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The Six Swans
Tale of the Brothers Grimm translated by M. Hunt [1884]
Interpretation by Undine & Jens in green [2024]
Based on the last three fairy tales, we would now like to try to penetrate the spiritual depth of the symbolism, especially since most of the symbols of "Prince Swan" can also be found in this fairy tale. In the first part in particular, we can think about how the spiritual swan actually became an earthly swan. Of course, as always, we recommend reading the fairy tale text in its entirety first.
Once upon a time, a certain King was hunting in a great forest, and he chased a wild beast so eagerly that none of his attendants could follow him. When evening drew near, he stopped and looked around him, and then he saw that he had lost his way. He sought a way out, but could find none.
The story begins with a king, in whom we can once again see the ruling or active spirit, who, as we later learn, has lost his first wife and queen. Here we could think that as a pure spirit he has lost his pure and original nature or soul. That is, he has turned away from his soul and thus separated, and separation means death and loss of the original unity. With his conceptual mind he has thus turned away from the inner unity and turned to the external diversity in the forest of forms and ideas, where he then lost himself. This means symbolically: As an ego mind, he separated himself from "his people" and now eagerly hunts in the earthly forest of imagined forms for "wild" food for his body and mind. In doing so he gets lost in this forest of the earthly world and cannot find an exit in his state of separation, so that he is threatened with the loss of his rule and ultimately death. Does this sound familiar?
Then he perceived an aged woman with a head which nodded perpetually, who came towards him, but she was a witch. "Good woman," said he to her, "Can you not show me the way through the forest?" "Oh, yes, Lord King," she answered, "that I certainly can, but on one condition, and if you do not fulfil that, you will never get out of the forest, and will die of hunger in it." - "What kind of condition is it?" asked the King. "I have a daughter," said the old woman, "who is as beautiful as anyone in the world, and well deserves to be your consort, and if you will make her your Queen, I will show you the way out of the forest."
So, the king, in his despair, comes to his senses again and sees the ancient being of external nature in the forest of forms, namely the famous witch, who of course also ensured that he was able to come to this forest in the first place, to hunt here and to get lost. We have already thought about the term "witch" (or hag, in German: Hexe) in "The Drummer", and here too the meaning of the number six as Greek "Hexa" and Latin "Sex" in relation to the "six swans" is obvious, as is the etymological derivation of "Hagazussa", which "guards the fence" insofar as she causes the separation and guards the borders of the forest, but is also the key to liberation. For the path that leads into the forest also leads out again.
The condition is of course that the king reunites with his soul, the spirit with nature. Otherwise, the separation can never be overcome. The witch, however, as an external nature, offers her daughter as a natural soul that is, so to speak, bewitched, and bound to the five physical senses with conceptual thought as the sixth in an external nature of separate forms, so that of course the spirit that marries her is also bound to a separate body and imprisoned in it. In this sense, in contrast to the "pure holistic soul," one could also speak of a "separate egoistic soul," so that the usual idea of "my soul and yours", and of "my body and yours" arises.
In the anguish of his heart the King consented, and the old woman led him to her little hut, where her daughter was sitting by the fire. She received the King as if she had been expecting him, and he saw that she was very beautiful, but still, she did not please him, and he could not look at her without secret horror. After he had taken the maiden up on his horse, the old woman showed him the way, and the King reached his royal palace again, where the wedding was celebrated.
The king had actually already agreed, i.e., had turned his will in this direction, when he went hunting in this forest of external nature. But now he is becoming more and more aware of this. That is why the witch's daughter, who was sitting by the fire, received him not unexpectedly. And this probably does not mean the fire of love or the Holy Spirit with which “The Drummer" burned the entire forest of ideas in the penultimate fairy tale, but the hearth fire of passion on which the "eagerly hunted game" from the forest of ideas is to be prepared as tasty food for body and mind to satisfy hunger. The external beauty of this soul reminds us of worldly seduction, and the inner horror of a higher voice of truth that still resonates in the king as wisdom and reason. Nevertheless, he now lifts this soul to his side and rides with her on his horse back to his royal castle. That means, he rides on a physical being as a spiritual king with his queen. And in his kingdom, in conjunction with the natural soul given to him by the witch, he rules at least over external nature, i.e., over the forest of forms and ideas where he loves to hunt. The spirit needs some kind of soul, either the pure, holistic soul or an egoistically separated soul, because without nature the spirit cannot rule or work because he has nothing in which he can work. But the continuation of the story shows that this marriage was not and could not be a pure union of spirit and nature.
