Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/281

 the forgetful servant of Joshua drinks from the well of life, whereupon he becomes immortal, and is placed in a ship by Chidher and Moses, as a punishment, and is cast out to sea, once more a fragment of a sun myth, the motive of the "sea journey."[47]

The primitive symbol, which designates that portion of the Zodiac in which the Sun, with the Winter Solstice, again enters upon the yearly course, is the goat, fish sign, the [Greek: ai)gôke/rôs]. The Sun mounts like a goat to the highest mountain, and later goes into the water as a fish. The fish is the symbol of the child,[48] for the child before his birth lives in the water like a fish, and the Sun, because it plunges into the sea, becomes equally child and fish. The fish, however, is also a phallic symbol,[49] also a symbol for the woman.[50] Briefly stated, the fish is a libido symbol, and, indeed, as it seems predominately for the renewal of the libido.

The journey of Moses with his servant is a life-journey (eighty years). They grow old and lose their life force (libido), that is, they lose the fish which "pursues its course in a marvellous manner to the sea," which means the setting of the sun. When the two notice their loss, they discover at the place where the "source of life" is found (where the dead fish revived and sprang into the sea) Chidher wrapped in his mantle,[51] sitting on the ground. According to another version, he sat on an island in the sea, or "in the wettest place on earth," that is, he was just born from the maternal depths. Where the fish vanished Chidher, "the verdant one," was born as a "son of the deep waters," his head veiled, a Cabir,