The Transformation of
the Feminine
The fairy tale states that it is
this princess, this daughter without a mother, who must solve the problem. The princess represents the new, emerging
feminine consciousness, an evolution in the form of the eternal feminine
principle, who is Lady Wisdom. Just as
humanity is hopefully evolving into greater consciousness, Divine awareness
enlarges as our own consciousness deepens.
In fact, Jung believed that the Divine needs humanity's capacity to know
It in order to know Itself.16
With the development of this new feminine consciousness will come a
deepening and enrichment of the images of the Divine in both its masculine and
feminine aspects. The princess brings new energy and passion to life, and a new
connection to spirit as well.
This princess has no mother, only a
father who falls passionately in love with her; not seen for herself, but
valued for his expectations of her.
Having no mother cuts her off from her feminine roots and feminine
nourishment. Many women I know have felt
this in their own lives. How many of us
have fervently worked to ensure that we are nothing like our mothers! This princess, like us, has to get her nourishment
from the Father's spirit, collective masculine ideals, and her personal
father. The spirituality of the feminine
principle and its mysteries are lost to conscious life.
The princess takes on the life of masculine
spirit, so of course her father is enchanted with her! Men seem to want a woman who meets their own
anima projections. It keeps them in
control. Robin McKinley’s DeerSkin makes this part of the tale
very concrete, for the father will
have his daughter, whether she will have him or not. He brutally rapes her. We women know, however, that there are many
forms of rape, and this fairy tales speaks to all forms: physical, mental,
emotional and spiritual. But all forms
of rape injure our spirit, and women have to find healing before we can be free
of the father, free from being ‘owned’ and free to make choices about our
bodies and our lives.
But this princess, perhaps because
she is a father's daughter, cannot be so easily overpowered by his demand. After all, she's learned so much from
him. Although she looks very much like
her mother, she is both like and unlike her.
She probably has the same strong spirit as her mother, for she stands up
to the king without fear. But she is not
her mother, and she knows that something is wrong that her father should love
her so. She very rationally decides on a
course of action that she believes will defeat his purpose.
Transforming Consciousness
To turn her father aside from this
unholy marriage, she demands three marvelous dresses and a fur mantle. Clothes, dresses, and shirts can hide the
true personality, as in the case of certain uniforms: nurse, policeman, doctor,
or priest. This is when clothes
represent the persona, the mask with which we meet the world. But clothes can also symbolize an attitude
which we try to incorporate and then manifest to the world. When we’re teenagers, we need to dress ‘just
like everyone else’ so we can feel comfortable with our peers. As we mature, we choose clothes that fit our
individual style, so that what we wear says something about who we are at a
glance. Psychologically, this often
means finding the right mode of expression, or the right type of consciousness
with which to meet a situation. In this
story, these three dresses have a cosmic significance, and represent different
ways of knowing, or different types of consciousness, which the Woman of Revelation integrates. The price of her father's passion is the
possession of all the knowledge of his kingdom.
Today’s women have taken our political
freedom and learned all there is to know about the world. We excel in business, science, the arts,
sports, and politics. And yet, the
‘patriarchy’ is still alive and well in Russia as well as in the Middle East, in South America
as well as in the United
States, in Africa
as well as in Asia. The old order of the patriarchy makes a show
of giving women equality – like the dresses given by the Father – but in both
subtle and overt ways, women have to emulate the prevalent masculine viewpoint
to win acceptance and validation. There
is still very little respect for or even understanding of a truly feminine
standpoint. The real freedom for women
comes when we live in our mantle of furs and reclaim our wildness and our
instinctual knowledge of life. That is
when women can truly claim these three dresses as our own.
All the Riches of the
World: The Four Types of Consciousness
These three dresses and the mantle of
furs symbolize different types of consciousness, just as their colors represent
the differentiation of light. They
represent the four-fold aspect of our nature:
physical, psychological, imaginal and spiritual or our body, our
individual ego consciousness, our unconscious imagination and our spiritual
consciousness. When Allerleirauh appears
in each of dresses, she is manifesting the image of the Woman clothed with the Sun, standing on the Moon, crowned with Stars.
