Snake

Psyche is seduced by Amor. She has never seen him, although she recieves him each night - her sisters poison her with doubt, say she is making love to a dragon who will eat her up in the end, at any rate, that she should check. She betrays him - she lights the oil lamp one night and a drop of oil burns him awake: he leaves. (And what could be worse than the flight of Amor?)

Marie-Louise von Franz interprets this story in her book on redemption motifs. She says that the animal and the divine are very close ("above and below the human level") and one of the things that unites them is their being "touchy about being seen in the light of consciousness". 'Dragon' is synonymous with 'snake' here. The voice of the sisters is the voice of hasty consciousness, Lawrence's "accursed human education". It is also the voice of 'conditional hospitality'.

Normally we think of bringing something to light as positive (especially as philosophers). Marie-Louise von Franz isn't saying that consciousness is bad, rather, she says instead "in this light of recognition there is a 'nothing but' attitude", and we must be careful of this. Otherwise, like Psyche, we might roam all over the world in pursuit of the vanished stranger who was a lover and might have been a husband.

(This is a psychological interpretation of the story of a meeting, which I think is convincing, but I would like to add that an actual meeting with a snake needs no 'interpretation' to mediate the sense of meeting one of God's more dubious sons.)