of conscious and deliberate condensation. It is more likely that the historical evolution of the Mass gradually led to its becoming a concrete picture of the most important aspects of Christ's life. First of all (in the Benedictus qui venit and Supra quae) we have an anticipation and prefiguration of his coming. The uttering of the words 31 Rticker, ed., Ritus baptismi et mi:isae quam descripsit Theodorus ep. Mopsuestanus. 
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they are two they are virtually one." 31 The text at this point says: "May this mixture and consecration [commixtio et consecratio] of the body and blood of our Lord help us," ete. The word 'consecration' may be an allusion to an original consecration by contact, though that would not clear up the contradiction since a consecration of both substances has already taken place. Attention has therefore been drawn to the old custom of holding over the sacrament from one Mass to another, the Host being dipped in wine and then preserved in softened, or mixed, form. There are numerous rites that end with minglings of this kind. Here I would only mention the consecration by water, or the mixed drink of honey and milk which the neophytes were given after communion in the Church Order of Hippolytus. 
The Leonine Sacramentary (seventh century) interprets the commixtio as a mingling of the heavenly and earthly nature of Christ. The later view was that it symbolizes the resurrection, since in it the blood (or soul) of our Lord is reunited with the body lying in the sepulchre. There is a significant reversal here of the original rite of baptism. In baptism, the body is immersed in water for the purpose of transformation; in the commixtio, on the other hand, the body, or particula, is steeped in wine, symbolizing spirit, and this amounts to a glorification of the body. Hence the justification for regarding the commixtio as a symbol of the resurrection. 

336 
of consecration corresponds to the incarnation of the Logos, and also to Christ's passion and sacrificial death, which appears again in the fractio. In the Libera nos there is an allusion to the descent into hell, while the consignatio and commixtio hint at resurrection. 

In so far as the offered gift is the sacrificer himself, in so far as the priest and congregation offer themselves in the sacrificial gift, and in so far as Christ is both sacrificer and sacrificed, there is a mystical unity of all parts of the sacrificial act.32 The combination of offering and offerer in the single fi~ure of Christ is implicit in the doctrine that just as bread is composed of many grains of wheat, and wine of many grapes, so the mystical body of the Church is made up of a multitude of believers. The mystical body, moreover, includes both sexes, represented by the bread and wine.33 Thus the two substances-the masculine wine and the feminine bread-also signify the androgynous nature of the mystical Christ. 

The Mass thus contains, as its essential core, the mystery and miracle of God's transformation taking place in the human sphere, his becoming Man, and his return to his absolute existence in and for himself. Man, too, by his devotion and self-sacrifice as a ministering instrument, is included in the mysterious process. God's offering of himself is a voluntary act of love, but the actual sacrifice was an agonizing and bloody death brought about by men instrumentaliter et ministerialiter. (The words incruente immolatur-'bloodlessly sacrificed' -refer only to the rite, not to the thing symbolized.) The terrors of death on the cross are an indispensable condition for the transformation. This is in the first place a bringing to life of substances which are in themselves lifeless, and, in the second, a substantial alteration of them, a spiritualization, in accordance with the ancient conception of pneuma as a subtle material entity (the corpus glorificationis). This idea is expressed in the concrete participation in the body and blood of Christ in the Communion. 

82 This unity is a good example of participation mystique, which Levy-Bruhl stressed as being one of the main characteristics of primitive psychology-a view that has recently been contested by ethnologists in a very short-sighted manner. The idea of unity should not, however, be regarded as "primitive" but rather as showing that participation mystique is a characteristic of symbols in general. The symbol always includes the unconscious, hence man too is contained in it. The numinosity of the symbol is an expression of this fact. 33 Krarnp, p. 55. 
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3. PARALLELS TO THE TRANSFORMATION MYSTERY 

I. THE AZTEC "TEOQUALO" 

	19 	Although the Mass itself is a unique phenomenon in the his- 

tory of comparative religion, its symbolic content would be profoundly alien to man were it not rooted in the human psyche. But if it is so rooted, then we may expect to find similar patterns of symbolism both in the earlier history of mankind and in the world of pagan thought contemporary with it. As the prayer Supra quae shows, the liturgy of the Mass contains allusions to the "prefigurations" in the Old Testament, and thus indirectly to ancient sacrificial symbolism in general. It is clear, then, that in Christ's sacrifice and the Communion one of the deepest chords in the human psyche is struck: human sacrifice and ritual anthropophagy. Unfortunately I cannot enter into the wealth of ethnological material in question here, so must content myself with mentioning the ritual slaying of the king to promote the fertility of the land and the prosperity of his people, the renewal and revivification of the gods through human sacrifice, and the totem meal, the purpose of which was to reunite the participants with the life of their ancestors. These hints will suffice to show how the symbols of the Mass penetrate into the deepest layers of the psyche and its history. They are evidently 
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TRANSFORMATION SYMBOLISM IN THE MASS 

among the most ancient and most central of religious conceptions. Now with regard to these conceptions there is still a widespread prejudice, not only among laymen, but in scientific circles too, that beliefs and customs of this kind must have been "invented" at some time or other, and were then handed down and imitated, so that they would not exist at all in most places unless they had got there in the manner suggested. It is, however, always precarious to draw conclusions from our modern, "civilized" mentality about the primitive state of mind. Primitive consciousness differs from that of the present-day white man in several very important respects. Thus, in primitive societies, "inventing" is very different from what it is with us, where one novelty follows another. With primitives, life goes on in the saine way for generations; nothing alters, except perhaps the language. But that does not mean that a new one is "invented." Their language is "alive" and can therefore change, a fact that has been an unpleasant discovery for many lexicographers of primitive languages. Similarly, no one "invents" the picturesque slang spoken in America; it just springs up in inexhaustible abundance from the fertile soil of colloquial speech. Religious rites and their stock of symbols must have developed in much the same way from beginnings now lost to us, and not just in one place only, but in many places at once, and also at different periods. They have grown spontaneously out of the basic conditions of human nature, which are never invented but are everywhere the same. 
	34° 	So it is not surprising that we find religious rites which come 
very close to Christian practices in a field untouched by classical culture. I mean the rites of the Aztecs, and in particular that of the teoqualo} 'god-eating,' as recorded by Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, who began his missionary work among the Aztecs in 1529, eight years after the conquest of Mexico. In this rite, a doughlike paste was made out of the crushed and pounded seeds of the prickly poppy (A rgemone mexicana) and moulded into the figure of the god Huitzilopochtli: 
And upon the next day the body of Huitzilopochtli died. 

And he who slew him was the priest known as Quetzalcoatl. And that with which he slew him was a dart, pointed with flint, which he shot into his heart. 
He died in the presence of Moctezuma and of the keeper of the 223 

341 
342 

PSYCHOLOGY A;\lD RELIGION : WEST 
god, who verily spoke to Huitzilopochtli-who verily appeared before him, who indeed could make him offerings; and of four masters of the youths, front rank leaders. Before all of them died H ui tzilopochtli. 
And when he had died, thereupon they broke up his body of dough. His heart was apportioned to Moctezmna. 
And as for the rest of his members, which were made, as it were, to be his bones, they were distributed and divided up among all. ... Each year ... they ate it. ... And when they divided up among themselves his body made of ... dough, it was broken up exceeding small, very fine, as small as seeds. The youths ate it. 
And of this which they ate, it was said: "The god is eaten." And of those who ate it, it was said: "They guard the god." 1 
The idea of a divine body, its sacrifice in the presence of the high priest to whom the god appears and with whom he speaks, the piercing with the spear, the god's death followed by ritual dismemberment, and the eating (communio) of a small piece of his body, are all parallels which cannot be overlooked and which caused much consternation among the worthy Spanish Fathers at the time. 
In Mithraism, a religion that sprang up not long before Christianity, we find a special set of sacrificial symbols and, it would seem, a corresponding ritual which unfortunately is known to us only from dumb monuments. There is a transitus, with Mithras carrying the bull; a bull-sacrifice for seasonal fertility; a stereotyped representation of the sacrificial act, flanked on either side by dadophors carrying raised and lowered torches; and a meal at which pieces of bread marked with crosses were laid on the table. Even small bells have been found, and these probably have some connection with the bell which is sounded at Mass. The Mithraic sacrifice is essentially a self-sacrifice, since the bull is a world bull and was originally identical with Mithras himself. This may account for the singularly agonized expression on the face of the tauroktonos,2 which bears comparison with Guido Reni's Crucifixion. The Mithraic transitus is a motif that corresponds to Christ carrying the cross, just as the 
1 Bernardino de Sahagun, General History of the Things of New Spain, Book 3: 
The Origin of the Gods, trans. by Anderson and Dibble, pp. 5f. (slightly modified). 2 Cumont, Textes et monuments, I, p. 182. [And cf. Jung, Symbols of Transformation, p. 428 and frontispiece.-EDlToRs.] 
224 

