The Hero with a Thousand Faces

[69] All of these are described and discussed at length by Sir James G. Frazer in The Golden Bough.

[70] Epistles to the Hebrews, 9:13–14.

[71] Le P.A. Capus des Pères-Blancs, “Contes, chants et proverbes des Basumbwa dans l’Afrique Orientale,” Zeitschrift für afrikanische und oceanische Sprachen. Vol. III (Berlin, 1897), pp. 363–64.

[72] Koran, 10:31.

[73] See above.

[74] See above. The Basumbwa (tale of the Great Chief, Death) and the Wachaga (tale of Kyazimba) are East African peoples; the Yoruba (tale of Edshu) inhabit the West Coast nation of Nigeria.

[75] Koran, 6:59, 6:60.

[76] Gospel According to Luke, 2:7.

[77] Ovid, Metamorphoses, VIII, pp. 618–724.

[78] Koran, 2:115.

[79] Katha Upaniṣad, 3:12.

[80] Gospel According to Thomas, 77.

[81] Book of Job, 40:7–14.

[82] Ibid., 42:5–6.

[83] Ibid., 42:16–17.

[84] Leon Stein, “Hassidic Music,” The Chicago Jewish Forum, vol. II, No. 1 (Fall 1943), p. 16.

[85] Pranja-Paramita-Hridaya Sutra; “Sacred Books of the East,” vol. XLIX, Part II, p. 148; also, p. 154.

[86] Vajracchedika (“The Diamond Cutter”), 17; Ibid., p. 134.

[87] Compare above.

[88] Amitayur-Dhyana Sutra, 19; “Sacred Books of the East,” vol. XLIX, Part II, pp. 182–83.

[89] “To men I am Hermes; to women I appear as Aphrodite: I bear the emblems of both my parents” (Anthologia Graeca ad Fidem Codices, vol. II).

“One part of him is his sire’s, all else he has of his mother” (Martial, Epigrams, 4, 174; Loeb Library, vol. II, p. 501).

Ovid’s account of Hermaphroditos appears in the Metamorphoses, IV, pp. 288 ff.

Many classical images of Hermaphroditos have come down to us. See Hugh Hampton Young, Genital Abnormalities, Hermaphroditism, and Related Adrenal Diseases (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1937), Chapter I, “Hermaphroditism in Literature and Art.”

[90] Plato, Symposium, 178.

[91] Book of Genesis, 1:27.

[92] Midrash, commentary on Genesis, Rabbah 8:1.

[93] See above.

[94] See below.

[95] Compare James Joyce: “In the economy of heaven...there are no more marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being a wife unto himself” (Ulysses, Modern Library edition, p. 210).

[96] Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus. See also Ovid, Metamorphoses, III, pp. 324 ff., 511, and 516. For other examples of the hermaphrodite as priest, god, or seer, see Herodotus, 4, 67 (Rawlinson edition, vol. III, pp. 46–47); Theophrastus, Characteres, 16.10–11; and J. Pinkerton’s Voyage and Travels, Chapter 8, p. 427, “A New Account of the East Indies,” by Alexander Hamilton. These are cited by Young, op cit., pp. 2 and 9.

[97] See Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, Figure 70.

[98] See Figure 34.

[99] See B. Spencer and F.J. Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia (London, 1899), p. 263; Róheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream, pp. 164–65. The subincision produces artificially a hypospadias resembling that of a certain class of hermaphrodites. (See the portrait of the hermaphrodite Marie Angé, in Young, op cit., p. 20.)

[100] Róheim, The Eternal Ones of the Dream, p. 94.

[101] Ibid., pp. 218–19.

[102] Compare the following view of the Bodhisattva Dharmakāra: “Out of his mouth there breathed a sweet and more than heavenly smell of sandalwood. From all the pores of his hair there arose the smell of lotus, and he was pleasing to everybody, gracious and beautiful; endowed with the fulness of the best bright color. As his body was adorned with all the good signs and marks, there arose from the pores of his hair and from the palms of his hands all sorts of precious ornaments in the shape of all kinds of flowers, incense, scents, garlands, ointments, umbrellas, flags, and banners, and in the shape of all kinds of instrumental music. And there appeared also, streaming forth from the palms of his hands, all kinds of viands and drink, food, hard and soft, and sweetmeats, and all kinds of enjoyments and pleasures” (The Larger Sukhavati-Vyuha, 10, “Sacred Books of the East,” vol. XLIX, Part II, pp. 26–27).

[103] Róheim, War, Crime, and the Covenant, p. 57.

[104] Ibid., pp. 48–68.

[105] First Book of Samuel, 17:26.

[106] Koran, 4:104.

[107] “For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule” (from the Buddhist Dhammapada, 1:5, “Sacred Books of the East,” vol. X, Part I, p. 5; translation by F. Max Müller).

[108] Gospel According to Luke, 6:27–36.