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Author
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Comment
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judithwq
Registered User
(2/10/03 7:49:40 am)
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tales about inner flame
I'm looking for fairy tales that use a flame as a symbol for the life force, or spirit, and teach how to keep that flame burning, to protect it, or give warnings through the tale about what can make the flame dwindle and die.
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Carrie
Unregistered User
(2/10/03 9:49:40 am)
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flames
Hi there. This isn't fairy tale information exactly, but the first thing that comes to my mind are the will o wisps. In my mind, flame is all about rebirth and the cleansing -- probably because I live in a city named after the fabled Phoenix, which bursts into flames every 500 years to rise again from the ashes.
I have discovered that I have a tremendous fear of fire, with no real reason. Flame, interestingly enough carries all of the colors of the rainbow. I think that is fascinating when you compare the water and fire symbology. The ancient Indians in Southwestern Arizona are the only Native Americans known to cremate the remains of animals. Something I think interesting in a discussion about fire because there is also an element of water involved.
This is an excerpt from a piece I wrote of Desert Big Horn Sheep for Cerca magazine:
Even though the spiral horns of bighorn sheep show up in Celtic and Egyptian lore, their role in the driest reaches of the Sonoran Desert take on an interesting twist. Large mounds of cremated bighorn sheep bones were documented by early Spanish explorers to the region and are the only place in the world where humans have cremated non-human beings. Experts speculate that the horns and bones where cremated so as not to offend the fierce winds and rains associated with the animals. And even as late as the early 1900s, bighorn sheep hunts in the Southwest were shrouded in secrecy and superstition.
I think fire is also interesting with its relation in Christianity and the idea of Hell. Wasn't it Anderson's story about the tin soldier, that the paper ballerina was destroyed by flame? Or was it the soldier who perished in this manner? I can't recall off the top of my head.
La Llorona is associated with balls of fire in the Southwest and Mexico and the heroine in the Six Swans comes through flame as rebirth when she knits the final bit on the nettle shirts that will free her brothers from thier swan figures and her from her vow of silence. Only then can she redeem herself with the truth.
You should also take a look at the role of ashes in Cinderella -- here is another tale of rebirth.
Carrie
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judithwq
Registered User
(2/10/03 1:01:10 pm)
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tales about inner flame
Thanks for your comments Carrie-I'm thinking of a flame, perhaps a spark, that is what gives us life, and that perhaps grows and shrinks with times of joy and sadness, or perhaps an inner flame that gives courage, rather than something one goes through...I love the tale of Elia and the Swans, and just read a wonderful version of the tale, "Daughter of the Forest" by Juliet Marillier.
Someone mentioned to me that there is an image of Jesus holding a heart which flames between the two hands. If anyone knows more of this and its meaning, please let me know.
Judith
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ZMethos
Registered User
(2/10/03 4:42:25 pm)
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Sacred Heart
The image of Jesus (and also Mary) with a flaming heart in his chest,
or sometimes held between his hands, is usually refered to in Catholicism
as the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It should be easy enough to research;
I've forgotten my catechism.
~M
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Podnah
Registered User
(2/22/03 11:37:37 pm)
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stories about inner flame
Hi Judith,
I was wondering if you found any of the stories you were seeking - I'd love to hear of them if you have. I know I've heard of some - I'll let you know if I remember what they were. Scott
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spideri
Registered User
(2/25/03 6:13:01 pm)
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innerflame
HC Andersen's little Gerda in the Snow Queen possesses amazing powers of inner warmth.
Poor and shoeless, Gerda enters the frozen castle where Hans sits lost in the icy game of reason. Gerda's words of prayer become angels in the air. Her own inner heat is all she has to warm herself, but it is enoigh, and her hot tears melt away the ice sliver in Hans' heart and set him him free.
In a Native Alaskan myth in The Bookhouse Series (Vol.III) there's a fine tale: "Yehl and the Beaming Maiden" - The maiden's the Sun herself- who's trapped by an ice-hearted chief, then released by a young savior boy, son of Raven - who comes by virgin birth! - to the chief's sister. Wild heat and cold imagery.
Anyone know the tribal origin of this great old story? So far, I haven't found it.
Wishing for warm hearts all around,
Beatrice
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Judith
Berman
Registered User
(2/25/03 9:08:31 pm)
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Yeil, fish & the daylight box
> In a Native Alaskan myth in The Bookhouse Series (Vol.III) there's a fine tale: "Yehl and the Beaming Maiden" - The maiden's the Sun herself- who's trapped by an ice-hearted chief, then released by a young savior boy, son of Raven - who comes by virgin birth! - to the chief's sister. Wild heat and cold imagery.
