Hidden Symbolism of

                       ALCHEMY and the OCCULT ARTS

       (Formerly titled: _Problems of Mysticism and Its Symbolism_)

                         by Dr. Herbert Silberer

              Translated by Smith Ely Jelliffe, M.D., Ph.D.

                         Dover Publications, Inc.

                                 New York

                                   1971

CONTENTS

Translator’s Preface
Part I. The Parable.
   Section I. The Parable.
   Section II. Dream And Myth Interpretation.
Part II. Analytic Part.
   Section I. Psychoanalytic Interpretation Of The Parable.
   Section II. Alchemy.
   Section III. The Hermetic Art.
   Section IV. Rosicrucianism And Freemasonry.
   Section V. The Problem Of Multiple Interpretation.
Part III. Synthetic Part.
   Section I. Introversion And Regeneration.
      A. Introversion And Intro-Determination.
      B. Effects Of Introversion.
      C. Regeneration.
   Section II. The Goal Of The Work.
   Section III. The Royal Art.
Notes.
Bibliography.
Index.
Footnotes

This Dover edition, first published in 1971, is an unabridged and
unaltered republication of the work originally published by Moffat, Yard
and Company, New York, in 1917 under the title _Problems of Mysticism and
its Symbolism_.

_International Standard Book Number: 0-486-20972-5_
_Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 74-176356_

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

Prominent among the stones of a fireplace in my country den, one large
rounded giant stands out. It was bourne by the glacial streams from a more
northern resting place and is marked by a fossil of a mollusk that
inhabited northern seas many million years ago. Yet in spite of the eons
of time that have passed it can be compared with specimens of mollusks
that live to-day. Down through the countless centuries the living stream
has carved its structural habitations in much the same form. The science
of Paleontology has collected this history and has attempted a
reconstruction of life from its beginnings.

The same principle here illustrated is true for the thought-life of
mankind. The forms in which it has been preserved however are not so
evident. The structuralizations are not so definite. If they were,
evolution would not have been possible for the living stream of energy
which is utilized by mind-stuff cannot be confined if it would advance to
more complex integrations. Hence the products of mind in evolution are
more plastic—more subtle and more changing. They are to be found in the
myths and the folk-lore of ancient peoples, the poetry, dramatic art, and
the language of later races. From age to age however the strivings
continue the same. The living vessels must continue and the products
express the most fundamental strivings, in varying though related forms.

We thus arrive at a science which may be called paleo-psychology. Its
fossils are the thought-forms throughout the ages, and such a science
seeks to show fundamental likenesses behind the more superficial
dissimilarities.

The present work is a contribution to such a science in that it shows the
essential relationships of what is found in the unconscious of present day
mankind to many forms of thinking of the middle ages. These same trends
are present to-day in all of us though hidden behind a different set of
structural terms, utilizing different mechanisms for energy expression.

The unceasing complexity of life’s accumulations has created a great
principle for energy expression—it is termed sublimation—and in popular
parlance represents the spiritual striving of mankind towards the
perfecting of a relation with the world of reality—the environment—which
shall mean human happiness in its truest sense. One of the products of
this sublimation tendency is called Mysticism. This work would seek to aid
us to an understanding of this manifestation of human conduct as expressed
in concrete or contemplated action through thought. It does so by the
comparative method, and it is for this reason I have been led to present
it to an English reading public.

Much of the strange and outre, as well as the commonplace, in human
activity conceals energy transformations of inestimable value in the work
of sublimation. The race would go mad without it. It sometimes does even
with it, a sign that sublimation is still imperfect and that the race is
far from being spiritually well. A comprehension of the principles here
involved would further the spread of sympathy for all forms of thinking
and tend to further spiritual health in such mutual comprehension of the
needs of others and of the forms taken by sublimation processes.

For the actual work of translation, I wish to express my obligations to
friends Wilfred Lay, and Leo Stein. Without their generous and gifted
assistance I would not have been able to accomplish the task.

SMITH ELY JELLIFFE, M.D.
NEW YORK, Oct. 27, 1917.

                                 Part I.

THE PARABLE.

                                Section I.

The Parable.

In an old book I discovered an extraordinary narrative entitled Parabola.
I take it as the starting point of my observations because it affords a
welcome guide. In the endeavor to understand the parable and get a
psychological insight into it, we are led on to journey through these very
realms of fancy, into which I should like to conduct the reader. At the
end of our journey we shall have acquired, with the understanding of the
first example, the knowledge of certain psychical laws.

I shall, then, without further prelude introduce the example, and
purposely avoid at the outset mentioning the title of the old book so that
the reader may be in a position to allow the narrative to affect him
without any preconceived ideas. Explanatory interpolations in the text,
which come from me, I distinguish with square brackets.

    [1]. As once I strolled in a fair forest, young and green, and
    contemplated the painfulness of this life, and lamented how
    through the dire fall of our first parents we inherited such
    misery and distress, I chanced, while thinking these thoughts, to
    depart from the usual path, and found myself, I know not how, on a
    narrow foot path that was rough, untrodden and impassable, and
    overgrown with so much underbrush and bushes that it was easy to
    see it was very little used. Therefore I was dismayed and would
    gladly have gone back, but it was not in my power to do so, since
    a strong wind so powerfully blew me on, that I could rather take
    ten steps in advance than one backward.

    [2]. Therefore I had to go on and not mind the rough walking.

    [3]. After I had advanced a good while I came finally to a lovely
    meadow hedged about with a round circle of fruit bearing trees,
    and called by the dwellers _Pratum felicitatis_ [the meadow of
    felicity], I was in the midst of a company of old men with beards
    as gray as ice, except for one who was quite a young man with a
    pointed black beard. Also there was among them one whose name was
    well known to me, but his visage I could not yet see, who was
    still younger, and they debated on all kinds of subjects,
    particularly about a great and lofty mystery, hidden in Nature,
    which God kept concealed from the great world, and revealed to
    only a few who loved him.

    [4]. I listened long and their discourse pleased me well, only
    some would break forth from restraint, not touching upon the
    matter or work, but what touched upon the parables, similitudes
    and other parerga, in which they followed the poetic fancies of
    Aristotle, Pliny and others which the one had copied from the
    other. So I could contain myself no longer and mixed in my own
    mustard, [put in my own word], refuted such trivial things from
    experience, and the majority sided with me, examined me in their
    faculty and made it quite hot for me. However the foundation of my
    knowledge was so good, that I passed with all honors, whereupon
    they all were amazed, unanimously included and admitted me in
    their collegium, of which I was heartily glad.

    [5]. But they said I could not be a real colleague till I learned
    to know their lion, and became thoroughly acquainted with his
    powers and abilities. For that purpose I should use diligence so
    as to subdue him. I was quite confident in myself and promised
    them I would do my best. For their company pleased me so well that
    I would not have parted from them for a great deal.

    [6]. They led me to the lion and described him very carefully, but
    what I should undertake with him none could tell me. Some of them
    indeed hinted, but very darkly, so that the (Der Tausende)
    Thousandth one could not have understood him. But when I should
    first succeed in subduing him and should have assured myself
    against his sharp claws, and keen teeth, then they would conceal
    nothing from me. Now the lion was very old, ferocious and large,
    his yellow hair hung over his neck, he appeared quite
    unconquerable, so that I was almost afraid of my temerity and
    would gladly have turned back if my promise and also the
    circumstance that the elders stood about me and were waiting to
    see what I would do, had allowed me to give up. In great
    confidence I approached the lion in his den and began to caress
    him, but he looked at me so fiercely with his brightly shining
    eyes that I could hardly restrain my tears. Just then I remembered
    that I had learned from one of the elders, while we were going to
    the lion’s den, that very many people had undertaken to overcome
    the lion and very few could accomplish it. I was unwilling to be
    disgraced, and I recalled several grips that I had learned with
    great diligence in athletics, besides which I was well versed in
    natural magic [magia] so I gave up the caresses and seized the
    lion so dextrously, artfully and subtlely, that before he was well
    aware of it I forced the blood out of his body, yea, even out of
    his heart. It was beautifully red but very choleric. I dissected
    him further and found, a fact which caused me much wonder, that
    his bones were white as snow and there was much more bone than
    there was blood.

    [7]. Now when my dear elders, who stood above around the den and
    looked at me, were aware of it, they disputed earnestly with each
    other, for so much I could infer from their motions but what they
    said I could not hear since I was deep down in the den. Yet as
    they came close in dispute I heard that one said, “He must bring
    him to life again, else he can not be our colleague.” I was
    unwilling to undertake further difficulties, and betook myself out
    of the den to a great place, and came, I know not how, on a very
    high wall, whose height rose over 100 ells towards the clouds, but
    on top was not one foot wide. And there went up from the
    beginning, where I ascended, to the end an iron hand rail right
    along the center of the wall, with many leaded supports. On this
    wall I came, I say, and meseems there went on the right side of
    the railing a man several paces before me.

    [8]. But as I followed him awhile I saw another following me on
    the other side, yet it was doubtful whether man or woman, that
    called to me and said that it was better walking on his side than
    where I went, as I readily believed, because the railing that
    stood near the middle made the path so narrow that the going at
    such a height was very bad. Then I saw also some that wished to go
    on that path, fall: down below behind me, therefore I swung under
    the railing; holding tight with my hands and went forward on the
    other [left] side, till I finally came to a place on the wall
    which was very precipitous and dangerous to descend. Then first I
    repented that I had not stayed on the other [right] side and I
    could not go under to the other side as it was also impossible to
    turn round and get on the other path. So I risked it, trusted to
    my good feet, held myself tight and came down without harm, and as
    I walked a little further, looked and knew of no other danger, but
    also knew not what had become of wall and railing.

    [9]. After I came down, there stood in that place a beautiful rose
    bush, on which beautiful red and white roses were growing, the red
    more numerous, however, than the white. I broke off some roses
    from the bush and put them on my hat. But there seemed to be in
    the same place a wall, surrounding a great garden. In the garden
    were lads, and their lasses who would gladly be in the garden, but
    would not wander widely, or take the trouble to come to the gates.
    So I pitied them. I went further along the path by which I had
    come, still on the level, and went so fast that I soon came to
    some houses, where I supposed I should find the gardener’s house.
    But I found there many people, each having his own room. They were
    slow. Two together they worked diligently, yet each had his own
    work. [The meaning may be either that working alone they were
    slow, but in twos they worked diligently; or two of them worked
    together and were diligent. Both amount to the same thing as we
    shall later realize.] But what they did, it seems, I had myself
    done before and all their work was familiar to me. Especially,
    thought I, see, if so many other people do so much dirty and
    sloppy work, that is only an appearance according to each one’s
    conceit, but has no reason in Nature, so it may also be pardoned
    in you. I wished, therefore, because I knew such tricks vanished
    like smoke, to remain here no longer in vain and proceeded on my
    former way.

    [10]. After I had arrived at the gate of the garden, some on one
    side looked sourly at me, so that I was afraid they might hinder
    me in my project; but others said, “See, he will into the garden,
    and we have done garden service here so long, and have never
    gotten in; we will laugh him down if he fails.” But I did not
    regard all that, as I knew the conditions of this garden better
    than they, even if I had never been in it, but went right to a
    gate that was tight shut so that one could neither see nor find a
    keyhole. I noticed, however, that a little round hole that with
    ordinary eyes could not be seen, was in the door, and thought
    immediately, that must be the way the door is opened, was ready
    with my specially prepared Diederich, unlocked and went in. When I
    was inside the door, I found several other bolted doors, which I
    yet opened without trouble. Here, however, was a passage way, just
    as if it was in a well built house, some six feet wide and twenty
    long, with a roof above. And though the other doors were still
    locked, I could easily see through them into the garden as the
    first door was open.

