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 an already considerable pile.
Hey...you’re already spending enough of your time sitting here letting 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 granola-sounding thingy which is pretty popular to talk about...but oh, so damned difficult to enter...
i.e. 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 (as Rajneesh would say) is the Tao that can't be named...so I won’t go on any further with this...
but fairytales speak to us from that very 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 without any cliches...
but with everything he had.
Now I’ve chose to use a version of the tale that’s different from Andersen’s 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 (i.e. neurosis) into his stories for her to be able to use them in her powerful interpretive work with fairy tales.
The differences between the versions are tiny, but numerous...and might make for an interesting way to evaluate my own, um, complexes...but let’s get started:
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.
(now you may not agree with this premise...but if we use it as a hypotheical starting point...let’s just see where it takes us...)
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...no?
So it could mean the end of each day after work.
After all, it takes bravery to wake up each day and march off to whatever your daily grind is.
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.”
Looked at from the Jungian perspective, a war is something that occurs when two opposites meet. Yes, you’re right...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.
That other phase...best known as “make-up sex” is actually gonna sneak its way into this fairytale...so you might just wanna keep on reading.
The western medieval alchemists used the symbol of the ouroboros to represent this concept of the battle of opposites.
I’ve written about this elsewhere...and I guess it’s time to post that information here on the website.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 references a period of time during which our 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 fairytales are always talking on a much different level than the literal.
The kind of battle fairytales 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...(don’t worry...we’ll get to the make-up sex)
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 must sound suspect...if you’re accustomed to life out on the streets (both Main and Wall).
But it’s something we’d all probably prefer...if we could actually get just a little taste of it once in awhile...
(Hell...we’ve got SUV’s, and football, and eBay to satisfy all of those primal in-your-face win / lose desires).
But this is a brave soldier.
Coming up with win / win solutions to the problems of life takes plenty of hard work.
But again you ask, bravery?
Why bravery?
If it’s a matter of being brave in the face of battle...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 fairytale says so), then it really does mean that we've got something to lose, right?
And again, we're right back to win / lose, right?
(And it’s just a stupid kiddie fairytale anyway, right? So why waste any time at all with it, except maybe to put your kid to sleep at night? Screw this fairy win-win bs.)
Well, the alchemists might have been said to be morons looking to find gold in crap...or bs...or any other “s” (exotic or mundane) you can think of.
Simple charlatans just wasting their time trying to avoid doing any kind of hard work in life.
Lazy dreamers (bums) applying nothing but impotent (and insanely) wishful thinking to solve one of the most difficult problems of life...i.e. making a living without killing yourself in the process.
And guess what?
In the very next line of the fairytale 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 damn nickel.
Wow, what a loser!
Well...this story sure includes the idea of making a living...although actually, it’s the more frightening and 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 includes looking for gold out in the dungheap?
(Just where the hell are you going with this, kristo?)
Don’t ever forget that in Jung’s reading of alchemical texts he found that what these 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.
(in the dung heap? c'mon man)
It was Transformation.
And not just any old kind of transformation.
It was the kind that can take the most useless, filthy, and unpleasant sort of trash...and turn it into gold.
Kinda like any good, super profitable business.
(Huh?)
Many texts and recipes called for the transformation of the heaviest, most turbid of metals...i.e. 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 (depending on which side of the cash register you stand).
So maybe they were actually talking (metaphorically) about happiness, and just happened to leave behind a pretty dated load of the medieval equivalent of self-help books.
But there’s another, more important kind of transformation.
More than money...and 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?
(at least the alarm clock end of it...)
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 / win 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.
(And that’s one helluva big chunk of the definition of transformation.)
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. win / lose at any cost...
otherwise known as 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.
Because hanging on to ego is pretty much pure crap.
Ego doesn’t ever get transformed.
But it can get lost.
And if it does...
well...
that’s who / what we really are.
And when it does...
well...
we’re actually IN the Present Moment.
The HereNow.
Something alot like what they call Flow.
And so it’s the ego “that which we THINK we are but whom we are NOT” as the adepts would say, is the thing to lose...or be lost.
And THAT is the true alchemical paradox of losing being winning.
So...I’m not claiming to have the secret of the alchemists.
Nor am I claiming my own Transformation.
But this fairytale sure as hell has something to say about Transformation, the HereNow and the male ego.
And I won’t know for sure what that something is until I can spend enough time working with it, so: more to come...
in the future, of course....
It’s now december 2009, and nearly 3 years since I wrote these first 5 installments...
and I’ve since done a thorough job of interpreting this fairytale (and 3 others), in my jungian lecture series in Chicago.
The only problem is...none of it was written down or recorded...
This winter (january 2010) I’ll be taking a semester off from my usual teaching gig to complete this jungian interpretation of the Tinderbox in writing.
And as my written project progresses I expect to publish the updates here...
Now as much as I love doing this, it’s time consuming and expensive for me to just sit down and write...
So please, if you find my work to be of personal benefit to you, consider making a small donation to help support kristo’s Fairy Tale Project.
I’m grateful for any sum you care to donate...
And if this current writing project proves successful, I can immediately proceed to bring you my interpretation of more fairytales
I guarantee that if you like what I’ve written so far...you’re going to love what happens in the rest of the story...
Thank you
kristo
continue reading The Magic Tinderbox...
part two
part three
part four
part five
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