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The Desolate Island

2/26/2018

FROM APPLE FARM WRITER,  Jo Marie Thompson. Jo Marie lives in Norwalk, WI

Idries Shah recounts the tale of The Desolate Island in his collection “World Tales.” It appears in various sources from Egypt, the Talmud and Spain as well as a story written in the 7th century by the monk John of Damascus.  Much of the material is believed to have originated in Buddhist sources. It has traditionally been seen as an allegory to instill energy for righteous deeds and spiritual labor during this lifetime, in order to reap the rewards of the heavenly realm. It tells the story of a slave freed by a generous master and set sail on a boat filled with treasures. A storm arises however, and the boat is destroyed along with all the crew. Only the former slave survives, cast up naked on an island. The citizens of the island promptly declare the former slave their king, dressing him in robes. He wonders at his good luck and questions his benefactors. A wise man tells him he has arrived in a realm of spirits. The spirits petitioned their God to send a Son of Man to rule them. Every year their God provides a man to serve as king. After the King’s one year rule, he is stripped naked and banished to a desolate island. The King questions the wise man further: “Oh Spirit of Wisdom, how do I face what is to come?” The Spirit of Wisdom replies “Naked you came among us, and naked you will leave. At present you are King, and may do whatever you please. Therefore, send workmen to the island, and let them build houses and prepare the land, and make the surroundings beautiful. The barren soil will be turned into fruitful fields, people will go there to live, and you will have established a new kingdom for yourself. Your own subjects will be waiting to welcome you when you arrive. The year is short; the work is long: therefore be earnest and energetic.”  The King follows this advice. The day arrives and he is placed naked on a ship, sails set for the island. When he approached its shore, however, the people who he had sent ahead came forward to welcome him with music, song, and great joy. They made him ruler, and he lived ever after in peace.
I have both a narrative and a poetic response to the fable. First the narrative:

  This fable speaks to me of the many and inevitable routes from inner slavery to freedom, from power back to helplessness. And of the routes to a different kind of peace. Although the fable itself charts a fairly linear progression through these states, it of course points to the many levels at which we experience these dynamics as recurring themes: We find them repeatedly in the changing tides of our lives, just as we find them in our central journey that delivers us from our prime of health and actors in the world, to the helplessness and potentially desolate island of age. For those of us involved in the fable’s inner work, we experience these states cyclically in our many arrivals at insight, confidence, numinosity, and even ecstatic moments - only to be banished naked again on the rocks, our only hope being the prior integration of true wisdom. In our particular historical moment this fable may also speak to our common experience as citizens in a powerful Kingly empire teetering on the edge of collapse (both our national empire and our global Anthropocene empire)...

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The Spirit in the Bottle–A Fairy-tale for Our Time

2/21/2018

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FROM APPLE FARM WRITER, Mary Theis. Mary lives lives in the Chicago area (and two days weekly at Apple Farm).

Once upon time, there was an old woodcutter and his young son. The woodcutter always wanted his son to go to school but they didn't have enough money, and after a few years he had to come home. The son insisted on going to the woods to work with his father, but the father didn't think he could handle the hard work. During a lunch break, instead of resting, he defied his father and went wandering through the forest, where he heard a voice saying it was trapped at the bottom of the tree. There he saw a bottle, but when he opened it a giant demon sprang out and said it would break his neck and kill him. The young woodcutter then challenged that the demon spirit did not have the ability to get back in the bottle. So the spirit, to show that he really could do whatever he wanted, re-entered the bottle to show the boy how strong he was, and the boy stopped the bottle up again. The demon, shocked, began begging the woodcutter's son to open the bottle again, but he refused unless the spirit promised to benefit the boy.
The spirit pleaded with him and offered to make him rich. The boy decided it was worth the risk and released the demon. The spirit gave him a special cloth with one side that would turn any object into pure silver and the other side that would heal any wound. After turning his axe into silver, he tried to cut a tree in front of his father but bent the axe head. The father was extremely disappointed that he would have to replace the axe, which belonged to his neighbor. The boy went to sell the axe head and made 400 times more money than he needed to pay for the broken axe, and finally he told his father the story of the spirit in the bottle.
After that the father recognized that the boy's cleverness had made them rich and was happy. The boy went back to school to become a doctor and became one of the most successful and famous doctors with the help of his magical cloth that healed wounds.  (Summary taken from Wikipedia)

My husband Tom and I began coming to Apple Farm as members of the “young people’s group” around 1970.  We each began our inner journeys at that time, working on our dreams with the founders of the Farm community at the same time as we were beginning our married life and starting a family.
We decided that we wanted a more focused time of exploring Jungian psychology–exploring our dreams and discovering our inner and outer paths in the world.  So, in the fall of 1972, we took our toddler son and went to study at the Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland.  We each began analysis.
The woman I was working with in analysis, Jane Walgren, told me that she thought the fairy-tale “The Spirit in the Bottle” ( though the name I remembered was “The Woodcutter’s Son”) -  was “my” fairy-tale.
In the tale, a young man and his father have done all they can to launch the young man on his life.  But, as in all fairy-tales, as in life, they run into an insurmountable problem – they run out of money - which symbolizes the energy that is needed to live one’s life.  So, the young man comes home to help his father with his woodcutting.  He becomes tired and wanders off and “magically” finds a bottle with a genie trapped inside.  Being kind, and naïve, he frees the genie only to have his life threatened by the angry spirit.  Now, what could the boy do?  He certainly could not overpower the creature, so he used his wits to trick the genie into returning to his place of entrapment.  Of course, then the genie has to bargain for his release and the young man will not free the genie until his is promised a precious gift.  It is the gift of wealth – enough for his father and him to live comfortably and for him to pursue his studies to become a doctor – and the gift of the ability to heal.
Now, at age 70, this story still speaks to me and I think it has relevance to all of us in these times.  We continue to be called to the task of containing and negotiating with this strong, masculine spirit, in order to protect ourselves from this incredibly powerful, amoral aspect within us, and equally as important, to negotiate with him to obtain his gifts.
Whether we choose to go the route of working on our dreams, or find some other way to do this work, I believe it is imperative for each of us to come to terms with our “shadow” side, which is represented by the genie in the story.  This is an essential task, which we are each called to do.  We need to free up the creative energy that is hidden within, so that we can minimize the results of being unconscious of our shadow side, and have access to the gifts we have been given so we can use them to help bring some balance to the world around us.

