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Every sacred tent, every temple, every church, every throne is believed to be at the very center of the universe and to be connected by an umbilical cosmic pillar leading upwards to the center of Heaven (Nurturant Placenta) and downwards to the Great Serpent of the Underworld (Poisonous Placenta).

The placenta has many guises, most either emphasizing its tree-like bran-ching, with the umbilicus as the trunk, or else its snake-like qualities, often symbolized as a many-headed snake or octopus (see Illustrations 1 and 2). Sometimes the umbilicus is represented separately (see Illustration 3), taking the form of a flagpole, connecting rope, or snake. These symbols repeat themselves with few variations in every primitive and archaic religion, in historical religions, and in past and contemporary political symbols, and unless one understands these basic fetal symbols there is simply no way to explain much of what happens in the world.

The placenta as Cosmic Tree,(88) connecting the group to Heaven by its branches and to Hell by its roots, is found in most religious and political systems, whether taking the form of a sacred tree (Nordic Yggdrasil), a sacred pole (Hebrew Asherah), a sacred cross (Christian Holy Cross) or a sacred flagpole (Roman vexilloid or Celtic sacred wood). The Cosmic Tree is of course the Tree of Life which stands "at the golden Navel of the Earth" where "before birth, the souls of little children perch like little birds on the branches."89 Often the blood of the placental prototype leaves clear traces on the Cosmic Tree or pole, whether actually - as in the ritual of anointing the sacred pole with actual human blood as primitive tribes often do - or mythically - as in the many myths of bleeding sacred trees - or symbolically - as in the blood of Christ on the Holy Cross. But whatever the form, the placental tree or pole is so crucial to group life that when it is lost the entire group becomes disoriented, as in the case where one primitive tribe broke their sacred pole they simply laid down and waited for death,(90)or as in the stories of Christian crusaders who were lost without their cross or troops who quit battle when they lost their flag.

Sometimes the uterine site of this central tree or pole is termed a Sacred Mountain, as in the Mount of Lands of Mesopotamian beliefs, the Paradise that contains the Tree of Life, Mount Tabor (tabbur = navel) at the center of Palestine, or Golgotha where Christ's Cross was located.(91) In fact, every ancient city also shared this fetal symbolism, since it was usually believed to have been situated exactly in the center of the earth, surrounded by water, and since it contained a temple, ziggurat or pyramid which was the navel of the universe and the place of birth or rebirth of every fetal savior of the group, be he shaman, pharoab, Adam, Zarathustra or Christ. As Hebrew tradition puts it: "The Most Holy One created the world like an embryo. As the embryo grows from the navel, so God began to create the world by the navel . . . the rock of Jerusalem . . . is called the Foundation Stone of the

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Illustration 2-The Poisonous Placenta in Modern Times
Clockwise from upper left corner: God of war; 17th century; Great Beast of the Apocalypse; Two of Churchill as octopus; Bolshevism as spider; Japan as octopus; Churchill as octopus; American government as octopus; Carter grabbed by octopus; German serpent swallowing world; MIR V atomic bomb as many-headed serpent.

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Earth, that is, the navel of the Earth, because it is from there that the whole Earth unfolded. "(92)

The drama of the suffering fetus, then, is the deepest level of meaning of all ritual, religious or political, in all primitive, archaic or historical groups, no matter how many elements are present from later life. Once one begins to recognize the limited cast, the standard stage settings, and the ritual script of the fetal drama, what once seemed like endless cultural invention in history and ethnology quickly reduces itself to a few ritual group-fantasies endlessly repeated at different evolutionary levels, according to the childrearing modes reached by the group. The five basic elements of this fetal drama are (1) The Poisonous Placenta, (2) The Suffering Fetus, (3) The Growing Pollution, (4) The Nurturant Umbilicus, and (5) The Cosmic Battle.