    [11]. I wandered into the garden in God’s name, and found in the
    midst of it a small garden, that was square and six roods long,
    hedged in with rose thorns, and the roses bloomed beautifully. But
    as it was raining gently, and the sun shone in it, it caused a
    very lovely rainbow. When I had passed beyond the little garden
    and would go to the place where I was to help the maids, behold I
    was aware that instead of the walls a low hurdle stood there, and
    there went along by the rose garden the most beautiful maiden
    arrayed in white satin, with the most stately youth, who was in
    scarlet each giving arm to the other, and carrying in their hands
    many fragrant roses. I spoke to them and asked them how they had
    come over the hurdle. “This, my beloved bridegroom,” said she,
    “has helped me over, and we are going now out of this beautiful
    garden into our apartment to enjoy the pleasures of love.” “I am
    glad,” said I, “that without any further trouble on my part your
    desires are satisfied; yet see how I have hurried, and have run so
    long a way in so short a time to serve you.” After that I came
    into a great mill built inside of stones, in which were no flour
    bins or other things that pertained to grinding but one saw
    through the walls several water wheels going in water. I asked why
    it had equipment for grinding. An old miller answered that the
    mill was shut down on the other side. Just then I also saw a
    miller’s boy go in from the sluice plank [Schutzensteg], and I
    followed after him. When I had come over the plank [Steg], which
    had the water wheels on the left, I stood still and was amazed at
    what I saw there. For the wheels were now higher than the plank,
    the water coal black, but its drops were yet white, and the sluice
    planks were not over three fingers wide. Still I ventured back and
    held onto the sticks that were over the sluice planks and so came
    safely and dry over the water. Then I asked the old miller how
    many water wheels he had. “Ten,” answered he. The adventure stuck
    in my mind. I should have gladly known what the meaning was. But
    as I noticed that the miller would not leave I went away, and
    there was in front of the mill a lofty paved hill, on which were
    some of the previously mentioned elders who walked in the sun,
    which then shone very warm, and they had a letter from the whole
    faculty written to them, on which they were consulting. [In our
    modern mode of expression, the elders had directed a letter to the
    sun, and so I find the passage in an English version of the
    parable. This generally bungling translation is nevertheless not
    in the least authoritative. And although an acceptable meaning is
    derived from it, if one regards the sun as the just mentioned
    “prince,” yet I believe a freer translation should be given ...
    the elders walked in the warm sunshine; they consulted about a
    letter written to them by the faculty.] I soon noticed what the
    contents must be, and that it concerned me. I went therefore to
    them and said, “Gentlemen, does it concern me?” “Yes,” said they,
    “you must keep in marriage the woman that you have recently taken
    or we must notify our prince.” I said, “that is no trouble as I
    was born at the same time as she and brought up as a child with
    her, and as I have taken her once I will keep her forever, and
    death itself shall not part us, for I have an ardent affection for
    her.” “What have we then to complain of?” replied they. “The bride
    is content, and we have your will; you must copulate.”
    “Contented,” said I. “Well,” said one, “the lion will then regain
    his life and become more powerful and mighty than before.”

    [12]. Then occurred to me my previous trouble and labor and I
    thought to myself that for particular reasons it must not concern
    me but some other that is well known to me; then I saw our
    bridegroom and his bride go by in their previous attire, ready and
    prepared for copulation, which gave me great joy, for I was in
    great distress lest the thing might concern me.

    [13]. When, then, as mentioned, our bridegroom in his brilliant
    scarlet clothes with his dearest bride, whose white satin coat
    shot forth bright rays, came to the proper marriage age, they
    joined the two so quickly that I wondered not a little that this
    maid, that was supposed to be the mother of the bridegroom, was
    still so young that she appeared to be just born.

    [14]. Now I do not know what sin these two must have committed
    except that although they were brother and sister, they were in
    such wise bound by ties of love, that they could not be separated,
    and so, as it were, wished to be punished for incest. These two
    were, instead of a bride bed and magnificent marriage, condemned
    and shut up in an enduring and everlasting prison, which, because
    of their high birth and goodly state, and also so that in future
    they should not be guilty in secret, but all their conduct should
    be known to the guard placed over them and in his sight, was made
    quite transparent, bright and clear like a crystal, and round like
    a sphere of heaven, and there they were with continual tears and
    true contrition to atone and make reparation for their past
    misdeeds. [Instead of to a bride bed the two were brought to a
    prison, so that their actions could be watched. The prison was
    transparent; it was a bright crystal clear chamber, like a sphere
    of heaven, corresponding to the high position of the two persons.]
    Previously, however, all their rare clothing and finery that they
    had put on for ornament was taken away, so that in such a chamber
    they must be quite naked and merely dwell with each other. [It is
    not directly understood by these words that a cohabitation in
    modern sense (coition) is meant. According to modern language the
    passage must be rendered, “had to dwell near each other naked and
    bare.” One is reminded, moreover, of the nuptial customs that are
    observed particularly in the marriage of persons of high birth. In
    any case and, in spite of my reservation, what occurs is conducive
    or designed to lead to the sexual union.] Besides they gave them
    no one that had to go into the chamber to wait on them, but after
    they put in all the necessities in the way of meat and drink,
    which were created from the afore mentioned water, the door of the
    chamber was fast bolted and locked, the faculty seal impressed on
    it and I was enjoined that I should guard them here, and spend the
    winter before the door; the chamber should be duly warmed so that
    they be neither too hot nor too cold, and they could neither come
    out nor escape. But should they, on account of any hope of
    breaking this mandate, escape, I would thereupon be justly
    subjected to heavy punishment. I was not pleased by the thing, my
    fear and solicitude made me faint hearted, for I communed with
    myself that it was no small thing that had befallen me, as I knew
    also that the college of wisdom was accustomed not to lie but to
    put into action what it said. Yet because I could not change it,
    beside which this locked chamber stood in the center of a strong
    tower and surrounded with strong bulwarks and high walls, in which
    one could with a small but continuous fire warm the whole chamber,
    I undertook this office, and began in God’s name to warm the
    chamber, and protect the imprisoned pair from the cold. But what
    happened? As soon as they perceived the slightest warmth they
    embraced each other so tenderly that the like will not soon be
    seen, and stayed so hot that the young bridegroom’s heart in his
    body dissolved for ardent love, also his whole body almost melted
    in his beloved’s arms and fell apart. When she who loved him no
    less than he did her, saw this, she wept over him passionately
    and, as it were buried him with her tears so that one could not
    see, for her gushing tears that overflowed everything, where he
    went. Her weeping and sorrowing had driven her to this in a short
    time, and she would not for deep anguish of heart live longer, but
    voluntarily gave herself to death. Ah woe is me. In what pain and
    need and trouble was I that my two charges had quite disappeared
    in water, and death alone was left for me. My certain destruction
    stood before my eyes, and what was the greatest hardship to me, I
    feared the threatened shame and disgrace that would happen to me,
    more than the injury that would overtake me.

    [15]. As I now passed several days in such solitude and pondered
    over the question how I could remedy my affairs, it occurred to me
    how Medea had revived the dead body of Aeson, and I thought to
    myself, “If Medea could do such a thing, why should such a thing
    fail me?” I began at once to bethink me how I would do it, found
    however no better way than that I should persist with continual
    warmth until the waters disappeared, and I might see again the
    corpses of our lovers. As I hoped to come off without danger and
    with great advantage and praise I went on with my warmth that I
    had begun and continued it forty whole days, as I was aware that
    the water kept on diminishing the longer I kept it up, and the
    corpses that were yet as black as coal, began again to be visible.
    And truly this would have occurred before if the chamber had not
    been all too securely locked and bolted. Which I yet did not avail
    to open. For I noted particularly that the water that rose and
    hastened to the clouds, collected above in the chamber and fell
    down like rain, so that nothing could come of it, until our
    bridegroom with his dearest bride, dead and rotten, and therefore
    hideously stinking, lay before my eyes.

    All the while the sunshine in the moist weather caused an
    exceedingly beautiful rainbow to be seen, in the chamber, with
    surprisingly beautiful colors, which overjoyed not a little my
    overpowering affliction. Much more was I delighted that I saw my
    two lovers lying before me again. But as no joy is so great but is
    mixed with much sadness, so I was troubled in my joy thinking that
    my charges lay still dead before me, and one could trace no life
    in them. But because I knew that their chamber was made of such
    pure and thick material, also so tight-locked that their soul and
    spirit could not get out, but was still closely guarded within, I
    continued with my steady warmth day and night, to perform my
    delegated office, quite impressed with the fact that the two would
    not return to their bodies, as long as the moisture continued. For
    in the moist state nature keeps itself the same, as I then also
    found in fact and in truth. For I was aware upon careful
    examination that from the earth at evening through the power of
    the sun, many vapors arose and drew themselves up just as the sun
    draws water. They were condensed in the night in a lovely and very
    fruitful dew, which very early in the morning fell and moistened
    the earth and washed our dead corpses, so that from day to day,
    the longer such bathing and washing continued, the more beautiful
    and whiter they became. But the fairer and whiter they became, the
    more they lost moisture, till finally the air being bright and
    beautiful, and all the mist and moist weather, having passed, the
    spirit and soul of the bride could hold itself no longer in the
    bright air, but went back into the clarified and still more
    transfigured body of the queen, who soon experienced it [i.e. her
    soul and spirit] and at once lived again. This, then, as I could
    easily observe, not a little pleased me, especially as I saw her
    arise in surpassingly costly garments whose like was never seen on
    earth, and with a precious crown decked with bright diamonds; and
    also heard her speak. “Hear ye children of men and perceive ye
    that are born of women, that the most high power can set up kings
    and can remove kings. He makes rich and poor, according to his
    will. He kills and makes again to live.”

    [16]. See in me a true and living example of all that. I was great
    and became small, but now after having been humbled, I am a queen
    elevated over many kingdoms. I have been killed and made to live.
    To poor me have been trusted and given over the great treasures of
    the sages and the mighty.

    [17]. “Therefore power is also given me to make the poor rich,
    show kindness to the lowly, and bring health to the sick. But I am
    not yet like my well-beloved brother, the great and powerful king,
    who is still to be awakened from the dead. When he comes he will
    prove that my words are true.”

    [18]. And when she said that the sun shone very bright, and the
    day was warmer than before, and the dog days were at hand. But
    because, a long time before, there were prepared for the lordly
    and great wedding of our new queen many costly robes, as of black
    velvet, ashen damask, gray silk, silver taffeta, snow white satin,
    even one studded with surpassingly beautiful silver pieces and
    with precious pearls and lordly bright-gleaming diamonds, so
    likewise different garments were arranged and prepared for the
    young king, namely of carnation, yellow Auranian colors, precious
    gear, and finally a red velvet garment with precious rubies and
    thickly incrusted with carbuncles. But the tailors that made their
    clothes were quite invisible, so that I also wondered as I saw one
    coat prepared after another and one garment after another, how
    these things came to pass, since I well knew that no one came into
    the chamber except the bridegroom with his bride. So that what I
    wondered at most of all was that as soon as another coat or
    garment was ready, the first immediately vanished before my eyes,
    so that I knew not whence they came or who had taken them away.

    [19]. When now this precious clothing was ready, the great and
    mighty king appeared in great splendor and magnificence, to which
    nothing might be compared. And when he found himself shut in, he
    begged me with friendly and very gracious words, to open the door
    for him and permit him to go out; it would prove of great
    advantage to me. Although I was strictly forbidden to open the
    chamber, yet the grand appearance and the winning persuasiveness
    of the king disconcerted me so that I cheerfully let him go. And
    when he went out he was so friendly and so gracious and yet so
    meek that he proved indeed that nothing did so grace high persons
    as did these virtues.

    [20]. But because he had passed the dog days in great heat, he was
    very thirsty, also faint and tired and directed me to dip up some
    of the swift running water under the mill wheels, and bring it,
    and when I did, he drank a large part with great eagerness, went
    back into his chamber, and bade me close the door fast behind him,
    so that no one might disturb him or wake him from sleep.

    [21]. Here he rested for a few days and called to me to open the
    door. Methought, however, that he was much more beautiful, more
    ruddy and lordly, which he then also remarked and deemed it a
    lordly and wholesome water, drank much of it, more than before so
    that I was resolved to build the chamber much larger. [Evidently
    because the inmate increased in size.] When now the king had drunk
    to his satisfaction of this precious drink, which yet the
    unknowing regard as nothing he became so beautiful and lordly,
    that in my whole life I never saw a more lordly person nor more
    lordly demeanor. Then he led me into his kingdom, and showed me
    all the treasures and riches of the world, so that I must confess,
    that not only had the queen announced the truth, but also had
    omitted to describe the greater part of it as it seemed to those
    that know it. For there was no end of gold and noble carbuncle
    there; rejuvenation and restoration of natural forces, and also
    recovery of lost health, and removal of all diseases were a common
    thing in that place. The most precious of all was that the people
    of that land knew their creator, feared and honored him, and asked
    of him wisdom and understanding, and finally after this transitory
    glory an everlasting blessedness. To that end help us God the
    Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.

The author of the preceding narrative calls it a parable. Its significance
may have indeed appeared quite transparent to him, and he presupposes that
the readers of his day knew what form of learning he masked in it. The
story impresses us as rather a fairy story or a picturesque dream. If we
compare parables that come nearer to our modern point of view and are
easily understood on account of their simplicity, like those of Ruckert or
those of the New Testament, the difference can be clearly seen. The
unnamed author evidently pursues a definite aim; one does find some unity
in the bizarre confusion of his ideas; but what he is aiming at and what
he wishes to tell us with his images we cannot immediately conceive. The
main fact for us is that the anonymous writer speaks in a language that
shows decided affinity with that of dreams and myths. Therefore, however
we may explain in what follows the peculiarly visionary character of the
parable, we feel compelled to examine it with the help of a psychological
method, which, endeavoring to get from the surface to the depths, will be
able to trace analytically the formative powers of the dream life and
allied phenomena, and explain their mysterious symbols.

