- [Footnote: [Greek: katepeigou/sês kai\ pikra~s a)paraitê/tou a)na/nkês] (On account of the oppressing
bitter and inexorable need).
From the speech of the High Priest (Apuleius: "Metamorphoses," lib. XI, 248) a similar train of thought may be gathered. The young philosopher Lucius was changed into an ass, that continuously rutting animal which Isis hated. Later he was released from the enchantment and initiated into the mysteries of Isis. When he was freed from the spell the priest speaks as follows: "Lubrico virentis aetatulae, ad serviles delapsus voluptates, curiositatis improsperae sinistrum praemium reportasti.—Nam in eos, quorum sibi vitas servitium Deae nostrae majestas vindicavit, non habet locum casus infestus—in tutelam jam receptus es Fortunae, sed videntis" (But falling into the slavery of pleasure, in the wantonness of buxom youth, you have reaped the inauspicious reward of your ill-fated curiosity—for direful calamity has no power over those whose lives the majesty of our Goddess has claimed for her own service.—You are now received under the guardianship of fortune, but of a fortune who can see). In the prayer to the Queen of Heaven, Isis, Lucius says: "Qua fatorum etiam inextricabiliter contorta retractas licia et Fortunae tempestates mitigas, et stellarum noxios meatus cohibes" (By which thou dost unravel the inextricably entangled threads of the fates, and dost assuage the tempests of fortune and restrain the malignant influences of the stars).—Generally it was the purpose of the rite to destroy the "evil compulsion of the star" by magic power.
The power of fate makes itself felt unpleasantly only when everything goes against our will; that is to say when we no longer find ourselves in harmony with ourselves. As I endeavored to show in my article, "Die Bedeutung des Vaters," etc., the most dangerous power of fate lies in the infantile libido fixation, localized in the unconscious. The power of fate reveals itself at closer range as a compulsion of the libido; wherefore Maeterlinck justly says that a Socrates could not possibly be a tragic hero of the type of Hamlet. In accordance with this conception the ancients had already placed [Greek: ei(marme/nê] (destiny) in relation to "Primal Light," or "Primal Fire." In the Stoic conception of the primal cause, the warmth spread everywhere, which has created everything and which is therefore Destiny. (Compare Cumont: "Mysterien des Mithra," p. 83.) This warmth is, as will later be shown, a symbol of the libido. Another conception of the Ananke (necessity) is, according to the Book of Zoroaster, [Greek: peri\ phy/seôs] (concerning nature), that the air as wind had once a connection with fertility. I am indebted to Rev. Dr. Keller of Zurich for calling my attention to Bergson's conception of the "durée créatrice."]*