343 
344 

TRANSFORMATIO;\l SYMBOLISM IN THE MASS 
transformation of the beast of sacrifice corresponds to the resurrection of the Christian God in the form of food and drink. The representations of the sacrificial act, the tauroctony (bullslaying), recall the crucifixion between two thieves, one of whom is raised up to paradise while the other goes down to hell. 
These few references to the Mithras cult are but one example of the wealth of parallels offered by the legends and rites of the various Near Eastern gods who die young, are mourned, and rise again. For anyone who knows these religions at all, there can be no doubt as to the basic affinity of the symbolic types and ideas.3 At the time of primitive Christianity and in the early days of the Church, the pagan world was saturated with conceptions of this kind and with philosophical speculations based upon them, and it was against this background that the thought and visionary ideas of the Gnostic philosophers were unfolded. 
11. THE VISION OF ZOSIMOS 
A characteristic representative of this school of thought was Zosimos of Panopolis, a natural philosopher and alchemist of the third century A.D., whose works have been preserved, though in corrupt state, in the famous alchemical Codex Marcianus, and were published in 1887 by Berthelot in his Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs. In various portions of his treatises 4 Zosimos relates a number of dream-visions, all of which appear to go back to one and the same dream.5 He was clearly a nonChristian Gnostic, and in particular-so one gathers from the famous passage about the krater 6-an adherent of the Poimandres sect, and therefore a follower of Hermes. Although alchemical literature abounds in parables, I would hesitate to class these dream-visions among them. Anyone acquainted with the language of the alchemists will recognize that their parables are mere allegories of ideas that were common knowledge. In the allegorical figures and actions, one can usually see at once 
3 Cf. Frazer's The Golden Bough, Part Ill: "The Dying God." For the Eucharistic meal of fish, see Aion, pars. 174ff., 181ff. 
4 Alchimistes, Ill, i, 2, 3; Ill, v; Ill, vi. 
5 Cf. my paper "The Visions of Zosimos," par. 86, which quotes the relevant 
	passages. 	6 Alchimistes, Ill, li, 8. Cf. supra, par. 313. 
225 

	
	
PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION : WEST 
what substances and what procedures are being referred to under a deliberately theatrical disguise. There is nothing of this kind in the Zosimos visions. Indeed, it comes almost as a surprise to find the alchemical interpretation, namely that the dream and its impressive machinery are simply an illustration of the means for producing the "divine water." Moreover, a parable is a self-contained whole, whereas our vision varies and amplifies a single theme as a dream does. So far as one can assess the nature of these visions at all, I should say that even in the original text the contents of an imaginative meditation have grouped themselves round the kernel of an actual dream and been woven into it. That there really was such a meditation is evident from the fragments of it that accompany the visions in the form of a commentary. As we know, meditations of this kind are often vividly pictorial, as if the dream were being continued on a level nearer to consciousness. In his Lexicon alchemiae, Martin Ruland, writing in Frankfort in 1612, defines the meditation that plays such an important part in alchemy as an "internal colloquy with someone else, who is nevertheless not seen, it may be with God, with oneself, or with one's good angel." The latter is a milder and less obnoxious form of the paredros, the familiar spirit of ancient alchemy, who was generally a planetary demon conjured up by magic. It can hardly be doubted that real visionary experiences originally lay at the root of these practices, and a vision is in the last resort nothing less than a dream which has broken through into the waking state. We know from numerous witnesses all through the ages that the alchemist, in the course of his imaginative work, was beset by visions of all kinds,7 and was sometimes even threatened with madness.8 So the visions of Zosimos are not something unusual or unknown in alchemical experience, though they are perhaps the most important self-revelations ever bequeathed to us by an alchemist. 
	345 	I cannot reproduce here the text of the visions in full, but 
will give as an example the first vision, in Zosimos' own words: 
And while I said this I fell asleep, and I saw a sacrificial priest standing before me, high up on an altar, which was in the shape of a 
7 CL the examples given in Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 347f. 
8 Olympiodorus says this is particularly the effect of lead. Cf. Berthelot, H, iv, 43· 
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TRANSFORMATION SYMBOLISM 1:'-1 THE MASS 
shallow bowl. There were fifteen steps leading up to the altar. And the priest stood there, and I heard a voice from above say to me: 
"Behold, I have completed the descent down the fifteen steps of darkness and I have completed the ascent up the steps of light. And he who renews me is the priest, casting Jway the grossness of the body, and by compelling necessity I am sanctified and now stand in perfection as a spirit [pneuma]." And I percei\ed the voice of him who stood upon the altar, and I inquired of him who he was. And he answered me in a fine voice, saying: "I am Jon, priest of the innermost hidden sanctuary, and I submit myself to an unendurable torment. For there came one in haste at early morning, who overpowered me and pierced me through with the sword and cut me in pieces, yet in such a way that the order of my limbs was preserved. And he drew off the scalp of my head with the sword, which he wielded with strength, and he put the bones and the pieces of flesh together and with his own hand burned. them in the fire, until I perceived that I was transformed and had become spirit. And that is my unendurable torment." And even ;)S he spoke this, and I held him by force to converse with me, his eyes became as blood. And he spewed out all his own flesh. And I saw how he changed into a manikin r av8pw7ra.pwv, i.e., an homunculus] who had lost a part of himself. And he tore his flesh with his own teeth, and sank into himself. 
	346 	In the course of the visions the Hiereus (priest) appears in 
various forms. At first he is split into the figures of the Hiereus and the Hierourgon (sacrificer), who is charged with the performance of the sacrifice. But these figures blend into one in so far as both suffer the same fate. The sacrificial priest submits voluntarily to the torture by which he is transformed. But he is also the sacrificer who is sacrificed, since he is pierced through with the sword and ritually dismembered.9 The deipnon consists in his tearing himself to pieces with his own teeth and eating himself; the lhysia, in his flesh being sacrificially burned on the altar. 
	347 	He is the Hiereus in so far as he rules over the sacrificial rite 
as a whole, and over the human beings who are transformed during the lhysia. He calls himself a guardian of spirits. He is also known as the "Brazen Man" and as Xyrourgos, the barber. 
9 The dismemberment motif belongs in the wider context of rebirth symbolism. Consequently it plays an important part in the initiation experiences of shamans and medicine men, who are dismembered and then put together again. For details, see Eliade, Shamanism, ch. n. 
227 

,r: 

348 

	PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION 	WEST 
The brazen or leaden man is an allusion to the spirits of the metals, or planetary demons, as protagonists of the sacrificial drama. In all probability they are paredroi who were conjured up by magic, as may be deduced from Zosimos' remark that he "held him by force" to converse with him. The planetary demons are none other than the old gods of Olympus who finally expired only in the eighteenth century, as the "souls of the metals" -or rather, assumed a new shape, since it was in this same century that paganism openly arose for the first time (in the French Revolution). 
Somewhat more curious is the term 'barber,' which we find in other parts of the visions,IO for there is no mention of cutting the hair or shaving. There is, however, a scalping, which in our context is closely connectec}with the ancient rites of flaying and their magical significance,u I need hardly mention the flaying of Marsyas, who is an unmistakable parallel to the son-lover of Cybele, namely Attis, the dying god who rises again. In one of the old Attic fertility rites an ox was flayed, stuffed, and set up on its feet. Herodotus (IV, 60) reports a number of flaying ceremonies among the Scythians, and especially scalpings. In general, flaying signifies transformation from a worse state to a better, and hence renewal and rebirth. The best examples are to be found in the religion of ancient Mexico,12 Thus, in order to renew the moon-goddess a young woman was decapitated and skinned, and a youth then put the skin round him to represent the risen goddess. The prototype of this renewal is the snake casting its skin every year, a phenomenon round which primitive fantasy has always played. In our vision the skinning is restricted to the head, and this can probably be explained by the underlying idea of spiritual transformation. Since olden times shaving the head has been associated with consecration, 
10 [Cf. Berthelot, Ill, i, 3 and v, 1-2; and "The Visions of Zosimos," par. 86.EDITORS.] 
11 Cf. Frazer's The Colden Bough, Part IV: Adonis, Attis, Osiris, pp. 242ff. and p. 405, and my Symbols of Transformation, pars. 594f. Cf. also Colin Campbell, The Miraculous Birth of King A mon-Hotep Ill, p. 142, concerning the presentation of the dead man, Sen-nezem, before Osiris, Lord of Amentet: "In this scene the god is usually represented enthroned. Before and behind him, hanging from a pole, is the dripping skin of a slain bull that was slaughtered to yield up the soul of Osiris at his reconstruction, with the vase underneath to catch the blood." 12 Cf. Eduard Seler's account in Hastings, Encyclopedia, VIII, pp. 615f. 
228 

