In last week’s episode — The Heart of the Matter: Alchemy and the Prima Materia — I read a section of the fairy tale ‘The Gnome,’ letting the images of that story amplify important facets of the meaning associated with the alchemical idea of the prima materia. This procedure is central to the symbolic method.
When Jungian psychology speaks of the image, it has in mind something very specific. An image is not just a picture. It is not understood merely as an illustration or a clever analogy invented for the purpose of simplifying a difficult concept. “Image is psyche,” wrote Jung,1 which is to say that it is the native language of the psyche or, to put it another way, the natural habitat of the soul.
Images, then, are disclosures of psychological reality, of the unconscious depths behind and beyond our narrow conscious perception. They communicate the fullness of experience in a way that no concept ever can. And it is at this level of understanding that we speak of images as being symbolic.
There are so many wonderful images and details in ‘The Gnome’ that I was not able to include in the episode. I thought it would be nice to share the complete fairy tale with you here, and then look at a few more of the images in it to see what further insights they might reveal.
You can listen to my narration of the tale by clicking on the audio player below. If you prefer to read it yourself, a version of the story can be found at this link: The Gnome, Margaret Hunt translation (Note: This is a different translation than the one I use in the recording).
The Gnome:
The redeeming hero of the story is, of course, Stupid Hans. He is the one who brings a much needed correction to the possessive and controlling attitude of the King. Stupid Hans and the King, in fact, represent two very different qualities of consciousness. This can be expressed most simply by referring to the general arc of the fairy tale: The King causes the princesses to become trapped, Hans sets them free. How this happens in each case can be discovered in the details of the story.
In the last episode, I discussed the problem of the possessiveness of the King. His hoarding of the apples on the tree, I said, “is against the principle of life.” He is grasping, clinging, and controlling. Holding jealously to the fruits of his garden, he poisons them with a curse and causes his daughters — the hope of the future — to become trapped underground. The King is an image, then, of the established order of consciousness that resists the natural flow of growth and change, that rigidly holds on to the status quo.
This is not to suggest that he does so deliberately. He is not evil or cruel or tyrannical. The King clearly loves his daughters and is distraught by their disappearance. He even seems to have some feeling for nature; we are told that he “loved trees of every kind.” It is not so much that his intentions are bad, it is that they get expressed in distorted ways that have destructive effects. And this suggests something of the nature of ego-consciousness — it tends to become hardened and inflexible. It tends to become habitual consciousness, a repetition of known ways and patterns, a relic of past realizations and attainments. Unless it is continually refreshed by new values — insights, possibilities, discoveries — such a consciousness soon becomes unconsciousness.
This aspect of the King is reflected in the image of the “deep well without any water in it,” a symbol for the drying up of what was once a source of life. It is also reflected in the image of the dragons that have imprisoned the princesses. These dragons are really just echoes of the King; they are an image, so to speak, of his shadow. Dragons by nature are hoarders. They guard treasure that they keep from the world, such that it remains sterile and useless. The dragons, then, are the image of the King’s own hoarding nature, revealing him to be a devourer of life’s true potential.
If the attitude represented by the King is the problem, that represented by Stupid Hans is the solution. ‘Stupid Hans,’ or ‘Dummling’ is a common motif in fairy tales. I have discussed this figure in some detail in the podcast, in an episode called Being What We Are — Episode 8 from the first season. About this figure, Marie-Louise von Franz states, “Characteristically, he is the one who is called stupid and seemingly unlucky. But if you look at his behavior more closely, you see that he is simply spontaneous and naïve; he takes things as they are.”2
The ‘Stupid’ in Stupid Hans’ name, then, points to the fact that he doesn’t rely on his own cleverness — he does not impose ready made categories, personal agendas, or even “common sense” on any given situation. This turns the categories of cleverness and stupidity on their heads. “Cleverness,” in this sense, interferes with the flow of life, while “stupidity” lets life be. Thus it is that the sage of the Tao Te Ching, for instance, can say: “Others are sharp and clever, but I alone am dull and stupid.”3
Because of this attitude, Stupid Hans has a different relationship with the depths than his brothers. He is the one, the story tells us, who can go all the way down to the bottom of the well. His brothers don’t even get halfway down before getting spooked and needing to be pulled back up again. Stupid Hans, we could surmise, is not afraid of the dark. He is also able to come to terms with being lost, as becomes clear after he is abandoned and betrayed by his brothers.
Being lost in the dark, our tale suggests, though it is certainly disorienting, allows for a deeper wisdom to make itself known. At his worst moment, when his brothers have made off with the princesses and he is wandering alone deep in the earth, Stupid Hans is rescued, not by his own cleverness, but by his acceptance of the unfamiliar and his attunement to the life of the depths. At first, Hans “wears the ground smooth,” walking back and forth and worrying about his situation. But then, as we read in the story, “he began to think of other things.” At this point, Hans takes down a flute that is hanging on the wall and begins to play a tune.
At first glance, this seems like a pointless, even stupid, thing to do under the circumstances. However, it is an image of setting aside the planning and worrying mind and turning to the creative dimension, to the imagination. It is a spontaneous opening to image and the expression of a kind of symbolic consciousness. To put it yet another way, with this act, Stupid Hans lets his conscious mind wander and allows the unconscious to emerge. Soon thousands of gnomes appear — a symbol for the sudden, unexpected, and often felicitous insights that can come when we stop clinging to the known and open ourselves to the not yet known. Each gnome takes him by one of his hairs and together, they raise him up to the surface of the earth, returning him to the daylight world. He is, so to speak, “lifted up” by the autonomous creative energies of the unconscious — the wisdom of the deep.
Consciousness, I said earlier, is always in danger of a kind of hardening. It needs to be continually refreshed and renewed to prevent it from becoming its own form of unconsciousness. This means that what we know must be refreshed by what we don’t know; what we have mastered must be renewed by what we cannot master. In other words, we are only truly conscious when we are able to maintain a relationship with the creative unconscious.
This, of course, is the heart of Jungian psychology and it is something that Jung himself knew well. In one of his letters, he declares his affinity with the way of Stupid Hans when he makes a deceptively simple statement that perfectly captures the spirit of what I have been exploring in this post. He writes:
"Everything I know comes from my mastery of not-knowing."4
Until next time.
Alchemical Studies, Collected Works, vol. 13 by C.G. Jung
The Interpretation of Fairy Tales by Marie-Louise von Franz
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English
C.G. Jung Letters, vol. 1
Upcoming Events
The Symbol of the Grail: I will be returning to the Jung Archademy starting on Monday, March 6th, 2023 for a deep dive into Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival. In this class we will explore the rich symbolism of the Grail legend and discover the relevance of the Parzival myth to the modern experience of individuation. For more details visit: The Symbol of the Grail: Parzival and the Path of Individuation
Religious but Not Religious: I will giving two presentations at the Maine Jung Center in March. On Friday, March 24th I will be giving a talk on my book, Religious but Not Religious: Living a Symbolic Life. The following day — Saturday, March 25th — I will be offering a workshop that explores the practical dimensions of this material, titled Deep Listening: Developing Symbolic Sensitivity. For more information, just click on the links for each of the programs.