The spiritual Message of German Fairy tales

Death and the Goose Herder

Tale of the Brothers Grimm translated by Undine [2024]
Interpretation by Undine & Jens in green [2024]

A poor herder went along the shore of a large and stormy water, tending a flock of white geese. Death came to him over the water, and was asked by the herder, where he came from, and where he wanted to go? Death answered, that he came out of the water and wanted to go out of the world. The poor goose herder asked further: how can one leave the world? Death said, that one had to go over the water into the new world, which lies beyond. The herder said, that he was tired of this life, and asked Death to take him across. Death said, that it was not yet time, and he had other things to do now.

Not far from there was a miser, who by night thought on his bed, how he could bring even more money and goods together. Death led him to the great water and pushed him in. But because he could not swim, he sank to the bottom, before he could reach the shore. His dogs and cats, who had run after him, drowned with him too.

A few days later Death came also to the goose herder, found him singing merrily and said to him: “Will you now come with me?” He was willing and came across well with his white geese, which were all transformed into white sheep. The goose herder looked upon the beautiful land and heard, that the herders there became kings, and as he looked around carefully, the chief herders Abraham, Isaac and Jacob came towards him, placed a kingly crown upon him, and led him to the herder’s palace, where he is still to be found.

Now, after we have thought so much about the significance of swans, we would like to turn to geese, and especially to gooseherds and gooseherdesses. We do not want to fall into the current gender madness, but rather look at the herding of geese from different angles, from the male perspective of the witnessing spirit and from the female perspective of the giving birth nature or soul. In this regard, many holy ascetics in old Indian stories are also referred to as “Hamsa”, which is often translated as “swan”, but actually means a male goose, i.e., a gander. And in principle this also means a gooseherd who carefully guards and can control the “white geese” as his senses and thoughts, so that they do not scatter, so that he is controlled and driven by them, but rather remain preserved as a flock in its “wholeness”. And of course, they should not be eaten by a wolf or a fox, that is, seized by desire and killed by the conceptual mind, so that they lose their vitality and literally freeze to death in a material world. From this perspective, we would now like to look at this fairy tale.

A poor herder went along the shore of a large and stormy water, tending a flock of white geese. Death came to him over the water, and was asked by the herder, where he came from, and where he wanted to go? Death answered, that he came out of the water and wanted to go out of the world.

We have already thought in detail about the poverty of the “poor herder” from the perspective of a pure soul in the last fairy tale about the “Star Money”. Here, too, this indicates a certain spiritual purity, so that he also tends “white geese”. The “large and stormy water over which death comes” reminds us first of the famous river of death like Acheron or Styx from Greek mythology as a separation from the world beyond. But because the herder tends his geese on this river while still alive, we could also think of the great river of life that flows before our senses and thoughts, and often very impetuously.

Hermann Hesse describes a similar river in his book “Siddhartha”:
Siddhartha looked into the water, and images appeared to him in the flowing water… and flowed into one another, all became a river, all strove as a river towards the goal, yearning, desiring, suffering, and the river’s voice sounded full of longing, full of burning pain, full of insatiable desire. The river was striving towards its goal, Siddhartha saw it hurrying, the river that consisted of him and his family and of all the people he had ever seen, all the waves and water were hurrying, suffering, towards goals, many goals, the waterfall, the lake, the rapids, the sea, and all goals were reached, and each one was followed by a new one, and the water became steam and rose into the sky, became rain and poured down from the sky, became a spring, became a stream, became a river, strived again, flowed again... And everything together, all voices, all goals, all longing, all suffering, all desire, all good and evil, everything together was the world. Everything together was the flow of events, was the music of life. And when Siddhartha listened attentively to this river, to this song of a thousand voices, when he did not listen to the suffering or the laughter, when he did not bind his soul to any one voice and enter into it with his ego, but heard everything, the whole, the unity, then the great song of the thousand voices consisted of a single word, which was OM: the perfection...

Where does death come from then? Why does death come “over and out of the water”? It is said that separation is death, connection is life, and union is survival. Plato also said: “Death is evidently nothing other than the separation of two things from one another, the soul and the body.” In the past, the Grim Reaper was also known as a male or spiritual being who cuts off and separates connections, while the holistic One can never be separated. Therefore, this cutting death only appears to us as separation and loss if we want to hold on to some form in this river and identify with it, because this form must at some point pass away and die, because it arose and was born in this river. What remains is the observer who sits on the bank, so to speak, and as consciousness perceives the flow of the world, hears the river, feels it, sees it, tastes it, smells it, and thinks it.

