Copyright © 2002 by William Mistele. All rights reserved.

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An Interview Regarding Fairy Tales

The following questions were submitted to me by Ann Kubricky who wanted to interview me in regard to fairy tales. She is doing a year long research paper for her high school AP English class.

Refer also to my Introduction to Fairy Tales on my web site. In that essay, I explore more carefully some of the objections to the idea of genuine fairy tales as encounters with fairies. I review some of the dangers and also point out the particular literary device I am using in my selection of fairies.

1. What is your full name and educational history.

My name is William Russell Mistele. I attended Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. I majored in philosophy with a minor in economics and graduated in 1970. Shortly after college, I began studying esoteric oral traditions. My next course of formal education took place three years after college in 1973 at the University of Arizona. There I studied Hopi Indian language and culture since there was a Hopi Indian teaching in the anthropology department. I completed a MA in linguistics at U of A in 1975. Other than an occasional class in biochemistry or conflict resolution, I have not pursued academic studies.

In addition to formal education, I have studied for several years with a Taoist priest from one of the oldest monasteries in China that has an unbroken lineage going back 1,200 years. I have lived in a Nyingma Buddhist monastery which is the oldest sect of Tibetan Buddhism. I have studied with the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids in England which is the largest order of Druids. And I have been pursuing practices in the hermetic tradition of Franz Bardon for 23 years. Bardon hermetics requires, among other things, extensive first hand encounters with nature spirits which has lead me to write fairy tales to describe and share my experiences.

2. Why have fairy tales lasted for so many generations, and remained “timeless?”

A good story is irresistible. It does not matter where it originated. The people and places change but the themes remain the same.

In the Mahaharata, the great Hindu epic, Dharma, who is the law of the universe, demands answers before anyone may quench their thirst from the water of life he sets before them. “Answer my questions,” he demands--”What is your opposite? What is victory? What is happiness?” and so forth. These are perennial questions. They must be and will be asked by each generation as long as life exists. Fairy tales play a similar role.

Fairy tales deal with the numinous within nature. Something is numinous when it beyond our knowledge, highly charged with energy and power, and, at the same time, it has something for us--a demand, an invitation, or an offer. Fairy tales are often numinous. They speak to us of something we can find in ourselves or discover in life if we somehow follow the right path, if we are vigilant, alert, and ask the right questions about the situations and people we encounter.

Nature is an inexhaustible source of wonder and surprise. In the last hundred years, we have filled in the squares in the periodic table of elements. In the last fifty years, we have identified most of the subatomic particles and yet scientists do not know where ninety per cent of the matter in the universe is. They have called what is missing and unknown dark matter because, unlike everything else in the universe, it hides itself--it does not emit radiation from any part of the light spectrum.

We are in search of something unknown, whether dark matter, the relation of gravity to the other three fundamental forces in nature, how to cure cancer, make peace instead of war, love instead hate, etc. and these tasks are extremely challenging and full of wonder. Fairy tales remind us to be open-minded, to ask questions, and to retain our sense of awe as we look at the world around us.

Footnote:

Before going further, I would like to discuss briefly the definition of fairy tales. Obviously fairy tales can be approached from a wide variety of perspectives and defined according to the interests and assumptions of different individuals.

For example, there is a narrow definition of a fairy tale I sometimes use in my writing. In the narrow definition, fairy tales contain a reference or component relating to fairies, that is, nature spirits of some kind or another. In any case, there is at least a reference to the magic of nature. Following this idea, we have the spirits of nature pertaining to the ancient separation of nature into its four components--earth, water, air, and fire.

These spirits are, for example, sylphs and sprites who dwell in the air element. Dwarves and gnomes relate to the earth. Mermaids, mermen, and undines live in water. And salamanders and firedrakes, etc. dwell in fire. The names of such creatures relating to the four elements vary from culture to culture but there is a rough correspondence that can be traced along these lines.

Even in the examples I have cited there are other distinctions. Mermaids are often conceived as being half human and half fish but sometimes they resemble beautiful women. Such a mixture of creatures would seemingly include a centaur, a Pegasus, a harpy, and so forth.

There are stories with various kinds of animals which we could call animal stories. American Indians have many animal stories and often these animals talk. In these stories, the animals often portray various human traits and characteristics. The Bible has two animals that talk--the serpent in the Garden and Balaam’s donkey. The Bible also refers to unicorns. Unicorns, dragons, and other kinds of magical animals certainly are well-positioned for inclusion under the general category of fairy tales.

Werewolves, vampires, and golems seem to fall more under the rubric of magical, occult, or supernatural beings. Ghouls, zombies, and so forth perhaps belong more under the caterogy of horror fiction depending on your attitude toward them. Some of them are magically produced, some belong to nature, and some are the result of demonic actions.

On internet, a brother and sister in Ireland tell how they always thought they were a little different but their parents would never respond to their questions. One day their uncle explained to them that the family had werewolves as it totem spirit. In this case, the totem spirit seems to enhance their perceptions and their sense of being a warrior.

Related to magical animals and combinations such as half-human, half-animal are beings such as Silkies. Silkies are seals that can change into human beings after they take off their seal “skins.” (See A Field Guide to the Little People by Nancy Arrowsmith and George Moorse, Pocket Books, 1977, as an example of modern encyclopedias of fairies). The Sioux Indians tell about the Buffalo Woman who taught them some of their rituals. Magical animals or totem spirits in some legends change into human beings and vice versa. These kinds of stories, in my opinion, are naturally a part of fairy tales.

The elemental beings, for that matter from an occult point of view, can also incarnate or enter and live within the body of a human being under certain circumstances. Shapeshifting has a longstanding and honorable place in oral traditions. Psychologists might refer to such examples as forms of hallucination or psychosis. Traditional theologians might refer to it as possession. It all depends on your point of view and the specific circumstances and details of the case history.

