The Poor Miller’s Boy and the Cat #3
This interpretation of The Poor Miller’s Boy from the Grimm brothers collection is third and last in a series. Welcome back!
We left the story with Hans’s accomplishing the task of building a silver house for the tabby-cat he’s apprenticed to. Next “The cat asked him if he would like to see her horses.” I bet you know his answer.
So she opens up the door of the little house he has just made for her! Isn’t that a cool image? Meaning, that the horses were revealed (opening a door) through his inner work with the feminine, because they were also CREATED, built by that internal process. “…there stood 12 horses- such horses, so bright and shining, that his heart rejoiced at the sight of them.” I generally take this symbolic 12 to mean the usual 7 chakras plus 5 transpersonal chakras. Transpersonal chakras are not in the body space; they are above and/or below. The transpersonal chakras are part of many systems, and I’m not going to get into detail on that. Not my job.
I have run across this #12 in many symbolic stories; in Kalevala it seems to refer to different dimensions, which we can actually dovetail into the chakra systems. Maybe it refers to astrology, to that wheel of life represented by the miller in this tale (see first in the series). Anyway, it is something cosmic…
And the state of joy (“his heart rejoiced”) is the one Hans has been after. Symbolically, the horses are that multifaceted state, a happiness on steroids; power, freedom, abundance, connection, creativity.
One of the defining characteristics of the Foolish one (see first in the series) like Hans, is that they have somehow realized that all human competitive striving is really just an innocent misinterpretation, or a forgetting, or perhaps just a fun peek-a-boo game, around the innate human desire for the expanded connectivity we can call joy. Rediscovering and reinterpreting this essential joy, in our own unique way, is why we come here. Through our rediscovery and reinterpreting, we RECREATE joy, maybe over and over again. It’s kind of a cool job description, I think. We keep building new joy-houses, and then open the doors, to experience our work. We figure out how to make lemonade from lemons, or in alchemical terms, to make gold from lead.
The original desire for joy, ecstasy, peace, or what have you, is usually coopted by our social conditioning. Thus we believe that through following conditioned values, beliefs, and strategies we shall get what we dearly desire. As I said, the socialized perspective is represented in this story by the other two apprentices. In Cinderella, that perspective is played by the stepmom and stepsisters.
The cat-mistress gives Hans something to eat and drink and tells him to go home, and in three days she will bring the horse. There’s our trinity again. A fun symbolic detail is that the cat-mistress had never given him new clothes, so he is going to arrive at the mill in ragged and now ill-fitting attire. Symbolically, Hans is once again embodying the Fool archetype. Again, early on Hans dons the Fool archetype by the designation “Stupid Hans”. Now that he has done an awesome alchemical apprenticeship, he’s in the Wise Fool category!!!! Yay!!!!
So Hans’s present state of abundance, or enlightenment, or wisdom, or what have you, will not be discernible from his physical appearance; and that in and of itself is a wisdom tip. For wisdom and/or enlightenment never is- obvious. It’s the meek inheriting the Earth thing I referred to earlier.
In order to find the wisdom that lurks behind facades, we realize that humans are multidimensional beings, and anything from their sloppy dress, to their fame and riches, to their lame-o behaviors, are just the way they’re showing up in this particular drama.
The other clothes symbolism is that Hans has grown out of who he was before; his old self is no longer a fit. He’s transformed, matured, in a nonphysical way. Most generally, he has claimed his personal power. He knows he is the boss of himself, and he won’t be boo-hooing about what other people do or don’t do.
This ill fit is a common experience, for example when people leave home and return some time later, and they aren’t sure if they will “fit in”. The family members seem the same, but we feel quite different from the one they knew when we left. Our new behaviors will likely freak out some others, for they will have to adjust their behaviors in order to relate to our new persona. Families naturally have lots of power games, hierarchies and dependencies, so that’s why they are a good place to experience our power or lack thereof.
That return to the family thing is about to happen for Hans. He’s about to step into an experience similar to a young man driving to their home town for a Thanksgiving dinner with a conservative family, after a few years away. Note we are in the realm of clothes symbolism here, which I talked about in the last post. And recall also; Cinderella features a “fit” theme. The prince knows that she is identifiable by the fit of her shoe. A very clever metaphor, actually.
Hans gets back to the old mill and the other two apprentices are back there now with their horses. One horse is blind, the other horse lame; who’s “stupid” now? These two horses represent personal power through partnering inner masculine and feminine. These lame and blind horses inform us that these guys have absolutely not done their inner alchemical work. The dysfunctionality of the horses is the ill consequence alluded to earlier (“And they thought that they had done a very clever thing, but it was certain to turn out ill for them”).
