Chapter 5

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 asking for his son he is answered that the youth has gone to visit relatives. The father throws all the bones under the table. They are collected by the sister, wrapped in a bit of cloth and laid under the juniper tree. The soul of the boy soared in the air as a bird and was afterward translated into a living youth. The Grimm brothers introduce as a parallel: “The collection of the bones occurs in the myths of Osiris and Orpheus, and in the legend of Adelbert; the revivification in many others, e.g., in the tale of Brother Lustig (K. H. M., No. 81), of Fichter’s Vogel (No. 46), in the old Danish song of the Maribo-Spring, in the German saga of the drowned child, etc.” Moreover, W. Mannhardt (Germ. Mythen., pp. 57-75) has collected numerous sagas and fairy tales of this kind, in which occur the revivifications of dismembered cattle, fish, goats, rams, birds, and men.

The gruesome meal in the story of the juniper tree reminds us of the Tantalus story and the meal of Thyestes. Demeter (or Thetes) ate a shoulder of the dismembered Pelops, who was set before the gods by his father Tantalus, and the shoulder, after he was brought to life again, was replaced by an ivory one. In a story from the northeastern Caucasus, a chamois similarly dismembered and brought to life, like Thor’s goats, gets an artificial shoulder (of wood).

For the purpose of being brought to life again the parts of the dismembered animal are regularly put in a vessel or some container (kettle, box, cloth, skin). In the case of the kettle, which corresponds to the belly or uterus, they are generally cooked. Thus in the tale of the juniper tree, the magic rejuvenations of Medea, which—except in the version mentioning the magic potion—she practices on Jason and Æson, and also on goats (cf. Thor and his goats). I must quote still other pertinent observations of Rank (p. 313 ff). The motive of revivification, most intimately connected with dismemberment, appears not only in a secondary rôle to compensate for the killing, but represents as well simple coming to life, i.e., birth. Rank believes that coming to life again applies originally to a dissected snake (later other animals, chiefly birds), in which we easily recognize the symbolical compensation for the phallus of the Osiris story, excised and unfit for procreation, which can be brought to life again by means of the water of life. “The idea that man himself at procreation or at birth is assembled from separate parts, has found expression not only in the typical widespread sexual theories of children, but in countless stories (e.g., Balzac’s Contes drolatiques) and mythical traditions. Of special interest to us is the antique expression communicated by Mannhardt (Germ. Myth., p. 305), which says of a pregnant woman that she has a belly full of bones,” which strikingly suggests the feature emphasized in all traditions that the bones of the dismembered person are thrown on a heap, or into a kettle (belly) or wrapped in a cloth. [Even the dead Jesus, who is to live again, is enveloped in a cloth. In several points he answers the requirements of the true rejuvenation myth. The point is also made that the limbs that are being put in the cloth must be intact, so that the resurrection may be properly attained (as in a bird story where the dead bird’s bones must be carefully preserved). The incompleteness (stigmata) also appears after the resurrection.

John XIX, 33. “But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs.”—40 f. “Then took they the body of Jesus and wound it in linen cloths with the spices.... Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new sepulcher, wherein was never man yet laid.”

We shall mention later the significance of garden and grave. It supports that of the cloths.]

Rank considers that the circumstance that the dismembered person or animal resurrected generally lacks a member, points without exception to castration.

What he has said about dismemberment we can now sum up with reference to the lion in the parable in the formulae: Separation of parents; the pushing aside of the father; castration of father; taking his place; liberation of the power of procreation; improvement. In its bearing on the incest wish, castration is indeed the best translation of the “anatomizing” of the lion. The dragon fighter has to release a woman. The idea that the mother is in need of being released, and that it is a good deed to free her from her oppressor, father, is according to the insight of psychoanalysis a typical element of those unconscious phantasies of mankind, which are stamped deeply with the greatest significance in the imaginative “family romance” of neurotics. To the typical dragon fight belongs, however (according to Stucken’s correct formulation), the motive of denial. As a matter of fact the hero of our parable is denied the prize set before him—the admission into the college—for several of the elders insist on the condition that the wanderer must resuscitate the lion (Sec. 7). In myths where the dragon has to fight with a number of persons this difference generally occurs: that he produces dissension among his opponents. (Jason throws a stone among the men of the dragon’s teeth, they fight about the stone and lay each other low.) Dissension occurs also among the old men. They turned (Sec. 7) “fiercely on each other” if only with words.

The wanderer removes, as it were, an obstacle by the fight, tears down a wall or a restraint. This symbol occurs frequently in dreams; flying or jumping over walls has a similar meaning. The wanderer was carried as if in flight to the top of the wall. Then first returns the hesitation. The symbolism of the two paths, right and left, has already been mentioned. The man that precedes the wanderer (Sec. 7 and 8) may be quite properly taken as the father image; once, at any rate, because the wanderer finds himself on the journey to the mother (that is indeed the trend of the dream) and on this path the father is naturally the predecessor. The father is, however, the instructor, too, held up as an example and as a model for choosing the right path. The father follows the right path to the mother also; he is the lawful husband. The son can reach her only on the left path. This he takes, still for the purpose of making things better. Some one follows the wanderer on the other side (Sec. 8), whether man or woman is not known. The father image in front of the wanderer is his future for he will occupy his father’s place. The Being behind him is surely the past, the careless childhood, that has not yet learned the difference between man and woman. It does not take the difficult right way, but quite intelligibly, the left. The wanderer himself turns back to his childish irresponsibility; he takes the left path. The many people that fall down may be a foil to illustrate the dangers of the path, for the purpose of deepening the impression of improvement. Phantasies of extraordinary abilities, special powers; contrasts to the anxiety of examinations; all these in the case of the wanderer mark the change from apprehension to fulfillment. We must not fail to recognize the element of desire for honor; it will be yet described. In view of myth motives reported by Stucken, the entire wall episode is to be conceived as a magic flight; the people that fall off are the pursuers.

At the beginning of the ninth section of the parabola, the wanderer breaks red and white roses from the rosebush and sticks them in his hat. Red-white we already know as sexuality. The breaking off of flowers, etc., in dreams generally signifies masturbation; common speech also knows this as “pulling off” or “jerking off.” In the symbolism of dreams and of myths the hat is usually the phallus. This fact alone would be hardly worth mentioning, but there are also other features that have a similar significance. The fear of impotence points to autoerotic components in the psychosexual constitution of the wanderer (of course not clearly recognized as such), which is shown as well in the anxiety about ridicule and disgrace that awaken ambition. This is clearest in the paragraphs 6, 10, 14, of the parable. That the masturbatory symbol precedes the subsequent garden episode, can be understood if we realize that the masturbation phantasy (which has an enormous psychic importance) animates or predetermines the immediately following incest.

The wall about the garden that makes the long detour necessary (Sec. 9) is as we know the resistance. Overcoming the resistance = going round the wall, removal of the wall. Of course, after the completion of the detour there is no wall. The wall, however, signifies also the inaccessibility or virginity of the woman. The wall surrounds a garden. The garden is, however (apart from the paradise symbolism derived from it), one of the oldest and most indubitable symbols for the female body.

“Maiden shall I go with you In your rose garden, There where the roses stand The delicate and the tender; And a tree nearby That moves its leaves, And a cool spring That lies just under it.”

Without much change the same symbolism is found in stately form in the Melker Marienlied of the 12th century. (See Jung, Jb. ps. F., IV, S. 398 ff.)

Sainted Mary Closed gate Opened by God’s word— Sealed fountain, Barred garden, Gate of Paradise.

Note also the garden, roses and fountains in the Song of Solomon.

The wanderer wishes to possess his mother as an unravished bride. Also a feature familiar to psychoanalysis. The generally accompanying antithesis is the phantasy that the mother is a loose woman = attainable, sexually alluring woman. Perhaps this idea will also be found in the parable.

The young people of both sexes, separated by a wall, do not come together because they are afraid of the distant detour to the door. This can, with a little courage, be translated: The auto-erotic satisfaction is easier.

[C G. Jung writes (Jb. ps. F., IV, p. 213 ff): “Masturbation is of inestimable importance psychologically. One is guarded from fate, since there is no sexual need of submitting to any one, life and its difficulties. With masturbation one has in his hands the great magic. He needs only to imagine and in addition to masturbate and he possesses all the pleasures of the world and is under no compulsion to conquer the world of his desire through hard work and struggle with reality. Aladdin rubs his lamp and the slaves come at his bidding; this story expresses the great psychologic gain in local sexual satisfaction through facile regression.” Jung applies to masturbation the motive of the dearly won prize and that of the stealing of fire. He even appears to derive in some way the use of fire from masturbation. In this at any rate I cannot follow him.]

On his detour the wanderer (who desires to reach the portal of woman) meets people who are alone in the rooms and carry on dirty work. Dirt and masturbation are wont to be closely associated psychically. The dirty work is “only appearance and individual fantasy,” and “has no foundation in Nature.” The wanderer knows that “such practices vanish like smoke.” He has done it himself before and now he will have nothing more to do with it. He aspires to a woman, that the work done alone leads to nothing is connected with the fact that the work of two is useful. But “dirty work” is also to be understood as sensual enjoyment without love.

In paragraph 10 we again meet the already mentioned symbolism of the walled garden. The wanderer is the only one that can secure admission to the maiden. After a fear of impotence (anxiety about disgrace) he goes resolutely to the door and opens it with his Diederich, which sticks into a narrow, hardly visible opening (deflowering). He “knows the situation of the place,” although he has never been there before. I mean that once, before he was himself, he was there in the body of his mother. What follows suggests a birth fantasy as these occur in dreams of being born. The wanderer now actually takes part in being born in reverse direction. I append several dreams about being born.

“I find myself on a very narrow stairway, leading down in turns; a winding stairway. I turn and push through laboriously. Finally I find a little door that leads me into the open, on a green meadow, where I rest in soft luxuriant bushes. The warm sunshine was very pleasant.”

F. S. dreams: “In the morning I went to work with my brother (as we went the same road) in the Customs House Street. Before the customs house I saw the head postillion standing. From it the way led to a street between two wooden walls; the way appeared very long and seemed to get narrower toward the end and indeed so close that I was afraid that we would not get through. I went out first, my brother behind me; I was glad when I got out of the passage and woke with a beating heart.” Addenda. “The way was very dark, more like a mine. We couldn’t see, except in the distance the end, like a light in a mine shaft. I closed my eyes.” Stekel notes on the dreams of F. S.: “The dream is a typical birth dream. The head postillion is the father. The dreamer wants to reverse the birth relations of his brother who is ten years older than he. ‘I went out first, my brother after me.’ ”

Another beautiful example in Stekel: “Inter faeces et urinas nascimur.” [We are born between faeces and urine] says St. Augustine. Mr. F. Z. S. contributes an account of his birth which strongly reminds us of the sewer-theory.

“I went into the office and had to pass a long, narrow, uneven alley. The alley was like a long court between two houses and I had the indefinite feeling that there was no thoroughfare. Yet I hurried through. Suddenly a window over me opened and some one, I believe a female, spilled the wet contents of a vessel on me. My hat was quite wet and afterwards I looked at it closer and still noticed the traces of a dirty gray liquid. Nevertheless, I went on without stopping, and quickened my steps. At the end of the alley I had to go through the house that was connected by the alley with the other. Here I found an establishment (inn?) that I passed. In this establishment were people (porters, servants, etc.) engaged in moving heavy pieces of furniture, etc., as if these were being moved out or rearranged. I had to be careful and force my way through. Finally I came to the open on a street and looked for an electric. Then I saw on a path that went off at an angle, a man whom I took for an innkeeper who was occupied in measuring or fastening a hedge or a trellis. I did not know exactly what he was doing. He was counting or muttering and was so drunk that he staggered.”

Stekel: “In this dream are united birth and effects of the forbidden or unpermissible. The dreamer goes back over the path—evidently as an adult. The experiences represent an accusation against the mother. This accusation was not without reason. Mr. F. Z. S. had a joyless childhood. His mother was a heavy drinker. He witnessed her coitus with strangers. (Packing up = coitus.) The packers and porters are the strange men who visited his inn (his mother was also his nurse) in order to store heavy objects, etc. Finally he was obstructed in his birth, for a man is occupied in measuring. The father was a surveyor (the innkeeper). In the dream, furthermore, he was measuring a trellis-fence. Both trellis and hedge are typical dream symbols of obstacles to copulation.”

Comparing Sections 10 and 11 of the parable carefully with the contents of this dream, we find astonishing correspondences. Notice the details, e.g., the rosebushes, the sun, the rain, the hedge. On the “well builded house” of Section 10, I shall only remark that Scherner has noticed in this connection that the human body represents a building. “Well built house” signifies “beautiful body.”

If we remember that the wanderer reverses the way of birth, we shall not be surprised that he finds a smaller garden in the larger. That is probably the uterus. The wanderer attains the most intimate union with his ideal, the mother, in imagining himself in her body. This phantasy is continued still less ambiguously,—but I do not wish to anticipate. Be it only said: He possesses his mother as a spouse and as a child; it is as if in the desire to do everything better than his father he desires to beget himself anew. We already know the mythological motives of new creation, that should follow the forcible separation of the parents and that we have not yet noticed in the parable. Shall the better world still be created, the dismembered paternal power be renewed, the lion again be brought to life?

The rectangular place in the garden suggests a grave. A wall in a dream means, among other things, a cemetery wall and the garden, a cemetery. And widely as these ideas may be contrasted with the lifegiving mother’s womb, they yet belong psychologically in very close connection with her. And perhaps not only psychologically.

Stekel tells a dream of Mrs. Delta in which occurs “an open square space, a garden or court. In the corner stood a tree, that slowly sinks before our eyes as if it were sinking in water. As the tree and the court also made swinging motions, I cleverly remarked, ‘Thus we see how the change in the earth’s surface takes place.’ ” The topmost psychic stratum of the dream reveals itself as an earthquake reminiscence. “Earth” leads to the idea of “Mother Earth.” The tree sinking into it, is the tree of life, the phallus. The rectangular space is the bedroom, the marriage bed. The swinging motions characterize the whole picture still better. The earthquake, however, contains, as is found in the analysis, death thoughts also. The rectangular space becomes a grave. Even the water of the dream deserves notice. “Babies come out of the water,” says an infantile theory of procreation. We learn later that the fœtus floats in amniotic liquor. This “water” lies naturally in “Mother Earth.” In contrast we have the water of the dead (river of the dead, islands of the dead, etc.). Both waters are analogous in the natural symbolism. It is the mythical abode of the people not yet, or no longer, to be found in the world.

As water will appear again at important points in the parable, I will dwell a little longer on that topic.

Little children come out of Holla’s fountain, there are in German districts a number of Holla wells or Holla springs (Holla brunn?) with appropriate legends. Women, we are told, who step into those springs become prolific. Mullenhof tells of an old stone fountain in Flensburg, which is called the Grönnerkeel. Its clear, copious water falls out of four cocks into a wide basin and supplies a great part of the city. The Flensburgers hold this fountain in great honor, for in this city it is not the stork which brings babies, but they are fished out of this fountain. While fishing the women catch cold and therefore have to stay in bed. Bechstein (Fränk. Sagensch.) mentions a Little Linden Spring on a road in Schweinfurt near Königshofen. The nurses dip the babies out of it with silver pails, and it flows not with water but with milk. If the little ones come to this baby fountain they look through the holes of the millstone (specially mentioned on account of what follows) at its still water, that mirrors their features, and think they have seen a little brother or sister that looks just like them. (Nork. Myth d. Volkss., p. 501.)

From the lower Austrian peasantry Rank takes the following (Wurth. Zf. d. Mythol., IV, 140): “Far, far off in the sea there stands a tree near which the babies grow. They hang by a string on the tree and when the baby is ripe the string breaks and the baby floats off. But in order that it should not drown, it is in a box and in this it floats away to the sea until it comes into a brook. Now our Lord God makes ill a woman for whom he intended the baby. So a doctor is summoned. Our Lord God has already suggested to him that the sick woman will have a baby. So he goes out to the brook and watches for a long time until finally the box with the baby comes floating in, and he takes it up and brings it to the sick woman. And this is the way all people get their babies.”

I call attention briefly also to the legend of the fountain of youth, to the mythical and naturalistic ideas of water as the first element and source of all life, and to the drink of the gods (soma, etc.) Compare also the fountain in the verses previously quoted.

The bridal pair in the parable (Sec. 11) walk through the garden and the bride says they intend in their chamber to “enjoy the pleasures of love.” They have picked many fragrant roses. Bear in mind the picking of strawberries in Mr. T.’s dream. The garden becomes a bridal chamber. The rain mentioned somewhat earlier, is a fructifying rain; it is the water of life that drops down upon Mother Earth. It is identical with the sinking trees of Mrs. Delta’s dream, with the power of creation developed by the wanderer, with the mythical drink of the gods, ambrosia, soma. We shall now see the wanderer ascend or descend to the source of this water of life. To gain the water of life it is generally in myths necessary to go down into the underworld (Ishtar’s Hell Journey), into the belly of a monster or the like. Remember, too, that the wanderer puts himself back in his mother’s womb. There is indeed the origin of his life. The process is still more significantly worked out in the parable.

The wanderer (Section 11, after the garden episode) comes to the mill. The water of the mill stream also plays a significant part in the sequel. The reader will surely have already recognized what kind of a mill, what kind of water is meant. I will rest satisfied with the mere mention of several facts from folklore and dream-life.

Nork (Myth. d. Volkss., p. 301 f.) writes that Fenja is of the female sex in the myth (Horwendil) which we must infer from her occupation, for in antiquity when only hand mills were as yet in use, women exclusively did this work. In symbolic language, however, the mill signifies the female organ (μυλλός from which comes _mulier_) and as the man is the miller, the satirist Petronius uses _molere mulierem_ = (grind a woman) for coitus, and Theocritus (Idyll, IV, 48) uses μύλλω (I grind) in the same sense. Samson, robbed of his strength by the harlot, has to grind in the mill (Judges XVI, 21) on which the Talmud (Sota fol. 10) comments as follows: By the grinding is always meant the sin of fornication (Beischlaf). Therefore all the mills in Rome stand still at the festival of the chaste Vesta. Like Apollo, Zeus, too, was a miller (μυλεύς, Lykophron, 435), but hardly a miller by profession, but only in so far as he presides over the creative lifegiving principle of the propagation of creatures. It is now demonstrated that every man is a miller and every woman a mill, from which alone it may be conceived that every marriage is a milling (jede Vermählung eine Vermehlung), etc. Milling (vermehlung) is connected with the Roman confarreatio (a form of marriage); at engagements the Romans used to mingle two piles of meal. In the same author (p. 303 and p. 530): Fengo is therefore the personification of grinding, the mill (Grotti) is his wife Gerutha, the mother of Amleth or Hamlet. Grotti means both woman and mill. Greeth is only a paraphrase of woman. He continues, “Duke Otto, Ludwig of Bavaria’s youngest son, wasted his substance with a beautiful miller’s daughter named Margaret, and lived in Castle Wolfstein.... This mill is still called the Gretel mill and Prince Otto the Finner” (Grimm, D. S., No. 496). Finner means, like Fengo, the miller [Fenja—old Norman? = the milleress], for the marriage is a milling [Vermählung ist eine Vermehlung], the child is the ground grain, the meal.

The same writer (Sitt. u. Gebr., p. 162): “In concept the seed corn has the same value as the spermatozoon. The man is the miller, the woman the mill.”

In Dulaure-Krauss-Rieskel (Zeugung i. Glaub usw. d. Völk., p. 100 ff.) I find the following charm from the writings of Burkhard, Bishop of Worms: “Have you not done what some women are accustomed to do? They strip themselves of clothes, they anoint their naked bodies with honey, spread a cloth on the ground, on which they scatter grain, roll about in it again and again, then collect carefully all the grains, which have stuck on their bodies, and grind them on the mill stone which they turn in a contrary direction. When the corn is ground into meal, they bake a loaf of it, and give it to their husbands to eat, so that they become sick and die. When you have done this you will atone for it forty days on bread and water.”

Killing is the opposite of procreating, therefore the mill is here turned in reverse direction.

Etymologically it is here to be noted that the verb mahlen (grind), iterative form of môhen (mow), originally had a meaning of moving oneself forwards and backwards. Mulieren or mahlen (grind), _molere_, μυλλειν for coire (cf. Anthropophyteia, VIII, p. 14).

There are numerous stories where the mill appears as the place of love adventures. The “old woman’s mill” also is familiar; old women go in and come out young. They are, as it were, ground over in the magic mill. The idea of recreation in the womb lies at the bottom of it, just as in the vulgar expression, “Lassen sie sich umvögeln.”

In a legend of the Transylvanian Gypsies, “there came again an old woman to the king and said: ‘Give me a piece of bread, for seven times already has the sun gone down without my having eaten anything!’ The King replied: ‘Good, but I will first have meal ground for you,’ and he called his servants and had the old woman sawn into pieces. Then the old woman’s sawn up body changed into a good Urme (fairy) and she soared up into the air....” (H. V. Wlislocki, Märchen u. Sagen d. transylv. Zigeuner.)

A dream: “I came into a mill and into ever narrower apartments till finally I had no more space. I was terribly anxious and awoke in terror.” A birth phantasy or uterus phantasy.