The King had already been married once, and had by his first wife, seven children, six boys and a girl, whom he loved better than anything else in the world. As he now feared that the step-mother might not treat them well, and even do them some injury, he took them to a lonely castle which stood in the midst of a forest. It lay so concealed, and the way was so difficult to find, that he himself would not have found it, if a wise woman had not given him a ball of yarn with wonderful properties. When he threw it down before him, it unrolled itself and showed him his path.
Here we learn of the first woman and queen, whom he certainly loved "more than anything in the world" at the beginning and how he now loves her children, that is, a true love between a pure spirit and a pure nature, in which we practically all have our origin. The six beloved boys, as pure beings of the witnessing spirit, remind us of the five senses with thought as the sixth, and the beloved girl, as a pure virgin and being of the giving birth nature, reminds us of the one pure soul, which of course is always and everywhere present, but is rarely conscious to us.
We know the symbol of the "stepmother" or "substitute mother" from many fairy tales. It means above all that the active spirit has lost his original unity with the true nature and is united with a second or "other" nature, which is supposed to replace the true nature. This can of course only be an illusory nature, which cannot exist in her entirety but only in the separation of opposites, i.e., in an egoistic world of separate forms, as we all know it well. This nature is constantly afraid of the holistic truth because she will disappear as soon as the true nature returns. That is why she does not know true holistic love, but can only love her own forms or children in order to confirm herself.
The king now fears, not without reason, that the bewitched egoistic soul, to which the spirit is now married, could corrupt and even kill his true children, because the holistic purity of these senses and soul is of course a threat to the bewitched or illusory nature of the external forms in the realm of separations. This is what happens to all of us when egoism reigns within us, which can only survive in such an external or material nature, although deep within us we can still feel a true and pure love. But we have taken these original children or senses together with the pure soul deep in the forest of ideas to "a lonely castle and hidden them". And we would have lost the memory of them long ago if there were not also a "wise woman" within us, a higher wisdom that gives us the soul string that still connects our spirit with our pure soul of true nature. And we can unravel this mystical string of cause and effect in our mind's eye, so to speak, and trace it back to find our way back to our pure origin.
Jacob Boehme also wrote about this “stepmother” in 1620:
We came from our true, pure, paradisiacal mother, in whom we were supposed to live as dear children. And now we are enclosed in the mother who gives birth to wild animals, and have received animal characteristics. So, we act no differently than wild animals, for we have surrendered ourselves to a foreign mother who cares for us and leads us captive on her ropes. Now we must leave the external human being to the earthly mother, but we cannot escape from her, for she has captured us in flesh and blood, she raises us in herself and considers us her children. But we have a precious jewel hidden within us, with which we are God's children. With this, let us strive for the highest good, so that we may attain it. (On the Threefold Life of Man, 14.2)
The King, however, went so frequently away to his dear children that the Queen observed his absence; she was curious and wanted to know what he did when he was quite alone in the forest. She gave a great deal of money to his servants, and they betrayed the secret to her, and told her likewise of the ball which alone could point out the way. And now she knew no rest until she had learnt where the King kept the ball of yarn.
This "being quite alone" far away from this world, deep in the forest, where the usual paths do not reach, reminds us from a spiritual point of view of the retreat into our inner being on the path of remembrance, which is also called meditation or contemplation. In this way we come to the origin of our being, where the pure love of holistic senses and thoughts is still alive in secret. But if you marry the egoistic soul, it is only a matter of time before she captivates our thoughts with the promise of great gain, takes hold of the clew of life's story and learns which paths the active spirit takes and who he secretly loves. Then she naturally fears that he could be unfaithful to her. What can she do about it?