The golden dress of the sun symbolizes
the solar, masculine, left-brain consciousness of our culture, which likes to
differentiate one thing from another. It
is our psychological consciousness. The
solar principle is a strong, fiery, life-giving force. It is concerned with logos, the Word spoken before the beginning of the world. It is our ability to name a thing, which
helps us understand its nature more fully. It represents our rational mode of
consciousness, in that it brings the possibility of seeing, with great clarity,
causes and effects. It stands for the
principle of order, of differentiation, of individuality.17 It can
also be death-dealing, like the Sun in the desert, for cold rationality can
objectively look on death and destruction without qualms.
The silvery dress represents the
lunar, feminine principle. Lunar,
right-brain consciousness supports the claims and needs of the reality of life. It is a consciousness attuned to rhythm,
tides, needs and the feeling side of life.18 It is a receptive consciousness, ready to
listen, wait, trust, take in and yield to situations, and to allow things to
happen in their own time. It nourishes
and embraces all things, for like the moonlight, it blurs distinctions and
gathers together disparate elements.19 In its highest form, it is the imagination
developed to its fullest.
These two types of consciousness see
the world through different eyes, and as the scientific study of the brain
shows, both types of consciousness are available to us. As stated before, most of us have
overdeveloped our solar consciousness at the expense of our imaginal, lunar
consciousness. Getting these two dresses
represents developing the ability to use both types of consciousness, to see
with both eyes.
The dress of the brightness of the
stars relates to the divine dimension of life and is concerned with mystical
vision. Stars symbolize the spark of
divinity within humanity. Paracelsus,
the famous medieval alchemist, states that within each of us is an 'astrum' or
star, which drives us towards great wisdom.20 This divine image within each person is
comparable to Jung's concept of the Self.
Jung says that Paracelsus "beholds the darksome psyche as a
star-strewn night sky, whose planets and fixed constellations represent the
archetypes in all their luminosity and numinosity."21 The archetypes within and the patterns
of stars without combine to help us find the meaning of our lives and our place
in creation. The star dress represents
our relationship to the Divine, to the ground of our being. This dress is very much present in our
society, for it is made up of all the accumulated spiritual wisdom of all times
and ages, and it is available to us in books, through yoga and meditation
practices, from spiritual gurus and teachers, and most directly through our own
inner work. Many people who are seeking
this kind of personal connection to Spirit are trying to live in their star
dresses.
Leaving the Father’s
House
When
the princess gets ready to flee from her father, she puts these three dresses
into a nutshell. This symbolizes the
fact that she must take the essence of each type of consciousness with her,
reduced to its essential state, for the image indicates a dark, enclosed,
germinating place. This image of
germinating is repeated a second time when Allerleirauh falls asleep in the
tree, and once more in the tale in the image of the closet beneath the stairs,
where no daylight enters. This is where
Allerleirauh sleeps and lives; this is where her new life is enclosed and
germinating.
Like Harry Potter, we have
to accept that we might go through a time of being marginalized for our
attempts to find our own power. Harry is
given the room under the stairway because his aunt and uncle will not admit
that he is a wizard. But it also becomes
his own special sanctuary where he can dream.
There is a sense of interiority, of going within, that is needed for
this task, for the princess' task is this: to take these dresses and make them
her own. They must grow within her so
that she can express them in her life.
They cannot be 'things' that she knows about or 'puts on'; she must
integrate them so that they are expressions of her essential being. These three dresses will bring her Wisdom.
This occurs in a woman's life when she
finally realizes that she is responsible for her own life. Women need to understand that it is our
values that make us who we are: we have to work to live by them, taking
responsibility for how those values shape our life and also accepting how they
shape the world we live in. It is the
only way to learn how to listen within for the voice of Wisdom. This, of course, is the hard part, and the
rest of the fairy tale speaks of how this must be accomplished. The princess must live in the mantle of furs.
When
we take responsibility for our lives, we begin to listen to ourselves.