Where does death want to go? Why does he want to “get out of the world”? If death is separation, then the meaning of every separation is of course to be overcome, united and healed again:

“It is this that you mean: that the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at the same time, and that there is only the present for it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future?” - “This is it,” said Siddhartha. “And when I had learned it, I looked at my life, and it was also a river, and the boy Siddhartha was separated from the man Siddhartha and from the old man Siddhartha only by shadows, not by reality. Siddhartha’s previous births were also not past, and his death and his return to Brahma will not be future. Nothing was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has essence and presence.”

The poor goose herder asked further: how can one leave the world? Death said, that one had to go over the water into the new world, which lies beyond. The herder said, that he was tired of this life, and asked Death to take him across. Death said, that it was not yet time, and he had other things to do now.

What does the other bank of this water mean? Of course, one can give this symbolism a serious consideration, and we should. Why should the other bank be different and even better? Here, for example, we could imagine that the river is a ring that surrounds us, like an island or bubble of consciousness, where the observer is the centre, as the “I am.” And the more this bubble contracts and encloses and walls itself in with ideas of possession, the smaller and darker this island becomes, and we find ourselves on the dark side of the river of life, like in a cave or even hell. In the “beyond” one would look at this river from “the other side”, so to speak, so that almost everything is reversed for the observer, as if he were no longer looking into a mirror, but directly, using his senses and thoughts: the limited island becomes infinity, darkness becomes light, separation becomes wholeness, death becomes life, bound matter becomes free spirit, the ego becomes self, nothing becomes everything, time becomes eternity and so on. One could also say: what from our perspective stands on the head of the dark ego-mind is put back on the feet of wholeness in the divine light of the “beyond”.

In this way, consciousness could expand beyond all forms if it no longer clings to and adheres to certain forms in space and time. The herder had probably achieved this “poverty in spirit” because he had carefully guarded and kept his senses and thoughts pure. Death thus becomes his friend, and he is ready to part with his “last shirt”, with the stubborn physicality of which he has now become “tired”, and thus also with this dark shore on the water of life. He waits consciously and calmly until the time is ripe, and of course, an ego-mind can’t do this.

Jacob Boehme wrote about this in his text “On the Transcendental Life” around 1622:
If the will surrenders itself to God down to the ground, then it sinks beyond itself, beyond all ground and all place where God alone is revealed, works and wills. In this way it becomes nothing to itself according to its own will. Then God works and wills in it, and God dwells in its calm will. This sanctifies the soul so that it comes into divine rest. When the body perishes, the soul is permeated by divine love and illuminated by God’s light, just as fire glows through iron, thereby losing its darkness...

Just as the gooseherd consciously waits, calm and content, to let death lead him into eternal life, there are also other beings who unconsciously urge and summon death, eager and dissatisfied.

Not far from there was a miser, who by night thought on his bed, how he could bring even more money and goods together. Death led him to the great water and pushed him in. But because he could not swim, he sank to the bottom, before he could reach the shore. His dogs and cats, who had run after him, drowned with him too.

This is the person who is physically attached as a “miser” who “at night on his bed”, that is, in the darkened spirit in his body, eagerly grasps the forms in the flow of life and wants to hold on to them. Death comes to him as an enemy in the form of loss and separation and causes him to drown in this sea of forms because he has become far too heavy with all his “property of money and goods” to float on and reach the other shore. In this way, consciousness becomes more and more narrow and condensed, and he falls even further into the darkness, because “his dogs and cats” follow him, who perhaps act as mouse hunters and watchdogs to remind him of his spiritual tendencies of desire and hatred.

And Jacob Boehme writes further:
But the godless soul does not want to enter into the divine serenity of its will at this time, but only goes into its own lust and desire, into vanity and falsehood, into the devil’s will: it only contains malice, lies, pride, greed, envy and anger and surrenders its will to them. This vanity also becomes apparent and active in it and penetrates the soul completely, like fire through iron. So, it cannot come to divine rest, because God’s wrath is evident in it. And when the body separates from the soul, then eternal remorse and despair begin, because it feels that it has become such an anxious horror through vanity. Then it is ashamed to go to God with its false will, indeed it cannot, because it is caught in anger, and it is only anger itself and has thus locked itself in through its false desire, which it has awakened within itself. And because God’s light does not shine in it and his love does not touch it, such a soul is a great darkness and a painful, fearful torment of fire, and it carries hell within itself and cannot see God’s light. So, it dwells in hell within itself and needs no entry. For in whatever it is, there it is in hell. Even if it could swing itself many hundreds of thousands of miles from its place, it is still in such torment and darkness.

