[533]. “In a Pyramid text, which depicts the battle of the dead Pharaoh for the dominance of heaven, it reads: Heaven weeps, the stars tremble, the guards of the gods tremble and their servants flee, when they see the king rise as a spirit, as a god, who lives upon his fathers and conquers his mothers.” Cited by Dieterich: “Mithrasliturgy,” p. 100.
[534]. Book II, p. 61.
[535]. By Ares, the Egyptian Typhon is probably meant.
[536]. In the Polynesian Maui myth, the act of the sun-hero is very plain: he robs his mother of her girdle. The robbery of the veil in myths of the type of the swan maiden has the same significance. In an African myth of Joruba, the sun-hero simply ravishes his mother (Frobenius).
[537]. The previously mentioned myth of Halirrhotios, who destroyed himself when he wished to cut down the holy tree of Athens, the Moria, contains the same psychology, also the priestly castration (Attis castration) in the service of the great mother. The ascetic self-torture in Christianity has its origin, as is self-evident, in these sources because the Christian form of symbol means a very intensive regression to the mother incest.
[538]. The tearing off from the tree of life is just this sin.
[539]. Compare Kuhn: “Herabkunft des Feuers.”
[540]. Nork: “Wörterbuch s. v. Mistel.”
[541]. Therefore in England mistletoe boughs were hung up at Christmas. Mistletoe as rod of life. Compare Aigremont: “Volkserotik und Pflanzenwelt.”
[542]. Just as the tree has the phallic nature as well as a maternal significance, so in myths the demonic old woman (she may be favorable or malicious) often has phallic attributes, for example, a long toe, a long tooth, long lips, long fingers, pendulous breasts, large hands, feet, and so on. This mixture of male and female motive has reference to the fact that the old woman is a libido symbol like the tree, generally determined as maternal. The bisexuality of the libido is expressed in its clearest form in the idea of the three witches, who collectively possessed but one eye and one tooth. This idea is directly parallel to the dream of a patient, who represented her libido as twins, one of which is a box, the other a bottle-like object, for eye and tooth represent male and female genitals. Relative to eye in this connection, see especially the Egyptian myths: referring to tooth, it is to be observed that Adonis (fecundity) died by a boar’s tooth, like Siegfried by Hagen’s spear: compare with this the Veronese Priapus, whose phallus was bitten by a snake. Tooth in this sense, like the snake, is a “negative” phallus.