Then she made little shirts of white silk, and as she had learnt the art of witchcraft from her mother, she sewed a charm inside them. And once when the King had ridden forth to hunt, she took the little shirts and went into the forest, and the ball showed her the way. The children, who saw from a distance that someone was approaching, thought that their dear father was coming to them, and full of joy, ran to meet him. Then she threw one of the little shirts over each of them, and no sooner had the shirts touched their bodies than they were changed into swans, and flew away over the forest. The Queen went home quite delighted, and thought she had got rid of her step-children, but the girl had not run out with her brothers, and the Queen knew nothing about her.
Here we are told how the egoistic soul makes small, narrow shirts for the pure senses and thoughts out of the seductive silk thread that was spun by a greedy, voracious caterpillar. And while the king or spirit was distracted on the hunt in the external world, she threw this web over the senses and thoughts and enveloped them with it, so that they became physical and flew out of their hiddenness or wholeness into the external world as swans. This web of the egoistic soul reminds us again of the ball of life’s story that is wound up as a soul bond of cause and effect, and thus also envelops and embodies the senses and thoughts.
Why swans in particular? Well, they are practically among the largest and heaviest birds that can still fly. And perhaps what is meant by this is that flying birds, which are also considered a symbol of the soul, cannot be embodied any better. They also have the white feathers of external purity, although internally they are animals that can be very wilful and aggressive, and do not immediately flee when threatened, like other small birds. This is why they are also difficult to tame, and who does not know what untamed senses and thoughts mean. After all, swans are not typical herd animals like the goose, which likes to seek the whole, but often travel alone or with a lifelong partner, which is why they usually defend their territory stubbornly, just as our senses like to see themselves separated from the other senses, defend their respective territory and are bound to their desired sense objects for life.
And why not black shirts to send them into the world of darkness and death? No, they should live, but as her own children in the limited light of her external world, because she doesn’t know no other. Thus, the egoistic witchcraft was sewn into these "white silk shirts" or woven or entangled, so that they separated from their sister, the pure soul, and flew out into a world of external forms and separation. Even so, our senses and thoughts are pure and "white as on the first day" insofar as they are pure information or pure consciousness, but the mind is free to evaluate and judge, either with holistic reason from a divine perspective or with conceptual-separating reason from an egoistic perspective. In this way, the senses and thoughts can be bewitched and enchanted, but of course not the pure soul, which "does not run towards the illusion" so that the illusion "knows nothing about her either". Because if the pure soul or nature were to be contaminated, bewitched and disappear, then we would truly be hopelessly lost.
Next day the King went to visit his children, but he found no one but the little girl. "Where are thy brothers?" asked the King. "Alas, dear father," she answered, "they have gone away and left me alone!" and she told him that she had seen from her little window how her brothers had flown away over the forest in the shape of swans, and she showed him the feathers, which they had let fall in the courtyard, and which she had picked up. The King mourned, but he did not think that the Queen had done this wicked deed, and as he feared that the girl would also be stolen away from him, he wanted to take her away with him. But she was afraid of her step-mother, and entreated the King to let her stay just this one night more in the forest castle.
The active spirit has now lost the inner connection to his true senses, and the pure soul will not and cannot stay with him, because where illusion reigns, truth cannot exist. The active spirit has thus not only lost his unity with true nature, but also his connection to her through the soul bond, and has fallen completely into physicality. He no longer rides on the horse as a king with his queen, as he did when he returned to his kingdom, but has become the horse on which the queen now rides. One could also say that he has now become a swan, like his senses and thoughts, and no longer knows who he really is, because he has been controlled and captured by the illusion, which he can no longer recognize. Just as the king "did not think that the queen had committed this evil deed."
