well, today’s the day we start start digging into the story... and really get our hands dirty...
so get ready for this, because in getting to the bottom of this fairytale we’re gonna find ourselves uncovering some long-buried skeletons... and as we bring them up into the light, they just might start coming back to life...
Welcome to episode 2 of the Hansel and Gretel Code
as I’ve said, there are only 42 sentences in the manuscript version we’ll be using, and each one of them is jam packed with clues, so we’re gonna have to sift through them pretty carefully, one at a time...
this being a cold case, we don’t want to miss anything that all the other investigators have...
that said, before we even get to the first sentence, we can already see that there’s an odd little discrepancy in the matter of the title...
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Clue 1 - The Title Discrepancy
what I mean is: the first and most obvious clue we have to examine is that Hansel and Gretel wasn’t the original name of the story...
our manuscript version was called das Brüderchen und das Schwesterchen... the little brother and the little sister...
it was the Grimm’s themselves who chose to give the story its famous name...
and so right off the bat we have this seemingly insignificant little detail we could probably get away with ignoring...
I mean, is this really a clue, or are we just making work for ourselves by bringing it up...?
plenty of other investigators have already mentioned it and pretty much left it at that...
of course, it seems only logical that the Grimm’s would change the name — they already had another “little brother and little sister” story they also wanted to publish... which they did...
obviously, they couldn’t use the same title for both stories, so they made a simple editorial decision...
there’s probably nothing more to it than that...
The Juice
if we’re hoping to get through the story and find all the Easter eggs in it as quickly and efficiently as possible, getting bogged down in thinking through every teensy, tiny detail like this — especially when we’ve already got a perfectly adequate and logical explanation for it sounds kinda silly... if not something worse...
and hey, it might even be the factual Truth...
so why don’t we just leave it at that, and keep moving...?
beating around the bush here is probably a complete waste of our valuable time and attention... not to mention a very boring exercise in futility...
except, it’s not...
and here’s why:
perfectly logical interpretations of this story —not to mention some highly sophisticated academic investigations — have all missed the boat on just about every fascinating discovery that we’re going to make...
the key is to be suspicious of perfectly logical explanations that just have no juice — no excitement in them...
ho-hum, reasonable explanations that don’t make us all sit up and go “whoa!” well, they might help us to get through this fairytale in just a few episodes... what they would give us, though, is just another wooden cliché of an interpretation...
and for my money, interpretations like that are real snoozers...
more importantly though, details that have perfectly logical explanations are almost a dead give-away that something sly, sneaky and entertaining as hell is hiding in them...
and this little brother and little sister detail is no exception...
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Context is King
we’re actually going to find out that there IS an important clue hiding in the original name of the story...
I just can’t say anything more about it right now, and that’s not because I want to keep you hanging...
it’s because there’s no way any of us could possibly pull the meaning of that clue out of thin air... or anywhere else...
not now... and maybe not ever...
and what I mean is, not without a whole lot of context...
you and I need to know so much more about the story before we would be able to see this deft little clue as one of the missing jewels in it...
because that’s exactly what it is...
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A different Zeitgeist
see, there was a time and a place when that bare bones, generic sounding title — little brother and little sister — would have made more than just a few people smile, and nod their heads, and rub their hands together knowing exactly where this story was coming from and where it was likely headed...
and that’s because they were living within a culture that provided all the context they needed to catch the drift of that title...
we no longer live in that zeitgeist...
so the kinds of things we’re all familiar with — the kind of info we need to get us through our usual days, and the kind of entertainment we seek to get us through our evenings and nights (not to mention all the attention grabbers and distractions we can no longer escape)
that’s all stuff that forces us to keep missing the boat on Hansel and Gretel...
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A Snapshot
so let me give you a little snapshot of those people and that zeitgeist:
you see, the people who cared about this story and who first understood its meaning were professionals...
they just weren’t the typical fairytale professionals native to our zeitgeist: academic folklorists, psychiatrists and various postmodern cultural critics...
no, they were theologians, philosophers and artists...
just about all of them were writers, many of them were teachers, and some were very involved in the discipline of Philology...
hey, it really was a different zeitgeist...
and a very dangerous one, too
It was just after the French Revolution — a pivotal, free-for-all moment in European history when everything went topsy-turvy...
