Little Red Riding Hood Symbolism: Bargaining with the Devil
I don’t remember if I have ever done an interp of the Grimms’ Little Red Riding Hood before. If so, a personal experience has prompted me to have another go. I can always do another, since these wisdom tales are rendered in archetypal/symbolic language, which lends itself to permutations. Like a faceted gem, symbolic story shifts color and shape when the angle of the light changes. Interpretations of LRRH can vary from the pragmatic “Don’t talk to strangers” to pubescent Persephone-like initiations with masculine desire (LRRH’s flower-picking is one nice symbolic corollary to Persephone's experience).
This interpretation features a very common over-riding (haha) theme of the old archetypal stories, that of wisdom development. The purpose in these wisdom stories is advice on the matter of human development, which is the same as wisdom development. Wisdom development is learning how to navigate life on planet Earth with ever more refinement, depth, and personal power; even plants and animals do it. Along the wisdom path which begins at birth we learn compassion, self authority, equanimity, a whole raft of such skills that make the human experience more rewarding for self and other. LRRH shows us that we learn, also, to play the long game- to stay on the path with big goals like self love, improved physical health, deeper creative expression, and balancing activity and stillness (i.e. masculine and feminine archetypal energies).
This time of year lots of people are making deals with the archetypal Devil, dieting and exercising and meditating and journaling with an eye to feeling better about themselves and their life than they have been. We have all learned through our human experience the basic law of cause and effect. If I do/don’t do A, then I will experience B. B will be the result of using my personal will to do/don’t do A. That conclusion is all good; cause and effect is pretty much the most basic law here, aside from gravity, right? So where does the devil come into pursuing our goals?
The Devil comes when we “pay”, in this case do something or don’t do something, with the belief that we will manipulate our experience in the short term, and reap particular rewards. “Paying” generally refers to any simple exchange that occurs in a vacuum, like buying an apple in the store with money. Paying in this sense is as opposed to, for example, trading firewood for apples in a barter system or gifting economy. Simplistic monetary exchanges are very practical, for the price is set; the actions are predetermined and the results pretty predictable. If I do A (give you money), then you do B (hand over the goods), kind of like if I burn 1000 calories I lose 1 pound of fat (made that up).
I don’t have to know ANYTHING AT ALL ABOUT YOU, or myself, in order to exchange money with you for goods. I can just left click a mouse or poke at a phone screen. Because relationship experiences take time and skill and effort, simplified monetary exchange streamlines the marketplace exponentially. It serves the often short term goal of buying stuff, and that means we can theoretically buy a lot of stuff.
So, there is no human relationship needed in the sort of monetary exchanges we do every day in my society, increasingly so with internet transactions. Relationship is optional. Hell, there’s no relationship in such exchanges to the actual source of our material goods, the planet, Gaia, the Earth. Most adults in my society have cut that connection off at the proverbial pass, imagining goods as coming from shops, from businesses. Relationship-free exchange is how we got into the environmental pickle we are in now on our planetary home, as many individuals ignore the importance of the personal relationship we have with Gaia since our conception.
That relationship, though it sustains every moment of our lives, is seemingly not worthy of our time and energy. Our alienated exchange-based relationships (recall the calorie equation) with our bodies can mimic this human disconnect from our complex and wise planet. For those raised in a monetary exchange society, the streamlined, short term goal is natural. We usually don’t have to consider anything beyond the simplistic formula created in a vacuum of if I do A, then B will result. For example, we don’t have to consider our own motives for the purchase.
Devil’s pacts fit easily into the short term mode, for they always have a due date for results. If I am any example, odds are decent that at some point in the not too distant future I will abandon my lofty goals and go back to what I was doing before; busy all day so no time to exercise/meditate/create, consuming unhealthy grub so my energy level never improves, self-abusing in order to accomplish my health goals, etc. and etc. and etc.
In any case, the old thing is always tough to give up, because changing lifestyle is not so much a mouse click. It involves relationship with self, with body, heart and soul, which in truth often extends to our relationship with “other”. Maybe if we have always been overweight, and our goal is a leaner body mass, we have to give up some negative self-talk and a very inhibited social persona, perhaps drop the habitual delusion that we will start eating right- tomorrow. If we hurt ourselves by zooming around in a caffeinated whirlwind, ’cause that’s super fun and we get lots of kudos, we have to give up some of our competitive ego and lower our unreasonable standards (know that one personally).
Anyway, point is, that short term goals usually imply changing something in our lives without changing ourselves on levels that involve shifting not just lifestyle, but self concept and core beliefs and all that groovy stuff. We have learned to mechanically change specific actions, expect rewards (we paid for it!), and delude ourselves into thinking we can get them on the cheap (i.e. quickly, easily, and/or exactly when we expect them). We’re looking for short cuts, like the wolf who takes a short cut to Grandma’s in order to eat her. That M.O. may work for some, it may work for a while, but eventually we realize the Devil was there messing with us all along, and that’s the beginning of wisdom on the matter of short cuts.
