In episode 1 we hear about modern-day cannibal witches, and find out that we're all on the menu...
this podcast is a deep dive into a fairytale that you'd better believe has the goods on how to stop them...
Interested...?
well, read on — or listen closely, friend...
Hi and welcome to the Hansel and Gretel Code: the podcast for people who love fairytales — and who’d love to find out what they really mean...
of course, Einstein is supposed to have told someone that reading fairytales to children would make them smart, and that reading more fairytales would make them even smarter...
well, reading fairytales the way we’re going to be doing here will not only make you smarter, it’s going to transform the way you think about a lot more things than just fairytales...
and, oh yeah... it’s going to make you love fairytales even more...
This is episode 1
Shawshank...???
You might not realize that the reason the Shawshank Redemption is such a terrifically popular film, is that the story it’s based on is one of the most popular tales ever written...
and no, I’m not talking about Stephen King’s original story — the one the screenplay was based on — no, I’m talking about a different story — one that’s much, much older...
I’m talking about Hansel and Gretel...
and yeah, I know — Wikipedia cites some Tolstoy story as being the model for Stephen King’s original story: some guy gets wrongly convicted of murder and sent to prison — just like Andy Dufresne
but that’s about it...
the delicious Hollywood satisfaction of revenge and a righteous escape is nowhere to be found in Tolstoy’s story...
fact is, certain, crucial aspects of Shawshank simply don’t exist in Tolstoy — and I don’t just mean that his hero ends up dying in prison...
no, taken all together, there are multiple cogent plot points that indicate Hansel and Gretel as the original story Shawshank is based on...
so, what’s my point...?
Steal like an Artist
well, I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase: “steal like an artist” and that’s because artists steal original ideas from each other all the time...
not because they’re frauds or plagiarists...
it’s because consciously or not, they recognize great creativity when they see it...
you see, REAL artists are adept at re-purposing a great, creative idea in their own imaginative way... and they always manage to create something original — something of their own from it...
(I love Nick Cave's generous take on this...)
and that’s how we were gifted this modern-day, feel-good classic of a film...
and, well, that’s more to the point... what I mean is: that feeling... that overwhelming sense of emotional well-being and satisfaction we get at the end of the movie...
that pleasurable feeling is the real reason so many of us have watched Shawshank over and over — just like we asked to have our favorite bed-time story read to us over and over...
Steven King’s story, and its re-telling as a screenplay, is a genuine fairytale whose magical, super-satisfying ending — its happily ever after — was set up by the very same plot elements and main characters as Hansel and Gretel...
except it begs the question: who gets that same kind of intense pleasure out of reading Hansel and Gretel anymore...?
well, even if we don’t, we still owe that delicious, feel-good sensation of Shawshank to Stephen King’s master-theft of Hansel and Gretel...
funny thing though, I’m sure he didn’t consciously decide to steal it... in fact I’m willing to bet that Stephen King doesn’t even realize his story is THE most brilliant and original of all the re-tellings of Hansel and Gretel ever published... and let me tell you... there are legions of them...
Hansel and Gretel and the DNA Evidence
see, a great storyteller can’t help being influenced by great stories...
and so the secret as to why we all feel so very, very good about Red and Andy is hidden deep within Hansel and Gretel...
actually, I should say that Hansel and Gretel is in their DNA... and what I mean is that Red is an actual descendent of Hansel... and Andy is a descendent of Gretel...
not only that... we’ve got the Warden and Hadley... and they’re both direct descendents of the gingerbread Witch...
we’ve even got a descendent of the Mother in the character of the prosecutor...
and to round it all off, the Judge is a descendent of Hansel and Gretel’s Father...
now oddly enough, FatAss — the guy who’s the first new inmate to break down and cry, well, he’s also a descendent of Gretel... but let’s not belabor the analogy...
it’s just that EVERY good story has a family tree... and the 4 members of the Hansel and Gretel Family represent the four main branches of THIS particular tree...
actually, those four branches split off from the main trunk a long, long time before Hansel and Gretel was written... and as far as I can tell, that split occurred somewhere around 450 BC, if not earlier...
of course you’d never know any of this just by reading the fairy tale... even if you’ve read it a hundred times — the family resemblance isn’t all that obvious...
Conspiracy Theory
no, something happened that made it almost impossible for us to see this...
more importantly, that same something made it nearly impossible for us to understand how we too, are legitimate descendants of the H&G family...
that just like Red and Andy, their story is our story... and their ancestors are our ancestors...
that something began as a simple mistake... and then it snowballed...
that first mistake was compounded by others, until finally the truth of the matter lay completely hidden beneath layer upon layer of confusion and misdirection...
mixed in with those layers of honest mistakes, were some very deliberate lies, and because of them, those layers eventually hardened into a near impenetrable falsehood...
I hesitate to call it a conspiracy... and yet whenever anyone came close to the truth it was effectively hushed-up...