(1) The Poisonous Placenta: Ultimately every god and every leader is a Poisonous Placenta, for even those which appear in beneficent guise betray their awful aspects in the fear and awe with which they are regarded. This is easier to see in primitive and archaic groups, for there either monstrous gods are directly worshipped or else the good gods turn into monsters with what to the modern mind appears to be perplexing ease. (Sudden shifts from nurturant to asphyxiating conditions are, of course, repetitions of the actual experience of the fetus of alternating good and bad conditions.) The basic form of the Poisonous Placenta in group-fantasy is the serpent or dragon, a poisonous marine monster (water symbolizing the amniotic fluid) with many snake-like heads (representing the umbilicus and the placental network-see Illustration 2). In this form you can instantly recognize Tiamat, Rahab, Behemoth, Humbaba, Apophis, Hydra, Gorgon, Typhon and the thousands of other divine monsters in antiquity, including all those serpents openly worshiped by primitive and archaic man. Since the serpent "plays a larger part in religious myth" than any other animal, and can "occur even in the myths of lands where there are no snakes,"(93) its fetal origins are evident. The serpentine monsters in Illustrations 1 and 2 are just a few I have selected from a bewildering variety of thousands represented in past art and present cartoons, from the poisonous dragons of antiquity and the biblical seven-headed beast of the Apocalypse to the octopus-like choking enemies" of modern times. The serpent betrays its origin as Poisonous Placenta in its every aspect: in its birth from an egg, in its home in holes or in water, in its role as guardian of the Tree of Life, in its life-giving blood out of which mankind is produced, in its poisonous sting and its ferocious opposition to the mythic hero.(94) Once this basic pattern becomes familiar, it is then not too difficult to see the elements of the Poisonous Placenta behind every malevolent group-fantasy figure in history, behind every poisoning sorcerer, every dangerous menstruating woman, every blood-sucking witch or blood-poisoning Jew, every Red Commie who ever threatened our "national life-blood."

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(2) The Suffering Fetus: The hero of all group-fantasy, all myth, all ritual is, of course, ourselves, as the suffering fetus. We deify and identify with all those who are fated to face suffering and death, from Marduk to Tammuz, from Osiris to Christ, from Caesar to Napoleon, from Jeanne d'Arc to Piaf. It is essential that the hero of our fetal drama be basically as innocent as we ourselves felt in the womb, as innocent as the newborn thrown into the mouth of Moloch, as the innocent Tammuz who was flogged until bloody in Hell or as the sinless Christ suffering on the Cross.(95) Yet, as in the womb, the traumatic ritual of suffering and rebirth must be repeated over and over again, whether in yearly New Year's suffering and rebirth rituals in archaic groups or in the yearly Easter rituals of suffering, death and resurrection in Christian groups. Because all important events in life may stir up superego retribution, every major life event therefore precipitates a suffering-and-rebirth ritual: birth, puberty, marriage, death. Sometimes only a portion of the fetal drama is enacted, as in baptism or circumcision after birth, which repeat the experiences of the amniotic water, the cleansing saving of the baby from the devil, or the cutting of the umbilicus-penis and the establishing of the blood covenant with God. Sometimes the entire fetal drama is repeated, as in initiation ceremonies at puberty where a full suffering, death and rebirth ritual is enacted. But what is most important is that all major group events require a repetition of the fetal drama: at the end of each year, at every spring planting, at harvest time, at carnival time, before battles, at coronations. In fact, many archaic societies not only regularly renewed the potency of their kings and cleansed the group through yearly death-and-rebirth rituals, as Frazer endlessly documented is his study of "Dying and Reviving Gods," some, like the Egyptian, required their leaders to go through a rebirth drama every morning of every day for fear the world would otherwise sink into irredeemable pollution. Christianity, of course, was able to accomplish this cleansing of the group through once-a-week Masses with similar death-and-rebirth con-tent, and modern nations accomplish their cleansing through elections every few years.

(3) The Growing Pollution: The only experience in life which corresponds to the group's basic conviction that the world is forever in danger of being swamped by blood pollution is that of fetal life. The central terror which underlies all group life, from primitive taboo to modern political paranoia, is that of pollution. All social order is upheld, no matter how irrational it may be, to prevent the imminent danger of pollution of group life by a transgressor. Every ritual, every "sacrificial crisis," is performed to cleanse the pollution from the group.(96) The two opposite poles of holiness and impurity have a single placental source; the word "sacred" (sacer) originally meant both holy and defiled in Latin.(97) The menstrual blood of women is the most universally taboo substance on earth because it is equated with

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Illustration 3-The Nurturant Umbilicus in History
Clockwise from upper left: American colonies flag; Hitler posters in four versions; Japanese posters in four versions.

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polluted blood, and the image of the wildly menstruating "placental" woman is a central subject of myth of many primitive cultures. Indeed, menstrual blood is often itself personified by primitives; since it might have gone to "make a fetus," they say, it must now be dangerous to humans.(98) Menstruating women are believed to be a danger to the whole community: they ruin camp sites, pollute whole forests, decrease herds, rob men of their virility, poison wine, cause crop failure and invite all kinds of group disasters. Yet menstrual blood is at bottom life-giving, too, powerful and sacred; incest between mother and son, the primal personal taboo, is ultimately the powerful wish to return to the original placental source of life.