349 
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TRANSFORMATION SYMBOLISM IN THE MASS 
that is, with spiritual transformation or initiation. The priests of Isis had their heads shaved quite bald, and the tonsure, as we know, is still in use at the present day. This "symptom" of transformation goes back to the old idea that the transformed one becomes like a new-born babe (neophyte, quasimodogenitus) with a hairless head. In the myth of the night sea journey, the hero loses all his hair during his incubation in the belly of the monster, because of the terrific heat.13 The custom of tonsure, which is derived from these primitive ideas, naturally presupposes the presence of a ritual barber.H Curiously enough, we come across the barber in that old alchemical "mystery," the Chymical Wedding of 1616.15 There the hero, on entering the mysterious castle, is pounced on by invisible barbers, who give him something very like a tonsure.16 Here again the initiation and transformation process is accompanied by a shaving.17 
In one variant of these visions there is a dragon who is killed and sacrificed in the same manner as the priest and therefore seems to be identical with him. This makes one think of those far from uncommon medieval pictures, not necessarily alchemical, in which a serpent is shown hanging on the Cross in place of Christ. (Psychology and Alchemy, fig. 217. Note the comparison of Christ with the serpent of Moses in John 3: 14.) 
A notable aspect of the priest is the leaden homunculus, and this is none other than the leaden spirit or planetary demon Saturn. In Zosimos' day Saturn was regarded as a Hebrew god, 
13 [Symbols of Transformation, pars. 309£.; Psychology and Alchemy, par. 490.] 14 Barbers were comparatively well-to,do people in ancient Egypt, and evidently did a flourishing trade. Cf. Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, p. 304: "Barbers, all of whom must ... have lived in easy circumstances," 
15 The real author of the Chymische Hochzeit was .Tohann Valentin Andreae. [It appeared under the pseudonym "Christian Rosencreutz," dated 1459, but actually published at Strasbourg, 1616. Concerning Andreae, cf. "The Psychology of the Transference," par. 407 and n. 18.-EDITORS.] 
16 As Andreae must have been a learned alchemist, he might very well have got hold of a copy of the Codex Marcianus and seen the writings of Zosimos. Manuscript copies exist in Catha, Leipzig, Munich, and Weimar. I know of only one printed edition, published in Italy in the 16th cent., which is very rare. 
17 Hence the "shaving of a man" and the" "plucking of a fowl," mentioned further on among the magical sacrificial recipes. A similar motif is suggested by the "changing of wigs" at the Egyptian judgment of the dead. Cl. the picture in the tomb of Sennezem (Campbell, p. 143)' When the dead man is led before Osiris his wig is black; afterwards (at the sacrifice in the Papyrus of Ani) it is white. 
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presumably on account of the keeping holy of the SabbathSaturday means 'Saturn's Day' 18-and also on account of the Gnostic parallel with the supreme archon Ialdabaoth ('child of chaos') who, as AEOIITOHO~S, may be grouped together with Baal, Kronos, and Saturn.19 The later Arabic designation of Zosimos as al-'Ibri (the Hebrew) does not of course prove that he himself was a Jew, but it is clear from his writings that he was acquainted with Jewish traditions.20 The parallel between the Hebrew god and Saturn is of considerable importance as regards the alchemical idea of the transformation of the God of the Old Testament into the God of the New. The alchemists naturally attached great significance to Saturn,21 for, besides being the outermost planet, the supreme archon (the Harranites named him "Primas"), and the demiurge laldabaoth, he was also the sPiritus niger who lies captive in the darkness of matter, the deity or that part of the deity which has been swallowed up in his own creation. He is the dark god who reverts to his original luminous state in the mystery of alchemical transmutation. As the Aurora Consurgens says: "Blessed is he that shall find this science and into whom this prudence of Saturn floweth." 22 
	S51 	The later alchemists were familiar not only with the ritual 
slaying of a dragon but also with the slaying of a lion, which took the form of his having all four paws cut off. Like the dragon, the lion devours himself, and so is probably only a variant.23 
18 Plutarch, Quaestiones convivales, IV, 5, and Diogenes Laertius, Il, §112: 
Reitzenstein, Poimandres, pp. 75f. and 1] 2. In a text named "Chaya al-hakim," ascribed to I\Iaslama al-Madjriti, the following instructions are given when invoking Saturn: "Arrive \'etu a la maniere des Juifs, car il est leur patron." Dozy and de Coeje, "Nouveaux documents pour l'etude de la religion des Harraniens," P·350. 
190rigen, Contra Celsum, VI, 31. Mead, Pistis SoPhia, ch. 45. Bousset, Flauptprobleme der Gnosis, pp. 351ft. Roscher, Lexikon, S.\'. Kronos, Il, col. 1496. The dragon (KpOVOS) and Kronos are often confused. 
20 Lippmann, Entstehung und Ausbreitung der Alchemie, Il, p. 229. 21 Cf. A ion, pars, ] 28f. 
22 "Beatus homo qui in\'enerit hanc scientiam et cui affluit providentia Saturni." lEt!. \'on Franz, pp. 37f.] 
2:3 See the illustraliou in Reusner, Pal/dora ('"RR), and in Le Songe de PoliPhile, Iran,. I\(,to;dde de "enille (11;00). ["'\'I'h. al/r! .-lIch., fig. 4.] :\lostl\ the pictures show tll'O lions eating one anOlher. The uroboros, too, is often pictured in the form of tll'O dragons engaged in the same process (Viridarium chymicum, 1624). 
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	352 	The vision itself indicates that the main purpose of the trans- 
formation process is the spiritualization of the sacrificing priest: he is to be changed into pneuma. We are also told that he would "change the bodies into blood, make the eyes to see and the dead to rise again." Later in the visions he appears in glorified form, shining white like the midday sun. 
	353 	Throughout the visions it is clear that sacrificer and sacri- 
ficed are one and the same. This idea of the unity of the prima and ultima materia, of that which redeems and that which is to be redeemed, pervades the whole of alchemy from beginning to end. "Unus est lapis, una medicina, unum vas, unum regimen, unaque dispositio" is the key formula to its enigmatic language.24 Greek alchemy expresses the same idea in the formula Ell TO 7l'av. Its symbol is the uroboros, the tail-eating serpent. In our vision it is the priest as sacrificer who devours himself as the sacrifice. This recalls the saying of St. John Chrysostom that in the Eucharist Christ drinks his own blood. By the same token, one might add, he eats his own flesh. The grisly repast in the dream' of Zosimos reminds us of the orgiastic meals in the Dionysus cult, when sacrificial animals were torn to pieces and eaten. They represent Dionysus Zagreus being torn to pieces by the Titans, from whose mangled remains the VfOS lUOVV<TOS arises.25 
	354 	Zosimos tells us that the vision represents or explains the 
"production of the waters." 26 The visions themselves only show the transformation into pneuma. In the language of the alchemists, however, spirit and wat~r are synonymous,27 as they are 24 Cf. the Rosarium philosoPhorum, in the Artis aUTiferae (]593), Il, p. 206. 
25 Cf. the Cretan fragment of Euripides (Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie, p. 105): 
a:yvc)JI oE {3loJl rElvwJI f~ ou 
.6LO~ 'Ioalov f.L{)(TTT]S 'YEv6P:T]V 
Kat VVKTL7rOXOV Za'YPEWS {3ovras 
TOUS W}.LOq,a.-yOUS 511'TI1S HAf(Tl1S 
(living a holy life, since I have been initiated into the mysteries of the Idaean Zeus, and eaten raw the flesh of Zagreus, the night-wandering shepherd). 
26 [Cf. "The Visions of Zosimos," par. 86, UI, i, 3, and-for the reference lower down to "blood"-IIl, v bis.] 
27 "Est et coelestis aqua sive potius divina Chymistarum ... pneuma, ex aetheris natura et essentia rerum quinta" (There is also the celestial, or rather the divine, water of the alchemists ... the pneuma, having the nature of the pneuma and the quintessence of things).-Hermolaus Barbarus, COl·oll. in Dioscoridem, cited in M. Maier, Symbola aureae mensae (16]7), p. 174. 
"Spiritus autem in hac arte nihil aliud quam aquam indicari .. ," (In this art, 
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in the language of the early Christians, for whom water meant the spiritus veritatis. In the "Book of Krates" we read: "You make the bodies to liquefy, so that they mingle and become an homogeneous liquid; this is then named the 'divine water.' " 28 The passage corresponds to the Zosimos text, which says that the priest would "change the bodies into blood." For the alchemists, water and blood are identical. This transformation is the same as the solutio or liquefactio, which is a synonym for the subli- 
	matio, for "water" is also "fire": "Item ignis 	est aqua et 
	ignis noster est ignis et non ignis" (For fire 	is water and 
our fire is the fire that is no fire). "Aqua nostra" is said to be "ignea" (fiery).29 
