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The poor Girl and the Star-Money
Tale of the Brothers Grimm translated by M. Hunt [1884]
Interpretation by Undine & Jens in green [2024]
There was once on a time a little girl whose father and mother were dead, and she was so poor that she no longer had any little room to live in, or bed to sleep in, and at last she had nothing else but the clothes she was wearing and a little bit of bread in her hand which some charitable soul had given her. She was, however, good and pious. And as she was thus forsaken by all the world, she went forth into the open country, trusting in the good God. Then a poor man met her, who said, "Ah, give me something to eat, I am so hungry!" She reached him the whole of her piece of bread, and said, "May God bless it to thy use," and went onwards. Then came a child who moaned and said, "My head is so cold, give me something to cover it with." So, she took off her hood and gave it to him; and when she had walked a little farther, she met another child who had no jacket and was frozen with cold. Then she gave it her own; and a little farther on one begged for a frock, and she gave away that also. At length she got into a forest and it had already become dark, and there came yet another child, and asked for a little shirt, and the good little girl thought to herself, "It is a dark night and no one sees thee, thou canst very well give thy little shirt away," and took it off, and gave away that also. And as she so stood, and had not one single thing left, suddenly some stars from heaven fell down, and they were nothing else but hard smooth pieces of money, and although she had just given her little shirt away, she had a new one which was of the very finest linen. Then she gathered together the money into this, and was rich all the days of her life.
Now that we have thought a lot about our soul and the realm of the stars in the last three fairy tales, we cannot miss this beautiful fairy tale, which may be very short, but can touch us deep in our hearts. Modern science now knows that our earth, our bodies and ultimately all our money are made of "stardust", because this seemingly solid matter was, so to speak, hatched by nuclear fusion in the stars. But we do not want to look so much at the stardust here, but rather at the "starlight" of consciousness, and try to interpret this fairy tale from a spiritual perspective and explore the deeper symbolism. Be brave!
There was once on a time a little girl whose father and mother were dead, and she was so poor that she no longer had any little room to live in, or bed to sleep in, and at last she had nothing else but the clothes she was wearing and a little bit of bread in her hand which some compassionate soul had given her.
The “girl” as a pure virgin reminds us again of the pure soul of nature, which in truth has no parents at all, because it is itself the origin. Only in this world of “reality” in time and space, where the pure soul can take on many different forms, can we speak of father and mother, namely in relation to the soul bonds of cause and effect. The fact that these parents had “died” indicates a separation, because death is nothing other than separation. And what can the pure soul be separated from? Actually, only from the holistic spirit, and then only in relation to an illusion or a dream of property and thus of one’s own physicality.
This makes us see many separate souls, each incarnated differently, each with a “little room, bed and clothes on the body” and feeding on physical food that is given externally to the hungry body out of “compassion”. If the pure soul of nature were holistically united with a pure spirit, then we could speak of a suffering-free and pure consciousness that knows no separation, does not cling to any form and is thus completely free to take on any form.
The fact that our consciousness (or conscience) is the reason for all creation is meanwhile not even so far-fetched from a scientific point of view, when the quantum physicist and Nobel Prize winner Anton Zeilinger says: “Information is the primary substance of the universe.” The Bible says something similar: “In the beginning was the word...” And conscience as “with-science” means nothing other than moving knowledge that interacts with one another in being. But how can pure consciousness take on a form and even become solid matter? Well, simply and briefly, this happens by “holding on” to knowledge or information, i.e., by owning it in time and space, when the two components of “con-science” become a “two-component adhesive,” so to speak. Anyone who studies the physics of light will find something similar. Because light itself is free from time and space, and only through observation it is bound and given speed and mass. And what does an observer do? Sure, of course he grasps and holds on to information or knowledge.
People have long been asking themselves where they actually come from and what they are? And with that, the question has always been what people would be if they lost everything they had in this world and wanted to hold on to? And that is what this fairy tale is about.
