In the great Eleusinian festival procession the image of Iakchos was carried. It is not easy to say which god is Iakchos, possibly a boy, or a new-born son, similar to the Etrurian Tages, who bears the surname “the freshly ploughed boy,” because, according to the myth, he arose from the furrow of the field behind the peasant, who was ploughing. This idea shows unmistakably the Mondamin motive. The plough is of well-known phallic meaning; the furrow of the field is personified by the Hindoos as woman. The psychology of this idea is that of a coitus, referred back to the presexual stage (stage of nutrition). The son is the edible fruit of the field. Iakchos passes, in part, as son of Demeter or of Persephone, also appropriately as consort of Demeter. (Hero as procreator of himself.) He is also called τῆς Δήμητρος δαίμων (Δαίμων equals libido, also Mother libido.) He was identified with Dionysus, especially with the Thracian Dionysus-Zagreus, of whom a typical fate of rebirth was related. Hera had goaded the Titans against Zagreus, who, assuming many forms, sought to escape them, until they finally took him when he had taken on the form of a bull. In this form he was killed (Mithra sacrifice) and dismembered, and the pieces were thrown into a cauldron; but Zeus killed the Titans by lightning, and swallowed the still-throbbing heart of Zagreus. Through this act he gave him existence once more, and Zagreus as Iakchos again came forth.

Iakchos carries the torch, the phallic symbol of procreation, as Plato testifies. In the festival procession, the sheaf of corn, the cradle of Iakchos, was carried. (λῖκνον, mystica vannus Iacchi.) The Orphic legend^[662] relates that Iakchos was brought up by Persephone, when, after three years’ slumber in the λῖκνον,^[663] he awoke. This statement distinctly suggests the Mondamin motive. The 20th of Boedromion (the month Boedromion lasts from about the 5th of September to the 5th of October) is called Iakchos, in honor of the hero. On the evening of this day the great torchlight procession took place on the seashore, in which the quest and lament of Demeter was represented. The rôle of Demeter, who, seeking her daughter, wanders over the whole earth without food or drink, has been taken over by Hiawatha in the Indian epic. He turns to all created things without obtaining an answer. As Demeter first learns of her daughter from the subterranean Hecate, so does Hiawatha first find the one sought for, Mondamin,^[664] in the deepest introversion (descent to the mother). Hiawatha produces from himself, Mondamin, as a mother produces the son. The longing for the mother also includes the producing mother (first devouring, then birth-giving). Concerning the real contents of the mysteries, we learn through the testimony of Bishop Asterius, about 390 A.D., the following:

“Is not there (in Eleusis) the gloomiest descent, and the most solemn communion of the hierophant and the priestess; between him and her alone? Are the torches not extinguished, and does not the vast multitude regard as their salvation that which takes place between the two in the darkness?”^[665]

That points undoubtedly to a ritual marriage, which was celebrated subterraneously in mother earth. The Priestess of Demeter seems to be the representative of the earth goddess, perhaps the furrow of the field.^[666] The descent into the earth is also the symbol of the mother’s womb, and was a widespread conception under the form of cave worship. Plutarch relates of the Magi that they sacrificed to Ahriman, εἰς τόπον ἀνήλιον.^[667] Lukian lets the magician Mithrobarzanes εἰς χωρίον ἔρημον καὶ ὑλῶδες καὶ ἀνήλιον,^[668] descend into the bowels of the earth. According to the testimony of Moses of the Koran, the sister Fire and the brother Spring were worshipped in Armenia in a cave. Julian gave an account from the Attis legend of a κατάβασις εἰς ἄντρον,^[669] from whence Cybele brings up her son lover, that is to say, gives birth to him.^[670] The cave of Christ’s birth, in Bethlehem (‘House of Bread’), is said to have been an Attis spelæum.

A further Eleusinian symbolism is found in the festival of Hierosgamos, in the form of the mystic chests, which, according to the testimony of Clemens of Alexandria, may have contained pastry, salt and fruits. The synthema (confession) of the mystic transmitted by Clemens is suggestive in still other directions:

“I have fasted, I have drunk of the barleydrink, I have taken from the chest and after I have labored, I have placed it back in the basket, and from the basket into the chest.”

