Read "Faithful Johannes" this afternoon, from Volume I of The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, translated by Jack Zipes.

Synopsis: A dying king entrusts his son to his faithful servant, Johannes. After the king dies Johannes shows the young king all of the rooms in the castle, except for one room that the old king bade Johannes never to show his son. The young king, however, insists on entering the room, and Johannes has no choice but to let him in. The room contains a portrait of the Princess of the Golden Roof. The young king is smitten by it and swoons. When he revives, all he can think of is to find the princess and make her his bride.

Johannes suggests that they take all of the gold in the castle and have the smiths fashion them into exquisite items, since the princess is always surrounded with and is obsessed with gold. They sail to the land where the princess lives. Johannes shows the princess some items of gold and lures her to their ship, where Johannes greets her and shows her everything that they brought on board. Unbeknownst to the princess, Johannes orders the crew to set sail. In the middle of the sea the young king proposes to the princess, and she agrees to be his bride.

During the trip to the young king's home, Johannes overhears ravens foretell the doom that the young king and the princess are headed for:

1) Upon reaching land a horse as red as a fox will trot up to the young king, who will be tempted to ride off on it and will never see the princess again unless someone jumps up the saddle, takes the gun from it, and shoots the horse dead.

2) Upon reaching the castle the young king will find a bridal outfit in a basin. It is made, however, of sulfur and pitch, and the young king can be saved only if someone puts on gloves and hurls the outfit into the fire.

3) During a ball inside the castle, the princess will be stricken as though dead and can be brought back to life only if someone pricks her breast, draws three drops of blood from the puncture wound, and spits them out.

4) Anyone who reveals these to the young king, however, will immediately be turned to stone.

Everything happens as the ravens predict. Johannes shoots the horse with the gun, puts on gloves and hurls the bridal outfit into the fire, and draws three drops of blood from the princess's breast and spits them out. The young king forgives Johannes for the first two but not for the third, upon which he condemns Johannes to burn at the stake.

Once tied to the stake Johannes begs to give a final word before dying. The young king grants it. Johannes discloses everything he overheard from the ravens. Upon doing this, he turns to stone. The young king and the princess grieve over Johannes's fate. They eventually have two young sons. One afternoon, while the boys are playing, the young king wonders aloud how Johannes can be brought back to life. The stone statue says that the only way is for the young king to behead his sons and smear their blood on the stone. Due to the injustice he did Johannes, the young king does this. Johannes not only comes back to life, he reattaches the boys' heads to their bodies and they come back to life again. The royal family lives the rest of their lives in happiness.


My Commentary: Though written long before the birth of psycho-anthropologist Carl Gustav Jung, this fairy tale illustrates the first two stages of the psyche's development from Warrior to Lover to Magician to King. The dying king prohibits the prince from entering the forbidden room because the prince must first successfully complete his journey through the stage of Warrior. No one, after all, can enter the stage of Lover too soon without suffering its psychological consequences.

The motif of gold corresponds to purity and truth. Johannes must destroy the horse because it will take the young king forever into the Warrior stage and be hopelessly fixated in it. The bridal outfit comes too much, too soon before the Lover's maturity and will only lead to disaster. The princess falling comatose during the ball is an indication that she, too, will not benefit from an early entry into the Lover stage.

Beheading one's sons may come across as an act of violence unless we understand that the young king, the two boys, and Johannes are all parts of one, whole Ego. The Ego must learn to make sacrifices in service of the psyche in order to be integrated--perhaps pretty much as we find, frankly, in the story of Abraham and Isaac. 

Read "The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids" two nights ago, from Volume I of The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, translated by Jack Zipes.

Synopsis: Before leaving to find food in the forest, a mother goat cautions her seven kids to be on guard against the wolf, who will most certainly eat them up. Sure enough, as soon as the mother goat leaves, the wolf comes in disguise and asks the kids to let them in. The kids refuse him entrance because his voice is gruff, unlike their mother's. The wolf then eats a piece of chalk, goes back to the house, and calls to the kids in a sweet voice, but he makes the mistake of placing his paw on the window sill so that the kids see that it is black, unlike their mother's. The wolf next goes to a baker and bids him cover his paw with dough and sprinkle it with flour. When he goes back to the house the kids see that his paw is white, like their mother's, and they open the door to him, upon which he chases them round the house and swallows them whole except for the seventh kid, who hides inside the clock case.

