Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/464

 Meanwhile Brunhilde sleeps the enchanted sleep, like a Hierosgamos, upon a mountain, where Wotan has put her to sleep[65] with the magic thorn (Edda), surrounded by the flames of Wotan's fire (equal to libido[66]), 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"[67] to the woman:

Siegfried:

Off with the imp! I ne'er would see him more! Might I but know what my mother was like That will my thought never tell me! Her eyes' tender light Surely did shine Like the soft eyes of the doe!

Siegfried decides to separate from the demon which was the mother in the past, and he gropes forward with the longing directed towards the mother. Nature acquires a hidden maternal significance for him ("doe"); in the tones of nature he discovers a suggestion of the maternal voice and the maternal language:

Siegfried:

Thou gracious birdling, Strange art thou to me!