Ever notice the poetic nature of fairy tales? Those who are long familiar with my classes have said I speak like poetry as well. Those metaphors aren’t just imagination. Our words reflect an actual object of observation.
I think the rhythm is kind of magic. A rhyme helps you remember. Yes, and for fairy tales the poetic reality is the more immediate reality, because it’s the reality of the crossroads.
Bards are very unsuccessful if they cannot give a memorable tale, so they make it entertaining with rhymes. Actually, they make it substantial with rhymes. They make it real. In fact, recent research into the neuropsychiatry behind education has turned up that we understand and remember things best if they are presented in a story format.
Familiar with fairy tale links to crossroads? The place where dreams and reality branch off? Where everything branches; supposed real life stories, trains of thought, spiritual trends in your life. Is there really any difference?
It’s all your own personal tree. Fairies like trees.
Are some cultures more attuned to faeries than others? Yes. The earth centric cultures. Eastern cultures have preserved some measure of that even to the present day.
It sounds like reading old fairy tales can help us understand reality. To “go beyond” so to speak. They can indeed. We are not alone on earth, or in heaven, any heaven you choose to subscribe to.
Are most fairy tales warnings of where not to tread, or are they equally hopeful and show where to go? Mostly, they were warnings, because people needed those more. They didn’t handle subtle navigation very well, but a smaller portion were hopeful. There were old practices that were in honor of the connection between human fortunes and those of the other people.
Familiar with the tale of Sleeping Beauty? That links back to one of those old fairy practices. It was believed that on the eve of a child’s birth, it was necessary to set a table with food as an offering to the fairies. The fairies were believed to have a hand in the development of one’s life path, sort of like guardian angels, and neglect of any might bring misfortune whether you liked that fairy or not, or liked any fairies. Do you see the relevance of the dinner for fairies?
Getting them on your side? It is sort of a combination of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer, but it goes beyond that. Even if the wolves, and bears, and birds, and bees never do anything directly to humans or against humans, there is a consequences for not allowing a place for them at the metaphorical dinner table.
Give the faeries some food or else they will rufie you and then some dude will come along and molest you? I always thought Sleeping Beauty was a bit disturbing. Indeed, it is. Feeling groggy? It has been established by FMRI studies that the human brain functions on auto-pilot more often than it is actively busy.
Most fairy tales are not really for small kids if they are easily frightened. Disney has a lot to answer for. There were no mice in the real Cinderella. Actually, they were rats, and crows, and spiders. Nature does play favorites. It’s just gentle about it, and has been for a long time.
You never hear of the main character being plain or ugly. Not in the sanitized tales. There were older tales often of a crone figure.
Why get a prince when you had seven men willing to work and cook meals for you. Indeed, dwarves make fine providers and loyal friends in many fairy tales.
I guess modern day fairy tales may still exist in the fantasy section of bookstores? Some of Neil Gaimans
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~
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