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The old witch
Tale of the Brothers Grimm [1810] translated by Undine
Interpretation by Undine & Jens in green [2024]
With this fairy tale, we would like to continue the theme of the “witch” and will also find some symbols from the last fairy tale “Saint Solicitous”. The fairy tale itself is relatively unknown and was only handed down by the Brothers Grimm in the original handwritten version from 1810, with the note of origin: “From a modern and fatally told story entitled: Der schoene Schlaefer (The Beautiful Sleeper), a fairy tale in Langbein’s Feierabende (After-Evenings), 1794”. We will read this longer version by Langbein alongside and refer to it in our interpretation as needed. A similar version with the same core, but differently expanded and embellished, was found in France by Catherine de Lintot in her 1735 book “Trois nouveaux contes des fees”. A German translation of this story appeared in 1749, entitled “Drey neue Hexenmaehrgen” (Three New Witch Stories). A similar translation can also be found in 1790 in “Die Blaue Bibliothek aller Nationen, Band 1” (The Blue Library of All Nations, Volume 1) under the title “Prinz Offenherz (Prince Openheart)”. But in principle, nothing is missing in the Grimms’ version, and this again shows their good instinct for the essence of this fairy tale, the source of which is certainly much older.
Once upon a time, there lived a king who loved nothing but horses. He had them fed from a hundred marble mangers and watered from a hundred silver buckets in his stables. All the courtiers wore riding boots with iron spurs and carried long whips under their arms. At the balls, only galloping dances were performed, and the king spoke nothing but “Chop- chop!” or “Whoa, little man, stand!”
From a spiritual perspective, we can first rediscover the conceptual mind that wants to be king in the body, loves and pampers the animal beings, and also wants to dominate, treat, and use all other people like animals. We learn from Langbein that the queen avoided this activity and preferred to move with her daughters and ladies-in-waiting to an old castle in a lonely forest, even though it had a reputation for being inhabited by witches and ghosts. The king gladly agreed, for “it had long been his wish to be rid of the swarm of women and, in general, all people who couldn’t ride.” Thus, we also rediscover the usual division in the world between king and queen as spirit and nature, or man and woman, which the ego-mind, as king in the body, brings about and promotes when holistic reason is lacking.
This king had two beautiful daughters, Mene and Bene, the eldest of whom was evil and the youngest good.
Where these names come from is relatively unclear. “Mene” could be reminiscent of “Menetekel (warning)” or, in Saxony dialect, “Meine” (Mine), which probably best fits her character. And “Bene” could be Latin for “good, well, and just.” Langbein calls them Zefire and Aurore, and he writes of the proud, arrogant, and jealous princess:
The older name was Zefire,
And a charming figure,
Her undisputed possession.
To the painter and the sculptor,
Her sight often gave
the ideal of a queen of love.
And yet no soul was fond of her,
Because she held her nose too high,
And continually gave free rein to the boldest pride
In her royal birth and beauty.
She was like the midday sun,
Which casts golden rays around itself,
But is not loved because it scorches.
And of Aurore, the youngest princess, a fine girl whom all hearts adored because she was kind to everyone, he writes:
Because she was not one step ahead of Zephyr in beauty,
yet as gentle as moonlight.
No conceited pride that she was a higher being than other people
arose in her breast.
Contentment could be read in every glance,
And doing good was her joy.
Zephyr is the Greek god of the west wind, and Aurora the Roman goddess of the dawn. Perhaps this refers to the awakening light of consciousness, for it is said that she loves people not because they are this or that, but because they are human, and thus she can feel pure love and true compassion. Zephyr would then be the wayward wind that should be tamed. In the two translations from French mentioned above, they are called “Sourpuss” and “Well-Beloved,” and “Gloomy Look” and “All-Beloved.” Thus, the two sisters remind us again of the two levels - the egoistic and the pure soul, which act here as separate persons, yet are found together in practically every human being.
Two souls, alas! reside within my breast,
And each withdraws from, and repels, its brother.
One with tenacious organs holds in love
And clinging lust the world in its embraces;
The other strongly sweeps, this dust above,
Into the high ancestral spaces.
(Goethe, Faust 1)
Why does the youngest daughter so often play the role of the pure soul in fairy tales? Well, the pure soul is always the youngest, for she does not age but rises into the realm of eternal presence. Only when the soul connects with the conceptual ego-mind and, under the influence of the witch, clings to the world with senses and thoughts, does she attempt to cling to certain forms and thus fall into time and space. Thus, one seeks true love, and the other strives for selfish desire. Anyway, both daughters, as souls of childbearing nature, are now searching for their husband as the procreative spirit in order to become fruitful and realised.
