`` As if - the explanation of Emergence

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Faery


For aught that I could ever read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth - William Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night's Dream


Index


  1. Faery Fundamentals

    2. Fables


  2. Aesop's Fables

    3. Faery Tales


  3. Hansel and Gretel

  4. Jack and the Beanstalk

  5. Dick Wittington

  6. The Emperor's New Clothes

  7. Puss in Boots

  8. The Goosegirl

  9. Rapunzel

  10. Little Red Riding Hood

  11. Beauty and the Beast

  12. The Frog Prince

  13. The Girl With No Hands

  14. Snow White

  15. Rumpelstiltskin

  16. Cinderella

  17. Sleeping Beauty

  18. Goldilocks

    19. Legends


  19. Buddha

  20. Confucius

  21. Lao Tsu

  22. Jesus

  23. King Arthur

  24. Robin Hood

  25. Wat Tyler

    26. Myths


  26. The Judgment of Paris

  27. The Iliad

  28. The Odyssey

  29. Twelve Labours of Hercules

  30. Theseus and the Minotaur

  31. Perseus and Medusa

  32. Jason and the Argonauts

  33. Daedalus and Icarus

  34. Prometheus Steals Fire

  35. Chiron the Centaur

  36. Sisyphus

  37. Nationalism

    38. Gods


  38. The Titans

  39. The Olympians

    40. The Bible Parables


  40. The Old Testament

  41. The New Testament

    42. Faery Fundamentals


    It has been said that our hardware is ape, but our software is storytelling, and it is a fact that we remember stories much more easily than we remember facts such as numbers. Stories can be told for entertainment, but with fairytales there is always a deeper psychological and relational meaning. What follows are just a few ideas about what may lay hidden in familiar tales. Although the brothers Grimm published their collection of tales in the early 19th century, they have origins dating back centuries to at least the mid 1600s and Giambattista Basile's Pentamerone.


    In fairytales the father is usually a king, the mother a queen, boys are princes, and girls are princesses. The thing to understand about these folk tales is that they function as archetypes, so to interpret them properly it is necessary to grasp that the woods are a metaphor for the wide world; woodcutters and hunters are the workers of that world; that giants are people in positions of power, high up in society; that step-mothers are the shadow side of mother, not a different person; that poison equates to lies; that apples are the seeds of ideas from which incidents may grow, so golden apples are truths, while poison apples are lies; and that animals are the primitive sides of our human natures. Towers in which princesses are imprisoned are their minds from which they need release because of the curse laid on them. Nothing is quite what it is said to be, yet everything has archetypal meaning.


    It is notable that in both myth and fairytale, time and distance are treated with as much metaphor as everything else. So we see 7-league boots as enabling a distance in one step, when a more realistic interpretation would be that a good pair of shoes enables you to do a full day's walk; the 7-leagues is both arbitrary, and about the furthest people would walk to market.


    100 years , I'd suggests means a lifetime, i.e. such a long time that it is that and more. While for the Greeks, 10 years is just a long time, so long wars and long journeys both last 10 years. Similarly, Ithaca is the furthest Greek island from Troy, so is symbolic of the longest of journeys.


    The purpose of fairytales is to inform children of the adult world without 'frightening the horses', in a kind of gentle introduction to adult life, so most are proto-psychological warnings of making a way in the world, or of embarking on relationships and marriage. As such, they are full of dramatic device to enable the story to proceed, but which is otherwise unnecessary. They also have resulted in some unfortunate consequences, particularly for women who have not been able to shake off the mythical messages inherent in some dire warnings about sex, and so carry a fear into adult life that possibly is the hidden cause of the 'orgasm gap' experienced by a large proportion of women in comparison to men.


    'Happily ever after' is producing the next generation, which is the only way anyone gets to live ever after.


    Whatever story you are told is either another chain to bind you, or another key to free you.


    Aesop's Fables


    Aesop's Fables - .


    Faery Tales


    Hansel and Gretel


    Hansel and Gretel - the savage world will eat you up, so fight back.


    Jack and the Beanstalk


    Jack and the Beanstalk - rob the rich, escape to the poor .


