In episode 10 we have a whole lotta friends over for cards, and serve pie for dessert...
Part 1 [01:02] - in which we find 2 Super-Virgos following their bliss
Part 2 [04:03] - in which we travel the world and knock-out the knock-offs
Part 3 [09:34] - in which we moonlight as fairytale census-takers
Part 4 [12:01] - in which we have 4 for dessert
Part 5 [16:13] - in which we take the road less traveled
Part 6 [21:30] - the four horsemen of — WHAT?
Part 7 [29:21] - in which we borrow the Time Machine for a trip to the doctor, and then hang on to it for a second opinion
Hi, and welcome to Episode 10 of the Hansel and Gretel Code...
[ciao]
🎶 Schubert - piano sonata no. 21 in B flat major D.960 III. Allegro vivace 🎶
in episode 9 we started looking into the metaphors of the second sentence of our fairytale and found our woodcutter living on Tobacco Road — in other words: in genuine, involuntary poverty...
today, we’re going to complete our investigation of that second sentence, and get acquainted with his little family of four... so, before we start, let’s just take another listen to those 2 sentences:
Once upon a time there was a poor woodcutter who lived before a great forest.
He had it so rough he could barely feed his wife and two children.
[awww...]
*🎶*🎶*
Part 1 - in which we find 2 Super-Virgos following their bliss
[whaaaht...?]
well, in 1913, 2 of the most important folklorists of the 20th century — Jiří Polívka and Johannes Bolte — published the first of 5 volumes of what can only be described as a massive Virgoan tour de force...
01:31
[ooh la, la]
what they had done was to gather every fairytale collection they could find from every country, and then group each of the individual tales according to which of the Grimm’s 200 stories they resembled...
in all, they produced over 2500 pages of densely packed facts and references, and didn’t finish the project until 19 years later, in 1932...
2:02
[whistle - awe]
right...? we gotta be talking tens of thousands of fairytales that these guys read through, classified and catalogued...
in the case of Hansel and Gretel, they had distinguished 5 main motifs or plot points — and using them as a literary fingerprint, they found over 200 fairy tales having 2 or more of those plot points in some combination...
2:30
[wow...!]
as impressive an undertaking as that was, what’s the point here...?
well, if we look at the first of those identifying plot points — the one they called: “the children being left in the woods by their father” — turns out, nearly every one of the stories that included it were published AFTER 1810...
2:53
[yeah, so what?]
well that’s super interesting because it means our manuscript version of the story is one of the earliest and oldest examples of the full fairytale...
3:06
[really?]
fact is, out of those 200+ stories, they only found 4 that were published earlier than our manuscript, and that include this one particular motif... and oddly enough, none of those 4 stories have all 5 of the plot points found in the manuscript...
still, they bear looking into, especially if we’re going to assume that the story of Hansel and Gretel is from the Middle Ages, if not even before... and if it is, there just might be some ancient wisdom encoded in it that’s been handed down through generation after generation of storytellers... and since that wisdom has been passed over by generation after generation of listeners and readers, you and I are here to finally suss it out...
[that’s awesome...!]
*🎶*🎶*
Part 2 - In which we travel the world and knock out the knock offs
so let’s take a quick look at those 4 stories...
🎶 Schubert - Piano Sonata no. 21 in B-flat major, D. 960 - IV. Allegro ma non troppo 🎶
The oldest example these 2 folklorists found was from the 16th century: an Alsatian tale by a certain Martin Montanus, the title of which translates into: A fine tale about a woman with 2 children
it was first published around 1557, and must have been fairly popular because around 200 years later, it ended up in Goethe’s hands...
04:50
[are you sure...?]
well, we know this for a fact because he made mention of it in a letter he wrote in May of 1776... The next 3 stories were from the 17th Century, the oldest being Giambattista Basile's Neapolitan story called:
05:10
[Pizza!]
Nennillo e Nennella — first published between1634 and 1636...
This was followed by 2 French stories: Madame d’Aulnoy's Finette Cendron (c.1690) (and which is much closer to Cinderella than it is to Hansel and Gretel), and finally Charles Perrault's Le Petit Poucet (or Little Thumb) — from 1697.
05:45
[ooh la la]
This theme of child abandonment is also consistent with an English Ballad called The Babes in the Wood, and known to have been published in 1595.
05:59
[that’s correct]
Now I don’t want to get us off track here, except Bolte and Polívka — our 2 Virgos deluxe — also cite a story from a book of fairy tales coming out of Pakistan that was published in 1892... the translator of that collection tells us that he didn’t get his stories out of books, he collected them from local storytellers... he also expressed his certainty that all of them are older than history itself... and I’m inclined to believe him...
06:36
[oh really? man]
🎶 MUMBAI MUSIC 2 🎶
well, yeah, see I found and read the story in question (THANK YOU! archive.org): it was called LÂL BADSHÂH, THE RED KING — and it excited the hell outta me, because it reads as a kind of mashup of elements from the Alsatian story and from Basile’s Neapolitan story of Nennillo and Nennella...
so you’ve gotta figure that it must be older than both of those stories — and therefore, the real deal... a genuine source for those stories...