The "secret fire of our philosophy" is said to be "our mystical water," and the "permanent water" is the "fiery form of the true water." 30 The permanent water (the iJowp BELOY of the Greeks) also signifies "spiritualis sanguis," 31 and is identified with the blood and water that flowed from Christ's side. Heinrich Khunrath says of this water: "So there will open for thee an healing flood which issues from the heart of the son of the great world." It is a water "which the son of the great world pours forth from his body and heart, to be for us a true and natural Aqua vitae." 32 Just as a spiritual water of grace and truth flows from Christ's sacrifice, so the "divine water" is produced by a sacrificial act in the Zosimos vision. It is mentioned in the ancient 
Spirit means nothing else but water),- Theobaldus de Hoghelande, in the Theatrum chemicum, I (1602), p. 196. Water is a "spiritus extractus." or a "spiritus qui in ventre (corporis) occultus est et fiet aqua et corpus absque spiritu: qui est spiritualis naturae" (spirit which is hidden in the belly [of the substance], and water will be produced and a substance without spirit, which is of a spiritual nature).- J. D, Mylius, PhilosoPhia retormata (1622), p. 150. This quotation shows how closely spirit and water were associated in the mind of the alchemist, 
"Sed aqua coelestis gloriosa scil. aes nostrum ac argentum nostrum, sericum nostrum, totaque oratio nostra, quod est unum et idem scil. sapientia, quam Deus obtulit, quibus voluit" (But the glorious celestial water, namely our copper and our silver, our silk, and everything we talk about, is one and the same thing, namely the Wisdom, which God has given to whomsoever he wished).-"Consilium coniugii," in the Ars chemica (1566), p. 120. 
28 Berthelot, La Chimie au moyen dge, Ill, p. 53. 
211 Mylius, pp. 121 and 123. For the blood-water-fire equation see George Ripley, Opera omnia chemica (1649), pp. 162, 197, 295, 427. 
	30 Ripley, Opera, p. 62; Rosarium, p. 264. 	31 Mylius, p. 42. 
32 Khunrath, Von hylealischen ... Chaos (1597), pp. 274f. 
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treatise entitled "Isis to Horus," 33 where the angel Amnael brings it to the prophetess in a drinking vessel. As Zosimos was probably an adherent of the Poimandres sect, another thing to be considered here is the krater which God filled with nous for all those seeking fJJJJOLCt.34 But nous is identical with the alchemical Mercurius. This is quite clear from the Ostanes quotation in Zosimos, which says: "Go to the streams of the Nile and there thou wilt find a stone which hath a spirit. Take and divide it, thrust in thy hand and draw out its heart, for its soul is in its heart." Commenting on this, Zosimos remarks that "having a spirit" is a metaphorical expression for the exhydrargyrosis, the expulsion of the quicksilver.35 
During the first centuries after Christ the words nous and pneuma were used indiscriminately, and the one could easily stand for the other. Moreover the relation of Mercurius to "spirit" is an extremely ancient astrological fact. Like Hermes, Mercurius (or the planetary spirit Mercury) was a god of revelation, who discloses the secret of the art to the adepts. The Liber quartorum, which being of Harranite origin cannot be dated later than the tenth century, says of Mercurius: "Ipse enim aperit clausiones operum cum ingenio et intellectu suo" (For he opens with his genius and understanding the locked [insoluble] problems of the work).36 He is also the "soul of the bodies," the "anima vitalis," 37 and Ruland defines him as "spirit which has become earth." 38 He is a spirit that penetrates into the depths of the material world and transforms it. Like the nous, he is symbolized by the serpent. In Michael Maier he points the way to the earthly paradise.39 Besides being identified with Hermes Trismegistus,40 he is also called the "mediator" 41 and, 
33 Berthelot, Alchimistes, I, xiii, [Cf, "The Visions of Zosimos," pars, 97ff.] 34 Ibid., Ill, li, 8, and Hermetica, ed. Scott, I, p. 151. 
35 Berthelot, Alchimistes, Ill, vi, 5. 
36 Of the later authors I will mention only Johannes Christophorus Steeb, Coelum sephiroticum (1679, p. 138): "Omnis intellectus acuminis auctor ... a coelesti mercurio omnem ingeniorum vim provenire" (The author of all deeper understanding ... all the power of genius comes from the celestial Mercurius). For the astrological connection see Bouche-Leclercq, L'Astrologie grecque, pp, 312, 
	321-23. 	37 "Aurora consurgens." In Mylius (p, 533) he is a giver of life. 
	38 Lexicon. 	39 Symbola, p. 592. 	40 Ibid" p, 600. 
41 Ripley, Opera, Foreword, and in Khunrath's Chaos. In Plutarch, Mercurius acts as a kind of world soul. 
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PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION : WEST 
as the Original Man, the "Hermaphroditic Adam." 42 From numerous passages it is clear that Mercurius is as much a fire as a water, both of which aptly characterize the nature of spirit.43 
	357 	Killing with the sword is a recurrent theme in alchemical 
literature. The "philosophical egg" is divided with the sword, and with it the "King" is transfixed and the dragon or "corpus" dismembered, the latter being represented as the body of a man whose head and limbs are cut off.44 The lion's paws are likewise cut off with the sword. For the alchemical sword brings about the solutio or separatio of the elements, thereby restoring the original condition of chaos, so that a new and more perfect body can be produced by a new impressio tormac, or by a "new imagination." The sword is therefore that which "kills and vivifies," and the same is said of the permanent water or mercurial water. Mercurius is the giver of life as well as the destroyer of the old form. In ecclesiastical symbolism the sword which comes out of the mouth of the Son of Man in the Book of Revelation is, according to Hebrews 4: 12, the Logos, the Word of God, and hence Christ himself. This analogy did not escape the notice obhe alchemists, who were always struggling to give expression to their fantasies. Mercurius was their mediator and saviour, their filius macrocosmi (contrasted 'with Christ the filius microcosmi),45 the solver and separator. So he too is a sword, for he is a "penetrating spirit" ("more piercing than a two-edged sword"!). Gerhard Darn, an alchemist of the sixteenth century, says that in our world the sword was changed into Christ our Saviour. He comments as follows: 
After a long interval of time the Deus Optimus Maximus immersed himself in the innermost of his secrets, and he decided, out of the compassion of his love as well as for the demands of justice, to take the sword of wrath from the hand of the angel. And having hung the sword on the tree, he substituted for it a golden trident, and thus was the wrath of God changed into love .... When peace and 
42 Gerhard Dorn, "Congeries Paracelsicae ehemicae," in the Theatrum chemicum, I, p. 589. 
43 CL "The Spirit Mercurius," pars. 255, 2561£. 
44 Illustration in "Splendor solis," Aureum vellus (15g8). 
45 CL Khunrath, Chaos, and Amphitheatrum saPientiae aeternae (1604). 
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TRANSFORMATION SYMBOLISM IN THE MASS 
justice were united, the water of Grace flowed more abundantly from above, and now it bathes the whole worId.46 
46 Dorn, "Speculativae philosophiae," in the Theatrum chemicum, I, pp. 2841£. The whole passage nms as follows: 
"Post primam hominis inobedientiam, Dominus viam hanc amplissimam in callem strictissimam difficilimamque (ut videtis) restrinxit, in cuius ostio collocavit Cherubim angelum, ancipitem gladium manu tenentem, quo quidem arceret omnes ab introitu felicis patriae: hinc def!ectentes Adae filii propter peccatllm primi sui parentis, in sinistram latam sibimet viam construxerunt, quam evitastis. Longo postea temporis intervallo D. O. M. secreta secretorum suorum introivit, in quibus amore miserente, accusanteque iustitia, conclusit angelo gladium irae suae de manibus eripere, cui us loco tridentem hamum substituit aureum, gladio ad arborem suspenso: & sic mutata est ira Dei in amorem, servata iustitia: quod antequam fieret, f1uvius iste non erat, ut iam, in se collectus, sed ante lapsum per totum orbem terrarum roris instar expansus aequaliter: post vero rediit unde processerat tandem, ut pax & iustitia sunt osculatae se, descendit affiuentius ab alto rnanans aqua gratiae, totum nunc mundum all liens. In sinistram partem qui deflectunt, partim suspensum in arbore gladillm videntes, eiusque noscentes historiam, quia mundo nimium sunt insili, praetereunt: nonnulli videntes eius efficaciam perquirere negligunt, alii nec vident, nee vidisse voluissent: hi recta peregrinationem suam ad vallem dirigunt omnes, nisi per hamos resipiscenriae, vel poenitentiae nonnulli retrahantur ad montem Sion. Nostro iam saeculo (quod gratiae est) mutatus est gladius in Christum salvatorem nostrum qui cruds arborem pro peccatis nostris ascendit." 
