In Ep. 33 we have one hell of an early wake-up call, and wish we were all back in West Virginia???
Part 1 [05:43] - In which we have cause to mention the Anabaptists, and uh oh, it’s time to make the donuts
Part 2 [22:26] - In which we have real teamwork...and some historic subterfuge
Part 3 [26:35] - In which nostalgia plays an interesting part in the action
[wakey, wakey! eggs and bakey!]
oh man, leave me the fuck alone...
[group shocked - OH!]
I’ve got Covid...
I feel like doggie doo and I ain’t got no appetite...
[well, that’s no surprise at all]
🎶 🎹 dramatic organ music 🎹 🎶
🎶 🔔 deep church bell 🔔 🎶
Bless me fadder, for I have sinned... maybe that’s why I got Covid... anyway, it’s been tree or 4 weeks since my last episode...
[oh, you back again?]
just barely, but, uh yup...
[oh my god... ridiculous!]
🎶 ANACHRONIST 🎶
hey there, welcome back to the Hansel and Gretel Code... this here is Episode 33
[alright already, get on with it!]
In our last episode we found Hansel comforting his sister... and then taking a well deserved snooze...
a good fairytale reminder that sometimes, our best move is to sleep on a tough problem... better that than of giving up, giving in, and accepting Plan A...
[why? why? why? why???]
when we’re getting squeezed, Plan A usually means accepting the, um, short end of the stick...
sleeping on a problem, gives our Intuition time to come up with Plan B...
Plan B is very often a move that under normal circumstances, would be so bold, and so risky, as to be unthinkable...
🤡🤓👹
Time for another gratuitous aside:
for those who feel that fairytales are supposed to teach children moral and logical lessons about life, this is anything but... and I vehemently disagree with that pedagogy crowd because the majority of them believe fitting in, and sticking with Plan A, is the best policy...
I’ve got personal stories to back that up... but of course, Plan A is what they teach in our schools...
just remember, the majority of any group dictates the prevailing culture... and our culture — the culture symbolized by the Holzhacker parents — has no room for a healthy Intuition and healthy Feelings...
***
remember, we also found out that Wilhelm Grimm had baptized Hansel into the Calvinist faith...
in the manuscript version, Hansel was already confident things were gonna work out for him and his sister... then in the 1843 revision Wilhelm made him say: “God will not forsake us.”
that changed Hansel’s self-confidence from an Intuitive knowing — a genuine Gnosis — into blind religious faith...
why would Wilhelm do that? why have Hansel invoke a Christian — and a specifically Calvinist — God...
we know Wilhelm and his brother were Calvinists... and Reformed — or Calvinist — theology dictates that your salvation or damnation is already a done deal at birth...
so if you don’t express your confidence things are gonna work out on that score it’s a sign you’re headed uh, South when your ticket gets punched...
[uh, oh]
still, why have Hansel undergo this religious conversion...?
over the course of the story, the original manuscript puts way more emphasis on Henosis... not Salvation...
you know, retuning to the One... the Gnostic version of Salvation...
oddly enough, Wilhelm probably understood this... so why bring his own Calvinism into the story...?
well, wrestling with that question led me to a surprising answer... one that I’ll share with you in this episode...
first, I wanna say we’re gonna try moving things along a bit quicker...
[oh, good!]
yeah, there’s so much important, juicy material in each line of this deceptively simple fairytale, trying to fit it all into a podcast — the way I’ve been doing — will take years and years... and I’m no Calvinist... I’m not confident I’ll get to share all the literary jewels I’ve found in Hansel and Gretel — and a few other fairytales — before my ticket gets punched...
case in point: this stupid virus...
so I’m gonna try my best to emulate Hansel and do something more productive than worrying...
that means skipping over some very tasty morsels of meaning, so we can get to the main meal of gingerbread, and that big, wood-burning pizza oven Gretel is so rightly famous for... even if I’m not hungry for a slice of ny’s best 🍕 🍕 🍕
and, uh, BTW... as much as I love Chicago... that stuff that they sell there... deep dish... that’s not pizza 👎 👎 👎
[OOH!!!]