07:14
[no way male]
hey, that’s not just me saying it...! there are a couple of very good reasons for that being the case... one of them is that Carl Jung considered Europe to be a cultural and psychological peninsula of India...
07:31
[is that so?]
of course there are other, more scientific sorts of reasons backed by philologic facts...
07:43
[please, don’t do that]
right now, as exciting a discovery as that is, let’s just get back to the task at hand, which is: to understand why it’s such a big deal to find out there are only 4 or 5 Hansel and Gretel type stories that are certifiably older than our manuscript...
08:04
[cranky why?]
well, first it tells us that ALL of them with that “children abandoned in the woods” business — and published after 1810 — are knock offs... (with that one exception of the story from Pakistan)
actually, there is another story from Kashmir that’s also similar to the oldest of the European tales — the Alsatian one — except the children in it aren’t left in the woods or abandoned at all...
08:32
[hooray girl]
anyway, all of the later stories, the ones written after 1810 — whether they come from France or Sweden or Russia or Romania — they’re all re-tellings or local adaptations of the more original, and explicitly German story of Hansel and Gretel...
08:51
[ja, ja it’s okay]
and sure, just like Hollywood re-makes, many of them are original in their details and local flourishes, they’re just not original in their conception... so that means we can pretty much ignore them and confine our investigation to the older ones... and by investigation, I don’t mean that we’re going to examine every single detail in them...
09:16
[why the fuck not?]
oh man, we’ve gotta draw the line somewhere... so we’re just going to look at the differences in their main characters and see where that takes us...
[oh, very nice, much better]
*🎶*🎶*
Part 3 - In which we moonlight as fairytale Census-takers
First, there’s that Alsatian story... and just like Hansel and Gretel, it describes a family of 4: except the poor man and woman in it have 2 daughters.
09:56
[ooh!]
The next oldest story is Basile's Nennillo and Nennella which comes out of his very popular collection known as the Pentamerone
10:06
[si, si, esatto, si, si, si...]
this story, just like the Grimms' tale, has a poor man and woman with a boy and a girl.
The Pakistani story, LÂL BADSHÂH, THE RED KING, also has a family of 4, with a major twist: instead of a poor man and woman, it has has a King and a Queen with 2 daughters...
10:32
[yeah, so what...?]
the earliest French tale, Finette Cendron, which the Grimms themselves had read, since they mention it in their own notes on Hansel and Gretel... well, it has a family of 5: a King and Queen with 3 daughters.
10:50
[ooh la la]
and finally, Perrault's Le Petit Poucet (The Little Thumb), also mentioned by the Grimms, has a poor woodcutter with a wife and 7 young children—all boys!
11:07
[what seems to be the problem?]
okay, so, that’s an awful lot of variables and moving parts to juggle... and if we took the time to analyze each of them, we’d likely find that they change the ultimate meaning of each story... kinda like that famous butterfly effect... so that in the end, we’d likely find ourselves arriving at conclusions other than the ones Hansel and Gretel is leading us towards...
as interesting and worthwhile as those conclusions might be, they’d also require years of work...
11:42
[we’ve been at this for hours, now]
okay, so let’s just leave it at that and focus in on what the manuscript version is giving us: a family of 4...
and even more basically: the number four.
[challenge accepted]
*🎶*🎶*
Part 4 - In which we have 4 for dessert
Feel free to bring up any associations you might have to the number 4, especially if Numerology is your thing.
as for me, I’ve never put in the time and effort it takes to meditate on the metaphors and symbolism of numbers... not the way Pythagoras intended...
12:27
[uh, excuse you...]
so I'm going to leave that particular stone unturned...
what I have done, though is spend years reading and thinking about the work of Carl Jung... and he had plenty to say about the number Four... so let me see if I can explain what I’ve learned from him without going all Jungian on you...
12:45
[moans and lamentations]
Basically, any grouping of four is a potent symbol of Completeness or Wholeness...
and if that sounds a little arbitrary, it might be because you can always divvy up a pie into as many equal pieces as you want or need, and still have a conceptual Whole pie...
at least until you finish dessert...
13:09
[groans]
sure enough, those 2 French fairytales divide their fancy dessert into some number other than 4... so let’s just leave them to their rococo cocoa, and find out more about the humble pie of OUR story...
13:29
[this is gonna suck]
and of course, that means the woodcutter Family — the complete, whole family unit that our story divides into 4 pieces...
okay, so it’s obvious these pieces aren’t the same: they’re male and female and young and old... that said, the only leap of faith we have to make here (and it’s an important one) is to consider each family member to be equal...
13:59
[I’m not so sure]
not in size or age, or gender... just equal in importance... 4 equally important parts...
14:10
[hmmm 02]
okay now that we’ve gotten this far we have to make another, bolder leap... we’ve got to decide what this family of 4 means as a metaphor...
