- festations and afterwards develops a hyperæsthetic negation
in order to convince every one of his special purity. Christianity, with its repression of the manifest sexual, is the negative of the ancient sexual cult. The original cult has changed its tokens.[36] One only needs to realize how much of the gay paganism, even to the inclusion of unseemly Gods, has been taken into the Christian church. Thus the old indecent Priapus celebrated a gay festival of resurrection in St. Tychon.[37] Also partly in the physicians Sts. Kosma and Damien, who graciously condescended to accept the "membra virilia" in wax at their festival.[38] St. Phallus of old memories emerges again to be worshipped in country chapels, to say nothing of the rest of the paganism!
There are those who have not yet learned to recognize sexuality as a function equivalent to hunger and who, therefore, consider it as disgraceful that certain taboo institutions which were considered as asexual refuges are now recognized as overflowing with sexual symbolism. Those people are doomed to the painful realization that such is still the case, in spite of their great revolt. One must learn to understand that, opposed to the customary habit of thought, psychoanalytic thinking reduces and resolves those symbolic structures which have become more and more complicated through countless elaboration. This means a course of reduction which would be an intellectual enjoyment if the object were different. But here it becomes distressing, not only æsthetically, but apparently also ethically, because the repressions which are to be overcome have been brought about by our best
