e
same way as the forces which may be observed in the soul, as belonging
to and native to it. We see that it is the soul-force which precedes
the coming of wisdom which Socrates represents as a "wise woman." It
is the mother-principle which gives birth to the Son of God, Wisdom,
the Logos. The unconscious soul-force which brings the divine into the
consciousness is here represented as the feminine element. The soul
which as yet is without wisdom is the mother of what leads to the
divine. This brings us to an important conception of mysticism. The
soul is recognised as the mother of the divine. Unconsciously it leads
man to the divine, with the inevitableness of a natural force.

This conception throws light on the view of Greek mythology taken in
the Mysteries. The world of the gods is born in the soul. Man looks
upon what he creates in images as his gods (_cf._ p. 33). But he must
force his way through to another conception. He must transmute into
divine images the divine force which is active within him before the
creation of those images. Behind the divine appears the mother of the
divine, which is nothing else than the original force of the human
soul. Thus side by side with the gods, man represents goddesses.

Let us look at the myth of Dionysos in this light. Dionysos is the son
of Zeus and a mortal mother, Semele. Zeus wrests the still immature
child from its mother when she is slain by lightning, and shelters it
in his own side till it is ready to be born. Hera, the mother of the
gods, incites the Titans against Dionysos, and they tear him in
pieces. But Pallas Athene rescues his heart, which is still beating,
and brings it to Zeus. Out of it he engenders his son for the second
time.

In this myth we can accurately trace a process which is enacted in the
depths of the human soul. Interpreting it in the manner of the
Egyptian priest who instructed Solon about the nature of myths (_cf._
p. 78 _et seq._), we might say, it is related that Dionysos was the
son of a god and of a mortal mother, that he was torn in pieces and
afterwards born again. This sounds like a fable, but it contains the
truth of the birth of the divine and its destiny in the human soul.
The divine unites itself with the earthly, temporal human soul. As
soon as the divine, Dionysiac element stirs within the soul, it feels
a violent desire for its own true spiritual form. Ordinary
consciousness, which once again appears in the form of a female