"The countenance, which may be seen in the best reproductions, is that of a young man of an almost feminine beauty; the head has a quantity of curly hair, which, rising up from the forehead, surrounds him as with a halo; the head is slightly tilted backwards, so that the glance is directed towards the heavens, and the contraction of the brows and the lips give a strange expression of sorrow to the face."[45]
The Ostian head of Mithra Tauroctonos, illustrated
in Cumont, has, indeed, an expression which we recognize
in our patients as one of sentimental resignation. Sentimentality
is repressed brutality. Hence the exceedingly
sentimental pose, which had its counterpart in the
symbolism of the shepherd and the lamb of contemporaneous
Christianity, with the addition of infantilism.[46]
Meanwhile, it is only his animal nature which the god sacrifices; that is to say, his sexuality,[47] always in close analogy to the course of the sun. We have learned in the course of this investigation that the part of the libido which erects religious structures is in the last analysis fixed in the mother, and really represents that tie through which we are permanently connected with our origin. Briefly, we may designate this amount of libido as "Mother Libido." As we have seen, this libido conceals itself in countless and very heterogeneous symbols, also in animal images, no matter whether of masculine or feminine nature—differences of sex are at bottom of a secondary value and psychologically do not play the part which might be expected from a superficial observation.
The annual sacrifice of the maiden to the dragon probably represented the most ideal symbolic situation. In