I don’t know when all the malicious lying began... certainly more than 200 years ago, when the story was first published by the Grimms...
however long it’s been, the enduring truth written into Hansel and Gretel has been locked away and mis-treated — just like the honest truth of Andy Dufresne’s innocence...
and while nobody seems to realize, missing out on the truth in Hansel and Gretel is causing so many of us a great amount of unnecessary suffering and confusion...
well, it’s about time to free-up that truth... or at least, help it to escape...
so... how are we going to do that...?
Where, oh where, oh where???
well, do you remember the jewels that Hansel and Gretel found in the witch’s gingerbread house after Gretel outsmarted her...?
if you don’t remember, they brought them all back to their father’s house and made him rich at the end of the story... and it’s those very jewels that are the key to the truth we’ve been missing out on...
fact is, those jewels actually belong to us... they are OUR rightful heritage... except they’ve gone missing...
once upon a time, they were hidden away for safe keeping and NOW, nobody seems to remember how to find them... or even where to start looking...
well, we desperately need them back... because without them, that truth we’ve been missing out on is lost to us as well...
and here’s the thing, we need the substance of that truth in order to claim our very own fairytale ending... our own Zhihuatanejo...
without it, we’re stuck in the painful middle of both Shawshank and Hansel and Gretel...
as I said, those stories are our stories... we’re living our own version — our own re-telling — of them...
unfortunately, the happily ever after we crave — and have a genuine right to — is bound to remain a fairytale pipe-dream... unless we can find those jewels...
originally, they were hidden to keep them away from the descendents of that gingerbread witch... because there have always been legions of them among us...
what...?
you don’t believe me...?
Witches...??? For Realz...???
well, take Shawshank’s Warden for example... he was definitely one of them...
sure, you may think he’s only a fictional character who got what was coming to him...
think again though, because he’s got descendents too... and I’m dead certain you’ve met some of them... not only in literature and film... but in your own real life...
so now here’s where it starts getting real, because just like their notorious fairytale ancestor, these real-life descendants have been getting away with murder...
and this may sound ridiculous: they’ve been eating children left and right... like since forever...
and we have got to stop them... and I mean, like for real...
this is no joke... and it’s no fairy tale...
we desperately need to find those jewels in order to stop these modern day, real-life cannibal witches... because if we don’t, they’re going to have US for lunch...
A real-life DaVinci Code
fortunately, I know exactly where to look for those jewels... and that’s because I’ve discovered something utterly astounding: you see, I’ve learned that Hansel and Gretel is not just an entertaining fairy tale for kids...
instead, it’s a serious document full of paradoxically playful, secrets that were deliberately and mischievously written into the text...
and every one of those secrets is a valuable clue meant to lead people like us step by step, right to the jewels we all so desperately need...
we’re going to discover that Hansel and Gretel is not only a literary treasure... it’s more like a treasure map... something of a real-life DaVinci code...
and the clues in it were written as secrets, not only to hide them from generations of greedy, cruel and hungry witches...
they were also written to select out those of us who COULD ACTUALLY find and understand them...
so now, finding those jewels is a priority, because, as I said, they are the keys to the Truth of Hansel and Gretel and to our feel-good, happily ever after...
and that’s why the gingerbread witch was hoarding all those jewels in the first place...
for witches like that, Truth is anathema, and feeling good is a zero-sum game...
we’re going to see that Hansel and Gretel was specifically written in order to change the culture that allows those witches, and that zero-sum mentality to thrive...
so now we have a duty to find those jewels... and not only will they protect us (and future generations) from the witches... they will, indeed, make us rich...
in this podcast we’re going to suss out those secrets, decipher their code and find those jewels...
so to do that we’re going to go through the fairytale step by step, and carefully examine each and every clue...
together, we’re going to uncover the secret hiding place of the most valuable jewels you can possibly imagine... and learn the truth that’s key to that Shawshank / feel-good sensation of our own story... 1
Dreams and Fairytales
so maybe that sounds far-fetched to you... utterly fictitious... or just silly...
well, fine...
I want you to know that I didn’t know any of this when I started looking into Hansel and Gretel...
I was just doing what I love: treating a short, simple fairytale as if it were a dream... which is to say, reading and analyzing its metaphors...
you see, I’ve spent a lot of time reading Carl Jung... and one thing I learned from him is that fairy tales and myths are the dreams of mankind... or at least, dreams of the culture that produced and propagated those stories...
( "...we can treat fairytales as fantasy products, like dreams, conceiving them to be spontaneous statements of the unconscious about itself." see: Jung's Collected Works vol. 13 Alchemical Studies: The Spirit Mercurius paragraph 240)
my original aim was to see what Western European culture was dreaming about when it produced Hansel and Gretel...
taking my cue from Jung, I just knew there had to be some fundamental meaning in that deceptively simple story some truth that was well worth knowing...
something much more significant than any trite victorian moral, like “don’t take candy from strangers,” or “always obey your parents...”