In a kind of intellectual reign of terror, it wasn’t just the guillotined heads of aristocrats that were being held up for view; everything that had been held up as Truth for as long as anyone could remember was being examined — and overturned.
Dickens used a litany of paradoxical opposites to describe that zeitgeist, famously calling it the best of times and worst of times.
one of the most important things to understand about that zeitgeist, especially as it relates to our fairytale, is that what interested and entertained so many people was the activity of reading and discussing ideas and information... and we’re not talking just fiction and newspapers...
no people were actually entertained by reading philosophy and poetry...
just to give you an idea of how far removed we are from such a zeitgeist, consider this brief snippet from a long fan letter sent to Immanuel Kant on October 2nd 1796... just 14 years before the Grimms wrote down our story...
You cannot believe how enthusiastically young ladies and women are taken with your system and how eager they all are to learn about it. There are many women’s groups here in Würzburg, where each one is eager to outdo the others in showing knowledge of your system: it is the favorite topic of conversation.***
just let that sink in for a moment...
*** Letter to Kant 2nd October 1796
„Haben Männer sich so sehr gegen die kritische Philosophie gesträubt, so macht sie ihr Glück leichter bey Weibern. Sie glauben nicht, wie enthusiastisch Mädchen und Frauen für Ihr Sistem eingenommen sind, und wie allgemein diese wünschen, es zu kennen. Hier in Würzburg kömmt man in viele Frauenzimmergesellschaften, wo man sich beeifert, vor andern mehr Kenntniß Ihres Sistems zu zeigen, und wo es stets das Lieblingsgespräch ausmacht.“
I don’t know about you, but that totally reminds me of the line from King Herod’s song in JC Superstar:
Jesus you just won't believe
The hit you've made 'round here
You are all we talk about
You're the wonder of the year
...
My Guarantee
of course, if you’ve ever tried reading Kant, you realize how ridiculous that sounds...
however, around that time, the 3 most famous philosophers in Germany were Kant, Moses Mendelsohn, and a guy named Christian Garve... Mendelsohn and Garve were both what was called a Popularphilosoph... meaning, they read and understood Kant and the mind-bending nuances, intricacies and mumbo jumbo of what we might think of as his inscrutably arcane academic philosophy... and what they did was to produce a Readers Digest version of Kant for popular consumption... much the way William Barrett did that for us with Existentialism in his sweet classic "Irrational Man."
well, I guarantee we’re going to get an even more intimate and entertaining view of the context that gave those earlier fairytale lovers plenty of reasons to smile... and before we’re through, the very mention of "little brother and little sister" is gonna put a knowing smile on our faces too...
and here’s a real flash: I’ve been working on this material for over 10 years... and in all that time, it never fully registered with me that the names Hansel and Gretel do not appear anywhere in the manuscript...
such is the power of our own zeitgeist to blind us to the simplest of observations...
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SGT. FRIDAY
so here’s the very first line of the manuscript in English:
Once upon a time there was a poor woodcutter who lived before a great forest.
now, just like the title, you might be thinking there’s nothing of any great consequence here...it’s all pretty straightforward and factual...
kinda like an episode of Dragnet...
just the facts, m’am...
well, with fairy tales and dreams, all the magic (and meaning) lies hidden between the lines — in all the tiny details, meaning: the nooks and crannies of those seemingly innocent and straightforward facts...
and this first line already has at least 3 of them:
first we’ve got a woodcutter living near a great big forest...
second we’ve been told that our woodcutter is poor...
and third, before we can even set foot in that fairytale forest to start hunting for witches and interpretive Easter eggs, there’s the easily overlooked detail of that universal phrase: “Once upon a time.”
...
Once upon a time…
So now, why am I stopping to examine “Once upon a time”...?
it’s certainly not specific to Hansel and Gretel...
It’s just a simple cliché, isn’t it?
or maybe a basic literary convention...?
What more can anybody say about “Once upon a time?”