When the mother goat returns she sees the devastation that occurred. The kid who hid inside the clock case tells her everything that happened. They go outside and eventually find the wolf sleeping soundly under a tree. The mother goat cuts open his belly and lets out the six kids inside. She then fills the wolf's belly with stones and sews his belly up again. The wolf soon wakes up in great thirst. He goes to the well to drink some water, but due to the weight of the stones inside his body he falls into it and drowns. 


My Commentary:

In this fairy tale all characters are parts of one whole, the Self. The mother is the psyche, the seven kids the vulnerable Ego, and the wolf the Shadow Self. Note that, as in the story of Red Riding Hood, the vulnerable Ego is swallowed whole and does not die, it merely becomes part of the Shadow Self; should it stay there a long time it is said to have merged with the Shadow Self, causing a life of neurosis, negativity, and depression.

By the same token, the Shadow Self also never dies. Although the story ends with the wolf falling into the well and drowning, we know that it will soon rise and roam the psychological landscape once again, pretty much as in the midrash of the Temptation in the Wilderness, where Jesus is the Ego and the shaitan, or Tester, is the Shadow. They confront each other but do not "kill" or vanquish each other. Instead, at the end of the midrash, the Tester says that he will come "another time", which he later did, as Judas.  

Read "A Tale About the Boy Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was" two nights ago, from Volume I of The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, translated by Jack Zipes.

Synopsis: 

A father has two sons, the elder smart and responsible, the younger slow and disinterested in many things. The younger son often listens to his elder brother's refusal to do errands at night, having to pass through a cemetery in the dark, because it makes his hairs stand on end. The younger son has never experienced having his hairs stand on end and makes it his singular objective to have that experience. The father willingly lends his younger son to the sexton, who assigns the boy to ring the church bell at midnight. One night, unbeknownst to the boy, the sexton dresses himself in white, goes up to the belfry, and waits for the boy to come up and ring the bell. Seeing the figure in white, the boy merely demands it to identify itself, and, when it remains silent, throws it down the stairs. The sexton breaks a leg, and the boy's angry father sends the boy away from home. 

The boy meets a man with whom he confides his desire to experience having his hairs stand on end. The man challenges him to spend the night below a tree where the corpses of seven criminals remain hanging. The boy does so and even lights a fire and takes down the corpses to sit round it to keep themselves warm. The boy attempts to converse with the men, but they remain silent. The corpses' pieces of clothing catch fire, though, and the boy hangs them back on the tree.   

The boy then meets a carter, who takes him to an inn, where he learns from the innkeeper that the king is offering the reward of his daughter' hand to any man who can spend the night in a nearby haunted castle. In the past, many suitors attempted to do this but were never seen alive again. Unfazed, the boy takes on the challenge.

On the first night inside the haunted castle the boy is attacked by huge cats and dogs, but he kills most of them with his knife and sends the rest running away. He lies on a bed that springs to life and zooms around and through the castle, but he thoroughly enjoys it and goes to sleep on the bed afterward.

On the second night, dead men come tumbling down the chimney and play a game of ninepins with skulls as balls. The boy not only joins the game--he turns the skulls on a lathe to make them roll  more easily.

On the third night, six huge men set a coffin on a floor. The boy opens the coffin, sets the corpse near the fire, and rubs its body to revive it. The corpse does come to life but attempts to strangle the boy, and so the boy seals it inside the coffin once again. An old man arrives next, and he challenges the boy to a test of strength. The old man takes an axe and rives an anvil in two. The boy, however, is able to do the same. He wedges the old man's beard in the split of the anvil and proceeds to beat him up. The old man surrenders and gives the boy three chests full of gold: one for the poor, the second for the king, the third for the boy.

Everyone is amazed that the boy survived three nights inside the haunted castle. The boy marries the king's daughter, and they live happily except that the boy still cannot experience having his hairs stand on end. His wife becomes exasperated, but their chambermaid thinks of a solution. They pour water with live minnows from the river on the boy's body. The little fish flap all over his body and make his hairs stand on end.


