This article is a continuation of From Trauma to Wholeness: Brothers Grimm’s Fitcher’s Bird. We left the story with the murder and dismemberment of the first girl; now the wizard says “I will fetch myself the second”, for there are three sisters in the story. Again, he magically steals the…

Here is a version of the story, if you wish to read it: Fitcher’s Bird It is not necessary to read the story to understand this symbolic interpretation of it, however. Fitcher’s Bird is one of the Grimms’ relatively short and sweet transformational tales, featuring a few symbolically encoded bits…

Through me you pass into the city of woe: Through me you pass into eternal pain: Through me among the people lost for aye. Justice the founder of my fabric mov’d: To rear me was the task of power divine, Supremest wisdom, and primeval love. Before me things create were…

I ran across this story in an illustrated children’s book: image above obviously. Most reviewers tout it as a Cinderella story, and that’s true, for our nameless protagonist is indeed a cinderbiter (see my previous article on cinderbiting here). Rafe Martin fleshes the story out nicely, but out of respect…

Rumpelstiltskin is a teaching tale concerning the ways in which we give our creativity away, with some pointers on reclamation. In the story, the miller father and the king are in cahoots to enslave the daughter/queen; thus it’s a teaching on what we call toxic patriarchy. Toxic patriarchy can be…

“… a change is coming, and nobody knows it but me.” Merricat in opening scene at desk I was super excited to discover We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a remake of Shirley Jackson’s final 1962 novel. Symbolically encoded subtext appears in lots of film, as it does in…

The story of Sedna, Inuit sea goddess, has a number of variations- usual for myths, of course. Some versions focus on social conditioning; Sedna the mortal young woman judged as vain, idly combing her hair, insulting suitors with rejection, and rebelling against her traditional role as wife. …

I lived in East Palo Alto, CA in 2010 while I finished my Master’s degree. Having lived in a very rural community for years, I was pretty excited about all the Bay Area options for alternative religious observance. One church I looked forward to visiting was the Palo Alto Ananda…

Maybe you’ve never heard of The Great Turning. I think I first read the term from Joanna Macy, around ten years ago, in her book Coming Back to Life: Practices To Reconnect Our Lives, Our World (1998). The book was updated with the help of Molly Brown in 2014, and…