The question as to what lay in the chest is explained in detail by Dieterich.^[671] The labor he considers a phallic activity, which the mystic has to perform. In fact, representations of the mystic basket are given, wherein lies a phallus surrounded by fruits.^[672] Upon the so-called Lovatelli tomb vase, the sculptures of which are understood to be Eleusinian ceremonies, it is shown how a mystic caressed the serpent entwining Demeter. The caressing of the fear animal indicates a religious conquering of incest.^[673] According to the testimony of Clemens of Alexandria, a serpent was in the chest. The serpent in this connection is naturally of phallic nature, the phallus which is forbidden in relation to the mother. Rohde mentions that in the Arrhetophories, pastry, in the form of phalli and serpents, were thrown into the cave near the Thesmophorion. This custom was a petition for the bestowal of children and harvest.^[674] The snake also plays a large part in initiations under the remarkable title ὁ διὰ κόλπου θεός.^[675] Clemens observes that the symbol of the Sabazios mysteries is ὁ διὰ κόλπων θεός, δράκων δὲ ἐστι καὶ οὗτος διελκόμενος τοῦ κόλπου τῶν τελουμένων.^[676]

Through Arnobius we learn:

“Aureus coluber in sinum demittitur consecratis et eximitur rursus ab inferioribus partibus atque imis.”^[677]

In the Orphic Hymn 52, Bacchus is invoked by ὑποκόλπιε,^[678] which indicates that the god enters into man as if through the female genitals.^[679] According to the testimony of Hippolytus, the hierophant in the mystery exclaimed ἱερον ἔτεκε πότνια κοῦρον, Βριμὼ βριμόν (the revered one has brought forth a holy boy, Brimos from Brimo). This Christmas gospel, “Unto us a son is born,” is illustrated especially through the tradition^[680] that the Athenians “secretly show to the partakers in the Epoptia, the great and wonderful and most perfect Epoptic mystery, a mown stalk of wheat.”^[681]

The parallel for the motive of death and resurrection is the motive of losing and finding. The motive appears in religious rites in exactly the same connection, namely, in spring festivities similar to the Hierosgamos, where the image of the god was hidden and found again. It is an uncanonical tradition that Moses left his father’s house when twelve years old to teach mankind. In a similar manner Christ is lost by his parents, and they find him again as a teacher of wisdom, just as in the Mohammedan legend Moses and Joshua lose the fish, and in his place Chidher, the teacher of wisdom, appears (like the boy Jesus in the temple); so does the corn god, lost and believed to be dead, suddenly arise again from his mother into renewed youth. (That Christ was laid in the manger is suggestive of fodder. Robertson, therefore, places the manger as parallel to the liknon.)

We understand from these accounts why the Eleusinian mysteries were for the mystic so rich in comfort for the hope of a better world. A beautiful Eleusinian epitaph shows this:

The hymn to Demeter^[682] in the mysteries also says the same:

Immortality is inherent in the Eleusinian symbol; in a church song of the nineteenth century by Samuel Preiswerk we discover it again:

Firmicus relates concerning the Attis mysteries:

“Nocte quadam simulacrum in lectica supinum ponitur et per numeros digestis fletibus plangitur; deinde cum se ficta lamentatione satiaverint, lumen infertur: tunc a sacerdote omnium qui flebant fauces unguentur, quibus perunctis sacerdos hoc lento murmure susurrat: ‘Θαρρεῖτε μύσται τοῦ Θεοῦ σεσωσμένου ἔσται γὰρ ἡμῖν ἐκ πόνου σωτηρία.’”^[683]

