The sound resemblance of _mar_, _mère_ with _meer_ = sea and Latin _mare_ = sea is remarkable, although etymologically accidental. Might it refer back to “the great primitive idea of the mother” who, in the first place, meant to us our individual world and afterwards became the symbol of all worlds? Goethe said of the mothers: “They are encircled by images of all creatures.” The Christians, too, could not refrain from reuniting their mother of God with water. “Ave Maris stella” is the beginning of a hymn to Mary. Then again it is the horses of Neptune which symbolize the waves of the sea. It is probably of importance that the infantile word ma-ma (mother’s breast) is repeated in its initial sound in all possible languages, and that the mothers of two religious heroes are called Mary and Maya. That the mother is the horse of the child is to be seen most plainly in the primitive custom of carrying the child on the back or letting it ride on the hip. Odin hung on the “world-ash,” the mother, his “horse of terror.” The Egyptian sun-god sits on the back of his mother, the heavenly cow. We have already seen that, according to Egyptian conceptions, Isis, the mother of god, played an evil trick on the sun-god with the poisonous snake; also Isis behaved treacherously toward her son Horus in Plutarch’s tradition. That is, Horus vanquished the evil Typhon, who murdered Osiris treacherously (terrible mother = Typhon). Isis, _however, set him free again_. Horus thereupon rebelled, _laid hands on his mother and tore the regal ornaments from her head_, whereupon Hermes gave her a cow’s head. Then Horus conquered Typhon a second time. Typhon, in the Greek legend, is a monstrous dragon. Even without this confirmation it is evident that the battle of Horus is the typical battle of the sun-hero with the whale-dragon. Of the latter we know that it is a symbol of the “dreadful mother,” of the voracious jaws of death, where men are dismembered and ground up.[526] Whoever vanquishes this monster has gained a new or eternal youth. For this purpose one must, in spite of all dangers, descend into the belly of the monster[527] (journey to hell) and spend some time there. (Imprisonment by night in the sea.)