There are also the whole gamut of stories involving spirit guides, ghosts, and those spirits who interact with those who are dying or dead such as Banshees. In the poem The Lady of Shalott by Alfred Lord Tennyson and put to music so beautifully by Lorenna McKennitt in The Visit, the woman uses a magic mirror to gaze upon the heroes of Camelot. Yet she is under a curse not to venture forth and meet them. I would consider this a fairy tale though not in the narrow definition. Mirrors in their reflective aspect often embody the magic of water.

In many cultures, ghosts are perfectly acceptable for inclusion in fairy tales. Again, a ghost shows up in the Bible when the witch of Endor calls the spirit of the departed Prophet Samuel to appear in response to the request of Saul, the king of Israel. And Christ calls the departed spirits of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to appear so that three of his disciples can speak with them.

“Sendings” occur when immediately after someone dies the departed individual appears to someone living. My mother experienced sendings of this kind. In my poem, An Elegy for Kathy, a friend suddenly died. The next day she appeared to me. She asked me to write a poem through which her husband could have the words to say good-bye to her since she had died so suddenly.

One nurse I know who runs a terminally ill clinic in a hospital points out that ninety-nine per cent of the patients see departed spirits who come to visit them and assist them in their transition to the other side. Ghosts and supernatural encounters of this nature are much more common than the academic world leads us to believe.

I know a woman whose child sees and talks to spirits similar to the child in the move, Sixth Sense. I told the mother not to allow him to see Sixth Sense without going with him but he managed to sneak out and see it with his friends. Unlike the child in that movie, he only sees “good spirits.” I also know a number of men and women who see ghosts and also their children see ghosts. Such reports raise a lot of questions regarding ethics, parental responsibility, and the best attitude toward parenting under these circumstances.

A very successful Hopi Indian medicineman I knew told me that when he was born a ritual was performed that linked him to another child who had just died. Later in life, the dead child became his spirit guide and enabled him to become a medicineman. In other cultures, contact with the departed is much more accepted and this contact has largely been overlooked by the modern world.

Encounters with ghosts belong perhaps more to the areas of superstition, religion, the psychology of death and dying, and parapsychology. They make great stories but they are probably not fairy tales except where an element of fairy comes into play. A nine year old once asked me, “If someone is dead after they die, what are they before they are born?” That is a great question.

The song says that to be in love is to see your unborn children in a woman’s eyes. Love leads us forward and creates for us a future. It enables us to embrace life and it grants us hope. Wisdom often requires a movement in the opposite direction. The Sufi master says that the student must recover the knowledge he had before he was born. The Zen master asks the koan, What was your face before your father was born?

Among the druids, Beltane, the time of love and joining is paired with Samhuinn or Halloween, the time of death and separation. Samhuinn is the time when the veils between the worlds grow thin and the departed are free to return and visit with us. The two form one circle of life. To be whole and to be fully alive is to embrace both light and dark without fear. Medicinemen around the world meditate in graveyards because you can not heal others unless you have encountered the fears and the demons that rob them of their health and peace.

Stories about ghosts often involve journeys into the unknown and all sorts of transformations. But nature is not so concerned about death and dying. It is a natural process. For this reason among others, some kinds of fairies are considered to be immortal or nearly immortal. When they die, there is no loss of soul for they return to their respective elements becoming as the foam on the waves.

When I write about fairy tales, I am usually following the narrow definition. I write about beings who belong to and inhabit nature. My “stories” take the form of journal entries--I say who I spoke with, under what circumstances the encounter took place, and detailed experiences that arose. Often the specific nature spirit will tell me one or more stories about its previous encounters with human beings down through the centuries. I often interview these beings. I ask them, for example, to share with me their innermost dreams and they do so. These stories told to me by nature spirits are, in my definition, genuine fairy tales according to my narrow definition.

Gods and goddesses often show up in fairy tales. Depending on the circumstances, they can represent not so much a religious or mythical presence as much as a more concentrated and defined aspect of the numinous in nature. In one of my stories, the goddess Dawn tells a warrior a story about a woman whose child the goddess blessed. The child acquired the gift of turning enemies into friends. To me, this story is a fairy tale although it is not within my narrow definition.

I am not concerned about convincing anyone about the “reality” of these beings. Steven King, who also writes fairy tales, says he seeks to convey terror or at least horror in his writing. If I recall accurately, Mr. King relates how when he was a child he was locked in a dark basement and told there was a monster with him. He says he left his fingernail marks on the door as he tried to escape.

Writing is perhaps how Steven King comes to grips with an experience that briefly shattered his personality in a way that the modern world has been unable to bring together again. Art gives us a way to manage reality without surrendering to or denying its harsh demands.

I am happy if my stories simply entertain the reader. Having said that, I know at least ten people who see fairies and some who have done so their entire lives. One woman can accurately tell which fairy I have been interacting with. She can see it and give me its name. For another woman, fairies have played an extremely dynamic role in guiding her to meet and succeed in her friendships as well as granting her healing abilities.

The fairies I interact with are among the twenty-eight elemental beings each described in a few paragraphs by the Western hermetic magician Franz Bardon. I simply take his descriptions and use twenty-three years of training in his system to interact with the personalities of these nature spirits. The Bardon system requires a basic first hand set of experiences with such beings.

In Bardon’s system, the elemental beings or nature spirits embody heightened states of awareness and abilities to work with nature energies that are essential to those who wish to take full responsibility for manifesting in the “real world” their spiritual ideals. For Bardon, a “spiritual” individual who lacks this training is like an anthropologist who has never done field work, a psychologist without clinical experience, or a chemist without lab experience.

On the other hand, I am well-acquainted with the hermeneutical methods of interoperation including depth and transpersonal psychology, methods in meditation and contemplation, introspective techniques and the psychology of imagery. In many of these practices, “belief” is not relevant. The issues are psychological growth, wholeness, developing a sense of wonder and well-being, or exploring one’s empathic contact with nature.