14:23
[a meek"well, i don’t know"]
just remember that whenever we’re trying to figure out a metaphor, we’re always just speculating... we come up with some reasonable hypothesis and see if it resonates and endures as we get more information... and just as in the scientific method we’re going to see if our hypothesis fits all the new facts as they come up... if it doesn’t — whether it falls apart completely, or is close but no cigar — what we have to do is change or adjust it in order to fit all the facts...
15:00
[I think I could]
with that in mind, if you remember, in episodes 3 and 4 we talked about the forest as a fairly obvious metaphor of the Unconscious...
15:12
[no!]
and as long as our woodcutter was living in front of — or right on the edge of the Unconscious — he became a stand in for Consciousness itself...
so the leap I’m asking you to make with me is to change our understanding of the woodcutter... since we now have more facts to work with, we have to make a slight adjustment to our original hypothesis in order to fit them...
15:39
[but what if?]
instead of considering him alone to be a stand-in for Consciousness, we now switch to considering the entire family of four as a stand-in for Consciousness...
[no...]
and, once again, not just any Consciousness... OUR Consciousness...
the Consciousness of any reader — male or female, young or old — who is somehow fascinated by this tale...
and this podcast...
16:09
[don’t push your luck]
*🎶*🎶*
Part 5 - In which we take the road less traveled
okay so what does this now mean for our woodcutter...?
what does that make him...?
16:43
[I dunno]
what does he represent as a metaphor if he is no longer Consciousness itself, but just one part of it...???
one quarter of it...
and not only him... what does that makes each of the other family members...?
16:43
[what are they?]
well, we’re going to go with the hypothesis that these 4 pieces of the family pie symbolize four different, unique BUT EQUAL aspects of one whole and otherwise healthy Consciousness... albeit one that is struggling...
so, as Soupy Sales used to say:
17:04
["now, just what do we mean by that...???"]
what is an aspect of consciousness...?
what are components of consciousness...?
parts of consciousness...?
pieces of the consciousness pie...?
17:19
[it’s all complicated]
oh my goodness...! trying to find an answer to this is, indeed, a thorny problem... one we either have to abandon, avoid, and otherwise circle around the question...
or dive right into...
17:35
[watch out! diving board / splash]
well, make no mistake, this is a huge turning point in our investigation of the fairytale...
🎶 Schubert - Piano Sonata no. 19 in C minor, D. 958 - I. Allegro 🎶
for 2 reasons:
first, is that knowing there are no more characters we need to take into account (at least until much later in the story) we’ve got to figure this out now, otherwise we’ll be wandering around our fairytale forest without any real idea about the potent metaphor this family represents... and that will have us building a further speculative structure without any convincing metaphoric reference point
we need some kind of conceptual compass...
and unless we can come up with a metaphor that makes sense — at least provisionally — we’d be stuck thinking of the family members as literal children and parents...
18:39
[oh no!]
which is pretty much the unimaginative compass that everyone who’s tried analyzing this story in the last 100 years or so has used...
and where did that get them...?
18:53
[so many have failed before, what makes you think you’re different?]
no, we’ve got to do some hard thinking about this metaphor and answer these thorny questions about parts of consciousness so that we can at least run with this hypothesis for a while, and make some real progress...
and guess what — we might even find that we’re on the money...
19:17
[cha-ching!]
so that brings us to the second reason for this being such an important turning point: we’re about to become modern fairytale pioneers...
19:29
[that is excellent]
and that’s because nobody has ever gone down the metaphoric road we’re about to take...
although that’s not strictly true... we’re going to find that this road has been traveled before... just not in the last 100 years or so... and not armed with the information we’ve got...
19:54
[okay but you go first]
see that’s another important thing about metaphor: we have to read a lot...
20:01
[shh! we’re in a library!]
because that’s where all the answers come from...
20:06
[shh!!]
if we’re going to come up with ideas that seem to fit the metaphors... we can’t just make them up...
20:12
[why the fuck not?]
remember I said that metaphor is the cheeky trope that always says A is B, or C or maybe even X and Y...
well, this metaphor is waiting for us to recall something important we’ve read or come across before — some B or C or X and Y that makes perfect sense — and connects those cheeky dots...
20:39
[is that so?]
let’s face it... unless we do, we’ll never be able to think of these fairytale details as anything BUT literal fact...
so where have we come across or read about anything that sounds like this 4 pieces of consciousness pie business...?
20:56
[I dunno]
well, that’s where Jung comes in,
21:01
[an exasperated "oh boy"]
because having read him, I know that he gives us a nearly perfect B and C and X and Y...
21:11
[more exasperated "oh boy"s]
see, he not only names and defines those 4 equal components of Consciousness, he gives us an entire dissertation on the subject... and I mean, in a book that’s close to 1,000 paragraphs long...
21:27
[Louis, I think I’ve found what we’re looking for]
*🎶*🎶*
Part 6 - The four horsemen of — what???
The book in question is called Psychological Types... and yes, it’s the foundation that Meyers-Briggs Typology was built upon...
and that’s because in speaking about consciousness, Jung was explaining how 4 components of consciousness stand as the basis for differences in personality...