One day, Mene went for a walk in the forest and rested under a tree when suddenly a golden key sprang from the earth and circled around her, first in wide, then increasingly narrow circles. Finally, it leaped into her hand and pulled her up from her seat. Her hand had grown attached to the key, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t pull the hand free. So, the key pulled her across the forest to a rock, where it leaped from her hand into a keyhole, and a magnificently shining chamber opened before her eyes. Behind a golden net lay a sleeping prince, and beside it was written:
Only to the girl in whose breast
the fire of love for a monster
Of rare ugliness once glows,
Is this beautiful prince destined.
Mene tried to tear the golden cobweb apart with force, but suddenly all its shine went out, and a howling wind drove her powerfully from the rock.
So, the virgin princesses have now reached marriageable age, and with that, the witches and spirits in the worldly forest of imagination awaken and begin their game between man and woman in the search for the perfection of spirit and nature. The older one begins, and because she probably takes after her worldly father, she is magically drawn to the physical image of a beautiful prince in a magnificent chamber. She is led to this seductive image by a golden key, which first danced around her and then took hold of her body, leading her even deeper into physicality. But there a voice spoke to her: “To gain this spiritual beauty, you must also learn to love ugliness.” But she was too proud and arrogant for that and wanted to grasp the beautiful image by force. A golden net held her back, reminiscent of the web of soul threads of cause and effect that determines the fate of a living being. Accordingly, she was driven on her path by the wind of fate (“Zephyr”), which led her, with the beautiful image as her great goal and the motto in her memory, from the interior of her physicality back into the external world in the forest of imagination.
On her way home, Mene caught sight of her sister, who was a thorn in her side, and saw a colourful little bird circling her and dropping a precious stone from its beak. The words it sang, however, were unhearable to Mene:
Keep this little stone,
keep it carefully!
It will one day be your saviour in times of need.
Just as the eldest was shown the way by a golden key from the earth, which danced around her and led her, so a colourful little bird appeared to the youngest from the sky, circling her and dropping a precious stone from its beak. Here we might think of the higher reason that speaks to us as intuition and offers the famous and noble philosopher’s stone with its motto, that is, a pure consciousness that can deliver us from every distress if we preserve it and do not surrender it to the greedy, conceptual ego-mind.
Mene jumped forward greedily and cried, “What do you have? Give it to me!” Bene showed her the jewel, but didn’t want to give it away, and Mene began to quarrel over it. Suddenly, a voice behind them called out, “No, it belongs to Bene!” When they looked around, it was a hunchbacked dwarf who frightened them.
Now, in this dispute, a male spirit appears in the forest, as a witness to what he had seen. Indeed, our conceptual understanding has a hard time with spirits because they have no tangible body, and without form, one cannot think about them. Thus, imagination takes its course, and over time, entire families of spirits have emerged: ghosts, dwarves, goblins, trolls, gnomes, elves, brownies, fairies, angels, devils, and so on, which the mind divides into good and evil as needed. In this case, it is an “ugly, grey, old, hunchbacked, and quite misshapen dwarf on one leg,” as Langbein writes, who appeared to the two beautiful girls as a terrible monster and the epitome of ugliness.
But Mene pretended to be friendly towards him out of hypocrisy, thinking that she might thereby gain the beautiful sleeper. The dwarf ran back into the forest. Bene was very sad when she saw her sister mocking him behind his back and decided to seek him out and warn him. She found him and warned him. The dwarf hopped after her on one leg, but couldn’t reach her, and in her escape, she lost her jewel.
Thus, the ego-mind begins to work in the eldest, and she understands that she should love this dwarf in order to win the handsome prince. But this intellectual love is not true love, but merely a selfish desire to achieve an external ideal. Thus, the intellect often loves ugly things because it believes it can achieve beauty, just as we wage hideous wars and hope to gain good things through them, or our believe that we can find great happiness in life through ugly deceit and robbery.
In contrast, a higher reason is at work in the youngest; she feels compassion and warns the spirit being of her sister’s treacherous egotism. She feels his loving affection, but she still could not bear the terribly ugly sight. Presumably, she sought in vain in this being the humanity she loved in all people. Then the instinctive fear of the animal consciousness awoke, she took flight, and with this aversion, she lost the gem of wisdom as a holistic reason. The spiritual dwarf wanted to follow her, but one cannot walk well with one leg, one can only hop around and turn in circles, which already symbolically indicates the problem of the separation between spirit and nature when they are separated from each other and each stands on only one leg.
