trauterine nourishment, to which nothing, of course, can
be supplied but the water of the mill so familiar to us.

The precious vessel that the wanderer guards is surrounded by strong
walls; it is inaccessible to the others; he alone may approach with his
fire. It is winter. That is not merely a rationalizing (pretext of
commonplace argument) of the firing, but a token of death entering into
the uterus. The amorous pair in the prison dissolve and perish, even rot
(Section 15). I must mention incidentally, for the understanding of this
version, that at the time of the writing of the parable the process of
impregnation was associated with the idea of the "decaying" or "rotting"
of the semen. The womb is compared to the earth in which the kernel of
grain "decays."

The decaying which precedes the arising of the new being is connected with
a great inundation. Mythically, a deluge is actually accustomed to
introduce a (improved) creation. A proper myth can hardly dispense with
the idea of a primal flood. I would, in passing, note that the present
phase of the parable corresponds mythologically to the motive of being
swallowed, the later release from the prison is the spitting forth (from
the jaws of the monster), the return from the underworld. The
dismemberment motive of the cosmogonies is usually associated with a
deluge motive. In the description of the flood in the parable there are,
moreover, included some traits of the biblical narrative, e.g., the forty
days and the rainbow. This, be it remarked in passing, had appeared
before; it is a sign of a covenant. It binds heaven and earth, man and
woman. The flood originates in the falling of tears; it arises also from
the body of the woman; it refers to the well known highly significant
water. Stekel has arranged for dreams the so-called symbolic parallels,
according to which all secretions and excretions may symbolically
represent each other. On the presupposition that marks of similarity are
not conceived in a strict sense, the following comparisons may be drawn:
Mucus = blood = pus = urine = stools = semen = milk = sweat = tears =
spirit = air = [breath = flatus] = speech = money = poison. That in this
comparison both souls and tears appear is particularly interesting; the
living or procreating principle appears as soul in the form of clouds.
These are formed from water, the Water of Life. The dew that comes from it
impregnates the earth.

As we have now reached the exc