among kings and gods by a figurative representation of their attributes. (We find a beautiful example in an "Adoration" by Dürer in the old Pinakothek in Munich.)
Still we must hasten over these trains of thought in order to utilize what has been learned for our fairy tale symbolisms.
Here two symbolic series unite and often overlap; one develops from the aspects of magic, mythology, and religion, the other is the symbolism of dreams and of psychopathology. It is true they originate from the same spring, the human psyche.
In mythology the construction of symbols comes about in a different manner. First through personification. The forces that influence mankind are personified, natural phenomena and inexplicable inner experiences (dreams, nightmare). In place of the real, active forces, anthropomorphic beings are substituted. Whether these are to be sought in the departed souls, or whether they have another indefinite or later defined origin, whether they are incarnated in natural phenomena or are later thought of as controlling certain natural phenomena, is beside the point. There are very many stages in this aspect which sometimes exist together and sometimes follow one another. How far the analysis of such structures, such symbolic forms, which, originally simple personifications of a definite principle, have come to form fully built up personalities, may take us, is shown, for example, by the history of the devil.[1]
A new factor is now added to the symbol. The personified or unpersonified forces display some power, some effect. This effect becomes now transferred on its symbol, on its figurative representation, which belongs in its province, and so the symbol itself receives, besides its already named characteristics, a certain force and effect, which originally belonged to the whole which in part is represented by the symbol.[2] For this reason the devil can do nothing as soon as a place is protected by a cross or the sign of the cross. On the same grounds the pictures of the saints played such an important role with the Russians in the Japanese war and naturally also elsewhere. So in the old cults where the