Jung calls those 4 equal components of Consciousness the 4 Functions of Consciousness...
22:08
[what the hell?]
which is an unfortunately vague and misleading sort of name that lends itself to confusion (and to my mind — misuse)
because unless you’ve read a good chunk of Jung or are into Meyers-Briggs Typology, I might as well be talking about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse... or even the so-called Merkabah, or chariot mysticism that comes out of the Old Testament, and it’s based on The Four Wheels of Ezekiel's fiery chariot...
hell, I could even be spouting some esoteric mumbo jumbo about the Four Tires of an Automobile... except, we humans have been holding on to the very concept of those 4 components in all sorts of guises...
22:58
[no way...]
fact is, they’re even represented in the suits of our modern playing cards — which themselves are based on the older Tarocchi / Tarot suits of Coins, Swords, Cups and Wands... so, finding them in a fairytale isn’t as far-fetched as anyone might imagine...
funny thing is, they’re not all that complicated or difficult to understand...
23:25
[what are they?]
they are, however, very tricky to explain...
23:30
[blah, blah, blah...]
which tends to explain why nobody has ever recognized them in this fairytale before... not for quite some time that is...
what they represent are 4 different but equal lenses or filters through which we selectively take in and process reality... reality being that thing we most need to be conscious of...
the names that Jung gave them are: Logic, Feeling, Intuition and Sensation...
24:06
[confused what?]
(and don’t let Sensation throw you off... it basically means to take things in through the 5 physical senses)
the reason this has anything to do with personality types, is that while we each have all 4 of those faculties or functions, we also each prefer to take in, process and engage with reality only through one of them...
we still use and are influenced by all 4 lenses... it’s just that one of them tends to predominate — what’s known in Typology as our dominant function...
24:48
[we’re just friends]
and it’s our innate preference for that using that function that eventually translates into Personality...
24:57
[maybe]
it was Jung’s contention that everyone’s Personality could be categorized according to the characteristics of those 4 lenses and the innate predominance or preference for one of them in each of us...
and that’s the concept that the Meyers-Briggs team (Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers) took and ran with...
and while Meyers-Briggs gives us 16 personality types, they’re all based on the fundamental concepts of Jung’s 4 Functions or 4 lenses...
so, okay, if you’re already into Meyers-Briggs Typology, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about... and that’s great...
25:37
[not everyone’s like that]
okay, so if you’re not... no worries... there’s still plenty of delightful stuff we can learn from this fairytale without having any understanding of typology and its connection to consciousness...
and that’s because the fairytale itself is going to teach us the most basic facts about it that we need to know...
and that’s why we’re fairytale pioneers — because we’re going to run with the hypothesis that each member of our woodcutter family is a caricature of just one of Jung’s 4 Functions...
26:13
[interesting]
as I said, each of us possess all 4 of the Functions... which is why we can take the family of 4 as a metaphor of our own complete and whole consciousness...
in our hypothesis, each family member would represent the typical characteristics of just one of those 4 functions... and we’re going to be able to identify each character with one function according to their actions in the story...
because each of them is a caricature, they’ll be acting in a kind of one dimensional way, as if that single personality characteristic is all there was to them...
26:54
[oh really]
and that's the same with Andy Dufresne and Red from Steven King’s Shawshank Redemption... they too are each caricatures of one of those same 4 functions...
so I gotta tell you... just as it’s difficult to identify someone’s personality type in real life, it’s not as if we’re going to be able to identify which of the 4 functions each character represents right off the bat...
27:08
[damn!]
we’ll need to see them in action, and even then, it’s going to take some time to figure them out... I mean, after all, the MBTI (Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator) — which is a pretty lengthy questionnaire used to determine an individual’s typology (and as I said, is based on Jung’s 4 Function) — is by no means 100% accurate or even definitive...
27:35
[how long is this gonna take?]
In fact, making a positive identification took me all of nearly 18 months of working through the metaphors of the entire story. Still, there’s no need for us to know which is which at the outset. I’ll simply point out the circumstantial evidence as we encounter it...
so before we go any further, let’s just address the elephant in the room:
28:03
[where, where, where...???]
our fairytale was first published a good 63 years before Carl Jung was even born... so how could he or his Functions have had anything to do with our woodcutter...???
sure, Jung was a psychologist who considered fairytales to be important symbolic and psychological mirrors of our culture and our psyche — both the conscious and the unconscious aspects.
even so, the author of our fairytale was no psychologist... and for sure had never heard of such a ridiculously 20th century idea as a Function of Consciousness...
28:46
[no sir!]
well, the answer lies partially in the fact that Jung is, like the rest of us, a true descendant of our woodcutter...
here’s the key, though:
it’s the fact that Jung was not the first person in history to ponder the concept of personality — or even personality types — nor was he the first person to name the 4 different personality characteristics that he called functions...
29:16
[what’s that, you say?]