(After man's first disobedience the Lord straitened this wide road into a very narrow and difficult path, as you see. At its entrance he placed an angel of the Cherubim, holding in his hand a double-edged sword with which he was to keep all from entering into Paradise. Turning from thence on account of the sin of their first parents, the sons of Adam built for themselves a broad left.hand parh: this you have shunned. After a long interval of time the Deus Optimus J\laximus immersed himself in the innermost of his secrets. and he decided, out of the corn. passion of his love as well as for the demands of justice, to take the sword of wrath from the hand of the angel. And having hung the sword on the tree, he substituted for it a golden trident, and thus was the wrath of God changed into love, and justice remained unimpaired. Previous to rhis, however, the river was not collected into one as it is now, but before the Fall it was spread equally over the whole world, like dew. But later it returned to the place of its origin. When peace and justice were united, the water of Grace flowed more abundantly from above, and now it bathes the whole world. Some of those who take the left-hand path, on seeing the sword suspended from the tree, and knowing its history, pass it by, because they are too entangled in the affairs of this world; some, on seeing it, do not choose to inquire into its efficacy; others never see it and would not wish to see it. All these continue their pilgrimage into the valley, except for those who are drawn back to l\Iount Zion by the hook of repentance. l\'ow in Ollr age, which is an age of grace, the sword has become Christ Our Saviour, who ascended the tree of the Cross for our sins.) Cf. "The Philosophical Tree," pars. 4471£. 
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PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION : WEST 
	358 	This passage, which might well have occurred in an author 
like Rabanus Maurus or Honorius of Autun without doing them discredit, actually occurs in a context which throws light on certain esoteric alchemical doctrines, namely in a colloquy between Animus, Anima, and Corpus. There we are told that it is Sophia, the Sapientia, Scientia, or Philosophia of the alchemists, "de cuius fonte scaturiunt aquae" (from whose fount the waters gush forth). This Wisdom is the nous that lies hidden and bound in matter, the "serpens mercurial is" or "humidum radicale" that manifests itself in the "viventis aquae fluvius de montis apice" (stream of living water from the summit of the mountain).47 That is the water of grace, the "permanent" and "divine" water which "now bathes the whole world." The apparent transformation of the God of the Old Testament into the God of the New is in reality the transformation of the deus absconditus (i.e., the natura abscondita) into the medicina catholica of alchemical wisdom.48 
	359 	The divisive and separative function of the sword, which is 
of such importance in alchemy, is prefigured in the flaming sword of the angel that separated our first parents from paradise. Separation by a sword is a theme that can also be found in the Gnosis of the Ophites: the earthly cosmos is surrounded by a ring of fire which at the same time encloses paradise. But paradise and the ring of fire are separated by the "flaming sword." 49 An important interpretation of this flaming sword is given in Simon Magus: 50 there is an incorruptible essence potentially present in every human being, the divine pneuma "which is stationed above and below in the stream of water." Simon says of this pneuma: "I and thou, thou before me. I, who am after thee." It is a force "that generates itself, that causes itself to grow; it is its own mother, sister, bride, daughter; its own son, mother, father; a unity, a root of the whole." It is the very 
47 Another remark of Dorn's points in the same direction: "The sword was suspended from a tree over the bank of the river" (p. 288). 
48 A few pages later Dorn himself remarks: "Scitote, fratres, omnia quae superius dicta sunt et dicentur in posterum, intelligi posse de praeparationibus alchemicis" (Know, brothers, that everything which has been said above ancl everything which will be said in what follows can also be understood of the alchemical preparations). 
49 Leisegang, Die Gnosis, pp. 171f. 
50 The passage which follows occurs in Hippolytus, Elenchos, vi, pp. 4f. 
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TRANSFORMATION SYMBOLISM IN THE MASS 
ground of existence, the procreative urge, which is of fiery origin. Fire is related to blood, which "is fashioned warm and ruddy like fire." Blood turns into semen in men, and in women into milk. This "turning" is interpreted as "the flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." 51 .The operative principle in semen and milk turns into mother and father. The tree of life is guarded by the turning (i.e., transforming) sword, and this is the "seventh power" which begets itself. "For if the flaming sword turned not, then would that fair Tree be destroyed, and perish utterly; but if it turneth into semen and milk, and there be added the Logos and the place of the Lord where the Logos is begotten, he who dwelleth potentially in the semen and milk shall grow to full stature from the littlest spark, and shall increase and become a power boundless and immutable, like to an unchanging Aeon, which suffereth no more change until measureless eternity." 52 It is clear from these remarkable statements of Hippolytus concerning the teachings of Simon Magus that the ~word is very much.more than an instrument which divides; it is itself the force which "turns" from something infinitesimally small into the infinitely great: from water, fire, and blood it becomes the limitless aeon. What it means is the transformation of the vital spirit in man into the Divine. The natural being becomes the divine pneuma) as in the vision of Zosimos. Simon's description of the creative pneuma) the true arcane substance, corresponds in every detail to the uroboros or serpens mercurialis of the Latinists. It too is its own father, mother, son, daughter, brother, and sister from the earliest beginnings of alchemy right down to the end. 53 It begets and sacrifices itself and is its own instrument of sacrifice, for it is a symbol of the deadly and life-giving water.54 
Simon's ideas also throw a significant light on the abovequoted passage from Dorn, where the sword of wrath is transformed into Christ. vVere it not that the philosophoumena of Hippolytus were first discovered in the nineteenth century, on Mount Athos, one might almost suppose that Dorn had made use of them. There are numerous other symbols in alchemy whose origin is so doubtful that one does not know whether to 
	51 Genesis 3: 24. 	52 Leisegang, p. 80. 
53 That is why it is called" Hermaphroditus." 
54 One of its symbols is the scorpion, which stings itself to death. 
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attribute .them to tradition, or to a study of the heresiologists, or to spontaneous revival.55 
The sword as the "proper" instrument of sacrifice occurs again in the old treatise entitled "Consilium coniugii de massa solis et lunae." This says: "Both must be killed with their own sword" ("both" referring to Sol and Luna).56 In the still older "Tractatus Micreris," 57 dating perhaps from the twelfth century, we find the "fif'ry sword" in a quotation from Ostanes: 
"The great Astanus [Ostanes] said: Take an egg, pierce it vvith the fiery sword, and separate its soul from its body." 58 Here the sword is something that divides body and soul, corresponding to the division between heaven and earth, the ring of fire and paradise, or paradise and the first parents. In an equally old treatise, the "Allegoriae sapientum ... supra librum Turbae," there is even mention of a sacrificial rite: "Take a fowl [volatile], cut off its head with the fiery sword, then pluck out its feathers, separate the limbs, and cook over a charcoal fire till it becomes of one colour." 59 Here we have a decapitation with the fiery sword, then a "clipping," or more accurately a "plucking," and finally a "cooking." The cock, which is probably what is meant here, is simply called "volatile," a fowl or winged creature, and this is a common term for spirit, but a spirit still nature-bound and imperfect, and in need of improvement. In another old treatise, with the very similar title "Allegoriae super librum Turbae," 60 we find the following supplementary variants: "Kill the mother [the prima materia], tearing off her hands and feet." "Take a viper ... cut off its head and tail." "Take a cock ... and pluck it alive." "Take a man, shave him, and drag him over the stone [i.e., dry him on the hot stone] till his body dies." "Take the glass vessel containing bridegroom and bride, throw 
55 So far I have come across only one alchemical author who admits to having read the Panarium of Epiphanius, while declaring at the same time his sincere abhorrence of heresies. The silence of the alchemists in this matter is nothing to wonder at, since the mere proximity to heresy would have put them in danger of their lives. Thus even 90 years after the death of Trithemius of Spanheim, who was supposed to have. been the teacher of Paracelsus, the abbot Sigismund of Seon had to compose a moving defence in which he endeavoured to acquit Trithemius of the charge of heresy. Cf. Trithemius sui-iPsius vindex (1616). 
56 An chemica, p. 259. Printed in Manget (1702), n. 
57 "Micreris" is probably a corruption of "Mercurius." 58 Theatr. chem., V (1622), p. 103. 
	59 Ibid., p. 68. 	60 Artis auriferae, I, pp. 139f. 
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362 
363 
364 
365 

