Excerpts from The King and the Corpse by Heinrich Zimmer

1. From the self; Symbols are illimitable, inexhaustible, suggestive, instructive, metamorphosizing, transfiguring.

2. From the self; Interpretation of symbols require humility, open-mindedness, lucidity in thought, innocence

3. The King and the Corpse, pg. 2: The dilletante—Intalian dilettante (present participle of the verb diletarre, “to take delight in”) – is one who takes delight (diletto) in something. The following essays are for those who takes delight in symbols, like conversing with them, and enjoy living with them continually in mind.

4. The King and the Corpse, the take of abu kasim

5. The King and the Corpse, pg. 14: the ring of polycrates.

6. The King and the Corpse, pg. 34: “…to realize that completeness consists in opposites co-operating through conflict, and that harmony is essenially a resolution of irreducible tensions.”

7. The King and the Corpse, pg. 36: “…in the ancient mysteries of Isis and Osiris the initiate was required to pass through water, had to pass, that is to say, through the threat and experience of death, whence he would emerge reborn as a “Knower”, a “Comprehender”, beyond fear and released from all attachment to the perishable ego personality. This is the traditional way of initiation- a way attested abundantly in the mythologies and folk literatures of the world.”

8. The King and the Corpse, pg. 38: “In the picture language of folklore and myth, the symbolic figure of mount and rider represents the centauric character of man, fatefully compunded of animal instinct and human virtue. The horse if the “lower”, purely instinctive and intuitive aspect of the human being, the mounted knight the “higher” portion: conscious valor, the moral sense, will power, and reason.

9. The King and the Corpse, pg. 39: Footnote: “Now the Gods, ascending, knew not the way to the heavenly world, but the horse knew it” (Satapatha Brahmana 13.2.8.1)

10. The King and the Corpse, pg. 42: “For how could the prince become the perfect king without understanding, from within, crime and the quality of the inhuman? How could the king preside as supreme judge unless capable of surmounting his most cherished personal feelings, his propensity for indiscriminate mercy and compassion? The innocent youth must consummate his initiation into the sidom through evil through the enactment of a crime; and thus symbolic, sacramental act will fit him to dispense not only mercy but justice- make him a real Knower, capable