This admonition hits us and our pride, we who have become in our own estimation, since the years of childhood, so wise and so mighty. Like Œdipus, we live in ignorance of the wishes that are so offensive to morality, which nature has forced upon us, and after their disclosure we should all like to turn away our gaze from the scenes of our childhood.” (Freud, Trdtg., p. 190 f.) Believing that I have by this time sufficiently prepared the reader who was unfamiliar with psychoanalysis for the psychoanalytic part of my investigation, I will dispense with further time-consuming explanations. Part II. ANALYTIC PART. Section I. Psychoanalytic Interpretation Of The Parable. Although we know that the parable was written by a follower of the hermetic art, and apparently for the purpose of instruction, we shall proceed, with due consideration, to pass over the hermetic content of the narrative, which will later be investigated, and regard it only as a play of free fantasy. We shall endeavor to apply to the parable knowledge gained from the psychoanalytic interpretation of dreams, and we shall find that the parable, as a creation of the imagination, shows at the very foundations the same structure as dreams. I repeat emphatically that in this research, in being guided merely by the psychoanalytic point of view, we are for the time being proceeding in a decidedly one-sided manner. In the interpretation of the parable we cannot apply the original method of psychoanalysis. This consists in having a series of seances with the dreamer in order to evoke the free associations. The dreamer of the parable—or rather the author—has long ago departed this life. We are obliged then to give up the preparatory process and stick to the methods derived from them. There are three such methods. The first is the comparison with typical dream images. It has been shown that in the dreams of all individuals certain phases and types continually recur, and in its symbolism have a far reaching general validity, because they are manifestly built on universal human emotions. Their imaginative expression is created according to a psychical law which remains fairly unaffected by individual differences. The second is the parallel from folk psychology. The inner affinity of dream and myth implies that for the interpretation of individual creations of fancy, parallels can profitably be drawn from the productions of the popular imagination and vice versa.