Healing
Stories
“Stories
are medicine...They have such power; they do not require that we do,
be, act anything...we need only listen. The remedies for repair or
reclamation of any lost psychic drive are contained in the stories.”
Clarissa
Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. (Women Who Run With the Wolves)
Remember
the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin? In it, the miller's daughter is
locked in a chamber filled with straw, and commanded to spin it into
gold on penalty of death. This happens because of her father's hubris, and his desire for attention. He brags to a greedy king that
his daughter possesses such a rare talent, and the king, who above
all desires gold, locks her up, and demands she work her magic.
Of
course the girl has no such ability, and is weeping hopelessly when a
little troll of a man pops up and makes her an offer she can't
refuse—he will spin the straw into gold for her if she has
something to give him in return. She gives him her gold locket, and
overnight, while she sleeps, he turns the straw into gold.
The
king is thrilled, but instead of being satisfied, he places her in an
even bigger room full of straw, with the same demand. This time the
little man takes her gold ring. On the third day, the king, greedy
still, assigns her to a great hall filled with straw for spinning
into gold, but she has nothing left to give the ugly little man for
his magic. What he extracts from her is the promise of her first born
child.
This
time, the king is so happy and so rich, he makes the miller's girl
his queen and in due time she bears a handsome baby boy. The
delighted woman has forgotten her promise to the magician, but he has
not. He appears in her bedchamber, and demands the baby. When she
pitifully protests, he allows her three days to come up with his true
name which he has always kept secret. Of course, this is as
impossible as spinning straw into gold, so all her guesses are
incorrect. On the eve of the third day, a good and faithful servant
tells the Queen that he has overheard a little dwarf of a man dancing
around a fire in the forest, and singing a song about his
name—Rumpelstiltskin! When, next day, she guesses correctly, the
little man is so angry he stamps his foot through the floor, but the
Queen gets to keep her baby.
Fairy
tales resonate on many levels—both within and without. On one
level, this is a reflection of the human psyche, on another it is the
story of a culture. Both want to have the magical power to turn straw
into gold—we all want what we do not have, and we are inclined to
listen to voices that tell us we can have it all if only we are
willing to sell our souls to get it. Sometimes, it even works for a
while. But sooner or later, we are asked to give up that glorious
gift, that precious treasure to an ugly, beastly aspect that we
slowly recognize as our own. Unless we can name it and claim it, we
forfeit our very souls to it. It's name is greed and power, and when
we participate in it, we become that ugly little dwarf.
The
first step in the healing process is to stop listening to the troll's
voice. The second is to recognize that we can make a different
choice—we can become conscious. We can stop expecting magic, and listen instead to the good and
faithful servant.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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