I have still to reveal in what book and in what circumstances the parable
appears. It is in the second volume of a book “Geheime Figuren der
Rosenkreuzer aus dem 16ten und 17ten Jahrhundert,” published at Altona
about 1785-90. Its chief contents are large plates with pictorial
representations and with them a number of pages of text. According to a
note on the title page, the contents are “for the first time brought to
light from an old manuscript.” The parable is in the second volume of a
three-volume series which bears the subtitle: Ein güldener Tractat vom
philosophischen Steine. Von einem noch lebenden, doch ungenannten
Philosopho, den Filiis doctrinae zur Lehre, den Fratribus Aureae Crucis
aber zur Nachrichtung beschrieben. Anno, M.D.C.XXV.

If I add that this book is an hermetic treatise (alchemistic), it may
furnish a general classification for it, but will hardly give any definite
idea of its nature, not merely on account of the oblivion into which this
kind of writing has now fallen, but also because the few ideas usually
connected with it produce a distorted picture. The hermetic art, as it is
treated here, the principles of which strike us to-day as fantastic, is
related to several “secret” sciences and organizations, some of which have
been discredited: magic, kabbala, rosicrucianism, etc. It is particularly
closely connected with alchemy so that the terms “hermetic art” and
“alchemy” (and even “royal art”) are often used synonymously. This
“art”—to call it by the name that not without some justification it
applies to itself—leads us by virtue of its many ramifications into a
large number of provinces, which furnish us desirable material for our
research.

So I will first, purposely advancing on one line, regard the parable as a
dream or a fairy tale and analyze it psychoanalytically. This treatment
will, for the information of the reader, be preceded by a short exposition
of psychoanalysis as a method of interpretation of dreams and fairy tales.
Then I will, still seeking for the roots of the matter, introduce the
doctrines that the pictorial language of the parable symbolizes. I will
give consideration to the chemical viewpoint of alchemy and also the
hermetic philosophy and its hieroglyphic educational methods.

Connections will be developed with religious and ethical topics, and we
shall have to take into account the historical and psychological relations
of hermetic thought with rosicrucianism in its various forms, and
freemasonry. And when we begin, at the conclusion of the analytical
section of my work, to apply to the solution of our parable and of several
folk tales the insight we have gained, we shall be confronted with a
problem in which we shall face two apparently contradictory
interpretations, according to whether we follow the lead of psychoanalysis
or of the hermetic, hieroglyphic solution. The question will then arise
whether and how the contradiction occurs. How shall we bring into relation
with each other and reconcile the two different interpretations which are
quite different and complete in themselves?

The question arising from the several illustrations expands into a general
problem, to which the synthetic part of my book is devoted. This will,
among other considerations, lead us into the psychology of symbol-making
where again the discoveries of psychoanalysis come to our aid. We shall
not be satisfied with analysis, but endeavor to follow up certain
evolutionary tendencies which, expressed in psychological symbols,
developing according to natural laws, will allow us to conjecture a
spiritual building up or progression that one might call an anabasis. We
shall see plainly by this method of study how the original contradiction
arises and how what was previously irreconcilable, turns out to be two
poles of an evolutionary process. By that means, several principles of
myth interpretation will be derived.

I have just spoken of an anabasis. By that we are to understand a forward
movement in a moral or religious sense. The most intensive exemplar of the
anabasis (whatever this may be) is mysticism. I can but grope about in the
psychology of mysticism; I trust I may have more confidence at that point
where I look at its symbolism from the ethical point of view.

                               Section II.

Dream And Myth Interpretation.

[Readers versed in Freud’s psychoanalysis are requested to pass over this
chapter as they will find only familiar matter.]

In the narrative which we have just examined its dream-like character is
quite noticeable. On what does it depend? Evidently the Parable must bear
marks that are peculiar to the dream. In looking for correspondences we
discover them even upon superficial examination.

Most noticeable is the complete and sudden change of place. The wanderer,
as I will hereafter call the narrator of the parable, sees himself
immediately transported from the place near the lion’s den to the top of a
wall, and does not know how he has come there. Later he comes down just as
suddenly. And in still other parts of the story there occurs just as rapid
changes of scene as one is accustomed to in dreams. Characteristic also is
the fact that objects change or vanish; the shift of scene resembles also,
as often in a dream, a complete transformation. Thus, for instance, as
soon as the wanderer has left the wall, it vanishes without leaving a
trace, as if it had never been. A similar change is also required in the
garden scene where, instead of the previously observed enclosing-wall, a
low hedge appears in a surprising manner.

Further, we are surprised by instances of knowledge without perception.
Often in a dream one knows something without having experienced it in
person. We simply know, without knowing how, that in such a house
something definite and full of mystery has happened; or we know that this
man, whom we see now for the first time, is called so and so; we are in
some place for the first time but know quite surely that there must be a
fountain behind that wall to which for any reason we have to go, etc. Such
unmediated knowledge occurs several times in the parable. In the beginning
of the narrative the wanderer, although a stranger, knows that the lovely
meadow is called by its inhabitants Pratum felicitatis. He knows
intuitively the name of one of the men unknown to him. In the garden scene
he knows, although he has noticed only the young men, that some young
women (whom on account of the nature of the place he cannot then see) are
desirous of going into the garden to these young men. One might say that
all this is merely a peculiarity of the representation inasmuch as the
author has for convenience, or on account of lack of skill, or for
brevity, left out some connecting link which would have afforded us the
means of acquiring this unexplained knowledge. The likeness to the dream
therefore would in that case be inadmissible. To this objection it may be
replied, that the dream does exactly like the author of the parable. Our
study is chiefly concerned with the product of the fancy and forces us to
the observation (whatever may be the cause of it) that the parable and the
dream life have certain “peculiarities of representation” in common.

In contrast to the miraculous knowledge we find in the dream a peculiar
unsureness in many things, particularly in those which concern the
personality of the wanderer. When the elders inform the wanderer that he
must marry the woman that he has taken, he does not know clearly whether
the matter at all concerns him or not; a remarkable fluctuation in his
attitude takes place. We wonder whether he has taken on the rôle of the
bridegroom or, quite the reverse, the bridegroom has taken the wanderer’s.
We are likewise struck by similar uncertainties, like those during the
walk on top of the wall where the wanderer is followed by some one, of
whom he does not know whether it is a man or a woman. Here belong also
those passages of the narrative introduced by the wanderer with “as if,”
etc. In the search for the gardener’s house he chances upon many people
and “it seems” that he has himself done what these people are there doing.

Quite characteristic also are the different obstructions and other
difficulties placed in the path of the wanderer. Even in the first
paragraph of the narrative we hear that he is startled, would gladly turn
back, but cannot because a strong wind prevents him. On top of the wall
the railing makes his progress difficult; on other occasions a wall, or a
door. The first experience, especially, recalls those frequent occurrences
in dreams where, anxiously turning in flight or oppressed by tormenting
haste, we cannot move. In connection with what is distressing and
threatening, as described in the precipitous slope of the wall and the
narrow plank by the mill, belong also the desperate tasks and
demands—quite usual in dreams and myths—that meet the wanderer. Among such
tasks or dangers I will only mention the severe examination by the elders,
the struggle with the lion, the obligation to marry, and the burden of
responsibility for the nuptial pair, all of which cause the wanderer so
much anxiety.

Among the evident dream analogies belongs finally (without, however,
completing my list of them) the peculiar logic that appears quite
conventional to the wanderer or the dreamer, but seldom satisfies the
reader or the careful reasoner. As examples, I mention that the dead lion
will be called to life again if the wanderer marries the woman that he
recently took; and that they put the two lovers that they want to punish
for incest, after they have carefully removed all the clothes from their
bodies, into a prison where these lovingly embrace.

So much for the external resemblances of the parable with the dream life.
The deeper affinity which can be shown in its innermost structure will
first appear in the psychoanalytic treatment. And now it will be advisable
for me to give readers not intimately acquainted with dream psychology
some information concerning modern investigations in dream life and in
particular concerning psychoanalytic doctrines and discoveries. Naturally
I can do this only in the briefest manner. For a more thorough study I
must refer the reader to the work of Freud and his school. The most
important books are mentioned in the bibliography at the end.

Modern scientific investigation of dreams, in which Freud has been a
pioneer, has come to the conclusion, but in a different sense from the
popular belief, that dreams have a significance. While the popular belief
says that they foretell something of the future, science shows that they
have a meaning that is present in the psyche and determined by the past.
Dreams are then, as Freud’s results show, always wish phantasies. [I give
here only exposition, not criticism. My later application of
psychoanalysis will show what reservations I make concerning Freud’s
doctrines.] In them wishes, strivings, impulses work themselves out,
rising to the surface from the depths of the soul. When they come in
waking life, wish phantasies are sometimes called castles in the air. In
dreams we have the fulfillment of wishes that are not or cannot be
fulfilled.

But the impulses that the dreams call up are principally such wishes and
impulses as we cannot ourselves acknowledge and such as in a waking state
we reject as soon as they attempt to announce themselves, as for instance,
animal tendencies or such sexual desires as we are unwilling to admit, and
also suppressed or “repressed” impulses. As a result of being repressed
they have the peculiarity of being in general inaccessible to
consciousness. [Freud speaks particularly of crassly egoistic actuations.
The criminal element in them is emphasized by Stekel.]

One not initiated into dream analysis may object that the obvious evidence
is against this theory. For the majority of dreams picture quite
inoffensive processes that have nothing to do with impulses and passions
which are worthy of rejection on either moral or other grounds. The
objection appears at first sight to be well founded, but collapses as soon
as we learn that the critical power of morality, which does not desert us
by day, retains by night a part of its power; and that therefore the
fugitive impulses and tendencies that seek the darkness and dare not come
forth by day, dare not even at night unveil their true aspect but have to
approach, as it were, in costumes, or disguised as symbols or allegories,
in order to pass unchallenged. The superintending power, that I just now
called the power of morality, is compared very pertinently to a censor.
What our psyche produces is, so to speak, subjected to a censor before it
is allowed to emerge into the light of consciousness. And if the fugitive
elements want to venture forth they must be correspondingly disguised, in
order to pass the censor. Freud calls this disguising or paraphrasing
process the dream disfigurement. The literal is thereby displaced by the
figurative, an allusion intimated through a nebulous atmosphere. Thus, in
the following example, an unconscious death wish is exhibited. In the
examination of a lady’s dream it struck me that the motive of a dead child
occurred repeatedly, generally in connection with picnics. During an
analysis the lady observed that when she was a girl the children, her
younger brothers and sisters, were often the obstacles when it was
proposed to have a party or celebration or the like. The association
Kinder (= children) Hinderniss (= obstacle) furnished the key to a
solution of the stereotyped dream motive. As further indications showed,
it concerned the children of a married man whom she loved. The children
prevented the man separating from his wife in order to marry the lady. In
waking life she would not, of course, admit a wish for the death of the
embarrassing children, but in dreams the wish broke through and
represented the secretly wished situation. The children are dead and
nothing now stands in the way of the “party” or the celebration (wedding).
The double sense of the word “party” is noticeable. (In German “eine
Partie machen” means both to go on an excursion and to make a matrimonial
match.) Such puns are readily made use of by dreams, in order to make the
objectionable appear unobjectionable and so to get by the censor.

Psychoanalytic procedure, employed in the interpretation of dreams of any
person can be called a scientifically organized confession that traces out
with infinite patience even to the smallest ramifications, the spiritual
inventory of what was tucked away in the mind of the person undergoing it.
Psychoanalysis is used in medical practice to discover and relieve the
spiritual causes of neurotic phenomena. The patient is induced to tell
more and more, starting from a given point, thereby going into the most
intimate details, and yet we are aware, in the network of outcropping
thoughts and memories, of certain points of connection, which have
dominating significance for the affective life of the person being
studied. Here the path begins to be hard because it leads into the
intimately personal. The secret places of the soul set up a powerful
opposition to the intruder, even without the purposive action of the
patient. Right there are, however, so to speak, the sore spots (pathogenic
“complexes”) of the psyche, towards which the research is directed. Firmly
advancing in spite of the limitations, we lay bare these roots of the soul
that strive to cling to the unconscious. Those are the disfigured elements
just mentioned; all of the items of the spiritual inventory from which the
person in question has toilsomely “worked himself out” and from which he
supposes himself free. They must be silent because they stand in some
contradictory relation to the character in which the person has clothed
himself; and if they, the subterranean elements still try to announce
themselves, he hurls them back immediately into their underworld; he
allows himself to think of nothing that offends too much his attitudes,
his morality and his feelings. He does not give verbal expression to the
disturbers of the peace that dwell in his heart of hearts.

