The Lover's Card: Hansel and Gretel
The Lovers Card: Hansel and Gretel
In the Inner Child Cards, The Lovers, Trump #6, I associated the fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel as a means to explore the story of love. Let’s look at love from the vantage point of fairy tale mysticism and the lessons we can learn from the stories of past.
The Lover’s Card is often depicted as a marriage, two people in union, and other symbolic imagery representing the hope for Love. Often times, symbols representing the shadow of love, discord, jealousy, fear, or attachment are symbolically represented as well. In essence, the wholeness of the Lover’s Card carries within its potential the truth about Love, our deep longing for it, and it’s destructive side that may manifest when an attached ego or projection of another takes over the purity of the heart. In fact, the appearance of the Lover’s Card may arise reflecting one’s own abandonment of the union of one’s inner male and female balance within. Those of us who have been in and out of relationships know that Love can be tricky business, especially when one is entangled with false desires, greed, or dependency on another.
Hence the story of Hansel and Gretel: The story of Hansel and Gretel is represented by the pure anima and animus of the male and female archetypes that lives within each of us. In this story the male and female energies are seeking balance and collaboration. From a mystical or spiritual perspective, all fairy tale characters represent you, the individual, and all aspects of each story are a part of the human psyche. Whether male of female, all characters are an aspect of a man or a woman and are essentially non gender. They serve as metaphor and mirror to the innermost secrets of our incarnation. Most fairy tales begin with the proverbial “orphaned protagonist” whose sole purpose is to initiate toward self actualization and individuation. This ultimate goal is represented as the Castle which holds the divine potential of a royal marriage. In alchemical terms this can be referred to as “holy marriage within” representing the experience of bliss and wholeness found within.
In traditional tarot, the card depicted as The Lovers conveys the need for trust and loyalty in committed relationships. On a higher level, it symbolizes the balance between physical and spiritual love. The story of Hansel and Gretel allows us to see a rudimentary form of divine love at work in the adventure of dedicated siblings, or partners.
Hansel and Gretel, having been abandoned in the woods by their parents, symbolizing the feeling that comes when we are lost in the ‘woods’ with despair and lack, need to work together in harmony to trust each other. In their search, they come to a candy house, symbolizing desire and hunger. We most often make our errors in love when we have not addressed the real hunger we have within us, and in that starving anxiety, begin to accept or gobble up whatever form of love we find before investigating further. Hansel and Gretel gobble the sweet candy at the window of the cottage, (the window represents the soul), and are soon coaxed into the cottage by the enchantress who serves them a fine meal of all they can eat.
The Enchantress has a plan; just as our own inner saboteur resides within the shadows of our hunger for love. The fierce and earnest duty of the saboteur’s main objective is to awaken one to the dangers of illusion. Hansel’s wondrous meal will serve to fatten him up until the wicked witch has what she is hungry for. Caught in the cage of the Enchantress’s spell, Hansel is trapped. His only opportunity for freedom is Gretel, his anima, the feminine soul of love, who, with dedication love, will outwit the trickery of the witch and coax her into her own fires of destruction and transformation. Here we see the work of the soul and serving as a mirror to our own quest for freedom and liberation in love.
At this point in the story the children are liberated. Gretel, (the soul) ahs rescued Hansel (the spirit). United, brother and sister return to their home. However, in order to arrive safely at their father’s house, they must enter a new state of consciousness. The earthly soil is no longer capable of supporting them. The must travel across water, the stream of flowing life, on the wings of spirit (the white duck). On the highest level, once spirit escapes from the snare of the sense world (the candy house, carnal love), it begins to recall the true home which it sprang from (eternal love).
I invite you to use this story as metaphor in your own quest for love. Explore the ‘candy house’ of your own desires and seek to find balance and harmony with your own inner saboteur. In doing so, an awakening will occur, offering you the treasure of enlightened love and true partnership.
|