Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: The Woman Forced to Flee Into the Wilderness, Part 1

I know, I said we would discuss these things over the next four weeks, but as I started writing this work, I realized there was a lot to tell, so I’ll break it up into bite-size pieces.

Before I proceed, I want to lay some ground work about myself. I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I’m a Mormon. I believe Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the Son of God, that He atoned for our sins, wrought salvation for mankind and set up a Church anciently. I believe that Church fell into apostasy. Apostasy is nothing new. Faith and falling has been a pattern of mankind that has cycled through the ages. I believe Joseph Smith was the Prophet who restored the truth of the Gospel of Christ in these latter-days, fulfilling scripture. All that follows became very clear to me in the light of that restoration. Without it, these stories are only stories and belong where we have put them, in the children’s section.

So let us begin.

“Once upon a time in a kingdom far, far away...” Most fairy tales being this way. So what is time and what is space? The Savior said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.” And many parables began, “The Kingdom of God shall be likened to...” You will find no actual geographic location for the Kingdom of God. Depending on your spirituality and relationship with God, it’s near at hand or far, far away. Nor does this kingdom belong to any set time. The Doctrine & Covenants points out, “He comprehendeth all things, and all things are before him...” God is not bound by time. It is all before Him. Therefore, the story is pertinent now, tomorrow, a hundred years ago and a hundred years in the future. It’s for us.

Paraphrasing the story, there was a queen who desired to have a child. She wished this child would be red as blood, white as snow and black as ebony. Read the Fairy Tales carefully and you will note this color scheme coming up again and again in one form or another, particularly red and white. For example, Rapunzel and red and white radishes, The Goose Girl with the white handkerchief bearing red drops of her mother’s blood.

The wish is granted and a girl baby is born who has skin as white as snow, lips red as blood and hair black as ebony. These three colors don’t just reappear in Fairy stories. They crop up in cultures and stories around the world. Some years ago I was watching a PBS program about Brazilian Aboriginal Indians. We would call them primitive. They saw themselves as sacred. They had painted their bodies with white and black paint. Red paint was in their hair and they wore bright red gym trunks.

The four horsemen of the apocalypse are white, red, black and pale. In the story of the White Buffalo Woman, the Sioux Indian’s most sacred story, after she has taught the people and leaves them, she rolls over four times, turning into a buffalo, first brown, then red, then black and finally white.

So we know this child is something more than a mere child. She is sacred. She is important. But who and what is she?

The queen, noting her wish has been granted, names the child Snow White and then dies. Sometime later, the king remarries and enter the vain queen. If Snow White is something sacred, then the queen is her exact opposite, something wicked. Her greatest weakness is vanity. Her greatest sin is pride. She is obsessed with her mirror.

We all of us have mirrors, outside and inside. Mirrors do nothing but reflect the truth. I look in my own mirror and see the flawed little mole on my nose, the grey hair and the uneven teeth. The mirror of self-reflection, if I pay attention to it, tells me the flaws on the inside. We have a very hard time with that mirror. On the outside I can apply make-up and curl my hair and smile with my lips closed. On the inside I can either ignore the truth and keep on being vain and prideful, or I can pay attention and use the atonement to make changes. But that’s Jungian psychology. We are talking about the Kingdom of God and the Book of Revelation

Snow White goes un-noticed by the queen for seven years. Another sacred symbol, seven means perfection. It’s also the age of self-actualization, when children begin to see reason and ask how Santa Clause can possibly make it around the world to every home in one night. It’s a psychological awakening. A person can now become accountable for their actions.

At this age of seven, the mirror suddenly declares that though the queen is still very fair, Snow White has grown more fair and is not the most beautiful in all the land. The queen has a fit. She orders a huntsman to take the girl off into the woods, kill her and bring her heart back in a box. She’s going to eat it.

So, we have a kingdom. We have a queen who has given birth to a girl baby, not a boy baby. It is the queen who is removed, leaving Snow White to replace her, a child who eventually becomes the fairest in the land. And we have a wicked queen, an usurper. And a magic mirror that tells the truth at all times.

The LDS Edition to the Holy Bible has an interesting foot-note to Revelation, Chapter 12, verse one, “Woman.” It refers us to D&C section 5, verse 14 where it says, “...this the beginning of the rising up and coming forth of my church out of the wilderness - clear as the moon, and fair as the sun,...”

Snow White, the fairest in the land. She represents the Church of God.

Who is the queen? Hmm, isn’t there something in the Book of Revelation about the great whore? Chapter seventeen, starting with verse one. “...I will show unto thee the judgement of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters: With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication...And I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns (sounds like that dragon in chapter twelve). And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication.” (See Revelation, 17: 1-4) She is all pride and vanity.

The whore is supported by Satan and he cannot stand that Christ should have a Church upon the earth at all, so he persecutes it. And that is what the queen does to Snow White. The girl is persecuted, then finally sent out to be killed. But the queen really wants to be Snow White. She wants everyone to believe that she’s legitimate. And perhaps, if she eats Snow White’s heart, she will be.

In the end, she eats the heart of a pig. What is the least kosher food you can think of?

Pork.

We’ll talk more about that next week.