Another dream (Stekel, Spr. d. Tr., p. 398 f.): “I came through a crack between two boards out of the ‘wheel room.’ The walls dripped with water. Right before me is a brook in which stands a rickety, black piano. I use it to cross over the brook, as I am running away. Behind me is a crowd of men. In front of them all is my uncle. He encourages them to pursue me and roars and yells. The men have mountain sticks, which they occasionally throw at me. The road goes through the verdure up and down hill. The path is strewn with coal cinders and therefore black. I had to struggle terribly to gain any ground. I had to push myself to move forwards. Often I seemed as though grown to the ground and the pursuers came ever nearer. Suddenly I am able to fly. I fly into a mill through the window. In it is a space with board walls; on the opposite wall is a large crank. I sit on the handle, hold on to it with my hands, and fly up. When the crank is up I press it down with my weight, and so set the mill in motion. While so engaged I am quite naked. I look like a cupid. I beg the miller to let me stay here, promising to move the mill in the manner indicated. He sent me away and I have to fly out of another window again. Outside there comes along the ‘Flying Post.’ I place myself in front near the driver. I was soon requested to pay, but I have only three heller with me. So the conductor says to me, ‘Well, if you can’t pay, then you must put up with our sweaty feet.’ Now, as if by command, all the passengers in the coach drew off a shoe and each held a sweaty foot in front of my nose.”

This dream, too (beside other things), contains a womb phantasy, wheel room, mill, space with wet walls—the womb. The dreamer is followed by a crowd; just as our wanderer is met by a crowd; the elders. This dream, which will still further occupy our attention, I shall call the “Flying Post.”

Let us return to the parable. The mill of Section 11 is the womb. The wanderer strives for the most intimate union with his mother; his striving, to do better than his father culminates in his procreating himself, the son, again and better.

He will quite fill up his mother—be the father in full. Of course the phantasy does not progress without psychic obstructions. The anxious passage over the narrow plank manifests it.

We have here the familiar obstructions to movement and in a form indeed that recalls the dangerous path on the wall. The passage over the water is also a death symbol. We have not only the anxiety about death caused by the moral conflict, but we have also to remember that the passage into the uterus is a passage to the beyond. The water is the Water of Death (stygian waters) and of Life. In narrower sense it is also seminal fluid and the amniotic liquor. It is overdetermined as indeed all symbols are. The water bears the death color = black. In the Flying Post dream a black road appears. The dreamer has conflicts like those of the wanderer.

The old miller who will give no information is the father. Of course he will not let him have his mother, and he gives him no information as to the mill work or the procreative activity. The wheels are, on the one hand, the organs that grind out the child (producing the child like meal), and on the other hand they are the ten commandments whose mundane administration is the duty of the father, by means of strict education and punishment. In passing over the plank, the wanderer places himself above the ten commandments and above the privileges of the father. The wanderer always extricates himself successfully from the difficulties. The anxiety is soon done away with, and the fulfillment phase supervenes. It is only a faint echo of the paternal commandments when the elders (immediately after the episode, Section 11) hold out before him the letter from the faculty. At bottom, in retaining their authority, they do indeed go against his own wishes (also a typical artifice of the dream technique).

I have already discussed the letter episode sufficiently (as also Sections 12 and 13), so I need say no more about the incest wish there expressed.

The bridal pair were put (Section 14) into their crystal prison. We have been looking for the reassembling of the dismembered; it takes place before our eyes, the white and red parts, bones and blood, are indeed bridegroom and bride. The prison is the skin or the receptacle in which, as in myths, the revivification takes place. Not in the sense of the revivification of the annihilated father, but a recreation (improvement) that the son accomplishes, although the creative force as such remains the same. The son “marries and mills” (vermählt und vermehlt) with his mother, for the crystal container is again the same as the mill; the uterus. Even the amniotic fluid and the nutritive liquid for the fœtus are present, and the wanderer remakes himself into a splendid king. He can really do it better than his father. The dream carries the wish fulfillment to the uttermost limits.

Let us examine the process somewhat more in detail. The wanderer, by virtue of a dissociation, has a twofold existence, once as a youth in the inside of the glass sphere, and once outside in his former guise. Outside and inside he is united with his mother as husband and as developing child. He there embraces his “sister” (image of his mother renewed with him as it were) as Osiris does his sister Isis. And in addition to this the infantile sexual components of exhibitionism find satisfaction, for whose gratification the covering of the procreation mystery is made of glass. The sexual influence of the wanderer on the kettle (uterus) is symbolically indicated by the fire task allotted to him. The fire is one of the most frequent love symbols in dreams. Language also is wont to speak of the fire of love, of the consuming flames of passion, of ardent desires, etc. Customs, in particular marriage customs, show a similar symbolism. That the wanderer is charged with a duty, and explicitly commanded to do what he is willing to do without orders, is again the already mentioned cunning device of the dream technique to bring together the incompatible. It seems almost humorous when the prison is locked with the seal of the right honorable faculty; I recall to you the expression “sealing” (petschieren); the sealing is an applying of the father’s penis. In the place of father we find, of course, the officiating wanderer. The sealing means, however, the shutting up of the seed of life that is placed in the mother. It is also said that the pair, after the confinement in the prison, can be given no more nourishment; and that the food with which they are provided comes exclusively from the water of the mill. That refers to the intrauterine nourishment, to which nothing, of course, can be supplied but the water of the mill so familiar to us.

The precious vessel that the wanderer guards is surrounded by strong walls; it is inaccessible to the others; he alone may approach with his fire. It is winter. That is not merely a rationalizing (pretext of commonplace argument) of the firing, but a token of death entering into the uterus. The amorous pair in the prison dissolve and perish, even rot (Section 15). I must mention incidentally, for the understanding of this version, that at the time of the writing of the parable the process of impregnation was associated with the idea of the “decaying” or “rotting” of the semen. The womb is compared to the earth in which the kernel of grain “decays.”

The decaying which precedes the arising of the new being is connected with a great inundation. Mythically, a deluge is actually accustomed to introduce a (improved) creation. A proper myth can hardly dispense with the idea of a primal flood. I would, in passing, note that the present phase of the parable corresponds mythologically to the motive of being swallowed, the later release from the prison is the spitting forth (from the jaws of the monster), the return from the underworld. The dismemberment motive of the cosmogonies is usually associated with a deluge motive. In the description of the flood in the parable there are, moreover, included some traits of the biblical narrative, e.g., the forty days and the rainbow. This, be it remarked in passing, had appeared before; it is a sign of a covenant. It binds heaven and earth, man and woman. The flood originates in the falling of tears; it arises also from the body of the woman; it refers to the well known highly significant water. Stekel has arranged for dreams the so-called symbolic parallels, according to which all secretions and excretions may symbolically represent each other. On the presupposition that marks of similarity are not conceived in a strict sense, the following comparisons may be drawn: Mucus = blood = pus = urine = stools = semen = milk = sweat = tears = spirit = air = [breath = flatus] = speech = money = poison. That in this comparison both souls and tears appear is particularly interesting; the living or procreating principle appears as soul in the form of clouds. These are formed from water, the Water of Life. The dew that comes from it impregnates the earth.

As we have now reached the excreta, I should like to remind the reader of the foul and stinking bodies that in the parable lie in liquid (Section 15) on which falls a warmer rain. The parable psychoanalytically regarded, is the result of a regression leading us into infantile thinking and feeling; we have seen it clearly enough in the comparison with the myths. And here it is to be noticed how great an interest children take in the process of defecation. I should not have considered this worthy of notice, did not the hermetic symbolism, as we shall see later, actually use in parallel cases the expressions “fimus,” “urina puerorum,” etc., in quite an unmistakable manner. In any case it is worth remembering that out of dung and urine, things that decompose malodorously and repulsively, fresh life arises. This agrees with the infantile theory of procreation, that babies are brought forth as the residue of assimilation; we are to observe, however, still other interrelations that will be encountered later. A series of mythological parallels may be cited. I shall rest satisfied with referring to the droll story, “Der Dumme Hans.” Stupid Jack loads manure (fæces, sewage) into a cart and goes with it to a manor; there he tells them he comes from the _Moorish_ land (from the country of the blacks) and carries in his barrel the _Water of Life_. When any one opens the barrel without permission, Stupid Jack represented himself as having turned the water of life into sewage. He repeated the little trick with his _dead_ grandmother whom he sewed up in black cloths and gave out as a wonderfully beautiful princess who was lying in a hundred years’ sleep. Again, as he expected, the covering was raised by an unbidden hand and John lamented, that, on account of the interference, instead of the princess, whom he wanted to take to the King, a disgusting corpse had been magically substituted. He succeeded in being recompensed with a _good deal_ of money. [Jos. Haltrich, Deut. Volksmed. d. Siebenbürg, II, p. 224.]

Inasmuch as the wanderer of our parable finds himself not outside but inside of the receptacle, he is as if in a bath. I note incidentally that writings analogous to the parable expressly mention a bath in a similar place, as the parable also does (Sec. 15). In dreams the image of bathing frequently appears to occur as a womb or birth phantasy.

At the end of the 14th section, as the inmates of the prison die, his certain ruin stands before the wanderer’s eyes—again a faint echo of his relation to the bridegroom.

We have already for a long time thoroughly familiarized ourselves with the thought that in the crystal prison the revivification of the dismembered comes to pass. Whoever has the slightest doubt of it, can find it most beautifully shown in the beginning of Section 15. The author of the parable even mentions Medea and Æson. I need add nothing more concerning the talents of the Colchian sorceress in the art of dissection and rejuvenation.

In Section 18, “the sun shines very bright, and the day becomes warmer than before and the dog days are at hand.” Soon after (Sec. 19) the king is released from prison. It was before the winter (Sec. 14), but after that season, when the sun “shines very warm” (Sec. 11), consequently well advanced into autumn. Let us choose for the purpose a middle point between the departing summer and the approaching winter, about the end of October, and bear in mind that the dog-days come in August, so that at the end of July they are in waiting, then we find for the time spent in the receptacle nine months—the time of human gestation.

The newborn (Sec. 20) is naturally—thirsty. What shall he be fed with if not with the water from the mill? And the water makes him grow and thrive.

Two royal personages stand before us in splendor and magnificence. The wanderer has created for himself new parents (the father-king is, of course, also himself) corresponding to the family romance of neurotics, a phantasy romance, that like a ghost stalks even in the mental life of healthy persons. It is a wish phantasy that culminates in its most outspoken form in the conviction that one really springs from royal or distinguished stock and has merely been found by the actual parents who do not fit. They conceal his true origin. The day will come, however, when he will be restored to the noble station which belongs to him by right. Here belong in brief, those unrestrained wish phantasies which, no matter in what concrete form, diversify the naïvely outlined content. They arise from dissatisfaction with surroundings and afford the most agreeable contrasts to straitened circumstances or poverty. In the parable especially, the King (in his father character) is attractively portrayed.

At first the “lofty appearance” (Sec. 19) of the severe father amazes the wanderer, then it turns out, however, that the king (ideal father) is friendly, gracious and meek, and we are assured that “nothing graces exalted persons as much as these virtues.” And then he leads the wanderer into his kingdom and allows him to enjoy all the merely earthly treasures. There takes place, so to speak, a universal gratification of all wishes.

Mythologically we should expect that the hero thrown up from the underworld, should have brought with him the drink of knowledge. This is actually the case, as he has indeed gained the thing whose constitution is metaphorically worked out in the whole story, that is, the philosopher’s stone. The wanderer is a true soma robber.

Let us hark back to the next to last section. Here, near the end of the dream, the King becomes sleepy. The real sleeper already feels the approaching awakening and would like to sleep longer (to phantasy). But he pretends that the king is sleepy, thus throwing the burden from his own shoulders. And to this experience is soon attached a symbol of waking: the wanderer, the dreamer of the parable, is taken to another land, indeed into a bright land. He wakes from his dreams with a pious echo of his wish fulfillment on his lips ... “to which end help us, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Amen.” It is quite prosaic to conclude this melodious finale by means of the formula “threshold symbolism.”

To sum up in a few words what the parable contains from the psychoanalytic point of view, and to do this without becoming too general in suggesting as its results the universal fulfillment of all wishes, I should put it thus: the wanderer in his phantasy removes and improves the father, wins the mother, procreates himself with her, enjoys her love even in the womb and satisfies besides his infantile curiosity while observing procreative process from the outside. He becomes King and attains power and magnificence, even superhuman abilities.

Possibly one may be surprised at so much absurdity. One should reflect, however, that those unconscious titanic powers of imagination that, from the innermost recesses of the soul set in motion the blindly creating dream phantasy, can only wish and do nothing but wish. They do not bother about whether the wishes are sensible or absurd. Critical power does not belong to them. This is the task of logical thinking as we consciously exercise it, inasmuch as we observe the wishes rising from the darkness and compare and weigh them according to teleological standards. The unconsciously impelling affective life, however, desires blindly, and troubles itself about nothing else.

Section II.

Alchemy.

The tradition of craftsmanship in metallurgy, an art that was practiced from the earliest times, was during the speculative period of human culture, saturated with philosophy. Especially was this the case in Egypt, where metallurgy, as the source of royal riches and especially the methods of gold mining and extraction, were guarded as a royal secret. In the Hellenistic period the art of metal working, knowledge of which has spread abroad and in which the interest had been raised to almost scientific character, was penetrated by the philosophical theories of the Greeks: the element and atom ideas of the nature-philosophers and of Plato and of Aristotle, and the religious views of the neoplatonists. The magic of the orient was amalgamated with it, Christian elements were added—in brief, the content of the chemistry of that time, which mainly had metallurgy as its starting point, took a vital part in the hybrid thought of syncretism in the first centuries after Christ.

As the chemical science (in alchemy, alkimia, al is the Arabic article prefixed to the Greek χημεία) has come to us from the Arabs (Syrians, Jews, etc.) it was long believed that it had an Arabian origin. Yet it was found later that the Arabs, while they added much of their own to it, still were but the preservers of Greek-Hellenistic knowledge and we are convinced that the alchemists were right when they indicated in their traditions the legendary Egyptian Hermes as their ancestor. This legendary personage is really the Egyptian god Thoth, who was identified with Hermes in the time of the Ptolemies. He was honored as the Lord of the highest wisdom and it was a favorite practice to assign to him the authorship of philosophical and especially of theological works. Hermes’ congregations were formed to practice the cult, and they had their special Hermes literature.(2) In later times the divine, regal, Hermes figure was reduced to that of a magician. When I speak, in what follows, of the hermetic writings I mean (following the above mentioned traditions) the alchemic writings, with, however, a qualification which will be mentioned later.

The idea of the production of gold was so dominant in alchemy that it was actually spoken of as the gold maker’s art. It meant the ability to make gold out of baser material, particularly out of other metals. The belief in it and in the transmutability of matter was by no means absurd, but rather it must be counted as a phase in the development of human thought. As yet unacquainted with the modern doctrine of unchangeable elements they could draw no other conclusion from the changes in matter which they daily witnessed. If they prepared gold from ores or alloys, they thought they had “made” it. By analogy with color changes (which they produced in fabrics, glass, etc.) they could suppose that they had colored (tinctured) the baser metals into gold.

Under philosophical influences the doctrine arose that metals, like human beings, had body and soul, the soul being regarded as a finer form of corporeality. They said that the soul or primitive stuff (prima materia) was common to all metals, and in order to transmute one metal into another they had to produce a tincture of its soul. In Egypt lead, under the name Osiris, was thought to be the primitive base of metals; later when the still more plastic quicksilver (mercury) was discovered, they regarded this as the soul of metals. They thought they had to fix this volatile soul by some medium in order to get a precious metal, silver, gold.

That problematic medium, which was to serve to tincture or transmute the baser metal or its mercury to silver or gold, was called the Philosopher’s stone. It had the power to make the sick (base) metal well (precious). Here came in the idea of a universal medicine. Alchemy desired indeed to produce in the Philosopher’s Stone a panacea that should free mankind of all sufferings and make men young.

It will not be superfluous to mention here, that the so-called materials, substances, concepts, are found employed in the treatises of the alchemists in a more comprehensive sense, we can even say with more lofty implications, the more the author in question leans to philosophical speculation. The authors who indulged the loftiest flights were indeed most treasured by the alchemists and prized as the greatest masters. With them the concept mercury, as element concept, is actually separated from that of common quicksilver. On this level of speculation, quicksilver (Hg.) is no longer considered as a primal element, but as a suprasensible principle to which only the name of quicksilver, mercury, is loaned. It is emphasized that the _mercurius philosophorum_ may not be substituted for common quicksilver. Similar transmutations are effected by the concept of a primal element specially separated from mercury. Prima materia is the cause of all objects. Also the material from which the philosopher’s stone is produced is in later times called the prima materia, accordingly in a certain sense, the raw material (materia cruda) for its production. But I anticipate; this belongs properly to the occidental flourishing period of the alchemy of scholasticism.

A very significant and ancient idea in alchemy is that of sprouting and procreation. Metals grow like plants, and reproduce like animals. We are assured by the adepts (those who had found it, viz., the panacea) in the Greek-Egyptian period and also later, that gold begets gold as the corn does corn, and man, man. The practice connected with this idea consists in putting some gold in the mixture that is to be transmuted. The gold dissolves like a seed in it and is to produce the fruit, gold. The gold ingredient was also conceived as a ferment, which permeates the whole mixture like a leaven, and, as it were, made it ferment into gold. Furthermore, the tincturing matter was conceived as male and the matter to be colored as female. Keeping in view the symbol of the corn and seed, we see that the matter into which the seed was put becomes earth and mother, in which it will germinate in order to come to fruition.

In this connection belongs also the ancient alchemic symbol of the philosopher’s egg. This symbol is compared to the “Egyptian stone,” and the dragon, which bites its tail; consequently the procreation symbol is compared to an eternity or cycle symbol. The “Egyptian stone” is, however, the philosopher’s stone or, by metonomy, the great work (magnum opus) of its manufacture. The egg is the World Egg that recurs in so many world cosmogonies. The grand mastery refers usually and mainly to thoughts of world creation. The egg-shaped receptacle in which the master work was to be accomplished was also known as the “philosophical egg” in which the great masterpiece is produced. This vessel was sealed with the magic seal of Hermes; therefore hermetically sealed.

A wider theoretical conception, originating with the Arabs, is the doctrine of the two principles. They were retained in the subsequent developments and further expanded. Ibn Sina [Avicenna, 980-ca. 1037] taught that every metal consisted of mercury and sulphur. Naturally they do not refer to the ordinary quicksilver and ordinary sulphur.

From the Arabs alchemy came to the occident and spread extraordinarily. Among prominent authors the following may be selected: Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Vincent of Beauvais, Arnold of Villanova, Thomas Aquinas, Raymond Lully, etc.

The amount of material that could be adduced is enormous. It is not necessary, however, to consider it. What I have stated about the beginnings of alchemy is sufficient in amount to enable the reader to understand the following exposition of the alchemic content of the parable. And what I must supply in addition to the alchemic theories of the time of their prevalence in the west, the reader will learn incidentally from the following analysis.

In concluding this preliminary view I must still mention one novelty that Paracelsus (1493-1541) introduced into the theory. Ibn Sina had taught that two principles entered into the constitution of metals. Mercury is the bearer of the metallic property and sulphur has the nature of the combustible and is the cause of the transmutation of metals in fire. The doctrine of the two principles leads to the theory that for the production of gold it was necessary to get from metals the purest possible sulphur and mercury, in order to produce gold by the union of both. Paracelsus now adds to the two principles a third, salt, as the element of fixedness or palpability, as he terms it. According to my notion, Paracelsus has not introduced an essential innovation, but only used in a new systematic terminology what others said before him, even if they did not follow it out so consistently. The principles mercury, sulphur and salt—their symbols are [Symbol: Mercury], [Symbol: Sulphur] and [Symbol: Salt]—were among the followers of the alchemists very widely used in their technical language. They were frequently also called spirit, soul and body. They were taken in threes but also as before in twos, according to the exigencies of the symbolism.

The alchemists’ usual coupling of the planets with metals is probably due to the Babylonians. I reproduce these correspondences here in the form they generally had in alchemy. I must beg the reader to impress them upon his memory, as alchemy generally speaks of the metals by their planetary names. According to the ancient view (even if not the most ancient) there are seven planets (among which was the sun) and seven metals.

Planet. Symbol. Metal. Saturn. [Symbol: Saturn] Lead. Jupiter. [Symbol: Jupiter] Tin. Mars. [Symbol: Mars] Iron. Sun. [Symbol: Sun] Gold. Venus. [Symbol: Venus] Copper. Mercury. [Symbol: Mercury] Quicksilver. Moon. [Symbol: Moon] Silver.

Relative to the technical language, which I must use in the following discussion also, I have to make a remark of general application that should be carefully remembered. It is a peculiarity of the alchemistic authors to use interchangeably fifty or more names for a thing and on the other hand to give one and the same name many meanings. This custom was originally caused partly by the uncertainty of the concepts, which has been mentioned above. But this uncertainty does not explain why, in spite of increase of knowledge, the practice was continued and purposely developed. We shall speak later of the causes that were active there. Let it first be understood merely that it was the case and later be it explained how it comes about that we can find our way in the hermetic writings in spite of the strange freedom of terminology that confuses terms purposely and constantly. Apart from a certain practice in the figurative language of the alchemists, it is necessary, so to speak, to think independently of the words used and regard them only in their context. For example, when it is written that a body is to be washed with water, another time with soap, and a third time with mercury, it is not water and soap and mercury that is the main point but the relation of all to each other, that is the washing and on closer inspection of the connection it can be deduced that all three times the same cleansing medium is meant, only described three times with different names.

