That rosicrucianism in its better aspect is identical with the higher alchemy, can no longer be doubted by any one after the material here offered. The common psychological element is shown when, as will be done in later parts of this book, we go into the deeper common basis of alchemy and freemasonry. Then first will the sought-for “etiological assumption” attain to its desired clearness. But already this much may be clear: that we have in both domains, structures with a religious content, even though from time to time names are used which will veil these facts. I add now in anticipation a statement whose clear summing up has been reserved for psychoanalysis, namely that the object of religious worship is regularly to be regarded as a symbol of the libido, that psychologic goddess who rules the desires of mankind—and whose prime minister is Eros. [Libido is desire or the tendency toward desire, as it controls our impulsive life. In medical language used mainly for sexual desire, the concept of libido is extended in psychoanalysis (namely by C. G. Jung) to the impelling power of psychic phenomena in general. Libido would therefore be the inner view of what must in objective description be called “psychic energy.” How it could be given this extension of meaning is seen when we know the possibilities of its transformation and sublimation, a matter which will be treated later.] Now if the libido symbol raised up for an ideal is placed too nakedly before the seeker, the danger of misunderstanding and perversion is always present. For he is misled by his instincts to take the symbol verbally, that is, in its original, baser sense and to act accordingly. So all religions are degenerate in which one chooses as a libido symbol the unconcealed sexual act, and therefore also a religion must degenerate, in which gold, this object of inordinate desire, is used as a symbol.