The clearest example of the group-fantasy of pollution can be found in New Year's rituals the world over. The buildup of polluting blood reaches its visible climax as the sun dips the lowest on the horizon and the days grow shortest. As Eliade puts it, the community acts out this polluted state of the group through "the extinction of fires, the return of the souls of the dead, social confusion of the type exemplified by the Saturnalia, erotic license, orgies, and so on, symbolized the retrogression of the cosmos into chaos. On the last day of the year the universe was dissolved in the primordial waters. The marine monster Tiamat - symbol of darkness, of the formless, the non-manifested - revived and once again threatened. The world that had existed for a whole year really disappeared. Since Tiamat was again present, the cosmos was annulled; and Marduk was obliged to create it once again, after having once again conquered Tiamat."(99) It is this fetal drama of growing pollution, return of the placental beast, and ritual purification and rebirth through violence which we continue to repeat today in group-fantasy cycles of several years in length, only in the political rather than in the religious sphere, as I described in my four-stage model at the very beginning of this essay.

(4) The Nurturant Umbilicus: As I noted earlier, the fetus has been seen in uterine motion pictures grabbing its own umbilicus when in distress. In Illustration 3, you can see a number of political posters, each showing someone grabbing a pole, rope, chain or other object coming out of their midsection. These are a selection from hundreds of posters I have collected. 100 The single most common political symbol portrayed by nations about to go to war was someone grabbing a pole at his midsection, an image which constituted over one third of all political posters I could find.

Most of the time, of course, this pole is a flagpole, and the image of a leader holding a long flagpole (umbilicus) with a waving (amniotic water) flag (placenta) colored red (arterial blood), blue (venous blood) or green (Tree of Life) is always a comforting group symbol. One traces the path of one's arterial blood from one's heart to the placental flag each time one "pledges allegiance," by putting one's hand first on one's heart and then pointing it toward the flag. A strong breeze which makes the flags flutter and seem alive stirs our blood, but a lack of wind makes the flag "fall

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dead." This condition is so frightening that baseball announcers ominously comment before games that "the flags are dead in left field," and the American flag which was planted on the moon had to have wire put in it to show it waving, even in that airless space. Early flags and standards most often had placental beasts, serpents or dragons on them, and -- as I will describe in detail in the next section -- the very earliest flag was the actual king's placenta, complete with hanging umbilicus (see pictures of it on the right-hand side of Illustration 1). In brief, every connecting cord, pole or ladder symbolizes the Nurturant Umbilicus, from the rope or ladder which the shaman used to ascend to Heaven to the Rainbow Snake of primitive lore, Noah's and Jonah's rainbows, Jacob's and Mohammed's ladders to Heaven and so on.(101)

(5) The Cosmic Battle: The growing pollution of the group always ends in a cosmic battle between the heroic Suffering Fetus and the serpentine Poisonous Placenta. All the struggles of birth are poured into this cataclysmic battle, all the crushing head pressures, the deluge loosed upon the world by the breaking of the waters, the feelings of being torn apart limb from limb, the feelings of asphyxiation - plus, of course, all the sadistic and masochistic fantasies added from later childhood. Every element of the rebirth drama during primitive initiation, from the noise of the drums and the roar of the whirled bull-roarers to the cruelty of all initiatory ordeals, reproduces this fetal battle.(102) Each of the birth struggle elements are so well imprinted in our very bones that when Salk was doing his experiment of playing a normal adult heartbeat at 80 beats a minute for newborn babies - which he found was so soothing to them that they cried less and gained weight more - and he tried moving it up to 120 beats a minute (the rate of the mother's heartbeat when in labor), the babies became so agitated he had to stop the experiment. A similar effect can be seen in contrasting the soothing effect of most music, played at around 80 beats per minute, and the blood-stirring effects of military music at 120 beats per minute-which, when combined with the effects of fluttering placental flags on umbilical poles being marched down the long, narrow uterine passageway of the street, makes the military marching band one of the most powerful rebirth devices ever invented.

The cosmic battle between the suffering hero and the placental monster is a central subject of myth in every culture area of the world, and is replayed in symbolic form, in mock combat or in real battles, during important ritual occasions. The many-headed placental serpent is fought by Gilgamesh and Marduk, Osiris and Thor, Zeus and Herakles, Pharoah and Ra - - even Adam got thrown out of Paradise by a serpent, although the battle itself was later edited out.(104) This battle is not only mythically enacted during ritual, it is the sacrifice itself, even when not played out concretely. The basic cleansing ritual of every primitive and archaic group is the

by: Lloyd deMause
The Institute for Psychohistory
140 Riverside Drive, NY NY 10024

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