The Magic Tinderbox

part one...

the text: Once upon a time . . . a brave soldier returned from the wars. In spite of his courage, his pockets were empty and his only possession was his sword. As he walked through a forest, he met a witch, who said to him: “I say, good soldier….”

kristo's interpretation: *and thus another tale is launched.... Once upon a time... (or Olim, for those of you who remember at least SOME high school latin) has a particular kind of meaning on its own...and there has been enough written about it so that you don't need my two cents added to the already considerable pile.

Hey...you’re already spending enough of your time sitting here allowing me to talk to you about my interpretation of something we all have a share in...which is NOT necessarily fairy tales. And what I mean instead is that thing which is pretty popular to talk about...but oh, so damned difficult to enter...the Present Moment. That space outside of geometric space, and time outside of linear time.

HERE is not just where you’re sitting, it’s really just the opposite of There. And NOW isn’t just whatever the clock says, it’s simply the opposite of Then. So, like the Taoist archetypal opposites called Yin and Yang...they really mean nothing in themselves...and yet everything. Absolutely everything...together.

The Present Moment, or HereNow is the Tao that can't be named...so I won’t go on any further with this...but fairy tales speak to us from that place and time that isn’t blah, blah, blah...so let me just call it the Tao.

Interestingly, Hans Christian Andersen, the 19th century Danish poet, in publishing his own version of the Tinderbox, didn’t make use of the words (once upon a time) at all. He just started right in with the tale. Why? Because he was a born story-teller who wasn’t afraid to put you in the Present Moment with just the force of his Presence. And so he launched each telling of his tales with everything he had..

Now I’ve chose to use the Grimm’s version for a number of reasons. One is that it’s shorter (and that means I have a fighting chance of finding the time to finish it), but another is that Marie-Louise von Franz once spoke of poor old Hans as having injected too much of his personal complex into his stories for her to be able to use them in her powerful interpretive work with fairy tales.

Now the differences between the versions are tiny, but numerous...and might make for an interesting way to evaluate my own complexes...but let’s get started with the tale itself....a brave soldier returned from the wars.

Think about it. Each dream and each fairy tale speaks to us of ourselves. Different aspects of ourselves, to be sure...but that's US in this story. So how are we all brave soldiers returned from the wars?

Probably too many ways to count, actually...but the idea of returned from the wars kinda sounds like the end of a typical modern work day...so it could mean the end of each day after work. After all, it takes bravery to wake up each day to all of the stuff that’s usually facing us.

It could also mean the end of life...(and in a way it does)...or even just the end of high school (which it also does) but first, let's go back to the very idea (and symbolism) of “wars.”

If we look at this from the Jungian perspective, a war is something that occurs when two opposites meet. Yes, that actually sounds more like the idea of attraction, but in opposition there really are two phases. War as a battle of two sides opposing each other is simply one of those two phases.

The western medieval alchemists used the symbol of the ouroboros to represent this. You can read an article I’ve written about this here. But basically it is the snake biting its own tail...i.e. the meeting of the opposite ends of its own self. One meets the enemy only to find....

So the fairy tale is referring back to a period of time during which the brave soldier wrestled with opposites. And if we wish to be literal about war we’re talking win / lose...which is the way we tend to handle (and often feel handled by) much of the difficult business of life. But fairy tales are always talking on a much different level than simply the literal.

The kind of battle fairy tales tend to speak of is the one in which the opposites are (as the alchemists would say) reconciled. And in modern language that doesn't mean the attraction phase...the hot phase of kiss and make-up. Nor does it mean a kind of cold / post-traumatic phase after each side cancels out the other (as in nuclear war or Pyrrhic victory.)

Instead, it means the win / win experience.

Now that sounds delightful. Something we’d all probably prefer (or maybe not). But this is a brave soldier. Coming up with win / win solutions to the problems of life takes plenty of hard work, but bravery? Why bravery? If it’s a matter of being brave in the face of the enemy...well that should take us back to win / lose, no? After all, being brave at the risk of losing your life means that there MUST be a loser...or loss...and where the hell is the win / win in war???

In any case, if courage is required (which is definitely the case...because the fairy tale says so), then it really does mean that we've got something to lose, right? Again, we're right back to win / lose, right?

(And it’s just a stupid kiddy / fairy tale anyway, right? So why waste any time at all with it, except maybe to put your kid to sleep at night?)

Well, the alchemists might have been said to be morons looking to find gold in crap. Simple charlatans just wasting their time trying to avoid doing any kind of hard work in life. Lazy dreamers applying nothing but impotent (and insanely) wishful thinking to solve one of the most difficult problems of life...i.e. making a living.

And guess what? In the very next line of the fairy tale we find out that In spite of his courage, his pockets were empty. Damn! Our hero was broke. And he really went to work / war and wrestled with real problems / enemies / opposites and he returned from it all without a nickel. Wow, what a loser!

Well...this story at least has an element of the idea of making a living to it...or perhaps the more unpleasant experience of failing to do so.

But what if the idea of win / win still applied? And what if win / win actually meant what the alchemists said it did...which included looking for gold out in the dungheap?

Don’t ever forget that in Jung’s reading of the alchemical texts he found that what the alchemists were actually speaking of, while using the weirdest, oddest, most ridiculous and unstable kind of (shall we say) alche-babble...was not gold or money, or maybe even a temporary buzz. It was Transformation. And not just any old kind of transformation.

It was the kind that can take the most useless (and unpleasant) sort of trash...and turn it into gold. Kinda like a good business.

Some texts and recipes called for the transformation of the heaviest, most turbid of metals...lead...into gold. And in some circles lead, as the metal of Saturn, was considered pretty much the symbolic equivalent of melancholy or depression.

And of course, gold...well, there’s nothing depressing about gold...except maybe the price for those who want to buy it. So maybe they were talking a bit more in the direction of happiness, and just happened to leave behind a useless (and dated) load of the medieval equivalent of self-help books.

But there’s another, more important kind of transformation.

More than money...more than mood, alchemy represented the complete transformation of the individual.

Call it what you will. Soul. Psyche. Character. Individual. Whatever.

It’s what we wake up to (and sleep into) each day and night. (And who the hell doesn't want some kind of transformation of THAT?) But in order to achieve what we so blithely (and naively) call transformation, we need to do battle with ourselves. And that’s where the win / lose comes in. And the bravery.

It may be gut-wrenching, but it doesn't take guts to lose anything (or anyone)...or to give something up. But to do so with grace does.

To get transformed. To reconcile the opposites...as the alchemists would have it...does.

To make win / win happen we've got to lose something...i.e. our ego. And maybe sometimes it’s called swallowing our pride...which is a pretty damned bitter pill...but that's how we lose the crap and find the gold.

It’s who / what we are when we’re actually IN the Present Moment. The HereNow.

And it’s the ego…that which we THINK we are but whom we are NOT…which the adepts would say is the thing to lose…or be lost.

So...I’m not claiming to have the secret of the alchemists. Nor am I claiming my own Transformation. But the fairy tale sure as hell has something to say about Transformation and the HereNow. And I won’t know what that is until I can spend the time working with it, so: more to come...in the future, of course....

The Magic Tinderbox...
part two
part three
part four
part five