Whodunit
okay, so the first mystery confronting us is to see just how far back in time Hansel and Gretel actually goes...
to that end, we’re going to go through the oldest known complete version of Hansel and Gretel available, which turns out to be written in the so-called Ölenberg manuscript...
which isn’t really all that old... it only dates back to 1810... it simply has the earliest version of H&G that the Grimms wrote down...
in fact, every single complete version of Hansel and Gretel from across Europe dates to after the Grimms’ first edition of 1812, which itself was a re-telling of the manuscript version...
although we’re going to find different parts of the Hansel and Gretel Story in much older fairy tales, let’s just take the 1810 version as our starting point and see where it leads us...
I can tell you though, it’s going take us on the wildest, craziest, and most fascinating roller-coaster of a literary ride you can possibly imagine...
Hansel and Gretel is a real thriller of a whodunit... and yes, we’re even going to learn whodunit — the name of the author — because it turns out that in searching for the Truth within this story we can't help but find the Truth about this story
Aunt Susie
there’s just one crucial thing we all have to agree on before we can even think about getting started —
in fact, if you haven’t already figured this out, here’s the deal: everything I’ve said about witches and eating children is strictly metaphoric...
just to be clear, I’m not talking about modern-day Wiccans or empaths or your clairvoyant Aunt Susie...
instead I’m talking about certain other people you know: some that you possibly work with or work for...
maybe even a family member...
and certainly some people you may have only read about or seen in the news or on-line...
there is, in fact, one sure-fire method of identifying those kinds of witches — the genuinely dangerous and cruel ones...
for better or for worse, it’s a method that’s woven into the story, so pulling it out here and now would be like trying to take the salt out of the soup...
Sarcasm
what I CAN tell you though, is that witches abhor metaphor... almost exactly the way vampires hate mirrors and crucifixes... which actually means they’re terrified of it...
oddly enough, these witches don’t mind similes or even analogies... and they also don’t mind irony — which is something they like to incorporate into their rhetorical weapon of choice: sarcasm...
for them, sarcasm is the very height of wit and intelligence, and it’s not only something they tend to be good at, it’s a key component of their magic...
just as an example: do you remember Andy asking the warden why he was being so obtuse — prompting the warden to throw him into solitary...?
well if you do, you’ll also remember the warden later asking Andy if he understood the awful consequences of refusing to serve him... saying: “You understand me... catch my drift... or am I being obtuse?”
like I said... witches don’t mind irony, because they know how to use it as a weapon...
instead, they truly hate metaphor... and not only because they don’t understand it or trust it...
it’s because metaphor is the language of art, of Truth, and of the soul... and they have all, long ago, sold theirs off...
Promises, promises...
so let me recap the deal here: we’re not just going to read Hansel and Gretel... we’re going to uncover and decode the secrets in it...
and we’re going to do that by examining its metaphors...
and the clues in them are going lead us right to those jewels... which, in turn are going to allow us to finally get at and free up the truth that’s been denied to us for ages — the Truth that is the key to our very own happily ever after...
and here’s a promise: if you follow along with me, you’re going to learn how to read clues like this for yourself, with any fairytale...
now unfortunately there will probably be a few witches following along as well, just like the villain in the DaVinci Code...
don’t worry, though... we’re certain to reach the prize before they do...
and that's not just because their hatred and fear of metaphor makes it impossible for them to figure this out on their own...
no, their problem is that they’re far too invested in believing in their own fantasy... and their fantasy is that there absolutely cannot be any metaphoric meaning of substance or consequence in dreams and fairytales...
for the rest of us... what choice do we have...?
if we don’t find those jewels and reach that final hidden truth, we’re screwed...
so I’m delighted to have you come along with me...
Vorsicht..!
a final word of warning...!
this is a short fairy tale... it has something like 42 sentences... which is reasonably compact for a Grimm’s story...
however, the metaphors, with their hidden clues, are so densely packed into each of those sentences, it’s going to take plenty of time and effort to get through them...
and that means we’re going to need quite a few episodes...
I promise to keep them coming, and I’ll do my best to keep them short...
I just have no idea how long this journey is going to take and exactly how many episodes we’ll need to reach happily ever after...
the only guarantee I can make on that score is that each episode is gonna be a gem...
well, that’s where we stand... right on the threshold of Once upon a time...
so if you’re game... subscribe to the podcast on whatever app floats your boat... and then visit the website: betweenthelines.xyz
you’ll find transcripts, links — including links to my other podcasts: kristo’s astrology (which is now on permanent hiatus) and kristo.art — and a few other surprises there...
alrighty then... I’ll see you next time... ciao a tutti...
got a question, a comment, or just wanna say hi...?
don't be shy (like me) — I'd love to hear from you:
Episode 2 - Once Upon a Time / The Hansel and Gretel Code Trailer