Yeil is the Tlingit (and I think also Haida) name of Raven. This story, though, is distributed up and down the north Pacific coast. With some variation: in the north, the chief is Raven-at-the-head-of-the-Nass [River], a strange and powerful being who keeps the sun- and moonlight in boxes in his house, while further south the light's owner is sometimes a spirit/deity called the Daylight-Box Woman.
The above version sounds as if it has been reworked and Euro-romanticized (if I may coin a word) from the original, somewhat mangling it, though it could be based on a version of the story I've never seen. "Ice hearted," "savior boy," etc. are not original. The usual story is: the world is all in darkness; Raven-at-the-head-of-the-Nass keeps the sun and moon in boxes in his house. Raven goes to his house and in one way or another impregnates the chief's daughter. The most frequent way is that Yeil turns himself into a hemlock needle and falls into the girl's drinking water. The child born to her is Raven/Yeil himself. The baby becomes his grandfather's favorite and when he cries unceasingly for first the moon box and then the sun box he is given them; he opens the boxes and sun and moon fly out the smoke vent into the sky and illuminate the world. In some versions it's stated that this event is connected to the cosmogonic separation of humans and animals. In the iconography of the region, Raven is often shown with the sun disk in his beak.
The light-emitting sun and moon are sometimes characterized as separate spirit entities, sometimes as masks or headdresses (which might be animate in their own right) worn by other spirits/deities. Usually the sun is male. I don't think I've ever seen a story in which the sun is a "maiden," but the world of traditional nPc literature is large and I haven't been to every corner of it. In the story "Mink and the Sun," Mink, who is another "virgin birth" Transformer type, is begotten when a sun ray falls on his mother (the original language is topologically explicit in a way English can't be). Mocked by other children for not having a father, he travels to the world above where father Sun takes Mink into his house, gives him the sun mask and lots of advice as to how to bear it across the sky. Mink, as usual, messes up, sets the world on fire and is thrown back down to earth by his enraged father. Mink stories usually involve his death and comical resurrection (he dies frequently) and this one is no exception. He is found dead on the water by some women out in their canoe; they take him aboard; he rubs his eyes and says "Hey, I've been asleep a long time" in typical Mink lisping baby talk.
Carrie, it's not strictly true that the Southwest is the only place where people cremated animals. On the north Pacific coast (and one might also check the opposite side of the north Pacific, the Amur river etc., where there are similar notions), traditionally salmon and other fish bones were placed in the fire when they could not be returned to the water. One reason given for this was to keep dogs from the bones -- dogs were considered kind of unclean. Another was that thus the fish could reincarnate and return again to feed humans. Where fish were concerned, water also had magical properties of resurrection.
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Carrie
Unregistered User
(2/27/03 7:04:14 am)
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bones and fire
Judith,
I recieved the information on the bones from a scientist at the U of A. I wasn't aware of the fish bones. Perhaps it might have been better and easier to add "animal cremation of great magnitude". These charred bones were always stacked in huge mounds that it seems frightened the Spanish explorers enetering what is now Arizona. I had also seen several other references of this interesting practice in a book of collected essay by Gary Nabhan. But thank you for the clarification. Was the salmon bone cremation an ancient tradition or is it currently being practiced? The big horn cremation was documented because of the towering stacks of charred bones and horns. It seems to me that most people eating fish would throw fish bones in the fire after eating the flesh. What would make someone believe that this common act had ceremonial value? Just curious.
Carrie
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Becca
Unregistered User
(3/1/03 11:33:43 pm)
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Flames
Well, off the top of my (very sleepy) head, "Godfather Death" of Grimms is the first thing that comes to mind. The ending scene takes place in a cave or grotto filled with candles of various heighths and with various amounts of time left -- each representing a human life.
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judithwq
Registered User
(3/2/03 10:21:54 am)
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inner flame
Well folks, I just got back from a contemplative week away from the busy world and was grateful and pleased to find more responses to my inner flame question-such interesting threads I never expected. I want to reread them all, so I can take them in more deeply. Meanwhile, Scott, so far II have discovered a couple of "inner flame" oriented stories in cpe's well known work on women/wolves/wildness. Baba Yaga seems to be keeper of a flame, and if she is some representation of a figure in the psyche, then it strikes me that Baba, with her fearsomeness and interesting habits could be pointing to the fact that perhaps the keeper of the internal flame is not-very-pretty/sweet-an idea echoed in Buddhism, where often when we face the most difficult visitors in the mind and watch them change, often insights are revealed that release a great amount of clarity and lightness of being.
