Cannibalism that underlies the symbolism of the Mass

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Cannibalism That Underlies the Symbolism of the Mass, Excerpt from Memories, Dreams, Reflections
by C.G. Jung
Recorded and edited by Aniela Jaffe
Translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston

The fear of the "black man," which is felt by every child, was not the essential thing in that experience; it was, rather, the recognition that stabbed through my childish brain: "That is a Jesuit." So the important thing in the dream was its remarkable symbolic setting and the astounding interpretation: "That is the man-eater." Not the child's ogre of a man-eater, but the fact that this was the man-eater, and that it was sitting on a golden throne beneath the earth. For my childish imagination it was first of all the king who sat on a golden throne; then, on a much more beautiful and much higher and much more golden throne far, far away in the blue sky, sat God and Lord Jesus, with golden crowns and white robes. Yet from this same Lord Jesus came the "Jesuit," in black women's garb, with a broad black hat, down from the wooded hill. I had to glance up there every so often to see whether another danger might not be approaching. In the dream I went down into the hole in the earth and found something very different on a golden throne, something non-human and underworldly, which gazed fixedly upward and fed on human flesh. It was only fifty years later that a passage in a study of religious ritual burned into my eyes, concerning the motif of cannibalism that underlies the symbolism of the Mass. Only then did it become clear to me how exceedingly unchild-like, how sophisticated and oversophisticated was the thought that had begun to break through into consciousness in those two experiences. Who was it speaking in me? Whose mind had devised them? What kind of superior intelligence was at work? I know every numbskull will babble on about "black man," "maneater," "chance," and "retrospective interpretation," in order to banish something terribly inconvenient that might sully the familiar picture of childhood innocence. Ah, these good, efficient, healthyminded people, they always remind me of those optimistic tadpoles who bask in a puddle in the sun, in the shallowest of waters, crowding together and amiably wriggling their tails, totally unaware that the next morning the puddle will have dried up and left them stranded.