*🎶*🎶*
Part 7 - In which we borrow the time machine for a trip to the doctor... and then hang on to it for a second opinion
Throughout recorded history, 2 particular groups of professionals have pondered the mystery of human behavior and personality, and both came up with explanations that are now scoffed at by modern science...
29:48
[for good reason]
I’m not going to get into a discussion about one of those groups — the astrologers — whose division of personality characteristics into 12 separate categories is far more sophisticated and interesting than most scientists realize...
30:05
[bollicks, just bollicks]
Instead, the names and categories dreamt up by the second group — the philosophers — have a direct and dramatic impact on our story...
30:20
🎶 Bach - Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 🎶
so, get ready for a whirlwind trip on the Time Machine:
our first stop is somewhere in Sicily around 460 BC, where we find Empedocles, one of the so-called pre-Socratic philosophers... Empedocles is the guy that gave us the concept of the 4 elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water...
that probably doesn’t mean much of anything in terms of our 4 family members... even if those elements are somehow worked into the psychological divisions maintained by the astrologers... except he, too, Empedocles, is another one of our woodcutter’s celebrity ancestors...
there’s even a wild family legend saying that somewhere around 434 BC, he died by throwing himself into the active crater of Mt. Etna...
31:29
[audience gasp / yikes!]
just hold that image somewhere in the back of your mind because it will, indeed, come back to us when the time is right...
our next stop on the Time Machine is right after the death of Empedocles and a little further East — in Greece... this time we run into Hippocrates, the famous Father of Western Medicine...
oddly enough, I don’t think Hippocrates was a woodcutter ancestor... no, we just need to know about his contribution to the story as the guy who connected the 4 elements of Empedocles with the so-called 4 humors of the human body:
blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile...
32:18
[you’re scaring me]
so what’s the big deal about the 4 humors...? well, just as the 4 characters of our story make up a single whole entity — in other words our family unit — for Hippocrates, these 4 humors, as a mixture, make up the entirety of our bodily fluids...
35:37
[ew!]
and any unbalance in the mixture — either too much or too little of any of them — is what caused illness and pain... Hippocratic medicine was all about keeping those humors in balance...
just remember that at some point in our story, 2 members of the woodcutter family unit are kicked out... leaving it unbalanced...
33:07
[it’s really terrible]
that might sound like a stretch of the metaphor, since we’ve only covered 2 of it’s sentences... and that’s why we still need to treat this as unproven hypothesis, yet the fact that nothing so far drastically contradicts our hypothesis... well that, at the very least, is encouraging...
33:28
[well, okay]
33:36
🎶 Mascagni - ”O Lola ch'ai di latti la cammisa" (from Cavalleria Rusticana) 🎶
okay, so we need to hop back on the Time Machine and cruise forward another 5 hundred years or so to somewhere around the 2nd century CE — where we have to make one more doctor visit, this time to a Greek doctor living in Rome...
33:48
[Roma!]
this is the doctor / philosopher known as Galen... and his contribution to our story is that he not only furthered the balancing act that Hippocrates had started with the humors, he was deeply interested in the mysteries of human personality...
34:13
[ooh...]
with Galen we can say that the 4 humors became intimately connected to personality by way of the 4 so-called Temperaments... in other words, Galen felt that you could diagnose the state of someone’s mixture of humors by observing their temperament... which was, in essence, their personality type...
long before Jung and Meyers-Briggs named their personality types according to those 4 functions of consciousness, thanks to Galen, Western Europeans understood there to be 4 different personality types... each named according to an over-abundance or dominance of one of the 4 humors...
the names of the 4 different temperaments / the original personality types come from the names of the 4 humors... and these are names that we still use today — albeit more for literary purposes than medical ones... and they are:
Sanguine for blood, Choleric for yellow bile, Phlegmatic for phlegm and Melancholic for black bile...
35:37
[ugh, ew]
so, according to Hippocrates, in each human being there is a mixture of the 4 humors, and according to Galen the predominance of one humor leads to a characteristic temperament or personality type... and while we could possibly make a case for identifying the personality type for each one of our woodcutter family members and maybe name them after one of these Temperaments... if we go on a little further in our Time Machine we’ll arrive at another interesting place and time that brings us so much closer to the model of personality that our fairytale more accurately seems to be based on...
so let’s make a quick move forward another 3 centuries (putting us in the 5th century CE)...
that’s where we find the Neo-Platonic philosopher Proclus (412 – 485 CE) writing out a little essay on what I’m going to call here: Magic, although that’s not quite the right name for it...
one intent of this magic Proclus was into was meant (surprise, surprise) to achieve the more or less pagan equivalent of Unio Mystica... in other words union with a god or gods...
it turns out that the original Greek text had disappeared, and wasn’t found until around 1928... although we did have it in translation...
so with Proclus in mind, let’s make one last trip on the Time Machine an entire Millennium ahead to the Italian Quattrocento or Renaissance...
37:28
[Italia!]
and the city of Firenze, where the Greek text had fortuitously landed and was translated into Latin by that famous denizen of the Medici court, Marsilio Ficino...
