[648]. Compare the discussion above about the encircling and devouring motive. Water as a hindrance in dreams seems to refer to the mother, longing for the mother instead of positive work. The crossing of water—overcoming of the resistance; that is to say the mother, as a symbol of the longing for inactivity like death or sleep.
[649]. Compare also the Attic custom of stuffing a bull in spring, the customs of the Lupercalia, Saturnalia, etc. I have devoted to this motive a separate investigation, therefore I forego further proof.
[650]. In the Gilgamesh epic, it is directly said that it is immortality which the hero goes to obtain.
[651]. Sepp: “Das Heidentum und dessen Bedeutung für das Christentum,” Vol. III, 82.
[652]. Compare the symbolism of the arrow above.
[653]. This thought is generally organized in the doctrine of pre-existence. Thus in any case man is his own generator, immortal and a hero, whereby the highest wishes are fulfilled.
[654]. Frazer: “Golden Bough,” IV, 297.
[655]. “Thou seekest the heaviest burden, there findest thou thyself” (Nietzsche: “Zarathustra”).
[656]. It is an unvarying peculiarity, so to speak, that in the whale-dragon myth, the hero is very hungry in the belly of the monster and begins to cut off pieces from the animal, so as to feed himself. He is in the nourishing mother “in the presexual stage.” His next act, in order to free himself, is to make a fire. In a myth of the Eskimos of the Behring Straits, the hero finds a woman in the whale’s belly, the soul of the animal, which is feminine (Ibid, p. 85). (Compare Frobenius: Ibid, passim.)
[657]. The carrying of the tree played an important part, as is evident from a note in Strabo X, in the cult of Dionysus and Ceres (Demeter).