Tag: fairy tale

Bearskin.

Grimm’s fairy tales have a number of stories about the Devil. They all have a pronounced theme running through them. He is instrumental in the protagonist’s transformation and wants not their souls but their old worn out identities.

Before the Church got hold of the Devil and gave him responsibilities absent from his job description, it was widely recognized that the Shadow of Consciousness had to be carefully propitiated in order not to run foul of it. In other words, the Devil had to be given his due, not by way of succumbing to wickedness, nor even by the psychological hygiene of respectful gestures and diplomatic compromises to ward off his worst effects but by the recognition that he played a meaningful part in the evolution of consciousness.

‘A warring peace; a sweet wound; a mild evil.” Alchemical saying

Grimm’s stories show that trying to run the Devil out of town on a rail ends very badly, creating all kinds of splits, disasters and neurotic conflicts. You can see this in our culture’s obsessive preoccupation with combating ‘negative emotions’, political correctness turned moral crusade. In full blown Orwellian tradition becoming whole now involves dividing the psyche against itself, a collective spiritual bypassing of such proportions it has its own service industry and several shelves of any good book store.

We no longer burn witches, we just neuter them with guilt inducing self help books, chokka with any amount of advice to get rid of all those warty, all-too-human parts of you which fall short of perfection’s tyranny, forces which are all the more powerful because they are denied and therefore beyond influence let alone transformation.

A story which can teach us something about negotiating with the shadow and give some hope for integration over enactment, is Grimm’s ‘Bearskin’, written down by the brothers in 1812, but with its roots in the pre-Christian psyche.

A discharged soldier had nothing left to live on and so he took himself off into the forest in despair of what was to become of him. Suddenly there appeared a little man who looked right stately but had a hideous cloven hoof.

‘I understand well what you need’, said the Devil, just as the soldier was about to speak, ‘but there must be some fair exchange’. The soldier agrees provided their arrangement does not compromise his salvation for he knows only too well to whom he speaks…

The Devil’s request is subtle, poetic and symbolically intriguing. The old soldier must show his courage in killing a bear and then wear it’s pelt for seven years during which time he may neither wash nor cut his hair or nails. If the soldier survives this experience he is free to go with great riches.

Once the soldier agrees, the Devil throws into the bargain his own coat, whose magical pockets are always filled with gold,…

which was nice of him..

allegedly.

Because why else would a trickster who delights in mischief give you magic pockets full of gold other than because he was a really nice chap?

And so it was that the newly dubbed, ‘Bearskin’ went out into the world ‘refraining from nothing that did him good’, though slowly, year by year, his appearance deteriorated. Bearskin’s hair matted into his beard. His face arms and feet became encrusted with filth. He smelled like a drain and though he showered the poor with golden ducats to pray for his soul he couldn’t shower himself, so he was invariably shunned wherever he went…

In the fourth year of his travail he stopped at an Inn whose landlord would not receive him, directing him to the stable instead. There he sat alone until his attention was drawn by someone crying. He went to see what was the matter and found a ragged old man weeping bitterly in his room.

At first the old man is terrified of Bearskin but then perceives him to be human. Bearskin shows him kindness, inquiring into his suffering and soon the old man tells him all his troubles; his daughters have no-one to support them and he is about to be imprisoned for debt.

Bearskin hands him a small sack of gold, resolving all his problems in one go. The old man is so grateful he offers Bearskin the hand of one of his daughters in marriage. The older two are totally put off by the filth and the stench but the youngest sees only the kindness of his gesture towards her father and volunteers herself. Bearskin vows to return once his tenure to the Devil is paid and gives her half a gold ring, keeping the other half himself.

Eventually the seven years are up. The Devil admits Bearskin’s success and is compelled to wash and comb him, to trim his nails and shave his beard, to dust his coat and polish his boots. Then the restored Bearskin hightails it back to his beloved who recognizes the handsome stranger by his half of the ring.

At the beginning of our story we find our hero at the end of his road. Peace has broken out and his old wartime identity is redundant. This is the classic existential crisis. You have fulfilled your collective obligations but feel internally bankrupt, a crisis which compels exploration of the dark forest..

...’where you discover that there are some things in your nature which can forge your signature”. M. Gurevitch.

