or 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 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 Aeses made
Mitgard, the son of man.
But from his brain were created all the ill-tempered clouds."

The Iranian myth has an ancestor bull, Abudad. "From his left side goes
Goschorum, his soul, and rises to the starry heavens; from his right side
came forth Kajomorts (Gayomard), the first man. Of his seed the earth took
a third, but the moon two thirds. From his horns grew the fruits, from his
nose, leeks, from his blood, grapes, from his tail, five and twenty kinds
of grain. From his purified seed two new bulls were formed, from which all
animals are descended." Just as in the Iranian myth the original being,
Gayomard, considered as human, and the ancestor bull belong together, so
we find in the northern myth a cow Audhumla associated with Ymir. Ymir is
to be regarded as androgynous (man and woman), the primitive cow as only a
doubling of his being. The Iranian primitive bull ancestor also occurs as
cow. Compare white and red, male and female, in the body of the lion.

In the Indian Asvamedha the parts of the sacrificed steed correspond to
the elements of the visible creation. (Cf. Brhadaranyaka--Upanisad I, i.) A
primitive vedic cosmogony makes the world arise from the parts of the body
of a giant. (Rig-veda purusa-sukta.)

Just as from the dead primordial being the sacrificed bull, Mithra,
sprouts life and vegetation, so in the dream of Omicron, a tree grows out
of the belly of the dead bear. In mythology many trees grow out of graves,
that in some way reincarnate the creative or life principle of the dead.
It is an interesting fact that the world, or especially an improved new
edition of the world, comes from the body of a dying being. Some one kills
this being and so