Once there lived an old man and an old woman both of whom had daughters by previous marriages. The old woman hated her husband’s daughter and eventually threw her out saying she should go and find work. The poor girl was saddened and scared but did as she was told and set on her way.
After a while she came across a pear tree which begged her to trim its dead branches and though the work was difficult and hard on her hands she did her best before walking on. Then she came to a vineyard and the vines cried out to her to hoe around their roots so they could be replenished and though it was hot and dusty work she completed the work before setting off. Then she came to a broken oven which asked plaintively to be repaired and though it was heavy graft to make up the mortar for the job she managed it. A little further on she encountered a well which begged her to freshen its brackish waters.
Eventually she came to a large house which was occupied by seven fairies. The fairies took her in and gave her work saying that she should sweep and clean six of the rooms daily but never enter the seventh. The diligent girl did as she was told and after a year and a day the Fairies took her to the seventh room which was full of treasure and invited her to help herself.
On the way home she passed the well which gave her sweet water to drink, she passed the oven which was piping hot and full of bread and cakes. The vines had prepared wine for her and the pear tree was laden with fruit.
When she got home her step mother was furious to be so upstaged and sent out her own daughter to profit likewise but this girl was ignorant and stuck up, thinking she knew everything. When the pear tree asked to have its dead branches removed she refused least it roughen her pretty white hands. She also snubbed the oven saying that all that treading of mortar would dirty her dainty feet. The vines received their own dismissal and the poor well was left all fouled.
When she got to the House of the Fairies they took her in and gave her the same work admonishing her not to go in the seventh room but she was far too inquisitive and peeked in whereupon she was attacked by all manner of biting and stinging creatures. As she fled home she begged the well for water yet it had none to give. The Oven was full of bread and cakes but burned her when she reached in her hand. The vines slapped her pretty white wrist when she tried to take the wine and no matter how high she jumped she could not reach a single pear…
One way of understanding this parable is simply at the level of social morality, an instructive tale on how to behave with good things happening to good people and a bad end for the selfish and deceitful. Closer examination reveals deeper significance, more pertinently the story seems to be about the meaning of life and the means by which some degree of enlightenment might be found.
The story begins with injustice and loss. Deserving none of it, the diligent girl is thrown out into the world to fend for herself in what has to be felt as a terrible calamity. The first steps on the path of individuation are invariably beset by crisis and the sense of having been cast down.
‘The freeing of an individual from the authority of his parents is one of the most necessary though one of the most painful results brought about by the course of development. Indeed, the whole progress of society rests upon the opposition between successive generations.‘ S Freud.
This painful separation and the feeling of being rejected is also something you can see in the animal kingdom. The lioness cuffs her cubs, the blackbird chick is ejected from the nest, Mama Labrador barks at her pups. For growth to occur the original Eden-like bliss of oneness must be ruptured…
”In individuation the self starts by performing the opposite function (of nurturance); it, so to say, attacks and eliminates the ego’s position of pre-eminence which, as an illusion, it never regains.” M Fordham 1958.
This involves a process that Fordham describes as ‘deintegration’, which is bound to feel like a fall from grace..
‘a sense of loss of contact with feeling fed and contained, a deep sense of disappearance, perhaps even of non-being ensues.”ibid
Alchemically, this is synonymous with ‘the nigredo’, the first stage the work, also described as ‘melancholia’, a dark night of the soul in which the vastness of the world beyond the garden gate, and the corresponding vastness of the unconscious are first experienced, not only as something potentially dangerous which might at any moment swallow you up, but also as something upon which the ego must anxiously depend.
In order to reach the House of Fairies our heroine has to pass several Herculean kinds of tests. These four tests correspond to the ‘tetrameria’, a quaternary of elements which comprise the alchemical opus. These four ‘elements’ of the unconscious (air, fire, earth and water) correspond to her four trials. Firstly she must get up in amongst the branches of the pear tree (air/intuition), then she must till the roots of the vines (earth/sensation). Then she must mend the oven (fire/thinking) and lastly she must repair the well (water/feeling). Each of these tasks involve hard physical graft but are also tests of compassion and relatedness. Is she able to make sacrifices? Can she defer her own egotistical agenda for the sake of another?
A mistake that greatly impedes spiritual progress is the idea that you can be the author of your own happiness, meaning and purpose. They say ‘life is what you make it,’ and nod sagely yet nothing could be further from the truth. In fact the effort to be the captain of our souls, to strive forward according to your own plan is largely responsible for much of life’s misery and depression. The lonely void within that much of modernity’s striving, achieving and compulsions aim to fill is no more attainable than pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Even the idea of ‘connecting with yourself’ is still about I and me.
What is actually required is that we tend to the spirit in matter, that we care for the planet, for the stranger, for the shadow, the ‘other’ in all its manifestations and only then does the year and a day in the ‘House of Fairies’ produce any sense of reward. The irony of the treasure hard to attain is that it is not really attained in any kind of heroic sense but rather tangentially, given as a grace.
The Seven Fairies are agents of the Unconscious dedicated to the process of self-realization which is managed not by resolving conflicts, to paraphrase Jung, but by outgrowing them, a process which requires time, a year and a day.. The seven fairies are also..
”the alchemical seven-petalled flower, symbolizing the seven planets and seven stages of transformation, (they) relate psychologically to “evolution in time,” the slow process of becoming conscious.” M. L. Von Franz
”Our heroine submits herself to this slow process and to the authority of the Fairies. She sacrifices her own will (and curiosity) to this higher power and is subsequently rewarded for her diligence.
”Sacrifice is more than the act of giving, it is the forgoing of any claim on reciprocation or result and most often entails an experience of profound loss.” J Feather.
The step-sister’s peremptory efforts to be the mistress of her own fate with a litany of ‘positive thoughts’ and self affirmations ends in disaster. Her refusal to be involved, her preoccupation with her lily white hands and dainty feet, her fixation upon the materialization of her own will and her disavowal of relatedness turns the unconscious against her, manifesting in its most punitive and attacking form. Sadly, we are collectively well and truly cast in her role.
