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. [pg 070] 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 [pg 071] 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.