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Mystery in religion is the general subject of this collection of papers given by scholars of international repute at the “Eranos” conferences at Ascona between 1936 and 1944. In reviewing so erudite a work, which extends beyond the bounds of my own speciality, I feel myself to be under a considerable handicap. Yet, perhaps, this ignorance may be turned to advantage as, leaving technical criticism to experts in mythology, comparative religion, philosophy, theology and classical history, I can devote myself to the exciting mysteries of the unknown criminal, the deus absconditus and the autonomous complex.
The riddle of an ancient alabaster bowl of unknown origin is the intriguing subject of Hans Leisegang's essay, “The Mystery of the Serpent”. Elucidating its cryptic message, he vividly reconstructs a cultic scene of the jealously hidden Orphic mysteries. As he examines and re-arranges its fragmentary, disconnected and incorrectly written inscription, illuminating it by parallel texts, it begins to speak to us as to the original devotees. In an invocation of the divine cosmic power, the story of the universe is unfolded, from the primordial age and the cosmic egg to the rule of the Aeon who enlightens and maintains the rotation of the starry sphere. Analysing and amplifying, by analogy, the features of the bowl, Leisegang admits us to the rites of the serpent-redeemer Aeon, with the naked mystai who, by the descent into darkness and the ascent to light, share in the death and rebirth of the god, the fertilizing life of the world. In the satisfactory conclusion, seldom achieved by “thrillers”, we are left with a solution which is but another approach to mystery.
Leisegang's painstaking and critical scholarship stands as a shining example to analytical psychologists of the method of amplification of material by analogous parallels. Nothing is taken at its face value and the parallels, varying from Indian and Etruscan bowls to the remarkable behaviour of Rasputin the mad m