And if we are honest with ourselves, we also live in such a world. We think that our senses and thoughts are free and can rise into the world like white swans, but it is only a narrow physical world of separation in the play of opposites. Of course, we try everything to maintain this illusion of freedom with an almost endless variety of forms through our modern media such as television, telephone and Internet or through technology such as cars, airplanes and other machines, but this artificially illuminated world cannot protect us from an inner darkness. Although, we are outwardly as "delighted" as the queen, inwardly we "mourn" like the king and increasingly fall into depression, which has now become a widespread national disease. We have enclosed our consciousness in a narrow physicality and now believe that we have to run, drive and fly through the world with our bodies in order to be free, and the further and faster, the freer. And of course, our selfish queen will do everything to keep our minds bewitched, which is why we love selfishness in our world more than anything.
This concludes the first part of this fairy tale, and we have learned how the pure spirit could incarnate in this world, or how the pure, holistic and eternal consciousness could forget itself and identify with an external, separate and transient form that it had made for itself.
The pure soul or nature remains hidden and unconscious during the "spiritual night", as long as this night lasts for the king, until the spiritual morning dawns, the senses and thoughts are freed and the pure soul is recognized again. And what the soul does there in secret, how it works in the subconscious in the depths of nature, we will now read in the second part of this fairy tale, and of course we also want to try to understand the symbolism of this path to salvation from a spiritual point of view.
The poor girl thought, "I can no longer stay here. I will go and seek my brothers." And when night came, she ran away, and went straight into the forest. She walked the whole night long, and next day also without stopping, until she could go no farther for weariness. Then she saw a forest-hut, and went into it, and found a room with six little beds, but she did not venture to get into one of them, but crept under one, and lay down on the hard ground, intending to pass the night there.
The pure soul now searches in the realm of the moon at night, similar to the last fairy tale of "Prince Swan", and in the realm of the sun during the day, and finally ascends to a forest hut, probably in the realm of the stars, which is reminiscent of our animal body, since it is practically made of "stardust". In this house, the five senses and thinking have their six narrowly confined "little beds" and are, so to speak, at home. Of course, the pure soul does not want to lie down in these beds, but rather lies down underneath them, similar to the last fairy tale. Because as the soul of nature, which spins and weaves all the threads of life from cause and effect, she is of course also the basis of embodiment. And this happens above all through the "weariness" or inertness of nature, so that she literally freezes in certain forms. She wanted to wait there until the "spiritual night" of the house's residents was over.
Just before sunset, however, she heard a rustling, and saw six swans come flying in at the window. They alighted on the ground and blew at each other, and blew all the feathers off, and their swan's skins stripped off like a shirt. Then the maiden looked at them and recognized her brothers, was glad and crept forth from beneath the bed. The brothers were not less delighted to see their little sister, but their joy was of short duration. "Here canst thou not abide," they said to her. "This is a shelter for robbers, if they come home and find thee, they will kill thee." - "But can you not protect me?" asked the little sister. "No," they replied, "only for one quarter of an hour each evening can we lay aside our swan's skins and have during that time our human form; after that, we are once more turned into swans."
The times of sunrise and sunset have always been a particularly mystical time of change between day and night, neither this nor that, like a no man's land between two realms, a twilight and a time of spirits, which people used to like to spend with rituals, prayer and meditation. Even today, a sunrise or sunset can inspire us deeply, calm the thoughts, open the senses and expand consciousness. And so here in the body house, too, the senses and thoughts could easily take off their tight feather shirts and show their true nature, so that nature and spirit recognized each other with joy in their wholeness. But like in the last fairy tale of "Prince Swan", this house is also home to the greedy ego, which wants to take everything for itself and lives like a "robber" in the world. And at the end of the day, the hungry ego returns to the inwards of the body house, where it continues to search for nourishment in the form of thoughts, dreams and memories. Therefore, a holistic soul cannot stay here, because she would immediately be devoured and incorporated because the ego naturally wants its own or personal soul. The pure senses and thoughts could protect them from this, but their purity or truth only lasts for a brief moment in the twilight, because they have been embodied and must now serve the body with the ego mind in a narrowly limited space of consciousness, during the day in the external and at night in the internal dream world.