37:41
[who’s this?]
humanist scholar, astrologer and yes, another one of our woodcutter’s celebrity ancestors...
37:51
[another exasperated "oh boy"]
Ficino translated the title of the Greek text as “de Sacrificio et Magia” and in it there is one hell of an important sentence that may or may not have directly influenced Jung in his naming of the 4 Functions...
38:08
[who cares?]
I’m not going to read the entire sentence... at this point in the story, we still need more context for that to make complete sense... I will give you the gist of it though, because Proclus spoke of 4 different ways in which people approach the gods and pray, which essentially speaks to the idea of there being 4 different personality types...
Ficino translated them as: intellectuali, rationali, naturali, and sensibili...
38:44
[more exasperated "oh boy, oh boy..."]
not surprisingly, they’ve been translated into English as: intellectual, rational, natural, and sensible...
of course in both Latin and English they don’t seem to make much sense as 4 different personality types...
39:03
[roger that]
just remember Jung called his 4 different functions: Intuition, Logic, Sensation and Feeling...
and that seems problematic for our hypothesis since they don’t sound a whole helluva lot like Ficino’s translation of Proclus...
39:20
[well, this is awkward]
and that seems problematic for our hypothesis since they don’t match up very well with Ficino’s translation of Proclus...
so, remember I said that the original Greek text was lost to us until 1928... at least we have a copy of it now, so here are the 4 words in Greek:
39:32
[lots of moans and groans]
noerôs, logikos, phusikôs, and aisthêtôs / νoερως λογικως φυσικως αισθητως
and while they don’t sound any closer to Jung’s words than Ficino’s... that first word, noeros / νoερως is what’s really going to make us pioneers...
39:53
[a confused “what?”]
if you go and look up the English words noesis and noetic in dictionaries and encyclopedias, you’ll find an enormous range of ideas...
and that’s because, for my money, Ficino’s translation of noeros into intellectuali, is one of the first major misdirections and misunderstandings ever applied to the concept of intuition by our culture...
40:23
[what?]
and make no mistake, the translation we’re going to apply to it is Intuition... which would put the original concepts that Proclus was aiming at more in line with the words that Jung chose for the 4 Functions as the basis of human personality
40:42
[that’s it!]
so, there it is: going forward, it’s our hypothesis that somebody in the family represents Logic, or Logikos — Ficino’s rationali — somebody represents Feeling, or Aisthetos — Ficino’s sensibili — somebody represents Sensation, or Phusikos — Ficino’s naturali — and finally, somebody represents Intuition, or Noeros — and I’m just gonna deep-six Ficino’s intellectuali, since it’s pretty obvious to those of us who have found our Intuition that in modern Western Culture, most intellectuals not only have very little understanding of what intuition actually is and means, they have zero respect for the word and what they think it means...
41:37
[that shit is fucked up]
well, right or wrong we’re going to see if our hypothesis doesn’t prove to be the golden key to understanding and explaining everything there is to know and learn from Hansel and Gretel...
and I gotta tell you — it actually does...!
and while I’ve been working on this material for the last 10 years, I’ve jealously guarded that information, and haven’t shared it with anyone except family...
you’re the first to hear it from me... and for sure: you heard it here first...
42:12
[crowd short applause]
and I have to admit that I’d been hoping to publish it in a completed and polished book... the problem being that while the book is completed, it’s far from polished...
42:25
[oh, huh? you did it? good job, I guess...]
putting the material out in this podcast is part of my ongoing efforts to re-write, edit and otherwise polish it, while making sure that it doesn’t have to wait another century or two before someone finally pieces it all together...
42:43
[whatever...]
🎶 Haydn - Piano Sonata in F major, Hob. XVI:23 I. Allegro moderato 🎶
next time, we’re going to move on to the 3rd sentence of our fairy tale,
42:49
[hooray!]
which is when the shit really hits the fan...
42:54
[uh oh]
so if you haven’t already hit me up for a copy of my manuscript version of the story, please do that so that you can follow along and know what’s coming... and maybe do some literary sleuthing on your own in between episodes... just hit the talk to me link on the website between the lines.xyz and ask me for the free pdf... I'll send it to you and put you on my mailing list...
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
in any case, here are the first 3 sentences of the fairytale
Once upon a time there was a poor woodcutter who lived before a great forest.
He had it so rough he could barely feed his wife and two children.
Once, there wasn’t even any more bread, [...]
so, there it is...
the story now tells us that the lack of food is the immediate problem facing the family.
and, once again, while so many investigators of this fairytale have limited themselves to taking this development as literal fact, we’re going to consider what this new lack of bread could possibly mean as a metaphor — and not just in isolation...
all of the detailed work we’ve done so far may have seemed dense and even excessive... what it has done though is allow us to establish a rich and fertile context surrounding the word “poor” that we can now plant with the metaphor of this new dire development... and while it might take us another 2 episodes to work through the metaphor, we’re well on our way towards leaving all previous literal interpretations of the fairytale behind in the dust...
so have a think about the metaphor yourself and see how your thoughts about it intersect and diverge from mine in the next episode...
not only will that enrich your own understanding of the story... it’s a great way to exercise and strengthen your intuition...
and hey...it might even balance your humors...