Alright, sure, it makes you wonder sometimes, especially about that phrasing...
so even if it sounds oddly quaint, like “Auld Lang Syne,” we all know what it means. Right?
It just references some mythical or imaginary time in the past.
We really don’t need any more complicated an explanation than that, do we?
instead of a red hot clue into Hansel and Gretel, it’s probably just a red herring that will only get us lost and off the trail...
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idioms
well, before we dismiss it as a convention or a cliché, or even a red herring, how about we try giving it a precise definition, and see where that takes us... okay?
so, to be nitpicky, it qualifies as an idiom... and an idiom is any phrase where you can’t deduce its full meaning from the dictionary meanings of the individual words...
what I’m saying is, we all know what ONCE means, and we all know what UPON means, and of course we all know what TIME means... put them all together, it gives us this phrase that we’ve all heard, and we all know exactly when to use...
and that makes it just like a handy phrase in a foreign language...
in fact, a foreign idiom is something you’ve learned how to say, and you know when to use...
that is, you know that it fits in a certain situation — and you can use it with confidence — even though the literal translation is either really weird or it just makes no sense at all in your own language...
using it, though, is something that not only makes you sound more like a native, it can actually make you less of a complete foreigner...
so that’s what “Once upon a time” is...
a foreign idiom. period. end of story. even though it only fits at the beginning of them...
okay, well that still only tells us what “Once upon a time” is... not what it means... and that puts us right back where we started...
so are we just chasing our own tails here…?
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Alchemy
well, in a very particular way, yes... because that’s exactly what the phrase requires of us...
let me explain:
we all now know that “Once upon a time” is just an idiom... and it references some mythical or maybe even some historical past... and that’s plenty of meaning to hang our logical hats on ...
except...
it still leaves US hanging...
As a traditional fairytale mantra, “Once upon a time” always tickles something in us that goes beyond words... something that Logic and Reason can never quite reach.
kinda like those pesky little hairs that sneak up under your collar at the barber shop.
Logically, we all know that fairytales have the power to stir our imagination... except we’re not imagining things when we sense that something important is hiding in that tantalizing little phrase... something we really need to know...
and yet, like a zen koan, “Once upon a time” confounds our logic...
in fact, it might as well be a magic spell conjured up by some witch or wizard, because it makes us feel something that we know in our bones but renders us powerless to explain what it could be... even to ourselves...
And it’s not just the phrase... it’s what comes after the phrase...
there’s a feeling that “Once upon a time” is almost standing guard over something... and that something, whatever it is, is locked away, not only in the fairytale, it’s in us, too.
...
Outta my way...!
so maybe we’ve all become immune to the power of that spell...
and we should brush right by “Once upon a time...”
just push it out of the way...
after all, if this was once a dragon guarding the castle of Truth, we’re all far too sophisticated to pay any attention to it’s toothless demand that we learn its language... not to mention that of the fairytale it’s guarding...
hey, we’re all adults here... we all know how to read a fairytale...
our logical mind has no trouble understanding the words, and we all get the picture...
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The Truth
well, maybe we get the picture... we just don’t get the Truth...
not if Logic is the only language we understand...
if we enter fairytales armed only with logic, we will, like so many clueless knights trying to slay the dragon, end up with nothing but boring clichés for our pains...
the deep Truths that “Once upon a time” stands guard over are written in a language that only our Intuition and Emotions can understand...
and one of the deepest secrets of Hansel and Gretel is that unless we learn to value our Intuition and Emotions, and come to understand their language, Truth itself will always elude us...
and not only in fairytales...
see, Hansel and Gretel is a story that’s all about Truth...
maybe even the most important Truth in Life, the Universe and Everything.
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It's all LIES...!!!
what it’s not, though, is a story about telling the truth, since there are 9 outright lies or fibs told in the course of it.
EVERYBODY in Hansel and Gretel lies at some point or another — and that fact alone ought to be enough to convince you that the characters in it are all utterly true to life.
just know that facts alone don’t constitute Truth.
Truth be told, I myself have already lied to you — about the facts, that is — because the father, unlike everyone else in the story, doesn't actually tell a lie.