We want the material reality to compensate and/or reward us for our work, our struggle, our losses and our suffering. If we “lose” in the game of life, instead of going deeper we look around for who cheated us, for the Devil’s short term mode means we live in a constant state of Let’s Make a Deal. That’s why the archetypal Devil is often depicted going around making deals with despairing or ambitious “sinners”. The wise third way (not the 3D way) is the long game. Traveling the long way ‘round we rediscover the love, inspiration, and connection that lasts, that was always there, beneath all the bargaining. That is wisdom, as defined in these stories, and unlike a fit bod, you can take it with you when you go.
Alright, that’s the shortest I can make an intro to the wisdom path as I see it described in LRRH. Hope it made some sense. Let’s get into the story.
There was once a sweet little maid, much beloved by everybody but most of all by her grandmother, who never knew how to make enough of her. Once she sent her a little riding hood of red velvet, and as it was very becoming to her, and she never wore anything else, people called her Little Red Riding Hood.
We see right away that wisdom development is featured by the focus on the grandmother, the crone. She gives the granddaughter a red hat, a metaphorical “crown”, in fact, “crown” being the meaning of ‘crone’. It is made of a rich, red, soft fabric; it is made of love. This tells us that the crowning glory of wisdom is just that; the knowledge that love is foremost. When we want to change our lives, don’t forget to do it with love. That the child is much beloved hints that we are talking about some inner child work, in fact. The granny, in that case, is our protagonist, and she is learning/has learned to dearly love her own inner child.
Red is one of the alchemical colors that often show up in these stories, the others being white, black, gold and silver; we see all these but white in the crown above, but her hair is white. The symbolism of red is probably the most complex of all the alchemical colors. We are given a clue here, in the detail of the riding hood. Riding refers, of course to riding a horse. However, the child never does. The “crown” is gifted, conferred, worn, in relation to something ethereal pointed to here in the combination of red and horse.
Horses are very powerful animals that humans have learned to “harness”; to behave according to our will. Horse and rider develop a relationship, a partnership, and then the rider has access to the horse’s power. Specifically in the sense of riding, the rider guides the horse’s direction as well as speed. The horse could refer to the body and/or the personality or ego, which must be (or hopefully is) guided, as sometimes depicted in the Chariot card in tarot (example above).
The horse symbolism could also be something like the wind horse (below) of Tibetan tradition and beyond, which carries, is guided by, the personal human soul. Wind horse symbolizes good luck, as being in partnership with one’s soul is great fortune. This rider is soul in the sense of the most powerful spiritual aspect of an individual’s life, we could say. The soul always plays the long game as it has has a very long term perspective: eternity. Aged humans can develop a more expanded perspective, too, in their wisdom development, as the length of our known days shifts from years to decades, and eternity in the form of Death knocks more and more frequently upon our door.
Due to the later entrance of the wolf, I interpret the red as passion; not just love, but also inspiration and desire. Thus the theoretical Red Riding Hood horse could also represent passion itself and its attribute of powerful movement. I mean ‘inspiration’ as in motivation. Inspiration, typically goal oriented, is what gets us moving, motivated. We are inspired to move by love, by attraction. In this case some goal seems attractive to us, for example a healthy mind or body, a new car, a particular job, the desire to learn something.
The word ‘desire’ usually carries the meaning of passion in the sense of the Devil’s 3D realm of sensuality. ‘Desire’ in this case usually means goals that cause and effect have taught us will garner 3D rewards; something we can see, touch, hear, physically experience. Wisdom development, however, does not aim to reap 3D rewards directly, one reason few care about it in a materialistic or 3D society like mine. I am not putting down materialism here, please note. I’m not hating on material reality, that is stupid and otherwise pointless.
Red Riding Hood and her passion focus, her symbolic red and her horse, show us the human path is about motivation. Do we love ourselves and our lives enough to self motivate for the long game? Can we truly commit to our important life goals, and change our relationship to self and thus “the world”? The Devil comes in when we ask “the world” (the active, sensory-based, dualistic 3D situation) to make life worth living. We hope 3D rewards will give our lives meaning and connection and all that good stuff that are not intrinsically in its provenance. Immersed, as the archetypal Devil is, in 3D, we use the reflection of “the world” to feel good about our life and therefore our selves; the two (life and self) are one and the same. Nothing intrinsically wrong with it, but it can distract us from what lies beyond the senses. Lies may sound good, beauty may belie; like the story’s wolf, the Devil is a famous shapeshifter.
We see in the detail “once she sent her” (the hood) that in the beginning of the story, there is some psychic distance between the child and crone. “Once” could mean a long time ago, in human terms. Their coming together will be the story event that symbolizes the grandmother’s having learned and integrated wisdom in regards to some passionate behavior(s) of her youth. Some wildness, represented by the animals (horse and wolf), will be understood and tamed, redirected. The wolf becomes a nice rug…
As in many wisdom/alchemical tales, 3 generations of females are featured; mother, crone, and “maid” in this translation. This trinity harks to the old triune goddesses and the powers of these 3 life stages. The three stages and their experiences come together, “meet”, as wisdom in the crone. In this framework we see that the “maid” or innocent could be a baby, a child, or an adolescent. It just means experiences previous to adulthood.