As she walked through a ravine, an old witch came towards her, calling out: “Don’t bump into me, my beautiful child!” But no matter how hard Bene avoided her, the old woman still staggered from left to right, until the princess became bewildered and they collided violently. “Oh, that the earth would swallow you up, you wicked thing!” cried the witch, and collapsed like a shattered pot at Bene’s feet. Here fell an arm, there a leg, all bonds were broken, all limbs entangled, the head lay in the middle and began to speak: “You child of hell, put me back together again at once! Take my right leg and lean it neatly against a stone, and then take the left and do the same. And be careful that they don’t wander off into the open field, but hurry, so that you put all the pieces back on properly and don’t forget a single one.”
This, too, is a wonderfully ingenious symbolism: When consciousness, from the holistic perspective of reason, flees from the spiritual world back into the external world of the physical mind, it runs into narrow and deeply ingrained hollows that are difficult to escape. In this constriction and limitation, pure consciousness, between the inner and outer worlds, encounters the “old witch” of the physical five senses and thoughts. It hears the warning, but cannot escape. It becomes insane and breaks apart into the separate senses, thereby cursing itself into the earthly world. Here, two arms, two legs, and the torso symbolize the five senses, together with the head of thoughts, which now curses the pure soul as a child of the dark hell of ignorance and, as the conceptual mind, demands that the six (“hexa”) parts of the witch be physically reassembled, that is, that the senses and thoughts be brought back under the control of the physical mind. And the stone on which she is supposed to build everything is probably not the gemstone of the wise, but the seemingly solid and reliable matter of our body.
Bene was frightened and tried to flee, but the head got in the way, so she began to line everything up. The limbs snapped into place of their own accord, and when she finally had the arms attached and everything except to the torso was finished, the head sprang onto the shoulders with its own swiftness. The broken old woman was whole again, picked up her walking stick, and held out her hand to the princess, saying: “Farewell, my little daughter! I forgive you because you’ve put me back together properly. And in return, you’ll have a handsome groom!”
Here the pure soul could decide whether to flee back to the spiritual world to the ugly dwarf or to assemble the physical witch and, through the senses and thoughts, run with the intellect into the external world of nature. But she had lost the sage’s gem, and so the head of the intellect and its thoughts stood in her way, cutting off her path back to the spiritual world. And once the consciousness had made its decision, everything happened automatically, for as long as she was not yet united with the pure spirit, the intellectual mind helped a great deal with the assembly. The witch then thanks the soul and promises her a “handsome bridegroom,” naturally according to her ideas. And in the worst case, we even feel flattered, successful, and richly rewarded.
Bene searched for the lost gem, the little bird brought it and sang:
Better keep
the precious stone!
I can’t always be
your attendant.
If it weren’t lost,
you would have mocked and ridiculed the power
of the poisonous witch.
Well, the pure soul didn’t fall for it, but remembered the lost gem of reason and searched for it. Then intuition appeared again and reminded her of her motto, along with a small reproach.
Meanwhile, at Mene’s insistence, the old queen invited the ugly dwarf to court. However, the king disliked the son-in-law, and his mother and eldest sister secretly mocked him. Bene went into the forest and wept. The old witch met her and announced the arrival of her bridegroom. This was a silly, dressed-up prince whom she could not stand at all.
The selfish soul now tries to win the dwarf over in her own way and invites him to the castle of the worldly queen, who sided with her eldest daughter and knew and supported her vision. Naturally, the pure spirit doesn’t like this treacherous world, especially since he had been warned against it, but he agrees because he hopes to find the pure soul there as well. Here he also encounters the worldly king, a physical mind, who was visiting the queen and had no use for the pure spirit in this form because, with one leg, he can’t even ride a horse properly, as Langbein also says: “He who cannot ride is no man.” This could also mean that the pure spirit, due to his separation from the pure soul of nature, cannot function in physical nature. Thus, he lacks the “leg of nature” and stands only on the “leg of the spirit.”
The youngest princess was also saddened by her father’s rejection, and the witch tried to use this moment of doubt to match her with a bridegroom of her choosing, thereby winning the queen’s favour. After the last dangerous clash with the pure soul, she naturally feared losing her power as the separating principle between spirit and nature if holistic reason were to become the ruling king. But the pure soul couldn’t do much with the witch’s foolish bridegroom, a superficial and stupid spirit of an external world.
Full of sorrow, she went into the garden and met the poor but clever dwarf, to whom she poured out her heart. Finally, they began to talk, and when he asked her if she disliked him, she replied, “Oh no, I love you.” Suddenly, the spell was broken, and he became a beautiful youth. He told her how he had once encountered the witch in the forest and laughed at her strange leaps, and how she had transformed him into this ugly form until a beautiful girl who, of her own free will, loved him. And for a certain time, he had been forced to sleep in the rock in his natural state.