The mischief makers are, however, merely repressed, not dead. They are
like the Titans [On this similarity rests the psychologic term “titanic,”
used frequently by me in what follows.] which were not crushed by the gods
of Olympus, but only shut up in the depths of Tartarus. There they wait
for the time when they can again arise and show their faces in daylight.
The earth trembles at their attempts to free themselves. Thus the titanic
forces of the soul strive powerfully upward. And as they may not live in
the light of consciousness they rave in darkness. They take the main part
in the procreation of dreams, produce in some cases hysterical symptoms,
compulsion ideas and acts, anxiety neuroses, etc. The examination of these
psychic disturbances is not without importance for our later researches.

Psychoanalysis, which has not at any time been limited to medical
practice, but soon began with its torch to illumine the activity of the
human spirit in all its forms (poetry, myth-making, etc.), was decried as
pernicious in many quarters. [The question as to how widely psychoanalysis
may be employed would at this time lead us too far, yet it will be
considered in Sect. 1, of the synthetic part of this volume.] Now it is
indeed true that it leads us toward all kinds of spiritual refuse. It does
so, however, in the service of truth, and it would be unfortunate to deny
to truth its right to justify itself. Any one determined to do so could in
that case defend a theory that sexual maladies are acquired by catching a
cold.

The spiritual refuse that psychoanalysis uncovers is like the manure on
which our cultivated fruits thrive. The dark titanic impulses are the raw
material from which in every man, the work of civilization forms an
ethical character. Where there is a strong light there are deep shadows.
Should we be so insincere as to deny, because of supposed danger, the
shadows in our inmost selves? Do we not diminish the light by so doing?
Morality, in whose name we are so scrupulous, demands above everything
else, truth and sincerity. But the beginning of all truth is that we do
not impose upon ourselves. “Know thyself” is written over the entrance of
the Pythian sanctuary. And it is this inspiring summons of the radiant god
of Delphi that psychoanalysis seeks to meet.

After this introductory notice, it will be possible properly to understand
the following instructive example, which contains exquisite sexual
symbolism.

Dream of Mr. T. “I dreamed I was riding on the railroad. Near me sat a
delicate, effeminate young man or boy; his presence caused erotic feelings
in me to a certain extent. (It appeared as if I put my arm about him.) The
train came to a standstill; we had arrived at a station and got out. I
went with the boy into a valley through which ran a small brook, on whose
bank were strawberries. We picked a great many. After I had gathered a
large number I returned to the railway and awoke.”

Supplementary communication. “I think I remember that an uncomfortable
feeling came over me in the boy’s company. The valley branched off to the
left from the railway.”

From a discussion of the dream it next appeared that T., who, as far as I
knew, entertained a pronounced aversion to homosexuality, had read a short
time before a detailed account of a notorious trial then going on in
Germany, that was concerned with real homosexual actions. [In
consciousness, of course. In the suppressed depths of unconsciousness the
infantile homosexual component also will surely be found.] An incident
from it, probably supported by some unconscious impulse, crowded its way
into the dream as an erotic wish, hence the affectionate scene in the
railway train. So far the matter would be intelligible even if in an
erotic day dream the image of a boy, considering the existing sexual
tendency of T., had been resolutely rejected by him. How are the other
processes in the dream related to it? Do they not at first sight appear
unconnected or meaningless?

And yet in them are manifested the fulfillment of the wish implied in the
erotic excitement in the company of the boy. The homosexual action of this
wish fulfillment would have been insufferable to the dream censor; it must
be intimated symbolically. And the remainder of the dream is accordingly
nothing but a dextrous veiling of a procedure hostile to the censor.

Even that the train comes to a standstill is a polite paraphrase.
[Paraphrase as the dreamer communicated to me, of an actual physical
condition—an erection.] Similar meaning is conveyed by the word station,
which reminds us of the Latin word status (from stare, to stand). The
scene in the car recalls moreover the joke in a story which often used to
occur to T. “A lady invited to a reception, where there were also young
girls, a _Hungarian_ [accentuated now, on account of what follows] (the
typical Vienna joker), who is feared on account of his racy wit. She
enjoined him at the same time, in view of the presence of the girls, not
to treat them to any of his spicy jests. The Hungarian agreed and appeared
at the party. To the amazement of the lady, he proposed the following
riddle: ‘’One can enter from in front, or from behind, only one has to
stand up.’ Observing the despair of the lady, he, with a sly, innocent
look, said, ‘But well then, what is it? Simply a trolley car.’ Next day
the daughter of the house appeared before her schoolmates in the high
school with the following:‘’Girls, I heard a great joke yesterday; one can
go in from in front or behind, only one must be stiff.’ ” [A neat
contribution, by the way, to the psychology of innocent girlhood.] The
anecdote was related to T. by a man later known to him as a homosexual. T.
had been with few Hungarians, but with these few, homosexuality had been,
as it happened, a favorite subject of conversation.

In the above we find many highly suggestive elements. The most suggestive
is, however, the strawberries. T. had, as appeared during the process of
the analysis, a couple of days before the dream read a French story where
the expression (new to him) _cueillir des fraises_ occurred. He went to a
Frenchman for the explanation of this phrase and learned that it was a
delicate way of speaking of the sexual act, because lovers like to go into
the woods under the pretext of picking strawberries, and thus separate
themselves from the rest of the company. In whatever way the dream wish
conceived its gratification, the valley (between the two hills!) through
which the brook flowed furnishes a quite definite suggestion. Here also
the above mentioned “from behind” probably gets a meaning.

The circumstance that the dream has, as it were, two faces, with one that
it openly exposes to view, implies that a distinction must be made between
the manifest and the latent material. The openly exposed face is the
manifest dream content (as the wording of the dream report represents the
dream); what is concealed is the latent dream thoughts. For the most part
a broad tissue of dream thoughts is condensed into a dream. A part of the
dream thoughts (not all) belongs regularly to the titanic elements of our
psyche. The shaping of the dream out of the dream thoughts is called by
Freud the dream work. Four principles direct it, Condensation,
Displacement, Representability, and Secondary Elaboration.

Condensation was just now mentioned. Many dream thoughts are condensed to
relatively few, but therefore all the more significant, images. Every
image (person, object, etc.) is wont to be “determined” by several dream
thoughts. Hence we speak of multiple determination or “Overdetermination.”

Displacement shows itself in the fact that the dream (evidently in the
service of distortion) pushes forward the unreal and pushes aside the
real; in short, rearranges the psychic values (interest) in such a way
that the dream in comparison with its latent thoughts appears as it were
displaced or “elsewhere centered.”

As the dream is a perceptual representation it must put into perceptually
comprehensible form everything that it wants to express, even that which
is most abstract. The tendency to vividly perceptual or plastic expression
that is characteristic of the dream, corresponds accordingly to the
Representability.

To the Secondary Elaboration we have to credit the last polishing of the
dream fabric. It looks after the logical connection in the pictorial
material, which is created by the displacing dream work. “This function
(i.e., the secondary elaboration) proceeds after the manner which the poet
maliciously ascribes to the philosopher; with its shreds and patches it
stops the gaps in the structure of the dream. The result of its effort is
that the dream loses its appearance of absurdity and disconnectedness and
approaches the standard of a comprehensible experience. But the effort is
not always crowned with complete success.” (Freud, “Traumdeutung,” p.
330.) The secondary elaboration can be compared also to the erection of a
façade.

Of the entire dreamwork Freud says (“Traumdeutung,” p. 338)
comprehensively that it is “not merely more careless, more incorrect, more
easily forgotten or more fragmentary than waking thought; it is something
qualitatively quite different and therefore not in the least comparable
with it. It does not, in fact, think, reckon, or judge, but limits itself
to remodeling. It may be exhaustively described if we keep in view the
conditions which its productions have to satisfy. These productions, the
dream, will have first of all to avoid the censor, and for this purpose
the dream work resorts to displacement of psychic intensities even to the
point of changing all psychic values; thoughts must be exclusively or
predominantly given in the material of visual and auditory memory images,
and from this grows that demand for representability which it answers with
new displacements. Greater intensities must apparently be attained here,
than are at its disposal in dream thoughts at night, and this purpose is
served by the extreme condensation which affects the elements of the dream
thoughts. There is little regard for the logical relations of the thought
material; they find finally an indirect representation in formal
peculiarities of dreams. The affects of dream thoughts suffer slighter
changes than their image content. They are usually repressed. Where they
are retained they are detached from images and grouped according to their
similarity.”

Briefly to express the nature of the dream, Stekel gives in one place
(“Sprache des Traumes,” p. 107) this concise characterization: “The dream
is a play of images in the service of the affects.”

A nearly exact formula for the dream has been contributed by Freud and
Rank, “On the foundation and with the help of repressed infantile sexual
material, the dream regularly represents as fulfilled actual wishes and
usually also erotic wishes in disguised and symbolically veiled form.”
(Jb.; ps. F., p. 519, and Trdtg., p. 117.) In this formula the wish
fulfillment, following Freud’s view, is preponderant, yet it would appear
to me that it is given too exclusive a rôle in the (chiefly affective)
background of the dream. An important point is the infantile in the dream,
in which connection we must mention the Regression.

Regression is a kind of psychic retrogression that takes place in manifold
ways in the dream (and related psychic events). The dream reaches back
towards infantile memories and wishes. [Sometimes this is already
recognizable in the manifest dream content. Usually, however, it is first
disclosed by psychoanalysis. Strongly repressed, and therefore difficult
of access, is this infantile sexual material. On the infantile forms of
sexuality, see Freud, “Three Contributions to Sexual Theory.”] It reaches
back also from the complicated and completed to a more primitive function,
from abstract thought to perceptual images, from practical activity to
hallucinatory wish fulfillment. [The latter with especial significance in
the convenience dreams. We fall asleep, for instance, when thirsty, then
instead of reaching for the glass of water, we dream of the drink.] The
dreamer thus approaches his own childhood, as he does likewise the
childhood of the human race, by reaching back for the more primitive
perceptual mode of thought. [On the second kind of regression the Zurich
psychiatrist, C. G. Jung, has made extraordinary interesting revelations.
His writings will further occupy our attention later.]

Nietzsche writes (“Menschliches, Allzumenschliches”), “In sleep and in
dreams we pass through the entire curriculum of primitive mankind.... I
mean as even to-day we think in dreams, mankind thought in waking life
through many thousand years; the first cause that struck his spirit in
order to explain anything that needed explanation satisfied him and passed
as truth. In dreams this piece of ancient humanity works on in us, for it
is the germ from which the higher reason developed and in every man still
develops. The dream takes us back into remote conditions of human culture
and puts in our hand the means of understanding it better. The dream
thought is now so easy because, during the enormous duration of the
evolution of mankind we have been so well trained in just this form of
cheap, phantastic explanation by the first agreeable fancy. In that
respect the dream is a means of recovery for the brain, which by day has
to satisfy the strenuous demands of thought required by the higher
culture.” (Works, Vol. II, pp. 27 ff.)

If we remember that the explanation of nature and the philosophizing of
unschooled humanity is consummated in the form of myths, we can deduce
from the preceding an analogy between myth making and dreaming. This
analogy is much further developed by psychoanalysis. Freud blazes a path
with the following words: “The research into these concepts of folk
psychology [myths, sagas, fairy stories] is at present not by any means
concluded, but it is apparent everywhere from myths, for instance, that
they correspond to the displaced residues of wish phantasies of entire
nations, the dreams of ages of young humanity.” (Samml. kl. Lehr. II, p.
205.) It will be shown later that fairy stories and myths can actually be
subjected to the same psychologic interpretation as dreams, that for the
most part they rest on the same psychological motives (suppressed wishes,
that are common to all men) and that they show a similar structure to that
of dreams.

Abraham (Traum und Mythus)(1) has gone farther in developing the
parallelism of dream and myth. For him the myth is the dream of a people
and a dream is the myth of the individual. He says, e.g., “The dream is
(according to Freud) a piece of superseded infantile, mental life” and
“the myth is a piece of superseded infantile, mental life of a people”;
also, “The dream then, is the myth of the individual.” Rank conceives the
myths as images intermediate between collective dreams and collective
poems. “For as in the individual the dream or poem is destined to draw off
unconscious emotions that are repressed in the course of the evolution of
civilization, so in mythical or religious phantasies a whole people
liberates itself for the maintenance of its psychic soundness from those
primal impulses that are refractory to culture (titanic), while at the
same time it creates, as it were, a collective symptom for taking up all
repressed emotion.” (Inz-Mot., p. 277. Cf. also Kunstl., p. 36.)

