Thursday, May 03, 2007

RUMPELSTILTSKIN: CODED Goddess MESSAGE?

My friend Jan put me on to something: She thinks the fairytale Rumpelstiltskin is another coded message from our Great-Goddess ancestors. Although these ancestors were forced on pain of death (or worse) to give up the Mother for the Daddy, they tried to hide messages in fairy tales for us about the Goddess -- so someday we could resurrect Her. But what is the message of Rumpelstiltskin?

In a nutshell, Rumpelstiltskin is about a dwarf who spins straw into gold for a maiden to meet the demands of the king. He spins, though, on condition that she give him her first child or else guess his name. She discovers his name, and he destroys himself in a fit of rage by stomping his right foot into the Earth so hard that his entire leg is drawn into the Earth. He then grabs his left leg, and pulls so hard that he “tore himself in two” (from The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Pantheon Books).

I think the Earth here is the Great Goddess, and the maiden Her daughter. Her baby is us, the human race. And I think ol’ Rumpel is none other than the Daddy God himself, Mr. Jehovah (or, actually, ‘JHVH’).

So what is the message?

I’m not sure.

Is it “Just wait long enough and Daddy’s rages will finally destroy him”?

Or could it be “Just keep seeking info about Daddy and you’ll eventually break him”?

Or could it be this: “The Daddy’s not a god, he’s just a name. He keeps his name secret ‘cause if you’d discover it, you’d see he’s nothing but a big bagga wind.” (Daddy God’s name is really a big, fat secret. All you’ll find in the original Old Testament texts are the consonants “YHWH” or “JHVH,” which stands for the “incommunicable name of God.” For more on this, go HERE).

TWO POINTS:

1. When the maiden/queen snoops around, she finds Rumpel’s house near “A high mountain” at “The end of the forest” … “Where the fox and the hare bid each other goodnight” (symbolic of peace, as Jan pointed out). Also all symbolic of Goddess.

2. Transformation is everywhere in this little tale. The maiden is the daughter of a miller – who transforms grain into meal. Rumple transforms straw into gold, and later grain/yeast into bread and beer: When the maiden’s messenger finds him, Rumpel is “Hopping on one leg” around a fire and singing:

“To-day I bake, to-morrow I brew,
The next I’ll have the young Queen’s child.
Ha! Glad am I that no one knew
That Rumpelstiltskin I am styled
.”
___________________
Thnx to thecabaretdolly for the foto

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

A lot of fairy tales contain hidden wisdom, including hidden Goddess wisdom. The book I am currently reading, Summoning the Fates by Z. Budapest includes several hungarian fairy tales, and The Witch in Every Woman by Laurie Cabot also includes fairy tales.
Your analysis was excellent.

Athana said...

Thnx, Amy, for the compliment and for the info on books re: fairy-tale hidden code. I'm going to see if I can find these books.

Aquila ka Hecate said...

Lovely thinking-point, Athana.

Personally, I think his name is Ioaldeboth or Samael, the evil demiurge who lays claim to the creation of the Earth in many Middle Eastern texts.

I'm going to start calling him by these names and see how he responds.

Love,
Terri in Joburg

Athana said...

Do you mean, Terri, that the Muslims can't even give women the Earth? What -- instead of Mother Earth they have Daddy Ioaldeboth Earth?

Aquila ka Hecate said...

It's a name found mainly in the remnants of Gnostic texts, Athana.
Some of those Gnostics became Christians -it was a competing ideology around the time of Christianity's rise -and most were wiped off he face of the Earth for daring to espouse a theology in which the God of the Bible was the Evil One.

In some versions the race of humanity and the material plane was indeed created by a Goddess, but was later taken over by Ialdeboth(I'm not too sure of the spelling!), and in other versions the Evil One created the Earth as an exercise in vanity, and he is directly conflated with Yahweh.

Love,
Terri in Joburg