When man’s his own enemy, it is only because he is too much his own friend; not because he is careful about everybody but himself. The serpent is associated with death and fears of the dead, it also connotes immortality. In a similar fashion, the serpent appears as a homeopathic remedy for the fears of boundary violation, which sexuality arouses in orally fixated individuals. The snake is often utilized as a bisexual symbol, and bisexuality, like parthenogenesis, is an obvious solution to boundary fears. The child survives the attack and becomes a man, while at the very end he is reborn a babe and the entire sequence renewed. The destructive story of the wife is followed by a rapt portrait of the husband lost in ecstatic dreams of a blissful after life. Thus, at one level, the story of the attacked heart expresses the idea that through self-destruction, the little boy can rid himself of the persecutions of the mother and recreate himself along more satisfactory lines. Closely related to this fantasy of rebirth is that of propitiation, not only of the mother’s hostility, but also of her sexual demands. There is a feeling that the hero can escape death, only by appeasing these needs, but that only his self-destruction will in fact appease them. Rebirth is thus the only means to existence at all. It is clear to him that he cannot provide what she wants, that what she wants has something to do with his being male, and that is inability to provide it has something to do with his being too small. 

Perhaps he even senses that in some manner, he is being put in the place of his fathers. It is not necessary for him to know that the only baby he can give his mother is himself; he can still sense that it will take all him giving up his life to please her, she is angry and hungry. After she swallows his heart, she will give birth to him again, and it will be better this time and she will be satisfied.  Rituals involving the Terrible Mother with hearts and phalli to assure fertility of the Earth, and in both instances the serpent is prominently involved as the recipient of these sacrifices. Thus: All Aztec polices were subordinated to the wars that were waged for the purpose of taking prisoners to be sacrificed in the cult of the Snake Woman, who yielded fertility only when satiated by terrible blood sacrifices….The characteristic Aztec form of the sacrifice was to tear the heart out of the living body and offer it up to the Sun; this gave assurance of the fructifying rain that made the Earth fertile. Although offering the heart to the Sun seems to contradict the interpretation suggested here, the solar emphasis is merely a patriarchal overlay, superimposed upon the Earth-Mother cult. Why cutting out of the heart was maintained during the transition, however, remains a question to be investigated. Castrating or dismembering of the son, by the Terrible Mothers, suggest that the son is a snake, his scepter is a snake.

 An identity between the cutting out of the heart and birth links the castration and rebirth interpretations. The dying prisoner was the generative feminine Earth principle, the woman dying in childbirth; in dying, he engendered his heart…The husking of the corn, the heart, is castration, mutilation, and sacrifice of the essential male part; but at the same time, it is birth and a life-giving deed. Blood sacrifice and dismemberment belong to the fertility ritual of the Great Mother. Both fecundate the womb of the pieces of the victim, weather man or animal, are solemnly spread over the fields. The Greek Thesmophoria, in which little pigs, symbolizing the children of the Earth sow, and phallic symbols are thrown into a ravine supposed to be swarming with snakes, also belongs to this context. No wonder that one idle fellow should love another. One may interpret this ritual of propitiating the serpent as essentially a projection of male fears and female resentment. In the ritual of the Thesmophoria, for example, the women who perform it are projecting onto the Earth-Mother their own modal conflict, saying, in effect, she will conceive and bring forth only when her hatred and fierce hunger have been sated with the blood and organs of the offending male. A treacherous friend is the most dangerous enemy. 

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