In other words, you can “find” the dwarf, undine, sylph, or salamander in yourself without having to believe anything. You can practice writing a journal as if you were a spirit who lives in a tree or an undine who oversees a running stream. You can gaze at an ocean, a mountain, or a stone getting a gut level feeling, a direct impression, or intuitive reaction of what that specific part of nature means to you individually. Artists--painters, sculptures, and poet--are already well-acquainted with this procedure.

This can also be taken further if you have the inclination. Through an act of creative imagination, you can imagine your specific feeling taking on the form of a living being and having a conversation with you. You can meet unicorns and fairies in dreams, in daydreaming, and in imaginative journeys and ask them anything you want. It is possible to get a response that is different from anything you can imagine.

This is a part of art, psychology, and contemplation. It does not need to have more “reality” than this in order to be enjoyable, entertaining, and to enrich. I think individuals can decide for themselves the best psychological, theological, or metaphysical interpretation to place on first hand accounts of encounters with fairies or fairy tales in general.

There is also a distinction between a fairy tale as a short story that stands by itself and mythology. The mythology provides an entire landscape and a kind of history. According to Joseph Campbell, genuine mythologies attempt to do four things: the first thing they do is offer a genuine encounter with awe, wonder, and mystery. In this sense, they enable us to embrace all the horror and suffering as well as the beauty and delight in being alive.

We can also call fairy tales written recently as modern fairy tales, retold tales, or fantasy. Are The Last Unicorn, The Hobbit, and the Harry Potter stories fantasy or fairy tales? They are clearly fiction and do not present themselves as being real. That is, they are presented as interesting stories but not as first hand accounts. The Blair Witch Project, by contrast, is a movie presented as if it is true as was the radio program, War of the Worlds, about the Martian invasion back in the early part of the century. It is understandable that given that kind of format some individuals would be mislead into thinking that what is being reported is based on fact.

But the question remains, Have we moved to where genuine encounters with the numinous in nature and the realms of fairy no longer occur? It appears so if you take the modern definitions and instruction as being the final authority:

Modern fantasy: p. 178, Children’s Literature, Discovery for a Lifetime by Barbara D. Stoodt-Hill and Linda B. Amspaugh-Corson (Prentice-Hall, 1996) the definition of fantasy runs “....fantasy always includes at least one element of the impossible, one element that goes against the laws of the physical universe, as we currently understand them; it concerns things that cannot really happen, people or creatures that do not really exist. Nevertheless, each story must have its own self-contained logic that creates its own reality.”

And on page 175, “Fairy tales are unbelievable stories featuring magic and the supernatural. Fairies, giants, witches, dwarves, good people, and bad people in fairy tales live in supernatural worlds with enchanted toadstools and crystal lakes. Heroes and heroines in these stories have supernatural assistance in solving problems.”

Obviously, a bean stalk that grows up through the clouds is pretty much unbelievable. Some fairy tales are clearly made up and even very young children understand this to be the case. The above definition is workable except that I suspect a great many individuals have supernatural assistance, magic, and mysterious encounters that occur in their lives. I find it rather humorous if not on some days unbelievable that astrophysicists do not know where ninety per cent of the matter in the universe is hiding. And as for “the laws of the physical universe,”--they are still full of surprises and so far refuse to submit to the best minds of our generation.

One only need read Psychic Warrior by David Morehouse to observe the strange interactions of science, technology, and modern life. Morehouse is a highly trained special forces officer who commanded Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, Hunter Army Airfield, Savannah, Georgia. He was subsequently recruited into a top secret psychic warfare unit operated by the CIA. With a training program developed by Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania, he was subjected to a hypnotic procedures designed to heighten his powers of remote viewing--to locate and describe military targets around the world.

David Morehouse writes at the end of his book, “This work is not a quest for faith in the unseen. It is not a plea for spiritual tokens or selfless offerings; it is a testimony to the reality of other worlds, of benevolent leaders, of creators--and, more important, of life beyond this physical existence and dimension.”

My point is that there is a lot going on all around us. There come times when we have make our own first hand observations and draw our own conclusions in order to negotiate the conflicts we encounter. This is especially true when we are dealing with assumptions that authority figures would like us to take for granted.

W.B. Yeats, in his introduction to Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland, (Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1973), has an interesting comment on his philosophical stance toward fairy tales. In reviewing the various authors methodology in collecting and interpreting fairy tales, Yeats says that in his collection of tales he has “Tried to make it representative...of every kind of Irish folk-faith” while avoiding any kind of rational interpretation.

Yeats goes on to quote a response Socrates made in the Phadrus when asked about the tale in which “Boreas is said to have carried off Orithyia from the banks of the Ilissus....I beseech you to tell me, Socrates, do you believe this tale?”

In response, Socrates reviews the various legends regarding this tale and the various interpretations. He points out that for those who believe this allegory there is the further problem of having to continue on to “rehabilitate....numberless other inconceivable and portentous monsters.” And if one is skeptical and tries to “reduce them one after another to the rules of probability, this sort of crude philosophy will take up all of his time.”

Socrates then says, “Now, I have certainly not time for such inquiries. Shall I tell you why? I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says; to be curious about that which is not my business, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous....I want to know not about this, but about myself.”

Yeats, like the Brothers Grimm, remained academically detached from his subject matter so he would not be accused of promoting superstition or being enamored with occult mysticism. Carl Jung, similarly, did not reveal his mystical experiences because it would have interfered with his promoting analytic psychology.

Yeats, however, as also William Blake, was a registered member of the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids. I suspect that you do not associate with Druids and attend their ceremonies without having some sort of appreciation for the magic within nature. I think when Yeats quotes Socrates on fairies, Yeats is disguising his actual connection to the realms of fairy.

