Fairy Tales are valid classical myth and help self discovery

[Cindy B.]

Once upon a time I stumbled across this and found it interesting. Make sure that your speakers are turned up.

Rotkäppchen (Little Red Riding Hood)

[nandu]

For starters, that little girl on the cover very much resembles me when I was young...

Cindy! You must have been adorable!

Nandu.

[nandu]

Cindy,

You don't have to tell me about childhood fears! There was this poster of hell which it used to be a fashion to hang in drawing rooms during my childhood, showing all those grinning demons cutting, goring and burning those poor damned souls who looked like naked children in those drawings. Nightmares about this poster followed me into my teens, and the funny thing was that I could not remember where I was getting these images of grinning fiends from. So your dream about those wolves brought out the goosebumps again.

You really have to see "The Company of Wolves" if you haven't, Cindy.

Nandu.

[nandu]

The poet is Lois Beebe Hayna. Her poem is on Little Red Riding Hood. You can download it online if you have a PC. It won't download for me.

She is a wonderful woman, I think in her nineties, she couldn't believe that we were honoring her poetry and her wonderful self.

Jan

Terrific poem. Absolutely chilling.

Nandu.

[Cindy B.]

You really have to see "The Company of Wolves" if you haven't, Cindy.

I don't know, Nandu. I was uncomfortable just now reading about the movie online. Part of me, though, says that maybe I should watch it as means to further deal with those lingering unconscious factors that I still project onto wolves and big dogs. At the same time, I've yet to recover from reading the book and watching the movie Cujo back in the 80s. Other shadow figures in books and movies don't affect me in the same way, though, whether natural or supernatural, male or female, and what attracts me in these cases is the personal psychology that seemingly underlies such characters in a given story and what led them to become the way they are.

How about you? Was there a particular fairy tale character that most scared you when you were young?

[nandu]

Was there a particular fairy tale character that most scared you when you were young?

Well, not exactly a fairy tale "character" (from a story), but a supernatural entity that spans many stories. I've written about her on the MythNow blog - The Yakshi.

The Yakshi takes on the disguise of a beautiful young woman to entice men into her lair (invariably atop a palm tree), which looks like a palace to the bewitched person. As soon as darkness sets in, the Yakshi resumes her terrifying aspect (eyes like burning coals, wild flying hair, a bloody tongue hanging out and large tusks) and chomps down the poor guy. The way to escape from her is usually by invoking the Goddess Durga or Kali (sometimes more frightening than the Yakshi, with her garland of human heads and cummerbund of severed limbs).

Even now, sex, pain and death are somehow linked in my mind... maybe some childhood trauma which I have forgotten.

My younger sister also has the same fears, but in her case they are more intense and disturbing and take on more graphic forms in her paintings (she is an artist of some renown in Kerala). There was one movie which frightened the dickens out of her as a girl, A Nightmare on Elm Street, which gave her many sleepless nights as she waited for Freddy Kruger to appear. Recently, she saw the movie as a grownup, and told me it had resolved many loose ends in her art. It proved to be cathartic.

The same thing may happen if you watch The Company of Wolves, but then again, it may not. If you are not sure, better not take that chance.

Nandu.

[Clemsy]

We're doing this wonderful story in my senior classes right now. If you don't know it it's very cool. Rich mythic imagery, reversed atonement with the father....

THE LANGUAGE OF THE BIRDS




(I sneaked in here, Clemsy, and fixed your link. Cindy )

[Cindy B.]

Was there a particular fairy tale character that most scared you when you were young?

Well, not exactly a fairy tale "character" (from a story), but a supernatural entity that spans many stories. I've written about her on the MythNow blog - The Yakshi.

The Yakshi takes on the disguise of a beautiful young woman to entice men into her lair (invariably atop a palm tree), which looks like a palace to the bewitched person. As soon as darkness sets in, the Yakshi resumes her terrifying aspect (eyes like burning coals, wild flying hair, a bloody tongue hanging out and large tusks) and chomps down the poor guy. The way to escape from her is usually by invoking the Goddess Durga or Kali (sometimes more frightening than the Yakshi, with her garland of human heads and cummerbund of severed limbs).

Even now, sex, pain and death are somehow linked in my mind... maybe some childhood trauma which I have forgotten.

A charming character, Nandu, Yakshi. I checked her out here: http://enchantingkerala.org/kerala-vill ... alabar.php

This page might interest you regarding feminine archetypes. Scroll down to "Two Characters of The Feminine (Elementary And Transformative)."


And folks, here's the link to Nandu's Blog entry, The Myth and the Land.

