Iakov Levi

Girls’ Desire of Incest in Myth and in the Bible

June 30, 2005

An ancient popular belief, especially strong in Persia, holds that a wise magus must be incestuously begotten...
...wherever soothsaying and magical powers have broken the spell of present and future, the rigid law of individuation, the magic circle of nature, extreme unnaturalness in this case incest is the necessary antecedent;
(F.Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 9)

Males' instinctual drive for incest, and its close association with aggressiveness toward fathers, is the main thread in mythology and religion, and it is pivotal to the understanding of history. Without the counter - trend need of self inhibition from acting out these basic instincts, there would be no society, and therefore no history. The equivalent incest's need of girls has less relevance to social order, because in a males' society the parallel aggressiveness of the girl toward the mother is perceived as a lesser threat to the group's survival. However, it is not less intensive. Its compelling vitality emerges in mythology and in folklore.
Greek mythology tells the moving story of Myrrah's compelling need to possess her father. As Ovid sings:

The God of love denyes
His weapons to have hurted thee, O Myrrha, and he tryes
Himselfe ungiltie by thy fault. One of the Furies three
With poysonde Snakes and hellish brands hath rather blasted thee.
To hate ones father is a cryme as heynous as may bee,
But yit more wicked is this love of thine than any hate. (Ovid, Metamorphoses , 10.244)

Poysonde Snakes relates to snakes as the symbol of the female genital (Cf. Medusa, the Female Genital and the Nazis; Why Is the Lady so Sexy?). The responsible for its excitment are the Erynnies (called by the Romans "Furies"), whose symbol are indeed snakes (Cf. Three Women: the Penis).

No measure of her love was found, no rest, nor yit releace,
Save only death. Death likes her best. Shee ryseth, full in mynd
To hang herself. About a post her girdle she doth bynd,
And sayd: Farewell deere Cinyras, and understand the cause
Of this my death. (Ovid, op.cit.)

As Iocasta hung herself because of her incestuous drive towards her son (Oedipus), so Myrrha contemplates hanging herself because of the drive towards her father.
Then, her nurse suggests a remedy to her desperate need:

The yeerely feast
Of gentle Ceres came, in which the wyves bothe moste and least
Appareld all in whyght are woont the firstlings of the feeld,
Fyne garlonds made of eares of come, to Ceres for to yeeld.
And for the space of thryce three nyghts they counted it a sin
To have the use of any man, or once to towche his skin.
Among theis women did the Queene freequent the secret rites.
Now whyle that of his lawfull wyfe his bed was voyd a nightes,
The nurce was dooble diligent: and fynding Cinyras
Well washt with wyne, shee did surmyse there was a pretye lasse
In love with him. And hyghly shee her beawty setteth out.
And beeing asked of her yeeres, she sayd shee was about
The age of Myrrha. Well (quoth he) then bring her to my bed. (op.cit.)

Myrrha’s mother will be deterred from the marital bed by Ceres' yearly rites. On the occasion, she will be able to consummate her incestuous need through deception.
The story continues in Myrrha becoming pregnant, transforming into a tree, and giving birth to Adonis, the most handsome young man of all, who becomes Aphrodite's lover.

Bernardino Luini: The Birth of Adonis Milan (Brera).

The Bible tells a similar story:

Lot went up out of Zoar, and lived in the mountain, and his two daughters with him; for he was afraid to live in Zoar. He lived in a cave with his two daughters.  The firstborn said to the younger, "Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in to us after the manner of all the earth.  Come, let's make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve our father's seed."  They made their father drink wine that night: and the firstborn went in, and lay with her father. He didn't know when she lay down, nor when she arose.  It came to pass on the next day, that the firstborn said to the younger, "Behold, I lay last night with my father. Let us make him drink wine again, tonight. You go in, and lie with him, that we may preserve our father's seed."   They made their father drink wine that night also. The younger arose, and lay with him. He didn't know when she lay down, nor when she arose.  Thus both of Lot's daughters were with child by their father.  The firstborn bore a son, and named him Moab. The same is the father of the Moabites to this day.  The younger also bore a son, and called his name Ben Ammi. The same is the father of the children of Ammon to this day. (Gen. 19: 30-37).