In my own mind I was imagining this inner flame as that which keeps what torments of the heart at bay-faith, hope, courage, confidence some sort of inner protector-all big words that my own mind receives more deeply when told via story. Also, inner flame as that which makes new life-when destruction has occurred in one's world. Still looking for more, if anyone has anything to add...
A nice quote by Viktor Frankl: "What is to give light must endure burning".
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Midori
Unregistered User
(3/3/03 3:11:21 am)
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Salamander
In East of the Sun, West of the Moon the young woman on her journey encounters the Salamander at the firey heart of the earth. In narrative terms the salamander is the fire of the heart/passion the transformative principle--important to the young woman's rite of passgae. The salamander is a lovely creature in this tale--burning with fire, but benevolent (not the consuming dragon--something softer, more mutable). It has always been one of my favorite characters
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Judith
Berman
Registered User
(3/3/03 11:16:19 am)
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burning bones
> I recieved the information on the bones from a scientist at the U of A. I wasn't aware of the fish bones. Perhaps it might have been better and easier to add "animal cremation of great magnitude". <...> Was the salmon bone cremation an ancient tradition or is it currently being practiced? <...> It seems to me that most people eating fish would throw fish bones in the fire after eating the flesh. What would make someone believe that this common act had ceremonial value? Just curious.
JB: Maybe not all people would intuitively think of fish as "animals"?... As far as I know, among the Kwakwaka'wakw the practice belongs to the 19th century and before, with no doubt some persistence by tradition-minded into the 20th century.
Anadromous and other fish, especially salmon, provided the staple food and the foundation of the economy in that area. A series of taboos and ceremonial behaviors were observed for the various salmon species, oolachan and halibut, especially regarding treatment and disposal of bones, skin, blood and offal. Some of this had to do with notions of pollution and purity (for example, dogs were not supposed to get at the first-caught fish), and some of it with notions about the immortality, that is, the resurrectability, of the fish spirits (poor translation), and thus with larger notions about reproduction, death and reincarnation. Given how much attention was paid to proper disposal of fish remains to ensure their reincarnation and their continued support of human life, it's hard to believe that placing the bones in the fire was a purely pragmatic act, and it's hard to imagine that ANY customary practice in relation to salmon did NOT have a "ceremonial" (spiritual/religious) significance, so dominant were they in so many areas of the culture.
The "standard" method of disposing of the bones among the Kw. was placing them in the ocean, particularly at a rivermouth. But fire and water both have power, and both were apparently acceptable ways of treating fish bones. The power of water is easier to tease out of old texts than fire (see my "Red Salmon and Red Cedar Bark" in BC STUDIES (2000)). But burning things in the hearthfire was, certainly in some instances, a way to "transfer" them to the spirit realm, and so I imagine that this was more or less what was thought to happen when bones went into the fire.
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judithwq
Registered User
(3/3/03 1:03:59 pm)
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inner flame
Midori-
I don't know the version of East of the Sun, West of the Moon with the salamander in it-I just remember the different wind/mountain sisters who point the way to the young woman. Where can I find the version with the Salamander?
judith
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Midori
Unregistered User
(3/3/03 2:11:32 pm)
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mayer
Judith:
The version is a beautifully illustrated version by Marianna Meyer. It should still be available in paperback. One of those classics!
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Jane Yolen
Unregistered User
(3/4/03 6:07:00 am)
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salamander
Midori et al: It's not clear to me whether Marianna added the salamander or not. Remember, she does a lot of retellings and writes other fiction as well. So the salamander may be her own invention.
Jane
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Midori
Unregistered User
(3/4/03 4:15:46 pm)
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Salamanders
Hmmm...I guess I wondered about that. Maybe it was the lovely illustration and the seamless way it fit into the story--I look into it and see if something like it doesn't show up any where else.
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Rosemary
Lake
Registered User
(3/4/03 8:08:48 pm)
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inner flame
In yoga teaching the image of a flame in a windless place is very important: round, not blown out of shape or flickering. The feeling of an even current of energy rising through ones body like the updraft round and insdie a candleflame is important too.
I suppose it's just a coincidence or a bit of realism that the Russian story "Daughter and Stepdaugher" (about the girl exiled to a hut in the woods who plays blinld mans buff with a bear) makes a big point of telling her never to let her hearthfire go out, iirc.
Btw, I'm looking for a copy of that story in Russian.
Rosemary r@rosemarylake.com
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