My younger sister also has the same fears, but in her case they are more intense and disturbing and take on more graphic forms in her paintings (she is an artist of some renown in Kerala). There was one movie which frightened the dickens out of her as a girl, A Nightmare on Elm Street, which gave her many sleepless nights as she waited for Freddy Kruger to appear. Recently, she saw the movie as a grownup, and told me it had resolved many loose ends in her art. It proved to be cathartic.

The same thing may happen if you watch The Company of Wolves, but then again, it may not. If you are not sure, better not take that chance.

About the movie, Nandu, since yesterday I have been considering it. Right now I'm still mulling over two things, that it might give me bad dreams and that I prefer my movie experience to be entertaining not tormenting. I'm exaggerating here, of course, but as with those wolves and large dogs, I'm still holding on to my cautious avoidance.

[nandu]

This page might interest you regarding feminine archetypes. Scroll down to "Two Characters of The Feminine (Elementary And Transformative)."

Interesting. If we apply it to the Yakshi myth, she is the negative transformative archetype, an example of the vagina dentata: the male, helpless before her, has to be rescued by the negative elementary archetype of the Goddess in her "terrible mother" guise. The Goddess, of course, can move across the diagonal into her nurturing role any time.

Nandu.

[nandu]

We're doing this wonderful story in my senior classes right now. If you don't know it it's very cool. Rich mythic imagery, reversed atonement with the father....

THE LANGUAGE OF THE BIRDS

Nice story, Clemsy. I have seen it as a common theme in fairy tales where the parents have to atone with the children.

BTW, do you notice how the prophecy of the nightingale is self-fulfilling? If the merchant had not heard it, and abandoned Ivan, the story would not have happened!

Nandu.

[nandu]

A song about a Yakshi and her prey, from the 1972 Malayalam movie Gandharva Kshetram (Temple of the Gandharvan), a forgotten masterpiece on the myth and the sexuality of Kerala girls. It shows a girl growing up with her grandmother, in a dark mansion full of traditional terrors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uts8w1iQfHw

The following is my own inexpert translation of the song:

The Yakshi temple was closed...
It was the day of Durgaashtami (a festival day of the Goddess Durga)

In the forest, where the wind ruffled the hair of palm trees,
In front of the priest, walking home alone with a small lamp,
A girl stood, coyly requesting a bit of lime to put on her betel leaves.

The girl had a golden waistband, and her body was a blushing pink;
She smelled of the Champaka flowers; and
Below her navel, she wore only a thin, diaphanous garment...

In the forest, where the birds fluttered their wings against the wind,
His body covered in goosebumps, the poor priest
Gave the lime from his hoard, and stood there smiling, expecting something...

Growing into the Yakshi of the fairy tale, the girl
Flew with him up into the sky...
...And below the palm tree, next day,
There was a heap of bones and hair...

It is impossible to convey how this song frightened me as a boy of nine... Brrr!!!

Nandu.

[nandu]

As a child, I used to buy a lot of Russian fairy tale collections because they were easily available (because of India's friendship with the Soviet Union) and damn cheap. Here's one fascinating character who made an impression on me.

Baba Yaga

Nandu.

[Cindy B.]

Cool, Nandu. I had this one pegged to share, too, since it's the closest European tale (with subsequent migration to the US) that I, anyway, could think of as obviously imbued with Yakshi elements. The main difference here, of course, is that a heroine is central to the story. Here's the tale as I'm familiar with it: Baba Yaga. Marie-Louie von Franz explored this tale from the Jungian perspective for any interested.


Also, I've given some thought to the archetypal terrible mother and the vagina dentata in relation to fairy tale heroines and came away with this, for example: Prunella. The point, of course, is the difference in the archetype's expression in masculine and feminine psyches; i.e., a female must differentiate herself from mother then individuate to the point that she can again relate to mother at a more more mature level.

[nandu]

Cindy,

Baba Yaga is present in many fairy tales. She is killed in one (the tale of Teryosha) but mostly appears as a helper, albeit a fearsome one.

More later, when I have time...

Nandu.

[Clemsy]

We're doing this wonderful story in my senior classes right now. If you don't know it it's very cool. Rich mythic imagery, reversed atonement with the father....

THE LANGUAGE OF THE BIRDS

Nice story, Clemsy. I have seen it as a common theme in fairy tales where the parents have to atone with the children.

BTW, do you notice how the prophecy of the nightingale is self-fulfilling? If the merchant had not heard it, and abandoned Ivan, the story would not have happened!

Nandu.

That's why I love this story, Nandu! The mythic elements are wonderful. I asked my classes what myth does this story remind them of and they all went right to Perseus. How many great stories start with a prophecy that the father figure (king) makes sure comes true by trying to avoid it?