Thus, the pure soul with true love was able to break the witch’s spell and achieve the goal, something the selfish soul with covetous love could not, even though she knew the motto and had the goal in sight. The pure soul had only the sage’s gem and the motto to protect it.
Langbein tells the story of the king’s son in a little more detail:
Once, while hunting lions, I had lost my way and ridden through the lonely forest to find a way out. I met no one but an old, utterly ugly woman, exactly as I had been just a few minutes before. This dwarf woman spun around in front of me on her single leg so comically that I couldn’t help laughing.
Under this “lion hunt,” we could imagine the spirit seeking to conquer the hungry and wild beast, yet without having found the pure soul of nature. Thus, he became lost in the forest of ideas and encountered the old Mother Nature as a hostile and thus ugly being, standing on only one leg, that is, weak and spiritless, so that the spirit sought to rise above her. Through this separation, the witch naturally appeared as a separating principle and automatically transformed the spirit into a weak, one-legged being. And only when a virgin or pure soul with pure love is found, one who can harmoniously unite the pure spirit with pure nature, independent of any external form, will this separation end. Until then, the spirit dwarf must continue to hop around on one leg in the forest of his ideas, unable to leave.
But the old witch had to concede one thing: If the mind is given the golden key to expanded consciousness, it can also behold the sleeping spirit in its natural form and all its glory in the “rock” of physical matter. However, this is clearly not the way to liberate and gain access to it. To do so, man must follow the path of reason and find the sage’s gem. Thus, it was perhaps no coincidence that modern quantum physics discovered the spirit in matter but could not liberate and gain access to it.
In this respect, we could also imagine that the golden key was the witch herself, dancing on one leg around the egotistical soul to seduce it, for not everything that glitters is true gold. Thus, this key is also a typical tool of the ego-mind, used to arbitrarily lock and unlock certain doors in the game of separation. Yet, not the egotistical soul, but only the pure soul, with true love, could ultimately break the witch’s spell as the principle of separation, so that the prince regained his natural form and now, as a human being, stands on two feet again, on spirit and nature. But the great happy ending had not yet been reached.
At that moment, the witch came out of the castle into the garden with her silly son and the others, wrapped her bony hand in the maiden’s yellow hair, and carried her away like a feather through the air, more than a hundred miles over hill and dale, until she arrived in front of a round iron tower.
For now, the fundamental cause that led to this separation and banishment must still be resolved. Therefore, they still see the witch before them, appearing with “her foolish son and the others.” Here, the pure soul, upon seeing the “others,” once again loses the jewel of wisdom as a holistic vision, and in Langbein’s version, it is said that she left it behind in her house clothes, which she exchanged for a full-dress gown to receive the foolish butterfly prince. Thus, the witch can now seize the maiden’s hair or thoughts as a principle of separation, thereby separating her from the pure spirit again and imprisoning her in an iron tower—better perhaps in a brick tower made of the mental images of the conceptual mind, but in any case, in a solid prison for the soul. In this way, the play now reverses: The prince returned to the outer world with his natural body, and the soul vanished “like a feather in the wind” before the eyes of the people into the inner world, where she was hidden by the witch in the body tower, just as reason speaks of the usual separation between body and soul. And here we find another wonderfully ingenious symbolism.
In the tower there were nothing but snails crawling up and down the wall. “Here you shall live, and if you don’t teach these snails to dance within eight days, then you yourself must become one.” When the witch was gone and had locked the door, the snails were afraid of the princess and all retreated into their little houses. But little by little they came out again and made themselves known to her. An invisible hand brought her food and green grass to the snails to eat. They passed the time and were very bored in the tower.
Thus, the soul is separated from the external world and finds herself enclosed in a tower of the body, just as the conceptual mind tells us that the soul dwells in the body, and the animate body in an inanimate world. And what were just hairs of thoughts, growing more or less freely and wildly into the external world, we can now find within the sluggish and slimy snails, the sticky thoughts of attachment, which also like to retreat deep into the memory, but then emerge again in search of food and are nourished by an invisible hand that reminds us of formless consciousness. And if the soul fails to lure these sticky thoughts from memory, to organize them, and make them dance in holistic harmony, then the witch will curse her, to become a thought in the tower of the mind, just as the egoistic or personal soul is merely a thought construct. For what the witch demands here is not something impossible, but the great task of the pure soul, and thoughts are the soul’s threads that are spun in the natural play of cause and effect.