The little sister wept and said, "Can you not be set free?" - "Alas, no," they answered, "the conditions are too hard! For six years thou mayst neither speak nor laugh, and in that time, thou must sew together six little shirts of starflowers for us. And if one single word falls from thy lips, all thy work will be lost." And when the brothers had said this, the quarter of an hour was over, and they flew out of the window again as swans.
Now the question is how the senses and thoughts can be freed or redeemed from the restrictive shirts of their physicality? And when we read the conditions, we naturally first think of a long period of penance and asceticism, so that other versions of this fairy tale speak of shirts made of nettles that the girl had to spin, weave and sew as a path of suffering. This is a path that reminds us not only of the path of suffering of Christ, who was given the crown of thorns, but also of many other ascetics, hermits, recluses and monks who were able to overcome their physicality and regain healing as holiness, wholeness or divinity. And these tried and tested paths to salvation, which people have been following since ancient times, often included a long-standing vow of silence, as we can read, for example, in the ancient Indian Mahabharata 13.10:
The ways of virtue are extremely subtle and can hardly be understood by people with an impure soul. For this reason, the ascetics take a vow of silence and follow the paths of the generally respected order through the appropriate initiations without getting lost in words. For fear of saying something wrong or disastrous, the ascetics often refrain from speaking at all. For even righteous people, blessed with every virtue, truthfulness and simplicity, have been seen to accumulate great guilt due to words spoken unworthily.
But here the brothers are supposed to get shirts made of starflowers to break the witch's spell. And starflowers remind us less of pain and suffering, but more of a vibrant, bright variety of flowers in nature that fills the entire, unimaginably large realm of the stars with beauty and joy, more of the heavenly flowers of starlight than of our earthly plants made of stardust.
And "sewing together" reminds us of the wholeness of the senses and thoughts in a realm of pure love, which the active spirit needs to overcome every separation and thus also the egoistic physicality of mine and yours in a world of opposites. Just as the famous wreath or ring woven from daisies symbolizes the wholeness that we like to put on our heads. Goethe also spoke of a starflower in [Faust I] in order to announce Faustian love to Gretchen in the famous flower petal game “He loves me, loves me not, loves me…”: “Yes, child! and let this blossom-word for thee be speech divine! He loves thee!”
And until this divine or holistic view of the senses and thoughts is achieved again, it should not be spoken about, and especially not by the pure soul herself, because as soon as the ego mind takes hold of this work, "all work is lost". Because then the pure soul becomes a "concept" in the world of opposites and can no longer be truth and wholeness. We know all too well how fanatical and devastating people can become when they grasp the words of God with their ego mind and then believe: "I am the way, the truth and the life..." So, on this path it is not about understanding in the ego mind, but about a direct experience, awareness, knowledge and realization, a "self-knowledge" and "self-realization" so to speak, which is not done by the ego, but which happens "by itself" in the wholeness of spirit and nature.
And why not laugh for once? On the one hand, it is a time of mourning over the separation, so the pure soul should not give the impression of being really happy and glad about it. Who does not know those times of crisis when we feel sad and depressed deep down inside? On the other hand, this work requires the utmost seriousness, without being distracted by ridiculous things.
The process of redemption from witchcraft is said to take six long years. Similarly, there is also talk of cycles of seven years in which a person develops from an infant to a schoolchild, to a teenager, to an adult, etc., and pure reason should increasingly awaken. These years seem relatively long to us, but nature itself works in completely different dimensions here. These six years could even mean the entire six days of creation as described in the Bible. And during all this time, the pure soul of nature is determined to do her work.
The maiden, however, firmly resolved to deliver her brothers, even if it should cost her life. She left the hut, went into the midst of the forest, seated herself on a tree, and there passed the night. Next morning, she went out and gathered starflowers and began to sew. She could not speak to any one, and she had no inclination to laugh; she sat there and looked at nothing but her work.