*🎶*🎶*
PART ONE [05:43]
Teil eins:
In which we have cause to mention the Anabaptists, and uh oh, it’s time to make the donuts
🎶 ⏰ alarm clock ⏰ 🎶
[🍩 time to make the donuts 🍩]
Alrighty then, let’s listen in as Jürgen Lexow lends his amazing voice to the next line of the fairytale:
Des Morgens früh, ehe die Sonne aufgegangen war, kam der Vater und die Mutter und weckten die Kinder auf, die mit in den großen Wald sollten. Sie gaben jedem ein Stücklein Brod, [...]
Early next morning, before the sun rose, the father and mother came to wake the children and take them into the forest. They gave them each a small piece of bread, [...]
Okay, why are they getting the kids up so fucking early...?
is it usual for woodcutters to keep bakers’ hours...???
[I dunno...]
isn’t it enough to say “early next morning...?”
why this extra emphasis on getting the kids up before dawn...?
sure, “before the sun rose,” sounds more poetic, but there’s gotta be some symbolic reason for it...
[no sir!]
oh yes, sir!
this is a jungian podcast, after all... and I agree with Jung — fairytales are the dreams of mankind... so just like in a dream — or in a poem — every detail is important and meaningful...
this isn’t one of Madame D’Aulnoy’s salon stories with all of their baroque flourishes and rococo excesses...
there ARE no gratuitous embellishments in Hansel and Gretel... or in any of the fairytales the Grimms published...
so with this tiny extra detail of a pre-dawn reveille, my Intuition had me thinking:
what is something that happens very, very early...?
prematurely...
something you get forced into doing before you want to...
before you have any say in the matter...
OR
maybe even, before the dawn of adult consciousness...
well, in the context of everything we’ve learned so far in the podcast, the religious hot potato known as Paedo - or infant - baptism fits the bill...
out of context, sure, it sounds random and far-fetched... but we first mentioned infant baptism back in Episode 05... remember?
[no!]
well, I get that... Episode 5 was pretty top-heavy with all sorts of busy facts about the enormous history of apostolic poverty... and the particular fact in question concerned two 12th century Intuitives: Pierre De Bruys & Henri de Lausanne — the first guys to ever be denounced — and punished — as heretics for their belief that infant baptism was just plain, fucking wrong...
we know for sure that Wilhelm Grimm decided to baptize Hansel... and now we know why...!!!
by mentioning God in one line, and then linking it with the early awakening of the next line... Wilhelm was taking us by the hand, and leading us to th e idea of baptism... and in particular, the practice of baptizing infants... that is, making them Christian before they reach the age of reason or consent... before they can choose for themselves...
[interesting]
why is this important...?
well, not only did the pope insist on infant baptism... so did Luther and Calvin...
yet a whole segment of European Protestants (after the followers of Pierre and Henri, the Petrobrusians and Henricians) — the so-called Anabaptists — were dead set against it...
and I do mean dead, since so many of them, all across Europe, were literally martyred for their belief that getting baptized should be a conscious choice of the individual, and not up to an infant’s parents...
so we’re not gonna get into a long discussion about the Anabaptists...
[thank you]
all we need to know is that right here, between these last 2 lines of the fairytale, our author hid a brief historic sentence that has everything to do with the Anabaptists...
since this fairytale was written for cognoscenti — people who would have already known about and read that historic sentence — this pre-dawn wake-up business was both a reminder of the sentence, and a cheeky little nod to their literary acumen...
in other words, this little “pre-dawn” detail is a metalepsis...
[what the fuck is that?]
hey remember, back in Episode 19 I explained what a metalepsis is...
[no!]
well, I’ll leave a link... and in the interest of brevity, let’s just say it’s a literary easter egg... a veiled reference to some famous historic event, or to something already written by someone else, either much earlier in history, or even in the same time period as the author... and whatever that referenced something is carries much of the weight of meaning that the metalepsis itself is meant to convey...
html problemmo... SORRY, but coding for this proved to be a huge pain in the ass... the reference is in Episode 19
thanks to these little easter eggs, we can easily see how this entire fairytale has serious religious undertones — and a decidedly Protestant axe to grind...
this particular metaleptic treat, hidden, as they all are, between the lines of the fairytale, is just one of many satiric digs aimed at the Vatican... it tells us that despite being persecuted by Catholics and Protestants alike, the Anabaptist perspective — along with that of this fairytale — had a particular, anti-Catholic edge to it...
so here’s the story, and the reference:
In 1529, a former Catholic monk, Michael Sattler, along with a few like-minded friends, wrote something of an Anabaptist manifesto known to history as the Schleitheim Confession.
and I quote from article number 1 of this here manifesto:
"Notice concerning baptism... blah, blah, blah, Jesus Christ, blah, blah, blah... hereby is excluded all infant baptism, the greatest and first abomination of the pope."
