are assured that "nothing graces
exalted persons as much as these virtues." And then he leads the wanderer
into his kingdom and allows him to enjoy all the merely earthly treasures.
There takes place, so to speak, a universal gratification of all wishes.

Mythologically we should expect that the hero thrown up from the
underworld, should have brought with him the drink of knowledge. This is
actually the case, as he has indeed gained the thing whose constitution is
metaphorically worked out in the whole story, that is, the philosopher's
stone. The wanderer is a true soma robber.

Let us hark back to the next to last section. Here, near the end of the
dream, the King becomes sleepy. The real sleeper already feels the
approaching awakening and would like to sleep longer (to phantasy). But he
pretends that the king is sleepy, thus throwing the burden from his own
shoulders. And to this experience is soon attached a symbol of waking: the
wanderer, the dreamer of the parable, is taken to another land, indeed
into a bright land. He wakes from his dreams with a pious echo of his wish
fulfillment on his lips ... "to which end help us, the Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, Amen." It is quite prosaic to conclude this melodious finale
by means of the formula "threshold symbolism."

To sum up in a few words what the parable contains from the psychoanalytic
point of view, and to do this without becoming too general in suggesting
as its results the universal fulfillment of all wishes, I should put it
thus: the wanderer in his phantasy removes and improves the father, wins
the mother, procreates himself with her, enjoys her love even in the womb
and satisfies besides his infantile curiosity while observing procreative
process from the outside. He becomes King and attains power and
magnificence, even superhuman abilities.

Possibly one may be surprised at so much absurdity. One should reflect,
however, that those unconscious titanic powers of imagination that, from
the innermost recesses of the soul set in motion the blindly creating
dream phantasy, can only wish and do nothing but wish. They do not bother
about whether the wishes are sensible or absurd. Critical power does not
belong to them. This is the task of logical thinking as we consciously
exercise it, inasmuch as we observe the wishes rising from the darkness
and compare and weigh them according to teleological standards. The
unconsciously impelling affective life, however, desir