So, the pure soul goes into all of nature, where she can be found everywhere, in the tree of life, so to speak, where she sits in complete silence and does her work with all seriousness and only looks at it. She has no desire to laugh, because she mourns the separation and will only be happy again when this time is over. With this, the pure soul of nature now strives full of love again for the wholeness of our senses and thought. Isn't that a wonderful and profound view of nature, how she works tirelessly on the inside on the work of our salvation, unrecognized by the outside world? Even if it often feels like nettle shirts, suffering is only one of her means, and not even the most decisive one: "Let this blossom-word for thee be speech divine! She loves thee!”
When she had already spent a long time there it came to pass that the King of the country was hunting in the forest, and his huntsmen came to the tree on which the maiden was sitting. They called to her and said, "Who art thou?" But she made no answer. "Come down to us," said they. "We will not do thee any harm." She only shook her head. As they pressed her further with questions she threw her golden necklace down to them, and thought to content them thus. They, however, did not cease, and then she threw her girdle down to them, and as this also was to no purpose, her garters, and by degrees everything that she had on that she could do without until she had nothing left but her shift. The huntsmen, however, did not let themselves be turned aside by that, but climbed the tree and fetched the maiden down and led her before the King.
Here the king comes into play again as an active spirit, without whom nature cannot work and accomplish her work. From a spiritual point of view, it is of course the same king or spirit as in the first part, who hunts again in the forest of the world and sends out his hunters. The hunters would then again be his five senses with the thoughts that have been bewitched and need redemption. And as a young prince, he is naturally looking for his queen or soul, so that "his hunters" are not satisfied with the external material forms of nature, but want to grasp and take hold of her "naked and living being" itself. Which is of course impossible, because if she had taken off her last shirt, then they would only have grasped into the void. Even so, we can only grasp and take hold of the soul of nature in external forms with our bewitched senses and thoughts, which then usually becomes "my wife" or "my soul" as physical and spiritual property, seized by the ego mind.
Here we find a wonderful symbolism that one can meditate on for a long time: the generative spirit cannot be satisfied with all the fruits that the tree of life gives, because they are only golden chains, belts and bands, until he has rediscovered, recognized and united with the pure soul of the giving birth nature.
The King asked, "Who art thou? What art thou doing on the tree?" But she did not answer. He put the question in every language that he knew, but she remained as mute as a fish. As she was so beautiful, the King's heart was touched, and he was smitten with a great love for her.
“One look at our true nature and we are in love.”
Here something very unusual happens. The spirit finds a soul that has no name, does not answer his questions and cannot even laugh. And yet he feels a great love for her that touches him deep in his heart. Of course, because she is his true nature, which is in truth always united with him and, as pure consciousness, can take on any form she wants. But she cannot answer him on the level of the mind because his senses and thoughts are still bewitched and the pure soul would thus lose her truth and purity. We feel the same way with our love for God. We do not know his name or his work in the tree of life, and for a long time we do not receive an answer to our questions. Only great love can connect us with him and give us trust in a spiritual world and eternal life.
He put his mantle on her, took her before him on his horse, and carried her to his castle. Then he caused her to be dressed in rich garments, and she shone in her beauty like bright daylight, but no word could be drawn from her. He placed her by his side at table, and her modest bearing and courtesy pleased him so much that he said, "She is the one whom I wish to marry, and no other woman in the world." And after some days he united himself to her.
Well, the active spirit "puts his mantle on her", his physical one, and lifts her up to his side again, as in the first part of this fairy tale, to ride on the horse of his physicality as king with his queen into his kingdom of the external world. Back then it was the selfish soul of the witch, of whom he knew where she came from. And she was also beautiful, but inside he had felt a "horror" and no great love for her. He had married her anyway because he wanted to regain his kingdom. This time it is the pure soul. But the worldly spirit is still dominated by the same selfishness that now symbolically meets us as the "evil mother of the king" and asks the same questions that our egoic mind would usually ask.