The alchemistic interpretation of our parable is a development of what its author tried to teach by it. We do not need to show that he pursues an hermetic aim, for he says so himself, and so do the circumstances, i.e., the book, in which the parable is found. In this respect we shall fare better in the alchemistic exposition than in the psychoanalytic, where we were aiming at the unconscious. Now we have the conscious aim before us and we advance with the author, while before we worked as it were against his understanding, and deduced from the product of his mind things that his conscious personality would hardly admit, if we had him living before us; in which case we should be instructing him and informing him of the interpretation afforded by psychoanalysis.

In one respect we are therefore better off, but in another we are much worse off. For the matter in which we previously worked, the unconscious, remains approximately the same throughout great periods; the unconscious of the wanderer is in its fundamentals not very different from that of a man of to-day or from that of Zosimos. [Zosimos is one of the oldest alchemistic writers of whom we have any definite knowledge—about the 4th century.] It is the soul of the race that speaks, its “humanity.” Much more swiftly, on the contrary, does objective knowledge change in the course of time and the forms also in which this knowledge is expressed. From this point of view the conscious is more difficult of access than the unconscious. And now we have to face a system so very far removed from our way of thinking as the alchemistic.

Fortunately I need not regard it as my duty to explain the parable so completely in the alchemistic sense that any one could work according to it in a chemical laboratory. It is much more suitable to our purpose if I show in general outline only how we must arrange the leading forms and processes of the parable to accord with the mode of thinking peculiar to alchemy. If I should succeed in doing so clearly, we should already have passed a difficult stage. Then for the first time I might venture further—to the special object of this research. But patience! We have not yet gone so far.

First of all it will be necessary for me to draw in a few lines a sketch of how, in the most flourishing period of alchemy, the accomplishment of the Great Work was usually described. In spite of the diversity of the representations we find certain fundamental principles which are in general firmly established. I will indicate a few points of this iron-clad order in the alchemic doctrine.

There is, in the first place, the central idea of the interaction or the coöperation of two things that are generally called man and woman, red and white, sun and moon, sulphur and mercury. We have already seen in Ibn Sina that the metals consist of the combination of sulphur and mercury. Even earlier the interaction of two parts were figuratively called impregnation. Both fuse into one symbol, and indeed so much the more readily, as it probably arose as the result of analogous thoughts, determined by a sexual complex. Also there occurs the idea that we must derive a male activity from the gold, a female from the silver, in order to get from their union that which perfects the mercury of the metals. That may be the reason that, for the above mentioned pair that is to be united, the denotation gold and silver ([Symbol: Gold] and [Symbol: Silver]) prevailed. Red and white = man and woman (male and female activity), we found in the parable also when studied psychoanalytically.

In the “Turba philosophorum” “the woman is called Magnesia, the white, the man is called red, sulphur.”

Morienus says. “Our stone is like the creation of man. For first we have the union, 2, the corruption [i.e., the putrefaction of the seed], 3, the gestation, 4, the birth of the child, 5, the nutrition follows.”

Both constituents come from one root. Therefore the authors inform us that the stone is an only one. If we call the matter “mercury,” we therefore generally speak of a doubled mercury that yet is only one.

Arnold (Ros., II, 17): “So it clearly appears that the philosophers spoke the truth about it, although it seems impossible to simpletons and fools, that there was indeed only one stone, one medicine, one regulation, one work, one vessel, both identical with the white and red sulphur, and to be made at the same time.”

Id. (Ros., I, 6): “For there is only one stone, one medicine, to which nothing foreign is added and nothing taken away except that one separates the superfluities from it.”

Herein lies the idea of purification or washing; it occurs again. Arnold (Ros., II, 8): “Now when you have separated the elements, then wash them.”

The idea of washing is connected with that of mechanical purification, trituration, dismemberment in the parable, grinding (mill), and with the bath and solution (dissolution of the bridal pair). “Bath” is, on the other hand, the surrounding vessel, water bath. Arnold (Ros., I, 9): “The true beginning, therefore, is the dissolution and solution of the stone.” Fire can also cause a dissolution, either by fusion or by a trituration that is similar to calcination. They are all processes that put the substances in question into its purest or chemically most accessible form.

Arnold (Ros., I, 9): “The philosophical work is to dissolve and melt the stone into its mercury, so that it is reduced and brought back to its prima materia, i.e., original condition, purest form.”

Through the opening of the single substance the two things or seeds, red and white, are obtained.

But what is the “subject” that is put through these operations, the matter that must be so worked out? That is exactly what the alchemists most conceal. They give the prima materia (raw material) a hundred names, every one of which is a riddle. They give intimations of interpretations but are not willing to be definite. Only the worthy will find the keys to the whole work. The rest of the procedure can be understood only by one that knows the prima materia. Much is written on it and its puzzling names. They are, partly as raw material, partly as original material, partly as prime condition, called among other names Lapis philosophicus (philosopher’s stone), aqua vitæ (water of life), venenum (poison), spiritus (spirit), medicina (medicine), cœlum (sky), nubes (clouds), ros (dew), umbra (shadow), stella signata (marked star), and Lucifer, Luna (moon), aqua ardens (fiery water), sponsa (betrothed), coniux (wife), mater, mother (Eve),—from her princes are born to the king,—virgo (virgin), lac virginis (virgin’s milk), menstruum, materia hermaphrodita catholica Solis et Lunae (Catholic hermaphrodite matter of sun and moon), sputum Lunae (moon spittle), urina puerorum (children’s urine), fæces dissolutæ (loose stool), fimus (muck), materia omnium formarum (material of all forms), Venus.

It will be evident to the psychoanalyst that the original material is occasionally identified with secretions and excretions, spittle, milk, dung, menstruum, urine. These correspond exactly to the infantile theories of procreation, as does the fact that these theories come to view where the phantasy forms symbols in its primitive activity. It is also to be noticed that countless alchemic scribblers who did not understand the works of the “masters” worked with substances like urine, semen, spittle, dung, blood, menstruum, etc., where the dim idea of a procreative essence in these things came into play. I will have something to say on this subject in connection with the Homunculus. I should meanwhile like to refer to the close relationship of excrement and gold in myth and folklore. [Cf. Note B at the end of this volume.] It is clear that for the art of gold production this mythological relationship is of importance.

To the action of analyzing substances before the reassembling or rebuilding, besides washing and trituration, belongs also putrefaction or rotting. Without this no fruitful work is possible. I have previously mentioned that it was thought that semen must rot in order to impregnate. The seed grain is subject to putrefaction in the earth. But we must remember also the impregnating activity of manure if we wish to understand correctly and genetically the association rot—procreate. Putrefaction is one of the forms of corruption (= breaking up) and corruptio unius est generatio alterius (the breaking up of one is the begetting of another).

Arnold (Ros., I, 9): “In so far as the substances here do not become incorporeal or volatile, so that there is no more substance [as such therefore destroyed] you will accomplish nothing in your work.”

The red man and the white woman, called also red lions and white lilies, and many other names, are united and cooked together in a vessel, the philosophical Egg. The combined material becomes thereby gradually black (and is called raven or ravenhead), later white (swan); now a somewhat greater heat is applied and the substance is sublimated in the vessel (the swan flies up); on further heating a vivid play of colors appears (peacock tail or rainbow); finally the substance becomes red and that is the conclusion of the main work. The red substance is the philosopher’s stone, called also our king, red lion, grand elixir, etc. The after work is a subsequent elaboration by which the stone is given still more power, “multiplied” in its efficiency. Then in “projection” upon a baser metal it is able to tincture immense amounts of it to gold. [In the stage of projection the red tincture is symbolized as a pelican. The reason for this will be given later.] If the main work was interrupted at the white stage, instead of waiting for the red, then they got the white stone, the small elixir, with which the base metals can be turned into silver alone.

We have spoken just now of the main work and the after work. I mention for completeness that the trituration and purification, etc., of the materials, which precedes the main work, is called the fore work. The division is, however, given in other ways besides.

Armed with this explanation we can venture to look for the alchemic hieroglyphs in our parable. I must beg the reader to recall the main episodes.

In the wanderer we have to conceive of a man who has started out to learn the secret of the great work. He finds in the forest contradictory opinions. He has fallen deep into errors. The study, although difficult, holds him fast. He cannot turn back (Sec. 1). So he pursues his aim still further (Sec. 2) and thinks he has now found the right authorities (Sec. 3) that can admit him to the college of wisdom. But the people are not at one with each other. They also employ figurative language that obscures the true doctrine, and which, contrasted with practice, is of no value. (I mention incidentally that the great masters of the hermetic art are accustomed to impress on the reader that he is not to cling to their words but measure things always according to nature and her possibilities.) The elders promise him indeed the revelation of important doctrines but are not willing to communicate the beginning of the work (Sec. 5, 6, preparation for the fight with the lion). That is a rather amusing trait of hermetic literature.

We have come to the fight with the lion, which takes place in a den. The wanderer kills the lion and takes out of him red blood and white bones, therefore red and white. Red and white enter later as roses, then as man and woman.

I cite now several passages from different alchemistic books.

Hohler (Herm. Phil., p. 91) says, apparently after Michael Meiers, “Septimana Philosophica”: “The green lion [a usual symbol for the material at the beginning] encloses the raw seeds, yellow hairs adorn his head [this detail is not lacking in the parable], i.e., when the projection on the metals takes place, they turn yellow, golden.” [Green is the color of hope, of growth. Previously only the head of the lion is gold, his future. Later he becomes a red lion, the philosopher’s stone, the king in robe of purple. At any rate he must first be killed.]

The lion that must die is the dragon, which the dragon fighter kills. Thus we have seen it in the mythological parallel. Psychoanalysis shows us further that lion = dragon = father (= parents, etc.). It is now very interesting that the alchemistic symbolism interchanges the same forms. We shall see that again.

Berthelot cites (Orig. de l’Alch., p. 60) from an old manuscript: “The dragon is the guardian of the temple. Sacrifice it, flay it, separate the flesh from the bones, and you will find what you seek.”

The dragon is, as can be shown out of the old authors, also the snake that bites its own tail or which on the other hand can also be represented by two snakes.

Flamel writes on the hieroglyphic figure of two dragons (in the 3d chapter of his Auslegung d. hierogl. Fig.) the following: “Consider well these two dragons for they are the beginning of the philosophy [alchemy] which the sages have not dared to show their own children.... The first is called sulphur or the warm and dry. The other is called quicksilver or the cold and wet. These are the sun and the moon. These are snakes and dragons, which the ancient Egyptians painted in the form of a circle, each biting the other’s tail, in order to teach that they spring of and from one thing [our lion!]. These are the dragons that the old poets represent as guarding sleeplessly the golden apples in the garden of the Hesperian maidens. These are the ones to which Jason, in his adventures of the golden fleece, gave the potion prepared for him by the beautiful Medea. [See my explanation of the motive of dismemberment] of which discourses the books of the philosophers are so full that there has not been a single philosopher, from the true Hermes, Trismegistus, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Artephias, Morienus, and other followers up to my own time, who has not written about these matters. These are the two serpents sent by Juno (who is the metallic nature) that were to be strangled by the strong Hercules (that is the sage in his cradle) [our wanderer], that is to be conquered and killed in order to cause them in the beginning of his work to rot, be destroyed and be born. These are the two serpents that are fastened around the herald’s staff and rod of Mercury.... Therefore when these two (which Avicenna calls the bitch of Carascene and the dog of Armenia) are put together in the vessel of the grave, they bite each other horribly. [See the battle of the sons of the dragon’s teeth with Jason, the elders in the parable, but also the embrace of the bridal pair and the mythological parallels wrestling = dragon fight = winning the king’s daughter,... = incest = love embrace or separation of the primal parents, etc....] ... A corruption [destruction] and putrefaction must take place before the renewal in a better form. These are the two male and female seed that are produced ... in the kidneys and intestines ... of the four elements.”

The dragon, who is killed at the beginning of the work, is also called Osiris by the old alchemists. We are now acquainted with his dismemberment, also his relation to lead ore. Flamel calls the vessel of the alchemistic operation a “grave.” Olympiodorus speaks in an alchemistic work of the grave of Osiris. Only the face of Osiris, apparently wrapped up like a mummy, is visible. In the parable only the head of the lion is golden. The head as the part preserved from the killing [dismemberment] stands probably for the organ of generation. The phallus is indeed exactly what produces the procreating substance, semen. The phallus is the future. The phallus was consecrated by Isis as a memorial.

Janus Lacinius gives in his Pretiosa Margarita the following allegory. In the palace sits the king decorated with the diadem and in his hand the scepter of the whole world. Before him appears his son with five servants and falling at his feet implores him to give the kingdom to him and the servants. [The author takes the thing wrong end to. The gold, king, is assailed by the other six metals, because they themselves wish to be gold. The king is killed. Essentially the same thing happens as above.] Then the son in anger, and at the instigation of his companions, kills his father on the throne. He collects the father’s blood in his garment. A grave [the lion’s den, the grave] is dug, into which the son intends to throw the father, but they both fall in. [Cf. the dangerous walk of the wanderer on the wall, Section 8, where the people fall off.] The son makes every effort to get out again, but some one comes who does not permit it. [Symbolism of obstruction, the locked door, etc., in the parable. The grave changes imperceptibly into the vessel where the bridal pair—with Lacinius they are father and son instead of mother and son—are united and securely locked in.] When the whole body is dissolved the bones are thrown out of the grave. They are divided into nine [dismemberment], the dissolved substance is cooked nine days over a gentle fire till the black appears. Again it is cooked nine days until the water is bright and clear. The black, with its water of life [in the parable the mill water is black] is cooked nine days till the white earth of the philosophers appears. An angel throws the bones on the purified and whitened earth, which is now mixed with its seeds. They are separated from water in a strong fire. Finally the earth of the bones becomes red like blood or ruby. Then the king rises from his grave full of the grace of God, quite celestial, with grand mien, to make all his servants kings. He places golden crowns on the heads of his son and the servants.

As bearers of both seeds, male and female, the lion is androgynous. Actually the subject (i.e., the first material) is conceived as twofold, bisexual. It is called by names that mean the two sexes, it is also called “hermaphrodite.” It is represented as rebis (res bina = double thing), as a human with a male and a female head standing on a dragon. From the conquered dragon (lion) comes forth the Double. The substance is also called Mercurius; his staff bears the two antagonistic serpents mentioned by Flamel. In the parable also appears an hermaphrodite, the being (Sec. 8) which the wanderer cannot distinguish, whether it be a man or a woman. It is the original substance, Mercury, “our hermaphrodite.”

In Section 9 of the parable, and also later, red and white appear in roses. The white and the red tincture are often in alchemy compared to white and red roses.

In Section 9 the wanderer comes to those houses where people work alone or by twos. They work in a slovenly fashion. The alchemistic quacks are generally called “bunglers” and “messy cooks” by the masters of the art. These are the ones who do not work according to the “possibilities of nature,” which is, nevertheless, the touchstone of all right production.

The garden (Sec. 10, 11) is one of the “rose gardens” of which, e.g., the alchemist, Michael Meier, likes to speak.

There are difficulties in uniting the red youths with the white maidens. A wall separates them. The wanderer removes the obstruction in unlocking the door. That may indicate a chemical unlocking, by which the bodies are chemically brought nearer together.

The wanderer comes to a mill (Sec. 11). The mill naturally indicates the already mentioned trituration of the substance. It has, however, also reference to fermentation and in particular to that by means of meal.

Rulandus (Lex., pp. 211 ff., s. v. Fermentum): “Ferment is elixir, leaven, or yeast as it is called; it makes porous the body that swells up and the spirit finds a place in it so that it becomes fit to bake. As now the meal is not yeast, but meal and water [mill water] and the whole dough is thoroughly leavened and real yeast, so also the lapis [stone] is itself the ferment, yet gold and mercury are also called ferment.”

Now begins the main work—marriage, prison, embrace, conception, birth, transfiguration—to which the rest of the parable is devoted.

The prison is the philosophic egg. It is also called “Athanor, a sieve, dunghill, bain-marie (double cooker), a kiln, round ball, green lion, prison, grave, brothel, vial, cucurbit.” It is just like the belly and the womb, containing in itself the true, natural warmth (to give life to our young king). The warmth that is used must first be gentle, “like that after the winter”; it must be stronger like the sun in spring, in summer [cf. the seasons in our parable]. (Flamel, pp. 50 ff.)

Daustenius (Ros., VII): “... And this thing can be a symbol of a woman’s belly, which, when she has conceived, will immediately close the womb.”

Id. (Ros., VII): “Therefore, when you have put them (the white woman and the red man) in their vessel, then close it as fast as possible....” [Seal of Hermes.]

Id. (Ros., VIII): “Therefore that you arrange the substances right and fine, and regulate your work well, and marry consanguineous matter with masses acting consanguineously....” [Incest.]

Id. (Ros., VII): “So now this is our solution, that you marry the Gabricum with the Beja, which when he lies with the Beja, dies immediately and is changed into her nature. Although the Beja is a woman, still she improves the Gabricum because he is come out of her.” [Death of the bridegroom son. It should be remembered in this connection that all metals or all substances generally—consequently also the [Symbol: Sun]—come forth from the “mother,” the primal substance [Symbol: Mercury].]

In a “Vision” of Daustenius, the king is to return into his mother’s womb in order to be procreated afresh. The king “goes into his bedroom and unexpectedly is fired with a great desire for coition, and goes to sleep at once, and has lain with a surpassingly beautiful maiden, who was a daughter of his mother” [weakened form of mother incest]. Later the vision says, “The woman, however, incloses her man, as a mother, quite carefully in the innermost part of her body.”

The bodies inclosed in the vessel fall to pieces and are partly volatile. The vapors [soul] return, however, into the bodies. There conception takes place.

Daustenius [Ros. IX.]: “... From that are airy spirits come, that with each other rise into the air, and there have conceived life, that is blown into them by their dampness, as the human being has life from air, by which it increases.... For life of all natural things depends upon the blowing in of air.”

The bestowing of life by a blowing in of air plays a great part in myths. Also there occurs quite frequently special impregnations by air and wind. It is a primitive impregnation theory, that is found also in the ideas of children.

Children think of the blowing in of air into the anus as a natural sexual theory. I know several cases where this practice is carried out with emphasis on the erotic under the pretense of “playing doctor.” A child once told what papa and mamma do when they are alone; they put their naked backsides together and blow air into each other.

Another infantile theory explains impregnation by the swallowing of an object. In myths and fairy lore this motive occurs with extraordinary frequency. To the swallowing as conception, corresponds defecation as parturition. Incidentally we should note that the bodies in the philosophic egg turn actually into a rolling, stinking, black mass, which is expressly called dung by many authors. The water is also called urine. The prima materia is also called urine. In the philosophical egg the white woman swallows the red man, man-eating motive. (Stucken.)

Liber Apocal. Hermetis (Cited by Hohler, p. 105 f.): “... Therefore the philosophers have married this tender young maiden to Gabricus, to have them procreate fruit, and when Gabricus sleeps he dies. The Beja [i.e., the white maiden] has swallowed him and consumed him because of her great love.”

Now as to the intra-uterine nourishment of the fetus by means of the water of life:

Daustenius [Ros. vi.]: “... The fruit in the womb is nourished only by the mother’s blood.” Id. (Ros. x):

“Without seeds no fruit can grow up for thee: First the seed dies; then wilt thou see fruit. In the stomach the food is cooked tender From which the limbs draw the best to themselves. When too the seed is poured into the womb Then the womb stays right tenderly closed. The menstruum does not fail the fruit for nourishment Till it at the proper time comes to the light of day.”

Later he says (Id., XI): “Lay the son by her that she suckle him.” [The water of life is therefore also the milk.]

The new king is born, and now he and his consort appear in priceless garments (cf. Section 18 of the parable). The color change of the substance is expressed by means of the change of garments, like peacock’s tail, rainbow. The process goes from black through gray to white, yellow, red, purple.

The end is reached with purple. The wanderer at the end describes the virtues of the philosopher’s stone. We have already compared the great elixir with soma. In the old alchemistic book, which bears the name of the Persian magician, Osthanes (Berthelot, Orig., p. 52), the divine water heals all maladies. Water of life,—elixir of life.

Many readers will shake their heads over the psychoanalytic exposition of the parable. The gross development of sexuality and the Œdipus complex may seem improbable to him. The alchemistic hieroglyphic has now in unexpected manner shown after all, that these surprising things were not read into the parable by psychoanalysis, but rightly found in it, even though psychoanalysis has not by any means exhausted the contents of the parable. What might at first have appeared to be bold conjecture, as for example, killing of the father, incest with the mother, the conception of the red blood and white bones as man and woman, the excrementitious substance as procreative, the prison as the uterus, has all been shown to be in use as favorite figurative expression among the alchemistic authors.