And as for Socrates, I think he was asking the wrong question. If you seek to know yourself, at least in the way he asked it, you end up having to leap over another question, “How do you know anything?” Rational Greek philosophy almost inevitably leads to Descartes’ statement, “I think, therefore I am.” Statements like that tell us absolutely nothing when it comes to knowing ourselves.

The only way to know the self is through encounters with others and with the world around us. For me, a better question is, “What is it to be fully alive?” Socrates never sat in the forest and became the rock, the tree, the steam, the wolf, and the deer in his mind. He never found these things within himself. Greek civilization was split between the rational and the sensual, between Apollo and Dionysus.

In the New Testament, Christ invited and intended Peter to encounter a direct and magical contact with the numinous aspect of nature. Standing upon the water amid a storm, Christ bid Peter to walk on water also. According to that account, Peter got out of the boat and began to walk on water. But then Peter’s faith failed him and he began to sink among the waves.

For two thousand years the Christian Church has been hostile to nature. It has failed to consider the divine invitation to explore its numinous qualities other than under the guise of rationalistic Greek philosophy or science. Perhaps it is time to reexamine our options and procedures.

3. How do fairy tales "mirror real life struggles"?

Individual have conflicts with other people, society, and circumstances and this occurs regardless of who you are, how old you are, or the society into which you are born.

Children have already met bullies, cruelty, blind aggression, danger, fear, horror, and abuse. This is true in my understanding of children. Fairy tales offer children a chance to learn the words and review these feelings and situations in imaginary settings that are often non-threatening. “Once upon a time,” or “In a kingdom....” are locations sufficiently removed from the child’s circumstances that the emotions and issues can be raised without directly threatening the child.

Fairy tales enable us to externalize. They teach how to see both sides of issues, offering perspective. They enable children to talk about things that they usually do not talk about. Stories organize reality. Telling a story helps make sense of reality. A story can read others’ minds and present both sides within a context and it can be resolved. It may not be real but it presents options. The stories review issues concerning love and nurturing, power and its abuse, friendship, trust, fear, and horror. They become an opportunity to rehearse and think about life’s difficulties.

When I was a teenager, I was invited to sit in on a board meeting of a Christian organization that invested large sums of money. Naive me, I was shocked to discover that the adults were as selfish, greedy, bullying, fearful, insecure, and blindly competitive as children I knew. And these were the leaders of their communities. Good fairy tales present human beings as being both positive and negative, as having strengths as well as weaknesses. That is something I might have considered more carefully before taking offense at what is simply human nature.

There is also a more theoretical outlook I have on fairy tales. For me, the nature spirits who are elemental beings mirror four basic components in the human psyche that are often in conflict. Let me review a few comments from my essay, An Introduction to Faery Tales. The salamanders who dwell in fire, the firedakes, (the genie from Aladin is a salamander) are fascinated with will power.

The salamanders seize each moment with zeal in order to dissolve the obstacles blocking their path to fulfillment. Such fiery will destroys all fear and apprehension. For the salamanders, each moment presents the opportunity to purify, strengthen, and expand the power of will. The salamanders are enchanted with the magic within fire to heal, to fuse, to refine, to integrate, to transform, and to electrify according to their individual inclinations.

At the other extreme is the element of water--something very easy to relate to as a human being. In water are love and sharing--the experience of life giving birth to life and of flowing in and through another. In water is the absolute destruction of loneliness, separation, and isolation. For the beings who dwell within water, the undines, each moment is a magnetic sea containing the dreams and the taste of ecstasy--each moment arises from and resonates with the love sustaining all life on earth.

In the air element is found clarity of mind and the attainment of freedom. The air element is so vast and expansive, so encompassing, those who are illuminated by its wisdom vanquish all confusion and overcome all attachment. The beings who reside in the sky, the sylphs, enter each moment seeking to attain and to abide in complete harmony.

In the earth element--through comprehending shape, weight, density, and the molecular vibration of minerals and elements--is the wisdom that banishes depression, sadness, and sorrow. The most powerful gnomes who dwell within the earth perceive time not only in terms of centuries, eons, and geologic ages. Their perception penetrates into the processes through which matter is formed and through which it dissolves.

For gnomes, rocks and mountains do not possess solid and firm edges. Rather, their boundaries and shapes are fluid and liquid. For gnomes, anything in physical existence is constantly transforming, solidifying and dissolving again--in each moment matter and emptiness are flowing through each other like water being poured into water.

And if you listen carefully with you heart, you can discover that each moment contains a wonderful silence and a stillness in which you can hear the stars singing. The elements of nature which we perceive as solid have been born in the furnaces of stars and have passed through the emptiness of space. When I write about these kind of nature spirits I am always discussing human nature--what elementals are, all their powers and modes of perception, exist within us as latent abilities which we can develop.

What I am suggesting, then, is that the conflicts between love and will and between mind and body often occur because we do not understand these things in their primal nature. Evil catches us off guard because we have failed to study will and power as they exist in nature and in the depths of ourselves. Our relationships fail because love, in the depths of its beauty and transforming power, has escaped our grasp. We worry and are anxious because we fail to discover the clarity of mind that is like the sky that is ever on the edge of everyone’s consciousness. And we feel without roots and have difficulty establishing our sense of home because our feet do not know how to reach down into the earth like the roots of trees or rest in peace like a stone.

4. Can you give an example of a fairy tale that does this? (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Pied Piper, Snow White)

Of course, there are many obvious parallels between the circumstances of fairy tales and real life families and situations. The foster or step parent in a fairy tale may mirror the real life parent or step parent. Competition with siblings may resonate with the cruel sisters in Cinderella or the jealous sisters in Eros and Psyche. A grandparent may play the role of guide and protector instead of the magic fairy in a fairy tale. In Hansel and Grettle, you may not find yourself as a child encountering a wicked witch but rather a relative who becomes your caretaker and who commits criminal acts against you.