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Godfather Death: To Respect the Power of Death

2/16/2018

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FROM APPLE FARM WRITER, Jane Smith-Eivemark. Jane lives in Hamilton, Ontario

Godfather Death is a Grimm Brother’s fairytale about the relationship between life and death. It begins with a father who is poor and must choose a suitable godfather for his thirteenth child, a new son. There is no mention of a mother; the feminine is totally absent throughout the tale. When the father makes a choice for a godfather he does not choose God or the Devil. Instead, he chooses Death to be the godfather of his child because Death does not discriminate.
While Godfather Death is a rather sullen tale, it shows that intimacy with death can bring us a powerful gift which can enhance our humanity. The tale reveals that the healing alliance between life and death is both a physical and a psychological fact. The tale shows that each person has a singular purpose in life and an allotted time in which to undertake it by showing us the dangers of unduly prolonging life.
Recently I have been captured by a book written by Jungian analyst, Greg Mogenson.  Its title is: Greeting the Angels: An Imaginal View of Mourning.  While Mogenson says many things about mourning that are very worthwhile (and I do recommend his writing) what is pertinent to this fairytale is Mogenson’s assertion that, to a large extent, we in the western world have lost our sense of being able to embrace death when it comes knocking at the door – exemplifying our own temptations to thwart death that are not dissimilar to the doctor’s actions within the tale, Godfather Death.
The theme of the tale, Godfather Death, is that we can neither escape nor defy death. There are huge consequences to the folly of the doctor’s actions whereby the doctor believes he can defy death and he, not Death, can decide when someone dies. My questions from this tale surround the importance of our recognition of the power of death when the time comes for our loved ones and for ourselves.  As our technology and our expectations surrounding medical treatment change, like the doctor in the tale was tempted, we too are tempted to prolong life. Where will we draw our line in the name of the love of the life we hold dear?

To review the story:  https://www.grimmstories.com/en/grimm_fairy-tales/godfather_death

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BLUEBEARD

2/10/2018

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FROM APPLE FARM WRITER, Don Troyer

     The figure of Bluebeard in the Grimm’s brothers’ tale is powerful. He has means, he’s used to getting what he wants and feel entirely entitled to it. He is wary of rivals and crushes them whenever possible. He may give lip service to a code of noble virtues but they serve as a cover to justify control by whatever means. He is possessive – people are objects and are his to manipulate. He demands loyalty above all. He holds weakness in contempt. Relationship is all about who wins and who loses, and winning is everything in his world.
     The blue tint of his beard symbolizes coldness and absence of empathy, but also a distorted kind of single-mindedness. Just as the mantle of the virgin is traditionally blue symbolizing purity of devotion, this polar opposite represents a pure culture of devotion to rapacity. Hairyness in general and beards in particular can symbolize strength.
     The story is a window into an amoral archetypal core typically associated with the masculine. Its appearance on the human plane can take many forms, from the bully coach such as Woody Hayes or Bobby Knight who justify tyrannical training methods in the service of winning to psychopathic figures such as Hannibal Lector in literature. In business, politics and the entertainment industry they are the narcissistic opportunists who crave power, fame and fortune over any relational or personal values. Their sadism can express itself in contempt, harassment, physical or sexual abuse and rape. In these areas, the profound intimacy of sexuality is violated in the service of domination and control.
     What does the susceptible “bride” bring to this encounter? In the story she is a fatherless daughter who feels responsible for her widowed mother and her dependent sister. Vulnerable to intimidation, she is seduced by Bluebeard’s promises of wealth, power, and security, both for herself and her family. Unconsciously she basks in the external recognition of her superior worth! These overcome her initial wariness and her inhibitions. One is reminder of the character of Carmella Soprano in the HBO series “The Sopranos” who realizes her enmeshment in her husband Tony’s crime underworld too late. The pattern of the Co-Dependent partner or spouse can be a prison, protecting one from facing the terrors of change, insecurity, responsibility, decision-making and facing the world alone. It is the world of Psyche in the palace of Eros, where her every wish is granted, except that she is forbidden from seeing the true form of Eros.
     Eventually, in both the bride and Psyche’s cases, curiosity goads them to break the arbitrary rules of the tyrant and see the truth for themselves. This launches conflict of homicidal proportions. They call for help and receive it, a testimony to the value of sharing one’s story and garnering support from the community. We certainly can see the power of this in the current “MeToo” movement and the need for vulnerable minorities to cultivate bonds of trust in community.

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...it is in part by our response to the great stories of the world that we too can begin to find, each of us this individual story expressing the symbolic meaning behind the facts of our fate and behind the motives that determine the day-to-day choices of our lives. -Helen Luke, The Inner Story

​The Desolate Island

The Spirit in the Bottle–A Fairy-tale for Our Time

Godfather Death: To Respect the Power of Death

​BLUEBEARD

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The Desolate Island

BLUEBEARD