The King, however, had a wicked mother who was dissatisfied with this marriage and spoke ill of the young Queen. "Who knows," said she, "from whence the creature who can't speak, comes? She is not worthy of a king!" After a year had passed, when the Queen brought her first child into the world, the old woman took it away from her, and smeared her mouth with blood as she slept. Then she went to the King and accused the Queen of being a man-eater. The King would not believe it, and would not suffer any one to do her any injury. She, however, sat continually sewing at the shirts, and cared for nothing else. The next time, when she again bore a beautiful boy, the false step-mother used the same treachery, but the King could not bring himself to give credit to her words. He said, "She is too pious and good to do anything of that kind; if she were not dumb, and could defend herself, her innocence would come to light."
The evil stepmother became now an evil mother-in-law, who often stands as a symbol of selfish motherly love and sees her daughter-in-law as a competitor who wants to take away the son, she gave birth to and raised and now considers her property. Accordingly, she accuses her daughter-in-law of being a "cannibal" or "sorceress", which is what she actually is. But the great love between spirit and soul is still stronger and cannot be destroyed by external events in the world. Yes, such constant trust is rare, and in a similar way we also find it difficult to trust an eternally pure God who obviously allows so much suffering, loss and death in this world, kills and eats up his own creatures and ultimately even us. Do we sometimes ask ourselves who actually tells us such terrible stories about cruel nature? And why? Then perhaps we could also feel this great love for God and believe in his purity and innocence, which he will reveal to us one day. And until then, “the soul of his nature continually works toward our salvation and pays attention to nothing else.”
But when the old woman stole away the newly-born child for the third time, and accused the Queen, who did not utter one word of defence, the King could do no otherwise than deliver her over to justice, and she was sentenced to suffer death by fire.
This is how the famous test of fire finally comes, which we also got to know in the penultimate fairy tale of “The Drummer" on the glass mountain: Is it true love, or just the blind desire of an egotistical attachment that cannot and does not want to see the truth? How far does such pure and true love reach? Yes, this love can even overcome egoism, and the active spirit becomes ready to let go of all property and "deliver her over to justice". Similarly, “Prince Swan” also handed over the whole tangle of his life story to Mother Nature. For true love cannot have property of any form, just as pure consciousness knows no property, otherwise it would be desire that turns into hate as soon as the property is threatened. True love is therefore the power of pure forgiveness, which dissolves all contradictions of mine and yours, and at the same time it also receives everything back, for then there is only one soul, one nature and one spirit in one deity. And so, our enchanted senses and thoughts are cleansed and redeemed from every egoism of separation:
When the day came for the sentence to be executed, it was the last day of the six years during which she was not to speak or laugh, and she had delivered her dear brothers from the power of the enchantment. The six shirts were ready, only the left sleeve of the sixth was wanting. When, therefore, she was led to the stake, she laid the shirts on her arm, and when she stood on high and the fire was just going to be lighted, she looked around and six swans came flying through the air towards her. Then she saw that her deliverance was near, and her heart leapt with joy. The swans swept towards her and sank down so that she could throw the shirts over them, and as they were touched by them, their swan's skins fell off, and her brothers stood in their own bodily form before her, and were vigorous and handsome. The youngest only lacked his left arm, and had in the place of it a swan's wing on his shoulder.
Why do the senses and thoughts need new shirts? Why not just take off the old ones, like they did in the forest-hut during the brief period of twilight? Well, the path that leads into the forest also leads out again, what has been wound up must be unwound again, or as it was said in “The Drummer”: “As you have brewed, so you must drink.” So, the small and tight shirts made of the web of the greedy silkworm must be replaced now with the large and wide shirts made of the flowers of the stars, more with starlight than with stardust, in order to overcome the separation, to be released from the bond and to achieve wholeness or healing.
And where did the swans come from? Well, they were still the king's beloved senses and thoughts, which now returned from the external world "through the air" to the pure soul and were released from their narrow consciousness. Consciousness expanded again and the separation between spirit and nature could be overcome with the power of love, so that the king recognized the true nature of his queen.