A few days later Death came also to the goose herder, found him singing merrily and said to him: “Will you now come with me?” He was willing and came across well with his white geese, which were all transformed into white sheep. The goose herder looked upon the beautiful land and heard, that the herders there became kings, and as he looked around carefully, the chief herders Abraham, Isaac and Jacob came towards him, placed a kingly crown upon him, and led him to the herder’s palace, where he is still to be found.

So, death comes as a friend to the poor gooseherd and leads him across the river of forms into the world beyond, where the poor shepherd no longer tends his geese, but a rich king tends his pure sheep, for his spiritual inclination also follows him, like a wave on the sea of consciousness.

Why sheep? Master Eckhart says about this:
The sheep is simple; so are those people who are folded into an (inner) unity. A master says that nowhere can you recognize the course of heaven as well as in simple animals: they experience the influence of heaven in a simple way; the same goes for children, who have no sense of their own. But people who are wise and have many senses are constantly directed outwards in a variety of things. (Sermon 56)

So, one could imagine that the gooseherd in his entirety becomes the arch-herder himself, the first and original herder, and if you like, Christ or God himself. Because in this holistic or divine Christ consciousness he now looks after the gooseherds himself, who in turn look after their senses and thoughts. Of course, this cannot be understood from a physical point of view, but from the otherworldly point of view, where holistic consciousness is the basis of everything, it would be self-evident, so to speak.

And why did he become a king? Well, he carefully guarded what was given to him as a human being and increased God’s treasure, that is, he allowed consciousness to grow and expand and kept it pure. And Master Eckhart speaks similarly about the biblical parable about the entrusted talents and the faithful servant:
“Come on, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master! Because you have been faithful over a little thing, I will make you ruler over all that I have.” (Matthew 25:21 + 24:47)

Well, now pay attention to what the “little” things are that this man was faithful about. Everything that God created in heaven and on earth that is not himself is little before him. This good servant was faithful about all of these things. I will explain to you why this is so: God placed this servant between time and eternity. He was given over to neither, but he was free in reason and will and also in relation to all things. With his reason he passed through all things that God created; with his will he let go of all things and also of himself and of everything that God created that is not God himself. With his reason he took them up and gave God praise and honour for them and handed them over to God in his unfathomable nature and also to himself, insofar as he was created. There he left himself and all things, so that he never (again) touched himself or any created thing with his created will. (Master Eckhart, Sermon 27)

And in which kingdom did he become a king, united with the “chief herders Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”? There is probably no greater kingdom and no greater wealth than the divine or holistic, pure and free consciousness. Master Eckhart also speaks about this in another sermon:
“You should know” now first of all how “the kingdom of God is near to us”... For if I were a king but did not know it myself, then I would not be a king. But if I had the firm belief that I was a king and all people thought and believed the same as me and if I knew for certain that all people thought and believed the same, then I would be a king and all the king’s wealth would be mine and I would lack none of it... Nothing hinders the soul from knowing God as much as time and space. Time and space are parts, but God is one. Therefore, if the soul is to know God, it must know him above time and space; for God is neither this nor that, as these (earthly) manifold things are: for God is one. If the soul is to see God, it must not look at anything in time; for as long as the soul is conscious of time or space or any such idea, it can never recognize God...

The prophet says: “God leads the righteous through a narrow path into the broad road, so that they come into the wide and the broad” (Wisdom 10:10 ff.), that is: into the true freedom of the spirit, which has become one spirit with God. - May God help us to follow him, so that he brings us into himself, where we can truly recognize him. Amen. (Master Eckhart, Sermon 36)


... Table of contents of all fairy tale interpretations ...
Strong Hans - (topic: Ego, robbers and ultimate gain)
The Old Man and his Grandson - (topic: social division, disgusting impermanence)
Allerleirauh - (All-kinds-of-Fur) (topic: sick mind, dying nature and healing)
The Origin of Stories - (topic: material and spiritual world)
Hans Stupid - (topic: realize wishes)
The Drummer - (topic: Mind and path to salvation)
Swan Prince - (topic: soul, spirit and salvation)
The Six Swans - (topic: senses, thoughts and expansion)
The poor Girl and the Star-Money - (topic: poverty in spirit)
Death and the Goose Herder (topic: geese and wholeness)
The Fox and the Geese - (topic: mind and wholeness)

[Jacob Böhme] Alle Texte in deutscher Überarbeitung / www.boehme.pushpak.de
[Siddhartha] Siddhartha - Eine indische Dichtung, Hermann Hesse, Suhrkamp, 1974
[Eckhart] Meister Eckhart, Deutsche Predigten und Traktate, Diogenes 1979
[Bibel] Luther Bibel, 1912
[2024] Text and Pictures by Undine & Jens / www.pushpak.de