The Seba library treats Echidna in 4 passages, across 4 authors (including Kerényi, Karl, Hesiod, Rank, Otto).
Echidna was his mother, and, in this case, his father was Typhon. Ladon was appointed guardian of the tree that bore the Golden Apples. He lurked in the hollows of the dark earth
Kerényi positions Echidna as the chthonic maternal origin of the guardian-serpent Ladon, locating her generative function within the underworld’s protective mythology.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951thesis
Echidna, dwelling of -, mother of Orthus and Cerberus, 101 ; mother of the Lernaean Hydra. 103
Hesiod’s index entry establishes the canonical genealogical function of Echidna as the progenitrix of the major chthonic monster-guardians of Greek myth.
, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, -700thesis
Ebner, Margareta, 176 Echidna, 145 Ego, 55, 105, 166, 177, 186,
Rank’s index places Echidna in the conceptual vicinity of birth-anxiety symbolism without elaborating an interpretive claim, registering her as a figure of psychoanalytic interest in the context of pre-natal regression.
, The Trauma of Birth, 1924aside
Echidna, 61, 370n. 69
Panksepp references the echidna as a zoological specimen in the context of REM-sleep research, a usage biologically rather than mythologically grounded and unrelated to the depth-psychological figure.
, Affective Neuroscience The Foundations of Human and Animal, 1998aside