Not directly...
see, this guy’s weak capitulation to his wife’s carping demands to get rid of the kids — a key point on which the entire story depends — constitutes something far worse than any of the blatant lies told by the other characters.
In thinking, or somehow, believing, that he could live happily ever after — after abandoning his two children in the forest — he becomes the only character ultimately caught lying to himself.
ouch...!!!
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Metaphor Magic...
for what it’s worth, it turns out the father's lie doesn’t do him any great harm...
and without all the lying, there wouldn’t be any story at all...
so why would we want the Truth in any story, especially if the best part of it is all a tissue of lies — and fictional, imaginary ones at that...???
because: that’s where all the magic is...
in a lie...
in a lie that tells the Truth...
and what I’m talking about here is: Metaphor...
and what is metaphor, but a cheeky little rhetorical trope that says that A is B, or C, or maybe even X and Y... meaning, it takes 2 obviously (and sometimes wildly) dissimilar somethings, and insists that they are not just alike, but the very same thing...
and it does that all with a straight face...
see metaphor is the paradox that confounds logic... and that witches abhor...
and it’s the very language that fairytales speak...
it’s also the language that Truth speaks...
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American Express...
Now "Once upon a time" ("es war einmal," in German or "Olim," in Latin) may be a toothless old dragon to the logical mind... it still stands as a ritual signal to consciousness informing (if not warning) us that not only is our logical, empirical mind going to be a clueless tourist in the land of fairytales… it’s definitely not going to understand the language…
if we want to find all the jewels in Hansel and Gretel, our intuitive and emotional consciousness is going to have to take over and do the interpreting… otherwise we’re just going to get ripped off and have a typically bland, homogenized tourist experience where we never leave our filter bubble — or taste or see of any of the really mind blowing, juicy stuff that only the locals know about...
so if you’re looking for a tour of just the highlights of Hansel and Gretel, you’re probably on the wrong bus…
sure, we’re going to see all of its famous landmarks... we’re also gonna go way off the beaten path to explore its dark, metaphoric underbelly…
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Liminality
“Once upon a time” is the gateway to that scary but vibrant place...
in fact it’s an unassuming looking threshold that has a very specific name in psychology...
it’s what’s known as a liminal space: a psychological state where we find ourselves betwixt and between...
neither in nor out...
now we always have the option of passing right through it without thinking, and entering the fairytale forest with our logical caps on, which means letting logic lead us around by the nose — and take us to all the usual tourist traps — or we can acknowledge the power it represents by doffing those incongruously silly caps and giving our Intuition carte blanche to take us to the wild and funky source of all those intriguing foreign aromas: the Honest to God Truth...
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Hey...! what about that Tail Chasing...!?!
so I promised to explain why we were chasing our own tails:
the image comes from alchemy... and it’s known as the ouroboros — the snake biting its own tail...
and for our purposes, it's sometimes pictured as a dragon biting its own tail...
it’s a metaphoric image of such great depth, that it can never be fully explained to the logical mind...
and that’s the point...
just like a zen koan, it’s meant to take logic for a ride — around and around — until it gets tired and bored and finally gets off the bus... leaving our intuition in charge...
another thing it does is cast a protective circle... just as witches and wizards always did, and do...
and that’s where the Truth lies: within a circle that logic can’t penetrate... but can only distort...
so, consider "Once upon a time" as a magic spell that casts a circle around the Truth, in order to protect it from a premature intrusion of Logic...
and if we dare to cross the line and enter into the great Hansel and Gretel forest, we have to understand we’re being commanded to remove our logical hats... just as Moses was commanded to remove his sandals because he was about to tread on holy ground...
wild, huh...?
well, now that we’re in the right frame of mind, and properly prepared, we’re ready for our next episode, when we’re finally gonna step foot in our woodcutter’s great forest... and where we’ll almost immediately find ourselves transported to somewhere around the year 98 CE...
I hope you decide to join us...
and for sure... bring a friend or 2 or 3...
just remember that the website for this podcast is betweenthelines.xyz... where you’ll find transcripts, links and a few more fairytale articles, as well as links to my other intuitive work at kristo.art and kristo.com
hope to see you there...
alrighty then...
ciao a tutti
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