When I talk to a tree, the tree serves as a mirror that reflects back to me the psychological process or conflict unfolding inside myself. I described an actually conversation I had with a Blue Spruce tree on Christmas Eve, 1971 on the front lawn of Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois. I wrote this conversation into a dialogue between a bard named Vittana and the tree in my book, Mystical Fables.

Vittana replies, “Once a long time ago when I was very sad I sat down in front of a Blue Spruce tree.

“After a while I asked the tree, ‘Are there things that make you sad? Do you worry when your cones drop from your branches without saying goodbye and then you never hear from them again?’

“I waited in silence hoping the tree would speak to me, for this was the first time I had beseeched a tree to answer my questions. I was not sure of the correct procedure and whether or not I was violating any unspoken rules. But the tree did not seem to mind at all. It spoke to me as if it were my parent and I was its child who asks the right questions at the right time and in the right season.”

“‘Yes,’ replied the tree. ‘Whenever part of myself is lost, I experience unease and distress.

“‘In the late afternoon when the sun begins to set, when the earth shifts from day to night, time is suspended. In the moments of twilight, memories return to me from all periods of my life.

“‘And then on occasion I recall when I too was a pine cone on one of my mother's top most branches. I was so high I could see the tips of mountains that lay far beyond the horizon. The sun's first rays of light woke me in the morning. And I never missed the rising or setting of the moon.

“‘Then one day deep in winter when snow covered the ground, I was hit by a powerful, freezing gust of wind. My stem broke and my world came to an end.

“‘I fell to the earth below no longer attached to the tree. I lay upon the ground for days refusing to believe what had happened to me. There I was--lying upon the cold earth among stones. All around me was a feeling of separation and the loneliness of fallen snow.

“‘This dark vision persisted and would not go away. There was no water to drink; the surface of the earth was frozen. I could no longer see the moon. The stars were hidden from me. I was abandoned and then half buried as snow continued to fall.

“‘Finally one night when I could stand it no longer I cried out to my mother. When I heard her voice, I looked up and saw her immense beauty.

“‘She said, ‘My child, the Earth is now your mother. And though the icy hands of winter have torn you from me, listen with all your heart to the quiet stillness of the earth. Even in the dead silent cold of winter there throbs and sounds a pulse and a heartbeat.

“‘Listen for the Song the Earth sings even in the darkest night and in the loneliest place you may enter. You have begun a long journey, but do not be afraid. This is a time to abide in peace, to rest and to sleep within the sheltering protection of Silence. Goodbye my child.’

“And then my mother was silent. I never heard from her again.”

“But I accepted her words. I closed my senses to the outside world. I went and hid in the innermost chambers of my pine cone. And then I slept and I dreamed the Earth Herself came to visit me. She told me a long tale of winter and of night and of a Silence beyond all sight.

“I floated upon the sounds of her voice. I sailed upon her songs. Her dreams entered my heart and became my own. She held me to her breast through the winter was long and the darkness profound.”

“I do not remember how long I slept in her embrace. But the Earth did not call out to me to awaken and to rise up.

“Instead, I was awakened amid dazzling light and bathed in warmth and beauty. An infinite song of delight penetrated into my cone. I quickly stripped off my outer garments and stood naked beneath the rays of a radiant sun. And as that Greater Light took hold of me, I spouted as a young shoot and was surrounded by the merry songs of Spring.”

This children’s story or fairy tale is about death and rebirth, something I imagine myself to have gone through. The tree was presenting me with a very difficult problem I had to solve--namely, I had to undergo a long journey, turning away from the modern world and venturing into what was for me the unknown. The journey was similar to a seed that falls to the earth knowing not the transformation it is to pass through. I consider the journey of an artist to find his inspiration and style to be sometimes this kind of real life struggle.

Another fairy tale I wrote was told to me by the sylph Capisi. It is called, The Poet Amir. In this story, Capisi tells how she produced a magical incarnation in which she took the form of a human woman because she had fallen in love with an Arab poet. In this fairy tale, a master in the poet’s religious tradition points out that the treasures of fairy are too enchanting and fascinating for the human race to deal with.

If Amir reveals these treasures of fairy to mankind, human history will be compromised. Responsibility and productivity are the priorities for human beings and not bliss and ecstasy. Perhaps this is because bliss and ecstasy invariably require an encounter with their opposites--pain and separation.

Amir did not know how to let die his dependency on others. He needed their beliefs to sustain his own. He was unable to proceed alone. Others point out that this is a crucial test that occurs in most spiritual journeys as for example when St. Columba says, “I lie down in the dust and my spirit dies within me.”

The story of Amir goes to the heart of the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions in which the fairy kingdoms are strictly prohibited, forbidden and off limits, except perhaps for a few saints or masters. These conflicts are conflicts between being receptive or productive, creative or responsible. To what extent do we explore pure perception and first hand experience and then balance this with the need to organize and get on with living our lives as useful members of society?

The child certainly encounters the dogma and need to adapt to the requirements of the adult world. The teenager similarly often has a huge conflict finding his or her own identity in the process of separating from the family and finding a place in society. And those who have raised their children once again must deal with the unfinished business from childhood and all the longings and dreams they have set aside in order to care for, nurture, and provide for their family. The fairy tale speaks to us during all phases of our lives.

In some of the children’s stories I write, the story line is made up by the child in combination with one or more adults. In the Dragon and the Knight, the little girl (who plays the maiden kidnapped by the dragon) interrupts the story line demanding that for once the knight and the dragon, (played by the father and the mother), put aside their differences and reach some sort of mutually acceptable solution. The dragon and knight manage to do just that. The story is a study in the part empathy and role reversal have to play in conflict resolution.