Such parallels show how little human personality and how much divine, that is to say, universally human, is found in the Christ mystery. No man is or, indeed, ever was, a hero, for the hero is a god, and, therefore, impersonal and generally applicable to all. Christ is a “spirit,” as is shown in the very early Christian interpretation. In different places of the earth, and in the most varied forms and in the coloring of various periods, the Savior-hero appears as a fruit of the entrance of the libido into the personal maternal depths. The Bacchian consecrations represented upon the Farnese relief contain a scene where a mystic wrapped in a mantle, drawn over his head, was led to Silen, who holds the “λῖχνον” (chalice), covered with a cloth. The covering of the head signifies death. The mystic dies, figuratively, like the seed corn, grows again and comes to the corn harvest. Proclus relates that the mystics were buried up to their necks. The Christian church as a place of religious ceremony is really nothing but the grave of a hero (catacombs). The believer descends into the grave, in order to rise from the dead with the hero. That the meaning underlying the church is that of the mother’s womb can scarcely be doubted. The symbols of Mass are so distinct that the mythology of the sacred act peeps out everywhere. It is the magic charm of rebirth. The veneration of the Holy Sepulchre is most plain in this respect. A striking example is the Holy Sepulchre of St. Stefano in Bologna. The church itself, a very old polygonal building, consists of the remains of a temple to Isis. The interior contains an artificial spelæum, a so-called Holy Sepulchre, into which one creeps through a very little door. After a long sojourn, the believer reappears reborn from this mother’s womb. An Etruscan ossuarium in the archeological museum in Florence is at the same time a statue of Matuta, the goddess of death; the clay figure of the goddess is hollowed within as a receptacle for the ashes. The representations indicate that Matuta is the mother. Her chair is adorned with sphinxes, as a fitting symbol for the mother of death.

Only a few of the further deeds of Hiawatha can interest us here. Among these is the battle with Mishe-Nahma, the fish-king, in the eighth song. This deserves to be mentioned as a typical battle of the sun-hero. Mishe-Nahma is a fish monster, who dwells at the bottom of the waters. Challenged by Hiawatha to battle, he devours the hero, together with his boat:

It is the typical myth of the work of the hero, distributed over the entire world. He takes to a boat, fights with the sea monster, is devoured, he defends himself against being bitten or crushed^[684] (resistance or stamping motive); having arrived in the interior of the “whale dragon,” he seeks the vital organ, which he cuts off or in some way destroys. Often the death of the monster occurs as the result of a fire which the hero secretly makes within him; he mysteriously creates in the womb of death life, the rising sun. Thus dies the fish, which drifts ashore, where, with the assistance of “birds,” the hero again attains the light of day.^[685] The bird in this sense probably means the reascent of the sun, the longing of the libido, the rebirth of the phœnix. (The longing is very frequently represented by the symbol of hovering.) The sun symbol of the bird rising from the water is (etymologically) contained in the singing swan. “Swan” is derived from the root sven, like sun and tone. (See the preceding.) This act signifies rebirth, and the bringing forth of life from the mother,^[686] and by this means the ultimate destruction of death, which, according to a Negro myth, has come into the world, through the mistake of an old woman, who, at the time of the general casting of skins (for men renewed their youth through casting their skin like snakes), drew on, through absent-mindedness, her old skin instead of a new one, and as a result died. But the effect of such an act could not be of any duration. Again and again troubles of the hero are renewed, always under the symbol of deliverance from the mother. Just as Hera (as the pursuing mother) is the real source of the great deeds of Hercules, so does Nokomis allow Hiawatha no rest, and raises up new difficulties in his path, in form of desperate adventures in which the hero may perhaps conquer, but also, perhaps, may perish. The libido of mankind is always in advance of his consciousness; unless his libido calls him forth to new dangers he sinks into slothful inactivity or, on the other hand, childish longing for the mother overcomes him at the summit of his existence, and he allows himself to become pitifully weak, instead of striving with desperate courage towards the highest. The mother becomes the demon, who summons the hero to adventure, and who also places in his path the poisonous serpent, which will strike him. Thus Nokomis, in the ninth song, calls Hiawatha, points with her hand to the west, where the sun sets in purple splendor, and says to him:

This danger lurking in the west is known to mean death, which no one, even the mightiest, escapes. This magician, as we learn, also killed the father of Nokomis. Now she sends her son forth to avenge the father (Horus). Through the symbols attributed to the magician it may easily be recognized what he symbolizes. Snake and water belong to the mother, the snake as a symbol of the repressed longing for the mother, or, in other words, as a symbol of resistance, encircles protectingly and defensively the maternal rock, inhabits the cave, winds itself upwards around the mother tree and guards the precious hoard, the “mysterious” treasure. The black Stygian water is, like the black, muddy spring of Dhulqarnein, the place where the sun dies and enters into rebirth, the maternal sea of death and night. On his journey thither Hiawatha takes with him the magic oil of Mishe-Nahma, which helps his boat through the waters of death. (Also a sort of charm for immortality, like the dragon’s blood for Siegfried, etc.)