TRANSFORMA nON SYMBOLISM IN THE MASS 
them into the furnace, and roast them for three days, and they will be two in one flesh." "Take the white man from the vessel." 61 
One is probably right in assuming that these recipes are instructions for magical sacrifices, not unlike the Greek magic papyri.62 As an example of the latter I will give the recipe from the Mimaut Papyrus (li. 2ff.): "Take a tomcat and make an Os iris of him 63 [by immersing] his body in water. And when you proceed to suffocate him, talk into his back." Another example from the same papyrus (li. 425): "Take a hoopoe, tear out its heart, pierce it with a reed, then cut it up and throw it into Attic honey." 
Such sacrifices really were made for the purpose of summoning up the paredros) the familiar spirit. That this sort of thing was practised, or at any rate recommended, by the alchemists is clear from the "Liber Platonis quartorum," where it speaks of the "oblationes et sacrificia" offered to the planetary demon. A deeper and more sombre note is struck in the following passage, which I give in the original (and generally very corrupt) text: 64 
Vas ... oportet esse rotundae figurae: Ut sit artifex huius mutator firmamenti et testae capitis, ut cum sit res, qua indigemus, res simplex, habens partes similes, necesse est ipsius generationem, et in corpore habente similes partibus ... proiicies ex testa capitis, videlicet capitis elementi hominis et massetur totum cum urina ..• 
(The vessel ... must be round in -shape. Thus the artifex must be the transformer of this firmament and of the brain-pan, just as the thing for which we seek is a simple thing having uniform parts. It is therefore necessary that you should generate it in a body [i.e., a vessel] of uniform parts ... from the brain-pan, that is, from the head of the element Man, and that the whole should be macerated with urine ... ) 
One asks oneself how literally this recipe is to be taken.65 The following story from the "Ghaya al-hakim" is exceedingly enlightening in this connection: 
The Jacobite patriarch Dionysius I set it on record that in 61 Ibid., pp. 151, 140, 140, 139, 151, 151, resp. 
62 Papyri Graecae Magicae, trans. and ed. by Karl Preisendanz. 
	63 a7r08Ew(T« = ·sacrifice.' 	64 Theatr. chem., V, p. 153. 
65 See also pp. 127, 128, 130, and 149 of the same work. 
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the year 765, a man who was destined for the sacrifice, on beholding the bloody head of his predecessor, was so terrified that he took flight and lodged a complaint with Abbas, the prefect of Mesopotamia, against the priests of Harran, who were afterwards severely punished. The story goes on to say that in 830 the Caliph Mamun told the Harranite envoys: "You are without doubt the people of the head, who were dealt with by my father Rashid." We learn from the "Chaya" that a fair-haired man with dark-blue eyes was lured into a chamber of the temple, where he was immersed in a great jar filled with sesame oil. Only his head was left sticking out. There he remained for forty days, and during this time was fed on nothing but figs soaked in sesame oil. He was not given a drop of water to drink. As a result of this treatment his body became as soft as wax. The prisoner was repeatedly fumigated with incense, and magical formulae were pronounced over him. Eventually his head was torn off at the neck, the body remaining in the oil. The head was then placed in a niche on the ashes of burnt olives, and was packed round with cotton wool. More incense was burned before it, and the head would thereupon predict famines or good harvests, changes of dynasty, and other future events. Its eyes could see, though the lids did not move. It also revealed to people their inmost thoughts, and scientific and technical questions were likewise addressed to it.66 
	1166 	Even though it is possible that the real head was, in later 
times, replaced by a dummy, the whole idea of this ceremony, particularly when taken in conjunction with the above passage from the "Liber quartorum," seems to point to an original human sacrifice. The idea of a mysterious head is, however, considerably older than the school of Harran. As far back as Zosimos we find the philosophers described as "children of the golden head," and we also encounter the "round element," which Zosimos says is the letter omega (0). This symbol may well be interpreted as the head, since the "Liber quanorum" also associates the round vessel with the head. Zosimos, moreover, refers on several occasions to the "whitest stone, which is in the head." 67 Probably all these ideas go back to the severed head 
66 Dozy and de Goeje, p. 365. 
67 "Tov 1ravu hEuK6ro:rov h180V rop ~'YKEq,a.hOP." Berthelot, A lchimistes, Ill, xxix, 4· Cf. also I, Hi, 1 and Ill, ii. 1. 
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of Osiris, which crossed the sea and was therefore associated with the idea of resurrection. The "head of Osiris" also plays an important part in medieval alchemy. 
	367 	In this connection we might mention the legend that was 
current about Cerbert of Rheims, afterwards Pope Sylvester Il (d. 1003). He was believed to have possessed a golden head which spoke to him in oracles. Cerbert was one of the greatest savants of his time, and well known as a transmitter of Arabic science.G8 Can it be that the translation of the "Liber quanorum," which is of Harranite origin, goes back to this author? Unfortunately there is little prospect of our being able to prove this. 
	1168 	It has been conjectured that the Harranite oracle head may 
be connected with the ancient Hebrew teraphim. Rabbinic tradition considers the teraphim to have been originally either the decapitated head or skull of a human being, or else a dummy head.69 The Jews had teraphim about the house as a sort of lares and penates (who were plural spirits, like the Cabiri). The idea that they were heads goes back to I Samuel 19: 13£., which describes how Michal, David's wife, put the teraphim in David's bed in order to deceive the messengers of Sau!, who wanted to kill him. "Then Michal took an image and laid it on the bed and put a pillow of goats' hair at its head, and covered it with the clothes (RSV)." The "pillow of goats' hair" is linguistically obscure and has even been interpreted as meaning that the teraphim were goats. But it may also mean something woven or plaited out of goats' hair, like a wig, and this would fit in better with the picture of a man lying in bed. Further evidence for this comes from a legend in a collection of midrashim from the twelfth century, printed in Bin Corion's Die Sagen der ]uden. There it is said: 
The teraphim were idols, and they were made in the following way. The head of a man, who had to be a first-born, was cut off and the hair plucked out. The head was then sprinkled with salt and anointed with oil. Afterwards a little plaque, of copper or gold, was inscribed with the name of an idol and placed under the tongue of the decapitated head. The head was set up in a room, candles were lit before it, and the people made obeisance. And if any man fell 
68 Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, I, p. 705. 69 Jewish Enc)'clopaedia, XII, s.y. "Teraphim," pp. 108£. 
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down before it, the head began to speak, and answered all questions that were addressed to it.70 
	369 	This is an obvious parallel to the Harranite ritual with the 
head. The tearing out of the hair seems significant, since it is an equivalent of scalping or shearing, and is thus a rebirth mystery. It is conceivable that in later times the bald skull was covered with a wig for a rite of renewal, as is also reported from Egypt. 
	370 	It seems probable that this magical procedure is of primitive 
origin. I am indebted to the South African writer, Laurens van der Post, for the following report from a lecture which he gave in Zurich in 1951: 
The tribe in question was an offshoot of the great Swazi nationa Bantu people. When, some years ago, the old chief died, he was succeeded by his son, a young man of weak character. He soon proved to be so unsatisfactory a chief that his uncles called a meeting of the tribal elders. They decided that something must be done to strengthen their chief, so they consulted the witch doctors. The witch doctors treated him with a medicine which proved ineffective. Another meeting was held and the witch doctors were asked to use the strongest medicine of all on the chief because the situation was becoming desperate. A half brother of the chief, a boy of twelve, was chosen to provide the material for the rnedicine. 
One afternoon a sorcerer went up to the boy, who was tending cattle, and engaged him in conversation. Then, emptying some powder from a horn into his hand, he took a reed and blew the powder into the ears and nostrils of the boy. A witness told me that the lad thereupon began to sway like a drunken person and sank to the ground shivering. He was then taken to the river bed and tied to the roots of a tree. More powder was sprinkled round about, the sorcerer saying: "This person will no longer eat food but only earth and roots." 
The boy was kept in the river bed for nine months. Some people say a cage was made and put into the stream, with the boy inside it, for hours on end, so that the water should flow over him and make his skin white. Others reported seeing him crawling about in the river bed on his hands and knees. But all were so frightened that, although there was a mission school only one hundred yards away. 
70 Josef bin Gorion, Die Sagen der Juden, p. 325. I am indebted to Or. Riwkah Schiirf for drawing my attention to this passage. 
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no one except those directly concerned in the ritual \\"oldd go near him. All are agreed that at the end of nine months this fat, normal, healthy boy was like an animal and quite white-skinned. One woman said, "His eyes were white and the whole of his body was white as white paper." 
On the evening that the boy was to be killed a veteran witch doctor was summoned to the chief's kraal and asked to consult the tribal spirits. This he did in the cattle haal, and after selecting an animal for slaughter he retired to the chief's hut. There the witch doctor was handed parts of the dead boy's body: first the head in a sack, then a thumb and a toe. He cut off the nose and ears and lips, mixed them with medicine, and cooked them over a fire in a broken clay pot. He stuck two spears on ei ther side of the pot. Then those present-twelve in all including the weak chief-leaned over the pot and deeply inhaled the steam. All save the boy's mother dipped their fingers in the pot and licked them. She inhaled but refused to dip her fingers in the pot. The rest of the body the witch doctor mixed into a kind of bread for doctoring the tribe's crops. 
	37' 	Although this magical rite is not actually a "head mystery," 
it has several things in common with the practices previously mentioned. The body is macerated and transformed by long immersion in water. The victim is killed, and the salient portions of the head form the main ingredient of the "strengthening" medicine which was concocted for the chief and his immediate circle. The body is kneaded into a sort of bread, and this is obviously thought of as a strengthening medicine for the tribe's crops as well. The rite is a transformation process, a sort of rebirth after nine months of incubation in the water. Laurens van der Post thinks that the purpose of the "whitening" 71 was to assimilate the mana of the white man, who has the political power. I agree with this view, and would add that painting with white clay often signifies transformation into ancestral spirits, in the same way as the neophytes are made invisible in the Nandi territory, in Kenya, where they walk about in portable, cone-shaped grass huts and demonstrate their invisibility to everyone. 
	372 	Skull worship is widespread among primitives. In Melanesia 
and Polynesia it is chiefly the skulls of the ancestors that are worshipped, because they establish connections with the spirits 
71 Cf. the alchemical albedo and homo albus. 
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or serve as tutelary deities, like the head of Osiris in Egypt. Skulls also play a considerable role as sacred relics. It would lead us too far to go into this primitive skull ""Q1"ship, so I must refer the reader to the literature,72 I would only like to point out that the cut-off ears, nose, and mouth can represent the head as parts that stand for the whole. There are numerous examples of this. Equally, the head or its parts (brain, ete.) can act as magical food or as a means for increasing the fertility of the land. 
	373 	It is of special significance for the alchemical tradition that 
the oracle head was also known in Greece. Aelian 73 reports that Cleomenes of Sparta had the head of his friend Archonides preserved in a jar of honey, and that he consulted it as an oracle. The same was said of the head of Orpheus. Onians 74 rightly emphasizes the fact that the 1/;ux~, whose seat was in the head, corresponds to the modern "unconscious," and that at that stage of development consciousness was identified with OUfJ.OS (breath) and cf>PfvtS (lungs), and was localized in the chest or heart region. Hence Pindar's expression for the Soul-a'iwvos eT8wAOV (image of Aion)-is extraordinarily apt, for the collective unconscious not only imparts "oracles" but forever represents the microcosm (i.e., the form of a physical man mirroring the Cosmos). 
