The Power of Fairy Tales
I wrote my Fairy Tale novella - SOPHIA’S TALE - from my intuition using my Soul Writing Method. You can write your own fairy tale using this method too at the Fairy Tale Workshop on 3 July 2021.
When I started following my Soul Writing Guide I didn’t expect to write a fairy tale. It wasn’t a genre I’d ever written before. Although it surprised me, I realised an archetypal story was perfect for the journey of the Goddess of Wisdom.
What makes a story a Fairy Tale?
Fairy Tale: contains unicorns, elves, mermaids, and gnomes as well as other fantastic or magical elements. A girl can sleep for 100 years, or a pumpkin can turn into a carriage. Fairy tales often contain clear narratives that identify good and evil. Fairy tales were born out of oral folklore and many of them are also fables.
Legend: Based on a historical event.
Myth: ‘a myth was an event which … happened once but which also happened all the time’ (Karen Armstrong)
Fable: a story with a moral lesson - like a parable – but can have mythical characters. If you consider God a mythical character, they’re the same.
There’s grey area between these genres. For example, it’s been proven that Troy was a real place and that Odysseus (Greek) or Ulysses (Roman) spent 10 years sailing back from the battle of Troy to Ithaca where his very patient wife Penelope was waiting for him. Perhaps the story was exaggerated over too much wine! There’s been many retellings of myths, legends & fairy tales.
Snow White and Retellings
“Myths and fairy tales give expression to unconscious processes. Their retelling causes the process to come alive again.., thereby re-establishing the connection between conscious and unconscious”.
Carl Jung
Fairy Tales are retold again and again. Snow Drop (Grimm) was the original version which was retold as Snow White by Disney and Snow Child was the title Angela Carter gave to her more recent retelling of the story.
•All these stories include archetypal characters. Archetypes are Universal Human Qualities personified, such as the king, the wise sage, the fool, the mother. Every archetype has a light and dark aspect. We can see the two sides of the mother archetype, for example, in the mother goddess Kali, who is both a nurturing and protective mother as well as a devouring mother.
•The Maiden & the Evil Step Mother/ Witch are archetypes used in all these retellings of Grimm’s orginal tale. Disney inverted the archetype in Snow White so that what children are presented with is the ‘Shadow Side’ of the Maiden and the shadow side of the Mother archetypes.
•All of these retellings of Grimm’s original story present the shadow (the hidden aspect of the self) to different degrees. Fairy tales help children process negative emotions. For example, children might benefit from feeling they are not the only ones with mothers who give them a witchy feeling, a sense of betrayal or who make them feel powerless themselves and that the negative feelings that arise in them in relation to the ‘destructive aspect’ of their mother are valid.
So Fairy tales also have a teaching function. Fairy Tales are not just for children. Freud and Jung, the famous psychoanalysts, both thought that the symbolism and archetypal characters of fairy tale and myth contain gems of wisdom which can offer clues to guide our journey through life.
All three of these retellings of Snow White have common elements:
•Theme: Envy
•Emotions: Envy, hate, desire, pain – can you think of any more?
•There is usually a single theme in a fairy tale. It’s focused and keeps arching back to this theme. Angela Carter uses powerful symbolic language to emphasis the theme:
•‘Midwinter – invincible, immaculate.’
•‘White skin, red mouth, black hair; she was the child of his desire and the Countess hated her’
Quick Exercise 1 –
Choose a Fairy Tale to Retell
Make quick notes:
• What’s the theme in your retelling?
•What’s your setting?
•What language can you use to emphasise the theme?
•What colours help emphasis the theme?
•Who is the main ‘good’ character? Jot down 3 key physical traits of this character.
•Who is the main ‘evil’ character? Jot down 1 key physical trait of this character.
There’s another way to write your own Fairy Tale and that is not necessarily a retelling of a well-known story, but a unique story that comes directly from your soul. A fairy tale unique to you. Write your own Fairy Tale on the one-off Fairy Tale Workshop on Saturday 3 July (2-5pm BST).
Because the Soul Writing Method takes us into the unconscious well of our unique creativity, we are able to journey into our inner world and back with those gems of wisdom. Wicked witches, dragons, sleeping princesses, and magical toads that turn into princes can disguise secret messages from our unconscious to our conscious minds.
The powerful thing about writing your own fairytale using your intuition is that your creative unconscious creates very personal symbols and archetypal characters which are personal to you. Here's an example of a Soul Writer who manifested the Hindu Mother Goddess Kali and the great Sufi sage Rumi as her personal archetypes - who had a wise message to offer Mahabba.
Archetypes are characters which, if we connect to their energy, have the power to transform or guide us in our lives and our writing. Sophia, the Goddess of Wisdom was the archetypal character who led my writing. Join the Fairy Tale workshop and meet your own inner guide.
Use Soul Writing to Write your own Fairy Tale
The Hero or Heroine’s Journey
Your Soul Fairy Tale is a Journey to understanding your Self (with a big S).
•Carl Jung, the famous psychoanalyst, called it a journey of Individuation and integrating all the repressed aspects of the Self. Waking up. Joseph Campbell called this The Hero’s Journey and more recently Dr Sharon Blackie called it The Heroine’s Journey in her wonderful book If Women Rose Rooted.
The most powerful Fairy Tales follow this common structure of the Hero’s Journey, which often includes the following elements:
•Confronting the Shadow (slaying the dragon/ serpent)
•Going on a quest with obstacles to overcome
•Comes full circle to a deeper understanding of self (embracing the dragon/ serpent)
Bluebeard, William Blake’s Book of Job, Parzival, and many fairy tales and myths use this structure. Sophia’s Tale – A fairy tale for adults used the structure of the heretical Gnostic Myth (Pistis Sophia) to retell the story of how the goddess of Wisdom became wise, which has much in common with this structure.
Exercise 2 – Building your Character
Make quick notes:
You can reuse the same hero/heroine (main character) from exercise 1 if you like.
•What’s your hero/heroine’s main characteristic (Wisdom, Courage, Strength)?
•What do they have to overcome to earn / prove
this personality trait?
•Who/ what is their enemy?
•How do they fight this battle (is it an inner battle or
an outer battle?)
I’d love to hear from you about what you wrote - feel free to email me at: sarahsoulwriting@gmail.com
As I said, there’s another way to write. If you would like to write a Fairy Tale from your intuition using the Soul Writing Method, please do join me on Saturday 3 July. Find out more.