At the beginning of the story, from the perspective of the maid and the mother, grandmother is not in great shape. She is “weak and ill”, and Mom is sending cakes and a flask of wine. Mother is, of course, the feminine nurturing archetype (don’t forget that men carry these archetypes as well), and from our symbolic perspective this mother is an inner aspect of the protagonist grandmother’s: her inner Mom. As we move into our croneage, we must shift outward focus from feeding others to inner focus on what feeds us: thus the cakes. Otherwise our croneage will not be a healthy one developmentally.
Though in our young and middle adult years we might have been busy with family and/or “the world”, elderhood is for discovering the wholistic health that results from more alignment with Self, with our center, with our soul. Through the aging body’s direction and our self-attendance, extraneous conditioning, beliefs, goals and other behaviors fall away, or are painfully wrested from us. We lower worldly expectations and learn to turn inwards toward more self-support, satisfaction, depth, and meaning found in being, in not-doing, in taking the exterior Devil’s ephemeral 3D more lightly.
So upon her own wisdom path, grandmother is now calling on her inner nurturer for herself; she is learning to use her feminine resources for self healing. Maybe she’s diving into her creative powers; maybe she’s en-joying more deeply friends and family; maybe she’s using meditation to release the old anxieties she’s “sick and tired” of, that make her “weak”. Maybe she’s learning to grieve properly. Maybe she is reclaiming some childhood qualities of play and spontaneity. Maybe she is adjusting her lifestyle for improved health.
Cake symbolically is sort of like bread, the essential food of the heart chakra, but luxurious. It’s bread, elevated. We don’t need sugary, decorated, or fluffy food; that’s extra. Cake is more of a sixth or seventh chakra thing, depending on the cake. A flourless chocolate cake is leaning towards heart chakra, being heavy, and with all the chocolate. A tiered white wedding cake is quite seventh chakra, especially one with many tiers. The white refers to spirit in the sense of the ethereal; it refers to purity and light. The white and the sugar and the elevation represent the holiness of the marriage commitment, the inner marriage of masculine and feminine archetype, with the little mythic bride and groom figures joined up there in a sacred space. Thus, in line with the crown symbolism, the cake gives us to understand that the story refers to feeding the ethereal/soul/spirit aspect of human experience.
“Make haste and start before it grows hot, and walk properly and nicely, and don’t run, or you might fall and break the flask of wine, and there would be none left for grandmother.”
The translation seems conflicted here, because Mom tells her daughter to make haste and don’t run. I assume make haste refers to the instruction to leave in the cool of the morning, “before it grows hot”. This phrase I take as a reference to the subject of passion, for the trouble for all of us with passion is that we want to run towards the object in the heat of our desire; the proverbial striking while the iron is hot. That heat is indeed motivation. We want it now- or as soon as possible or at all clever. Especially if we are caffeinated, haha.
However, this behavior is not always wise, and becomes difficult for many folks if they live long enough. There’s something about being old that is like the tortoise, in my experience. You’re in a different energy that moves slower, soul-pace, Gaia-pace. So all the rushing is unhealthy now.
Mom says “walk properly and nicely”. That means, to be mindful. We don’t actually expect much mindfulness of that sort from children, but it’s a great skill to develop as we get older. The wine is a symbolic confirmation of my interpretation, as wine is not only a higher chakra food because it gets you high, but also an ubiquitous symbol for wisdom development, in the sense that it can become amazing if it’s aged for a long time. Of course that doesn’t work with most wine- most of it has a limited aging span. But generally an aged wine is considered more valuable than most, if for no other reason than long term aging is not an easy thing to do. It’s a risk, for it will not always pay off, and there are no shortcuts available. It requires commitment.
Another reason for the wine bottle symbolism is that in alchemical tradition the Inner Work or maturation/wisdom development is imagined as taking place in a container, usually depicted as glass. The container is a controlled environment: the things we do (or don’t) to support and encourage the process of our personal development, in short. For example, we can’t keep old disempowered beliefs of childhood and expect to mature past a certain level. We won’t be healthy and well in body, mind, and spirit if we enter old age with our childhood or even young adulthood conditioning still ruling our lives.
So going mindfully into the day, along our path, is the important bit of advice to us from Mom. Mindfulness has many definitions, but in the sense of motivation and passion it’s putting one foot in front of the other with a goal in mind, and motivating towards the goal with eyes open, the “whatever is happening, good or bad” in the meme above. We don’t freak out because we hit a bend in the road, or a new choice point, the proverbial crossroads where the Devil is known to lurk. Such experiences are invitations to examine deeper levels. Tending our inner experience requires valuing our personal soulcentric development first, and desired material results may or may not follow. Mother and daughter make a commitment:
“I will be sure to take care” said Little Red Riding Hood to her mother, and gave her hand upon it.
Here we see that commitment is indeed required for the wisdom path, for lasting transformation, for dealing with the curves and crosses and hills and dead ends on the path. Those who make New Year intentions likely know this on some level. The tale shall continue to inform us a bit about why our commitments may go awry. Enough for now. Thanks for reading and see you in part 2!