Same deception of the father, and in both cases wine is involved, as a mean of lowering his inhibiting instance. As Freud jokingly said: “The Super Ego is soluble in alcohol”.
The biblical version introduces a rationalization: "Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in to us after the manner of all the earth.  Come, let's make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve our father's seed."  Lot’s daughters rationalize their instinctual need as a pious act. The Greek myth has been much cruder. The real substance transpiring from the biblical text is that to his daughters, Lot, the father, had always been the only man on earth. This is indeed the way little Oedipal girls perceive their need towards the father: to them, he is the only man.

In both stories, as in Little Red Riding Hood,  and other stories of young virgins, as in Rigoletto –  the story of Gilda -, as in Donna Anna – Mozart’s Don Giovanni -, etc. the mother has been brushed away. She just disappears.

In both stories, the incestuous deed ends in the girl becoming pregnant.
As Karl Abraham writes:

Freud has shown that besides the idea of motion and penis in the sense of gift there is still a third idea which is identified with both of them, namely, that of a child. Infantile theories of procreation and birth adequately explain this connection.
The little girl cherishes the hope of getting a child from her father as a substitute for the penis not granted her, and this again in the sense of a gift.
("The Female Castration Complex" (1920), in  Selected Papers of Karl Abraham, edited by Ernest Jones,  Hogart Press, London 1927, p.343)

To a girl, the Father's gift is the most valuable thing on earth. In Greek myth it becomes the most handsome man and himself loved by Aphrodite, while in the biblical story the gift becomes predecessor of peoples. From Ruth, the Mohabite, descends David, who is the Hebrew version of Adonis, king of Israel and future Messiah.
The child – gift – is loved and adored, because he represents the most needed and loved paternal penis. Three Magi – the paternal penis – bring to the Virgin a Child, and he becomes the Saviour of mankind, beautiful like Adonis, Myrrha’s own gift.

However, if the father, or his substitute, betrays, the love turns into hatred and need of revenge. Now we can better understand why Medea, the scorned woman, turns her hatred and need of revenge on her own children. They represent Jason's penis, the gift he bestowed on her. By killing her/his children, she takes her revenge castrating her lover.

In the same way, a denied penis triggers the same need of revenge – castration.  The Gospel tells a story of a woman beheading a man: Salome and John the Baptist. As I have shown in John the Baptist; Father and Lover (An analysis of eating disorders), the penis denied triggers a regression from the genital level to the oral sadistic stage of psycho-sexual evolution. Myrrha obtained the paternal penis, and she became a tree (pen drawing by Poussin ), which, as every female tree, represents the tree of life and the female genital (Cf. On Trees and on Birds (and on Flowers)), while Salome regressed to the oral sadistic level because of a penis denied, and she devoured the head – penis of John the Baptist, who represents the paternal imago of the Gospels’ story.

Saint Nicholas = Santa Klaus
Three balls (the male penis) brings gifts to three girls (the female penis)

The legend tells that Nicholas (whose corrupted name became Santa Klaus) gave three bags of gold to three girls as dowry to spare them from prostitution. It is a very veiled hint that if a girl does not receive the paternal penis (namely, if she is emotionally rejected by her father - emotionally deprived while she is at the Oedipal stage), she might well become a prostitute, in the desperate trial to compensate for that emotional deprivation. A prostitute is a woman who craves to receive multiple male penises, without actually enjoying any of them. In the process, she humiliates the male and herself in the same condensation.
The male is deceived by false love, because he had deceived rejecting and disappointing the girl (bestowing false love). The woman humiliates herself as a coactive repetition of the original experience, and also as a self-punishment for the unavoidable aggressiveness associated with that emotional rejection. Usually, a man searching for prostitutes' "love" is acting out a similar early experience of rejection by his own mother, and now he humiliates her in the figure of the prostitute. It is a mutual acting out of desire, coercion to repeat, and Law of the Talion in the same condensation.

Links:

Little Red Riding Hood
Rapunzel and Other Stories of Beautiful Hair
Cinderella and "The Puss with the Boots"
The Three Little Pigs and Bruno Bettelheim. How not to make an interpretation
Truth Is a Woman: Bernini - Giorgione - Manet
Three Women: the Penis

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