This sudden complication of life at just the point you feel the Universe ought to cut you some slack is bound to leave you feeling a bit desperate, a bit vulnerable and diminished. Where it wasn’t before, there’s now perplexity about whether infinity is a number or not and what an expanding universe might be expanding into…what dreams mean and where they come from. Suddenly everything seems dangerous and overwhelming, throwing the personality back on its own as yet unacknowledged depths with considerable loss to normal functioning.

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is  disagreeable and therefore not popular.” C G Jung

Once Bearskin agrees to the proposal the devil gives him his coat to wear beneath the Bear’s pelt. It is a magical garment, like Mithral, whose pockets are always full of gold to both sustain and yet to tempt the personality with inflation as he begins to explore the forest.

Bearskin is impelled to discover who he is besides his socially adapted ego identity which no longer provides him with meaning. It’s not going to be fun. Suddenly he is swamped by the numinous pelt with its primal associations of ancient gods, of archaic tooth and claw. The great hide is disorienting, clumsy making, inveigling him with wild and shaggy, closing round him as a cocoon, sequestered from the world as much as rudely thrown into it.

In many shamanic traditions the initiate must identify with an animal spirit and regress into a primitive state before being returning to the community enriched. Many a modern mental illness has similar connotations…. crises born of the psyche’s own need to become more conscious, to cross developmental thresholds which are inherantly disorienting and weigh the ego down with archaic collective material.

So the Devil is not out to get our hero. Rather he sets in motion the individuation process with an initiatory challenge. Like the alchemical Mercurius, he provides both the difficult test and the means to accomplish it. When the time comes he admits defeat and honors Bearskin’s success with a generous preening session.

Bearskin manages to survive his foray into the unconscious because he develops the capacity for relatedness. When he arrives at the Inn it seems that his suffering and wretchedness can be endured because they have also given rise to kindness and the capacity to be touched by the suffering of others. He wants to hear the old man’s trouble without knowing if there is anything he can do about it because he has learned what value there is in the simple charity of giving comfort and lending a sympathetic ear.

The reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories. C G Jung

Relatedness and the sharing of stories anchors the soulful life. Without it consciousness itself is diminished, leaving you isolated and unable to be fed. Bearskin discovers, through the humble recognition of his dependence on others, the value of his own being there for another despite his terrible state.

You can’t help wondering if the old man is the Devil in disguise come to test Bearskin, to see if he has become sufficiently tender to survive seven years on the fringes of the community and perhaps at the edges of his own sanity.

‘The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life. Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle. A tree that is unbending is easily broken.’ Lao Tzu

So perhaps the gold goes full circle, as do the two halves of the ring at the end of the story. This transitional gesture of seeking out the crying man protects Bearskin. He has found that the strength to endure his liminal experience is through charity and being together. He’s invested beyond himself.

Wordsworth says of the redeemed wanderer..

‘Unoccupied by sorrow of its own, His heart lay open; and, by nature tuned And constant disposition of his thoughts To sympathy with man, he was alive To all that was enjoyed where’er he went, And all that was endured; for, in himself Happy, and quiet in his cheerfulness, He had no painful pressure from without That made him turn aside from wretchedness With coward fears. He could ‘afford’ to suffer With those whom he saw suffer.” W. Wordsworth

Bearskin survives and is transformed by The Devil, who hosts his inaugural bath by way of celebration and an end to his ordeal. It purifies and coroborates the hero’s capacity to ‘bear’ the strain of his arrangement with the Devil. It speaks to the humble kindness Bearskin develops along the way which has an apotropaic effect (the power to avert evil influence) on events, and so he makes it through the forest not only in one piece but with a deeper sense of wholeness and belonging..

……………………….

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The Valiant Tailor.

Our much loved tale begins with a charming domestic scene in which the diligent tailor is going about his legitimate business in his fine work shop with a song in his heart and a trill upon his lips. Passing school boys think how grand it must be to be a tailor and wish they could become like him when they grow up.

It seems too good to be true and sure enough the underlying situation is soon revealed. ‘Oh how Hungry I am to be sure ,’ cried out the little man eventually, ‘but I must finish his Lordship’s coat before I eat a morsel.’ and he broke into song once more..