Now, in a world that is so materially rich, where we live in abundance and yet are never satisfied, it is already very difficult to speak of material poverty, and even more difficult to speak of spiritual poverty. We would therefore like to let a famous old master have his say, namely Meister (Master) Eckhart in his extremely profound sermon No. 32 on “poverty in spirit”, which was written over 700 years ago:
Blessedness opened its mouth of wisdom and said: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. 5.3)” All angels and all saints and everything that has ever been born must be silent when this eternal wisdom of the Father speaks; for all the wisdom of the angels and of all creatures is pure nothingness before the groundless wisdom of God. This wisdom has said that the poor are blessed.
Now there are two kinds of poverty. The first is an external poverty, and this is good and very praiseworthy in the person who willingly accepts it out of love for our Lord Jesus Christ, because he himself had it on earth. I will not speak any further about this poverty. However, there is another poverty, an internal poverty, which is to be understood by the words of our Lord when he says: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”
Now I ask you to be likewise (poor), so that you can understand this saying; for I say to you by the eternal truth: If you do not resemble this truth, of which we now want to speak, you cannot understand me.
She was, however, good and pious. And as she was thus forsaken by all the world, she went forth into the open country, trusting in the good God. Then a poor man met her, who said, “Ah, give me something to eat, I am so hungry!” She reached him the whole of her piece of bread, and said, “May God bless it to thy use,” and went onwards.
We first read about the qualities that a soul needs again when it has fallen into separation and has been “abandoned by the whole world”, that is, the holistic spirit. With these qualities of “good and pious in trust in the good God”, it first goes “out into the field”, that is, into the human world, where we look for and produce our food. Here is our will, with which we feed ourselves: either our own egoistic will to hold on to and accumulate property, or a holistic or divine will to serve the whole or God. On this path of devotion to spiritual poverty, one should first give up one’s own ego food. And the “poor man” reminds us of God himself as the father of creation, who is already perfect poverty because he does not want to hold on to anything in his great creation as property, that is, he is pure consciousness that does not cling to any form but can take on any form. And he asks the same devotion from us, or from his son.
Meister Eckhart also continues:
Some people have asked me what poverty in itself and what a poor person is. We want to answer that. Bishop Albrecht says that this is a poor person who is not satisfied with all the things that God has ever created, and that is well said. But we say it better and take poverty in an (even) higher sense: This is a poor person who wants nothing and knows nothing and has nothing. I want to speak of these three points, and I ask you for the love of God that you understand this truth if you can. But if you do not understand it, do not worry about it, because I want to speak of a truth that only a few good people will understand.
Firstly, we say that a poor person is someone who wants nothing. Some people do not understand this meaning correctly: These are those people who, through penance and external exercise, cling to their selfish ego, which these people consider to be great. God have mercy on such people that they know so little of the divine truth! These people are called holy because of their outward appearance, but inside they are donkeys, because they do not understand the real meaning of divine truth. These people do indeed say that this is a poor person who wants nothing. But they interpret this as meaning that a person must live in such a way that he never fulfils his (own) will in anything, that he (rather) should strive to fulfil the most beloved will of God. These people are doing well, because their opinion is good; therefore, we want to praise them.
May God in his mercy grant them the kingdom of heaven. But I say by the divine truth that these people are not (really) poor people, nor do they resemble poor people. They are considered great in the eyes (only) of people who know nothing better. But I say that they are donkeys who understand nothing of divine truth. Because of their good intentions they may attain the kingdom of heaven, but they know nothing of the poverty that I now want to speak of.
If someone asked me what it is, a poor person who wants nothing, I would answer and say: As long as a person still has this in him, that it is his will to fulfil God’s most beloved will, such a person does not have the poverty that we want to speak of. For this person (still) has a will with which he wants to satisfy God’s will, and that is not true poverty. For if man is to be truly poor, he must be as free of his created will as he was when he did not yet exist. For I say to you by the eternal truth: As long as you have the will to fulfil the will of God and have a desire for eternity and for God, you are not really poor. For only that person is poor who wants nothing and desires nothing.