And yes, we like to pass the time with this game of thoughts, and if nothing new comes along, then great boredom sets in, like a dead silence. But how could anything new come into this tower if the witch keeps the gates of the senses closed? Although nothing entirely new comes through these gates either, as the saying goes: “Nothing new under the sun!” Yet it seems new to us because the corresponding snails emerge from their shells or cracks in the walls. So, the soul is now trapped in the body, and while we all know very well how the sticky thoughts work within us, constantly turning in circles in the round tower, seeking their nourishment, sometimes bored and sometimes agitated, we don’t know who really moves them and to what tune they dance. Instead, we believe that I am the mover, but this “I” is usually just a mental construct. Because if we’re honest, it’s not I who controls my thoughts, but the thoughts that control me. And so, the soul is trapped in the tower of the body...
The tower also reminds us of the great Tower of Babel in the Bible, a lofty edifice of thought that was meant to reach heaven, but instead ended in great confusion rather than harmony. The eight days essentially remind us of the biblical week of creation, in which we still live in the sixth day, playing with thoughts of attachment and building Towers of Babel to enclose the soul. And the witch’s “enclosure” reminds us again of the key as a typical tool of the ego-mind for separation.
Six days had already passed, and Bene still didn’t know how to teach the snails to dance. On the morning of the seventh, the little bird flew to the window and sang:
Here I bring once more
The precious stone,
But now I will no longer
be your attendant.
Now that Bene had the lost stone again, lo, a small crack appeared in it, from which twelve little dancing masters jumped, each a finger long and each with a small fiddle. As soon as they began to play their bows, the snails crawled out of their houses, held each other in pairs, and began to waltz. When it was over, they went back into the stone, but one had left the violin behind. The princess took it, and no sooner had it started playing than the snails danced again.
Wonderful! The intuition of holistic reason naturally finds a small window in this tower, one that the witch in her physical form cannot close. But this time, the warning sounds that this is the last service of the faithful little bird from heaven. Clearly, if the soul fails to fulfil this task of the witch, she will lose her pure essence, not in truth, but in reality.
So, the gemstone helps again. The “twelve little dancing masters” remind us of the harmonic twelve- tone row. But how do tones emerge from the philosopher’s stone? And how can tones entice thoughts from the memory and make them dance, even in pairs? Well, the fact that thoughts always dance in opposites is due to the principle of the wave, which always oscillates in two directions between plus and minus, so that the conceptual mind needs an opposite for each part, such as good and evil, cold and hot, beautiful and ugly, male and female, etc. Thus, the opposites swing back and forth, and now it is a matter of reordering these pairs and uniting them harmoniously, so that the fighting and jealousy between them ceases. And if we think of this precious stone, from which “the dancing masters emerge through a small crack,” as the foundation stone of pure consciousness, the divine word, or, from a scientific perspective, information, then we have already recognized in the last fairy tale of “Saint Solicitous” that everything is moved and shaped by it, so that “information” becomes a “formation” in the dance of forms. And so, here too, from the philosopher’s stone comes the violin of wisdom with the sound of harmony, which we also learned there as a tool of reason, played by the spirit to work in nature.
This symbolism is reminiscent of a meditation experience: First, you watch and observe, and then you become the dance master yourself and play the first violin. This is the famous path to self-knowledge and self-realization. In this way, you realize that thoughts, as sticky forms of attachment, are essentially freely moving forms of formless consciousness. And just as it says above that the youngest princess loved people because they are people, and not because they are this or that, so you can also love thoughts and sensations because they are pure divine consciousness, and not because they take on certain forms. This is pure love, which knows no why and is therefore not dependent on conditions. And that is probably the core message of the entire fairy tale.
So, the soul now plays this violin of reason and can at least bring the thoughts back into harmony internally, while her spirit still wanders through the external world, searching for his beloved soul.
Meanwhile, the prince had travelled through fields and forests to seek out his beloved, but he couldn’t find her at all, and on the morning of the eighth day, he was still a hundred miles from the iron tower. Suddenly, he found a pair of new boots standing in the grass, which he put on, because his own were torn. But he had barely taken a single step when he found himself in a completely strange region. With the second step, he crossed a vast plain and a broad river, and with the third, he crossed a large city with tall towers. In short, each time he walked a mile further. He walked further and further, and with the hundredth step, he found himself before the iron tower.
