serpent (appearing from the little serpent in the hollow tree, through the so-called stretching out of the serpent) has finally devoured all men (devouring mother—death), and only a pregnant woman remains alive; she digs a ditch, covers it with a stone (grave—mother's womb), and, living there, she gives birth to twins, the subsequent dragon-killers (the hero in double form, man and phallus, man and woman, man with his libido, the dying and rising sun).
This existence together in the mother is to be found also very beautifully expressed in an African myth (Frobenius):
"In the beginning, Obatala, the heaven, and Odudua, the earth,
his wife, lay pressed firmly together in a calabas."
The guarding "in a modest bud" is an idea which has
appeared already in Plutarch, where it is said that the
sun was born in the morning from a flower bud. Brahma,
too, comes from the bud, which also gave birth in Assam
to the first human pair.
Humanity.
(An unfinished poem.)
"Scarcely sprouted from the waters, O Earth,
Are thy old mountain tops and diffuse odors,
While the first green islands, full of young woods, breathe delight
Through the May air over the Ocean.
"And joyfully the eye of the Sun-god looked down
Upon the firstlings of the trees and flowers;
Laughing children of his youth, born from thee;
When on the fairest of the islands. . . .