My Commentary:

This fairy tale is about the archetypal Warrior's journey in developmental psychology. On his quest, the boy encounters only men, who conduct his rites of passage to full manhood, the equivalent of the French "100 blows". Ringing the church bell at midnight seems to indicate the first awakening of the boy's body; his encounter with the sexton seems to be a failed seduction on the sexton's part. The episode that follows, involving the cadavers of seven criminals, reflects the boy's dealing with the Shadow Selves of his peers; he extends kindness to them but is forced to place them back where they belong because they are not responsive to him.

The three nights inside the haunted castle reflect the last three stages in the Warrior's journey: the cats and dogs are the vices one must combat and transcend before having a good night's sleep; the game of ninepins is the challenge of socializing in a world of deceit; the corpse in the coffin is none other than his own weaknesses and shortcomings, which he must learn to overcome, and the old man is his future self, the keeper of riches. Note that the Warrior is obliged to turn over a third of his booty to the poor and another third to the king.

Above everything, every story about a boy who leaves his father and his brother behind to go out into the world is basically a story of the Zero Card, the Fool, in any Tarot deck. It is also the antithesis of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, retitled the Parable of the Beneficent Father--I say antithesis because the Warrior, whether successful in life or not, DOES NOT GO BACK TO THE FATHER AND TO THE BROTHER and instead continues to live independently the rest of his life. The ending of this fairy tale actually suggests the straight path to individuation: it is through the archetype of Woman, not of Man, that the Warrior ends this stage in his life and begins his journey through the next stage, the stage of the Lover, whether he is contending with an actual wife or with the Anima, or Feminine Self, within.

Read "The Virgin Mary's Child" two nights ago, from Volume I of The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, translated by Jack Zipes.

Synopsis:

The Virgin Mary appears to a poor woodcutter and offers to take his three-year-old child with her to heaven, where she can properly take care of her. The child grows up in heaven, wanting nothing. When she turns fourteen the Virgin Mary decides to go on a long journey. She entrusts the keys to the thirteen doors to the kingdom of heaven with her, informing her that she may open all the doors and explore within except for the thirteenth door, which she forbids her to open.

The maiden promises to be obedient, and the Virgin Mary departs. Every day she opens a door and is delighted by the splendor and glory within. Eventually she is tempted to open the thirteenth door just a crack, but the door flies wide open, she touches the golden light within, and one of her fingers turns golden. She tries her best to hide it when the Virgin Mary returns. The Virgin Mary asks her whether she opened the thirteenth door, but she denies it three times. For her disobedience the Virgin Mary exiles her to earth, where she must fend for herself until the king comes upon her during a hunt and takes her to his castle.

The king falls in love with and marries the maiden despite the fact that the Virgin Mary rendered her unable to speak. She gives birth to a son, after which the Virgin Mary visits her and asks her once again whether she opened the thirteenth door. She once again insists that she did not, and so the Virgin Mary takes her son away to heaven. She gives birth the following year to another son, after which the Virgin Mary visits her again and asks her once again whether she opened the thirteenth door. Again she insists that she did not. She gives birth a third time the following year to a daughter. The Virgin Mary takes the queen and her daughter to heaven and shows them the two little boys living in happiness. The Virgin Mary tells the queen that she will return all three children if only she would admit that she opened the thirteenth door. Still, the queen insists that she did not.

The Virgin Mary sends the queen back to earth, where the people accuse her of being an ogress due to the disappearance of her children. She is brought to trial and found guilty because she is unable to speak and defend herself. While burning at the stake the queen's pride melts. She is suddenly able to cry aloud, "Yes, Mary, I did it!" The Virgin Mary then descends from heaven with her three children, loosens her tongue, and bestows happiness of her for the rest of her life.  

My Commentary:

In every fairy tale where the protagonist is female, usually a maiden, the arrival of a king into her life is not so much the arrival of a romantic partner and prospective husband as it is the emergence of the Animus, or Masculine Self, heralding the female's passage into maturity and psychological completion. This is the real message of the story: that the denial of truth prevents this maturity to happen. The female 's psyche, personified here as the Virgin Mary, must guide the female through a path of righteousness in order to deserve living a life of happiness.