[holy shit!]
so how DID this historic sentence find it’s way into the fairytale...and suggest itself to our Intuition...?
the Grimms didn’t put it there... our fairytale author did...
but in going through the entire fairytale sentence by sentence, exactly the way we’ve been doing so far, I’ve discovered that Wilhelm Grimm’s additions and revisions aren’t about making the fairytale kinder and gentler, or even just more literary and polished...
Wilhelm was always adding little extra clues to guide us readers to the same metaleptic candy our fairytale author intended us to find...
whenever he judged a clue in the manuscript version to be a bit too subtle or difficult to follow — you know, like a clue in the Saturday NY Times crossword — Wilhelm made sure to give us a broader hint...
and THAT’s why he baptized Hansel...
he was deliberately making the symbolism available to a wider range of readers than just the cognoscenti...
making sure though, not to overtly spill the beans... and spoil the fun... because yes, finding the easter eggs in Hansel and Gretel was a game...
not exactly a parlour game... more of a centuries old, intellectual game...
I have proof of that... proof that I’ll eventually share with you...
although it only becomes obvious by doing what we’ve been doing so far, and playing the game ourselves...
so let’s continue doing that... but I want to emphasize what just happened here:
Wilhelm put the G word into Hansel’s mouth... not because he was being pious and precious about the tender or conservative feelings of his audience...
it’s because he had already surmised that an early wake-up call was supposed to point us toward the anti-Vatican sentiment in an Anabaptist manifesto...!
and the only way to get there was to understand how being awakened rudely and prematurely was metaphoric of infant baptism... the subtle clue our fairytale author left for cognoscenti...
if you and I had been born in Wilhelm’s time, the Schleitheim Confession would be something we’d probably have heard of... but if we were born into our author’s intellectual circle, we’d likely be as familiar with it as with the more famous lines of the Declaration of Independence...
there are plenty more instances of Wilhelm’s little nudges in the right direction, and I’ll point them out as we get to them... but I had only come to this conclusion about what Wilhelm was up to after seeing the game in Hansel and Gretel for myself... and observing how his revisions were always in tune with my earliest intuitions about the metaphors in each line of the manuscript...
and if no academic has so far made the same observation, it’s because no academic has gone through the fairytale as carefully and completely as you and I have been doing...
that said, there’s another clue supporting the idea of baptism in this line: the children are both given a small piece of bread...
take the religion out of this and it sounds logical doesn’t it...?
except we already know that in this story, bread is symbolic of grace... a religious abstraction to be sure... but soul food nonetheless...
so in the context of Christian baptism, what else could a small piece of bread symbolize, but the communion wafer...?
and if the tone here isn’t specifically anti-catholic, Wilhelm makes sure we get the point when he has the step-mother say: “don’t eat it before noon, because that’s all you’re gonna get!”
as if to say, Catholicism will only give you one tiny little bit of grace, and that’s it. no more...
this takes us all the way back down the road to where we started in Episode 3 with the Roman historian, Tacitus, and his descriptions of the original religious beliefs and practices of the Germans... and how the forest was sacred to them...
and it brings in Saint Boniface... and how Boniface originally baptized most of Germany... remember he converted Germans to Catholicism by pissing on their beliefs and traditions, and cutting down the Donar oak — the most famous, and most sacred tree in all of Germany...
we’re not done with this business of converting Germans to Christianity — which at the time was, of course, synonymous with Catholicism... but before we move on to the next line of the fairytale, there’s one more metaleptic easter egg hidden in this early morning wake up call...
the symbolism is only hinted at here... and while it comes much more overtly into the fairytale later on... it’s just too interesting a little morsel to have to save it for later...
in 1785, one year before his death, the famous German Philosopher and Literary Critic, Moses Mendelssohn published a book called „Morgenstunden oder Vorlesungen über das Daseyn Gottes“...
[ja, ja, it’s okay]
the title means: Morning Hours, or Lectures on the Existence of God**
**Trans. and Ed. Daniel O. Dahlstrom and Corey Dyck. Springer, 2011. 134 pages
in the text, Mendelssohn claims that these were lectures he delivered at dawn to his son, son-in-law, and another young man.
according to Professor Frederick Beiser** — an important scholar of German Philosophy — the book is a defense of Reason and Logic as the supreme arbiter of Truth in philosophy...
