How to Unravel your Fairy Tale…?
“The Fairy Tale of Little Red Riding Hood”
As a child I was already mesmerized by fairy tales. Now, I’m starting to see that they have a deeper meaning. Fairy tales are a metaphor for the phases we go through in life.
The Fairy Tale of Little Red Riding Hood
At the end of 2019 I set out on a (soul) journey, just like young Little Red Riding Hood did. Only, little I knew about the destination. I quit my job overnight, not knowing what I was going to do next. Intuitively, I started writing my novel Lost & Found.
What I learned while writing my story is that Little Red Riding Hood represents the innocence of a child. She goes into the forest for her initiation from girl to woman. This is done by going to the grandmother. Or rather; the Great Mother?!
Mother Earth, Pachamama, Nature. Yes, nature is the greatest teacher!
The main character in my book Lost & Found, called Lieze – a 40-year-old western working mother and wife – also ventures into the woods by herself. It takes courage to leave your safe environment behind and walk into the wilderness. Not knowing what you will encounter.
Who and what will she meet along the way? Inner peace or loneliness, mesmerizing views and deer, or bears and perhaps even wolves…? Like Little Red Riding Hood, Lieze runs into an hunter, a grandmother and much more archetypes.
Me as a child dressed like Little Red Riding Hood
What Are Archetypes?
An archetype is a literary device in which a character is created based on a set of qualities or traits that are specific and identifiable for readers.
The term archetype is derived from the studies and writings of psychologist Carl Jung who believed that archetypes are part of humanity’s collective unconscious or memory of universal experiences.
In a literary context, characters (and sometimes images or themes) that symbolically embody universal meanings and basic human experiences, independent of time or place, are considered archetypes.
The truth is that archetypes play a role in everyone’s life. They litteraly play a ‘role’!
I believe before our incarnation (see my blog: Start at the Beginning), we agreed on learning particular lessons as souls. We play roles (the roles of archetypes) in each other lives to assist one another on this learning curve called ‘life’.
How to recognize the role of archetypes in your life?
Be the observer of your life from time to time. Conscious choose from which perspective you want to look at things. Sometime it is interesting to zoom out, sometimes it is necessary to zoom in.
Intuitive writing is a great tool to explore your lifestory and offers you the chance to acknowledge and recognize reoccurring situations. This way you can learn through experiences and make conscious choices the next time you are in the same situation.
This is how we grow into, or rather deepen our understanding of, ourselves. We can let go of the need to repeat the experience of an ‘old’ story (karma, fairytale, archetype) and move on to another phase of our life’s journey.
If you want to know more about this and learn the first steps on how to do this ‘unraveling’ for yourself you can join the waitlist of my upcoming course ‘Know Yourself’.
Being on the waitlist is completely free and without any further obligations, but ensures you to be the first to hear about it when the course is online. It will be in the form of an e-course, because I want this to be easy to follow and accessible for everyone.
Discover Yourself
How To Unravel The Fairy Tale?
Before I could give identity to the characters (read: archetypes) of my book Lost & Found, I had to excavate my own hidden stories and believes.
This is what I call ‘the unraveling of the fairytale’, on which I also elaborated in my previous blog ‘Start at the beginning’. It became (and still is) a journey full of challenges, temptations, pitfalls, but above all magic!
Carl Jung called this the ‘Hero’s Journey’.
At some point in early to mid-adulthood, most of us start to sense that something important is missing in our lives. Unsure of the cause or nature of this perceived void, we embark on a sort of spiritual quest to discover what is missing.
C.G. Jung believed the hero’s journey to be a necessary part of becoming fully human, which he referred to as individuation.
The Begin Of The Hero’s Journey
There is a hero in everyone. But how do you find him or her?
By entering into life with a mixture of fear and curiosity, just like Little Red Riding Hood when she saw the beautiful flowers and stepped off the path. By liberating nothing more and less than the safe patterns within yourself.
In the end you can let go of fear, because you learn that fear was an illusion all along, and you are released from the chains that have hold you down for so long.
But before your reach that place – which does not always have to be a physical location, but is more like a state of mind – you have to go on a quest. Like Little Red Riding Hood had to go through the dark forest to arrive at her Grandmother’s place.
Fairy tales are perfect examples of the Hero’s Journey. A hero goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed.
But this blog is about the beginning of the Hero’s Journey, so let’s not go to fast and take a few steps back in time. There always is an inner yearning that evokes the journey of the Hero. That was the case for me too.
For years I was looking for myself. Wondering what the purpose of life was. What was my contribution to this all? There had to be more to it than just work, consume and sleep.
I went in search of my Soul. I went on my Hero’s Journey…
To be continued in my next blogpost.
Love,
Bianca ~ Be Budding