This probably means: The spirit could search endlessly for the pure soul in the external world “of fields and forests” of our conceptual ideas, for she cannot be found there; indeed, he cannot even approach her. At the end of his strength, when his boots were worn out, he asks the good spirits for help, as Lanbein puts it, and he is given “a pair of new league- boots,” which remind us very much of the two golden shoes for the two feet of spirit and nature from the last fairy tale, which can guide the spirit on the path of truth back to the foundation stone. For with this, his consciousness expands, and he transcends or traverses the external world, arriving safely at his goal after a hundred steps, for in numerology, 100 represents a certain perfection, which we still know today as 100%. And at this goal, he then receives the sage’s gem.
The old witch was just having Bene made the snails dance and was very angry that the animals were doing so well. However, under various pretexts, she still wouldn’t let the princess go. Then Bene stepped sadly to the window and joyfully saw her lover standing below. She threw the precious stone down to him, and as soon as he picked it up, it turned into a shining sword, before which the gate sprang open. When the prince entered, the witch fled to the snails in the corner. He touched the snails with the sword, and they turned into maidens, and he stabbed the old witch to death.
Thus, the old witch cannot turn the pure soul of nature into a snail and degrade her to a mental construct. For the soul fulfils her task, and with this fulfilment, the mile- boots also appear for the spirit to rediscover his beloved soul of nature. But as long as the pure spirit is still missing, the witch defends her position as the principle of separation. Now, however, the soul preserves the gemstone in the awareness of an ordered and harmonious world of thoughts, recognizes the pure spirit in the window of reason, and hands him the philosopher’s stone without losing it. For what is given to the pure spirit with true love is never lost. In his hand, the philosopher’s stone now becomes the famous sword of wisdom of holistic knowledge. With it, he can overcome all separation, open the locked gate of the body’s tower, and rise within. There, spirit and soul unite in the mystical marriage, and the witch flees to the snails as the principle of separation. She is now turned into a snail herself and recognized as a thought construct that has brought about the separation of spirit and nature, body and soul, and all other worldly opposites. And because the sword of wisdom does not separate but unites, and thus does not kill but enlivens, the snails or thoughts were not killed either, but transformed back into pure souls of nature or subserving soul threads of cause and effect, which, of course, are only one soul when there is no longer any separation. And in this sense, the old witch is also dead, having fulfilled her purpose in this world and bursting like a punctured bubble of illusion. What else can one do with an illusion? One can only recognize it for what it is. For killing illusions is as absurd as killing death or separating oneself from separation.
In Langbein’s case, the witch begs for mercy in the face of the fatal blow, and she is forgiven so that she might not soil the sword with impure blood, on the condition that she flees far and never meets the king again. And the freed maidens bow down before the king as a pure spirit and become the ladies-in-waiting of the new queen as pure souls of nature.
The old king soon grew fond of his son-in-law with the beautiful league- boots because he could mount his untamable horse.
And finally, the worldly mind is also satisfied with the son-in-law, for as holistic reason, he can tame and guide even the wildest body. Thus, he recognizes him as the new king, united with the new queen, and gladly adds his pure soul. Yes, in this way holistic reason should take over with the sage’s gem, the sword of wisdom, and the beautiful mile- boots as the path to truth in the harmony of spirit and nature - which is once again an excellent happy ending. OM
And what happened to the older sister? No, of course she didn’t marry the witch’s foolish son, who neither fit her ideal nor lived long. Langbein writes at the end:
Zefire didn’t wait for the dreary autumn days of an old maid, but died in the summer of her life of envy over her sister’s happiness. The foolish butterfly prince shot himself in despair because he had the misfortune to lose his first valet and hair curler to death and couldn’t immediately find another curl-maker who satisfied his stubborn taste as completely as the deceased man. What became of his venerable mother is unknown. It would hardly be worth the effort to gather information about it and delay the conclusion of this little tale because of it.
This also makes sense, for the egoistic soul is already married to the spirit of desire and envy as a conceptual and intellectual mind. And the ego-mind naturally remains under the rule of the witch as the principle of separation, and thus also under the rule of death, and dies in despair from its stubborn thoughts, no matter how beautifully they are styled, just as the hairdresser dies. And the old witch lives as a venerable mother in every ego-mind as long as it believes it lives in a separate body, playing its own violin, and does not recognize who, in truth, moves everything and makes it dance harmoniously, so that this stubborn violin playing is really not worth the effort. For separated from the whole, it never sounds harmonious as long as this violin is played by the ego-mind instead of the holistic reason that comes from the philosopher’s stone. And rightly so: Continuing to search for the old witch and thinking about separation will not bring us any closer to the happy ending of our fairy tale. Therefore, we would rather turn to the true goal:
Sound and Form
An Indian guru said:
Every form has a hidden sound within... When you know the hidden sound of a particular form, you realize that you also know the form... In this complex process of different types of vibrations, you too are one. If you were only this one, you would be like a grain of sand, nothing. For in the vastness of cosmic space, this small body is nothing, but when this hidden sound finds its expression, it is like a key to everything. This opens not only me, but also the other person I touch with this sound, for that is my sacred key... Listen to the sound, not the music! If you want to find a deeper access to life, you must listen to the vibration, not the melody. The melody is the surface, a small thing, beautiful, but that’s it. Vibrations are the very foundation of life... (Sadhguru, video “The Key to Existence”)
In Indian yoga, they also speak of seed syllables or bija- mantras, which are considered the seeds of all possible forms and are also found in the body’s chakras (as “Lam, Vam, Ram, Yam, Ham, and Om”) with their corresponding forms or mandalas. The king of the seed syllables is the famous OM, and Wikipedia states: “This sound represents the transcendent primordial sound, from whose vibrations, according to Hindu understanding, the entire universe arose.”