It is possible that this story is one of the Grimm Brothers' notorious "Christianizations" of some fairy tales, and we can only wonder how the original was. Perhaps the Virgin Mary was some other goddess in the original. Many texts, such as the Tagalog Ibong Adarna, became victims to such unwarranted interventions as "Christianization", and it is up to scholars to try to return such texts to their original forms, pretty much in the same way that old paintings must be subjected to full and proper restoration.   

Your firsthand experiences, memories, associations, and dreams will always remain yours and yours alone, no matter how much you record them in your literature and in your visual art.

Write intelligently and with reserve, never compulsively.

Read "The Companionship of the Cat and the Mouse" last night, from Volume I of The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, translated by Jack Zipes.

Synopsis: A male cat makes the acquaintance of a female mouse, falls in love with her, and convinces her to live with him. He advises her to stay home and keep house to avoid falling into any traps in the dangerous world. They worry about the winter, when food will be scarce, and purchase a jar of fat. They decide to hide the jar under the altar inside a church where no one will be likely to find it.

Very soon the cat develops a craving for the fat. He tells the mouse that he must be godfather to a cousin's child, then secretly goes to the church and consumes a third of the fat inside the jar. This happens two more times over the following days: he consumes half the jar, and then all of it.

Winter comes. The mouse suggests to the cat that they go to the church and partake of the fat they stowed away. When they get there, of course, the jar is empty. The mouse reflects and concludes that the cat ate all of it. The cat tells the mouse to stop accusing him or he will eat her up. The mouse continues to accuse him. He eats the mouse.

My Commentary:

On the surface this fairy tale seems to be about the innate nature of different species and how it is almost impossible for them to coexist. Numerous examples can be found in other texts: the stereotype cat and mouse, the stereotype cat and dog, the stereotype lion and lamb, among others. On a deeper, psychological level, however, I perceive this fairy tale to be a story of mismatches in human relationships: there are selfish men who fall in love with women and end up deceiving them. In the end, when they are accused of their misdeeds, they become defensive, abusive, even murderous. This apparently simple fairy tale is a precursor of the theme of the battle of the sexes, a subject that playwright August Strindberg later addressed with amazing complexity.

Read "The Frog King, or Iron Heinrich" two nights ago, after finishing my recent portrait, from Volume I of The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, translated by Jack Zipes.

Synopsis: A beautiful princess plays with her favorite golden ball beside a well inside a forest near the king's castle. One day the ball falls into the well, and the princess is inconsolable. A frog pledges to retrieve it on the condition that she will love him, be his companion, let him eat at her table, and let him sleep in her bedroom. The princess agrees to all this, thinking that the frog could not be serious. The frog retrieves the ball. The princess runs to the castle with the ball, leaving the frog behind.

The next day the frog appears at the castle entrance and demands to be let in. The king asks the princess what it is all about. She tells him what transpired between her and the frog inside the forest. The king admonishes her because promises need to be kept. He orders her to let the frog in, allow her to eat beside her at table, and sleep inside her bedroom.

Inside the bedroom the frog insists on sharing the princess's bed. She hurls him against a wall and he turns into a handsome, young king. He tells her that a wicked witch cast a spell on him and that only the princess could break it. The princess accepts the prince as her companion. The following day a coach with eight white horses arrives to take them away. It is driven by Faithful Heinrich, the young king's loyal servant. After the witch cast a spell over the young king, Heinrich had three iron bands wrapped around his heart to keep it from bursting with grief. As the coach drives away the three iron bands snap off.

My Commentary:

Fairy tales set in castles near forests are stories set within the landscape of the psyche: the castle is the Ego and the forest is the abode of the Shadow Self. On the surface, this fairy tale seems to be all about keeping one's word and not breaking promises. On a deeper, psychological level it is about lust and relationships. The golden ball represents the princess's innocence. The frog represents lust, its temptations, and its dangers. When lust is hurled against a wall the frog transforms into a handsome, young king--thus does lust transform into love and romance.

The curious detail about Iron Heinrich, who even shares the title of the fairy tale, is quite intriguing. Though suggestive of homoerotic love, it presents the yang completing the yin: the young king was loved by his male servant as he is now loved by the princess. Liberated from the three iron bands, Heinrich's heart is also now free to pursue its own destiny.