The Reality of Fairy Tales
Don't make a mistake about it: we are not telling stories because they are cute. We are telling stories, because they can save our lives – sometimes quite literally, sometimes in a psychological sense.
The world's greatest storytelling event, the Arabian Nights Entertainment, begins with a life to be saved. Scheherezade, just having married the raging king who executes all of his brides after the wedding night, attempts to stay alive. Therefore she begins to tell story upon story, weaving one story into another and yet another, until the King gets lost in a labyrinth of stories for 1001 nights. From the world of archetypes and symbols, he returns healed and becomes a loving husband to Scheherezade and the father of her child.
The world's greatest storytelling event, the Arabian Nights Entertainment, begins with a life to be saved. Scheherezade, just having married the raging king who executes all of his brides after the wedding night, attempts to stay alive. Therefore she begins to tell story upon story, weaving one story into another and yet another, until the King gets lost in a labyrinth of stories for 1001 nights. From the world of archetypes and symbols, he returns healed and becomes a loving husband to Scheherezade and the father of her child.
Illustration by Sani Ol-Molk
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Saving lives by narrating stories is a recurring motif in the Arabian Nights. In order to save her life, Scheherezade begins to tell her first story, which itself is about a man who unknowingly killed a genie's son, and now faces his retribution. Yet, the genie is willing to soften his death sentence if the three old men who assembled to watch the spectacle can tell increasingly exciting stories.
This motif is remarkable, because indeed the only way to renew our lives and save ourselves from (psychological) death, is to tell ourselves new stories. Stories serve as rehearsals for life's possibilities. With the telling of each new story we create a new way to heal a wound from the past and envision a new future. In personal development this is called reframing: if we manage to see our problem within a different, more positive frame, we automatically give it new meaning and can deal with it better. Our stories become the more powerful the more we focus our intent, in other words: the more we know what we are wishing for. |
The Arabian Nights story which saves the merchant's life is about the poor fisherman who brings up a genie in a bottle from the depths of the sea. This story tells us about the power of wishes.
The genie has the power to fulfil the fisherman's every wish, instead when he lets him out of the bottle, the genie threatens to kill him. Aghast, the fisherman asks why he is getting such reaction. He only saved his life! This is what the genie says:
"I have been under the water, bottled up for 4 hundred years. During the first hundred years, I thought when I will be released, I will fulfil my saviour's every wish, enriching him forever and ever. But waiting 100 years, I lost a bit of my patience, and thought for the second hundred years that I shall not fulfil every wish, but still open hoards of the earth for my saviour. After another hundred years waiting in vain, I was only willing to fulfil three wishes, not more. Another century later I got really angry! I vowed whoever finds me now, I shall slay."
The fisherman only gets away by tricking the genie back into the bottle.
If we know how to read the hidden, archetypal language of fairy tales, we find a deep meaning to this story.
The genie has the power to fulfil the fisherman's every wish, instead when he lets him out of the bottle, the genie threatens to kill him. Aghast, the fisherman asks why he is getting such reaction. He only saved his life! This is what the genie says:
"I have been under the water, bottled up for 4 hundred years. During the first hundred years, I thought when I will be released, I will fulfil my saviour's every wish, enriching him forever and ever. But waiting 100 years, I lost a bit of my patience, and thought for the second hundred years that I shall not fulfil every wish, but still open hoards of the earth for my saviour. After another hundred years waiting in vain, I was only willing to fulfil three wishes, not more. Another century later I got really angry! I vowed whoever finds me now, I shall slay."
The fisherman only gets away by tricking the genie back into the bottle.
If we know how to read the hidden, archetypal language of fairy tales, we find a deep meaning to this story.
In archetypal terms, the genie stands for the power within our psyche which originally can enrich us forever and ever. It is the power which produces the curiosity of the child, the amazing feeling of being alive, the mystery of existence, the knowledge that we were born to expand, to learn and to love without boundaries. It is the power of the mind to create reality through our own thoughts and intentions. As life progresses the genie within often becomes increasingly frustrated. We hear endless commands of ‘thou must’ and ‘thou shall not:’ all these things confine the genie. Born with natural instincts to follow the inbuilt instructions of our psyche to fulfil our potential, society tends to push us away from our authentic path. Like in the story of the ugly duckling, we might be born as a swan, yet expected to live like a duck (or born as a duck and expected to live like a swan), for example born an artist and expected to live like a business man, or born an entrepreneur and expected to live like a priest. So many people today lead the life of someone else, while their genie, locked up somewhere in the depth, is getting angrier and angrier by the day. We ‘bottle up’ our feelings, our hopes and dreams for way too long at the depth of our subconscious. Finally, our own creativity can turn into a self-destructive force, pushing us to conform, while depriving our lives of genuine, heart-felt meaning and joy. Things are usually made worse because walking our true path requires sharpened sensitivity, but then again, how often do we hear: ‘Don't be so sensitive!’ ... yet another attempt to bottle up the genie.
Saint Michael and the Dragon (Unknown Spanish painter)
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What can we do? Is our only choice to throw the genie back into its captivity at the bottom of the sea and continue to live lives of quiet desperation? I shall not think so. Life is worthy to be lived by the fullest.
If we follow the path of any fairy tale hero, we learn that every obstacle, no matter where it comes from (from parents, from the government, from the boss, from the economy) is indeed a dragon to be slain - or to befrienden. That way we can stay on the course of our own growth and evolution, so that - in Ray Bradbury's words - reality cannot destroy us. |