Healing from the Toxic Patriarchy: Symbolism of Grimms’ The Blue Light, part 3
I left off with the completion of the soldier’s second task, that of chopping wood for the witch. He is on his way to a more wholistic experience of life already. She tells him next
Tomorrow, you shall do me a very trifling piece of work. Behind my house, there is an old dry well, into which my light has fallen; it burns blue, and never goes out, and you shall bring it up again for me.
In the interpretation style I use, all characters in such a story as this are not just separate actors but also parts, subpersonalities and inner characters, of the protagonist. Thus it bears repeating that the witch is actually an inner figure of the soldier’s. She has an old dry well behind her house. “Behind the house” means, a place that’s not seen from the front; not for public viewing. You have to go around, you have to make more of an effort, to see it. It’s very much like the back side of our bodies, symbolically speaking. In Jungian terms, we will find some shadow material there, something ignored, something neglected, untended and considered useless, like an “old dry well”.
Wells are associated symbolically with the words ‘source’ and ‘deep’. The word ‘source’ metaphorically morphs into Source, that eternal power/energy from which the all and the everything originates. That the well is dry tells us the witch aspect is disconnected from Source, for the water element, the feminine connecting soulcentric oneness, has dried up. She is disconnected from Source, and thus the soldier is disconnected from his soul, his personal metaphysical source.
We use the word ‘deep’ in English to refer to experiences that are removed from our everyday, conditioned consciousness and closer to our metaphysical selves; it’s an in/yin word in this case. Our soul, for example, feels deep, although it’s not measurable; there’s nothing to measure. Maybe other languages have a specific word for this sort of ‘deep’. Symbolism, metaphor, is the language of soul, and thus poetics are often experienced with this sort of depth, as well as other arts.
The blue light that never goes out is the light of the eternal soul, of course. The soul’s light is the light of wisdom, of destiny, of unconditional love. I’m going to interpret its blueness as the divine masculine, in this case. We could also think of the blue throat chakra, the power of speaking the truth. In order to speak the soul’s “deeper” truth beyond our social conditioning we must first uncover/discover it, of course. That’s what the soldier’s doing.
The witch’s attitude towards this “trifling piece of work” implies she doesn’t think the light is important- or is she just trying to trick him? Her order is similar to the orders he may have gotten from the king, from other authorities, for her plan is that she alone will profit from the light’s retrieval. Yet anyone with half an eye open knows that a light that never goes out is more than a trifle- and at this point in the game the soldier is, apparently, using his noggin, what with all the wood chopping.
Just as soldiers risk life and limb in war while those in power have the opportunity for profit, the witch orders him to do the dirty work of obtaining power, yet passing it all to her, like a good minion. From the healing story perspective, she is giving him an opportunity to reverse some of the trauma he experienced at the hands of the toxic society he labored under, to redeem himself; to say no this time.
The witch lets him down into the well:
He found the blue light, and made her a signal to draw him up again. She did draw him up, but when he came near the edge, she stretched down her hand and wanted to take the blue light away from him. “No”, said he, perceiving her evil intention, “I will not give you the light until I am standing with both feet upon the ground.” The witch fell into a passion, let him down again into the well, and went away.
And here we see that the soldier passes his current level of mastery with flying colors! He sees through her attempts to gain power from his efforts, by trickery; he can tell truth from lies. He says No, and quite obviously stands up for himself; “I will not give you the light until I am standing with both feet upon the ground.” He takes care of himself first; he is faithful to self. In the current sociopolitical rhetoric he is speaking truth to power. And just like the king, the witch discards him when he no longer serves her desires. She can tell he’s not a slave anymore. The usual reason for not opposing exterior powers is that we fear retribution- and often with good cause.
The witch is the soldier’s inner aspect that lost the light of her (their) soul because she has ignored it, doesn’t value it, hasn’t protected it. She won’t go to any depth to retrieve it, either; perhaps it seems too risky. In a toxic masculine society, that can definitely be the case. There’s more empowerment to be done, and now he has the light. The abusive, dry wasteland of the toxic patriarchy will be returned to abundance and love through the soldier’s soul reclamation.