    Dick Wittington


    Dick Wittington - social climbing .


    The Emperor's New Clothes


    The Emperor's New Clothes - a story about politics and power. The emperor's clothes are his power, power that is invisible and only exists while everyone agrees that it is there. It is notable that he is an emperor, not a king, and so has none of the hereditary authority of the head of the family.


    The child is able to point out that the clothes/power does not really exist, because they have no buy-in to the system of power, a system that only exists because it is supported by the majority of people within the system.


    The story is a call for innovation and free-thinking, revolution even, and it tells the younger generation that their elders and betters may not actually have the last word.


    Puss in Boots


    Puss in Boots - hidden talents of the uneducated can get you anything. This is rags to riches for boys, and the moral is that your unrestrained wild side will enable you to get ahead and take some of the cake of the rich.


    The Goosegirl


    The Goosegirl - being the skivvy, you'd better shine.


    Rapunzel


    Rapunzel - surrender if you want to be saved.


    Little Red Riding Hood


    Little Red Riding Hood - watch out for beastly men once you hit puberty.


    Beauty and the Beast


    Beauty and the Beast - men aren't so bad after all, and you can reform him.


    The Frog Prince


    The Frog Prince - you have to kiss a lot of frogs..


    The Girl Without Hands


    The Girl Without Hands - a variation on the theme of 'too posh to push'.


    The basic premise of this story is that because of some dramatic ruse, a daughter has to have her hands removed. This is metaphor for being made useless as a working wife - the girl is not fit for marriage because she is now unable to work. This is no drawback for the wealthy husband, who has other servants - handmaidens! The wife is then given silver hands as a token of her high status.


    Snow White


    Snow White - mother's poison apple, be innocent when out with the little men.


    Snow White has to go out into the world, just as many girls went off to be in service, but mother has to ensure her pure innocence survives the company of all the lesser men who are not good enough for her daughter, so she poisons Snow White's mind with a lie, once mother discovers that her little darling is now beautiful, i.e grown enough to be an adult woman, and so susceptible to pregnancy. That is mother's protection for her daughter, which lasts until her prince comes along and changes all that.


    Rumpelstiltskin


    Rumpelstiltskin - don't brag, learn what sex is, get a baby.


    In the story the heroine brags of spinning straw into gold, i.e. she is making a promise that she is unable to fulfil. She has to identify Rumpelstiltskin, or she will have no baby. Here the clue is writ large in the little man's name - he is the one who stands up, aka 'stilts' with rumpled skin, need I say more ? The spinning of gold takes place at night, need I say more ? So until she learns his name, i.e. what he is and what to do with him, she is not making any golden nights, and she is not getting a baby.


    Cinderella


    Cinderella - the shared heart.


    Cinderella wants to join in on the dating scene, so she goes to the ball, blessed with whatever talents her fairy godmother has bestowed upon her, i.e. her character and looks. At the ball she dances with the guy she fancies, such that her heart is on display - this is the glass slipper that is left behind when she leaves. The glass slipper is an invisible receptacle capable of containing another's heart, it is a metaphor for the partner that she is searching for. Once the prince finds the slipper, it has become his heart, his missing piece, and so he must find the one that fits him. The ugly sisters are not really ugly, they just aren't his type. Then he finds her and the game is done.


    Cinderella, like many fairy tales, is a rags to riches story, or how to make your fortune, in her case through marriage, which is usually the case for princesses - girls in fairy tales.


    Sleeping Beauty


    Sleeping Beauty - reaching her heart and gifts, girls told don't and then do.


    Sleeping Beauty is a story of many parts. Initially there is the christening and bestowing of gifts from twelve fairy godmothers. This is an important stage because it is descriptive of the twelve planets, twelve chakras, twelve ways that a person can be. So they form her birthright, her destiny, her starchart. There is no room for a thirteenth godmother, because there are only twelve possibilities.


    Sleeping Beauty pricks her finger and starts bleeding, i.e. reaches puberty, whereupon she must sleep, that is she must avoid all possibility of getting involved in a sexual relationship. Sleeping for 100 years is one hell of a curse, but as with myth they only really mean a long time, not a literal 100 years.