First, Hiawatha slays the great serpent. Of the “night journey in the sea” over the Stygian waters it is written:

The description plainly shows the character of a water of death. The contents of the water point to an already mentioned motive, that of encoiling and devouring. It is said in the “Key to Dreams of Jagaddeva”:^[687]

“Whoever in dreams surrounds his body with bast, creepers or ropes, with snake-skins, threads, or tissues, dies.”

I refer to the preceding arguments in regard to this. Having come into the west land, the hero challenges the magician to battle. A terrible struggle begins. Hiawatha is powerless, because Megissogwon is invulnerable. At evening Hiawatha retires wounded, despairing for a while, in order to rest:

This protecting tree is described as coated over with the moccasin leather of the dead, the fungus. This investing of the tree with anthropomorphic attributes is also an important rite wherever tree worship prevails, as, for example, in India, where each village has its sacred tree, which is clothed and in general treated as a human being. The trees are anointed with fragrant waters, sprinkled with powder, adorned with garlands and draperies. Just as among men, the piercing of the ears was performed as an apotropaic charm against death, so does it occur with the holy tree. Of all the trees of India there is none more sacred to the Hindoos than the Aswatha (Ficus religiosa). It is known to them as Vriksha Raja (king of trees), Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesvar live in it, and the worship of it is the worship of the triad. Almost every Indian village has an Aswatha,^[688] etc. This “village linden tree,” well known to us, is here clearly characterized as the mother symbol; it contains the three gods.

Hence, when Hiawatha retires to rest under the pine-tree,^[689] it is a dangerous step, because he resigns himself to the mother, whose garment is the garment of death (the devouring mother). As in the whale-dragon, the hero also in this situation needs a “helpful bird”; that is to say, the helpful animals, which represent the benevolent parents:

Now, amusing to relate, Mama hurried to his help. It is a peculiar fact that the woodpecker was also the “Mama” of Romulus and Remus, who put nourishment into the mouths of the twins with his beak.^[690] (Compare with that the rôle of the vulture in Leonardo’s dream. The vulture is sacred to Mars, like the woodpecker.) With the maternal significance of the woodpecker, the ancient Italian folk-superstition agrees: that from the tree upon which this bird nested any nail which has been driven in will soon drop out again.^[691] The woodpecker owes its special significance to the circumstance that he hammers holes into trees. (“To drive nails in,” as above!) It is, therefore, understandable that he was made much of in the Roman legend as an old king of the country, a possessor or ruler of the holy tree, the primitive image of the Paterfamilias. An old fable relates how Circe, the spouse of King Picus, transformed him into the Picus Martius, the woodpecker. The sorceress is the “new-creating mother,” who has “magic influence” upon the sun-husband. She kills him, transforms him into the soul-bird, the unfulfilled wish. Picus was also understood as the wood demon and incubus, as well as the soothsayer, all of which fully indicate the mother libido.^[692] Picus was often placed on a par with Picumnus by the ancients. Picumnus is the inseparable companion of Pilumnus, and both are actually called infantium dii, “the gods of little children.” Especially it was said of Pilumnus that he defended new-born children against the destroying attacks of the wood demon, Silvanus. (Good and bad mother, the motive of the two mothers.)

The benevolent bird, a wish thought of deliverance which arises from introversion,^[693] advises the hero to shoot the magician under the hair, which is the only vulnerable spot. This spot is the “phallic” point,^[694] if one may venture to say so; it is at the top of the head, at the place where the mystic birth from the head takes place, which even to-day appears in children’s sexual theories. Into that Hiawatha shoots (one may say, very naturally) three arrows^[695] (the well-known phallic symbol), and thus kills Megissogwon. Thereupon he steals the magic wampum armor, which renders him invulnerable (means of immortality). He significantly leaves the dead lying in the water—because the magician is the fearful mother:

Thus the situation is the same as with the fish king, because the monster is the personification of the water of death, which in its turn represents the devouring mother. This great deed of Hiawatha’s, where he has vanquished the mother as the death-bringing demon,^[696] is followed by his marriage with Minnehaha.

A little fable which the poet has inserted in the later song is noteworthy. An old man is transformed into a youth, by crawling through a hollow oak tree.