The alchemists like to dwell on the process of procreation, and on infantile sexual theories. The deep interest that they show in these matters, and without which they would not have used them so much in their hieroglyphics, the meaning that these things must have, in order to be regarded as worthy to illustrate the processes of the great work, and finally, the meaning that in some form or other they actually have in the emotional life of every man, all of this makes it evident that the line of imaginative speculations with which we have become acquainted, deserves independent treatment. In practice there was a fission, and procreation becomes an independent problem for alchemists. Yet the followers of the art did learn from nature, in order that their art might follow the works of nature even to improve on her; what wonder then if many of them set themselves to the artificial creation—generation—of man? Yet the belief in generatio equivoca has not long been dead. Must it not have seemed somehow possible, in view of the supposed fact that they saw insects develop out of earth, worms out of dung, etc., that they should by special artificial interposition, be able to make higher forms of life come out of lifeless matter? And of all the substances not one was indeed completely lifeless for the “animated” metals even, grew and increased. In short, if we regard the matter somewhat more closely, it is after all not so extraordinary that they made serious attempts to create the homunculus.

Generally Paracelsus is regarded as the author of the idea, which to the somewhat uncritical, could not, in my opinion, help being in the air. There are different views regarding the part played by Paracelsus. The instructions that he gives for the production of the homunculus are found in a work (De natura rerum) whose authorship is not settled. And supposing that Paracelsus was the writer, it must be considered whether he does not lay before the inquisitive friend to whom the work is dedicated merely a medley of oddities from the variegated store that he had collected from all sources on his travels among vagrant folk. We must accept the facts as we find them; the question as to whether it was Paracelsus or not would be idle. Enough that there is a book by some writer who describes the work and describes it in such a way that naïve scholarship could have thought it quite consistent. The idea as such has appeared conceivable to us. Its form in the book mentioned appears clearly determined by alchemistic ideas. The reader will immediately perceive it himself as I give here some passages from the book. (Cf. the Strassb. Folio Ausg. des Paracelsus, Vol. I, pp. 881-884.) A consideration of the production of the homunculus appears important to me because it shows the main content of alchemistic ideas in enlarged form and complete development, a content that gives, moreover, the very thing that psychoanalysis would here look for.

Paracelsus begins with the fact that putrefaction transforms all things into their first shape and is the beginning of generation and multiplication. The spagiric [One of the names for alchemy. From σπᾶν (separate), and αγείρειν (unite).] art is able to create men and monsters. Such a monster is the Basilisk. “The Basilisk” grows and is born out of and from the greatest impurity of women, namely from the menstrua and from the blood of sperm that is put into a glass and cucurbit, and putrefied in a horse’s belly. In such putrefaction is the Basilisk born. Whoever is so daring and so fortunate as to make it or to take it out or again to kill it, who does not clothe and protect himself before with mirrors? I advise no one but I wish to give sufficient warning. [Many fables about the Basilisk were then current. The belief, too, was general that this terrible animal was produced from a hen’s egg. Herein lies, again, the idea of unnatural procreation.] ... Now the generation of the homunculus is not to be forgotten. For there is something in it, notwithstanding that it has till now been kept in mystery and concealed, and that not a little doubt and question there was among some of the old philosophers, whether it was possible for art and nature that a man should be born outside a woman’s body and a natural mother. To which I give the answer that it is in no way contrary to the spagiric art and nature, but is quite possible; but how such accomplishment and occurrence may be, is by the following procedure: Namely that the semen of a man is putrefied in a closed cucurbit per se, with the greatest putrefaction in a horse’s belly for 40 days or until it comes to life and moves and stirs, which is easily to be seen. [Horse’s belly by metonomy for horse’s dung. Horse manure or dung was an easily procured material that served the purpose of keeping warm at an even mild and moist heat a vessel that was put into it. Horse manure is then finally the gentle “moist heat” in general engendered by any means. In the preceding case surely the narrower meaning of animal belly or dung should not be overlooked. Here indeed this belly with its moist warmth has to act as an equivalent for a uterus.] After such a time it will look something like a man but transparent without a body. So after this it is daily fed whitish (weisslich) with the Arcano sanguinis humani [the water of life that nourishes the fœtus] and nourished about 40 weeks and kept in the even warmth of a horse’s belly. A real live human child will come forth with all members like another child that is born of a woman but much smaller. We call it homunculus and it should then be brought up just like another child with great diligence and care till it comes to its days of understanding. That is now the highest and greatest mystery that God has let mortal and sinful man know. For it is a miracle and magnale Dei, and a mystery above all mystery and should also be kept a mystery fairly till the judgment day, as then nothing will stay hidden, but all will be revealed.

“And although such a thing has hitherto been hidden from natural man, it has not been hidden from the fauns and the nymphs and giants, but has been revealed for a long time; whence they too, come. For from such homunculi, when they come to the age of manhood come giants, dwarfs and other similar great wonder people, [Just like Genesis vi, 4] that were used for a great tool and instrument, who had a great mighty victory over their enemies and knew all secret and hidden things that are for all men impossible to know. For by art they received their life, through art they received body, flesh, bone and blood, through art were they born. Therefore the art was embodied and born in them and they had to learn it from no one, but one must learn from them. For because of art are they there and grown up like a rose or flower in the garden and are called the children of fauns and nymphs because that they with their powers and deeds, not to men but to spirits are compared.” [It is characteristic that Paracelsus passes immediately to the production of metals.]

In the description of the generation of the homunculus the power of rotting material has been pointed out. There is clearly evident a feeding with a magisterium from blood (water of life) corresponding to the intrauterine alimentation. We note that from the homunculi come giants and dwarfs and wonderful beings.

The idea of palingenesis appears to have no little significance for the existence of the homunculus production. They imagine that a dead living being could be restored, at least in a smokelike image, if they carefully collected all its parts, triturated them and treated the composition in a vessel with the proper fire. Then there would appear after a time, like a cloud of smoke, the faint image of the former being, plant, bird, man. The clouds vanish if the heating is interrupted. Further it would be possible, even if more difficult, to pass beyond this mere adumbration, and cause the former being to arise again from the ashes, fully alive. In the recipes for this an important rôle is regularly played by horse manure or some other rotting substance. Many authors tell fables of all sorts of wonderful experiments that they have made. One tells that he has reduced a bird to ashes and made it live again, another will have seen in his retort and coming from the moldering corpse of a child its shadow image, etc. We see here in actuality the mythical motive of dismemberment and revivification expressed in a naïve practice. It is quite noticeable that this practice follows the same lines as the mythical representation. _All_ the constituent parts of the body that is _cut into little pieces_ must be carefully collected and put in a _vessel_ and (generally) _cooked_.

The human child as result of cooking or else of a similar process in a vessel, is not infrequent in primitive myths. I could mention a Zulu myth (Frobenius, Zeitalt. d. Sonneng., I, p. 237) of a formerly barren woman. It was said that she should catch a drop of blood in a pot, cover it up and set it by for eight months, and should open it in the ninth month. The woman did as she was advised and found a child in the pot. The drop of blood, be it noted, came from herself. The numerous whale dragon myths (Frobenius) where it is very hot inside of the whale, belong here in motive. From the whale’s belly comes indeed the baked young (sun) hero. [Who moreover generally gets nourishment in the whale-dragon’s belly. Nutritio. Heart motive according to Frobenius.] It is interesting that the idea of cooking human beings occurs very clearly in a well analyzed case of dementia precox. (Spielrein in Jb. ps. F., Ill, pp. 358 ff.) In the strongly regressive phantasies of the invalid, fragments of all sorts of things are cooked or roasted and the ashes can become men.

A very interesting variant of the infantile theories of procreation of the living in dung is found in the book, “De Homunculis et Monstris” (Vol. II, pp. 278 ff. of the Strassburg edition of the works of Paracelsus). It is there maintained that by sodomy as well as by pederasty (specifically coitus in anum and also in os is meant) the generation of a monster is possible.

As they did with alchemy in general, so charlatans also made use of the production of the homunculus. Their business was based on the great profits that were offered by the possession of a homunculus and that are equivalent to those of mandrake alum. Mandrake alum gave a certain impetus to the development of the homunculus idea and practice. It can be shown that secrets of procreation seem partly to underlie this also.

It is easy to show the possibility that many a duffer was led toward the production of the homunculus by erroneous interpretation of the procreation symbolism occurring in the alchemistic writings. It was merely necessary, in their limitations, to take literally one or another of the methods. In this way there actually occurred the most ludicrous blunders. Because the philosopher’s egg was mentioned, they took eggs as the actual subject. Because the spermatic substance and seeds were mentioned they thought that the prima materia was human semen, and so arose the school of seminalists. And because it was written of the subject that it was to be found wherever men dwell, and that it was a little despised thing which men threw away not realizing its worth, and because they thought of putrefaction as such, they thought to find the real substance in human excrement, and so the school of stercoralists was founded. From the belief in the healing and wonderworking power of excrement sprang moreover the famous filth pharmacy, that was held in no little esteem.

The homunculus topic is exceedingly interesting. Unfortunately I cannot in the space of this book go into it thoroughly. I shall do so in another place.

Section III.

The Hermetic Art.

Any one that makes a thorough study of the alchemistic literature must be struck with the religious seriousness that prevails in the writings of the more important authors. Every “master” who enjoyed the highest honor among his fellows in the hermetic art has a certain lofty manner that keeps aloof from the detailed description of chemical laboratory work, although they do not depart from the alchemistic technical language. They obviously have a leaning toward some themes that are far more important than the production of a chemical preparation can be, even if this is a tincture with which they can tinge lead into gold. Looking forth to higher nobler things, these authors, whose homely language frequently touches our feelings deeply, make the reader notice that they have nothing in common with the sloppy cooks who boil their pots in chemical kitchens, and that the gold they write about is not the gold of the multitude; not the venal gold that they can exchange for money. Their language seems to sound as if they said, “Our gold is not of this world.” Indeed they use expressions that can with absolute clearness be shown to have this sense. Authors of this type did not weary of enjoining on the novices of the art, that belief, scripture and righteousness were the most important requisites for the alchemistic process. [With the sloppers it was indeed a prime question, how many and what kinds of stoves, retorts, kettles, crucibles, ores, fires, etc., in short, what necessary implements they needed, for the great work.]

He whose eyes are open needs no special hints to see, in reading, that the so-called alchemistic prescriptions did not center upon a chemical process. A faint notion of the circumstance that even in their beginnings, alchemistic theories were blended with cosmogonic and religious ideas, must make it quite evident that, for example, in the famous Smaragdine Tablet of Hermes [Its real author is unknown.] a noble pillar of alchemy, something more must be contained than a mere chemical recipe. The language of the Smaragdine tablet is notoriously the most obscure that the hermetic literature has produced; in it there are no clear recommendations to belief or righteousness; and yet I think that an unprejudiced reader, who was not looking specially for a chemical prescription, would perceive at least a feeling for something of philosophy or theology.

[1.] Verum, sine mendacio, certum et [verissimum]: [2.] Quod est inferius est sicut quod est superius, et quod est superius est sicut quod est inferius, ad perpetranda [also: penetranda, praeparanda] miracula rei unius. [3.] Et sicut res omnes fuerunt ab uno, meditatione unius: sic omnes res natae fuerunt ab hac una re, adaptatione [adoptione.]. [4.] Pater ejus est Sol, mater ejus est Luna. [5.] Portavit illud ventus in ventre suo. [6.] Nutrix ejus terra est. [7.] Pater omnis Telesmi totius mundi est hic. [8.] Virtus ejus integra est, si versa fuerit in terram. [9.] Separabis terram ab igne, subtile ab spisso, suaviter, magno cum ingenio. [10.] Ascendit a terra in coelum, iterumque descendit in terram, et recipit vim superiorum et inferiorum. [11.] Sic habebis Gloriam totius mundi. Ideo fugiet a te omnis obscuritas. Haec est totius fortitudinis fortitudo fortis, quia vincet omnem rem subtilem, omnemque solidam [solidum] penetrabit. [12.] Sic mundus creatus est. [13.] Hinc erunt adaptationes mirabiles, quarum modus est hic. [14.] Itaque vocatus sum Hermes Trismegistus, habens tres partes philosophiae totius mundi. [15.] Completum est quod dixi de operatione Solis.

Translation: [1.] It is true, without lies and quite certain. [2.] What is lower is just like what is higher, and what is higher is just like what is lower, for the accomplishment of the miracle of a thing. [3.] And just as all things come from one and by mediation of one, thus all things have been derived from this one thing by adoption. [4.] The father of it is the sun, the mother is the moon. [5.] The wind has carried it in his belly. [6.] The earth has nourished it. [7.] It is the father [cause] of all completion of the whole world. [8.] His power is undiminished, if it has been turned towards the earth. [9.] You will separate the earth from fire, the fine from the coarse, gently and with great skill. [10.] It ascends from the earth to the sky, again descends to the earth, and receives the powers of what is higher and what is lower. [11.] Thus you will have the glory of the whole world, and all darkness will depart from you. It is the strength of all strength, because it will conquer all the fine and penetrate all the solid. [12.] Thus the world was created. [13.] From this will be wonderful applications of which it is the pattern. [14.] And so I have been called Hermes, thrice greatest, possessing three parts of the knowledge of the whole world. [15.] Finished is what I have said about the work of the sun.

Sun and gold are identical in the hieroglyphic mode of expression. Whoever seeks only the chemical must therefore read: The work of gold, the production of gold; and that is what thousands and millions have read. The mere word gold was enough to make countless souls blind to everything besides the gold recipe that might be found in the Smaragdine tablet. But surely there were alchemistic masters who did not let themselves be blinded by the word gold and sympathetically carried out still further the language of the Smaragdine tablet. They were the previously mentioned lofty-minded men. The covetous crowd of sloppers, however, adhered to the gold of the Smaragdine tablet and other writings and had no appreciation of anything else. For a long time alchemy meant no more for modern historians.

The fact that modern chemical science is sprung from the hermetic works,—as the only branch at present clearly visible and comprehensible of this misty tree of knowledge,—has had for result that in looking back we have received a false impression. Chemical specialists have made researches in the hermetic art and have been caught just as completely in the tangle of its hieroglyphics as were the blind seekers of gold before them. The hermetic art, or alchemy in the wider sense, is not exclusively limited to gold making or even to primitive chemistry. It should, however, not be surprising to us who are acquainted with the philosophical presuppositions of alchemy, that in addition to the chemical and mechanical side of alchemy a philosophical and religious side also received consideration and care. I think, however, that such historical knowledge was not at all necessary to enable us to gather their pious views from the religious language of many masters of the hermetic art. However, this naïve childish logic was a closed book to the chemists who made historical researches. They were hindered by their special knowledge. It is far from my purpose to desire in the least to minimize the services that a Chevreul or a Kopp has performed for the history of chemistry; what I should like to draw attention to is merely that the honored fathers of the history of chemistry saw only the lower—“inferius”—and not the higher—“superius”—phase of alchemy, for example, in the Smaragdine tablet; and that they used it as the type of universal judgment in such a way that it needed a special faculty for discovery to reopen a fountain that had been choked up.

I now realize that the poets have been more fortunate than the scientists. Thus Wieland, who, for example, makes Theophron say in the Musarion (Book II):

The beautiful alone Can be the object of our love. The greatest art is only to separate it from its tissue ... For it [the soul] nothing mortal suffices, Yea, the pleasure of the gods cannot diminish a thirst That only the fountain quenches. So my friends That which other mortals lures like a fly on the hook To sweet destruction Because of a lack of higher discriminative art Becomes for the truly wise A Pegasus to supramundane travel.

But the poets usually speak only in figures. I will therefore rest satisfied with this one example.

The service of having rediscovered the intrinsic value of alchemy over and above its chemical and physical phase, is to be ascribed probably to the American, Ethan Allen Hitchcock, who published his views on the alchemists in the book, “Remarks upon Alchemy and the Alchemists,” that appeared in Boston in 1857, and to the Frenchman, N. Landur, a writer on the scientific periodical “L’Institut,” who wrote in 1868 in similar vein [in the organ “L’Institut,” 1st Section, Vol. XXXVI, pp. 273 ff.], though I do not know whether he wrote with knowledge of the American work. Landur’s observations are reported by Kopp (Alch., II, p. 192), but he does not rightly value their worth. It need not be a reproach to him. He undertook as a chemical specialist a work that would have required quite as much a psychologist, a philosopher or a theologian.

The discoveries made by the acute Hitchcock are so important for our analysis, that a complete exposition of them cannot be dispensed with. I should like better to refer to Hitchcock’s book if it were not practically inaccessible.

We have heard that the greatest stumbling block for the uninitiated into the hermetic art lay in the determination of the true subject, the prima materia. The authors mentioned it by a hundred names; and the gold seeking toilers were therefore misled in a hundred ways. Hitchcock with a single word furnishes us the key to the understanding of the hermetic masters, when he says: The subject is man. We can also avail ourselves of a play on words and say the subject or substance is the subject.

The uninitiated read with amazement in many alchemists that “our subjectum,” that is, the material to be worked upon, is also identical with the vessel, the still, the philosopher’s egg, etc. That becomes intelligible now. Hitchcock writes (H. A., p. 117) very pertinently: “The work of the alchemists was one of contemplation and not a work of the hands. Their alembic, furnace, cucurbit, retort, philosophical egg, etc., etc., in which the work of fermentation, distillation, extraction of essences and spirits and the preparation of salts is said to have taken place was Man,—yourself, friendly reader,—and if you will take yourself into your own study and be candid and honest, acknowledging no other guide or authority but Truth, you may easily discover something of hermetic philosophy; and if at the beginning there should be ‘fear and trembling’ the end may be a more than compensating peace.”

The alchemist Alipili (H. A., p. 34) writes: “The highest wisdom consists in this, for man to know himself, because in him God has placed his eternal Word.... Therefore let the high inquirers and searchers into the deep mysteries of nature learn first to know what they have in themselves, and by the divine power within them let them first heal themselves and transmute their own souls, ... if that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee, thou wilt never find it without thee. If thou knowest not the excellency of thine house, why dost thou seek and search after the excellency of other things? The universal Orb of the world contains not so great mysteries and excellences as does a little man formed by God in his own image. And he who desires the primacy amongst the students of nature, will nowhere find a greater or better field of study than himself. Therefore will I here follow the example of the Egyptians and ... from certain true experience proclaim, O Man, know thyself; in thee is hid the treasure of treasures.”

A seminalist has concluded from this that the prima materia is semen, a stercoralist, that it is dung.

George Ripley describes the subject of the philosopher’s stone as follows:

“For as of one mass was made the thing, Right must it so in our praxis be, All our secrets of one image must spring; In philosophers’ books therefore who wishes may see, Our stone is called the less-world, one and three.”

The stone is therefore the world in little, the microcosm, man; one, a unity, three, [Symbol: Mercury] mercury, [Symbol: Sulphur] sulphur, [Symbol: Salt] salt, or spirit, soul, body. Dichotomy also appears, mercury and sulphur, which can then generally be rendered soul and body. One author says, “We must choose such minerals as consist of a living mercury and a living sulphur; work it gently, not with haste and hurry.” [Cf. Tabula Smaragdina 9, “suaviter” ...]

Hitchcock (H. A., p. 42): “The ‘one’ thing of the alchemists is above all man, according to his nature [as a nature] essentially and substantially one. But if the authors refer to man phenomenally they speak of him under different names, indicating different states as he is before or after ‘purification’ or they refer to his body, his soul or his spirit under different names. Sometimes they speak of the whole man as mercury, ... and then by the same word perhaps they speak of something special, as our mercury which has besides, a multitude of other names ... although men are of diverse dispositions and temperaments, some being angelic and others satanic, yet the alchemists maintain with St. Paul that ‘all the nations of men are of one blood,’ that is, of one nature. And it is that in man by which he is of one nature which it is the special object of alchemy to bring into life and activity; that by whose means, if it could universally prevail, mankind would be constituted into a brotherhood.”

The alchemist says that a great difficulty at the outset of the work is the finding or making of their necessarily indispensable mercury, which they also call green lion, mercurius animatus, the serpent, the dragon, acid water, vinegar, etc.

What is this mysterious mercury, susceptible to evolution, lying in mankind, common to all, but differently worked out? Hitchcock answers, conscience. Conscience is not equally “pure” with all men, and not equally developed; the difficulty of discovering it, of which the alchemists tell, is the difficulty of arousing it in the heart of man for the heart’s improvement and elevation. The starting point in the education of man is indeed to awaken in his heart an enduring, permanent sense of the absolutely right, and the consistent purpose of adhering to this sense. It is above all one of the hardest things in the world “to take a man in what is called his natural state, St. Paul’s natural man, after he has been for years in the indulgence of all his passions, having a view to the world, to honors, pleasures, wealth, and make him sensible of the mere abstract claims of right, and willing to relinquish one single passion in deference to it.” Surely that is the one great task of the educator; if it be accomplished, the work of improvement is easy and can properly be called mere child’s play, as the hermetics like to call the later phases of their work. (H. A., pp. 45 ff.)

No one is so suspicious and so sensitive as those whose conscience is not sensitive enough. Such people who wander in error themselves, are like porcupines: it is very difficult to approach them. The alchemists have suitable names for them as arsenic, vipers, etc., and yet they seek in all these substances, and in antimony, lead, and many other materials, for a true mercury that has just as many names as there are substances in which it is found; oil, vinegar, honey, wormwood, etc. Under all its names mercury is still, however, a single immutable thing. It was also called an incombustible sulphur for whoever has his conscience once rightly awakened, has in his heart an endlessly burning flame that eats up everything that is contrary to his nature. This fire that can burn like “poison” is a powerful medicine, the only right one for a (morally) sick soul.

