The Magic Hat is a story so ancient it’s roots can be traced to one of four proto-stories described by the Aaron/Thompson index of fairy tales as originating from a time older than the division of the Indo-European languages, which is why you find variants of it in both Europe and Asia.
The story concerns a young simpleton who goes out fishing in bad weather and wrecks his boat. He crawls out of the lashing brine half drowned and staggers home to his wife.
‘Oh, I have lost the boat… It’s such a disaster..’
‘No it’s not’, she says, ‘you just have to go into the forest and chop down a suitable tree for a new one.’
So the fisherman disappears back into the stormy night, full of the same kind of enthusiasm which so unwisely took him out to sea only hours before. Soon he’s lost. He doubles down, wandering deeper and deeper into the forest while the lighting cracks and thunder rolls.
After hours of stumbling about he comes across a cottage at the edge of a clearing and bangs on the door, begging for somewhere to sleep and a bite to eat. The wise old couple who live there let him in and show him to a small room saying they will bring him some supper shortly. The fisherman cannot resist peeking at their preparations in the next room where he is astonished to see them taking little hats from a secret chest which immediately transport his hosts to some unknown place.
The fisherman is curious to find out what has happened so he puts on one of the little hats himself. Instantly, he finds himself in a grand hall at the centre of which is a mighty table groaning with food. The old couple have taken a few morsels from here and there and are already about to leave just as the fisherman seats himself down to feast.
‘Oh, you mustn’t take too much,’ they warn, ‘just a few morsels.’ But the fisherman won’t listen and throws himself at the feast much as he threw himself first at the sea and then at the forest. Once the maelstrom of his passion has passed he falls asleep and dreams of being king of the place, only to be woken by armed guards who drag him off before the real king and tie him to a tree for summary execution. The king asks if he has any last requests..
‘Er, yes, if I might die with my hat on…?’ asks the fisherman, who wishes himself back home in a trice… with the tree to which he had been bound. It was just the right shape to carve a brand new boat….
The fisherman is a simpleton to begin with, not because he has no brains, but because he is not quite connected to what is happening around him. He doesn’t take the growing storm into consideration when he sets out to sea. Nor does he learn from his unlikely deliverance, expecting to fare differently in the forest.
Fortunately for our hero, the unconscious is more than a maelstrom of chaos. Within it is the organizing principle of the Self represented by the wise old couple who live in the forest, a source of rest and nourishment for nascent consciousness so recently spat from the sea. The difference in their status within the psyche is indicated by their magical hats which gives them mind bending elbow room in the great forest.
Fledgling consciousness deals with it’s perils in a unique way. Though trauma and it’s suppression can induce defensive and regressive split realities, (I hate you, don’t leave me), so too can the tricky business of fielding opposites, particularly mine and thine, me and not-me. Having been one with mother for ever, its a tad unnerving to realize you are being renounced for bingo or supplanted by a sibling. Such a dangerous transition, in both the development of the individual and the early collective psyche of humanity itself goes through a stage, ‘the chief characteristic of which is the splitting of both self and object into good and bad, with at first little or no integration between them.’ M Klein.
This stormy expansion of consciousness is first felt both as being helplessly at sea and yet also as omnipotently marching into the forest in dead of night, arrogating the powers of the wise old couple to himself. The resulting inflation dismisses the few morsels which magical hats can safely introduce into a split reality, a fabulous third possibility between the opposites of all or nothing.
The way the hat is used by the wise old couple can symbolize the way transition into a more cohesive sense of self might be made. Learning to take just a small pouch is a developmental triumph. It’s like being able to spit the nipple out in the sure confidence it will still be there at dinner time. The fisherman isn’t quite there yet. First, he has to eat the entire feast and get himself into trouble for his inflation.
This ‘binary splitting’, ‘is essential for healthy development as it enables the infant to take in and hold on to sufficient good experience to provide a central core around which to begin to integrate the contrasting aspects of the self.’ ibid
When the fisherman is arrested and taken before the king he doesn’t protest. Its a fair cop, guv’nor. He’s not king after all. He accepts deflating guilt and renounces omnipotence, which then seems to create a sufficient link between emerging extremities of himself for him to be magical within the king’s constraints, to be both persecuted victim and trixter hero in the same breath and thus to have something other than all or nothing – just enough wood to make a new and more buoyant vessel.
The theft of the magical hat brings consciousness by way of misadventure. It can also be used as a defense against crossing the next developmental threshold into what Klein calls ‘the depressed position’, which accepts and is content with the few morsels. It isn’t quite as much fun as being boss of everything, or as impressive as drowning at sea but you do get to take them home and stay in one piece.
Sometimes magical hats are used to split groups as well as individuals, think of the way in which a crown magically turns egalitarian citizens into a hierarchy of subjects. Sometimes group magic is employed to merge people into a state of ‘participation mystique’ with the divisive leader, like Stalin’s blue caps, or Trump’s MAGA hat.
It’s as if the fisherman needs to be arrested so his development is not. Being told ‘no’ and having to face consequences are part of becoming big, which means every narcissistic autocrat has a secret yearning to be constrained since that way lies psychological growth, even if it is at the expense of his stated agenda. At the end of the day a boat of your own beats any number of millions you’re not emotionally connected to, which is why tyrants are often the authors of their own demise.
The pundits were incredulous when disgraced US Secretary of Labor, Alex Acosta, released damning evidence of his complicity in the Epstein sex trafficking cover up at the very same press conference he gave to try and clear his name. How could he make such a stupid ‘mistake’ as to offer up, in writing, proof of his own corruption? Because the split reality of ‘us and them’ only feels special some of the time. The rest of the time it’s like being at sea in a storm or being hopelessly lost in the forest, which is why silence has the power to suck out the truth and why those who persist in their folly will become wise.
Apologies to Melanie Klein, Bob Woodward and William Blake.