A definite group of such repressed primal impulses is given a prominent
place by psychoanalysis. I refer to the so-called Œdipus complex that
plays an important rôle in the dream life as also in myth and apparently,
also in creative poetry. The fables (sagas, dramas) of Œdipus, who slays
his father and marries his mother are well known. According to the
observations of psychoanalysis there is a bit of Œdipus in every one of
us. [These Œdipus elements in us can—as I must observe after reading
Imago, January, 1913—be called “titanic” in the narrower sense, following
the lead of Lorenz. They contain the motive for the separation of the
child from the parents.] The related conflicts, that in their entirety
constitute the Œdipus complex (almost always unconscious, because actively
repressed) arise in the disturbance of the relation to the parents which
every child goes through more or less in its first (and very early) sexual
emotions. “If king Œdipus can deeply affect modern mankind no less than
the contemporary Greeks, the explanation can lie only in the fact that the
effect of the Greek tragedy does not depend on the antithesis between fate
and the human will, but in the peculiarity of the material in which this
antithesis is developed. There must be a voice in our inner life which is
ready to recognize the compelling power of fate in the case of Œdipus,
while we reject as arbitrary the situations in the Ahnfrau or other
destiny tragedies. And such an element is indeed contained in the history
of king Œdipus. His fate touches us only because it might have been ours,
because the oracle hung the same curse over us before our birth as over
him. For us all, probably, it is ordained that we should direct our first
sexual feelings towards our mothers, the first hate and wish for violence
against our fathers. Our dreams convince us of that. King Œdipus, who has
slain his father Laius and married his mother Jocasta, is only the
wish-fulfillment of our childhood. But more fortunate than he, we have
been able, unless we have become psychoneurotic, to dissociate our sexual
feelings from our mothers and forget our jealousy of our fathers. From the
person in whom that childish wish has been fulfilled we recoil with the
entire force of the repressions, that these wishes have since that time
suffered in our inner soul. While the poet in his probing brings to light
the guilt of Œdipus, he calls to our attention our own inner life, in
which that impulse, though repressed, is always present. The antithesis
with which the chorus leaves us

                      See, that is Œdipus,
    Who solved the great riddle and was peerless in power,
    Whose fortune the townspeople all extolled and envied.
    See into what a terrible flood of mishap he has sunk.

This admonition hits us and our pride, we who have become in our own
estimation, since the years of childhood, so wise and so mighty. Like
Œdipus, we live in ignorance of the wishes that are so offensive to
morality, which nature has forced upon us, and after their disclosure we
should all like to turn away our gaze from the scenes of our childhood.”
(Freud, Trdtg., p. 190 f.)

Believing that I have by this time sufficiently prepared the reader who
was unfamiliar with psychoanalysis for the psychoanalytic part of my
investigation, I will dispense with further time-consuming explanations.

                                 Part II.

ANALYTIC PART.

                                Section I.

Psychoanalytic Interpretation Of The Parable.

Although we know that the parable was written by a follower of the
hermetic art, and apparently for the purpose of instruction, we shall
proceed, with due consideration, to pass over the hermetic content of the
narrative, which will later be investigated, and regard it only as a play
of free fantasy. We shall endeavor to apply to the parable knowledge
gained from the psychoanalytic interpretation of dreams, and we shall find
that the parable, as a creation of the imagination, shows at the very
foundations the same structure as dreams. I repeat emphatically that in
this research, in being guided merely by the psychoanalytic point of view,
we are for the time being proceeding in a decidedly one-sided manner.

In the interpretation of the parable we cannot apply the original method
of psychoanalysis. This consists in having a series of seances with the
dreamer in order to evoke the free associations. The dreamer of the
parable—or rather the author—has long ago departed this life. We are
obliged then to give up the preparatory process and stick to the methods
derived from them. There are three such methods.

The first is the comparison with typical dream images. It has been shown
that in the dreams of all individuals certain phases and types continually
recur, and in its symbolism have a far reaching general validity, because
they are manifestly built on universal human emotions. Their imaginative
expression is created according to a psychical law which remains fairly
unaffected by individual differences.

The second is the parallel from folk psychology. The inner affinity of
dream and myth implies that for the interpretation of individual creations
of fancy, parallels can profitably be drawn from the productions of the
popular imagination and vice versa.

The third is the conclusions from the peculiarities of structure of the
dream (myth, fairy tale) itself. In dreams and still more significantly in
the more widely cast works of the imagination creating in a dream-like
manner, as e.g., in myths and fairy tales, one generally finds motives
that are several times repeated in similar stories even though with
variations and with different degrees of distinctness. [Let this not be
misunderstood. I do not wish to revive the exploded notion that myths are
merely the play of a fancy that requires occupation. My position on the
interpretation of myths will be explained in Part I. of the synthetic
part.] It is then possible by the comparison of individual instances of a
motive, to conclude concerning its true character, inasmuch as one, as it
were, completes in accordance with their original tendency the lines of
increasing distinctness in the different examples, and thus—to continue
the geometric metaphor—one obtains in their prolongations a point of
intersection in which can be recognized the goal of the process toward
which the dream strives, a goal, however, that is not found in the dream
itself but only in the interpretation.

We shall employ the three methods of interpretation conjointly. After all
we shall proceed exactly as psychoanalysis does in interpretation of
folk-lore. For in this also there are no living authors that we can call
and question. We have succeeded well enough, however, with the derived
methods. The lack of an actual living person will be compensated for in a
certain sense by the ever living folk spirit and the infinite series of
its manifestations (folk-lore, etc.). The results of this research will
help us naturally in the examination of our parable, except in so far as I
must treat some of the conclusions of psychoanalysis with reserve as
problematic.

Let us now turn to the parable. Let us follow the author, or as I shall
call him, the wanderer, into his forest, where he meets his extraordinary
adventures.

I have just used a figure, “Let us follow him into his forest.” This is
worthy of notice. I mean, of course, that we betake ourselves into his
world of imagination and live through his dreams with him. We leave the
paths of everyday life, in order to rove in the jungle of phantasy. If we
remember rightly, the wanderer used the same metaphor at the beginning of
his narrative. He comes upon a thicket in the woods, loses the usual
path.... He, too, speaks figuratively. Have we almost unaware, in making
his symbolism our own, partially drawn away the veil from his mystery? It
is a fact confirmed by many observations [Cf. my works on threshold
symbolism—Schwellensymbolik, Jahrb. ps. F. III, p. 621 ff., IV, p. 675
ff.] that in hypnagogic hallucinations (dreamy images before going to
sleep), besides all kinds of thought material, the state of going to sleep
also portrays itself in exactly the same way that in the close of a dream
or hypnotic illusions on awakening, the act of awakening is pictorially
presented. The symbolism of awakening brings indeed pictures of leave
taking, departing, opening of a door, sinking, going free out of a dark
surrounding, coming home, etc. The pictures for going to sleep are
sinking, entering into a room, a garden or a dark forest.

The fairy story also used the same forest symbol. Whether on sinking into
sleep I have the sensation of going into a dark forest or whether the hero
of the story goes into a forest (which to be sure has still other
interpretations), or whether the wanderer in the parable gets into a
tangle of underbrush, all amounts to the same thing; it is always the
introduction into a life of phantasy, the entrance into the theater of the
dream. The wanderer, if he had not chosen for his fairy tale the first
person, could have begun as follows: There was once a king whose greatest
joy was in the chase. Once as he was drawn with his companions into a
great forest, and was pursuing a fleet stag, he was separated from his
followers, and went still further from the familiar paths, so that finally
he had to admit that he had lost his way. Then he went farther and farther
into the woods until he saw far off a house....

The wanderer comes through the woods to the Pratum felicitatis, the Meadow
of Felicity, and there his adventures begin. Here, too, our symbolism is
maintained; by sleeping or the transition to revery we get into the dream
and fairy tale realm, a land to which the fulfillment of our keenest
wishes beckons us. The realm of fairy tales is indeed—and the
psychoanalyst can confirm this statement—a Pratum felicitatis, in spite of
all dangers and accidents which we have there to undergo.

The dream play begins and the interpretation, easy till now, becomes more
difficult. We shall hardly be able to proceed in strictly chronological
order. The understanding of the several phases of the narrative does not
follow the sequence of their events. Let us take it as it comes.

The wanderer becomes acquainted with the inhabitants of the Pratum
felicitatis, who are discussing learned topics, he becomes involved in the
scientific dispute, and is subjected to a severe test in order to be
admitted to the company. The admission thus does not occur without trouble
but rather a great obstacle is placed in the way of it. The wanderer tells
us that his examiners hauled him over the coals, an allegorical metaphor,
taken possibly from the ordeal by fire. In these difficulties the
attaining of the end meets us in the first instance in a series of
analogous events, where the wanderer sees himself hindered in his
activities in a more or less painful, and often even a dangerous manner.
After a phase marked by anxiety the adventure turns out uniformly well and
some progress is made after the obstruction at the beginning. As a first
intimation of the coming experiences we may take up the obstacles in the
path in the first section of the parable, which are successfully removed,
inasmuch as the wanderer soon after reaches the lovely region (Sec. 3).

The psychology of dreams has shown that obstacles in the dream correspond
to conflicts of will on the part of the dreamer, which is exactly as in
the morbid restraint of neurotics. Anxiety develops when a suppressed
impulse wishes to gratify itself, to which impulse another will, something
determined by our culture, is opposed prohibitively. Obstructed
satisfaction creates anxiety instead of pleasure. Anxiety may then be
called also a libido with a negative sign. Only when the impulse in
question knows how to break through without the painful conflict, can it
attain pleasure—which is the psychic (not indeed the biologic) tendency of
every impulse emanating from the depths of the soul. The degrees of the
pleasure that thus exists in the soul may be very different, even
vanishingly small, a state of affairs occurring if the wish fulfilling
experience has through overgrowth of symbolism lost almost all of its
original form. If we follow the appearances of the obstruction motive in
the parable, and find the regular happy ending already mentioned, then we
can maintain it as a characteristic of the phantasy product in question,
that not only in its parts but also in the movement of the entire action,
it shows a tendency from anxiety towards untroubled fulfillment of wishes.

As for the examination episode, to which we have now advanced in our
progressive study of the narrative, we can now take up a frequently
occurring dream type; the Examination Dream. Almost every one who has to
pass severe examinations, experiences even at subsequent times when the
high school or university examinations are far in the past, distressing
dreams filled with the anxiety that precedes an examination. Freud
(Trdtg., p. 196 ff.) clearly says that this kind of dream is especially
the indelible memories of the punishments which we have suffered in
childhood for misdeeds and which make themselves felt again in our
innermost souls at the critical periods of our studies, at the _Dies irae,
dies ilia_ of the severe examinations. After we have ceased to be pupils
it is no longer as at first the parents and governesses or later the
teachers that take care of our punishment. The inexorable causal nexus of
life has taken over our further education, and now we dream of the
preliminaries or finals; whenever we expect that the result will chastise
us, because we have not done our duty, or done something incorrectly, or
whenever we feel the pressure of responsibility. Stekel’s experience is
also to be noticed, confirmed by the practice of other psychoanalysts,
that graduation dreams frequently occur if a test of sexual power is at
hand. The double sense of the word _matura_ (= ripe) (that may also mean
sexual maturity) may also come to mind as the verbal connecting link for
the association. In general the examination dreams may be the expression
of an anxiety about not doing well or not being able to do well; in
particular they are an expression of a fear of impotence. It should be
noted here that not only in the former but in the latter case the fear has
predominantly the force of a psychic obstruction.

For the interpretation of the examination scene also, we note the fairy
tale motif so frequently appearing of a hard-won prize, i.e., any story in
which a king or a potentate proposes a riddle or a task for the hero. If
the hero solves or accomplishes it, he generally wins, besides other
precious possessions, a woman or a princess, whom he marries. In the case
of a heroine the prize is a beautiful prince. The motif of the hard-won
prize matches the later appearance of obstacles in the Parable. The nature
of the prize is, for the present at any rate, a matter of indifference.

A second edition of the examination scene meets us in the 6th section as
the battle with the lion. The advance from the anxiety phase to the
fulfillment phase appears clearly and the emotions of the wanderer are
more strongly worked out. The difficulty at the beginning is indicated in
the preceding conversation where no one will advise him how he is to begin
with the beast, but all hold out guidance for a later time when he shall
have once bound the lion. The beginning of the fight causes the wanderer
much trouble. He “is amazed at his own temerity,” would gladly turn back
from his project, and he can “hardly restrain his tears for fear.” He
fortifies himself, however, develops brilliant abilities and comes off
victor in the fray. A gratification derived from his own ability is
unmistakable. The scene, as well as a variation of the preceding
examination, adds to it some essentially new details. The displacement of
the early opponents (i.e., the examining elders) by another (the lion) is
not really new. It is a mere compensation, although, as we shall see
later, a very instructive one. Entirely new is the result of the battle.
After killing the lion the victor brings to light white bones and red
blood from his body. Note the antithesis, white and red. It will occur
again. If we think of saga and fairy lore parallels, the dragon fight
naturally comes to mind. The victorious hero has to free a maiden who
languishes in the possession of an ogre. The anatomizing of the dead lion
finds numerous analogies in those myths and fairy tales in which
dismemberment of the body appears. It will be dealt with fully later on.

