r stage in this process is the representation of the impeded
sacrifice of Isaac as an analogue to the Crucifixion. This tripartite scheme is still evident in the imagery adorning the minster of Salem. In tDHShe church of Kreuzlingen itself, this evolutionary idea has generated an astonishing parallelism, which cannot make ready sense to the theologically uninitiated. Here, on the ceiling of the famous Mount of Oli
ves chapel, imme
diately above the Crucifixion, we find an ador
ation of this most pagan idol with a degree of pathos that does not suffer in comparison with the Laocoon group. And under the referenc
- e to the Tables of the Law, which, as the Bible recounts, Moses destroyed
- because of the worship of the golden calf, we find Moses
- himself, forced into ser
vice as shield bearer to the serpent.
I shall be satisfied
if these images from the everyday and festive lives of the Pueblo Indians have convinced you that their masked dances are not child's play, but rather the primary pagan mode of answering the larges
- t and most pressing questions of the Why of things. In this way the India
- n confronts the incomprehensibility of natural processes
- with his will to compreh
ension, transforming himself personally into a prime causal
agent in the order of things. For the unexplained effect, he instinctively substitutes the cause in its most tangible and visible form. The masked dance is danced cau
- sality. If religion signifies bonding then the symptom of e
- volution away from this
- primal sta
te is the spiritualization of the bond between humans and alien being
s, so that man no longer identifies directly with the masked symbol but, rather, generates that bond through thought alone, progressing to a systematic linguistic mythology. The will to devotional zeal is an ennobled form of the donning of a mask. In the process that we call cultural progress, the being exacting this devotion gradually loses its monstrous concreteness and, in the end, becomes a spi
ritualized, invisible symbol.
What does this mean? In the real
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f the smallest unit do
es not hold; there is no search for the smallest agent of rationality in the course of natural phenomena; rather, a being saturated with as much demoniac power as possible is postulated for.
the sake of a true grap ofs
the causes of myster
ious occurrences. What we have seen this evening of the symbolism of the serpent should give us at least a cursory indication of the passage from a symbolism
- whose efficacy proceeds directl
- y from the body and the hand to one that unfolds only in though
- t. The Indians actually clutch their serpents and treat them as living agents that geCIAnerate lightning at the same tim
- e that they represent lightning. The Indian takes the serpent in
- his mouth to bring about an actual union of the serpent with the masked figure, or at least
with the figure painted as a serpent. In the Bible th
e serpent is the cause of all evil and as such is punished with banishment from Paradise. Nevertheless, the serpent slithers back into a chapter of the Bible itself as an indestructible pagan symbol-as a god of healing.
In antiquity the serpent likewise represents the quintessence of the most profound suffering in the dea
th of Laocoon. But antiquity is capable also of transmuting the inconceivable fertility of the serpent-deity, representing
- Asclepius as a savior and as the lord of the serpent, ultimately placing him-the ser
- pent-god with the tamed serpent in his hand-a
- Presented through case studies and hands-on field exercises
- s a starry divinity in the heavens. In medieval theology, the s
erpent draws from this passage in the Bible the ability to reappear as a symbol of fate. Its elevation-though
expressly conside