Conscience in the crude state is generally called by the alchemists “common quicksilver” in contrast to “our quicksilver.” To replace the first by the second and, according to the demands of nature, not forcibly, is the one great aim that the hermetics follow. This first goal is a preparation for a further work. Whither this leads we can represent in one word—“God”—and even here we may be struck with the “circular” character of the whole hermetic work, since the heavenly mercury that is necessary to the preliminary work, to the purification, is yet itself a gift of God; the beginning depends on the end and presupposes it. The symbol of the prima materia is not without purpose a snake that has its tail in its mouth. I cannot, in anticipation, enter into the problem that arises in this connection; only let it be understood in a word that the end can soar beyond the beginning as an ideal.

What is to be done with the messenger of heaven, mercury, or conscience, when it has been discovered? Several alchemists give the instruction to sow the gold in mercury as in the earth, “philosophic gold” that is also called Venus-love. Often the New Testament proves the best commentary on the hermetic writings. In Corinthians III, 9, ff., we read: “Ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building. According to the grace of God which is given unto me as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation and another buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, hay, stubble.... Every man’s work shall be made manifest ... because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.” And Galatians VI, 7 ff.: “For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let him not be weary in well doing; for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.” The spirit to which it is sowed there is [Symbol: Mercury], mercury, and the gold that will come out is to be proved in the fire.

The alchemists speak of men very often as of metals. Before I cite from the work of Johann Isaak Hollandus on lead, I call to mind that lead, [Symbol: Saturn], bears the name of Saturn. The writing of Hollandus could quite as well be called a treatise on mankind as on lead. To understand this better, be it added that man in a state of humility or resignation must specially be associated with lead, the soft, dark metal.

The publisher of the English translation of J. I. Hollandus, which is dated 1670, addresses the reader as follows: “Kind reader, the philosophers have written much about their lead, which as Basilus has taught, is prepared from antimony; and I am under the impression that this saturnine work of the present philosopher, Mr. Johann Isaak Hollandus, is not to be understood of common lead ... but of the lead of the philosophers.”

And in Hollandus himself we read: “In the name of God, Amen.—My child, know that the stone called the Philosopher’s Stone comes from Saturn. And know my child as a truth that in the whole vegetable work [vegetable on account of the symbolism of the sowing and growing] there is no higher or greater secret than in Saturn. [Cf. the previously cited passage from Alipili.] For we find, ourselves, in [common] gold not the perfection that is to be found in Saturn, for inwardly he is good gold. In this all philosophers agree; and it is necessary only that you reject everything that is superfluous, then that you turn the within outward, which is the red; then it will be good gold. [H. A., p. 74, notes that Hollandus himself means the same as Isaiah L, 16. ‘Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes,’ etc.] Gold cannot be made so easily of anything as of Saturn, for Saturn is easily dissolved and congealed, and its mercury may be more easily extracted from it.” [That means therefore that the conscience easily develops after the destruction of superfluities or obstacles in the plastic lead man.] “And this mercury extracted from Saturn is purified and sublimated, as mercury is usually sublimed. I tell thee, my child, that the same mercury is as good as the mercury extracted from gold in all operations.” [Herein lies, according to H. A., an allusion to the fact that all men are essentially of one nature, inasmuch as the image of God dwells in them all.]

“All these strange parables, in which the philosophers have spoken of a stone, a moon, a stove, a vessel, all of that is Saturn [i.e., all of that is spoken of mankind] for you may add nothing foreign, outside of what springs from himself. There is none so poor in this world that he cannot operate and promote this work. For Luna may be easily made of Saturn in a short time [here Luna, silver, stands for the affections purified]; and in a little time longer Sol may be made from it. By Sol here I understand the intellect, which becomes clarified in proportion as the affections become purified.... In Saturn is a perfect mercury; in it are all the colors of the world, [that is, the whole universe in some sense lies in the nature of man, whence have proceeded all religions, all philosophies, all histories, all fables, all poesy, all arts and sciences.]” (P. 77.)

Artephius [Hapso]: “Without the antimonial vinegar [conscience] no metal [man] can be whitened [inwardly pure].... This water is the only apt and natural medium, clear as fine silver, by which we ought to receive the tinctures of Sol and Luna [briefly, if also inexactly, to be paraphrased by soul and body], so that they may be congealed and changed into a white and living earth.” This water desires the complete bodies in order that after their dissolution it may be congealed, fixed and coagulated into a white earth. [The first step is purification, releasing, that is, otherwise also conceived as calcination, etc.; it takes place through conscience, under whose influence the hard man is made tender and brought to fluidity.]

“But their [sc. the alchemists] solution is also their coagulation; both consist in one operation, for the one is dissolved and the other congealed. Nor is there any other water which can dissolve the bodies but that which abideth with them. Gold and silver [Sol and Luna as before] are to be exalted in our water, ... which water is called the middle of the soul and without which nothing can be done in our art. It is a vegetable, mineral, and animal fire, which conserves the fixed spirits of Sol and Luna, but destroys and conquers their bodies; for it annihilates, overturns and changes bodies and metallic forms, making them to be no bodies, but a fixed spirit.”

“The argentum vivum [living silver] is ... the substance of Sol and Luna, or silver and gold, changed from baseness to nobility.

“It is a living water that comes to moisten the earth that it may spring forth and in due season bring forth much fruit.... This aqua vitæ or water of life, whitens the body and changes it into a white color....

“How precious and how great a thing is this water. For without it the work could never be done or perfected; it is also called vas naturae, the belly, the womb, receptacle of the tincture, the earth, the nurse. It is the royal fountain, in which the king and queen [[Symbol: Sun] and [Symbol: Moon]] bathe themselves; and the mother, which must be put into and sealed up within the belly of her infant, and that is Sol himself, who proceeded from her, and whom she brought forth; and therefore they have loved one another as mother and son, and are conjoined together because they sprang from one root and are of the same substance and nature. And because this water is the water of the vegetable life, it causes the dead body to vegetate, increase and spring forth, and to rise from death to life, by being dissolved first and then sublimed. And in doing this the body is converted into a spirit and the spirit afterwards into a body....

“Our stone consists of a body, a soul, and a spirit.

“It appears then that this composition is not a work of the hands but a change of natures, because nature dissolves and joins itself, sublimes and lifts itself up, and grows white being separated from the feces [these feces are naturally the same that Hollandus notes as the ‘superfluities’].... Our brass or latten then is made to ascend by the degrees of fire, but of its own accord freely and without violence. But when it ascends on high it is born in the air or spirit and is changed into a spirit, and becomes a life with life. And by such an operation the body becomes of a subtile nature and the spirit is incorporated with the body, and made one with it, and by such a sublimation, conjunction and raising up, the whole, body and spirit, is made white.” (H. A., p. 87.)

For elucidation some passages from the Bible may be useful. Colossians II, 11: “In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ.” Psalm LI, 7: “Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.” I Corinthians VI, 11: “But ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus.” Romans VIII, 13: “For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” John IV, 14: “But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” [In IV, 10, living water is mentioned.] John XII, 24 ff.: “... Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die [Putrefactio] it abideth alone; but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it and he that hateth his life in the world shall keep it unto life eternal.”

Romans VI, 5 ff.: “For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him [I must mention here that the hieroglyph for vinegar is [Symbol: Vinegar]] that the body of sin might be destroyed....”

I Corinthians XV, 42 ff.: “It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory.... It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.... The first Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.... We shall all be changed.... For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.”

I Corinthians XV, 40 ff.: “There are celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial.... There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon.”

Ephesians II, 14 ff.: “For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace, and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby.”

If we note the two contraries that are to be united according to the procedure of the hermetic philosophers with [Symbol: Sun] and [Symbol: Moon] [sun and moon, gold and silver, etc.] and represent them united with the cross [Symbol: +] we get [Symbol: Mercury with a sun]; i.e., [Symbol: Mercury], the symbol of mercury. This ideogram conceals the concept, Easter. All these ideas, as we know, did not originate with Christianity.

II Corinthians V, 1: “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

John VII, 38: “He that believeth on me ... out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.”

I mention right here that the hermetic philosophers do not pursue speculative theology, but that, as is clearly evident from their writings, they made the content of the religious doctrine a part of their life. That was their work, a work of mysticism. Everything that the reader is inclined to conceive in the passages above, as probably belonging merely to the other life, they as Mystics, sought to represent to themselves on earth, though without prejudice to the hope of a life beyond. I presume that they therefore speak of two stones, a celestial and a terrestrial. The celestial stone is the eternal blessedness and, as far as the Christian world of ideas is considered, is Christ, who has aided mankind to attain it. The terrestrial stone is the mystical Christ whom each may cause to be crucified and resurrected in himself, whereby he attains a kingdom of heaven on earth with those peculiar qualities that have been allegorically attributed to the philosopher’s stone. Therefore the terrestrial stone is called a reflection of the celestial and so it is said that from lead, etc., the stone may be easily produced and “in a short time,” i.e., not only after death.

At any rate in primitive symbolism there seems to be a religious idea at the bottom of the recommendation to use the sputum lunæ (moon spittle) or sperm astrale (star semen), star mucus, in short of an efflux from the world of light above us, as first material for the work of our illumination. [In many alchemistic recipes such things are recommended. Misunderstanding led to a so-called shooting star substance being eagerly hunted for. What was found and thought to be star mucus was a gelatinous plant.] So it is in this passage from John IX, 5, ff.: “As long as I am in the world I am the light of the world. When he [Jesus] had thus spoken, he spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle and anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, and said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam [which is by interpretation: Sent]. He went his way, therefore, washed, and came seeing.” The transference of a virtue by the receiving of a secretion is a quite common primitive idea.

As Michael Maier (Symbola Aureae Mensae Lib. XI) informs us, Melchior Cibinensis, a Hungarian priest, expressed the secrets of the forbidden art in the holy form of the Mass. For as birth, life, exaltation, suffering in fire and then death were, as it were, ascribed to the Philosopher’s Stone in black and gloomy colors, and finally resurrection and life in red and other beautiful colors, so he compared his preparation with the work of the salvation of man (and the “terrestrial” stone with the “celestial” stone), namely, with the birth, life, suffering, death and resurrection of Christ. (Höhler, Herm. Phil., p. 156.) The making of the Philosopher’s Stone is, so to speak, the Imitation of Christ.

Hitchcock (H. A., p. 143) believes that Irenaeus Philaletha has clearly alluded in a passage of his writings to the two mental processes, analysis and synthesis, which lead to the same end. “To seek the unity through Sol, I take it, is to employ the intellect upon the Idea of Unity, by analysis that terminates in the parts; whereas to study upon Mercury, here used for nature at large, is to work synthetically, and by combining the parts, reach an idea of the unity. The two lead to the same thing, beginning as it were from opposite extremes; for the analysis of any one thing, completely made, must terminate in the parts, while the parts, upon a synthetical construction, must reproduce the unity. One of the two ways indicated by Irenaeus is spoken of as a herculean labor, which I suppose to be the second, the reconstruction of a unity by a recombination of the parts, which in respect to nature is undoubtedly a herculean undertaking. The more hopeful method is by meditation, etc.”

Some of the writers tell us to put “one of the bodies into the alembic,” that is to say, take the soul into the thought or study and apply the fire (of intellect) to it, until it “goes over” into spirit. Then, “putting this by for use,” put in “the other body,” which is to be subjected to a similar trial until it “goes over” also; after which the two may be united, being found essentially or substantially the same.

The two methods of which Irenaeus speaks are also called in alchemy (with reference to chemical procedures) the wet and the dry ways. The wet way is that which leads to unity through mental elaboration. The philosophy of the Indian didactic poetry Bhagavad-Gita also knows the two ways and calls them Samkhya and Yoga.

“Thinking (Samkhya) and devotion (Yoga) separate only fools, but not the wise. Whoever consecrates himself only to the One, gets both fruits. Through thinking and through devotion the same point is reached, Thinking and devotion are only One, who knows that, knows rightly.”

Bh-G. V. 4ff.

“Samkhya” and “Yoga” have later been elaborated into whole philosophical systems. Originally, however, they are merely “different methods of arriving at the same end, namely the attainment of the Atman [all spirit] which on the one hand is spread out as the whole infinite universe and on the other is to be completely and wholly found in the inner life. In the first sense Atman can be gained by meditation on the multiplex phenomena of the universe and their essential unity, and this meditation is called Samkhya [from sam + khya, reflection, meditation]; on the other hand, Atman is attainable by retirement from the outer world and concentration upon one’s own inner world and this concentration is called Yoga.” (Deussen, Allg. Gesch. d. Phil., I, 3, p. 15.)

For the practice of alchemy a moral behavior is required, which is hardly necessary as a precondition of merely chemical work. The disciple of the art is to free his character, according to the directions of the masters from all bad habits, especially to abjure pride, is diligently to devote himself to prayer, perform works of love, etc.; no one is to direct his senses to this study if he has not previously purified his heart, renounced the love of worldly things, and surrendered himself completely to God. (Höhler, Herm. Phil., pp. 62 ff.)

The sloppers, who strive to make gold in a chemical laboratory often waste in it their entire estate. The adepts, however, assure us that even a poor man can obtain the stone; many, indeed, say the poor have a better materia than the rich. Rom. II, 11: “For there is no respect of persons with God.” Matth. XIX, 24: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” The alchemist Khunrath says somewhere, the cost of making gold amounts to thirty dollars; we understand this when we remember that Jesus was sold for thirty pence.

Ruland (Lex., p. 26) defines alchemy very finely: [In reference to Tab. Smar., 9] “Alchemy is the separation of the impure from a purer substance.” This is quite as true of the chemical as of the spiritual alchemy.

Why the hermetic philosophers write not literally but in figures may be accounted for in several ways. We should first of all remember that because of their free doctrine, which was indeed not at variance with true Christianity but with the narrow-minded church, they had to fear the persecution of the latter, and that for this reason they veiled their teachings. Hitchcock notices also a further point. The alchemists often declare that the knowledge of their secret is dangerous (for the generality of people). It appears that they did not deem that the time was ripe for a religion that was based more on ideal requirements, on moral freedom, than on fear of hell fire, expectation of rewards and on externally visible marks and pledges. Besides we shall see later that a really clear language is in the nature of things neither possible nor from an educational point of view to be recommended.

Still the mystical purpose of the authors of those times when the precautionary measures were not necessary appears clearer under the alchemistic clothing, although no general rule applying to it can be set forth. Other reasons, e.g., intellectual and conventional ones, influenced them to retain the symbolism.

Very clearly mystical are the writings of a number of hermetic artists, who are permeated by the spiritual doctrine of Jacob Boehme. This theosophist makes such full use of the alchemistic symbolism, that we find it wherever we open his writings. I will not even begin to quote him, but will only call the reader’s attention to his brief and beautifully thoughtful description of the mystical process of moral perfection, which stands as “Processus” at the end of the 5th chapter of his book, “De Signatura Rerum.” (Ausg., Gichtel Col., 2218 f.)

An anonymous author who has absorbed much of the “Philosophicus Teutonicus,” wrote the book, “Amor Proximi,” much valued by the amateurs of the high art. It does not require great penetration to recognize this pious manual, clothed throughout in alchemistic garments, as a mystical work. The same is true of the formerly famous “Wasserstein der Weisen” (1st ed. appeared 1619), and similar books. Here are some illustrative pages from “Amor Proximi”:

“This [Symbol: water] [[Symbol: water] of life] is now the creature not foreign or external but most intimate in every one, although hidden.... See Christ is not outside of us, but intimately within us, although hidden.” (P. 32.)

“Whoever is to work out a thing practically must first have a fundamental knowledge of a thing; in order that man shall macrocosmically and magically work out the image of God, all God’s kingdom, in himself; he must have its right knowledge in himself....” (P. 29.)

“Christ is the great Universal; [The Grand Mastery is also called by the alchemists the ‘universal’; it tinctures all metals to gold and heals all diseases (universal medicine); there is a somewhat more circumscribed ‘particular,’ which tinctures only a special metal and cures only single diseases.] who says: ‘Whoever will follow me and be my disciple (i.e., a particular or member of my body), let him take up his [Symbol: cross] and follow me.’ Thus one sees that all who desire to be members of the great universal must each partake according to the measure of his suffering and development as small specific remedies.” (Pp. 168 ff.)

“Paracelsus, the monarch of Arcana, says that the stars as well as the light of grace, nowhere work more willingly than in a fasting, pure, and free heart. As it is naturally true that the coarse sand and ashes cannot be illumined by the sun, so the SUN of righteousness cannot illumine the old Adam. It is then that the sand and ashes [the old Adam] are melted in the [Symbol: fire] [of the [Symbol: cross]] again and again, that a pure glass [a newborn man] is made of it; so the [Symbol: gold/sol] can easily shoot its rays into and through it and therefore illumine it and reveal the wonder of its wisdom. So man must be recast in [Symbol: cross] [Symbol: fire] [cross-fire], so that the rays of both lights can penetrate him; otherwise no one will become a wise man.” (P. 96 ff.)

Beautiful expositions of alchemy that readily make manifest the mystical content are found also in the English theosophists Pordage and his followers, in particular Jane Leade (both 17th century). Their language is clearer and more lucid than Jacob Boehme’s. Many passages appropriate to this topic might be here cited; but as I shall later take up Leade more fully, I quote only one passage from Pordage (Sophia, p. 23):

“Accordingly and so that I should arrive at a fundamental and complete cleansing from all tares and earthiness ... I gave over my will entirely to its [wisdom’s] fiery smelting furnace as to a fire of purification, till all my vain and chaff-like desires and the tares of earthly lust had been burnt away as by fire, and all my iron, tin and dross had been entirely melted in this furnace, so that I appeared in spirit as a pure gold, and could see a new heaven and a new earth created and formed within me.”

Out of all this, taken in conjunction with the following chapter, it will be evident and beyond question that our Parable must also be interpreted as a mystical introduction.

Section IV.

Rosicrucianism And Freemasonry.

The previous chapter has shown that there was a higher alchemy—it was furthermore regarded as the true alchemy—which has the same relation to practical chemistry that freemasonry has to practical masonry. A prominent chemist who had entered into the history of chemistry and that of freemasonry once wrote to me: “Whoever desires to make a chemical preparation according to a hermetic recipe seems to me like a person who undertakes to build a house according to the ritual of Freemasonry.”

The similarity is not a chance one. Both external and internal relations between alchemy and freemasonry are worthy of notice. The connection is partly through rosicrucianism. Since the Parable, which shall still be the center of our study, belongs to rosicrucian literature (and indeed is probably a later development of it), it is fitting here to examine who and what the Rosicrucians really were. We cannot, of course, go into a thorough discussion of this unusually complex subject. We shall mention only what is necessary to our purpose. I shall not, however, be partial, but treat of both the parties which are diametrically opposed in their views of the problems of rosicrucian history. It will be shown that this disagreement fortunately has but small influence upon our problem and that therefore we are relieved of the difficult task of reaching a conclusion and of bringing historical proof for a decision which experienced specialists—of whom I am not one—have so signally failed to reach.

Rosicrucians are divided into those of three periods, the old, who are connected by the two chief writings, “Fama” and “Confessio,” that appeared at the beginning of the 17th century; the middle, which apparently represents a degeneration of the original idealistic league, and finally, the gold crossers and rose crossers, who for a time during the 18th century developed greater power. The last Rosicrucians broke into freemasonry for a while (in the second half of the eighteenth century) in a manner almost catastrophic for continental masonry, yet I observe in anticipation that this kind of rosicrucian expansion is not immediately concerned with the question as to the original relation of freemasonry and rosicrucianism. We must know how to distinguish the excrescence from the real idea. Rosicrucianism died out at the beginning of the 19th century. The rosicrucian degrees that still exist in many systems of freemasonry (as Knight of the Red Cross, etc.) are historical relics. Those who now parade as rosicrucians are imposters or imposed on, or societies that have used rosicrucian names as a label.

Many serious scholars doubt that the old Rosicrucians ever existed as an organized fraternity. I refer to the article Rosenkreuz in the “Handbuch der Freimaurerei” (Lenning), where this skeptical view is dominant. Other authors, on the contrary, believe in the existence of the old order and think that the freemasons who appeared in their present form in 1717 are the rosicrucians persisting, but with changed name. Joh. Gottl. Buhle, a contemporary of Nicolai, had already assumed that the rosicrucian Michael Maier introduced rosicrucianism into England, and that freemasonry began then especially with the coöperation of the Englishman Robert Fludd (1574-1637). Ferdinand Katsch warmly defended the actual existence of the old rosicrucian fraternity with arguments, some of which are disputed. He names with certainty a number of people as “true rosicrucians,” among them Julianus de Campis, Michael Maier, Robert Fludd, Frisius or Frizius, Comenius (Katch, p. 33). Rosicrucianism turned into freemasonry for practical reasons. As the most outstanding imposters represented themselves as rosicrucians this name was not conserved. The wrong was prevented, in that the true rosicrucians withdrew as such and assumed a different dress.