Once at the bottom of the well, the soldier is on “moist ground”; a good sign that something new can be sprouted, grown. Water and earth are the feminine elements. He “saw very well that he could not escape death.” This saddens him, then he thinks of his pipe, half full in his pocket. He lights the pipe with the blue light and
When the smoke had circled about the cavern, suddenly a little black dwarf stood before him, and said, “Lord, what are your commands?” “What commands have I to give you?” replied the soldier, quite astonished. “I must do everything you bid me,” said the little man. “Good,” said the soldier; “then in the first place help me out of this well.”
The soldier’s smoking is obviously ritualistic. This is made obvious in the story by the smoke making a circle, the most ubiquitous and inclusive of sacred symbols. The circle represents the all and the everything, the circle of life, eternality, beingness or no-thing, oneness, etc. Of course tobacco is used ritually in many parts of the world. Such plant medicine rituals are indeed for connecting with the metaphysical, the nonmaterial, the soul, spirit, the sacred, the divine. And this truth is made even more obvious by the lighting of the pipe from an eternal flame, right?
The little man is another inner figure, then, which the soldier can find within the soul’s nonphysical realms. It is a power that does the soldier’s bidding. It’s probably black because of its being unknown to the personality; it’s shadowed, in Jungian terms. And/or, the blackness can refer to the creative void, another yin or feminine zone, the nothingness from which all is created, from which the manifest emerges. We have a connection with throat chakra here, as the mannikin informs the soldier that he can create whatever he desires by speaking it. This is the power of command that was once used to enslave and harm him.
The little man leads the soldier through the caverns, the soldier’s inner soul-world, showing him the treasures the witch had hidden there. Hidden treasure in these tales refers to inner, nonmaterial riches. The soldier “Took as much gold as he could carry”. Famously in symbolic story, those who discover the soul’s magical power will be enriched, and the soul is often signified by gold, one of the most noncorrosive (eternal) metals on Earth.
His inner riches more precious than gold such as self love and self authority, had been coopted by his outer and inner users and abusers. Now that he has stood up for himself and his values, he accesses his soul-treasures; an abundance of love, personal power, creativity, truth and clarity, etc. are available to him. His life is enriched.
To put paid to the witch, he tells the little man to tie her up and bring her before the judge. The little man does so, and the witch is condemned to die on the gallows. Often these tales use poetic justice for the antagonist’s demise, and being hanged means being strangled. So, as the witch-and-king disempowerment narrative had once blocked the soldier’s ability to speak truth, to command and manifest an abundant version of life for himself, the witch dies in the same strangled condition.
In manifestation magic, speaking is the same as commanding. That’s what spells are; spoken commands. The word ‘command’ has a bossy feel to it, but in English there’s no better word for spelling, creating with words. We’re not talking about asking for something to be done, we’re not talking about suggesting it. So ‘command’ is as good a word as any. Commanding is the voice of authority.
Having reclaimed some of his self authority, the soldier is now comfortable with commanding. He tells the mannikin to “be at hand immediately, if I summon you.” The mannikin informs the soldier that he will come whenever “you should light your pipe at the blue light…”
The soldier returned to the town from which he had come. He went to the best inn, ordered himself handsome clothes, and then bade the landlord furnish him a room as handsomely as possible. When it was ready,… he summoned the little black mannikin and said, “I have served the king faithfully, but he has dismissed me, and left me to hunger, and now I want to take my revenge.”
The soldier wants the mannikin to steal the King’s daughter from her bed when she is asleep and he will then order her to do menial work for him. The mannikin says he can do that, but it is dangerous to the soldier. At midnight, the witching hour between one day and the next, the mannikin arrives with the princess.
“Aha! Are you there?” cried the soldier, “get to your work at once! Fetch the broom and sweep the chamber.”
Still asleep, she does so.