As the next obstacle in the parable we meet the difficult advance on the
wall. (Para. 7 and 8.) We have here again an obstruction to progress in
the narrower sense as in Sec. 1, but with several additions. The wall,
itself a type of embarrassment, reaches up to the clouds. Whoever goes up
so high may fall far. The way on top is “Not a foot in width” and an iron
hand rail occupies some of that space. The walking is therefore
uncomfortable and dangerous. The railing running in the middle of it
divides the path and so produces two paths, a right and a left. The right
path is the more difficult. Who would not in this situation think of
Hercules at the cross roads? The conception of right and left as right and
wrong, good and bad, is familiar in mythical and religious symbolism. That
the right path is the narrower [Matth. VII, 13, 14] or more full of thorns
is naturally comprehensible. In dreams the right-left symbolism is
typical. It has here a meaning similar to its use in religion, probably
however, with the difference that it is used principally with reference to
sexual excitements of such a character that the right signifies a
permitted (i.e., experienced by the dreamer as permissible), the left, an
illicit sexual pleasure. Accordingly it is, e.g., characteristic in the
dream about strawberry picking in the preceding part of the book, that the
valley, sought by the dreamer and the boy, “in order to pick strawberries
there” turns off to the left from the road, not to the right. The sexual
act with a boy appears even in dreams as something illicit, indecent,
forbidden. In the parable the wanderer goes from right to left, gets into
difficulties by doing so, but knows, as always, how to withdraw
successfully.

From the wall the wanderer comes to a rose tree, from which he breaks off
white and red roses. Notice the white and red. The victory over the lion
has yielded him white bones and red blood, the passing through the dangers
on the wall now yields him white and red roses. The similarity in the
latter case is particularly marked by his putting them in his hat.

Again in the course of the next sections (9-11) there are obstacles. There
a wall is set up against the wanderer. On account of that he has, in order
to gain entrance for the maidens into the company in the garden, to go a
long way round. Arriving at the door, he finds it locked and is afraid
that the people standing about will prevent his entrance or laugh at him.
But the first difficulty is barely removed, by the magic opening of the
first gate, when the now familiar change from the anxiety phase to the
fulfillment phase occurs. The wanderer traverses the corridor without
trouble but his eyes glance ahead of him and he sees through the still
closed door, as if it were glass, into the garden. What result has this
success over the difficulties yielded him? Where is the usual white and
red reward? We do not have to look long. In Sec. 11 it is recorded, “When
I had passed beyond the little garden [in the center of the larger garden]
and was going to the place where I was to help the maidens, behold, I was
aware that instead of the wall, a low hurdle stood there, and there went
by the rose garden, the most beautiful maiden arrayed in white satin with
the most stately youth who was in scarlet, each giving arm to the other,
and carrying in their hands many fragrant roses. ‘This, my dearest
bridegroom,’ said she, ‘has helped me over and we are now going out of
this lovely garden into our chamber to enjoy the pleasures of love.’ ”
Here the parallel with the fairy tale is complete, and reveals the
characteristic of the prize that rewards him. The red and the white reveal
themselves as man and woman, and the last aim is, as the just quoted
passage clearly shows, and the further course of the narrative fully
indicates, the sexual union of both. Even the rest of the fairy tale
prizes are not lacking—kingdoms, riches, happiness. And if they are not
dead they are still living.... The narrative has yielded a complete
fulfillment of wishes; the longing for love and power has attained its
end. That the wanderer does not experience the acquired happiness
immediately in his own person, but that the representation of happy love
is in the most illustrative manner developed in the union of two other
persons, is naturally a peculiarity of the narration. It is found often
enough in dreams. The ego of the dreamer is in such a case replaced by a
“split-off” person, through whom the dream evokes its dramatic pageantry.
It is as if the parable tried to say the hero has won his happy love
through struggle; two are, however, needful for love, a man and a woman,
so let us quickly create a pair. Apart from the fact that the reward must
evidently fall to the hero who has won it, the identity of the wanderer
with the king in the parable is abundantly demonstrated, even if somewhat
paraphrased. The secret of the dramatizing craft of the narrative is most
clearly exposed in the conclusion of Sec. 11, where the elders, with the
letter of the faculty in their hands, reveal to the wanderer that he must
marry the woman he has taken, which he furthermore cheerfully promises
them to do.

So far all would be regular and we might think, on superficial
examination, that the psychoanalytic solution of the parable was ended.
How far from being the case! We have interpreted only the upper stratum
and will see a problem show itself that invites us to press on into the
deeper layers of the phantasy fabric before us.

We have noticed that in the parable much, even the most important, is
communicated only by symbols and by means of allusions. Its previously
ascertained latent content [corresponding to the latent dream thoughts]
will in the manifest form be transcribed in different and gradually
diminishing disguises. Also a displacement (dream displacement) has taken
place. Now the dream or the imagination working in dreams does nothing
without purpose and even though according to its nature (out of “regard
for presentability”) it has to favor the visual in all cases, the tendency
toward the pictorial does not explain such a systematic series of
disguises and such a determinate tendency as that just observed by us. The
representation of the union of man and woman is strikingly paraphrased.
First as blood and bones—a type of intimate vital connection; they belong
to _one_ body, just as two lovers are one and as later the bridal pair
also melt into one body. Then as two kinds of roses that bloom on one
bush. The wanderer breaks the rose as the boy does the wild rose maiden.
And hardly is the veil of the previous disguise lifted, hardly have we
learned that the wanderer has taken a woman (Sec. 11), when the affair is
again hushed just as it is about to be dramatized (cf. Sec. 12), so that
apparently another enjoys the pleasures of love. This consequent
concealment must have a reason. Let us not forget the striking obstacles
which the wanderer experiences again and again and which we have not yet
thoroughly examined. The symbolism of the dream tells us that such
obstacles correspond to conflicts of the will. What kind of inner
resistance may it be that checks the wanderer at every step on his way to
happy love? We suspect that the examinations have an ethical flavor. This
appears to some extent in the right-left symbolism; then in the experience
at the mill, which we have not yet studied, where the wanderer has to pass
over a very narrow plank, the ethical symbolism of which will be discussed
later; and in the striking feeling of responsibility which the wanderer
has for the actions of the bridal pair in the crystal prison, which gives
us the impression that he had a bad conscience. Altogether we cannot doubt
that the dream—the parable—has endeavored, because of the censor, to
disguise the sexual experiences of the wanderer. We can be quite certain
that it will be said that the sexual as such will be forbidden by the
censor. That is, however, not the case. The account is outspoken enough,
and not the least prudish; the bridal pair embrace each other naked,
penetrate each other and dissolve in love, melt in rapture and pain. Who
could ask more? Therefore the sexual act itself could not have been
offensive to the censor. The whole machinery of scrupulousness,
concealment and deterrent objects, which stand like dreadful watchmen
before the doors of forbidden rooms, cannot on the other hand be
causeless. So the question arises: What is it that the dream censor in the
most varied forms [lion, dangerous paths, etc.] has so sternly vetoed?

In the strawberry dream related in the preceding section, we have seen
that a paraphrase of the latent dream content appears at the moment when a
form of sexual intercourse, forbidden to the dreamer by the dream censor,
was to be consummated. (Homosexual intercourse.) Most probably in the
parable also there is some form of sexuality rejected by the censor. What
may it be? Nothing indicates a homosexual desire. We shall have to look
for another erotic tendency that departs from the normal. From several
indications we might settle upon exhibitionism. This is, as are almost all
abnormal erotic tendencies, also an element of our normal psychosexual
constitution, but it is, if occurring too prominently, a perversity
against which the censor directs his attacks. The incidents of the parable
that indicate exhibitionism are those where the wanderer sees, through
locked doors (Sec. 10) or walls (Sec. 11), objects that can be interpreted
as sexual symbols. The miraculous sight corresponds to a transferred wish
fulfillment. The supposition that exhibitionism is the forbidden erotic
impulse element that we were looking for is, however, groundless, if we
recollect that these very elements appear most openly in the parable. In
Sec. 14 the wanderer has the freest opportunity to do as he likes. Still
the question arises, what is the prohibited tendency? No very great
constructive ability is required to deduce the answer. The wording of the
parable itself furnishes the information. In Sec. 14 we read, “Now I do
not know what sin these two have committed except that although they were
brother and sister they were so united in love that they could not again
be separated and so, as it were, required to be punished for incest.” And
in another passage (Sec. 13), “After our bridegroom ... with his dearest
bride ... came to the age of marriage, they both copulated at once and I
wondered not a little that this maiden, that yet was supposed to be the
bridegroom’s mother, was still so young.”

The sexual propensity forbidden by the censor is incest. That it can be
mentioned in the parable in spite of the censor is accounted for by the
exceedingly clever and unsuspected bringing about of the suggestion.
Dreams are very adroit in this respect, and the same cleverness
(apparently unconscious on the part of the author) is found in the
parable, which is in every way analogous to the dream. Incest can be
explicitly mentioned, because it is attributed to persons that have
apparently nothing to do with the wanderer. That the king in the crystal
prison is none other than the wanderer himself, we indeed know, thanks to
our critical analysis. The dreamer of the dream does not know it. For him
the king is a different person, who is alone responsible for his actions;
although in spite of the clear disguise, some feeling of responsibility
still overshadows the wanderer, a peculiar feeling that has struck us
before, and now is explained.

Later we shall see that from the beginning of the parable, incest symbols
are in evidence. Darkly hinted at first they are later somewhat more
transparent, and in the very moment when they remove the last veil and
attain a significance intolerable for the censor, exactly at that
psychologic moment the forbidden action is transferred to the other,
apparently strange, person.

A similar process, of course, is the change of situation in the strawberry
dream at the exact moment when the affair begins to seem unpleasant to the
dreamer. This becoming unpleasant can be beautifully followed out in the
parable. The critical transition is found exactly in one of those places
where the representation appears most confused. It is in this way that the
weakest points of the dream surface are usually constituted. Those are the
places where the outer covering is threadbare and exposes a nakedness to
the view of the analyzer.

The critical phase of the parable begins in the 11th section. The elders
consult over a letter from the faculty. The wanderer notices that the
contents concern him and asks, “Gentlemen, does it have to do with me?”
They answer, “Yes, you must marry your woman that you have recently
taken.” Wanderer: “That is no trouble; for I was, so to speak, born [how
subtle!] with her and brought up from childhood with her.” Now the secret
of the incest is almost divulged. But it is at once effectually retracted.
In Sec. 12 we read, “So my previous trouble and toil fell upon me and I
bethought myself that from strange causes [these strange causes are the
dream censor who, ruling in the unconscious, effects the displacements
that follow], it cannot concern me but another that is well known to me
[in truth a well-known other]. Then I see our bridegroom with his bride in
the previous attire going to that place ready and prepared for copulation
and I was highly delighted with it. For I was in great anxiety lest the
affair should concern me.” The anxiety is quite comprehensible. It is just
on account of its appearance that the displacement from the wanderer to
the other person takes place. Further in Sec. 13: “Now after ... our
bridegroom ... with his dearest bride ... came to the age of marriage [The
aim with which the censor performs his duties and effects the dream
displacement is, says Freud (Trdtg., p. 193), ‘to prevent the development
of anxiety or other form of painful affect’.] they both copulated ... and
I wondered not a little that this maiden, that was supposed to be actually
the _mother_ of the bridegroom, was still so young....” Now when the
transfer has taken place, the thought of its being the mother is hazarded;
whereas formerly a mere suggestion of a sister had been offered. Section
14 explicitly mentions incest and even arranges the punishment of the
guilt. In this form the matter can, of course, be contemplated without
troubling the conscience or being further represented pictorially.

The sister, alternating in the narrative with the mother, is only a
preliminary to the latter. As we find that the Œdipus complex [Rather an
attenuation, which occurs frequently, not merely in dream psychology, but
also in modern mythology.] is revived in the parable, let us bring the
latter into still closer relation with the fairy tales and myths to which
we have compared it. The woman sought and battled for by the hero appears,
in its deeper psychological meaning, always to be the mother. The
significance of the incest motive has been discovered on the one hand by
the psychoanalysts (in particular Rank, who has worked over extensive
material), on the other by the investigators of myths. That many modern
mythologists lay most stress in this discovery upon the astral or
meteorological content and do not draw the psychological conclusions is
another matter that will be discussed later. But in passing it may be
noted that the correspondence in the discovered material (motives) is the
more remarkable as it resulted from working in the direction of quite
different purposes.