And why was the youngest missing his left arm? It is said that the perfection of this world lies in its imperfection. As long as we live in this world, a small part of the animal body will always cling to us, especially to the intellectual mind, which is our youngest child, so to speak. But we can be conscious of it so that it cannot control us. Then everything is good and perfect, and the happy ending is near:
They embraced and kissed each other, and the Queen went to the King, who was greatly moved, and she began to speak and said, "Dearest husband, now I may speak and declare to thee that I am innocent, and falsely accused." And she told him of the treachery of the old woman who had taken away her three children and hidden them. Then to the great joy of the King they were brought thither, and as a punishment, the wicked step-mother was bound to the stake, and burnt to ashes. But the King and the Queen with their six brothers lived many years in happiness and peace.
When the senses and thoughts of the active or generative spirit are pure again, the pure soul of the birthing nature can reveal her innocence and pure love to him. And so, the sister gets her brothers back, the king his beloved queen, the pure spirit his true nature, and the united couple their children, so that they are now all one big whole again. And the false, evil or cruel mother nature burns with the ego mind as an illusion on the stake (in German: Scheiterhaufen, scheitern = to fail, Haufen = pile) in her own fire that she had intended for the pure soul. But the pure soul knows no failure and can never be burned, as was also described in “The Drummer" on the glass mountain. Only the bewitched physicality burns here on earth "to ashes", that is, to stardust, from which all our bodies are made, which is basically just pure energy and pure light or consciousness. What remains is a happy family that is conscious of its wholeness and can live in this earthly world for many long years in happiness and peace with a reasonable spirit.
We have now heard of three basic ways of dealing with the knot of our life story: 1) As an active mind, you can play with it, ride on it, let yourself be carried away by it and try to hold on to it. 2) You can also get completely entangled in it and allow yourself to be completely enclosed, bound and overwhelmed by it. 3) Or you can hand it over to nature to unwind it and free yourself from it by trusting in nature with the power of love. For the more the mind with the ego-mind hunts and grasps for the forms of nature in the forest of ideas and clings to the fruits of its personal actions, the more this knot is wound up and the further the active mind moves away from its true nature and also wraps its senses and thoughts ever more tightly and densely in this web. Therefore, the ego-mind is fundamentally incapable of unwinding this knot again. But because it is a soul bond of cause and effect, it must of course be unwound at some point and the narrowed consciousness expanded. And the pure soul of nature works tirelessly on this for our well-being and is only happy again when the great work is completed, as this fairy tale describes in such a wonderful way.
May we too find the pure soul of our true nature in the tree of life, which wears the clothes of the sun, moon and stars, has the golden tools of spinning wheel, spindle and reel for our life thread and gives birth to our beloved children, itself, the senses and thoughts. May we feel love for true nature again in the depths of our hearts, trust it and give it a chance to reveal its pure love and innocence!
How can we practically imagine how our senses can escape the tightly knitted shirt and expand? Therefor we would like to present a video on the subject of "seeing without eyes" and how easy it is for children to be able to see this external world without their physical eyes. And if you look into this subject more closely, it quickly becomes clear that our conceptual mind is the biggest obstacle, which vehemently claims: "That's not possible!" Of course, children have it much easier here. Otherwise, abilities such as "clairvoyance" have long been known, and Indian yogis also know of such "siddhis". But the fact that children can learn it so easily in practice is astonishing. And what does our "modern science" say about this? Of course, it is silent, because what cannot be according to its world view must not be, and is either forbidden or ignored... (The video has English subtitles.)
• ... Table of contents of all fairy tale interpretations ...
• The Robber Bridegroom - (topic: dead soul, spiritual murder)
• The Poor Boy in the Grave - (topic: Education, Ego, Fear and Reason)
• Simeli Mountain - (topic: material and spiritual world)
• 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)
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[1884] Grimm's Household Tales. Translated from the German and edited by Margaret Hunt. With an introduction by Andrew Lang, 1884, Vol. 1/2, London: George Bell and Sons |