**(p. 94 in Frederick Beiser’s The Fate of Reason - German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte - 1987)
meaning, a defense against what we’ll eventually see as the combination of Intuition and Feeling... which are, as I’ve said, the 2 functions of consciousness represented by the little brother and the little sister: Hansel and Gretel...
of course, lectures like those of Professor Mendelssohn, could only come from someone whose Typology was a combination of Sensation and Thinking... the 2 functions of consciousness represented by the Holzhacker parents...
as I said, this text comes more obviously into the symbolism much later in the fairytale... the fact remains that the metalepsis in this line — a pre-dawn wake-up call — speaks with forked-tongue... which is to say it hides and holds 2 tongue in cheek easter eggs simultaneously: the single sentence from the Schleitheim Confession, and the entire text of Mendelssohn’s Morgenstunden.
as fun as it is to discover this... there’s something else in the Morgenstunden that’s only important to us, and might NOT have been so important to the Grimms or to anyone else of their era...
what I mean is, our fairytale author would have had to know about, and undoubtedly read Professor Mendelssohn’s book... and that makes its 1795 date of publication another clue to the date of authorship of Hansel and Gretel... it’s also another clue hinting at who that author might actually be...
[Motherfuck!]
*🎶*🎶*
PART TWO [22:26]
Teil zwei:
In which we have real teamwork...and some historic subterfuge
[Fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Fucker.]
here’s, the next line of the fairytale...
[...] die nahm das Schwesterchen unter das Schürzchen, denn das Brüderchen hatte die Tasche voll von den Kieselsteinen. Darauf machten sie sich fort auf den Weg zu dem großen Wald.
remember now, we’re talking about that little piece of bread:
[...] which the little sister put under her apron because the little brother had his pocket full of pebbles. Thereafter, they went on their way to the great forest.
I did an awful lot of thinking about that apron business, and all I could come up with was the symbolic apron that freemasons wear...
freemasonry was a pretty important Intuitive enterprise in the 18th century, and it does come into play later on in the symbolism of the story... so it’s possible that there’s some metaphoric or metaleptic meaning I’m missing here, but that’s all I’m gonna say about it...
of course, there’s the metaphoric idea of having a bun in the oven, but I just don’t see it, so let’s not go there...
the only obvious thing in this line is that Hansel’s Moon Rocks show up again...
and while I don’t wanna bore you with facts and redundancies, remember back in Episode 24 we mentioned the story of Abba Paul — otherwise known as Paul the Simple — the desert father who measured out his prayers by dropping a pebble for each prayer... meaning, he more or less invented the rosary for himself...?
[I remember]
right... remember we also mentioned that Hansel’s stones could be symbolic of Runes...
[oh yeah!]
well, since Runes could be a reference to Pre-Christian religious beliefs — put rosaries together with Runes and we’ve got the idea of syncretism... that sneaky practice of allowing pagan people to keep their old rituals and symbolic artifacts, but changing the names to reflect Christianity... all in order to facilitate their conversion to Christianity...
here, syncretism would change runes to rosaries... except, Hansel is secretly holding on to those stones... meaning, he’s secretly holding on to the old meaning of those stones... hanging on to them as Runes and NOT as rosaries...
I know that sounds like a stretch... but only because these Moon rocks have everything to do with Hansel representing Intuition, and by extension, his stones representing Hermeticism...
then it just so happens that Wilhelm Grimm was seriously interested in Runes... in fact, he was so interested he wrote 2 books about them...
***
***
and as far as syncretism goes, remember we already mentioned this in Episode 15 as an enterprise first endorsed by Pope Gregory I back in the year 601...
it was a subject that interested a lot of people back in the 16th and 17th centuries... so much so there are 3 notable books from that time listing all of the various ways in which pagan rituals and symbols had been appropriated by Christianity... I’ll leave a link:
***
Philip Melanchthon : Apologia Confessionis Augustanae (1530)
Heinrich Bullinger : De origine erroris libris duo (1539)
Isaac Casaubon : De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticus exercitationes (1614)
Jean Seznec : The Survival of the Pagan Gods: the mythological tradition and its place in Renaissance humanism and the arts. (1972).