    The prince must deal with the bush that grows, well thorn hedge if you must, and has to take advice from an older man on the use of his sword.


    Goldilocks


    Goldilocks - and the three bears. This is a story of a girl trying things for size, and taste, and the moral of the story is similar to that of the Frog Prince, but more explicit: A girl has to try out a few


    Legends


    Buddha


    Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, lived in India about 500 or 600 BC, and was the founder of Buddhism.


    Confucius


    Confucius lived in China from about 550 BC to about 480 BC,


    Confucius's teachings and philosophy underpin East Asian culture and society, and remain influential across China and East Asia to this day. His philosophical teachings, called Confucianism, emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice, kindness, and sincerity, as well as an emphasis on a ruler's duty to their subjects - Wikipedia


    Lao Tsu


    Lao Tsu was a semi-legendary ancient Chinese philosopher, author of the Tao Te Ching, the foundational text of Taoism.


    Jesus


    Jesus may well have been an historical person, may have been the 'Son of God', although we cannot be sure of either of these things. We can, however, be certain that Jesus has a legendary status. Just as much as any of these other mythical characters, Jesus offers us a way to live, which in his case is by loving thy neighbour, not by treating them as subhuman, as is the way of Right Wing politicians the world over, such as the Conservatives in the UK, and the Republicans in the USA. It is just not possible to be like Jesus and to be a supporter of these political parties.


    King Arthur


    King Arthur has a round table, a sword in a stone, and a sword in a like - the table symbolises that fairness is the important thing, i.e. that whatever the story, it applies equally to everyone, be they king or not. The sword from the stone is a cast bronze sword, the sword from the lake is a forged iron sword, and they tell us that the story predates the Romans.


    The ultimate story is of the search for the Holy Grail - obviously a later artefact, being Christian imagery. The grail is a cup, but also holy, so we are talking about something that symbolises the true heart, one may say the love of God. I say it is a guide to spirit, and that the nearest anyone can get to an actual Holy Grail is the Mandala Zodiac, as it is a complete, hence true, map of all possibilities, in the abstract, much as the London Underground map is an abstract map of 'the Tube'.


    Robin Hood


    Robin Hood and his Merry Men is one of those folk tales that could almost be true, it contains some historical figures, such as the [supposedly] good King Richard I, and his brother bad King John, as well as the fictional, and doesn't have any magic, allowing it to pass for a more real kind of truth.


    Robin steals from the rich, giving to the poor, so fundamentally is a political story, one about fairness, with the message that it is not good for anyone to be rich while others are poor.


    Robin's message to humankind is that for money to work as it should, money must circulate following the laws of its natural cycle - which is in essence Modern Monetary Theory. That is, money is created by the state [the king, or government] and that money bubbles up from the poor to the rich, such that it is an absolute law of nature that the rich must be taxed by the government, so that the government can then spend the money, over and over again. One essential part of this cycle is that the government must spend money on the poor, either by employing them to do work, or just by giving them the money outright. When the poor spend the money, as they must do, it then goes to the rich. Any societies that forget Robin's Rule, imperil their rich class, because ultimately the poor revolt and the rich are guillotined.


    Wat Tyler


    Wat Tyler and the Peasants' Revolt of June 1381. Here History gives us one of our first characters who was a commoner standing up for the rights of ordinary people. Little is known of such folk, yet they contribute to our sense of national identity, of what it meant to be English, then British, and perhaps now what it means to be a citizen of the World, although for the most part we are still as enslaved as the serfs of medieval England. Taxation formed the bonds that the Peasants' Revolt sought to break, and we are still bound, only now by the economic chains of Capitalism.


    Things ended badly for Wat, seemingly because he was naive, and the governing power, in the form of Richard II, reneged on any agreements made and quashed the short-lived rebellion. However, in later times the French carried out a nearly successful revolution, removing their royalty and a good proportion of their aristocracy, but retaining the exploitative shackles of Capital. Similarly, in 1917 the Russians achieved something similar, but still retain a czar in Putin. It appears that nowhere has revolution yet been accomplished, despite some bloody though temporary successes in China, Cuba, and perhaps a few other places. Maybe it is the case that equality, that is as impossible under Capitalism as it was under the feudal tyranny of Monarchy, can only be won on a global basis, or not at all. Be that as it may, Wat Tyler stands as a legendary prototype of the people not taking it anymore, in contrast to the aristocrat Boadicea, prototype for Brittania.


