Once there was a man who had seven sons though none of them pleased him entirely. His secret frustrated wish was for a daughter. Eventually a girl was born and there was much celebration though she was so weak that she had to be baptised immediately for the fear she might not live until the priest could be fetched. The father sent one of the lads, he couldn’t recall which, to get water from the well. All the others followed and an argument broke out between them as to who would carry the jug such that it is accidentally broken.
The boys are too afraid to go home.
Their father becomes ever more impatient..
‘They have evidently gone off on some game and forgotten about it,’ he thought, becoming even more agitated. He paced and fretted and muttered. Eventually he lost his rag and let out a great curse,
”Wicked boys! May you all be turned into ravens!” No sooner had the words left his lips when there was a great fluttering up of black wings around him. The boys had returned in just that moment, hunger having driven them home.
This cautionary tale has a great deal hidden in it: not only what happens to neglected sons, but it also details the role that the feminine then plays in redeeming the brothers from the depersonalising and debilitating effects of the Patriarchy.
The Princess is raised without the knowledge of her brothers, a secret kept carefully by her parents. Eventually she overhears some loose conversation between courtiers and the truth comes out. She becomes determined to free her brothers come what may and sets off to find them even though she has no idea where to begin.
She walks to the end of the world.
But cannot find them.
She goes to the boiling sun,
But cannot find them.
She goes to the freezing moon.
But cannot find them.
Eventually she goes to the Stars who comfort her and give her a magical drumstick of chicken which is a key to the Glass Mountain within which the Raven brothers are held.
When she gets there she discovers that the drumstick is lost, so she cuts off one of her fingers and uses that to open the mountain. Inside she is greeted by a dwarf who says that the masters will be home shortly and invites her through to a lavish dining hall with a groaning table and fancy cutlery.
The Princess takes her royal signet ring off and pops it into one of the Ravens glasses before ducking out of sight, uncertain about how she will be received. When the ring is discovered and its meaning discerned, a great shout of joy goes up, ‘Our sister is here to save us!’ When she shows herself the boys are restored to their human form..
and there’s loads of hugging and leaping up and down.
The generally accepted moral of the story, that harsh words should be avoided, misses the psychological significance of this shortest Grimm’s tale. It details an aspect of patriarchal legacy not generally considered…
besides the daughter being raised on a lie..
the sons become a mob.
Part of the problem with belonging to an exclusive club is that its members are generally required to forgo the temperament that might enjoy anything beyond the club, anything that might be a part of a more personal destiny and so despite their privilege so too are they held back in the pell mell of life’s schoolyard, imprisoned in collective identity. Instead of thoughts or feelings he might call his own he has a manifesto. This is fervently trotted out as if it were the beliefs themselves that mattered but you soon find that they are mere soundbites of collective opinion..
Caaaaw!
This kind of authoritarian father winds up cursing all his sons. Not just the one, he forgets which, to whom the task and the responsibility was given. He fails to distinguish between them and thus fails to relate to any of his sons as a person in his own right, regardless of their guilt or innocent. He treats them as members of a flock before cursing them to remain so.
So these sons can never reach maturity. They are trapped in the Glass Mountain, a fancy prison with a dwarf butler instead of a jailer and every finest thing instead of bread and water but detainees nevertheless. The father’s curse that lies insidiously behind the idealization of their royal blood means his son’s are barred from finding their own way in life and have to remain tied to family expectations even if these are that you fail or that you succeed but only by having to betray the fundamental impulse to your own self discovery.
By contrast, the Princess really knows what she’s about and makes the unpopular decision to take matters into her own hands.
She’s been witness to her father fretting over procedure and decorum, preferring priests to doctors: worried, not that she might die, but that she may do so improperly.. and so she has something concrete to kick against.
She sets off with determination and suffers all kinds of extremes before she is at last assisted by the Stars, the deep archetypal reservoirs of the Psyche which so often nurture and guide when a personal quest is courageously embraced.
The story suggests that the inner feminine plays a much greater part in his passage to manhood than he might be willing to let on. The more popular myth, that valiant George defeats the devouring mother with all kinds of super charged macho warrior items..
is perhaps a later story, since a knight must already have a lady on whose behalf he quests, whose colors he wears, who is curious about the face behind the visor, who wants to know what he personally thinks and feels, what ground he stands on..
before the slightest prospect of being roasted alive should be even vaguely entered into..