***
*🎶*🎶*
PART THREE [26:35]
Teil drei:
In which nostalgia plays an interesting part in the action
[🎶 country roads take me home... / vinyl record screech 🎶]
[what the hell is this?]
[ahem]
Wie sie nun so gingen, da stand das Brüderchen oft still, und guckte nach ihrem Haüschen zurück.
Now as they went along, the little brother often stopped and looked back towards their little house.
so I’m not gonna say anything more about this line except that it continues along the same metaphoric path as the last line... which is to say, this looking back business can represent an obvious longing of the entire Germanic people for their own native / Intuitive / pre-Christian ways... their pre-syncretic ways...
call it their Nature, their natural religious feeling and beliefs, or whatever you want... but as I've said, religion, especially in the modern age, is the natural and necessary substitute for Intuition...
it seems to me that the earliest forms of religion — and even the earliest forms of Christianity — especially, Gnosticism — were a natural expression of Intuition...
and as the culture drags us further and further away from a natural and legitimate interest in Intuition — and as STEM subjects and Technologic Progress convince us to eliminate Intuition in any form, and at all cost — that same cultural mindset is gradually and slowly suffocating empathic religion, and leaving the field wide-open for...
well, I’ll let you finish that sentence...
as I’ve already postulated, Intuition is personified in Hansel... and it’s opposite — as you can imagine — is personified in — yup, you guessed it — the step-mother and the witch...
and guess what, in our next episode, we’re gonna see Intuition in action...
that’s all for now...
I think you know the website where you can find the transcripts and links:
[visit us on the web @] betweenthelines.xyz
alrighty then, ciao a tutti...
🎶 🎶 🎶 Headshrinker 🎶 🎶 🎶
[ciao, ciao]
got a question, or just want to say hi...?
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*Chapter Titles read by Anna Jacobsen*
*Original German Fairytale Reading by Jürgen Lexow*
Music Credits:
*🎶*🎶* Bleeping Demo by Kevin MacLeod of filmmusic.io
🎶 Anachronist 🎶 by Kevin MacLeod and licensed under filmmusic.io/standard-license
🎶 Headshrinker 🎶 courtesy of deleted_user_4338788 and freesound.org
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kristo's awesome Peanut Gallery
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@00:00 "wakey, wakey...!" courtesy of Anzbot and freesound.org
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@00:50 "Oh my God! Ridiculous!" courtesy of Duisterwho and freesound.org
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@01:16 "alright already, get on with it!" courtesy of metrostock99 and freesound.org
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@01:46 "why, why, why, why?" courtesy of Reitanna Seishin and freesound.org
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@04:22 “oh, good” courtesy of Iceofdoom and freesound.org
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@05:38 “OOOH!!!” - Johnny Vincente
PART ONE / Teil eins @05:43
@05:50 🎶 alarm clock 🎶 courtesy of gecop and freesound.org
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@06:00 “time to make the donuts” - Fred the Baker
@06:47 "(giggle) I don't know" courtesy of nfrae and freesound.org
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@07:08 "No Sir!" courtesy of theuncertainman and freesound.org
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@08:38 “No!” courtesy of theuncertainman and freesound.org
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@09:52 "interesting..." courtesy of Reitanna Seishin and freesound.org
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@10:34 "thank you" courtesy of Legnalegna55 and freesound.org
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@11:14 “what the fuck is that?” courtesy of cheesepuff and freesound.org
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@11:22 “No!” courtesy of theuncertainman and freesound.org
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@13:24 "holy shit!" courtesy of AlienXXX and freesound.org
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@19:47 "ja, ja, it's okay” courtesy of Roses1401 and freesound.org
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@22:15 "Motherfuck!" - Bunk Moreland
PART TWO / Teil zwei @22:26
@22:36 "Fuckety, fuck, fuck...!!" - Jimmy McNulty
@24:30 "I remember" - the head of Nostradamus
@24:42 "oh yeah!” courtesy of Tim Kahn and Amy Gedgaudas and freesound.org
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PART THREE / Teil drei @26:35
@26:45 🎶 country roads... 🎶 courtesy of Tragedy and Beautyrock Records
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@26:58 "what the hell is this?” courtesy of afterguard and freesound.org
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@27:00 "ahem" courtesy of Alivvie and freesound.org
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@29:19 "visit us on the web @ WWWWWs…" courtesy of WillFitch1 and freesound.org
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@29:54 "ciao, ciao" courtesy of Nighteller and freesound.org
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