His song is not an expression of joy at all. Its fake news, a forced distraction from his emotional hungering for something more profound than momentary identification with authority. His song is camouflage, compensation for inner misery.

Out in the street an old lady is plying her wares, ‘jam for sale!’ It’s a moment pregnant with the possibility for some redemption, an opportunity for honest transaction and being gratefully fed. Instead he makes her climb his steps with her heavy load and rifles through her entire stock, only buying a small pot whose good measure he then calls into question and for which he pays grudgingly. The old lady goes off grumbling and humiliated.

Back indoors, his delight at having beaten the old lady down and pinched every penny, fuels the already inflated identification he has with his lordship. Having landed her with all his own feelings of worthlessness he is exultant, announcing proudly to the empty room that this special jam shall be blessed by God to give him health and strength. His inner emptiness which compels him to triumph over everyone in order to feel alive, easily spills over into messianic inflation.

At the same time, his slavish devotion to authority will not let him eat the jam. He must finish the coat first and only. His hunger destroys the quality of his work. The stitching becomes clumsy. Eventually the conflict between obligation and need becomes so great he blows up, enviously lashing out at the flies who feast where he will not.

This torture of emotional starvation rationalized by masochistic devotion to a supposedly higher cause in collision with his own instincts for survival and nurture makes the desperate tailor explode, destroying that which he wants most and accentuating his delusional state.

Seven flies lay dead. He is so impressed by his great new powers that he makes a belt advertising the fact, ‘seven with one blow.’ Then he set out to show the whole town, to let every one know what a fine fellow he is. In order to minimize his devaluation of the old lady and his inability to take in Her good things, he has to spoil the delicious morsel and cut the experience off. That which was a very fine work shop is now a shithole, too small for his valor.

”Nay, the entire world shall know of my bravery!’ His grandiosity is doubled down so as not to mourn the self destructive loss of his divine condiment. With a song in his heart and a trill upon his lips, he steps confidently into the world.

The tailor represents what Melanie Klien calls the paranoid/schizoid position. It is a very early stage of development in which the value of the other has not yet been learned and where the trauma of discovering that good things come from outside of me is dealt with by splitting, projection and envious attacks upon the self.

On his way out the door the tailor pockets a piece of cheese and a bird caught in a thicket. At the top of a mountain, he comes across a giant looking peacefully about. Interrupting the giant’s meditation, the tailor shows him the belt saying, ‘look there and read so you may see what manner of man I am.’ The giant was quite impressed. Then the giant picked up a stone and squeezed it till water ran out. ‘Can you do that?’ he asked.

The tailor took the cheese from his napsack and squeezed till liquid ran out. ‘There.’ The giant was doubly impressed. He picked up another stone and threw it so far it hit him on the back of his own head but the tailor scoffed and said he could throw a stone so high it would never come down and released the bird who duly flew off never to return.

‘Well, you sure can throw,’ said the giant, ‘let’s see you lift. Here, help me carry this mighty oak out of the forest.

‘Delighted,’ said the tailor, and leapt up into the branches whilst the giant had to carry the whole thing. When they got there he jumped down and laughed at the giant, ‘the idea of a man of your size not being able to carry a tree…’ Why are the people of Ohio so stupid?

The story of the valiant tailor, also called the lucky or brave tailor is a cautionary message about the beguiling power of projection so understated that even the most discerning reader can be left with the impression that he is indeed a most clever and charismatic person who deserves to do well in life.

Yet if you look closely he is not at all brave. He succeeds by trickery, deceit and emotional bullying. His courage is simply the lack of critical self reflection to question his own PR and his delight in the projections of others as to his greatness soon become his narcissistic supply.

The tailor arrives in the grounds of a royal palace and falls asleep on the grass. His inflation has now swallowed up any functioning ego left. People come from all sides and read the girdle. They run to tell the king who invites him to be his counselor entirely on the strength of the boast. The castle guard are afraid of the tailor lest they all be killed by such a mighty warrior and ask to be released from service. By now the king is scared as well and sends the tailor to deal with two unruly giants hoping he won’t return but promising his daughter in marriage and half his kingdom if he does.

The tailor creeps up on the giants while they sleep, alternately pelting them with stones until they get in such a rage that they tear up trees and beat one another to death. The tailor has a head for diversion and division.