In the fourteenth song is a description of how Hiawatha discovers writing. I limit myself to the description of two hieroglyphic tokens:

The world lies in the egg, which encompasses it at every point; it is the cosmic woman with child, the symbol of which Plato as well as the Vedas has made use of. This mother is like the air, which is everywhere. But air is spirit; the mother of the world is a spirit:

But the spirit of evil is fear, is the forbidden desire, the adversary who opposes not only each individual heroic deed, but life in its struggle for eternal duration as well, and who introduces into our body the poison of weakness and age through the treacherous bite of the serpent. It is all that is retrogressive, and as the model of our first world is our mother, all retrogressive tendencies are towards the mother, and, therefore, are disguised under the incest image.

In both these ideas the poet has represented in mythologic symbols the libido arising from the mother and the libido striving backward towards the mother.

There is a description in the fifteenth song how Chibiabos, Hiawatha’s best friend, the amiable player and singer, the embodiment of the joy of life, was enticed by the evil spirits into ambush, fell through the ice and was drowned. Hiawatha mourns for him so long that he succeeds, with the aid of the magician, in calling him back again. But the revivified friend is only a spirit, and he becomes master of the land of spirits. (Osiris, lord of the underworld; the two Dioscuri.) Battles again follow, and then comes the loss of a second friend, Kwasind, the embodiment of physical strength.

In the twentieth song occur famine and the death of Minnehaha, foretold by two taciturn guests from the land of death; and in the twenty-second song Hiawatha prepares for a final journey to the west land:

The sun, victoriously arising, tears itself away from the embrace and clasp, from the enveloping womb of the sea, and sinks again into the maternal sea, into night, the all-enveloping and the all-reproducing, leaving behind it the heights of midday and all its glorious works. This image was the first, and was profoundly entitled to become the symbolic carrier of human destiny; in the morning of life man painfully tears himself loose from the mother, from the domestic hearth, to rise through battle to his heights. Not seeing his worst enemy in front of him, but bearing him within himself as a deadly longing for the depths within, for drowning in his own source, for becoming absorbed into the mother, his life is a constant struggle with death, a violent and transitory delivery from the always lurking night. This death is no external enemy, but a deep personal longing for quiet and for the profound peace of non-existence, for a dreamless sleep in the ebb and flow of the sea of life. Even in his highest endeavor for harmony and equilibrium, for philosophic depths and artistic enthusiasm, he seeks death, immobility, satiety and rest. If, like Peirithoos, he tarries too long in this place of rest and peace, he is overcome by torpidity, and the poison of the serpent paralyzes him for all time. If he is to live he must fight and sacrifice his longing for the past, in order to rise to his own heights. And having reached the noonday heights, he must also sacrifice the love for his own achievement, for he may not loiter. The sun also sacrifices its greatest strength in order to hasten onwards to the fruits of autumn, which are the seeds of immortality; fulfilled in children, in works, in posthumous fame, in a new order of things, all of which in their turn begin and complete the sun’s course over again.

The “Song of Hiawatha” contains, as these extracts show, a material which is very well adapted to bring into play the abundance of ancient symbolic possibilities, latent in the human mind, and to stimulate it to the creation of mythologic figures. But the products always contain the same old problems of humanity, which rise again and again in new symbolic disguise from the shadowy world of the unconscious. Thus Miss Miller is reminded through the longing of Chiwantopel, of another mythic cycle which appeared in the form of Wagner’s “Siegfried.” Especially is this shown in the passage in Chiwantopel’s monologue, where he exclaims, “There is not one who understands me, not one who resembles me, not one who has a soul sister to mine.” Miss Miller observes that the sentiment of this passage has the greatest analogy with the feelings which Siegfried experienced for Brunhilde.

This analogy causes us to cast a glance at the song of Siegfried, especially at the relation of Siegfried and Brunhilde. It is a well-recognized fact that Brunhilde, the Valkyr, gives protection to the birth (incestuous) of Siegfried, but while Sieglinde is the human mother, Brunhilde has the rôle of “spiritual mother” (mother-imago); however, unlike Hera towards Hercules, she is not a pursuer, but benevolent. This sin, in which she is an accomplice, by means of the help she renders, is the reason for her banishment by Wotan. The strange birth of Siegfried from the sister-wife distinguishes him as Horus, as the reborn son, a reincarnation of the retreating Osiris—Wotan. The birth of the young son, of the hero, results, indeed, from mankind, who, however, are merely the human bearers of the cosmic symbolism. Thus the birth is protected by the spirit mother (Hera, Lilith): she sends Sieglinde with the child in her womb (Mary’s flight) on the “night journey on the sea” to the east:

The motive of dismemberment is found again in the broken sword of Siegmund, which was kept for Siegfried. From the dismemberment life is pieced together again. (The Medea wonder.) Just as a smith forges the pieces together, so is the dismembered dead again put together. (This comparison is also found in “Timaios” of Plato: the parts of the world joined together with pegs.) In the Rigveda, 10, 72, the creator of the world, Brahmanaspati, is a smith.

