therwise indifferent, to stink. In alchemy the substances
stink on their dissolution in mercurious purifying liquid. Only later does
the agreeable fragrance appear.

If we find on the one hand that the parable appears as a hermetic writing,
which allows us to develop theosophical principles from its chemical
analogues, on the other hand the psychoanalytic interpretation is not
thereby shaken. Consequently the question arises for us how it is possible
to give several interpretations of a long series of symbols that stand in
complete opposition. [If we were concerned with individual symbols merely,
the matter would not be at all extraordinary.] Our research has shown that
they are possible. The psychoanalytic interpretation brings to view
elements of a purposeless and irrational life of impulse, which works out
its fury in the phantasies of the parable; and now the analysis of
hermetic writings shows us that the parable, like all deep alchemistic
books, is an introduction to a mystic religious life,--according to the
degree of clearness with which the ideas hovered before the author. For
just as the psychoanalytically derived meaning of the phantasies does not
occur to him, so possibly even the mystical way on which he must travel
must have appeared only hazily before him. So no matter what degree of
clearness the subjective experience may have had from the author's point
of view, we have for the solution of our own problem, to stick to the
given object and to the possibilities of interpretation that are so
extraordinarily coherent.

The interpretations are really three; the psychoanalytic, which leads us
to the depths of the impulsive life; then the vividly contrasting hermetic
religious one, which, as it were, leads us up to high ideals and which I
shall call shortly the anagogic; and third, the chemical (natural
philosophical), which, so to speak, lies midway and, in contrast to the
two others, appears ethically indifferent. The third meaning of this work
of imagination lies in different relations half way between the
psychoanalytic and the anagogic, and can, as alchemistic literature shows,
be conceived as the bearer of the anagogic.

The parable may serve as an academic illustration for the entire hermetic
(philosophy). The problem of multiple interpretation is quite universal,
in the sense namely that one encounters it everywhere where the
imagination is creatively active. So our study opens wide fields and art
an