When I was still in my first cause, I had no God, and I was the cause of myself. I wanted nothing, I desired nothing, for I was a free being and a knower of myself in the enjoyment of truth. Then I wanted myself and wanted nothing else: what I wanted, I was, and what I was, I wanted. And here I stood free of God and of all things. But when I went out of my own free will and received my created being, then I had a God; for before the creatures were, God was not yet “God”: rather, he was what he was. When the creatures came into being and received their created being, God was not God in himself, but he was God in the creatures.
Now we say that God, insofar as he is (only) “God,” is not the highest goal of the creature. For even the lowest creature has such a high rank of being in God. And if it were the case that a fly had reason and could seek by reason the eternal abyss of divine existence from which it came, we would say that God, with all that he is as “God,” could not (even) create fulfilment and satisfaction for this fly. Therefore, we ask God that we may be rid of “God” and that we may grasp and enjoy the truth there and forever, where the highest angels and the fly and the soul are equal, there where I stood and wanted, what I was, and was, what I wanted. So, then we say: If man is to be poor in will, he must want and desire as little as he wanted and desired when he was not (yet). And in this way the man who wants nothing is poor.
Then came a child who moaned and said, “My head is so cold, give me something to cover it with.” So, she took off her hood and gave it to him; and when she had walked a little farther, she met another child who had no jacket and was frozen with cold. Then she gave it her own; and a little farther on one begged for a frock, and she gave away that also.
Here we read of three external garments of the soul, which, from a spiritual point of view, remind us of conceptual knowledge with all the many ideas with which we wrap ourselves and ultimately wall ourselves in and embody ourselves. Regarding the three garments of above, middle and below, one could think of our knowledge of heaven, earth and hell, so to speak between pure light and mere darkness when the girl is standing, and of our knowledge of the past, present and future when she is lying down. This may be far-fetched, but it leads us to the symbolic cross of the conceptual mind in space and time, to which we want to nail holistic reason, as we know from the crucifixion of Christ consciousness. From this point of view, the three freezing children can remind us of the Holy Spirit, who makes every trinity into one and asks for our devotion, as warmth of compassion, fire of purification and light of love that heals and unites everything. And this brings us to one component of “conscience”, knowledge or information.
Meister Eckhart continues:
Secondly, he is a poor person who knows nothing. We have previously said that people should live in such a way that they live neither for themselves nor for the truth nor for God. But now we say it differently and want to go further: The person who is to have this poverty must live in such a way that he does not (even) know that he is living neither for himself nor for the truth nor for God. Rather, he must be so devoid of all knowledge that he does not know, nor recognize, nor feel that God lives in him - more than that: he should be devoid of all knowledge that lives in him. For when man (still) stood in the eternal being of God, nothing else lived in him: what lived there was himself. So, we say that people should be as devoid of their own knowledge as they did when they (still) did not exist, and they let God do what he wills, and people will stand free.
Everything that has ever come from God is based on pure action. But the action intended for man is love and knowledge. Now it is a controversial question as to where bliss lies primarily. Some masters have said that it lies in love, others say that it lies in knowledge and love, and they are more accurate. But we say that it lies neither in knowledge nor in love. Rather, there is something in the soul from which knowledge and love arise. It does not know and love itself as the powers of the soul do. Whoever gets to know this (something) knows where bliss lies. It has neither before nor after, and it waits for nothing to come, for it can neither win nor lose. Therefore, it is also deprived of the knowledge that God is working in it. Rather, it is itself the same thing that enjoys itself in the way that God does.
So free and empty, I say, should man be, that he neither knows nor recognizes that God is working in him, and so man can possess poverty.
The masters say that God is a being and a reasonable being and knows all things. But I say: God is neither being nor reasonable being, nor does he know this or that. Therefore, God is free of all things - and (precisely) for this reason he is all things. Now whoever is to be poor in spirit must be poor in all his own knowledge, so that he knows nothing, neither of God nor of creatures nor of himself. Therefore, it is necessary that man desires to know nothing or recognizes nothing of the works of God. In this way man can be poor in his own knowledge.
