Come, mysterious mother, etc.
F. C. Conybeare: “Die jungfräuliche Kirche und die jungfräuliche Mutter.” Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, IX, 77. The connection of the church with the mother is not to be doubted, also the conception of the mother as spouse. The virgin is necessarily introduced to hide the incest idea. The “community with the male” points to the motive of the continuous cohabitation. The “twin nestlings” refer to the old legend, that Jesus and Thomas were twins. It plainly expresses the motive of the Dioscuri. Therefore, doubting Thomas had to place his finger in the wound at the side. Zinzendorf has correctly perceived the sexual significance of this symbol that hints at the androgynous nature of the primitive being (the libido). Compare the Persian legend of the twin trees Meschia and Mechiane, as well as the motive of the Dioscuri and the motive of cohabitation.
[440]. Compare Freud: “Dream Interpretation.” Also Abraham: “Dreams and Myths,” pp. 22 f.
[441]. The sea is the symbol of birth.
[442]. Isaiah xlviii:1. “Hear ye this, O house of Jacob, which are called by the name of Israel and are come forth out of the waters of Judah.”
[443]. Wirth: “Aus orientalischen Chroniken.”—The Greek “Materia” is ὕλη, which means wood and forest; it really means moist, from the Indo-Germanic root sū in ὕω, “to make wet, to have it rain”; ὑετός = rain; Iranian suth = sap, fruit, birth; Sanscrit súrā = brandy; sutus = pregnancy; sūte, sūyate = to generate; sutas = son; sūras = soma; υἱός = son; (Sanscrit, sūnús; gothic, sunus).
[444]. Κοίμημα means cohabitation, κοιμητήριον bedchamber, hence coemeterium = cemetery, enclosed fenced place.
[445]. Nork: “Realwörterbuch.”
[446]. In a myth of Celebes, a dove maiden who was caught in the manner of the swan maiden myth, was called Utahagi after a white hair which grew on its crown and in which there was magic strength. Frobenius, p. 307.
[447]. Referring to the phallic symbolism of the finger, see the remarks about the Dactyli, Part II, Chap. I: I mention at this place the following from a Bakairi myth: “Nimagakaniro devoured two finger bones, many of which were in the house, because Oka used them for his arrow heads and killed many Bakairi whose flesh he ate. The woman became pregnant from the finger bone and only from this, not from Oka” (quoted by Frobenius, p. 236).