Generally we imagine a different origin of freemasonry. We are accustomed to look for its beginnings in practical masonry, whose lodges can be traced back to the fourteenth century. The old unions of house builders were joined by persons who were not actual workers but lay members, through whom spiritual power was added to the lodges. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the old working masonry was transformed into the spiritual symbolical freemasonry, but with a continuance of its forms. At that time in London the building lodges had diminished to four. These were united on June 24 (St. John’s Day), 1717, and chose Anton Sayer for their grand master. That is the origin of Freemasonry as it exists to-day.

This derivation is and will be considered unsatisfactory by many, however much it may satisfy the merely documentary claims. The attempt to make it better required an inventive phantasy and this was not always fortunate in its attempts. The rosicrucian theory cannot be dismissed off hand, especially if we conceive it in a somewhat broader sense. In agreement with Katsch, Höhler (Herm. Phil., p. 6) recalls how generally people were occupied in the 16th and 17th centuries in the whole of western Europe with cabala, theosophy, magic (physics), astrology and alchemy, and indeed this held true of higher and lower social strata, scholars and laymen, ecclesiastic and secular. “The entire learned theology turned on cabala. Medicine was based on theosophy and alchemy and the latter was supposed to be derived from theosophy and astrology.” Höhler, in one respect, goes further than Katsch and conjectures: “Freemasonry had its roots in the chemical societies of the 16th and 17th centuries, in which all those things were fostered that constituted the science of that day.” This theory is incomparably more open to discussion than if one attempts to confine the origin to the insecure base of rosicrucianism. We shall learn to appreciate more fully the significance of the chemical societies.

In connection with the question, important for us, as to the position of the alchemy of the rosicrucians (whether they lived only in books or as an actual brotherhood), it is worth while to glance at the literature.

Joachin Frizius, whom some think identical with Fludd, writes in the “Summum Bonum, quod est verum Magiae, Cabalae, Alchymiae, verae Fratrum Roseae Crucis verorum subjectum” (first published in Frankfort, 1629):

“Aben (אבן) means a stone. In this one cabbalistic stone we have the Father, Son and Holy Ghost ... for in Hebrew Ab (אב) means Father and Ben (בן) Son. But where the Father and Son are present there the Holy Ghost must be also.... Let us now examine this Stone as the foundation of the macrocosm.... Therefore the patriarch Jacob spake, ‘How dreadful is this place. This is none other but the house of God,’ and rose up and took the stone that he had put for his pillow and poured oil upon the top of it, and said, ‘This stone that I have set for a pillar shall be God’s house, etc.’ If therefore a God’s house, then God is in that place or else his earthly substance. Here it was that the patriarch, as he slept on this stone, conserved something divine and miraculous, through the power of that spirit-filled stone which in its corporeality is similar to the relation of the body to the soul. But the spiritual stone was Christ; but Christ is the eternal wisdom, in which as the scripture says are many mansions, which are undoubtedly distinguished on account of the different grades of grace and blessedness. For blessedness follows wisdom or knowledge, the higher and more we know the farther we go towards the Godhead.” (Summ. Bon., pp. 17 ff.)

“Thereupon it clearly appears who this macrocosmic Stone Aben ... really is, and that his fiery spirit is the foundation stone of all and given for all (sit lapis seu petra catholica atque universalis) ... which was laid in Zion as the true foundation, on which the prophets and the apostles as well have built, but which was also to the ignorant and wicked builders a stumbling block and bone of contention. This stone therefore is Christ who has become our Cornerstone....” (Summ. Bon., p. 19.) “If we consider now the stone Aben in its significance for the microcosmos ... we shall soon be sure that as a stone temple of God it can have no less value for every outer man in so far as the Holy Ghost also reserves a dwelling in him forever.” (Summ. Bon., p. 20.)

“That is also the reason why the stone Aben appears in double form (quod ambae petrae), that is, in the macrocosmic and in the microcosmic.... For the spiritual stone is Christ that fulfills all. So we also are parts of the spiritual stone and such are also living stones, taken out of that universal stone (a petra illa catholica excisi)....” (Summ. Bon., p. 20.) Here again we have the alchemistic distinction between the universal and the particular, and the like distinction is also expressed by the opposition of the celestial and the terrestrial stones. The second chapter of I Peter speaks of the living stone. I Corinthians X, 4, says likewise: “And did all drink of that spiritual Rock that followed them and that Rock was Christ.” Alchemistically expressed it is called aurum potabile (drinkable gold).

“But,” now you ask, “where then is all the gold with which those alchemists [Fama] glitter so famously?” So we answer you.... “Our gold is indeed not in any way the gold of the multitude, but it is the living gold, the gold of God.... It is wisdom, which the psalmist means, Ps. XII, 6, ‘The words of the Lord are pure words as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.’ If you now wish ... to put before yourself the true and actual animal stone, then seek the cornerstone, which is the means of all change and transformation, in yourself.” (Summ. Bon., pp. 34 ff.)

“Finally the brother works towards the consummation of his labors in the form of a master builder (_denique sub architecti figura operatur frater ad huius operis perfectionem_).... Only for the better carrying out of our building and thereby to attain the rose-red bloom of our cross concealed in the center of our foundation ... we must not take the work superficially, but must dig to the center of the earth, knock and seek.” (Summ. Bon., p. 48; Trans. Katsch, pp. 413 ff.) Just after that he speaks of the three dimensions, height, depth, and breadth. The masonic symbolism is accompanied clearly enough in the “Summum Bonum” by the alchemistic. Notice the knocking and seeking, and what is mentioned in the doctrines about the form of the Lodge. Immediately thereafter is a prolix discussion of the geometric cube.

Frizius and Fludd contribute also a letter supposed to have been sent by rosicrucians to a German candidate. It says, “Since you are such a stone as you desire, and such a work ... cleanse yourself with tears, sublimate yourself with manners and virtues, decorate and color yourself with the sacramental grace, make your soul sublime toward the subtile meditation of heavenly things, and conform yourself to angelic spirits so that you may vivify your moldering body, your vile ashes, and whiten them, and incorruptibly and painlessly gain resurrection through J[esus] C[hrist] O[ur] L[ord].” In another passage: “Be ye transformed, therefore, be ye transmuted from mortal to living philosophic stones.”

In the “Clavis Philosophiae et Alchymiae Fluddanae” (published in Latin in 1633), are passages like the following: “Indeed every pious and righteous man is a spiritual alchemist.... We understand by that a man who understands not only how to distinguish but with the fire of the divine spirit to separate [spagiric art] the false from the true, vice from virtue, dark from light, the uncleanness of vice from the purity of the spirit emulating God. For only in this way is unclean lead turned into gold.” (P. 75.) “If one now ventures to say that the Word of Christ or the Holy Ghost of wisdom dwells in the microcosmic heaven [i.e., in the soul of man] we should not decry the blind children of the world as godless and abandoned. [But certainly the divine spirit is, as is later averred, the rectangular stone in us, on which we are to build.] This divine spark is, however, continuous and eternal; it is our gold purchasable of Christ.... So it happens in accordance with the teachings of Christ, or the Word become flesh, that if the true alchemists keep on seeking and knocking, they attain to the knowledge of the living fire.” (P. 81.) So again the important knocking and seeking of masonic symbolism, and this indeed, for the purpose of learning to know a fire.

In reference to the really elevating thoughts of the “Summum Bonum,” Katsch, enthusiastic about these ideas, exclaims: “What language, what an unflinching courage, what a dignified humility. Even the most reluctant will not be able to avoid the admission that here quite unexpectedly he has ... met the original and ideal form of freemasonry.”

The comparison of masonry and alchemy remains true even if we work more critically than Katsch, who is accused of many inaccuracies. I recall for instance the later researches of the thorough and far-seeing Dr. Ludwig Keller.

For the illumination of the darkness that has spread over the past of freemasonry, Keller shows us (B. W. and Z., pp. 1, 2) the rich material of symbolism that is offered the diligent student, first of all in the very copious literature, printed matter, and especially in the manuscripts, that is known by the name of Chemistry or Alchemy.

In the symbols of the alchemists, the rosicrucians, the Lodges, etc., “we meet a language that has found acceptance among all occidental peoples in analogous form, not indeed a letter or word language, but a language nevertheless, a token or a symbol language of developed form, which is evident even in the rock temples of the so-called catacombs, once called latomies and loggie. The single images and symbols have something to say only to the person who understands this language. To the man who does not understand it, they say nothing and are not expected to say anything.”

In reference to the symbol and image language, which was comprehensible only to the initiated, we think naturally of the ancient mysteries. The religious societies of the oldest Christians, in the centuries when Christianity belonged in the Roman Empire to the forbidden cults, found a possibility of existence before the law in the form of licensed societies, i.e., as guilds, burial unions, and corporations of all sorts. The primitive Christians were not the only forbidden sects that sought and found this recourse. Under the disguise of schools, trade unions, literary societies, and academies, there existed in the jurisdiction of the Roman Empire, and later inside of the world church, organizations that before the law were secular societies, but in the minds of the initiated were associations of a religious character. Within these associations there appeared very early a well developed system of symbols, which were adopted for the purpose of actually maintaining, through the concealment necessitated by circumstances, their unions and their implements and customs—symbols that they chose as cloaks and that in the circle of the initiated were explained and interpreted according to the teachings of their cult.

Valuable monuments of this symbolism are preserved in the vast rock temples that are found in Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, Sicily, and the Apennine peninsula, in Greece, France, and on the Rhine, and these vaults, which in part also served the early Christians as places of worship, show in their images and records and in their architectural form so close a resemblance that they must be acknowledged as the characteristic of a great religious cult extending over many lands, which has had consistent traditions for the use of such symbols and for the production of these structures.

Many of these symbols, it should be noted in passing, are borrowed from those tokens and implements of the building corporations, which were necessary to the completion of their buildings (Keller, l. c., p. 4). An important part was played even in the early Christian symbolism by the sacred numbers and the figures corresponding to them, a group of educational symbols which we find likewise in the pythagorean and platonic schools. It is known that the symbolical language of the subterranean rock temples, some of which were used by the earliest Christians for their religious worship, are closely connected with the pythagorean and platonic doctrines. From the year 325 A. D. on, every departure from the beliefs of the state church was considered a state offense. So those Christians who retained connection with the ancient philosophic schools were persecuted. In the religious symbol language of the church, the sacred numbers naturally began to disappear from that time. In the writings of Augustine begins the war on the symbolic language, whose use he declared a characteristic of the gnostics. In spite of the suppression the doctrines of the sacred numbers continued through all the centuries in religious use, in quiet but strong currents which flowed beside the state church. The sect names, which were invented by polemic theology for the purpose of characterizing methods that were regarded as imitations of the gnostics, are of the most varied kinds; it may be enough to remember that in all those spiritual currents, that like the old German mysticism, the earlier humanism, the so-called natural philosophy, etc., show a strong influence of platonic thinking, the doctrines of the sacred numbers recur, in a more or less disguised form, but yet clearly recognizable. (Keller, Heil. Zahl., p. 2.)

As the old number symbolism constitutes a part of the hieroglyphics of alchemy, I shall pause a moment to consider them. The use of mathematical and geometrical symbols proceeds from the use of the simplest forms, points and lines, but in all cases where the object is not a representation in the flat but in space, both the points and lines are replaced by plastic forms, i.e., forms of cylinders, spheres, bars, rings, cubes, etc. From this point it was but a short step to the use of trees, leaves, flowers, implements, and other things that showed similarities in form. Pillars are specially noticeable for the symbolism of the ceremonial chamber. In all cases where points and lines occur in images and drawings, pillars are found in the plastic representation of thoughts and symbols. They form the chief element of the organization of cults in academies and museums, and justify the names of colonnade, stoa, portico, and loggia, which occur everywhere; besides the special designation like Οἰκυς αἰονὶος, etc.

For symbolism, too, which served as the characterization of the forms of organization and the building up of the fraternity into degrees, lines were useless, but in place of lines and points are found plastic forms which were at their disposal in carpenters’ squares, crossed bars, etc. (Keller, l. c., p. 10.)

As the circle symbolized the all and the eternal or the celestial unity of the all, and the divinity, so the number one, the single line, the staff or the scepter, represented the terrestrial copy of the power, the ruling, guiding, sustaining and protecting force of the personality that had attained freedom on earth.

The sun or gold symbol [Symbol: Sun] corresponds in alchemy to the divine circle and the same circle occurs in other symbols of the art, as in [Symbol: Copper] [Symbol: Mercury], etc.

Duality, the Dyas, represents in contrast to the celestial being the divided terrestrial being that is dominated by the antagonism of things and is only a transitory, imperfect existence; the opposites, fluid and solid, sulphur and mercury, dry and wet, etc.

In the symbol of the trinity, which frequently occurs in the form of a triangle (three points united by three straight lines), is shown how the divided and sensuous nature is led by the higher power of the number 3 to a harmony of powers and to a new unity. The symbol of reason attaining victory over matter becomes visible. A representation of trinity is possible by means of the conventional cross. We can see in it two elements of lines which by their unification or penetration give the third as the point of intersection. More generally the cross is conceived as quinity (fiveness)—i.e., 4+1ness (in alchemy four elements which are collected about the quinta esentia). A cross in which unity splits into duality so that trinity results, is Y, which is called the forked cross. From unity grows duality, that is, nature divides into spirit and matter, into active and passive, necessity and freedom. The divided returns through trinity to unity. In alchemy we have the symbol REBIS, the hermaphrodite with the two heads. The ancient symbol was later conceived, by purposive concealment or by more accidental interpretation, as the letter Y, just as the symbol of the three lines [Symbol: fire] or [Symbol: fire with a line coming out top pointing left] and the like gradually appears to have become an A, as it is found frequently in the catacombs. Keller refers (l. c., p. 14) also especially to the reduplication of the carpenter’s square, which is found likewise in the old Latomies (Gk. = quarries) and has the appearance of two intersecting opened circles. I do not need to call attention to the masonic analogue; in alchemy we have here the interpenetration of [Symbol: fire] and [Symbol: Water], i.e., [Symbol: Star of David], which is among others the symbol for the material of the stone. [[Symbol: Fire] and [Symbol: Water] are the symbols for the elements fire and water. Fire and water, however, mean also the famous two opposites, that are symbolized quite as well by warm and cold, red and white, soul and body, sun and moon, man and woman.] With regard to the six points, in alchemy [Symbol: Star of David] is also called chaos in contrast to [Symbol: Star of David], which denotes cosmos, just as alum [Symbol: circle] on account of its lack of a center (God, belief, union), is incomplete beside [Symbol: sol]. In the catacombs the triangle is found also in multiple [five fold] combination, [Symbol: Star of David].

Four lines, somewhat in the form of a rectangle, define the limited space of the terrestrial world with the accessory meaning of the holy precinct, house, temple. In masonry, [Symbol: square] is well known as the lodge. The rectangle is related to the cube. I mention therefore in this place the cubic stone, the mighty masonic symbol, whose equivalent in alchemy will be discussed.

By a commonly used change of significance the number 5 is symbolized by 5-leaved plants (rose, lily, vine). “The flowers, however, and the garden in which they grow, early served as symbols of the Fields of the Blessed or the ‘better country’ in which dwell the souls passing through death to life; in antithesis to the terrestrial house of God, the temple built with hands, which was represented by the rectangle [Symbol: rectangle], the holy number 5 denoted the celestial abodes of the souls that had attained perfection, and therefore represented both the House of Eternity or the City of God and the Heavenly Jerusalem. The holy pentagram in the form of the rose, not only in the ancient but in the early Christian world, decorated the graves of the dead, that in their turn symbolized the gardens of the blessed. And the significance that the academies and loggia attributed to the pentagram placed in the rose is explained by the fact that their religious festival was closely connected with this emblem. Already in the ancient world at the festival of St. John, the rose feast or rhodismus or Rosalia was celebrated, at which the participants adorned themselves with roses and held religious feasts.” (Keller, 1. c., p. 21.)

As already mentioned, the cross, i.e., the Greek cross with its four equal arms, expresses the number five. It is interesting that already in the ancient number symbolism, rose and cross appear united, a fact which I mention here in view of the later connection of these two objects.

The semicircle or moon is an emblem of borrowed light. Besides the circles or spheres, the symbols of eons (divine beings, powers) that are enthroned in the ether as eternal beings, the human soul—the psyche or anima, which does not coincide with reason or the purified soul—appears as a broken circle. As the sun and its symbol, the ragged circle, symbolize the eternal light, the half circle is, as it were, the symbol of that spark of light that slumbers in the soul of man, or, as the alchemists often say, the hidden fire that is to be awakened by the process. If we reflect that in this symbolism the cross expresses a penetration, the alchemic symbol [Symbol: mercury] is explained. It is now quite interesting that the like connection appears in the subterranean places of worship in this form [Symbol: female with concave arc underneath it], (l. c., p. 27). Keller calls it a symbol of the all and the soul of man.

The number 7 (seven planets, etc.) also is of some importance in the old latomies. It is noteworthy besides that sun and moon usually appear as human forms; the sun wears on its head a crown or garland or beaming star, while the moon image is wont to carry the symbol [Symbol: Silver]. Alchemy, too, likes to represent [Symbol: Gold] and [Symbol: Silver] as human, and indeed frequently as crowned figures, sometimes as a royal bridal couple.

The ancient lore of the sacred numbers breathes a spirit that may be embodied in the following words: The soul of man, which through resignation or meekness, as they used to say then, is impelled onward to purity and union with the Eternal, has in itself a higher life, which cannot be annihilated by death. The doctrine of the infinite value of the soul ... and of God’s entering into the pure soul of man forms the central point of the thought of religious fellowship. Neither for sacrifice, which the state religions practice, nor for the beliefs in demons, by which the masses are controlled, nor for the idea of priesthood as means of salvation, was there a place in this system, and not a trace of such a belief is demonstrable in this religion of wisdom and virtue. (l. c., p. 33.)

Besides the early Christian ideal, which recognized and encouraged the connection between the teachings of Christ and the ancient wisdom of platonism, there was in early times another which emphasized and endeavored to develop the antithesis more than the connection. From the time when the new Christian state church came to life, and sacrificial religion and the belief in devils and the priesthood were restored, a struggle of life and death developed between the church and the so-called philosophic schools. “The fraternity saw that it had to draw down the mask still further over its face than formerly, and the ‘House of the Eternal,’ the ‘Basilika,’ the ‘Academies,’ and the ‘Museums’ became workshops of stone cutters, latomies, and loggia or innocent guilds, unions, and companies of every variety. But all later greater religious movements and tendencies which maintained the old beliefs, whether they appeared under the names of mysticism, alchemy, natural philosophy, humanism, or special names and disguises, as workshops or societies, have preserved more or less truly the doctrine of the ‘sacred numbers’ and the number symbolism, and found the keys of wisdom and knowledge in the rightly understood doctrine of the eternal harmony of the spheres.” (Keller, l. c., p. 38.)

Keller derives modern freemasonry from the academies of the renaissance, which, as we have just heard, continued the spirit of the ancient academies. Now it is interesting that the later branches of these religious societies (after the renaissance) took among others the form of alchemy companies and further that such fraternities or companies [as are not called alchemical], still employed symbols that we recognize as derived from alchemy. The hieroglyphics of alchemy appear to be peculiarly appropriate to the religious and philosophic ideas to be treated of. Rosicrucianism was, however, one of the forms into which alchemy was organized. It is further important that in just those societies of the beginning of the seventeenth century which outsiders called “alchymists” or “rosicrucians,” the characteristic emblems of the old lodge appeared, as, for instance, the circle, the cubic stone, the level, the man facing the right, the sphere, the oblong rectangle (symbol of the Lodge), etc. (Keller, Zur Gesch. d. Bauh., p. 17.) These “alchymists” honored St. John in the same way as can be shown for the companies of the fifteenth century. I need not mention that modern masonry, in its most important form, bears the name of Masons of St. John.

From the beginning of the 17th century attempts were made inside the fraternity, as the company societies working in the same spirit may be called, to bring to more general recognition a suitable name for this company, which could also form a uniting bond for the scattered single organizations. The leaders knew and occasionally said that a respected name for the common interest would be advantageous. This view appears especially in the letters of Comenius. It was then indeed an undecided question what nation should place itself at the head of the great undertaking. (Keller, in the M. H. der C. G., 1895, p. 156.) “As a matter of fact precisely in the years when in Germany the brothers had won the support of powerful princes and the movement received a great impetus, very decided efforts were made both to create larger unions and to adopt a unifying name. The founding of the Society of the Palmtree [1617] was the result of the earlier effort and the writings of Andreaes on the alleged origin and aims of the rosicrucians are connected with the other need. The battle of the White Mountain and the unfortunate consequences that followed killed both attempts, as it were, in the germ.” (Z. Gesch, d. Bauh., p. 20.) Note by the way that the name of the “Fraternity of the Red Cross” was taken from symbols which were already employed in the societies. In regard to this it is quite mistaken accuracy to maintain that it was correctly called “Bruderschaft des Rosenkreutz” and not “des Rosenkreutzes,” as the “Handbuch d. Freimaurerei,” p. 259, emends it. Vatter Christian Rosenkreutz is indeed evidently only a composite legendary personage as the bearer of a definite symbolism (Christ, rose, cross), (and may have been devised merely in jest). The name does not come from the personality of the founder but the personality of the founder comes from the name. The symbols and expressions that lie at the foundations are the earlier.