At length she got into a forest and it had already become dark, and there came yet another child, and asked for a little shirt, and the good little girl thought to herself, “It is a dark night and no one sees thee, thou canst very well give thy little shirt away,” and took it off, and gave away that also.
In his following sermon No. 33, Meister Eckhart speaks on this subject:
The soul that is to love God and to whom he is to communicate must be so completely stripped of temporality and of all tastes of creatures that God can taste his own taste in it. The Scripture says: “At midnight, when all things were silent, your word came down, Lord, from the royal thrones. (Wisdom 18.14)” That is: in the night, when no creature shines or peeps into the soul, and in silence, when nothing speaks into the soul, the word is spoken into reason. The word belongs to reason and is called verbum (active word), just as it is and stands in reason.
I am often shocked when I have to speak of God at how completely isolated the soul must be that wants to achieve that unification. But that should not seem impossible to anyone. It is not impossible for the soul that possesses God’s grace. Nothing has ever been easier for any man than to leave all things to the soul that possesses God’s grace…
So, we can now read in our fairy tale how the soul leaves the “country” or realm of conceptual, rational people and the external light of the world fades, so that the soul can no longer be seen in external form. And here we are dealing with the undershirt, the “last shirt” of existence. Accordingly, when we think of “another child who came,” we could think of the Christ child as the son of God or the word of God, the Christ consciousness or pure conscience itself, to which we can devote our entire existence. And this is ultimately about the last component of “being conscious,” being itself, so that the soul no longer has anything of its own, not even a quality. That would be complete devotion or true forgiveness in the holistic sense. In other words, giving without losing, because then it means: what I give or forgive, I give to myself.
Meister Eckhart continues to speak about “poverty in spirit” in his sermon no. 32:
Thirdly, this is a poor person who has nothing. Many people have said that it is perfection to have nothing of the material things of the earth (anymore), and that is certainly true in the sense that someone does it intentionally. But that is not the sense I mean. I said earlier that this is a poor person who does not (even) want to fulfil the will of God, but rather lives in such a way that he is as free of his own will and the will of God as he was when he was not (yet). We say of this poverty that it is the greatest poverty. - Secondly, we said that this is a poor man who (himself) knows nothing of the work of God within himself. If someone is so free of knowledge and recognition, then that is the purest poverty. - But the third poverty, of which I now want to speak, is the most extreme: it is that man has nothing.
Now pay close attention here! I have often said it, and great masters say it too: Man should be so free of all things and all works, both internal and external, that he can be a place of God’s own, in which God can work. But now we say it differently. If it is the case that man is free of all things, of all creatures and of himself and of God, but is still in a position where God finds a place to work in him, then we say: As long as this still exists in man, man is not yet poor in the truest poverty. For God does not strive for his work that man has a place within himself in which God can work; rather, it is poverty in spirit when man is so free of God and all his works that God, if he wants to work in the soul, is himself the place in which he wants to work - and he would certainly be happy to do this. For if God found man so poor, God works his own work and man bears God in himself, and God is a proper place for his works; man (but) is a pure bearer of God in his (=God’s) works in view of the fact that God is one who works in himself. Here, in this poverty, man regains the eternal being that he was and that he now is and that he will remain forever.
There is a saying of Saint Paul in which he says: “All that I am, I am by the grace of God” (1 Cor. 15:10). But this (my) saying seems to be above grace and above being and above knowledge and will and all desire. How then can Saint Paul’s saying be true? To this we should answer: that Saint Paul’s sayings are true. It was necessary that grace was in him, for the grace of God brought about in him that “coincidence” was perfected into essentiality. When grace ended and had completed its work, Paul remained what he was.
