Archetypes resemble the beds of rivers: dried up because the water has deserted them, though it may return at any time. An archetype is something like an old watercourse along which the water of life flowed for a time, digging a deep channel for itself. The longer it flowed the deeper the channel, and the more likely it is that sooner or later the water will return.

Water is the commonest symbol for the unconscious.

The facts of nature cannot in the long run be violated. Penetrating and seeping through everything like water, they will undermine any system that fails to take account of them, and sooner or later they will bring about its downfall. But an authority wise enough in its statesmanship to give sufficient free play to nature – of which spirit is a part – need fear no premature decline.

The whole nature of man presupposes woman, both physically and spiritually. His system is tuned into woman from the start, just as it is prepared for a quite definite world where there is water, light, air, salt, carbohydrates etc.

I know every numbskull will babble on about “black man,” “maneater,” “chance,” and “retrospective interpretation,” in order to banish something terribly inconvenient that might sully the familiar picture of childhood innocence. Ah, these good, efficient, healthy-minded people, they always remind me of those optimistic tadpoles who bask in a puddle in the sun, in the shallowest of waters, crowding together and amiably wriggling their tails, totally unaware that the next morning the puddle will have dried up and left them stranded.

On the third day of creation the land was separated from the water and life began.

Darwin describe the primal soup method which theorizes that all life came from water mixed with other elements.

The sea is a motherly figure (womb) and life flows from here. Demeter is the Goddess of the Earth and fertility.

The dead must cross the River Styx before entering the underworld. Styx also grants invulnerability to those who are dipped in it.

Khnum is an Egyptian god of creation. He was believed to control the Nile River and thereby the fertility of Egypt. He also has the power to create children out of clay and place them in their mother’s wombs.