It is now time to examine the details of the parable in conformity with
the main theme just stated and come to a definite interpretation.
Henceforward we may keep to a chronological order.

The threshold symbolism in the beginning of the parable has already been
given, also the obstacles that are indicative of a psychic conflict. We
might rest satisfied with that, yet a more complete interpretation is
quite possible, in which particular images are shown to be overdetermined.
The way is narrow, overgrown with bushes, and leads to the Pratum
felicitatis. That, according to a typical dream symbolism, is also a part
of the female body. The obstacles in the way we recognize as a recoil from
or impediment to incest; so it is evident that a definite female body,
namely that of the mother, is meant. The penetration leads to the Pratum
felicitatis, to blissful enjoyment. In fairy lore the sojourn in the
forest generally signifies death or the life in the underworld. Wilhelm
Muller, for example, writes, “As symbols of similar significance we have
the transformation into swans or other birds, into flowers, the exposure
in the forest, the life in the glass mountain, in a castle, in the
woods.... All imply death and life in the underworld.” The underworld is,
when regarded mythologically, not only the land where the dead go, but
also whence the living have come; thence for the individual, and in
particular for our wanderer, the uterus of the mother. It is significant
that the wanderer, as he strolls along, ponders over the fall of our first
parents and laments it. The fall of the parents was a sexual sin. That it
was incest besides, will be considered later. The son who sees in his
father his rival for his mother is sorry that the parents belong to each
other. A sexual offense (incest) caused the loss of paradise. The wanderer
enters the paradise, the Pratum felicitatis. [Garden of Joy, Garden of
Peace, Mountain of Joy, etc., are names of paradise. Now it is
particularly noteworthy that the same words can signify the beloved.
(Grimm, D. Mythol., II, pp. 684 ff., Chap. XXV, 781 f.)] The path thither
is not too rough for him (Sec. 2).

In Sec. 3 the wanderer enters his paradise (incest). He finds in the
father an obstacle to his relation with the mother. The elders (splitting
of the person of the father) will not admit him, forbid his entrance into
the college. He himself, the youth is already among them. The younger man,
whose name he knows without seeing his face, is himself. He puts himself
in the place of his father. (The other young man with the black pointed
beard may be an allusion to a quite definite person, intended for a small
circle of readers of the parable, contemporaries of the author. Either the
devil or death may be meant, yet I cannot substantiate this conjecture.)

In the fourth section the examinations begin. First the examination in the
narrower sense of the word. The paternal atmosphere of every examination
has already been emphasized in the passage from Freud quoted above. Every
examination, every exercise is associated with early impressions of
parental commands and punishments. Later (in the treatment of the lion)
the wanderer will turn out to be the questioner, whereas now the elders
are the questioners. In the relation between parent and child questions
play a part that is important from a psychological point of view.
Amazingly early the curiosity of the child turns toward sexual matters.
His desire to know things is centered about the question as to where
babies come from. The uncommunicativeness of the parents causes a
temporary suppression of the great question, which does not, however,
cease to arouse his intense desire for explanation. The dodging of the
issue produces further a characteristic loss of trust on the part of the
child, an ironic questioning, or a feeling that he knows better. The
knowing better than the questioning father we see in the wanderer. The
tables are turned. Instead of the child desiring (sexual) explanation from
the parents, the father must learn from the child (fulfillment of the wish
to be himself the father, as above). The elders are acquainted only with
figurative language (“Similitudines,” “Figmenta,” etc.); but the wanderer
is well informed in practical life, in experience he is an adept. As a
fact, parents in their indefiniteness about the question, Where do babies
come from? give a figurative answer (however appropriate it may be as a
figure of speech) in saying that the stork brings them, while the child
expects clear information (from experience). On the propriety of the
picturesque information that the stork brings the babies out of the water
we may note incidentally the following observations of Kleinpaul. The
fountain is the mother’s womb, and the red-legged stork that brings the
babies is none other than a humorous figure for the organ (phallus) with
the long neck like a goose or a stork, that actually gets the little
babies out of the mother’s body. We understand also that the stork has
bitten Mamma in the “leg.”

We have become acquainted above with the fear of impotence as one
significance of the anxiety about examinations. Psychosexual obstructions
cause impotence. The incest scruple is such an obstruction.

According to Laistner we can conceive the painful examination as a
question torture—a typical experience of the hero in countless myths.
Laistner, starting from this central motive, traces the majority of myths
back to the incubus dream. The solution of the tormenting riddle, the
magic word that banishes the ghost, is the cry of awakening, by which the
sleeper is freed from the oppressing dream, the incubus. The prototype of
the tormenting riddle propounder is, according to Laistner, the Sphinx.
Sphinx, dragon, giants, man eaters, etc., are analogous figures in myths.
They are what afflict the heroes, and what he has to battle with. The
corresponding figure in our parable is the lion.

Although the wanderer has brilliantly stood the test, the elders (Sec. 5)
do not admit him into their college (the motive of denial recurs later);
but enter him for the battle with the lion. This is surely a
personification of the same obstructions as the elders themselves. In them
we have, so to speak, before us the dragon (to be subdued) in a plural
form. Analogous multiplying of the dragon is found, for example, in
Stucken [in the astral myth]. Typical dragon fighters are Jason, Joshua,
Samson, Indra; and their dragon enemies are multitudes like the armed men
from the sowing of the dragon’s teeth by Jason, the Amorites for Joshua,
the Philistines in the case of Samson, the Dasas in that of Indra. We know
that for the wanderer the assemblage of elders is to be conceived chiefly
as the father, and the same is true now of the lion (king of animals,
royal beast, also in hermetic sense) who has as lion been already
appropriated to the father symbol. Kaiser, king, giants, etc., are wont in
dreams to represent the father. Accordingly large animals, especially wild
beasts or beasts of prey, are accustomed to appear in dreams with this
significance.

Stekel [Spr. Tr.] contributes the following dream of the patient Omicron:
“I was at home. My family had preserved a dead bear. His head was of wood
and out of his belly grew a mighty tree, which looked very old. Around the
animal’s neck was a chain. I pulled at it, and afterwards was afraid that
I had possibly choked him, in spite of the fact that he was long dead.”

And the following interpretation of it derived through analysis: “The bear
is a growler, i.e., his father, who has told him many a lie about the
genesis of babies. He reviles him for it. He was a blockhead, he had a
wooden head. The mighty tree is the phallus. The chain is marriage. He was
a henpecked husband, a tamed bear. Mother held him by the chain. This
chain (the bond ? of marriage) Omicron desired to sunder. (Incest
thoughts.) When the father died Omicron held his hand over his father’s
mouth to find out whether he was still breathing. Then he was pursued by
compulsive ideas, that he had killed his father. In dreams the same
reproaches appear. We realize how powerful his murder impulses were. His
reproaches are justified. For he had countless death wishes that were
centered about that most precious life.”

A girl not yet six years old told her mother the following dream:

“We went together, there we saw a camel on a rock, and you climbed up the
cliff. The camel wanted to keep slobbering you, but you wouldn’t let him,
and said, ‘I’d like to do it, but if you are like this, I won’t do it.’ ”

After the telling of the dream the mother asked the girl if she could
imagine what the camel signified in the dream, and she immediately
replied: “Papa, because he has to drag along and worry himself like a
camel. You know, Mamma, when he wants to slobber you it is as if he said
to you in camel talk, ‘Please play with me. I will marry you; I won’t let
you go away.’ The rocks on which you are were steep, the path was quite
clear, but the railing was very dirty and there was a deep abyss, and a
man slipped over the railing into the abyss. I don’t know whether it was
Uncle or Papa.”

Stekel remarks on this: “The neurotic child understands the whole conflict
of the parents. The mother refused the father coitus. In this she will not
‘play’ with the camel. The camel wants to ‘marry’ her. It is quite
puzzling how the child knows that Mamma has long entertained thoughts of
separation.... Children evidently observe much more sharply and exactly
than we have yet suspected. The conclusion of the dream is a quite
transparent symbolism of coitus. But the dream thoughts go deeper yet. A
man falls into an abyss. The father goes on little mountain expeditions.
Does the child wish that the father may fall? The father treats the child
badly and occasionally strikes her unjustly. At all events it is to be
noted that the little puss says to her mother, ‘Mamma, isn’t it true that
when Papa dies you will marry Dr. Stekel?’ Another time she chattered,
‘You know, Mamma, Dr. N. is nicer than Papa; he would suit you much
better.’ Also the antithesis of clean and dirty, that later plays such an
important part in the psychic life of neurotics, is here indicated.”

Not only the camel but also the railing and the abyss are interesting in
relation to Sec. 7 and 8 of the parable, where occurs the perilous wall
with the railing. People fall down there. There is evidently here an
intimate primitive symbolism (for the child also). But I will not
anticipate.

It is not necessary to add anything to the bear dream. It is quite clear.
Only one point must be noticed, that the subsequent concern about the dead
is to be met in the parable, though not on the wanderer’s part but on that
of the elders who desire the reviving of the lion.

The wanderer describes the lion (Sec. 6) as “old, fierce and large.” (The
growling bear of the dream.) The glance of his eye is the impressively
reproachful look of the father.

The wanderer conquers the lion and “dissects” him. Red blood, white bones,
come to view, male and female; the appearance of the two elements is, at
any rate overdetermined in meaning as it signifies on the one hand the
separation of a pair, father and mother, originally united as one body;
and on the other hand the liberation of sexuality in the mind of the
wanderer (winning of the mother or of the dragon-guarded maiden).

We ought not to explain the figures of the lion and the elders as “the
father.” Such exalted figures are usually condensations or composite
persons. The elders are not merely the father, but also the old, or the
older ones = parents in general, in so far as they are severe and
unapproachable. Apparently the mother also will prove unapproachable if
the adult son desires her as a wife. [The male child, on the other hand,
frequently has erotic experiences with the mother. The parents connive at
these, because they do not understand the significance even of their own
caresses. They generally do not know how to fix the limits between
moderation and excess.] The wanderer has no luck with blandishments in the
case of the lion. He begins indeed to fondle him (cf. Sec. 6), but the
lion looks at him formidably with his bright, shining eyes. He is not
obliging; the wanderer has to struggle with him. Offering violence to the
mother often appears in myths. We shall have an example of this later. It
is characteristic that the wanderer is amazed at his own audacity.

Dragon fighting, dismembering, incest, separation of parents, and still
other motives have an intimate connection in mythology. I refer to the
comparison of motives collected by Stucken from an imposing array of
material. [I quote an excerpt from it at the end of this volume, Note A.]
The motive of dismemberment has great significance for the subsequent
working out of my theme, so I must for that reason delay a little longer
at this point.

The parts resulting from the dismemberment have a sexual or procreative
value. That is evident from the analysis of the parable, even without the
support of mythological parallels. None the less let it be noticed that
many cosmogonies assign the origin of the universe or at least the world
or its life to the disintegrated parts of the body of a great animal or
giant. In the younger Edda the dismemberment of the giant Ymir is
recounted.

    “From Ymir’s flesh was the earth created,
    From his sweat the sea,
    From his skeleton the mountains, the trees from his hair,
    From his skull the heavens,
    From his eyebrows kindly Äses made
    Mitgard, the son of man.
    But from his brain were created all the ill-tempered clouds.”

The Iranian myth has an ancestor bull, Abudad. “From his left side goes
Goschorum, his soul, and rises to the starry heavens; from his right side
came forth Kajomorts (Gâyômard), the first man. Of his seed the earth took
a third, but the moon two thirds. From his horns grew the fruits, from his
nose, leeks, from his blood, grapes, from his tail, five and twenty kinds
of grain. From his purified seed two new bulls were formed, from which all
animals are descended.” Just as in the Iranian myth the original being,
Gâyômard, considered as human, and the ancestor bull belong together, so
we find in the northern myth a cow Audhumla associated with Ymir. Ymir is
to be regarded as androgynous (man and woman), the primitive cow as only a
doubling of his being. The Iranian primitive bull ancestor also occurs as
cow. Compare white and red, male and female, in the body of the lion.

In the Indian Asvamedha the parts of the sacrificed steed correspond to
the elements of the visible creation. (Cf. Brhadaranyaka—Upanisad I, i.) A
primitive vedic cosmogony makes the world arise from the parts of the body
of a giant. (Rig-veda purusa-sukta.)

Just as from the dead primordial being the sacrificed bull, Mithra,
sprouts life and vegetation, so in the dream of Omicron, a tree grows out
of the belly of the dead bear. In mythology many trees grow out of graves,
that in some way reincarnate the creative or life principle of the dead.
It is an interesting fact that the world, or especially an improved new
edition of the world, comes from the body of a dying being. Some one kills
this being and so causes an improved creation. (According to Stucken,
incidentally, all myths are creation myths.) This improvement is now
identical, psychologically, with the above mentioned superior knowledge of
the son (expressed in general terms, the present new generation as opposed
to the ancestors). The son does away with the father (the children
overpower the ancestors), and creates, as it were out of the wreckage, an
improved world. So, beside the superior knowledge, a superior efficiency.
The primordial beings are destroyed but not so the creative power
(phallus, tree, the red and the white). It passes on to posterity (son)
which uses it in turn.