Hans tells the “family” his horse will be along in three days, and they laugh at him, of course. “Indeed, stupid Hans, where wilt thou get a horse? It will be a fine one!” Hans goes into the parlor, the room that is for public viewing/social interaction, and the miller tells him he has to eat outside, because they are all ashamed of him, in his funky duds.
Likewise they won’t let him sleep in the house. He sleeps in the goose-house, another reference to the Fool archetype. The lowly office of gooseherd was often assigned to those with little in the way of brain power, a very lowly task, and so we have associated geese with the same, as in the phrase “silly goose”. At least that’s why I think that happened.
“In the morning when he awoke, the three days had passed, and a coach came with six horses and they shone so bright it was delightful to see them! And a servant brought a seventh as well, which was for the poor miller’s boy.” So again, here is our seven, which I made reference to formerly as the seven chakras. We can therefore imagine the 7th horse as a manifestation of the 7th chakra or crown chakra, the chakra of enlightenment in some folks’ estimation. Remember the tarot major arcana card, The Chariot? Representing forward movement, basically? It’s also the ability to know when to start and stop, when to act and when to be still, how to move in both outer and inner worlds; masculine and feminine balance.
“A magnificent Princess alighted from the coach and went into the mill, and this princess was the little tabby-cat whom poor Hans had served for seven years. She asked the miller where the miller’s boy and drudge was? Then the miller said, ‘We cannot have him here in the mill, for he is so ragged, he is lying in the goose-house.’” This last statement, “We cannot…” proves that the miller is still completely hung up in social conditioning. He believes he can’t decide how to treat people according to his own heart, the sign of someone who has given away their power. “Cannot” is the operative word there.
The princess orders them to bring Hans immediately, and her servants washed and dressed him in “splendid garments” (again, think Cinderella and her clothing upgrades). “Then the maiden desired to see the horses which the other apprentices had brought home with them”. We know their horses are either blind or lame. The lameness and blindness is, of course, from a particular perspective; the perspective of the princess and Hans, the perspective of the Wise Fool, the perspective of wisdom and unity consciousness. We all choose what lens we view reality through. Perhaps from the worldly or literal perspective there was nothing whatsoever wrong with these two horses.
After seeing the crippled horses of the two apprentices, the princess brings up Hans's horse, “such a horse as that had never yet entered his yard. ‘And that is for the third miller’s boy,’ said she. ‘Then he must have the mill’ said the miller…”
However, as usually happens in these tales, the original motivation for the quest is no longer applicable. In the original case, when the three are sent out to seek their fortunes as it were, the mill should now go to Hans. But the princess refuses the gift for Hans, as he is now going to share her abundance. This sharing is another description of Hans’s partnering with his internal feminine.
The same symbolism goes for Cinderella’s wedding the prince; both events represent the inner hieros gamos, the divine or alchemical wedding. In our own lives, this partnering will probably happen a number of times, as we work with different areas of life. We get wiser… and wiser…
She “took her faithful Hans and set him in the coach, and drove away with him.” Like Hans, our alchemical or inner quest might originally be motivated by some worldly reward; anything from the desire for romance to the desire for a pile of shekels. But if we bring awareness to our life experience desire will naturally shift away from worldly expectations, once we discover the key to joy and abundance is claiming it regardless of worldly circumstances.
The silver house Hans built is now a castle, and everything inside is silver and gold. The symbolism of the castle is that we experience safety, protection, strength, and are master/mistress of all we survey. This mastery position is not socially ordered or hierarchical authority. We do not feel that we are better or lesser than anyone. We have just realized that we are the boss of us, the driver of our own chariot, the rider of our own horse, and the creator of our own reality.
This house that morphs into a castle is an alchemical castle, the result of marrying the sun and the moon, gold and silver, masculine and feminine. “…and then she married him, and he was rich, so rich that he had enough for all the rest of his life.” This richness, from the perspective of our personal lives, is not necessarily a state of material abundance, of course.
And that’s a wrap! Hopefully for those who imagined that Cinderella is a misogynist tale, I have disabused you of that simplistic interpretation. And I hope for all and sundry that the cosmic complexities of art, of story, of drama, and of our unique trajectories, was explored to some useful result in these 3 posts! If you got to the end, I am sure that is true. Blessings upon your soul and its journeying.
