Money Wisdom #350

"A fiery consummation. Not suspense, but end-pleasure; not partial sacrifice (castration), but total holocaust. It is as fire that sex and war and eating and sacrifice are one. 'Woman, verily, O Gautama, is a sacrificial fire. In this case the sexual organ is the fuel: when one invites, the smoke; the vulva, the flame; when one inserts, the coals; the sexual pleasure, the sparks. In this fire the gods offer semen. From this oblation arises the fetus.' Sex and war and the Last Judgement - 'the Loins, the place of the Last Judgement.' The word consummation refers to both the burning world and the sacred marriage.

Chandogya Upanishad, V, viii, 1-2. Blake, Jerusalem, pl. 30, l. 38.
Cf. Frye, Fearful Symmetry, 196. A. Balint, 'Die mexikanische Kriegshieroglyphe.' Reik, Masochism in Modern Man, 51, 59-64.

Norman O Brown Love's Body (1966) p.178