Slipper As A Symbol Of Internal Communication

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

An ancient tale.

The first version of Cinderella was found among the ancient Egyptians. In this tale, a beautiful prostitute bathes in the river, an eagle steals her shoe and takes it to the Pharaoh. Pharaoh is surprised at the small size of the leg and decides to find a mistress. The girl is found and she becomes the wife of the pharaoh.

In those days, prostitution symbolized the connection of the mother earth (womb) with the fertilizer (seed). Sexual intercourse in the temple was the intercourse of not a real man or woman, and Isis and Osiris (earth and seed). Even the episode of the myth, where Osiris is torn into many small pieces and his phallus turns out to be separate, is not only a symbol of the splitting of the psyche during suffering; sacrifice for the sake of a new life (this part of the myth was directly inherited by the image of Jesus Christ); but also the destruction of grain in order to create a new life (which also inherited the image of the Savior).

What we now call venal love and promiscuity at that time symbolized the endlessness of life (very fragile and defenseless for the ancient world), requiring constant rituals to maintain it. This also had a direct meaning - the intercourse of women with foreigners who came to the temple renewed the blood of closed settlements.

And here is some such female creature, symbolizing Mother Earth and the bosom, ready to take a new life into itself, is bathing in the river. Leaving their tiny shoes on the shore unattended.

The slipper is an ancient symbol of marriage. Stealing shoes at our weddings is exactly what went on. The past experience is stolen, crossed out, and the woman begins a new stage.

Shoes are symbolically associated with the experience and mental work. Expressions "walking on pains", "feeling not in your shoes" - this is about the feeling of the experience. “Shake the dust from your feet” (Matthew 10:14) is also a phrase about the experience that I did what I could.

The Egyptians took good care of the shoes, even behind the pharaoh, his sandals could solemnly be carried from behind and he shod them only when he came to the place. On the shoes were painted enemies, who were supposed to be trampled underfoot. And worn-out shoes were considered a thing not good for his owner.

That is, apparently, life experience was projected onto the shoes. And now it remains with us as an idea that shoes can tell us a lot about a person.

Any rituals and symbols, both in the ancient world and in the modern one, is a way to connect your chaotic and frightening experiences (for example, the fear of death among the Egyptians and the fear of depersonalization and loss of identity among modern people) into a kind of visible and clear sequence of actions and manipulations.

For example, the burials of children in clay pots found among the Egyptians - as symbols of the child's return to the womb for a new birth - can be viewed, IMHO, as an attempt to connect childhood, which lost its chance of adulthood due to death, with something hopeful, which would symbolize the hope that pregnancy gives.

In an Egyptian tale, a girl swims in a body of water, which symbolizes her swimming in the source of life. The Egyptians believed that life originated from water. Not surprising for a desert civilization and reflects the physiological process of finding a child in amniotic fluid.

The small size of the shoe (I recall the one stolen by the eagle from the floating beauty, who was given in the temple to everyone who wants, serving the stream of life and fertility) - was apparently a sign of purity, childishness, as we would now say. A small shoe - as a symbol of freshness of life experience and readiness for growth and development in a new quality

The eagle as a symbol is absent in Egyptian myths, but among the Greeks it meant spiritual strength, royalty and good luck. Among the ancient Christians, it was a symbol of divine protection. And the hawk among the Egyptians was a symbol of the human soul.

What we have? Some kind of divine conduction (hawk or eagle) connects the life-giving bosom through an experience ready for a new quality with the power and authority of the one who will appropriate all this and fertilize it (marry it).

We have a unity of masculine and feminine principles through the intervention of spiritual and mental forces, and luck here, too, apparently plays a role. And our readiness for a new experience is a signal to start searching for a meeting of these two halves within us. Everything is like in life.

A modern tale of Cinderella.

Much has been written about this. I will add about the shoe.

The fairy godmother (an eagle or a hawk in the ancient myth, or maternal support even if the mother has been in the grave for a long time - in older versions of the Cinderella known to us from childhood) made many illusory transformations - rags turned into beauty, a pumpkin into a carriage, and rodents into vehicles. But these turned out to be only temporary assistants, facilitating communication at first. In order for the shoe to get to the one who is interested in it, the intervention of some will or force is needed.

Crystal slippers are a special gift. They did not disappear when the clock struck. They remained forever because they were a symbol of an experienced and restless experience and a pure (crystal, that is, real) soul. In the European fairy tale, this is associated with the symbol of the mother through the godmother, and in the Egyptian, the girl was the priestess of the temple of fertility.

But in order for the shoes to be noticed by that part of our psyche, which is symbolized by the pharaoh and the prince (this is the active, fertilizing part, where we lead, answer, act and decide) - a part of our soul and emotional experience (one of the two shoes) must to be surrendered to the will of conduct and good luck. That is, the unknown, which is not controlled by human forces and passions. And over-human.

For me, this is a symbol of the process when we put part of our soul into some earthly business, and part of it remains for us not yet cognized, mysterious and, as it were, not belonging to us. Investment of the whole soul is not required. This is also "Caesar's - Caesar's", but this also violates our possibilities of new (mental and spiritual) experience. We cannot count on success if we do not consider other options, sometimes completely unexpected turns of fate. And magical ritual transformations help only at first. And then everything depends on providence too. And from the intention of our active and active part to look for new parts of our soul, which are associated with complete unknown.

I will also add. The story of the gorocrax (split soul) in Harry Potter is not only the horror of dissociation, but also reality. It has already been proven that our spiritual integrity is mythical. Any person is normally dissociated.

But activity without a soul and its parts yearns, like a groom at a boring ball, where “someone” strives to divert our activity from the truth, nullifying the role of our soul in it. Perhaps the evil stepmother's daughters are those parts of our psyche that disguise themselves as feelings, but in fact want to feel nothing at all and harm our inner meeting with ourselves. Narcissistically injured parts. They are beautifully combed, fashionably dressed and with manners, but their role is destructive.

The consolation is that the inner agent (pharaoh or prince) wants to get to our souls and realizes this through the symbols of marriage (when we go to the registry office or "get married at work" in order to find ourselves), through the symbols of experience (when we are emotionally looking for something, what exactly should we have - often with the help of alcohol, sports, esotericism, the science of psychology, business). That is, there is no stagnation - something is happening with this search. A mediator in the form of a shoe or an eagle should help!

The slipper that does not disappear with the strikes of the clock is proof that the soul is somewhere and it did not seem to us. Part of it is devoted to activity, and the other part is in the pocket of our usual dress (even if we are the most unhappy and dependent person in the world). We hide her from being kidnapped. Happiness comes from a real meeting of these two. But not directly, but through an experience that is already ready to change. This is "READY" - this is the crystal slipper set in search of balance.

And we play this fairy tale inside ourselves over and over again.