(I’m taking my version of Snow White from the book “Bestloved Folktales of the World,” selected by Joanna Cole, published by Doubleday & Company, copyright 1982 by Joanna Cole. She says in her introduction, “In preparing this anthology, I...tried to stay as close as possible to the oral tradition of the folktales, selecting stories that came originally from the lips of of a storyteller rather than the pen of a writer.” The older the story, the closer we get to the origins)

Western Civilizations Sacred Stories: Fairy Tales

Many years ago, I attended a course at the University of Utah, “The Imagery and Psychology of Dreams.” It was fun and fascinating. We kept dream diaries, discussed our dreams with the class, learned how to talk to our dreams and even role played, or acted out dreams. It was quite revealing. The instructor spent about fifteen minutes on Dr. Sigmund Frued, who was the first to say, “Dreams have meaning!” Then he went on to spoil it all by saying that only trained Psycho-analysts could interpret the dream. We hastily moved on to Carl Jung who agreed with Frued that dreams have meaning, but insisted that only the individual could properly interpret their dreams for the individual chose those images in the first place.

Why do I bring this up? Because it was while taking this course I discovered the importance of our European Fairy Tales. Carl Jung called them stories of the collective conscious. It works like this. Centuries ago, someone told a story. The story was told again and again, passed on by word of mouth from one person or group to another. As it is told, words change, names change. It morphs and moves and as the years go by, then the centuries, the story begins to take on a truth about the culture and peoples it sprang from.

For the class, I had to write a few papers and while pondering on what I would write about, I found myself driving home from work reciting out loud to myself, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, Who is the fairest of them all?” I felt a sudden connection to the story, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Was I asking myself, “Fair as in beautiful, or Fair as in just?” I wrote the entire paper, centered around this fairy tale and how it applied to me, psychologically.

Thus began my love affair with Fairy Tales. I read them, collected them and tried to discover the earliest versions I could - and found out that Fairy Tales are NOT for children. In one version of “Snow White,” the wicked queen takes the ‘heart’ of Snow White, which is really the heart of a pig, and cooks it, salts it and eats it. At the end of the story, she is invited to Snow White’s wedding feast and is forced to wear red-hot iron shoes and dance until she falls down dead. Not a very nice story for children.

If you would like to learn more about Fairy Tales as the collective conscious of a culture, I’d like to recommend the following books by Robert Johnson, “He: Understanding Masculine Psychology,” “She: Understanding Feminine Psychology,” and “We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love.” These books rely on Carl Jung’s work (Jungian Psychology) and utilize Legends, Fairy tales and Greek Mythology to teach us truths about ourselves.

However, it was some years later, as I was expanding my interest into legends, myths and folk stories of other cultures, I came across an article about Native American Indian folk lore. The author of this article insisted that the Native American stories were not Fairy Tales. “These are our sacred stories.”

I thought and pondered on this idea and finally asked myself, “Do we (meaning western civilization, children of European descent) have sacred stories?”

I’m not really sure how or when I made the connection. I’m a deeply religious person and read scripture daily. However it happened, the connection was made.

Our so called Fairy Tales are actually the Book of Revelation!

I turn your attention to Revelation, chapter twelve. We begin with verse one, “And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.”

The chapter goes to describe how the woman is ready to give birth, but a dragon waits to devour her child as soon as it is born. Yet, when the man child is born it is immediately caught up to God.

Verse six: “And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there....”

Hmmm. That sounds familiar.

Snow White: Once upon a time, in a kingdom far, far away, there lived a queen who desired a child... The dragon, or wicked Step Mother, persecutes the child. The child is forced to flee into the woods.

Rapunzel: Once upon a time, there was a couple who longed to have a child... The wicked witch (dragon) steals the child and takes it far into the wilderness and locks her in a tower.

Shall I go on? Actually, I will. In fact I’m going to discuss four of my favorite Fairy Tales over the next four weeks. There will be overlapping themes and many concepts pointed out over and over with each story, but I hope you will find it as interesting as I do.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: The Woman Forced to Flee Into the Wilderness
Sleeping Beauty: Apostasy
Cinderella: Out of Obscurity
The Twelve Dancing Princesses: Restoration and the Wedding Supper of the Lord.

The Meanderings of a Middle Aged Mind

Here it is. My first blog. I launch myself out into the world at the age of 52. I've been meaning to launch myself since I wrote my first poem as a child. However, I was horribly shy and didn't think that anything I had to say would be noteworthy.

Now, I've got so many thoughts in my head, and I've had so many interesting conversations with so many people, it's time to make them tangible, readable - somehow permanent and not just the meanderings of a middle aged mind.

I intend to post on this blog, many of the things I find interesting, intrigueing and of value. I want to discuss history, some philosophy, mostly religion, a touch of physics - and fairy tales. Yes! You read right - fairy tales, from the word Fae, or otherworldly, not of this world. Did you know that the Spanish word for "Faith" is "Fe?" And Spanish and French are the modern languages closest to Latin. Remember the Marine Motto, "Semper Fi?" It means 'always faithful.' Fi, from the Latin fidelus, to fe in Spanish, to foi in French to fae in English, or faith. I just find that interesting.

So, my next blog: The Sacred Stories of Western Civilization: Fairy Tales.