So, we say that man must be so poor that he is neither a place nor has a place in which God can work. Where man (still) retains a place (within himself), he still retains distinction. Therefore, I ask God to free me from God; for my essential being is above God, insofar as we understand God as the beginning of creatures. In that being of God, where God is above all being and above all distinction, there I was myself, there I willed myself and recognized myself (willing) to create this man (=me). And therefore, I am the cause of myself according to my being, which is eternal, but not according to my becoming, which is temporal. And therefore, I am unborn, and according to the nature of my unbornness I can never die. According to the nature of my unbornness I have been eternal and am now and will remain eternally. What I am according to my birth will die and come to nothing, for it is mortal; therefore, it must perish in time. In my (eternal) birth all things were born, and I was the cause of myself and of all things; and if I had willed, neither I nor all things would be. But were I not, then “God” would not be either: I am the cause of God being “God”. Were I not, then God would not be “God”. There is no need to know this.
A great master says that his breaking through is nobler than his flowing out, and that is true. When I flowed out of God, all things said: “God is.” But this cannot make me blessed, for in this I recognize myself as a creature. But in the breaking through, where I am free of my own will and the will of God and all his works and God himself, I am above all creatures and neither “God” nor creature, but rather I am what I was and what I will remain now and forever. There I receive a rise that is to take me above all angels. In this rise I receive such great wealth that God cannot be enough for me with all that he is as “God” and with all his divine works. For in this breaking through I am granted that I and God are one. There I am what I was, and there I neither decrease nor increase, for there I am an immovable cause that moves all things. Here God finds no place in man, for man attains with this poverty what he has always been and will always remain. Here God is one with the spirit, and this is the truest poverty that can be found.
And as she so stood, and had not one single thing left, suddenly some stars from heaven fell down, and they were nothing else but hard smooth pieces of money, and although she had just given her little shirt away, she had a new one which was of the very finest linen. Then she gathered together the money into this, and was rich all the days of her life.
Here, the pure soul of nature finds its pure spirit again, overcomes every separation and becomes the entire and unimaginably large kingdom of the stars, which now “fall” to the soul from the sky and give it a new, holistic body of the “finest”, so to speak the shirt of the entire universe with all its riches, because in the whole there is no losing, no mine and yours and therefore no death. And not just as stardust, but above all as starlight, as a pure consciousness that can take on any form.
A similar view of the cosmic unity as a living being in a holistic mind can be found, for example, in the famous Bhagavat-Gita in the ancient Indian Mahabharata, Book 6, Chapter 35, where it says:
With these words, O monarch, Hari, the mighty Lord of Yoga power, revealed to the son of Pritha his divine sovereign form with many mouths and eyes, with countless wonderful faces, with many celestial ornaments and raised celestial weapons, with celestial garlands and robes, with celestial-scented ointments, full of all kinds of wonders, radiant, infinite, and with eyes directed in all directions. If a thousand suns appeared in the sky at the same time, then perhaps that glory would be similar to the splendour of that mighty appearance. Thus, the son of Pandu saw the entire universe, with all the diverse forms united in the body of the deity.
This is how far consciousness can expand when it frees itself through devotion from the limitations that arise from clinging to and being attached to external forms. When we read of “hard pieces of money” we should not think so much of coins that fall from the sky as a blessing and are supposed to solve all our problems. Although this may be a useful idea for children at times, adults should develop more reason and be able to see further. We are thinking more of the pure gold of the famous “philosopher’s stone” that we can find on this path, an imperishable wisdom of a holistic reason, the eternal word of God and an imperishable consciousness that we can really rely on and that contains all the wealth for the whole “day of life” as long as there is conscious life. Or as Meister Eckhart said above: “Such great wealth that God cannot be enough for me with all that he is as (conceptual) ‘God’ and with all his divine works.” Pure devotion and poverty are therefore not a question of conceptual understanding, but of direct experience. Our fairy tale closes now the circle to “The Drummer”, where we began with three similar tasks on the Glass Mountain.
And Meister Eckhart ends his sermon with the words that we can only confirm:
Whoever does not understand this speech should not trouble his heart with it. For as long as man does not resemble this truth, he will not understand this speech. For it is an undisguised truth that has come directly from the heart of God.
May God help us to live so (truthfully) that we experience it forever. Amen.
• ... Table of contents of all fairy tale interpretations ...
• 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)
• The poor Girl and the Star-Money (topic: poverty in spirit)
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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 |