The Indian Harivamsha Purana, Chapter 3.19, states:
OM is truly the supreme being, as recognized by the wise. It is the eternal Brahman that resonates in all creatures, moves them, and carries their intelligence. OM is the primordial word of Brahman, sound, wind, and embodiment of all names. The masters say: In its essence, it is the formless One that embodies itself in union with the elements and fills the entire diversity of creation, although it is completely unbound. It is the original sound that gave birth to this world from the spirit and, in a sense, fills it with spirit.
In addition, the various gods have their own seed syllables and mantras for invoking and worshipping them, which has developed into a complex system over many thousands of years in the vastness of India. There are few historical documents about the specific syllables and mantras, as it was important to pass them on primarily orally from teacher to student. We can find a glimpse into the diversity of rituals and the use of seed syllables and mantras in, for example, the “Mahanirvana Tantra”. In the Mahabharata, in chapter 12.199, there is also a wonderful story about a “mantra mutterer,” in which we can essentially find the two feet of spirit and nature, which together achieve the highest perfection as sound and form...
Sound and form have been and continue to be thought about a lot in the Western world, too, and today, sound and image are the main pillars of our media world. Their mutual connection is also reflected in terms such as “clang colour” or “colour tone.” Historically, for example, in 1787, seven years before Langbein published his fairy tale, Chladni published a book entitled “Discoveries on the Theory of Sound.” In it, he presented various sound figures that he had created in the sand on a plate with a violin bow, causing quite a stir. Even Napoleon is said to have said: “This man makes sounds visible.” Faraday waves originated in a similar way, and the term cymatics was coined.
Just as Chladni created harmonious patterns on a violin plate with his bow, we also found in the last fairy tale, in the meditation on the image of Saint Solicitous, how the bow between the hand of the active spirit and the loving heart of the soul of nature directed the sound of the violin to the foundation and cornerstone, there harmoniously uniting the forms that had lost their harmony through attachment to the cross of worldly opposites. Chapter 42 of the Indian Markandeya Purana also speaks of this path:
To whom OM reveals itself in the mind, he becomes one with every Matra (sound of AUMm) and with OM itself. The life-breath is the bow, the soul is the arrow, and Brahman is the subtle target. One who practices constantly and penetrates deep into Brahman like an arrow becomes one with Him… By chanting the syllable OM, all things, existent or non-existent, are encompassed… But if the bonds of his actions are not yet completely broken, then, upon recognizing the signs of death, he will, due to his inclination, be reborn in the next life as a yogi in order to remember and continue on the path.