	374 	There is no evidence to show that any of the parallels we 
have drawn are historically connected with the Zosimos visions. It seems rather to be a case partly of parallel traditions (transmitted, perhaps, chiefly through the Harran school), and partly of spontaneous fantasies arising from the same archetypal background from which the traditions were derived in the first place. As my examples have shown, the imagery of the Zosimos visions, however strange it may be, is by no means isolated, but is interwoven with older ideas some of which were certainly, and others quite possibly, known to Zosimos, as well as with parallels of uncertain date which continued to mould the speculations of the alchemists for many centuries to come. Religious thought in the early Christian era was not completely cut off from all contact with these conceptions; it was in fact influenced by them, and in turn it fertilized the minds of the natural philosophers during later centuries. Towards the end of the sixteenth century 
	72 Hastings, VI, pp. S3Sf. 	73 Varia historia, XII, 8. 
74 Onians, The Origins of European Thought, pp. !Od!. 
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the alchemical opus was even represented in the form of a Mass. The author of this tour de force was the Hungarian alchemist, Melchior Cibinensis. I have elaborated this parallel in my book Psychology and Alchemy.75 
	375 	In the visions of Zosimos, the Hiereus who is transformed 
into pneuma represents the transformative principle at work in nature and the harmony of opposing forces. Chinese philosophy formulated this process as the enantiodromian interplay of Yin and Yang. 76 But the curious personifications and symbols characteristic not only of these visions but of alchemical literature in general show in the plainest possible terms that we are dealing with a psychic process that takes place mainly in the unconscious and therefore can come into consciousness only in the form of a dream or vision. At that time and until very much later no one had any idea of the unconscious; consequently all unconscious contents were projected into the object, or rather were found in nature as apparent objects or properties of matter and were not recognized as purely internal psychic events. There is some evidence that Zosimos was well aware of the spiritual or mystical side of his art, but he believed that what he was concerned with was a spirit that dwelt in natural objects, and not something that came from the human psyche. It remained for modern science to despiritualize nature through its so-caJled objective knowledge of matter. All anthropomorphic projections were withdrawn from the object one after another, 'I"ith a twofold result: firstly man's mystical idEntity with nature 77 was curtailed as never before, and secondly the projections falling back into the human soul caused such a terrific activation of the unconscious that in modern times man 'I"as compeJled to postulate the existence of an unconscious psyche. The first beginnings of this can be seen in Leibniz and K:mt, and then, with mounting intensity, in Schelling, CanIS, and von Hartmann, until finally modern psychology discarded the last metaphysical claims of the philosopher-psychologists and restricted the idea of the psyche's existence to the psychological statement, in other 
75 Pars. 480-89. 
76 The classical example bcing The I Chilli!. or Book of Changes. 
77 Mystical or ul1conscio1ls identity occurs in eycr)' case of projection, because the content projectcd upon the extraneous object creates an apparent relationship between it and the subject. 
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PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGlOl\: : WEST 
words, to its phenomenology. So far as the dramatic course of the Mass represents the death, sacrifice and resurrection of a god and the inclusion and active participation of the priest and congregation, its phenomenology may legitimately be brought into line with other fundamentally similar, though more primitive, religious customs. This always involves the risk that sensitive people will find it unpleasant when "small things are compared with great." In fairness to the primitive psyche, however, I would like to emphasize that the "holy dread" of civilized man differs but little from the awe of the primitive, and that the God who is present and active in the mystery is a mystery for both. No matter how crass the outward differences, the similarity or equivalence of meaning should not be overlooked. 
4. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MASS 
1. GENERAL REMARKS ON THE SACRIFICE 
	376 	Whereas I kept to the Church's interpretation when dis- 
cussing the transformation rite in section 2, in the present section I shall treat this interpretation as a symbol. Such a procedure does not imply any evaluation of the content of religious belief. Scientific criticism must, of course, adhere to the view that when something is held as an opinion, thought to be true, or believed, it does not posit the existence of any real fact other than a psychological one. But that does not mean that a mere nothing has been produced. Rather, expression has been given to the psychic reality underlying the statement of the belief or rite as its empirical basis. When psychology "explains" a statement of this kind, it does not, in the first place, deprive the object of this statement of any reality-on the contrary, it is granted a psychic reality-and in the second place the intended metaphysical statement is not, on that account, turned into an hypostasis, since it was never anything more than a psychic phenomenon. Its specifically "metaphysical" coloration indicates that its object is beyond the reach of human perception and understanding except in its psychic mode of manifestation, and therefore cannot be judged. But every science reaches its end in the unknowable. Yet it would not be a science at all if it 
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regarded its temporary limitations as definitive and denied the existence of anything outside them. No science can consider its hypotheses to be the final truth. 
	3ii 	The psychological explanation and the metaphysical state- 
ment do not contradict one another any more than, shall we say, the physicist's explanation of matter contradicts the as yet unknown or unknowable nature of matter. The very existence of a belief has in itself the reality of a psychic fact. Just what we posit by the concept "psyche" is simply unknowable, for psychology is in the unfortunate position where the observer and the observed are ultimately identical. Psychology has no Archimedean point outside, since all perception is of a psychic nature and we have only indirect knowledge of what is nonpsychic. 
	3i8 	The ritual event that takes place in the Mass has a dual 
aspect, human and divine. From the human point of view, gifts are offered to God at the altar, signifying at the same time the self-oblation of the priest and the congregation. The ritual act consecrates both the gifts and the givers. It commemorates and represents the Last Supper which our Lord took with his disciples, the whole Incarnation, Passion, death, and resurrection of Christ. But from the divine point of view this anthropomorphic action is only the outer shell or husk in which what is really happening is not a human action at all but a divine event. For an instant the life of Christ, eternally existent outside time, becomes visible and is unfolded in temporal succession, but in condensed form, in the sacred action: Christ incarnates as a man under the aspect of the offered substances, he suffers, is killed, is laid in the sepulchre, breaks the power of the underworld, and rises again in glory. In the utterance of the words of consecration the Godhead intervenes, Itself acting and truly present, and thus proclaims that the central event in the Mass is Its act of grace, in which the priest has only the significance of a minister. The same applies to the congregation and the offered substances: they are all ministering causes of the sacred event. The presence of the Godhead binds all parts of the sacrificial act into a mystical unity, so that it is God himself who offers himself as a sacrifice in the substances, in the priest, and in the congregation, and who, in the human form of the Son, offers himself as an atonement to the Father. 
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TRANSFORIVIATION SYMBOLIS:\[ IN THE MASS 
	3i9 	Although this act is an eternal happening taking place within 
the divinity, man is nevertheless included in it as an essential component, firstly because God clothes himself in our human nature, and secondly because he needs the ministering co-operation of the priest and congregation, and even the material substances of bread and wine which have a special significance for man. Although God the Father is of one nature with God the Son, he appears in time on the one hand as the _eternal Father and on the other hand as a man with limited earthly existence. Mankind as a whole is included in God's human nature, which is why man is also incl uded in the sacrificial act. Just as, in the sacrificial act, God is both agens and patiens) so too is man according to his limited capacity. The causa efficiens of the transubstantiation is a spontaneous act of God's grace. Ecclesiastical doctrine insists on this view and even tends to attribute the preparatory action of the priest, indeed the very existence of the rite, to divine prompting,l rather than to slothful human nature with its load of original sin. This view is of the utmost importance for a psychological understanding of the Mass. Wherever the magical aspect of a rite tends to prevail, it brings the rite nearer to satisfying the individual ego's blind greed for power, and thus breaks up the mystical body of the Church into separate units. \Vhere, on the other hand, the rite is conceived as the action of God himself, the human participants have only an instrumental or "ministering" significance. The Church's view therefore presupposes the following psychological situation: human consciousness (represented by the priest and congregation) is confronted with an autonomous event which, taking place on a "divine" and "timeless" plane transcending consciousness, is in no way dependent on human action, but which impels man to act by seizing upon him as an instrument and making him the exponent of a "divine" happening. In the ritual action man places himself at the disposal of an autonomous and "eternal" agency operating outside the categories of human consciousness-si parva licet componere magnis-in much the same way that a good actor does not merely represent the drama, but allows himself to be overpowered by the genius of the dramatist. The beauty of the ritual action is one of its 
1 John 6: 44: "No man can come to me. except the Father which hath sent me draw him." 
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essential properties, for man has not served God rightly unless he has also served him in beauty. Therefore the rite has no practical utility, for that would be making it serve a purpose-a purely human category. But everything divine is an end-in-itself, perhaps the only legitimate end-in-itself we know. How something eternal can "act" at all is a question we had better not touch, for it is simply unanswerable. Since man, in the action of the Mass, is a tool (though a tool of his own free will), he is not in a position to know anything about the hand which guides him. The hammer cannot discover within itself the power which makes it strike. It is something outside, something autonomous, which seizes and moves him. What happens in the consecration is essentially a miracle, and is meant to be so, for otherwise we should have to consider whether we were not conjuring up God by magic, or else lose ourselves in philosophical wonder how anything eternal can act at all, since action is a process in time with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It is necessary that the transubstantiation should be a cause of wonder and a miracle which man can in no wise comprehend. It is a mysterium in the sense of a OpWjJ.EI'OI' and OELKI'VjJ.EI'OI', a secret that is acted and displayed. The ordinary man is not conscious of anything in himself that would cause him to perform a "mystery." He can only do so if and when it seizes upon him. This seizure, or rather the sensed or presumed existence of a power outside consciousness which seizes him, is the miracle par excellence, really and truly a miracle when one considers what is being represented. What in the world could induce us to represent an absolute impossibility? What is it that for thousands of years has wrung from man the greatest spiritual effort, the loveliest works of art, the profoundest devotion, the most heroic self-sacrifice, and the most exacting service? 'Vhat else but a miracle? It is a miracle which is not man's to command; for as soon as he tries to work it himself, or as soon as he philosophizes about it and tries to comprehend it intellectually, the bird is flown. A miracle is something that arouses man's wonder precisely because it seems inexp]icable. And indeed, from what we know of human nature we could never explain why men are constrained to such statements and to such beliefs. (I am thinking here of the impossible statements made by all religions.) There must be some compelling reason for this, even though it is not to be found in ordinary 
25° 

