Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/470



diabolicam repperit, eo transgresso descendens, draconem scidit, misitque in partes: ostendens et hie deos non esse qui manu fiunt."

The ''hero battling with the dragon has much in common with the dragon'', and also he takes over his qualities; for example, invulnerability. As the footnotes show, the similarity is carried still further (sparkling eyes, sword in his mouth). Translated psychologically, the dragon is merely the son's repressed longing, striving towards the mother; therefore, the son is the dragon, as even Christ is identified with the serpent, which, once upon a time, similia similibus, had controlled the snake plague in the Wilderness. John iii: 14. ''As a serpent he is to be crucified; that is to say, as one striving backwards towards the mother, he must die hanging or suspended on the mother tree.'' Christ and the dragon of the Antichrist are in the closest contact in the history of their appearance and their cosmic meaning. (Compare Bousset, the Antichrist.) The legend of the dragon concealed