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This paper is abstracted from the author's future book, Magic, Myth, and Money. The first part collates studies in ancient Western cultures to establish the
hypothesis that money in Græco-Roman cultures originated in the ritualistic animal sacrifice of ancient religions. The latter part presents psychoanalytic interpretations of the early forms of money.
The central ritual within ancient religion,—either the family-clan ancestor cult or the later city-temple deity,—was the common meal at the altar followed by the apportionment and eating of the sacrificial animal. The sacrificial bull, representative both of a god (Dionysius-Zeus, for example) and, in some centers, of the king-city-father, became a unit of value. The sacrificial offering with its subsequent distribution at the communal ritual meal became a fixed good of definite type and quality eventually subject to regulation by the priests. Transactions between man and god were mediated through the offering of the sacrifice. In the common meal following the sacrifice, the portion of flesh was a gift to the citizen or official. Besides the animal, the altar and various cult objects were also endowed with magic. Gradually, in nonreligious commercial transactions, the bull became the standard unit of value. Cult objects, and eventually medals, were valuated by this standard.
The earliest coins were religious medals, used only in religious transactions. When the King gave them, they were a sign of honor or commemorative of a personal relationship; they might be objects endowed with his mana. This coin medal was also the equivalent of the sacrificial portion. However, it is not clear how these coin medals eventually entered into commerce as money.
Supposing that the emotions and ideas associated with these ceremonials were carried over to coin medals and thence to money, the author proposes interpretations of the pregenital and Oedipal meanings of money. Besides its infantile and magical significance, he m