TRANSFORMA nON SYMBOLISM IN THE MASS experience. The very absurdity and impossibility of the statements vouches for the existence of this reason. That is the real ground for belief, as was formulated most brilliantly in Tertullian's "prorsus credibile, quia ineptum." 2 An improbable opinion has to submit sooner or later to correction. But the statements of religion are the most improbable of all and yet they persist for thousands of years.3 Their wholly unexpected vitality proves the existence of a sufficient cause which has so far eluded scientific investigation. I can, as a psychologist, only draw attention to this fact and emphasize my belief that there are no facile "nothing but" explanations for psychic phenomena of this kind. 
	3flo 	The dual aspect of the Mass finds expression not only in the 
contrast between human and divine action, but also in the dual aspect of God and the Gael-man, who, although they are by nature a unity, nevertheless represent a duality in the ritual drama. Without this "dichotomy of God," if I may use such a term, the whole act of sacrifice would be inconceivable and would Jack actuality. According to the Christian view God has never ceased to be God, not even when he appeared in human form in the temporal order. The Christ of the Johannine gospel declares: "I and my Father are one. He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (John 10: :la, 11: 9). And yet on the Cross Christ cries out: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" This contradiction must exist if the formula "very God ancl very man" is psychologically true. And if it is true, then the different sayings of Christ are in no sense a contradiction. Bein,g "very man" means being at an extreme remove and utterly different from God. "De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine"-this cry demonstrates both, the remoteness and the nearness, the outermost darkness and the dazzling spark of the Divine. God in his humanity is presumably so far from himself that he has to seek himself throup;h absolute self-surrender. And where ,vou]d God's wholeness be if he could not be the "wholly 
2 "Et mortuus est Dei filius. prorsus credibile est, quia ineptulTl est. Et sepultus rcsulTcxit; certllm est. quia impossibilc est" (.\nd the Son of God is dcad, which is to bc hclie"cd bccausc it is absurd. And buricd Hc rose again, which is certain becallse it is impossihle). "figne. P.L .. \'01. 2. col. 751. 
3 The aud;lcity of Tcrtullian's argument is undeniable. and so is its dangcr, bu: that docs not dctract from its ps\'chological truth. 
2:; I