But this is not just a made up story, a retelling of stories about dragons and knights as is so typical in so much modern fantasy. The father who tells the story is a king who has an alliance with a cosmic dragon, a being possessing an unmitigated and uninhibited lust for power. This king is so clever he is able to use concepts such as freedom, democracy, empowering the individual, and capitalism to further his quest to dominate the earth. The king is under the protection of the dark side and can not overthown except by somone possessing a greater power of will. And the daughter understands intuitively how to play the same game.

When individuals or societies do not have a language or the imagery to describe the dynamics of the inner psyche, when there is no effective language of the soul, then everyone suffers. Of our soldiers who fought in Viet Nam, three times more have committed suicide than died in battle. We still have Viet Nam veterans who live by themselves out in the jungles here in Hawaii. They encountered something in Viet Nam that still has possession of their souls and it will not let go.

How do you assume a new identity when your old identity is destroyed? How do you undergo a spiritual journey when society and no one offers or is able to offer you any support? How do you find what you have lost or what your civilization has abandoned thousands of years ago?

I spoke with a unrostered agent of the CIA who had an extemely high rank. He ran all sorts of black ops and also played a significant role in major international diplomatic endeavors. He finally burnt out. So he got in a sailboat here in Hawaii and sailed off by himself without telling anyone. He spend a year he said lying on a beach just thinking about his life. And then he sailed back to Hawaii and invented for himself a job he loved and has been doing it for the last thirty years.

He encountered a dragon of despair. He overcame that dragon by allowing himself to “sleep in the earth” and let the earth awaken and stir within him new instincts that lead him back to life. Psyche does this in the story of Eros and Psyche. In the story of Iron John, Robert Bly says that the hero has to go down into the mud at the bottom of the pool in order to find renewal. In many fairy tales, there is an encounter with something dark and wild. It is often this element that brings new hope and new life.

5. Do fairy tales help or hinder a child’s growth and perspective on life?

Once again, fantasy in general enables us to dream and imagine. It is exciting and fun to imagine you are someone else. It becomes absorbing and offers vicarious experience. It helps us understand ourselves and others.

From p. 179, of Children’s Literature. “Fantasy stimulates students to look at life and the problems of life in new ways. In fantasy, children develop more open-minded attitudes that enable them to understand others’ points of view. Fantasy stretches the imagination and encourages dreams, stimulating creative thinking and problem-solving abilities.

And also, Children’s Literature, p. 171, (quoting Bettelheim, 1975, p. 76) “Nothing in the entire range of children’s literature--with rare exceptions--can be as enriching and satisfying to child and adult alike as the folk fairy tale....A child can learn more about the inner problems of man and about solutions to his own (and our) predicaments in any society, than he can from any other type of story within his comprehension.”

Those are very emphatic statements. I would suggest that we consider the context in which a fairy tale is told. A parent, for example, may read a fairy tale as a bedtime story to a child. What I would notice if I were observing this is the quality of voice, the love and interest as well as the empathy and attention to detail conveyed through the parent’s intonation and body language. You can tell a story with love so that even the bad wolf and the evil dragon are appreciated for the part they have to play.

In Little Red Riding Hood, with a slight shift in tone, the wolf can be portrayed as an idiot, as something scary, or even as a creature of no significance. The story teller has the power to color and slant a story according to the emotions he or she puts into it and the way it is told. The same can be done through the artist’s drawings in a picture book.

I used to turn off the sound on the TV and ask my kids to just look at the individual’s face on the screen. Or I would ask them to close their eyes and just listen to the voice. I would then ask, Is this person conveying love or fear? Friendship or hatred? Is there tension and confusion or confidence?

The first message, therefore, in a spoken fairy tale comes from the attitude of the story teller. I have heard “masters” from different traditions convey arrogance, self-righteousness, condescension, indifference, fear, and weariness as well as wonder, delight, joy, happiness, and peace as they told stories. On this level of spoken language and oral tradition, the content of the story is irrelevant. The story is an opportunity for the teller to convey his or her integrity, faith, trust, flexibility, courage, and appreciation. There is always a non-verbal component and, for me, this is the most interesting thing that occurs when a story is told.

I talk more about this under question 9 dealing with escape from reality. My father almost never told a story his whole life until recently. He was a man of secrets and also of power. My mother, on the other hand, was willing to talk about anything. She had wonderful stories to tell about people and her own life.

There is a massive amount of fairy tales and folk tales available, some of which is part of everyone’s family traditions. It turns out my father was a genius at breaking the rules in college and getting away with it. He never shared any of this with us. He knew that you can have fun and break the rules even when everyone is watching you and trying to catch you. Had I known this, I would have seen a much greater continuity between his generation and my own. I had to discover this capacity our family possesses on my own without any verbal assistance. Father was not always deadly serious. He possessed great humor.

I had to read Tolkein’s The Hobbit to start my mind thinking about what is possible. I had to read Shakespeare’s The Tempest in order to form an attitude about magic and all those powers that we possess that nonetheless are denied and not spoken about in conventional society. Someone just emailed me who is a member of two different native American tribes. He complains that the elders tell him to study only the old ways and to avoid other forms of spirituality. He calls the elders oppressive and narrow-minded.

I told him that perhaps all elders are oppressive and narrow-minded at times to those who are in the process of finding their own way in life. Good stories get us beyond these conflicts between the generations. Fairy tales certainly are of this variety. They speak to all ages of the world. They fill in for the wisdom, wonder, and imagination that the generations sometimes fail to communicate to each other.

6. Are there any real life adult situations when fairy tale motifs are reinforced? (Rewards of being beautiful, "living happily ever after")

I think fairy tales tell us you have to be ever alert, constantly vigilant, and ready for the unexpected. You have to keep asking questions. You have to know when to let go and flow and when to hold your ground and fight with all of your might. There is a time to be radiant and bright like the sun, to be the center of action and to unite everything with strong connections. There is also a time to be silent and hidden, more so than a cave at the center of a mountain at night.