The king renages on his promise. The new Queen has overheard her mysterious husband talking in his sleep as if he were back in his tailor shop and the secret is out. So the king sets the tailor another great task, to catch a Unicorn who was ravaging the countryside. No problem for our hero who tricks the Unicorn into goring a tree and chops off his mighty horn with an axe.

Again the king prevaricates and sends him off to battle a great boar who’s making great havoc in the forest. The tailor traps the beast in a chapel and adamantly claims his reward.

which is grudgingly given.

The old king then decides just to arrest him anyway but the crafty tailor is forewarned and when the guard comes to his door shouts out saying, ‘I have killed seven with one blow, two giants, a unicorn and a boar. Why should I fear the king’s guard….?’ they all ran away. So the little tailor remained king for the rest of his life and the Queen just had to get used to it. Though he had no experience, real skill or acumen and had lied and cheated his way into power, the people just had to suck it up. The fact that he eventually gains a kingdom and a crown shouldn’t distract us from the fact of his ineptitude, vanity or psychopathic disregard for reality.

The problem is that by the time the story closes after the first telling everyone is cheering for the clever tailor. He has managed to seduce the reader as well as everyone in the story. All of which goes to show how easily otherwise intelligent folk are dazzled by slogans and punchy bravado.

Unfortunately, the tailor’s delusional belief in his own greatness, emblazoned like a political slogan across his belly, can only be maintained by lurching from one crisis to another. If such a hero had his hands on the tiller of the nation, they may cheer less loudly.

In the meantime we might ask how it is that everyone seems to be so taken in by this charlatan with zero qualifications or experience. The answer is that the rest of us secretly subscribe to be like him and harbor more omnipotent fantasies of similarly being able to sweep aside life’s frustrations than we’d like to admit.

”The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner contradictions, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposite halves.”
Carl Jung – Aion

Trump is more than a man at least as much as his failure to be one. Like the valiant tailor he is someone else’s man but, confusingly, also a brand, a telemarketing clusterfuck of primordial conflicts of interest condensed out of an entire culture’s psychic runoff. He is the amalgamation of all the denied arrogance and aggression of an epoch’s pious pilgrims whose combined efforts become the train wreck you can’t look away from.

When Rep (R) Peter Jolly said the problem was not Trump but the hundred million who voted for him he did not go far enough. He was not put there by a dumb bunch of blue collar hicks. He was put there by a system so convinced in its own righteousness that a Trump could never happen, until it did. He was put there by a system which has been preening its superiority since the battle of Acre. He is the manifestation of denied collective shadow which has been accumulating in the western psyche for as long as we have been exporting belief systems and invading people for their own good.

The valiant tailor is an archetype. He is the trickster-like narcissistic underbelly of an otherwise idealized culture which has denied and projected its shadow to the point of actually manifesting it in office.

”It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses- and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism. The individual seldom knows anything of this; to him, as an individual, it is incredible. But let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster; and each individual is only one tiny cell in the monster’s body, so that for better or worse he must accompany it on its bloody rampages and even assist it to the utmost.” CG Jung

What’s to be done? The clue lies in the beginning of the story, in the tailor’s contorted efforts to palm off his feelings of inferiority onto the old lady who becomes embittered by his measly purchase after much comment and inspection. He uses the interaction over the jam to feed his ego rather than his soul which will not then permit him to feast. Despite the invocation of the gods to bless his jam he never gets to taste it.

Had he treated the old lady decently, bought a fair sized pot of jam and simply tucked into his good fortune, his involvement in life would have obviated the compensatory lust for power and the dangerous blurring of fantasy and reality required along the way. Being a jammy tailor would have seemed just the right kind of thing to be. The problem with being so fortunate is that ..

‘such a man knows whatever is wrong in the world is in himself, and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow he has done something real for the world. He has succeeded in shouldering at least an infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved social problems of our day.’ Jung.

Political change, like charity, begins at home. We have to begin with the tailor within, that aspect of ourselves which is grandiose, paranoid and babyish. Moreover, if I can gratefully give the old lady the time of day, feel nourished by her jam, let the world in, then life is already good despite the world’s dictailors.