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mother. Therefore, they asserted that this slaughter was introduced at the feast for Ares."

It is evident that the pious here fight their way to a share in the mystery of the raping of the mother.[106] This is the part which belongs to them,[107] while the heroic deed belongs to the god.[108] By Ares is meant the Egyptian Typhon, as we have good reasons to suppose. ''Thus Typhon represents the evil longing for the mother'' with which other myth forms reproach the mother, according to the well-known example. The death of Balder, quite analogous to the death of Osiris (attack of sickness of Rê), because of the wounding by the branch of the mistletoe, seems to need a similar explanation. It is recounted in the myth how all creatures were pledged not to hurt Balder, save only the mistletoe, which was forgotten, presumably because it was too young. This killed Balder. Mistletoe is a parasite. The female piece of wood in the fire-boring ritual was obtained[109] from the wood of a parasitical or creeping plant, the fire mother. The "mare" rests upon "Marentak," in which Grimm suspects the mistletoe. The mistletoe was a remedy against barrenness. In Gaul the Druid alone was allowed to climb the holy oak amid solemn ceremonies after the completed sacrifice, in order to cut off the ritual mistletoe.[110] This act is a religiously limited and organized incest. That which grows on the tree is the child,[111] which man might have by the mother; then man himself would be in a renewed and rejuvenated form; and precisely this is what man cannot have, because the incest prohibition forbids it. As the Celtic custom shows, the act is performed by the priest only, with the