The attempt mentioned, to find a common name, did not permanently succeed. The visionaries and “heretics” decried as “Rosicrucians” and “alchymists” were considered as enemies and persecuted. It is irrelevant whether there was an organized fraternity of rosicrucians; it was enough to be known as a rosicrucian. (Keller, Z. Gesch. d. B., p. 21.) The great organization did not take place until a great European power spread over it its protecting hand, i.e., in 1717, when in England the new English system of “Grand Lodges of Free and Accepted Masons” arose. (Keller, D. Soc. d. Hum., p. 18.) We see that Keller arrives by another and surer way than Katsch at the same result, and shows the continuity of the alchemists or rosicrucians and the later freemasons, if not in exactly the same way that Katsch has outlined it. In particular Keller gets along without the unproved statement that there were organized rosicrucians (outside of the later gold- and rose-crosses). He shows what is much more important, namely that there were societies that might have borne the name of rosicrucians (or any similar name).

[Occult image.]

Figure 1.

Several interesting peculiarities should not be omitted, as for instance, that Leibniz, about 1667, was secretary of an alchemist’s society (of so-called rosicrucians) in Nuremberg. Leibniz describes alchemy as an “introduction to mystic theology” and identifies the concepts of “Arcana Naturae” and “Chymica.” (M. H. der C. G., 1903, p. 149; 1909, p. 169 ff.) In the laws of the grand lodge “Indissolubilis” (17th and 18th centuries) there are found as doctrinal symbols of the three grades, the alchemistic symbols of salt (rectification, clarification), of quicksilver (illumination), and of sulphur (unification, tincture), used in a way that corresponds to the stages of realization of the “Great Work.” The M. H. d. C. G., 1909, p. 173 ff. remarks that we should probably regard it only as an accident, if there are not found, in the famous hermetic chemical writings, similar signs with additions as would for experts, exclude all doubt as to their purport. In 1660 appeared at Paris an edition of a writing very celebrated among the followers of the art, “Twelve Keys of Philosophy,” which was ostensibly written by one Brother Basilius Valentinus. In this edition we see at the beginning a remarkable plate, whose relation to masonic symbolism is unmistakable (Figure 1). In addition to the lowest symbol of salt (represented as cubic stone) there is a significant reference to the earth and the earthly. [I should note that besides [Symbol: circle with diameter line] alchemy used [Symbol: square] for salt, in which there is a special reference to the earthly nature of salt. In Plato the smallest particles of the earth are cubical. Salt and earth alternate in the terminology, just as mercury [Symbol: female] and air [Symbol: air] or water [Symbol: water] do; as sulphur [Symbol: sulfur and fire [Symbol: fire]; only, however, where it is permitted by the context.] The Rectification of the subject (man) taken up by the Art, is achieved through the purification of the earthly elements according to the indication of the alchemists who call the beginning of the work “Vitriol,” and form an acrostic from the initial letters of this word: “Visita Interiora Terrae, Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem” [= Visit the interior of the earth; by purifying you will find the hidden stone]. Half way up there floats the [Symbol: mercury] that has the value of a “union symbol” in the brotherhoods (as such, a symbol of fellowship) and left and right of it is found the moon and sun or the flaming star. Above is placed a triangle, in which is a phoenix rising from the flames; and on the triangle stands the crowned Saturn or Hermes (in masonry Hiram). On the left and right of this kingly form, on whose breast and stomach are placed planet symbols, we notice water in the shape of drops (tears) and flames that signify suffering and resurrection. “When we notice that not only the principles of the old ‘amateurs of the art’ correspond with those of the ‘royal art’ [freemasonry], but that the symbolism also is the same in all parts, we recognize that the later masonic societies are only a modern reshaping of the societies which dropped the depreciated names of the alchemists in order to appear in a new dress” (l. c., p. 175). That the assertion of the complete similarity of the symbolism is not mere fancy, the following considerations (and not those only in this section), will satisfactorily demonstrate. In the following examples the words showing it most clearly are italicized.

Alchemy was regarded by its disciples as a _royal art_. Old sources show that the art of making gold was revealed in Egypt only to the crown princes. Generally only the kings’ sons were informed by the priests concerning the magic sciences. The hermetics derived their art expressly from kings, Hermes, Geber, and the patriarchs of alchemy were represented as kings.

According to Khunrath (Amphitheatrum) prayer, work and perseverance lead to eternal wisdom by the mystical ladder of the _seven_ theosophical _steps_. Perfect wisdom consists in the knowledge of God and his Son, in the understanding of the holy scriptures, in self knowledge and in knowledge of the great world and its Son, the Magnesia of the philosophers or the Philosopher’s Stone. The mystical steps in general contain _three_ activities, hearing (audire), persevering (perseverare), knowing (nosse et scire), that applies to _five_ objects, so that we can distinguish _seven_ steps in all. Only the pure may enter the temple of wisdom, only the _worthy_ are intrusted with the secrets, the _profane_, however, must stay away.

In the fifth table of Khunrath’s Amphitheatrum is pictured the seven pillared citadel of Pallas (Prov. IX, 1). At the entrance is a table with the legend Opera bona (= good works). Behind sits a man with the staff of Mercury. On each side is a _four sided pyramid_, on the top of the left one is the _sun_, on the right the _moon_. On the former stands the word _Fides_ (= faith), on the latter _Taciturnitas_ (= silence). Behind the man we read the word _Mysterion_, over the inner entrance _Non omnibus_ (= not for all).

Alchemy frequently mentions two or three _lights_. By these it understood [Symbol: Sol] and [Symbol: Luna], [Symbol: Venus], [Symbol: Mercury], [Symbol: Jupiter], light of grace and light of nature, etc. The juxtaposition of [Symbol: Sol] [Symbol: Luna] and [Symbol: Hexagram] is interesting; no one can attain the desired end before, through the _circular wheel_ of the elements, the fatness or the blood of the _sun_, and the dew of the _moon_ are by the action of _art_ and _nature_, united in one body in the image of the _hexagram_; and this can take place only by the will of the _Most High_, who alone imparts the unique boon of the _Holy Ghost_ and _priceless treasure_ according to his especial mercy. The above mentioned circular wheel is identical with the serpent that bites its own tail; it is a power that always consumes and always renews itself. This circle appears not to be lacking in the flaming star; it is the round eye or the likewise round fashioned “G,” which latter looks quite similar to the snake hieroglyph. The reference to Genesis has a good reason. Moreover, the hexagram represents in cabbalistic sense the mystical union of the male with the female potence [Symbol: Fire] with [Symbol: Water]. According to a rabbinical belief a picture is supposed to be placed in the ark of the covenant alongside of the tables of the laws, which shows a man and a woman in intimate embrace, in the form of a hexagram. In cabbalistic writings, as for instance, in those of H. C. Agrippa, we find the human form in a star, generally inscribed in the pentagram. The genitals fall exactly in the middle part and are often made prominent by an added [Symbol: Mercury] as male-female or androgyne procreative power. One of the snake shaped Egyptian hieroglyphs frequently turns into an Arabic [Symbol: gimel], i.e., gimel. I do not know whether this fact has any significance here. With respect to the above passages that mention the “will of the Most High,” I refer to the dialogue which concerns the “G”; e.g., “Does it mean nothing else?” “Something that is greater than you.” “Who is greater than I?” etc. “It is Gott, whom the English call God. Consider this mysterious star; it is the symbol of the Spirit.... The image of the holy fire, etc.”

[Occult image.]

Figure 2.

REBIS is represented as an hermetic hermaphrodite. The already mentioned figure with the two heads (figure 2) is found (as Höhler relates) in a book that appeared in Frankfort in 1618, called “Joannes Danielis Mylii Tractatus III, seu Basilica Philosophica,” though it is to be seen also in other books on alchemy. The hermaphrodite stands on a dragon that lies on a globe. In the right hand he holds a _pair of compasses_, in the left a _square_. On the globe we see a _square_ and a _triangle_. Around the figure are the signs of the seven planets, with [Symbol: Mercury] at the top. In a cut in the Discursus Nobilis of John of Munster we see _sun_ and _moon_, at the middle of the top the _star_ [Symbol: Hexagram], also denoted by Y = γλζ (= matter) surrounded by _rays_. (Höhler, Herm. Phil., p. 105.)

In the cabala, which has found admission into the idea of the alchemists and rosicrucians, no small part is played by _three pillars_ and _two pillars_.

Tubal Cain was renowned as a great alchemist. He was the patriarch of wisdom, a master of all kinds of brass and iron work. (Genesis IV, 22.) He had the knowledge not only of ordinary chemistry and of the fire required for it, but also of the higher chemistry and of the hidden elemental fire. After the flood there was no other man who knew the art but the righteous Noah, whom some call Hermogenes or Hermes, who possessed the knowledge of celestial and terrestrial things.

One devoted to art must be a _free man_ (Höhler, l. c., p. 66). The _ordinale_ of Norton establishes it more or less as follows: “The kings in the olden time have ordained that no one should learn the liberal sciences except the free and those of noble spirit, and any one who is devoted to them should devote his life most freely. Accordingly the ancients have called them the seven liberal arts, for whoever desires to learn thoroughly and well must enjoy a certain freedom.”

[Occult image.]

Figure 3.

Very frequently one finds in the alchemists images of _death_: grave, coffin, skeleton, etc. Thus in Michael Maier’s, Atalanta Fugiens, the Emblema XLIV shows how the _king_ lies with his crown in the _coffin_ which is just _opened_. On the right stands a man with a turban, on the left two who open the coffin and let his joyful countenance be seen. In the Practica of Basilius Valentinus the illustration of the fourth key shows a coffin, on which stands a skeleton, the illustration of the eighth key (see Fig. 3), a grave from which half emerges a man with upright body and raised hands. [This reproduction and figure I owe to the kindness of Dr. Ludwig Keller and the publications of the Comenius Society.] Two men are shooting at the well known mark, [Symbol: Sol], here represented as a target (a symbol much used in the old lodges), while a third is sowing. (Parable of the sower and the seeds.) The sign is a clever adaptation of the sulphur hieroglyph and is identical with the registry mark of the third degree of the Grand Lodge Indissolubilis. The mark [Symbol: Half circle] on the wall is also a symbol of the academy; it is the half circle, man, to whom the light is imparted and means, when occurring collectively, the fraternity. The evident idea is of representing the exclusive society as enclosing wall. The angel with the trumpet is the angel of the judgment day who awakes the dead. With respect to the birds I refer to Matthew XIII, 4: “And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the wayside and the fowls came and devoured them up.” In the text of Basilius Valentinus, the fourth key, there is mention of the rotting and falling to pieces with which we are familiar. The idea of dismemberment is not infrequently clearly expressed, more clearly than in our parable. Already in the oldest alchemistic manuals one operation is called the grave of Osiris. One of the manuscripts cited by Berthelot (Orig., p. 60) says: “The dragon is the _guardian of the temple_, sacrifice him, _flay_ him, cut his _flesh_ from his _bones_ and thou wilt find what thou seekest.” The dragon is also called Osiris, with whose _son_ Horus-Harpocrates, the skillful Hermes, is also identified. (Do we need reference to requirements in the 3d degree? J ... left his skin; ... B ... left his flesh...; M ... B..., he lives in the Son.)

Here more clearly than anywhere else we see the masonic symbolism combined with the myth of the first parents or creation myth. No matter where it acts, the myth-making power never seems willing to belie its laws. Also the tree growing out of the grave or the body of the dead ancestor is not wanting. (“... at the graves of our fathers.” “I was accused of a terrible crime.”) It is the acacia whose presence is rationalized apparently for the purpose of forming a sign by which to find again the place of the hastily buried.

An Egyptian fable tells of two brothers. The younger, Bata, was _falsely accused_ by his sister-in-law (as was Joseph by Potiphar’s wife). His brother Inpw (Anepu) consequently pursued him. The sun god made a mighty flood that separated the pursuer from the pursued. Bata castrated himself and threw his organ of generation into the water, where it was swallowed by a fish. Bata’s heart later in the story is changed into a blossom of an acacia or a cedar. [I naturally lay no stress on the accident that the acacia occurs here. The point is that the tree is a symbol of life.] Bata is reconciled with Inpw and at parting relates to him that a mug of beer is to serve as a symbol of how the brother fares, who is dwelling afar off. If the beer foams he is in danger. Bata’s wife has the acacia tree, on which Bata’s heart is a blossom, felled, and as a result Bata dies. By means of the mug Inpw learns of Bata’s peril and departs to look for his younger brother. Inpw _finds the fallen acacia_ and on it a berry that is the heart of his brother transformed. Bata _comes to life again_ and transforms himself into an ox. His wife has the ox butchered on the pretext of wishing to eat its liver. Two drops of blood fall from the cut throat of the ox upon the ground and are changed into two peach trees. Bata’s wife has the two peach trees felled. A chip flies into her mouth. She swallows it and becomes pregnant by it. The child that she bears is the reincarnated Bata. He therefore _lives again in his son as the child of a widow_.

The second fragment of the Physica et Mystica of Pseudo Democritus, that Berthelot cites (Orig., p. 151) relates that the _master died without having initiated Democritus into the secrets of knowledge_. Democritus conjured him up out of the underworld. The spirit cried: “So that is the reward I get for what I have done for thee.” To the questions of Democritus he answered, “The books are in the temple.” They were not found. Some time thereafter, on the occasion of a festival, they saw a _column_ crack open, and in the opening they found the books of the master, which contained three mystic axioms: “Nature pleases herself in Nature; Nature triumphs over Nature; Nature governs Nature.”

The quotations show, to be sure, only superficially the interrelation of alchemy and freemasonry. The actual affinity lying behind the symbolism, which, moreover, our examination of the hermetic art has already foreshadowed, will be treated later.

We could also posit a psychological interrelation in the form of an “etiological assumption” according to the terminology of psychoanalysis. It would explain the temporary fusion of alchemistic rosicrucianism with freemasonry. The rosicrucian frenzy would never have occurred—so much I will say—in masonry, if there had been no trend that way. Some emotional cause must have existed for the phenomenon, and as the specter of rosicrucianism stalked especially on the masonic stage, and indeed was dangerous to it alone, this etiological assumption must be such as to furnish an effective factor in masonry itself, only in more discreet and wholesome form. In masonry psychological elements have played a part which if improperly managed might degenerate, as indeed they did when gold- and rose-crossism was grafted on masonry. It appears to me too superficial to explain the movement merely from the external connection of rosicrucianism and the masonic system. Although the observation is quite just, it does not touch the kernel of the matter, the impulse, which only psychology can lay bare. Freemasonry must have felt some affinity with rosicrucianism, something related at the psychical basis of the mode of expression (symbolism, ritual) of both. Only the modes of expression of rosicrucianism are evidently more far reaching or more dangerous in the sense that they (the leadership of loose companions always presupposed) could sooner incite weaker characters to a perverted idea and practice of it.

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

What impels the seeker, that is, the man who actually deserves the name, in masonry and in alchemy, is clearly manifested as a certain dissatisfaction. The seeker is not satisfied with what he actually learns in the degrees, he expects more, wants to have more exhaustive information, wants to know when the “real” will be finally shown. Complaint is made, for example, of the narrowness of the meaning of the degrees of fellowship. Much more important than the objective meaning of any degree is the subjective wealth of the thing to be promoted. The less this is, the less will he “find” even in the degrees, and the less satisfied will he be, in case he succeeds in attaining anything at all. To act here in a compensating way is naturally the task of the persons that induce him. But it is the before mentioned dissatisfaction, too, which causes one to expect wonderful arts from the superiors of the higher degrees; an expectation that gives a fine opportunity for exploitation by swindlers who, of course, have not been lacking in the province of alchemy, exactly as later at a more critical time, in the high degree masonry. Who can exactly determine how great a part may have been played by avarice, ambition, vanity, curiosity, and finally by a not unpraiseworthy emotional hunger?

The speculators who fished in the muddy waters of late rosicrucianism put many desirable things as bait on the hook; as power over the world of spirits, penetration into the most recondite parts of nature’s teachings, honor, riches, health, longevity. In one was aroused the hope of one of these aims, in another of another. The belief in gold making was, as already mentioned, still alive at that period. But it was not only the continuance of this conviction that caused belief in the alchemistic secrets of the high degrees, but, as for instance, B. Kopp shows (Alch. II, p. 13) it was a certain metaphysical need of the time.

It will have been noticed that with all recognition of its abuses I grant to rosicrucianism, as it deserves, even its later forms, an ideal side. To deny it were to falsify its true likeness. Only the important difference must be noted between an idea and its advocates alchemy and the alchemists, rosicrucianism and the rosicrucians. There are worthy and unworthy advocates; among the alchemists they are called the adepts or masters and the sloppers and sloppy workers. Since in our research we are concerned with the hermetic science itself, not merely with the misdirections undertaken in its name, we should not let ourselves be involved in these. And as for us the spiritual result (alchemy, rosicrucian thoughts, masonic symbolism, etc.) is primarily to be regarded and not the single persons advocating it, the question is idle as to whether the earliest rosicrucians had an organized union or not. It is enough that the rosicrucians are created in the imagination, that this imagination is fostered and that people live it out and make it real. It amounts to the same thing for us, whether there were “so-called” or “real” rosicrucians; the substance of their teaching lives and this substance, which is evident in literature, was what I referred to when I said that rosicrucianism is identical with higher alchemy or the hermetic or the royal art. But I think the comparison holds true for the gold and rose-cross societies also, for the spiritual scope of this new edition is the same as that of the old order, except that, as in the fate of all subtile things, it was misunderstood by the majority. There were not lacking attempts to dissuade people from their errors. In the rosicrucian notes to the “Kompass der Weisen” (edition of 1782), e.g., “Moreover the object of our guiltless guild is not the making of gold.... Rather we remove the erroneous opinion from them [the disciples] in so far as they are infected with it, even on the first step of the temple of wisdom. They are earnestly enjoined against these errors and that they must seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” Also through all kinds of reforms we seek to set the wayfarer on the right path that leads to the original ideal. It appears that the alchemistic preparation of the “work” is available only for the smallest circles. The multitude is blinded.

“Where do the Scottish masters stay?”

“Quite near the sun.”

“Why?”

“Because they can stand it.”

Section V.

The Problem Of Multiple Interpretation.

After what has been said it is clear that the Parable contains instruction in the sense of the higher alchemy. Whoever has attentively read this 4th chapter will certainly be in a position to understand the parable, in large part, in a hermetic sense. I do not wish to develop this interpretation now, for to a certain extent it develops itself without further effort, and what goes beyond that can be treated only in the second part of this volume. I shall limit myself now to a few suggestions.

In regard to the external setting of the parable as a piece of rosicrucian literature, we must remember that it was published in 1788, the time of the later gold- and rose-cross societies, and in a book whose theosophic and religious character is seen in all the figures contained in it as well as in the greater part of the text. It is continually reiterated that gold is not common gold but our gold, that the stone is a spiritual stone (Jesus Christ), etc. The creation of the world, the religious duty of mankind, the mystic path to the experiencing of divinity—all is represented in detailed pictures with predominantly chemical symbolism. This higher conception of alchemy, that corresponds throughout to the ideal of the so-called old or true rosicrucian, does not prevent the editor from believing in the possibility of miraculous gifts which are to be gained through the hermetic art. Many parts of the book make us suspect a certain naïveté that may go several degrees beyond the simplicity required for religious development.

As for the origin of the parable there are two possibilities. Either the editor is himself the author and as such retires into the background, while he acts as collector of old rosicrucian manuscripts, that he now in publishing, discloses to amateurs in the art, or the editor is merely editor. In either case the obligation remains to interpret the parable hermetically. The educational purpose of the editor is established. If he is himself the author, he himself has clothed his teachings in the images of the parable. If, on the contrary, the author is some one else (either a contemporary and so [Symbol: sun] R. C. [Symbol: cross], or an old hermetic philosopher, Fr. R. C.), the editor has found in the piece edited by him a subject suitable to his purpose, a material that voices his doctrines. We can evidently also rest satisfied, in order to evade the question of authorship, that the writing itself gets its own character from the hermetic interpretations, and shows in detail its correspondingly theosophic material. Nevertheless I desire to show the directing hand of the collector and editor.

Several controlling elements pointing toward a hermetic theosophic interpretation, which the reader probably looks for in the parable, may be shown if I mention the ethical purposes that here and there emerge in our psychoanalytic interpretation of the parable. I might remind the reader that the wanderer is a killer of dragons like St. George; the holy Mary is represented standing over a dragon; also under the Buddha enthroned upon a lotus flower, there curls not infrequently a vanquished dragon; etc. I might mention the religious symbolism of the narrow path that leads to the true life. Many occurrences in the parable are to be conceived as trials, and we can see the wanderer overcome the elemental world (Nature triumphs over Nature), wherein he is proved by all four elements and comes off victorious from all tests. The fight with the lion in the den can be regarded as a world test, the walk on the cloud capped wall (like the flying up in the vessel) as an air test, the mill episode (and the flood in the vessel) as a water ordeal, and the stay in the heated vessel as a fire ordeal. The old miller is God, the ten mill wheels are the ten commandments, and likewise the ten Sephiroth that create the whole world. We are also reminded of the Ophanim (wheels, a class of angels).

