Alchemy

A father, a miller, puts his daughter between a rock and a hard place by promising a king that she can spin gold from straw or die trying. What was he thinking?

An uncanny gnome-like creature shows up out of thin air with the goods, uses magic to spin gold from straw, and demands the miller’s daughter’s first-born child in exchange.

The king marries the miller’s daughter, and they have a child. The bizarre tiny little man returns to extort his payment…unless…unless…the anguished queen can guess his name. At the last second, the queen stumbles across the manakin hopping around a fire in the woods and hears him chant,

‘Tonight, tonight, my plans I make. Tomorrow, tomorrow, the baby I take. The queen will never win my game, for Rumpelstiltskin is my name.”

The next morning the queen plays “gotcha” and triumphantly names Rumpelstiltskin, who stamps his tiny feet. His rage creates a crack in the earth; he rips himself in two and disappears into a chasm!  A drama king for sure!

If you enjoy the symbolism in stories, you might be tempted to make heads or tails of this freakish myth. You’d be in good company.  Literary professors, Jungian analysts, psychoanalysts, storytellers and children – big and little, have tried to sort Rumpelstiltskin out, captivated by a fairy tale that may be as much as 6,000 years old and whose variants show up by the dozens.

One author, Vivian Vande Velde, published a book, “The Rumpelstiltskin Problem” where she constructed six new versions that make a coherent story out of Rumpelstiltskin’s incongruous threads.  She writes, for example, that we are not told why the miller lied about his daughter’s ability to spin gold from straw, nor why the king doesn’t ask, “If your daughter can spin straw into gold why are you a poor miller?”

As a girl I hop-scotched and jump roped to Rumpelstiltskin’s strange chant. I doubt there are many people who do NOT know the tale.  What is it about this cunning cock and bull story that bangs around in our psyches like a bull in a China shop?

Rumpelstiltskin is a trickster tale; in all such tales a central character cackles with cunning wit, is changeable, weirdly wise and paradoxical.

Tricksters turn the tables, pull out roots and replant shoots; they break rules, create chaos and set our knees a’ knocking. They herald change; they are messengers who make what is unconscious conscious and who open cracks for the wisdom of the Gods, the light, to get through.

Spinning gold from straw is a magic trick where something is made of nothing.  Beauty out of ugly. Precious out of plain. Triumph out of tragedy. There is not a human being alive who has not practiced or been blessed by that magic.

Rumpelstiltskin reminds us that we are conjurers of magic. Our power, our wizardry makes us shiver. Daily, we forget its name. And yet, daily we stumble upon it in the forests when we hop around the fire of our creativity.

When we guess the name of the magic, all manner of strange spells are broken. The magic with which we spin gold from straw – is LOVE. It is OUR name.

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Copyright 2024, Linda Sandel Pettit, Ed.D.
Photo by Svetlana Angelus, licensed from Istockphoto.com

Dr. Linda Sandel Pettit is a visionary guide and communications creative who assists people to have transformative insights for effective living, creating and leading. She offers individual consulting, intimate group programs and has a special fondness for supporting writers of creative nonfiction. She hosts the Intuitive Way of Love Podcast, available on your favorite podcast platform and at https://drlindapettit.com/podcast/. Find her blog on her website https://drlindapettit.com/blog/. Her award winning, best-selling inspirational self-help memoir, Leaning into Curves: Trusting the Wild Intuitive Way of Love premiered in April, 2024. Her next book, MAGIC: Releasing the Power of Spiritual Consciousness is planned for 2025.

Check out another blog post: https://drlindapettit.com/nightengale/