Consider beauty. Some supermodels these days have taken charge of their careers. They have learned photography and shoot other models and run their own photography studios. They design and sell clothes and invent new perfumes. It would be hard to find a male who could manage their careers better than they are doing themselves. We are in a different age, an age that invites us to explore the mysteries of androgyny, of the masculine and feminine in union. They have transcended the idea that beauty makes you passive and stupid or that its only use is to gain the attention of and influence men.

In traditional stories, e.g., Snow White, beauty can get you into trouble. Some people understand beauty for the power it is and they would possess that power or else destroy it removing it disturbing presence from their lives. In Eros and Psyche, Psyche gets in trouble not with other people but with the goddess Aphrodite. Men stop worshiping at the temples of the goddess because they become enamored with Psyche. In the Japanese fairy tale, Kaguya Hime, the young woman is so beautiful the most powerful men in the kingdom vie for her hand in marriage yet she can not consent to marry any of them.

In my book, Mystical Fables, the head of the thieves guild, a dwarf disguised as a human being, says of beauty:

Beauty is a most remarkable thing. To taste it is to fly with divine wings. When its light fills you eyes, you see sights hidden from the wise. When it touches your skin, you are freed of all sin. And if it ever should anoint you, its cool, soothing tenderness flowing through you, then all that you have ever lost is again found and impossible hopes and dreams will soon come around.

In the same book, the bard Vittana says that his Muse is a bird of terrible beauty that flies between the stars. It offers to be a friend to those who have no friends. Yet the spirit also says, “But this geis I lay upon you, that you may not know my name nor may you even dream of the land from which I have come until that very moment in time when you cross that very threshold and enter that land--for it is a place unknown within your soul and I am forbidden by the laws of the universe from revealing it to you. You must discover it on your own.”

Beauty is that way--it can reach inside of us and discover our deepest secrets and satisfy our deepest needs. It has the power to unite all aspects of the self--the child and the adult, the body and the mind, passion and spirit, the past and the future. It harmonizes and it reconciles all opposites.

But to posses it, to contain it within yourself, to unite with it--this is one of the great mysteries of life. Beauty awakens within us powers and dreams we are not even aware that we have. But to form a union with beauty, you have to accept yourself exactly as you are and also be willing to pass through the unknown and to meet parts of yourself you have never encountered before. This makes beauty dangerous. It unites the different parts of ourselves and yet it changes us in ways we can not understand in advance.

The my fairy tale called The Wizard Hasan, the sylph Capisi tells me about how a wizard once tried to take possession of her. We have hundreds of thousands of cases of stalking that occur in the United States each year. In stalking, the stalker often concludes that the beauty and life the other possesses can not be found in him or herself. The stalker seems to say, “I will never find the life you have within me. Your beauty is something I can never touch unless you are with me.”

The Wizard Hasan is a stalker. He is possessive, greedy, and of course he has great magical power. He spies Capisi flying through the sky and imagines one day saying to himself,

“Ah, I have this beauty, the wind itself caught in my spell! This demonstrates my power and my will. As she submits to me, her femininity is naked and revealed. I taste her vitality. Her life flows through my veins. Oh, the satisfaction! The feelings unleashed as I devour her freedom, as I absorb her essence into my being!”

Capisi outwits the wizard by appealing to his greed. She uses the power of beauty to do this. She offers him a magical power that only the greatest magicians and the prophets of God possess. The trick is, he has to encounter an experience with infinite peace as one of the magical components to the spell she is teaching him.

As the wizard attempts to do this, he encounters the child within himself--his own childhood and all the longings, dreams, and needs he left behind and abandoned once he chose a path of acquiring magical power. But the child within him became awake again and was so strong that it completely destroyed his magical will. His magic was based on separation and control but the child possessed a greater power.

When you possess beauty and harmony to this degree, you can see the deepest secrets and the desires hidden in the depths of others’ hearts. You can speak to others from the core of their own being with their own voice and through their own deepest longings and dreams. This is in all the stories in which knowing another’s magical name gives power over them. This is in the Wizard of Earthsea and The Forgotten Beasts of Eld.

In drug and alcohol addictions, the process of recovery often involves therapies that reinforce focusing totally on the here and now. The individual concentrates on what he or she is feeling and thinking in the present moment. The choices one makes relate to the immediate situation you are in and who you are in this instant. This approach strengthens will and it is backed up by lots of support.

The inner journey for such individuals is often far too dangerous for anyone except the most gifted. In this case, part of self is best left unexplored, repressed, and lock away from the conscious self so that the individual can get on with coping with life. There is a time when you do not give things to those in need crying for your attention. You stay focused on your own journey crossing the river. To do otherwise is to become lost.

In The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle, Schmendrick, an incompetent magician, manages to survive the attack of a harpy with the help of a unicorn. The unicorn says something that everyone undergoing great trauma or emotional conflicts might keep in mind if those traumas or conflicts have the power to destroy.

The unicorn says, (p.46) “You must never run from anything immortal. It attracts their attention.” Her voice was gentle, and without pity. “Never run,” she said. “Walk slowly, and pretend to be thinking of something else. Sing a song, say a poem, do your tricks, but walk slowly and she may not follow. Walk very slowly, magician.”

One of the great dangers to those who encounter unusually powerful emotions is that they will be possessed by those emotions. In some cases, if they feel connected to the emotion, they may end up feeling larger than life--certain beyond all doubt that they are right and everyone else is wrong. Or else they are depressed, because the strength of what is within them drains all the excitement and life from the world around them.

The advice is to stick to the present moment, tie your shoes, drink if you are thirsty, eat if you are hungry. Stay focused on who you are and simply ignore what is more powerful than you until it takes an interest in something else, something more suitable for its appetites, and goes away. At another point in time, there will be an opportunity when the balance of power is in your favor and you have the courage and knowledge required to overcome your obstacles.