Several particulars suggest the admission of the seeker into a hermetic fraternity, which, as far as I am concerned, might be called rosicrucian. There was also among the cabbalists, as apparently is shown by Reuchlin (De Vero Mirifico), an initiation into a mystery. Fludd (in his Tractatus theologo-philosophicus de vita, morte et resurrectione, Chap. XVI) apostrophizes the rosicrucians: “With open eyes I saw from your brief answer to two men whom you intended, at the exhortation of the Holy Ghost, to choose to your cloister or house, that you possessed the same knowledge of the true mystery and the same keys of knowledge that unlock the Paradise of Joy, as the patriarchs and prophets of holy scripture possess.” And in another place, “Believe that your (the R. C. [Symbol: cross]) palace or abode is situated at the confines of the earthly paradise [locus voluptatis terrestris]....” In our parable it is a paradise of joy [pratum felicitatis] where the wanderer meets the company into which he desires admission. He must undergo examinations like every neophyte. The collegium sapientiae of the parable refers to the rosicrucian Collegium Sancti Spiritus, which is actually named in another passage of the book that contains the parable.

The blood of the lion, which the wanderer gets by cutting him up, refers to the rose-colored blood of the cross that we gain through deep digging and hammering. The wanderer picks roses and puts them in his hat, a mark of honor. The master is generally seen provided with a hat in the old pictures. “Rose garden” (the garden of the parable is quadrangular) was a name applied apparently to alchemistic lodges. The philosophical work itself is compared to the rose; the white rose is the white tincture, the red rose is the red tincture (different degrees of completion that follow the degrees of black). They are plucked in the “alchemistic paradise,” but one must set about it in obedience to nature. Basilius Valentinus in the third of his twelve keys writes of the great magisterium: “So whoever wishes to compare our incombustible sulphur of all the wise men, must first take heed for himself, that he look for our sulphur in one who is inwardly incombustible; which cannot occur unless the salt sea has swallowed the corpse and completely cast it up again. Then raise it in its degree, so that it surpass in brilliance all the stars of heaven, and become in its nature as rich in blood, as the pelican when he wounds himself in his breast, so that his young may be well nourished without malady to his body, and can eat of his blood. [The pelican possesses under its bill a great pouch in which he can preserve food, principally fish. If he regurgitates the food out of his crop to feed his young he rests his bill against his breast. That gave rise to the belief that it tore open its breast in order to feed its young with its blood. From early times the pelican is therefore used as a symbol of Christ, who shed his blood for mankind. The alchemists represented the philosopher’s stone, the red tincture, as a pelican; for by its projection on the baser metals it sacrificed itself and, as it were, gave its blood to tincture them. The Christian and the hermetic symbolism are concurrent as in higher sense the stone Christ, i.e., the Messiah, is on our hearts.] That is the rose of our master with color of scarlet and red dragon’s blood, written of by many, also the purple mantle of the highest commanders in our art, with which the Queen of Salvation is clothed, and by which all the poor metals can be warmed. Keep well this mantle of honor.”

It is interesting that dream parallels can support us in both directions on the path of hermetic interpretation. I have in the second section of this volume reported the “dream of the Flying Post.” I must now complete its interpretation. Stekel writes (l. c, p. 399): “If we examine the birth and uterus phantasies, Mr. X. Z., the dreamer, turns out to be a base criminal. He struggles with conscious murder ideas. He is afraid he may kill his uncle or his mother. He is very pious. But his soul is black as the coal-dust-strewn street. His evil thoughts (the homosexual) pursue him. He enters the mill. It is God’s mill that grinds slowly but surely. His weight (his burden of sin) drives the mill. He is expelled. He enters the Flying Post. It is the post that unites heaven and earth. He is to pay, i.e., do penance for his sins. His sins are erotic (three heller = the genitals). His sins and misdeeds stink before heaven (dirty feet). The conductor is death.... The wheel room refers to the wheel of criminals. The water is blood.” The perilous situation in the dream, God’s mill, the blackness, the water or blood, which are their analogues, are found in the parable without further reference being necessary. Especially would I select the unusual detail of the stinking, dirty feet, for which probably no one would see any association in the parable. It is found in the episode of the rotting of the bridal pair in the receptacle. It is expressly stated that the putrefying corpses (i.e., the disintegrating sinful bodies of men in the theosophic work) stink. The opposite is the odor of sanctity. Actually this opposition recurs frequently in hermetic manuals. The conductor in the dream is described hermetically as a messenger of heaven [Symbol: mercury], Hermes, conveyor of souls. His first appearance in the life of man is conscience. This causes our sins, which would be otherwise indifferent, to stink. In alchemy the substances stink on their dissolution in mercurious purifying liquid. Only later does the agreeable fragrance appear.

If we find on the one hand that the parable appears as a hermetic writing, which allows us to develop theosophical principles from its chemical analogues, on the other hand the psychoanalytic interpretation is not thereby shaken. Consequently the question arises for us how it is possible to give several interpretations of a long series of symbols that stand in complete opposition. [If we were concerned with individual symbols merely, the matter would not be at all extraordinary.] Our research has shown that they are possible. The psychoanalytic interpretation brings to view elements of a purposeless and irrational life of impulse, which works out its fury in the phantasies of the parable; and now the analysis of hermetic writings shows us that the parable, like all deep alchemistic books, is an introduction to a mystic religious life,—according to the degree of clearness with which the ideas hovered before the author. For just as the psychoanalytically derived meaning of the phantasies does not occur to him, so possibly even the mystical way on which he must travel must have appeared only hazily before him. So no matter what degree of clearness the subjective experience may have had from the author’s point of view, we have for the solution of our own problem, to stick to the given object and to the possibilities of interpretation that are so extraordinarily coherent.

The interpretations are really three; the psychoanalytic, which leads us to the depths of the impulsive life; then the vividly contrasting hermetic religious one, which, as it were, leads us up to high ideals and which I shall call shortly the anagogic; and third, the chemical (natural philosophical), which, so to speak, lies midway and, in contrast to the two others, appears ethically indifferent. The third meaning of this work of imagination lies in different relations half way between the psychoanalytic and the anagogic, and can, as alchemistic literature shows, be conceived as the bearer of the anagogic.

The parable may serve as an academic illustration for the entire hermetic (philosophy). The problem of multiple interpretation is quite universal, in the sense namely that one encounters it everywhere where the imagination is creatively active. So our study opens wide fields and art and mythology especially appear to invite us. I will depart as little as possible, however, from the province chosen as an example, i.e., alchemy. But in two fables I shall work out the problem of multiple interpretation. In the choice of the fables I am influenced by the fact that a psychoanalytic elaboration (Rank’s) lies ready to hand, and that both are subjected to an anagogic interpretation by Hitchcock, who wrote the book on alchemy. This enables me to take the matter up briefly because I can simply refer to the detailed treatment in the above mentioned books. The two stories belong to Grimm’s collection and are called the Six Swans, and the Three Feathers. (K. H. M., Nos. 49 and 63.)

Rank (Lohenginsage) connects the story of the six swans and numerous similar stories with the knight of the swan saga. It is shown that the mythical contents of all these narratives have at bottom those elemental forces of the impulse life that we have found in the parable, and that they are specially founded on family conflicts, i.e., on those uncontrolled love and hate motives that come out in their crassest form in the neurotic as his (phantasied) “family romance.” To this family romance belongs, among others, incest in different forms, the illicit love for the mother, the rescuing of the mother from peril, the rescuing of the father, the wish to be the father, etc., phantasies whose meaning is explained in the writings of Freud and Rank (Myth of the Birth of the Hero(3)). According to Hitchcock, on the contrary, the same story tells of a man who in the decline of life falls into error, takes the sin to his heart, but then, counseled by his conscience, seeks his better self and completes the (alchemic-creative) work of the six days. (Hitchcock, Red Book.)

It is incontestable that there is, besides the psychoanalytic and anagogic interpretation of this tale (and almost all others), a nature mythological and in the special sense, an astronomical interpretation. Significant indications of this are the seven children and the seven years, the sewing of clothes made of star flowers, the lack of an arm as in the case of Marduk, and the corresponding heroes of astral myths, and many others. One of the seven is particularly distinguished like the sun among the so-called planets. The ethically indifferent meaning of the tale alongside of the psychoanalytic and the anagogic corresponds to the chemical contents of the hermetic writings. As object of the indifferent meaning there always stands the natural science content of the spirit’s creation. There is generally a certain relationship between the astronomical and the alchemistic meanings. It is now well known that alchemy was influenced by astrology, that the seven metals correspond to the seven planets, that, as the sun is distinguished among the planets, so is gold among the metals; and as in astrology combustion takes place in heaven, so it occurs also in the alembic of the alchemists. And the fact that the sun maiden at the end of the story releases her six planet brothers, sounds exactly as when the tincturing power of gold at the end of six days perfects the six imperfect metals and makes the ill, well.

In the second story I will emphasize to a somewhat greater degree the opposition of the two contrasting interpretations (psychoanalytic and anagogic), as I must return to it again. The story is suited to a detailed treatment on account of its brevity. I will first present it.

There was once a king who had three sons, two of whom were clever and shrewd, but the third did not talk much, was simple and was merely called the Simpleton. When the king grew old and feeble and expected his end, he did not know which one of his sons should inherit the kingdom after him. So he said to them, “Go forth, and whoever brings me the finest carpet shall be king after my death.” And lest there be any disagreement among them, he led them before his castle, blew three feathers into the air, and said: “As they fly, so shall you go.” One flew towards the east, the other towards the west, the third, however, flew straight ahead, but flying only a short distance soon fell to earth. Now one brother went to the right, the other went to the left, and they laughed at Simpleton, who had to stay with the third feather where it had fallen.

Simpleton sat down and was sad. Suddenly he noticed that near the feather lay a trap door. He raised it, found a stairway, and went down. Then he came before another door, knocked and listened, while inside a voice called:

“Maiden green and small, Shrunken old crone, Old crone’s little dog, Crone here and there, Let us see quickly who is out there.”

The door opened and he saw a big fat toad and round about her a crowd of little toads. The fat toad asked what his wish was. He answered, “I should have liked the most beautiful and finest carpet.” Then she called a young one and said:

“Maiden green and small, Shrunken old crone, Crone’s little dog, Crone here and there, Fetch here the big box.”

The young toad brought the box and the fat toad opened it and gave Simpleton a carpet from it, so beautiful and so fine as up above on the earth could not have been woven. Then he thanked her and climbed up again.

The two others had, however, considered their youngest brother so weak-minded that they believed that he would not find and bring anything back. “Why should we take so much trouble,” said they, and took from the back of the first shepherd’s wife that met them her coarse shawl and carried it home to the king. At the same time Simpleton returned and brought his beautiful carpet, and when the king saw it he was astonished and said: “If justice must be done, the kingdom belongs to the youngest.”

But the two others gave their father no peace, and said that it was impossible that Simpleton, who lacked understanding in all things, could be a king, and begged him to make a new condition. Then the father said, “The one that brings me the most beautiful ring shall be king,” led the three brothers out and blew three feathers into the air for them to follow. The two oldest again went east and west, and Simpleton’s feather flew straight ahead and fell down near the door in the earth. So he went down again to the fat toad and told her that he needed the most beautiful ring. She immediately had her big box fetched and from it gave him a ring that glittered with jewels and was more beautiful than any goldsmith upon the earth could have made. The two eldest laughed about Simpleton, who was going to look for a gold ring, but they took no trouble, and knocked the pin out of an old wagon ring and brought the ring to the king. But when Simpleton showed his gold ring the father again said, “The kingdom belongs to him.” The two eldest did not cease importuning the king till he made a third condition and declared that the kingdom should go to the one that brought home the fairest woman. Again he blew the three feathers into the air and they flew as before.

So Simpleton without more ado went down to the fat toad and said, “I have to take home the fairest woman.” “The fairest woman, hey? She is not right here, but none the less you shall have her.” She gave him a hollowed out carrot to which were harnessed six little mice. Then Simpleton sadly said, “What shall I do with it?” The toad replied, “Just put one of my little toads in it.” So he took one by chance from the circle and put it in the yellow carriage, but hardly had she taken her seat when she became a surpassingly beautiful maiden, the carrot a coach, and the six little mice, horses. So he kissed the maiden, drove away with the horses and took them to the king. His brothers came afterwards. They had not taken any trouble to find a fair lady but had brought the first good looking peasant woman. As the king looked at them he said, “The youngest gets the kingdom after my death.” But the two oldest deafened the king’s ears with their outcry: “We cannot allow the Simpleton to be king,” and gained his consent that the one whose woman should jump through a ring that hung in the middle of the room should have the preference. They thought, “The peasant women can do it easily, they are strong enough, but the delicate miss will jump herself to death.” The old king consented to this also. So the two peasant women jumped, even jumped through the ring, but were so clumsy that they fell and broke their awkward arms and legs. Then the beautiful woman whom Simpleton had brought leaped through as easily as a roe, and all opposition had to cease. So he received the crown and ruled long and wisely.

I offer first a neat psychoanalytic interpretation of this narrative. Like the dream, the fairy tale is regularly a phantastic fulfillment of wishes, and, of such indeed, as we realize, but which life does not satisfy, as well as of such as we are hardly aware of in consciousness, and would not entertain if we knew them clearly. Reality denies much, especially to the weak, or to those who feel themselves weak, or who have a smaller capacity for work in the struggle for existence in relation to their fellow men. The efficient person accomplishes in his life what he wishes, the wishes of the weak remain unfulfilled, and for this reason the weak, or whoever in comparison with the magnitude of his desires, thinks himself weak, avails himself of the phantastic wish fulfillment. He desires to attain the unattainable at least in imagination. This is the psychological reason why so many fairy stories are composed from the standpoint of the weak, so that the experiencing Ego of the fairy tale, the hero, is a simpleton, the smallest or the weakest or the youngest one who is oppressed, etc. The hero of the foregoing tale is a simpleton and the youngest. In his phantasy, that is, in the story, he stamps his brothers, who are in real life more efficient, and whom he envies, as malicious, disagreeable characters. (In real life we can generally observe how suspicious are, for instance, physically deformed people. Their sensitiveness is well known.) Like the fox to whom the grapes are sour, he declares that what his stronger fellows accomplish is bad, their performance of their duty defective, and their aims contemptible, especially in the sexual sphere, where he feels himself openly most injured. The tale treats specifically from the outset the conquest of a woman. The carpet, the ring, are female symbols, the first is the body of the woman, the ring is the vagina (Greek kteis = comb = pudenda muliebria). (The carpet is still more specifically marked as a female symbol in that the brothers take it from the body of a shepherdess. Shepherdess—a coarse “rag”—coarse “cloth”—in contrast to the fine carpet of the hero.)

The simpleton is one who does not like much work. When he also ascribes negligence to his brothers he betrays to us his own nature, in that his “feather,” i.e., himself, does not go far, while his brothers’ feathers go some distance. In order to invalidate this view of himself the distribution of the feathers is put off on chance, as if to a higher determining power. This has always been a favorite excuse with lazy and inefficient people.

One of the means of consoling himself for the unattainableness of his wishes is the belief in miracles. (Cf. my work on Phantasy and Mythos.) The simpleton gains his advantage in a miraculous manner; roasted pigeons fly into his mouth.

In his erotic enterprises he sticks to his own immediate neighborhood. He clearly bears within himself an Imago that holds him fast. [This is an image, withdrawn from consciousness and consequently indestructible, of the object of one’s earliest passion, which continues to operate as a strongly affective complex, and takes hold upon life with a formative effect. The most powerful Imagos are those of the parents. Here naturally the mother imago comes to view, which later takes a position in the center of the love life (namely the choice of object).] Whither does he turn for his journey of conquest? Into the earth. The earth is the mother as a familiar symbol language teaches us. Trap door, box, subterranean holes, suggest a womb phantasy. The toad frequently appears with the significance of the uterus, harmonizing with the situation that the tale presents. (On the contrary frog is usually penis.) The toad’s big box (= mother) is also the womb. From it indeed the female symbols, in this connection, sisters, are produced for the simpleton. The box is, however, also the domestic cupboard,—food closet, parcel, bandbox, chamber, bowl, etc.,—from which the good mother hands out tasty gifts, toys, etc. Just as the father in childish phantasy can do anything, so the mother has a box out of which she takes all kinds of good gifts for the children. Down among the toads an ideal family episode is enacted. The mother’s inexhaustible box (with the double meaning) even delivers the desired woman for the simpleton.

The woman—for whom? Doubtless for the simpleton, psychologically. The tale says for the king, because the female symbols, carpet, ring, the king desires for himself, in so many words, and the inference is that the woman also belongs to him. The conclusion of the tale, however, turns out true to the psychological situation, as it does away with the king and lets the simpleton live on, apparently with the same woman. It is clear as day that the simpleton identifies himself with his father, places himself in his place. The image, which possesses him from the first is the father’s woman, the mother. And the father’s death—that is considerately ignored—which brings queen and crown, is a wish of the simpleton. So again we find ourselves at the center of the Œdipus complex. As mother-substitute figures the sister, one of the little toads.

We have regarded the story first from the point of view of the inefficiency of the hero, and have thereupon stumbled upon erotic relations, finally upon the Œdipus complex. The psychological connection results from the fact that those images on which the Œdipus complex is constructed appear calculated to produce an inefficiency in the erotic life.

The anagogic interpretation of Hitchcock (l. c., pp. 175 ff.) is as follows, though somewhat abridged:

The king plainly means man. He has three sons; he is an image of the Trinity, which in the sense of our presentation we shall think of as body, soul and spirit. Two of the sons were wise in the worldly sense, but the third, who represents spirit and in the primitive form, is called conscience, is simple in order to typify the straight and narrow path of truth. The spirit leads in sacred silence those who meekly follow it and dies in a mystical sense if it is denied, or else appears in other forms in order to pursue the soul with the ghosts of murdered virtues. Man is, as it were, in doubt concerning the principle to which the highest leadership in life is due. “Go forth and whoever brings me the finest carpet shall be king after my death.” The carpet is something on which one walks or stands, here representing the best way of life according to Isaiah XXX, 21. “This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand and when ye turn to the left.”

The three feathers are, of course, the three principles. Two of them move at once in opposite directions [towards the east and towards the west, as many writers on alchemy represent the two principles or breaths, anima and corpus or [Symbol: Gold] and [Symbol: Silver]] and so come even at the outset away from the right path. The third, symbol of the spirit, flies straight forward and has not far to its end, for simple is the way to the inner life. And so the spirit will speak to us if we follow its voice, at first quite a faint voice: “But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart that thou mayst do it.” (Deuteronomy XXX, 14.) Yet the soul is not free from sadness, as the man stands still on the lower steps of the ladder that leads up into eternal life. Simpleton is troubled in his heart and in the humility of this affliction he discovers “all at once” a secret door, which shows him the entrance into the mystical life. The door is on the surface of the earth, in abasement, as the third feather determined it in advance. As Simpleton discreetly obeyed it, he strolled along the path that the door opened for him. Three steps, three fundamental forces. So Christ had to descend before he could rise. The hero of the story knocks as Christ knocks in the gospel (i.e., on the inner door, contrasted with the law of Moses, the outer door). The big toad with her little ones in a circle about her signifies the great mother nature and her creatures, which surround her in a circle; in a circle, for nature always returns upon herself in a cycle. Simpleton gets the most beautiful carpet.

The other two beings that we call understanding and feelings (sun and moon of the hermetic writings) look without, instead of seeking the way within; so it comes to pass that they take the first best coarse cloths.

To bring the most beautiful ring is to bring truth, which like a ring has neither beginning nor end. Understanding and feeling go in different directions, the simpleton waits meekly by the door that leads to the interior of the great mother. [The appearance of this conception in the anagogic interpretation is also important.]

In the third test, the search for “the fairest woman,” the crown of life, conceived exoterically as well as esoterically, the carrot represents the vegetative life (body, the natural man), and the six mice that draw it are our old friends the six swans or virtues, and the highest of these compassion—or love—goes as the enthroned queen in the carriage. The uninitiated man is almost in doubt and asks, “What shall I do with a carrot?” Yet the great mother replies, as it were, “Take one of my fundamental forces.” And what do we see then? The toad becomes a beautiful maiden, etc. The man now all at once realizes how fearfully and wonderfully he is made. Filled with reverence of himself he is ready to cry, “Not my will but thine be done.”

Still another test remains. We must all go through a sort of mystical ring, which hangs in the hall (of learning). Only one in the whole universe is in a condition to accomplish it, to endure it without injury. The beautiful delicate maid with the miraculous gift is the spirit [spiritus or [Symbol: Mercury] of alchemy].

We shall add that the two interpretations externally contradict each other, although each exhibits a faultless finality. I should note that I have limited myself to the briefest exposition; in a further working out of the analysis the two expositions can be much more closely identified with the motives of the story.

First, then, the question arises, how one and the same series of images can harmonize several mutually exclusive interpretations (problem of multiple interpretation); yet we have discovered in the parable three practically equivalent schemes of interpretation, the psychoanalytic, the chemical (scientific), and the anagogic. Secondly, the question presents itself more particularly how can two so antithetic meanings as the psychoanalytic and the anagogic exist side by side.