45:03
[groans]
well, thanks for listening...
don’t forget to stop by the website for transcripts, links and maybe just to say hi...
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
alrighty then
45:26
[ciao, ciao]
*Chapter Titles read by Anna Jacobsen*
Music Credits
*🎶*🎶* Bleeping Demo by Kevin MacLeod of filmmusic.io
Schubert - Piano Sonata no. 21 in B-flat major, D. 960 - III. Scherzo：Allegro vivace con delicatezza - performed byPaul Pitman and courtesy of musopen.org
Schubert - Piano Sonata no. 21 in B-flat major, D. 960 - IV. Allegro ma non troppo - performed by Paul Pitmanand courtesy of musopen.org
***
Mumbai Music courtesy of xserra and freesound.org
Fragment of a concert by Hindustani tabla master, Talyogi Pandit Suresh Talwalkar, with the accompaniment of another Tabla, a Pakhwaj and a Harmonium. Recorded at a concert in Mumbai (India) on May 14th 2011.
This work is licensed under the Attribution License.
***
Schubert - Piano Sonata no. 19 in C minor, D. 958 - I. Allegroperformed by Paul Pitman and courtesy ofmusopen.org
Bach - Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 (Organ) performed by Hans Otto and courtesy of musopen.org
****use the Sarabande instead****
Mascagni - ”O Lola ch'ai di latti la cammisa" (from Cavalleria Rusticana) - performed by Enrico Caruso - courtesy of the Kahle/Austin Foundation and archive.org
Haydn - Piano Sonata in F major, Hob. XVI:23 I. Allegro moderato - performed by Ivan Ilic and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 courtesy of musopen.org
kristo's awesome Peanut Gallery
(all courtesy of freesound.org)
["ciao"] 00:04
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"oh, really?" courtesy of xyahka and freesound.org
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"please, don’t do that" courtesy of girlhurl and freesound.org
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[a cranky “why?”] 08:04
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[“hooray!”] 08:32
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[“ja, ja, it's okay”] 08:51
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[“why the fuck not?”] 09:16
“why the fuck not?” courtesy of cheesepuff and freesound.org
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[“oh, very nice... much better!” ] 09:26
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[ooh!”] 09:56
"ooh!" courtesy of Reitanna Seishin and freesound.org
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[si, si, si...! / esatto!] 10:06
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[“yeah, so what?”] 10:32
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["ooh la la"] 10:50
"ooh la la" courtesy of Amy Gedgaudas and Tim.kahn and freesound.org
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["what seems to be the problem?"] 11:07
“what seems to be the problem?” courtesy of AmeAngelofSin and freesound.org
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["we've been at this for hours now"] 11:42
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["challenge accepted"] 11:56
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[uh, excuse you...] 12:27
“uhh, excuse you..." courtesy of Alivvie and freesound.org
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[moans, lamentations, and dad joke groans] 12:44 & 13:09
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[“This is gonna suck”] 13:28
This is gonna suck" courtesy of nooc and freesound.org
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[“um, I’m not so sure...”] 13:58
"um, I’m not so sure..." courtesy of cognito perceptu and freesound.org
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[hmmm...] 14:10
"hmmm..." courtesy of agent vivid and freesound.org
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["well...I don't know..."] 14:22
"well, i don't know" courtesy of daphneporras and freesound.org
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["I think I could..."] 15:00
"um, I’m not so sure..." courtesy of cognito perceptu and freesound.org
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[“No!"] 15:51
“No!” courtesy of theuncertainman and freesound.org
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["but what if..."] 15:38
"um, I’m not so sure..." courtesy of cognito perceptu and freesound.org
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[an uncertain "no..."] 15:51
"um, I’m not so sure..." courtesy of cognito perceptu and freesound.org
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["don’t push your luck”] 16:09
don’t push your luck" courtesy of pyro13djt and freesound.org
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[“I dunno”] 16:27
“I dunno” courtesy of nfrae and freesound.org
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[“what are they?] 16:43
"what are they?" courtesy of AmeAngelofSin and freesound.org
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[“it's all complicated”] 17:19
"...it’s all complicated” courtesy of Roses1401 and freesound.org
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***
["watch out...!" / splash] 17:35
”watch out...! ” courtesy of daveincamas and freesound.org
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diving board / splash courtesy of patchen and freesound.org
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***
[“oh no...!”] 18:39
“oh no...!” courtesy of Junuxx and freesound.org
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["so many have failed before…"] 18:53
“so many have failed before...” courtesy of KieranKeegan and freesound.org
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[“cha-ching!”] 19:16
“cha-ching!” courtesy of angelak_m and freesound.org
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[“that is excellent”] 19:28
“that is excellent” courtesy of MatteusNova and freesound.org
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["okay, but you go first"] 19:53
"okay, but you go first" courtesy of IPaddeh and freesound.org
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[“shhh... we’re in a library…”] 20:01 & 20:06
"shhh... we’re in a library..." courtesy of InspectorJ and freesound.org
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[“why the fuck not?”] 20:11
“why the fuck not?” courtesy of cheesepuff and freesound.org
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["is that so?" 20:39