The Christian seer Jakob Boehme also deeply studied sound and form over 400 years ago, intuitively sensing a “natural language” in the sound of many names and words of human language. The following was reported about him:
Among Jakob Boehme’s former and already mentioned friends was Tobias Kober, a local doctor of medicine, whom I knew well, and who repeatedly put Jacob Boehme and his natural language to the test. The trusted friends often went for walks and showed each other flowers, herbs, and other earth plants. Jakob Boehme described the inner power, effect, and properties of the plants based on their external signature and structure, using the letters, syllables, and words of the names spoken and assigned to them. Afterwards, he wanted to know the names from the doctor, especially in Hebrew, because this was closest to the natural language. And if the doctor didn’t know the Hebrew name, he asked for the Greek. And if the doctor intentionally gave him a false name, he soon realized the deception, because of the characteristics of the plant, its signature, shape, colour, etc., this could not be the correct name, and there was sufficient evidence for this. (E. Hegenicht: On the Source of Knowledge and Wisdom, 1669)
Jacob Boehme himself writes about the heavenly source of sound and its harmony:
The second form of heaven in divine splendour is Mercury (quicksilver or “living silver”), or sound, just as sound is found in the earth’s saltpetre, from which gold, silver, copper, iron, and the like grow. And from it one can make all kinds of instruments for sound or joy, such as bells, pipes, and everything that resonates. This sound is also present in all creatures on earth, for otherwise everything would be silent. Thus, through this sound in heaven, all forces are moved, so that everything grows joyfully and is born delicately. Just as the divine forces are manifold and diverse, so too is sound or Mercury manifold and diverse. When the forces rise in God, one stirs the other, and they swell within one another. Thus, there is a constant mixing, so that all kinds of colours emerge from it, and in these colours, all kinds of fruit grow. This rises in the saltpetre, and the mercury, or sound, mingles with it and rises in all the powers of the Father, so that a sound and resound arise in the heavenly kingdom of joy. If you were to bring together thousands of different instruments and stringed music in this world and intertwine them all in the most artistic way, and have the very best masters to play them, it would still be like a dog’s barking compared to the divine music that arises from eternity to eternity through the divine sound. (Aurora oder Morgenröte im Aufgang (Aurora or Dawn in the Rising), Chapter 4, 1612)
Accordingly, one finds many examples in his extensive writings of how attentively he looked within, observing the formation of syllables and connecting them with the meaning of spoken words. For example:
The word “God” grasps itself in the middle of the tongue, protrudes from the heart, leaves the mouth open, remains seated on its royal chair, and resonates from within and within itself. But when it is pronounced, it also produces a pressure between the upper teeth and the tongue. This means that when God created heaven and earth and all creatures, he nevertheless remained in his divine, eternal, and almighty seat and never deviated from it, and that he alone is everything. The final pressure signifies the sharpness of his mind, with which he instantly directs everything in his entire body.
The word “Himmel” (heaven) takes hold in the heart and extends to the lips, where it is closed. And the syllable “mel” opens the lips again, is held in the middle of the tongue, and then the spirit emerges from the mouth on both sides of the tongue. This means that the inner birth has been closed off with the outer birth through horrific sin and is incomprehensible to the outermost birth. But because it is a word with two syllables and the second syllable “mel” opens the mouth again, it means that the gate of the Godhead has also been opened again. But that, with the word “mel” it grasps and holds itself again on the upper palate of the tongue and the spirit emerges on both sides alongside it, this means that God wanted to give this corrupted kingdom in God a king and grand prince again, who would once again unlock the innermost birth of the clear Godhead. And through this, the Holy Spirit would go forth again into this world on both sides, that is, from the innermost depths of the Father and the Son, so that this world would be reborn through the new King. (Aurora oder Morgenröte im Aufgang (Aurora or Dawn in the Rising), Chapter 18, 1612)
Similarly, in his text “On the Threefold Life of Man” Chapter 16, there is a detailed interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer in his natural language. And he often lamented, “Ah, if only you understood natural language, then you would already have the reason.” But he was aware that he could not explain this intuitive natural language to the intellect.
In the text “De Signatura Rerum”, he then writes at the end of Chapter 1 about the relationship between sound and form:
And so there is no thing in nature, created or born, that does not also reveal its inner form outwardly, for the inner always works toward revelation... Therefore, in the signature lies the greatest understanding, in which man (as the image of the greatest virtue) not only learns to recognize himself, but can also recognize the essence of all beings. For in the outward form of all creatures, in their drive and desire, as well as in their outgoing echo of voice and speech, one recognizes the hidden spirit, for nature has given each thing its language (according to its essence and form), for from the essence arises speech or echo, and the creation of this essence forms the quality of the essence in the outgoing echo or the outgoing force, the living things in the echo, and the essential things in smell, force, and form. Thus, every thing has its mouth for revelation. And this is the language of nature, through which every thing speaks from its own qualities, continually revealing and demonstrating its own good and usefulness. For every thing reveals its mother, who thus gives it its essence and the will to form.
“The goal of life is a life in harmony with nature.”
(Zeno of Citium, Greek philosopher, c. 300 BC)
• ... Table of contents of all fairy tale interpretations ...
• 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)
• The Goose-Girl at the Well - (topic: spirit, soul and nature)
• The Golden Goose - (topic: recognize true wholeness)
• The Goose-Girl and Falada - (topic: unity and diversity)
• King Thrushbeard - (topic: holy and healthy marriage)
• Saint Solicitous - (topic: beard and violin)
• The old witch (topic: true Love and Reason)
• The Jew among Thorns - (topic: Reason and Mind)
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[1810] Brüder Grimm: Kinder- und Hausmärchen, Handschriftliche Urfassung, 1810 |