When she had done this, he ordered her to come to his chair, and then he stretched out his feet and said, “Pull off my boots for me,” and then he threw them in her face, and made her pick them up again, and clean and brighten them. She, however, did everything he bade her, silently and with half-shut eyes.
At cock crow, the mannikin returns her to her bed.
Now this part with the princess is puzzling, a bit, but we can start with the idea of revenge. From the inner perspective, that the king is an internalized figure of the soldier’s. Revenge means he wants to inflict that which damaged and wounded him in their relationship, upon the king now. He wants the king to know what it’s like to be the object of abuse. However, it’s actually the princess that’s treated badly.
That the princess is sleeping, unconscious, tells us that this part of the story refers to something likewise unconscious in the psyche, due to conditioning or plain ignorance, ignoring. We can imagine this princess as a young inner feminine figure, whether of the king’s or the soldier’s doesn’t matter; it’s more like a matryoshka doll maybe. Men in my society typically leave behind their inner feminine or anima in adolescence and early adulthood; that’s how we get the dysfunctional patriarchy.
‘Scorn’ would be a good word for how the toxic aspect of male conditioning treats the feminine. Not that people are usually consciously aware of it. In fact, lots of women scorn their femininity, as well, in toxic patriarchy, however unconsciously. That’s how a hierarchical society works; someone is always scorned. The s**t flows downhill. And those who can’t make it in that environment, playing those toxic hierarchical games, are the scorned. The archetypal feminine with its egalitarian mode of operation is not affordable, is a luxury, really, in a hypercompetitive society, however scorned.
The overweening message in this weird night time activity is that the abusive form of authority the king employs is at least partly due to an utter lack of respect for the feminine. From this we can extrapolate that it was in large part the soldier’s feminine aspect, his anima, that was wounded, and that truth is now made obvious to both the soldier and the inner king or authority aspect. The young woman does whatever she is ordered to do, and frankly, the feminine principle is more biddable, less oppositional, than the masculine. It’s ordered more towards connectedness and caring, to subjectivity, to understanding the deeper meaning of others’ behaviors, as opposed to focusing always on individual desires and battling for them.
So this first task in the second round of tasks is another layer to the one where the soldier made a boundary around the garden, remember? This young woman offers no resistance to the abusive orders of the soldier, but automatically, unconsciously, carries them out, just as he once did in the king’s service. She is the boundaryless garden; like Nature herself, she can’t say no. Unconscious behavior is also unexamined behavior, whether socially conditioned or not. Our gender can dispose us to certain behaviors that go along with the plumbing, and it takes some time and experience for most young folk to figure out when masculine boundaries are applied in a healthy manner. Many never do, of course.
In any case, we see that the soldier’s wounds were to his inner feminine in large part, and also that bullies like the king (and now the soldier in imitation) are often just taking advantage of the cooperative feminine archetype that is a part of everyone. A lack of care and appreciation for the archetypal feminine in all of us is why hypercompetitive society is so damaging. Masculine objectification and its subsequent pervasive judgment eliminates the possibility of experiencing intrinsic, metaphysical valuation. We don’t care about that which does not obviously profit us to care about.
In a malecentric society value is only what makes me feel good, what helps me, what’s important to me, what I think is worth aspiring to, “looking up to”, so that I can get higher on the food chain, such as caring about the lives of the rich and famous. The world is there for my unconsidered advantage, the entitlement mode. Of course the feminine can be carried too far, and we then drown in a sea of empathy.
This conditioning is why, in a toxic or unbalanced malecentric society, men are in youth often rather severely cut off from their feminine side as a matter of survival. And then, as we grow to adulthood, the conditioning is perpetrated in the ways we live our lives; our behaviors, beliefs, lifestyles. If we are lucky, the foolish “king” of the toxic patriarchy adds the last straw, and we begin our soul reclamation. Again, and very importantly; this human disorder is not always male gendered. The society teaches its values to male, female, and other genders.
Next, why all the cleaning?