Dismemberments in creation myths are not always multiple but sometimes
dichotomous. Thus in the Babylonian cosmogony Marduk splits the monster
Tiamat into two pieces, which henceforth become the upper and lower half
of heaven. Winckler concludes that Tiamat is man-woman (primal pair). This
brings us to the type of creation saga where the producer of the
(improved) world separates the primal pair, his parents. The Chinese
creation myth speaks of the archaic Chaos as an effervescing water, in
which the two powers, Yang (heaven) and Yin (earth), the two primal
ancestors, are mingled and united. Pwanku, an offshoot of these primal
powers (son of the parents), separates them and thus they become manifest.
In the Egyptian myth we read (in Maspero, Histoire des Peuples de
l’Orient, Stucken, Astral Myth, p. 203): “The earth and the heaven were in
the beginning a pair of lovers lost in the Now who held each other in
close embrace, the god below the goddess. Now on the day of creation a new
god [son type], Shou, came out of the eternal waters, glided between them
and seizing Nouit [the goddess] with his hands, lifted her at arms’ length
above his head. While the starry bust of the goddess was lengthened out in
space, the head to the west, the loins to the east, and became the sky,
her feet and her hands [as the four pillars of heaven] fell here and there
on our earth.” The young god or the son pushes his way between the
parents, sunders their union, just as the dreamer Omicron would have liked
to sunder the chain of the bear (the marriage bond of the parents). This
case is quite as frequent a type in analytic psychology as in mythical
cosmology. The child is actually an intruder, even if it does indirectly
draw the bonds of marriage tighter. Fundamentally regarded, the child
appears as the rival of the father, who is no longer the only beloved one
of his wife. He must share the love with the new comer, to whom an even
greater tenderness is shown. Regarded from the standpoint of the growing
son, the intrusion represents the Œdipus motive (with the incest wish).

The most outspoken and also a commonly occurring form of the mythological
separation of the primal pair is the castration of the father by the son.
The motive is, according to all accounts, psychologically quite as
comprehensible as the frequently substituted castration of the son by the
father. The latter is psychologically the necessary correlate of the first
form. The rivals, father and son, menace each other’s sexual life. That
the castration motive works out that way with father and son (son-in-law
if the daughter takes the place of the mother) is expressed either in so
many words in the myth or through corresponding displacement types.

A clear case is the emasculation of Uranus by his son Kronos, who thereby
prevents the further cohabitation of the primal parents. [Archetype of the
Titan motive in a narrow sense.] Important for us is the fact that
castration in myths is represented sometimes as the tearing out of a limb
or by complete dismemberment. (Stucken, Astral Myth, pp. 436, 443, 479,
638 ff.; Rank, Incest Motive, p. 311 ff.)

The Adam myth also contains the motive of the separated primal parents. In
Genesis we do not, of course, see the myth in its pure form. It must first
be rehabilitated. Stucken accomplishes this in regarding Adam and Eve
(Hawwa) as the original world-parent pair, and Jahwe Elohim as the
separating son god. By a comparison of Adam and Noah he incidentally
arrives by analogical reasoning at an emasculation of Adam. In connection
with the “motive of the sleeping primal father,” he observes later (Astral
Myth, p. 224) that the emasculation (or the shameless deed, Ham with Noah)
is executed while the primal father lies asleep. Thus, Kronos emasculates
Uranus by night while he is sleeping with Gaia. Stucken now shows that the
sleep motive is contained in the 2d chapter of Genesis. “And the Lord God
caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of
his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof.” (II, 21.) According to
Stucken the rib stands euphemistically for the organ of generation, which
is cut off from Adam while he sleeps.

Rank works out another kind of rearrangement. He takes the creation of Eve
from Adam as an inversion. He refers to the ever recurring world-parent
myths of savage peoples, in which the son begets upon the mother a new
generation. He cites after Frobenius a story from Joruba, Africa, where
the son and daughter of the world parents marry and have a son, who falls
in love with his mother. As she refuses to yield to his passion he follows
and overpowers her. She immediately jumps up and runs away crying. The son
follows her to soothe her, and when he catches her she falls sprawling on
the earth, her body begins to swell, two streams of water spring from her
breasts and her body falls in pieces. Fifteen gods spring from her
disrupted body. [Motive of the mutilation of the maternal body. The
dismembered lion also naturally contains this motive. From the mutilated
body come male and female (red and white) children.] Rank supposes that
the biblical account of the world parents serves as a mask for incest (and
naturally at the same time the symbolic accomplishment of the incest). He
continues, “It is needed only that the infantile birth theory [Birth from
anus, navel, etc. The taking of the rib = birth process.] which ignores
the sexual organs in woman and applies to both sexes, be raised in the
child’s thought to the next higher grade of knowledge, which ascribes to
the woman alone the ability to bring children into the world by the
opening of her body. In opposition to the biblical account we have the
truly natural process, according to which Adam came out of the opened body
of Eve. If by analogy with other traditions, we may take this as the
original one, it is clear that Adam has sexual intercourse with his
mother, and that the disguising of this shocking incest furnished the
motive for the displacement of the saga and for the symbolic
representation of its contents.” The birth from the side of the body, from
the navel, from the anus, etc., are among children common theories of
birth. In myths analogous to the biblical apple episode the man almost
always offers the apple to the woman. The biblical account is probably an
inversion. The apple is an apple of love and an impregnation symbol.
Impregnation by food is also an infantile procreation theory. For Rank,
therefore, it is Adam who is guilty of separating the primal parents
[Jahwe and Hawwa] and of incest with the mother. The contrast between the
two preceding conceptions of the Adam myth should not be carried beyond
limits. That they can stand side by side is the more conceivable because
Genesis itself is welded together from heterogeneous parts and different
elaborations of the primal pair motive. Displacements, inversions, and
therefore apparent contradictions must naturally lie in such a material.
Moreover, the interpretation depends not so much on the narrative of the
discovered motives as on the motives themselves. [On the interpretation of
the mythological motives cf. Lessmann, Aufg. u. Ziele, p. 12.]

Let us return now to the motive of dismemberment. One of the best known
examples of dismemberment in mythology is that of Osiris. Osiris and Isis,
the brother and sister, already violently in love with each other in their
mother’s womb, as the myth recounts, copulated with the result that
Arueris was born of the unborn. So the two gods came into the world as
already married brother and sister. Osiris traversed the earth, bestowing
benefits on mankind. But he had a bad brother, full of jealousy and envy,
Typhon (Set), who would gladly have taken advantage of the absence of his
brother to place himself on his throne. Isis, who ruled during the absence
of Osiris, acted so vigorously and resolutely that all his evil designs
were frustrated. Finally Osiris returned and Typhon, with a number of
confederates (the number varies) and with the Ethiopian queen Aso, formed
a conspiracy against the life of Osiris, and in feigned friendship
arranged a banquet. He had, however, caused a splendid coffin to be made,
and as they sat gayly at the feast, Typhon had it brought in, and offered
to give it to the person whose body would fit it. He had secretly taken
the measure of Osiris and had prepared the coffin accordingly. All tried
it in turn. None fitted. Finally Osiris lay in it. Then Typhon and his
confederates rushed up, closed it and threw it into the river, which
carried it to the sea. (Creuzer, L., p. 259 ff.) For the killing of his
brother Set, which happened according to the original version on account
of desire for power, later tradition substitutes an unconscious incest
which Osiris committed with his second sister, Nephthys, the wife of Set,
a union from which sprang Anubis (the dog-headed god). Set and Nephthys
are, according to H. Schneider, apparently no originally married brother
and sister like Osiris and Isis, but may have been introduced by way of
duplication, in order to account for the war between Osiris and his
brother. With the help of Anubis, Isis finds the coffin, brings it back to
Egypt, opens it in seclusion and gives way to her tender feelings and
sorrow for him. Thereupon she hides the coffin with the body in a thicket
in the forest in a lonely place. A hunt which the wild hunter Typhon
arranges, discovers the coffin. Typhon cuts the body into fourteen pieces.
Isis soon discovers the loss and searches in a papyrus canoe for the
dismembered body of Osiris, traveling through all the seven mouths of the
Nile, till she finally has found thirteen pieces. Only one is lacking, the
phallus, which had been carried out to sea and swallowed by a fish. She
put the pieces together and replaced the missing male member by another
made of sycamore wood and set up the phallus for a memento (as a
sanctuary). With the help of her son Horus, who, according to later
traditions, was begotten by Osiris after his death, Isis avenged the
murder of her spouse and brother. Between Horus and Set, who originally
were brothers themselves, there arises a bitter war, in which each tore
from the other certain parts of the body as strength-giving amulets. Set
knocked an eye out of his opponent and swallowed it, but lost at the same
time his own genitals (testicles), which in the original version were
probably swallowed by Horus. Finally Set was overcome and compelled to
give up Horus’ eye, with the help of which Horus again revivified Osiris
so that he could enter the kingdom of the dead as a ruler.

The dismemberment, with final loss of the phallus, will be clearly
recognized as a castration. The tearing out of the eye is similarly to be
regarded as emasculation. This motive is found as self-punishment for
incest, at the close of the Œdipus drama. On the dismemberment of Osiris
as a castration, Rank writes (Inz. Mot., p. 311): “The characteristic
phallus consecration of Isis shows us that her sorrow predominantly
concerns the loss of the phallus, (and it also is expressed in the fact
that according to a later version, she is none the less in a mysterious
manner impregnated by her emasculated spouse), so on the other hand the
conduct of the cruel brother shows us that in the dismemberment he was
particularly interested in the phallus, since that indeed was the only
thing not to be found, and had evidently been hidden with special
precautionary measures. Indeed both motivations appear closely united in a
version cited by Jeremias (Babylonisches in N. T., p. 721), according to
which Anubis, the son of the adulterous union of Osiris with his sister
Nephthys, found the phallus of Osiris, dismembered by Typhon with 27
assistants, which Isis had hidden in the coffin. Only in this manner could
the phallus from which the new age originated, escape from Typhon. If this
version clearly shows that Isis originally had preserved in the casket the
actual phallus of her husband and brother which had been made
incorruptible and not merely a wooden one, then on the other hand the
probability increases that the story originally concerns emasculation
alone because of the various weakening and motivating attempts that meet
us in the motive of the dismemberment.”

In the form of the Osiris saga the dismemberment appears, however, not
merely as emasculation. More clearly recognizable is also the separation
of the primal parents, the dying out of the primal being resulting in a
release of the primal procreative power for a fresh world creation. It is
a very interesting point that in one of the versions a mighty tree grows
out of the corpse of Osiris. Later on we become acquainted for the first
time with the potent motive of the restoration of the dismembered one, the
revivification of the dead.

For example, in the Finnish epic, Kalevala, Nasshut throws the
Lemminkainen into the waters of the river of the dead. Lemminkainen was
dismembered, but his mother fished out the pieces, one of which was
missing, put them together and brought them to life in her womb. According
to Stucken’s explanation we recognize in Nasshut a father image, in
Lemminkainen a son image. In the tradition no relationship between them is
mentioned. That is, however, a “Differentiation and attenuation of traits,
which is common in every myth-maker.” (S. A. M., p. 107.)

In the Edda it is recounted “that Thor fared forth with his chariot and
his goats and with him the Ase, called Loki. They came at evening to a
peasant and found shelter with him. At night Thor took his goats and slew
them; thereupon they were skinned and put into a kettle. And when they
were boiled Thor sat down with his fellow travelers to supper. Thor
invited the peasant and his wife and two children to eat with him. The
peasant’s son was called Thialfi and the daughter Roskwa. Then Thor laid
the goats’ skins near the hearth and said that the peasant and his family
should throw the bones onto the skins. Thialfi, the peasant’s son, had the
thigh bone of one goat and cut it in two with his knife to get the marrow.
Thor stayed there that night, and in the morning he got up before dawn,
dressed, took the hammer, Miolner, and lifted it to consecrate the goats’
skins. Thereupon the goats stood up; but one of them was lame in the hind
leg. He noticed it and said that the peasant or some of his household must
have been careless with the goats’ bones, for he saw that a thigh bone was
broken.” We are especially to note here that the hammer is a phallic
symbol.

In fairy tales the dismemberments and revivifications occur frequently.
For example, in the tale of the Juniper Tree [Machandelboom] (Grimm, K. H.
M., No. 47), a young man is beheaded, dismembered, cooked and served up to
his father to be eaten. The father finds the dish exceptionally good. On