of the parable. If, on the contrary, the author is some one else (either a
contemporary and so [Symbol: sun] R. C. [Symbol: cross], or an old
hermetic philosopher, Fr. R. C.), the editor has found in the piece edited
by him a subject suitable to his purpose, a material that voices his
doctrines. We can evidently also rest satisfied, in order to evade the
question of authorship, that the writing itself gets its own character
from the hermetic interpretations, and shows in detail its correspondingly
theosophic material. Nevertheless I desire to show the directing hand of
the collector and editor.

Several controlling elements pointing toward a hermetic theosophic
interpretation, which the reader probably looks for in the parable, may be
shown if I mention the ethical purposes that here and there emerge in our
psychoanalytic interpretation of the parable. I might remind the reader
that the wanderer is a killer of dragons like St. George; the holy Mary is
represented standing over a dragon; also under the Buddha enthroned upon a
lotus flower, there curls not infrequently a vanquished dragon; etc. I
might mention the religious symbolism of the narrow path that leads to the
true life. Many occurrences in the parable are to be conceived as trials,
and we can see the wanderer overcome the elemental world (Nature triumphs
over Nature), wherein he is proved by all four elements and comes off
victorious from all tests. The fight with the lion in the den can be
regarded as a world test, the walk on the cloud capped wall (like the
flying up in the vessel) as an air test, the mill episode (and the flood
in the vessel) as a water ordeal, and the stay in the heated vessel as a
fire ordeal. The old miller is God, the ten mill wheels are the ten
commandments, and likewise the ten Sephiroth that create the whole world.
We are also reminded of the Ophanim (wheels, a class of angels).

Several particulars suggest the admission of the seeker into a hermetic
fraternity, which, as far as I am concerned, might be called rosicrucian.
There was also among the cabbalists, as apparently is shown by Reuchlin
(De Vero Mirifico), an initiation into a mystery. Fludd (in his Tractatus
theologo-philosophicus de vita, morte et resurrectione, Chap. XVI)
apostrophizes the rosicrucians: "With open eyes I saw from your brief
answer to two men whom you intended, at the exhortation of the Holy Ghost,
to choose to your cloister or house, that you possessed the s