    Myths


    The Judgement of Paris


    The Judgement of Paris - The prequel to the Wooden Horse of Troy.


    The myth of the Trojan War could be seen as just a story, even as a history of potentially real events embroidered by time and successive story tellers, but Id like to suggest that it be seen as metaphor for marriage and the war between the sexes. From this perspective the Greeks would be viewed as aspects of archetypal woman, and the Trojans as aspects of archetypal man. Each character then illustrates a role that falls to either sex. Of course there has to be some leeway given, because the legend has been retold many times and so some details are consequently more relevant than others.


    The myth commences with a wedding and Zeus [Jupiter] starts things off by commanding Erys [discord] to cast in a golden apple [one of Yeats', maybe - see The Song of Wandering Aengus], inscribed with 'To the fairest'.


    This is metaphor for all unions, and the apple of discord represents the motivation that is to fuel Jupiter's kind of love, a love that is rooted in difference, the difference between men and women, i.e. sex and reproduction, but more so the differences within the familial group.


    The three feminine principles that are up to win the apple are Hera [aka Juno, wife of Jupiter/Zeus, who is the mother principle], Athene (Pallas-Athena) [aka Minerva (or Sulis in Britain, as in Aqua Sulis - the Roman city of Bath), who is the principle of wisdom], and Aphrodite [aka Venus, who is the principle of desire, and that includes beauty, romantic love, and lust].


    It is worth noting that these three goddesses are on the one hand abstract principles , so ageless, but become embodied in the three ages of women, the beauty of youth, the motherhood of the adult, and the wisdom of age. Of course there is overlap with the ages of men.


    Paris, the groom in any marriage, [standing in for Mars as the personal drive for difference] chooses Aphrodite [Venus] and thereby wins the most beautiful woman, Helen. The interpretation here being that of Paris loving for beauty and lust makes Helen the most beautiful, i.e. brings out the Helen in the bride.


    After the wedding Helen, as the wife, is a married woman, so Paris the lover is also Menelaus the husband [who only plays a bit part in the Trojan War]


    The Iliad


    The Iliad - The Wooden Horse of Troy.


    The Iliad is a story that tells of the Greeks sailing to lay seige to Troy, and to bring Helen back to her husband Menelaus.


    The War is possibly the war between the sexes, with the Trojans being men and the Greeks being women, and the Trojan Horse the baby that is given by women, that wins them the war, or at least entry into the city of men [their hearts].


    Achilles is one of the more important characters, not only does he destroy Hector, and die himself through intervention of the gods, but the stories of his invulnerability, and of his recruitment, are both crucial. Achilles is protected by the effect of the waters of the river Styx, waters of the underworld, a gift from his mother that conveys the power of Hades [Pluto], but which leaves a vulnerability through which he is eventually killed by Paris poison arrow guided by the sun god Apollo. The gift is therefore archetypally feminine, as is Achilles who is discovered in a girls school.


    The implication in the myth is that in this war between the sexes, it is the women who have the Achilles heel in their hero, which is susceptible to Paris expressing his Apollo [Sun] nature, i.e. that the feminine side also has a desire for the love of the male, but largely the male consciousness, or that [arrow] which can be guided by male consciousness. The meaning here is that women too want to be loved, and nicely even though physically, not in just an animalistic [Mars] fashion, although Venus the abstract principle does respond to Mars the abstract principle.


    Ajax is the name of two heroes on the Greek side, one who comes to an early demise, and one who does not. There is also a big debate about which is the better in a fight, and after the defeat of Troy, lttle Ajax is said to have raped Cassandra. I'd suggest that big Ajax is food, that runs out when consumed by the men, while little Ajax is drink, that has a subduing effect on Cassandra - preventing her from being such an upstanding man!


