Once upon a time…
My fairy tale seminars begin this week. https://www.murielmcmahon.com/events
One of these fairy tale seminars is into its third year, and the other is just beginning. Veterans and rookies. I am delighted by the interest in the study and translation of these archetypal stories. I am delighted that these lovers of story are willing to trust me at the helm of a six month voyage.
It is my belief that fairy stories contain all the wisdom we need for these times. Make no mistake about it, we are in the end times. The times when the carnival makes its way to the centre. The times when most of the forms that held our deepest and perhaps darkest impulses at bay are crumbling.
The new scientists would speak of entropy. The end of a singularity that dissolves into a multiplicity. I endeavour to look at the issues of our day in this archetypal light. Whether it be diversity, multiculturalism, gender non-binary, late stage capitalism, immigration, political polarization, or any of the headlines of the day, I believe that some deeper current is carrying us. Always has. Always will. Maybe it used to be religion, a social contract, an innate morality that kept us afloat, whatever it was, it is recognizable no more. In the free fall, in the flooding, some of us will cling to what was and some of us will throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Fairy tales give us an archetypal orientation so needed in these times. Read, arch-typical. They are the silver seeds that have endured cataclysmic shifts and landed on us on the other side of the surging flood waters. As C. G. Jung and Marie Louis von Franz caution, these fairy tales are not personal stories. The princess or the prince, the king or the queen, the frog or bear, the golden ball or the poison apple are not to be understood subjectively. While we will undoubtedly have subjective reactions to the tales, they contain hidden objective perspectives. They hint at universal truths. They ask us to imagine more not less of ourselves and our world.
In a kingdom seven leagues beneath the sea… in a galaxy far far away… once upon a time… One need only turn on the news to conclude that these times are surely disorientating. The literal dissolution of reality; fake news, misinformation, proaganda, gas lighting, is dizzying and out of the deepest corners of the darkness emerge the demons and the monsters of our nature. That which has languished on the fringe of our understanding clamours for the centre of our attention. Towers fall. Heroes are blinded. Maidens loose their hands. Dragons stir. And yet…
These fairy stories are the gestalt of both our basest desires and our highest aspirations. They are actually the same story. The universal story. The archetypal story. They speak with a thousand voices about the human journey. The journey to the Self. The journey home. The journey toward a multiplicity that is held by the singularity. Diversity AND unity. This is why they have endured. They are older than our religions, deeper than our myths, stronger than our politics, and more enduring than our ideologies.
How so? These stories expand our imagination and welcome us into the realm of enchantment. They peel back the profane world and invite us into the magical. Jung would call these the Spirit of the Depths rather than the Spirit of the Times. Our dreams and visions, our rituals and ceremonies, whether enacted consciously or not, use the same techniques. Mircea Eliade called these the techniques of ecstasy. The vehicles that carry us beyond our limited perceptions into the limitless. To those with eyes to see and ears to hear, they welcome us into what the poet, Percy Shelley called the “white radiance of eternity”. Our task is to express, articulate, convey what we have experienced.
I have been a lover of story for as long as I can remember. Many years ago, under a deluge of a rain soaked summer day in the heart and the heat of the city, a Zimbabwe indigenous elder initiated me and deemed me a Keeper of Stories. With this honour, with this responsibility, I turn back the cover on the ancient tomes and begin. Begin again.
Once upon a time…