The sword has the significance of the phallic sun power; therefore, a sword proceeds from the mouth of the apocalyptic Christ; that is to say, the procreative fire, the word, or the procreative Logos. In Rigveda, Brahmanaspati is also a prayer-word, which possessed an ancient creative significance:^[697]

The Logos became a cow; that is to say, the mother, who is pregnant with the gods. (In Christian uncanonical phantasies, where the Holy Ghost has feminine significance, we have the well-known motive of the two mothers, the earthly mother, Mary, and the spiritual mother, the Holy Ghost.) The transformation of the Logos into the mother is not remarkable in itself, because the origin of the phenomenon fire-speech seems to be the mother-libido, according to the discussion in the earlier chapter. The spiritual is the mother-libido. The significance of the sword, in the Sanskrit conception, têjas, is probably partly determined by its sharpness, as is shown above, in its connection with the libido conception. The motive of pursuit (the pursuing Sieglinde, analogous to Leto) is not here bound up with the spiritual mother, but with Wotan, therefore corresponding to the Linos legend, where the father of the wife is also the pursuer. Wotan is also the father of Brunhilde. Brunhilde stands in a peculiar relation to Wotan. Brunhilde says to Wotan:

“Thou speakest to the will of Wotan By telling me what thou wishest: Who ... am I Were I not thy will?”

Wotan:

I take counsel only with myself, When I speak with thee....

Brunhilde is also somewhat the “angel of the face,” that creative will or word,^[698] emanating from God, also the Logos, which became the child-bearing woman. God created the world through his word; that is to say, his mother, the woman who is to bring him forth again. (He lays his own egg.) This peculiar conception, it seems to me, can be explained by assuming that the libido overflowing into speech (thought) has preserved its sexual character to an extraordinary degree as a result of the inherent inertia. In this way the “word” had to execute and fulfil all that was denied to the sexual wish; namely, the return into the mother, in order to attain eternal duration. The “word” fulfils this wish by itself becoming the daughter, the wife, the mother of the God, who brings him forth anew.^[699]

Wagner has this idea vaguely in his mind in Wotan’s lament over Brunhilde:

Brunhilde’s sin is the favoring of Siegmund, but, behind this, lies incest: this is projected into the brother-sister relation of Siegmund and Sieglinde; in reality, and archaically expressed, Wotan, the father, has entered into his self-created daughter, in order to rejuvenate himself. But this fact must, of course, be veiled. Wotan is rightly indignant with Brunhilde, for she has taken the Isis rôle and through the birth of the son has deprived the old man of his power. The first attack of the death serpent in the form of the son, Siegmund, Wotan has repelled; he has broken Siegmund’s sword, but Siegmund rises again in a grandson. This inevitable fate is always helped by the woman; hence the wrath of Wotan.

At Siegfried’s birth Sieglinde dies, as is proper. The foster-mother^[700] is apparently not a woman, but a chthonic god, a crippled dwarf, who belongs to that tribe which renounces love.^[701] The Egyptian god of the underworld, the crippled shadow of Osiris (who celebrated a melancholy resurrection in the sexless semi-ape Harpocrates), is the tutor of Horus, who has to avenge the death of his father.

Meanwhile Brunhilde sleeps the enchanted sleep, like a Hierosgamos, upon a mountain, where Wotan has put her to sleep^[702] with the magic thorn (Edda), surrounded by the flames of Wotan’s fire (equal to libido^[703]), which wards off every one. But Mime becomes Siegfried’s enemy and wills his death through Fafner. Here Mime’s dynamic nature is revealed; he is a masculine representation of the terrible mother, also a foster-mother of demoniac nature, who places the poisonous worm (Typhon) in her son’s (Horus’s) path. Siegfried’s longing for the mother drives him away from Mime, and his travels begin with the mother of death, and lead through vanquishing the “terrible mother”^[704] to the woman: