[475]. Spielrein (Jahrbuch, Vol. III, p. 358) points out numerous indications of the motive of dismemberment in a demented patient. Fragments of the most varied things and materials were “cooked” or “burnt.” “The ash can become man.” The patient saw children dismembered in glass coffins. In addition, the above-mentioned “washing,” “cleaning,” “cooking” and “burning” has, besides the coitus motive, also the pregnancy motive; the latter probably in a predominating measure.
[476]. Later offshoots of this primitive theory of the origin of children are contained in the doctrines of Karma, and the conception of the Mendelian theory of heredity is not far off. One only has to realize that all apperceptions are subjectively conditioned.
[477]. Demeter assembled the limbs of the dismembered Dionysus and from them produced the god anew.
[478]. Compare Diodorus: III, 62.
[479]. Yet to be added is the fact that the cynocephalic Anubis as the restorer of the corpse of Osiris (also genius of the dog star) had a compensatory significance. In this significance he appears upon many sarcophagi. The dog is also a regular companion of the healing Asclepius. The following quotation from Petronius best supports the Creuzer hypothesis (“Sat.,” c. 71): “Valde te rogo, ut secundum pedes statuae meae catellam pingas—ut mihi contingat tuo beneficio post mortem vivere” (I beseech you instantly to fasten beside the feet of my statue a dog, so that because of your beneficence I may attain to life after death). See Nork: Ibid., about dog.
Moreover, the relation of the dog to the dog-headed Hecate, the goddess of the underworld, hints at its being the symbol of rebirth. She received as Canicula a sacrificial dog to keep away the pest. Her close relation to Artemis as goddess of the moon permits her opposition to fertility to be glimpsed. Hecate, is also the first to bring to Demeter the news of her stolen child (the rôle of Anubis!). Also the goddess of birth Ilithyia received sacrifices of dogs, and Hecate herself is, on occasions, goddess of marriage and birth.
[480]. Frobenius (Ibid., p. 393) observes that frequently the gods of fire (sun-heroes) lack a member. He gives the following parallel: “Just as the god wrenches out an arm from the ogre (giant), so does Odysseus pluck out the eye of the noble Polyphemus, whereupon the sun creeps up mysteriously into the sky. Might the fire-making, twisting and wrenching out of the arm be connected?” This question is by this clearly illumined if we assume, corresponding to the train of thought of the ancients, that the wrenching out of the arm is really a castration. (The symbol of the robbery of the force of life.) It is an act corresponding to the Attis castration because of the mother. From this renunciation, which is really a symbolic mother incest, arises the discovery of fire, as previously we have already suspected. Moreover, mention must be made of the fact that to wrench out an arm, means first of all merely “overpowering,” and on that account can happen to the hero as well as to his opponent. (Compare, for examples, Frobenius: Ibid., pp. 112, 395.)
[481]. Compare especially the description of the cup of Thebes.
[482]. Professor Freud has expressed in a personal discussion the idea that a further determinate for the motive of the dissimilar brothers is to be found in the elementary observance towards birth and the after-birth. It is an exotic custom to treat the placenta as a child!
[483]. Brugsch: “Religion und Mythologie der alten Aegypter,” p. 354.