"is that so?" courtesy of kurtless and freesound.org
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[“I dunno”] 20:56
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[“oh boy”] 21:01 & 21:11
“an exasperated, “oh boy... oh boy...” courtesy of AmeAngelofSin and freesound.org
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["I think I've found what we're looking for"] 21:26
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[what the hell...?!?”] 22:08
"what the hell...?!?" courtesy of Reitanna Seishin and freesound.org
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[“no way...” guy] 22:58
“no way” (guy) courtesy of kathid and freesound.org
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[“what are they?] 23:25
"what are they?" courtesy of AmeAngelofSin and freesound.org
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["blah, blah, blah"] 23:30
"blah, blah, blah" courtesy of unfa and freesound.org
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[another confused “what...?”] 24:06
“what...?? (girl)" courtesy of Alivvie and freesound.org
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[“We’re just friends”] 24:48
“We’re just friends” courtesy of Tim Kahn and Amy Gedgaudas and freesound.org
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[“maybe...”] 24:57
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["not everyone's like that"] 25:37
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[“interesting...”] 26:13
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["oh, really?" (man)] 26:54
"oh, really?" courtesy of xyahka and freesound.org
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[“damn!”] 27:08
“damn...!” courtesy of Tim Kahn and Amy Gedgaudas and freesound.org
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[“how long is this gonna take?”] 27:35
"how long is this gonna take?" courtesy of shawshank73 and freesound.org
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[“where, where, where...?”] 28:03
“where, where, where...?” courtesy of AmeAngelofSin and freesound.org
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[no sir!] 28:46
“no sir!” courtesy of theuncertainman and freesound.org
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[“what’s that, you say?”] 29:15
“what’s that, you say?” courtesy of Stewartcolbourn and freesound.org
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[for good reason] 29:48
“for good reason” courtesy of Tim Kahn and Amy Gedgaudas and freesound.org
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[bollicks... just bollicks...] 30:05
angry muttering courtesy of RoivasUGO and freesound.org
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***
[audience gasp / yikes!] 31:29
“audience gasp” courtesy of FreqMan and freesound.org
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"Yikes!" courtesy of jorickhoofd and freesound.org
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***
[“you’re scaring me”] 32:18
“you’re scaring me” courtesy of vanceparley and freesound.org
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[ew!] 32:40
"ew!" courtesy of isabellaquintero97 and freesound.org
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[it's really terrible] 33:07
“it’s really terrible” courtesy of clivew and freesound.org
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[well, okay...] 33:28
"well, okay" courtesy of LG and freesound.org
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[Roma] 33:47
"Roma" courtesy of Nighteller and freesound.org
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[ooh] 34:13
"ooh" courtesy of brunchik and freesound.org
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[ugh! ew!] 35:37
"ew!" courtesy of isabellaquintero97 and freesound.org
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[Italia] 37:28
"Italia" courtesy of Nighteller and freesound.org
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[who's this?] 37:41
"who's this?" courtesy of PacificSea and freesound.org
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[another exasperated "oh boy...!"] 37:51
“an exasperated, “oh boy... oh boy...” courtesy of AmeAngelofSin and freesound.org
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[“who cares?”] 38:08
“who cares?” courtesy of ballOOnhead and freesound.org
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["oh boy, oh boy..."] 38:44
“an exasperated, “oh boy... oh boy...” courtesy of AmeAngelofSin and freesound.org
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[“roger that”] 39:03
“roger that” courtesy of theuncertainman and freesound.org
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[“well, this is awkward”] 39:20
“well, this is awkward” courtesy of KieranKeegan and freesound.org
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[lots and lots of moans and groans] 39:32
lots of moans and groans courtesy of TeamMasaka and freesound.org
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[another confused “what...?”] 39:53
“what...?? (girl)" courtesy of Alivvie and freesound.org
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[“what?!?”] 40:23
"what?!?" courtesy of Reitanna Seishin and freesound.org
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[“that’s it!] 40:42
"that’s it…!" courtesy of javapimp and freesound.org
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[that shit is fucked up] 41:37
"that shit is fucked" courtesy of cheesepuff and freesound.org
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[crowd - short applause] 42:12
crowd-short-applause courtesy of Processaurus and freesound.org
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[oh, huh, you did it...?] 42:25
"oh, huh...?" courtesy of InspectorJ and freesound.org
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[whatever...] 42:43
"whatever..." courtesy of pörnill and freesound.org
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[hooray!] 42:49
“hooray!” courtesy of javapimp and freesound.org
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[more dad joke groans] 45:03
lots of moans and groans courtesy of TeamMasaka and freesound.org
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[ciao, ciao] 45:26
"ciao, ciao" courtesy of Nighteller and freesound.org
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Episode 9 - Tobacco Road / Episode 11 - Whose turn to say grace?