Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/417



"The people, who journey on boats, draw it down by magic every evening, cut off a suitable piece and then give it a kick so that it flies up again into the sky."—Waitz: "Anthropologie," II, 342.

The infantile nourishment comes from the mother. In the Gnostic phantasies we come across a legend of the origin of man which possibly belongs here: the female archons bound to the vault of Heaven are unable, on account of its quick rotation, to keep their young within them, but let them fall upon the earth, from which men arise. Possibly there is here a connection with barbaric midwifery, the letting fall of the parturient. The assault upon the mother is already introduced with the adventure of Mudjekeewis, and is continued in the violent handling of the "grandmother," Nokomis, who, as a result of the cutting of the liana and the fall downwards, seems in some way to have become pregnant. The "cutting of the branch," the plucking, we have already recognized as mother incest. (See above.) That well-known verse, "Saxonland, where beautiful maidens grow upon trees," and phrases like "picking cherries in a neighbor's garden," allude to a similar idea. The fall downwards of Nokomis deserves to be compared to a poetical figure in Heine.

"A star, a star is falling Out of the glittering sky! The star of Love! I watch it  Sink in the depths and die.

"The leaves and buds are falling From many an apple-tree;