    The Trojan hero Hector can be seen to be the working man, he is known as 'The tamer of horses', horses being the main interest of the Trojans. Killed by Achilles, Hector's body is dragged around the walls of Troy, and his father, King Priam, has to beg for the return of Hector's body. All of which is a parable for the defeat of the husband's body, by hard work, producing the body of the aged man, as exemplified by King Priam.


    The Odyssey


    The Odyssey - Going home after the Wooden Horse of Troy.


    Odysseus can be seen to represent the desire for family. Odysseus does not want to take part, and is the instigator of the Wooden Horse. In the end Odysseus achieves reunion with his wife, Penelope, but only after a long journey, and dealing with many obstacles on the way.


    Twelve Labours of Hercules


    Twelve Labours of Hercules - Twelve Labours.



    Theseus and the Minotaur



    Perseus and Medusa



    Jason and the Argonauts


    Medea and the Golden Fleece


    Daedalus and Icarus


    Daedalus and his son Icarus were imprisoned on an island, but Daedalus, being a great inventor, was able to craft wings from wax and feathers, with which to make their escape. However Icarus flew too close to the Sun and the wax in his wings melted, causing Icarus to fall to his death in the sea below.



    Prometheus Steals Fire


    Prometheus was a Titan with the gift of foresight. This enabled him to know that the Gods would emerge victorious from the war with the Titans, and so he sided with the Gods. Zeus later commanded Prometheus to craft the race of mankind from clay, but forbade him from giving these creatures the gift of fire. However, Prometheus so loved his creations that he stole fire from Mount Olympus, and gave it to his 'children'. Zeus then punished Prometheus by chaining him to a rock and sending an eagle each day to peck out his liver, a torturous fate that could not kill him due to his immortality.


    There is a lot to unpack in this myth: First off, Prometheus is foresight, when you use your noggin and consider the consequences, then you are channelling Prometheus. Foresight tells anyone paying attention that the Gods are superior to the Titans, which is not surprising because the Gods emerge from the Titans. Mankind has brainpower, while Jupiter [Zeus] does not, hence the proscription of fire [consciousness] that is really Prometheus' personal quality. The understanding that consciousness brings also brings suffering, in a Buddhist sense, hence the liver punishment. The myth ends in one of the Twelve Labours of Hercules, when Hercules intervenes with Zeus on behalf of Prometheus, in return for advice on how to obtain the Golden Apples of the Hesperides, referred to by W.B. Yeats in The Song of Wandering Aengus.


    Chiron the Centaur


    Chiron the centaur is half man, half beast, and immortal. He is the teacher of all the Heroes, but suffers the unpleasant fate of being struck by one of the arrows of Hercules, and these, having been dipped in the blood of the Hydra, were highly venomous, and Chiron would have died had he not been immortal. Instead he carried the extremely painful wound until released from life to be placed in the stars by the Gods. Because Chiron was also a healer, he is often known as the wounded healer.



    Sisyphus


    In myth Sisyphus was a bad king, essentially an inhospitable host, consequently he was punished by the gods, and condemned to rolling a stone uphill, and that each time he reached the top the stone would roll to the bottom of the hill and he would have to start all over again.


    As a myth this is fairly obviously about reincarnation, and tells the same story as the Buddhists do, but dressed in different words. Sisyphus represents every mortal, and the stone every incarnation in the material world. Each time a life is completed, it must start again, because we don’t treat each other very well.


    This is a bit of an original sin tale, and just because it is a myth that does not necessarily mean that it is an accurate representation of why things are. Although, I reckon it works well enough on one level of how things are, and that life repeats.


    Nationalism


    The myth of Nationalism is the myth that in various guises empowered both Mussolini and Hitler in the establishment of their dictatorships. Nationalism has a powerful hypnotic quality because it is inherently inclusive of all members of a society, and so is exceptionally hard to argue against. Unlike the individualism of liberals and aristocrats, the Nationalist myth has the persuasive power to get people who should know better to die for their country. Hence Horace's 'Pro Patria Mori' was called 'the old lie' by Wilfred Owen in his poem Dulce et Decorum Est.


    Gods


    The Titans


    The Titans.


    .


    The Olympians


    The Olympians.


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