7. How are fairy tales different for young girls and boys?

I can only speculate on the answer to this question. Certainly, on the surface, there are many stories in which the male is active and the female inactive such as Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella. In feudal societies or a society with rigid gender roles, these stories would indeed reflect the prevailing attitudes toward gender definition. The gender roles in the stories would serve to indoctrinate and reinforce societal attitudes.

In a post industrial, pluralistic, and democratic society such as our own, the stories can be taken in a completely different way. In one interpretation, the male represents the activity of consciousness and reason while the female is the activity of the intuition, instinct, and deeper feeling. These two components are active in each of us regardless of gender.

In this kind of interpretation, it becomes important to study the way in which the male and female interact. The male risks his life to beat through the wall of thorns in Sleeping Beauty to see if he can awaken the female. The male searches throughout the kingdom for a woman whose foot fits the shoe left behind and which for some reason did not dissolve. The female--the inner connection to life, the prize of great value, the possibility to genuine love, and the presence that stirs one’s heart on the deepest level--this comes from the subconscious part of ourselves.

Once upon a time men had to suffer isolation, pain, and undergo long spiritual journeys in order grow. Some women will way that this “hero’s quest” is a male thing. It is perhaps more appropriate in our age to say that the hero’s journey belongs to anyone, male or female, who wishes to develop the masculine part of themselves--to take responsibility for the world, to take charge and master the self, and to be dynamic in action so any obstacle is overcome. This side of consciousness has been emphasized and even overdeveloped in Western civilization.

It is the respect and appreciation for the power that belongs to the feminine that is not very developed in our Western history. Fairy tales are very good at filling in and giving hints of how this other mysterious power manifests. The feminine side may act through our deepest feelings and intuitions. It guards and nourishes our dreams and the longings of our hearts.

It may seem that such vague feelings, longings, and dreams have little to do with everyday life and reality. They are too inactive and without authority, recognition, and power. This idea raises some significant questions. Are little girls in fairy tales somehow less important than the little boys in fairy tales? Are the girls’ lives fulfilled through being inactive and passive? Do fairy tales suggest that there are consequences and serious disturbances when girls depart from these roles?

Individual boys and girls no doubt have a very wide range of responses to fairy tales. Perhaps some girls struggle with the passive role assigned to them by some fairy tales. A male, such as myself, might point out that in a large number of fairy tales it is the female that defines the spiritual landscape. The woman is the one who moves the male to action and she is the treasure that he must win by overcoming some obstacle that holds or possesses her. It is the life within the woman that determines what men see, what they quest for, and what they are able to find.

On the other hand, if there are adult women who are acutely aware of the inequity in society, that for example women still earn 10% less than their male counterparts and hold far fewer positions of authority than men, these fairy tales become the enemies of the feminist movement. Stories, esp. stories that may indoctrinate by depicting the roles of the genders in society, should be rewritten to reflect the goals and standards of modern society.

Take for example the stories of mermaids and mermen. Franz Bardon says of some of the mermaids he describes that their beauty is such that they possess the power to enchant even the most powerful of magicians. To women is attributed the power of beauty.

The mermen, by contrast, in Bardon as well as many legends (See A Field Guide to the Little People on mermen) control the winds and weather. The merman are active and willing to negotiate with sea captains so that the ships avoid storms. The mermaids, again, dance, sing, and offer the ecstasies of love beyond human imagination.

I would hesitate to place an gender based ideological interpretation on this set of tales. Some of the mermen are probably as attractive as Sting and David Bowie combined with magical powers thrown in. Beauty is a matter of perception. Perhaps the merman are as beautiful to women as the mermaids are to those males who perceive them.

Fire and air are often considered to be active. The mermen, using the magnetism in water, gain control over the winds and lightening. The mermaids, using the same magnetism, control empathy, clairvoyant visions, and the magic of tones. A human being is no so limited. He can learn both the active and passive abilities according to his or her inclinations. There are no inherent gender restrictions on education or spiritual perception.

8. Please explain how psychological battles take place within a fairy tale.

There are many battles that take place in fairy tales. Certainly, the entire spectrum of human desires and passions are enacted through the stories told around the world. If someone speaks of psychological battles, then he or she will probably be discussing the battle in terms of a preferred psychology. I suggest that no one escapes their historically and culturally conditioned bias when it comes to interpreting fairy tales. Put another way, we do best when we learn from each other. Interpretation is necessary. It is also a communal and intersubjective activity.

At the end of this section, I give an example of a psychological battle, a test, if you like, that I enacted with a nature spirit or salamander called Itumo. This particular “battle” was somewhat typical of the way I write. I get to know the nature spirit. The nature spirit gets to know me. There is give and take. Sometimes friendship and more occurs.

Interactions with nature spirits of this kind, however, always involve a contest of will and power. Nature spirits are in no way governed by human morality. Many of these beings have existed for countless eons before human beings much less human religions appeared upon the earth. They have their own rules and laws to which they adhere.

One of the rules for exploring the realms of fairy is that you have to confront the darkness in yourself. The nature spirits such as Itumo and others are quick to perceive any weakness within you. They are especially gifted at discerning anything that you are concealing from yourself or any unusual power that is active within you and of which you are as yet unaware. You have to stay very alert and very clear to interact with them successfully.

There is a kind of battle that nature spirits have relayed to me. It sometimes occurs when human magicians try to control them. It reduces to a simple formula in which the nature spirit says, “You want to control me? You can not control me until you know the essence of my being.” (Or the nature spirit’s magical name as many fairy tales like to put it). “You can not know the essence of my being unless you are one with me.” The trick is that this oneness can not be compelled through external means. This oneness is a power of love.

In my story about the salamander Pyrhum, the salamander meets his match when he encounters an ancient magician named He’adra. In this encounter, Pyrhum explains his attitude toward human beings.