One of the big unanswered questions remaining from my childhood was: "What do fairy tales mean?" I grew up in the middle of the last century during a time when my parents read fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm to us and even allowed us to read the fairy tales on our own. I recall some vivid although brief glimpses of elves and fairies for a time during my childhood, but those images resided in some intermediate state of consciousness, close to dreaming. With those memories of fairy folk, fairy tales seemed very real to me, and at times scary. I trembled with Jack as the castle shook whenever the giant bellowed, "Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum!" But to this day, no one had ever explained satisfactorily to me the meaning of fairy tales with their giants and little people. Were they real? Where did they live? and Why did we make them up if they are not real? No one, that is, until Rudolf Steiner. If some of these questions have tweaked your curiosity over the decades since you were under five years old, read along with me and I'll share with you what I've learned about fairy tales from Rudolf Steiner.

There was a time when all human beings had a native clairvoyance which one might today call an "intermediate state of consciousness". Since we go through all the stages of human development and consciousness as we mature, we possess that native clairvoyance as a baby and later a child. But by the age of three or so, that capability of spiritual sight wanes as part of our natural growth, and we are left with only dreamy images such as mine of elves and fairy folk. The existence of those "long ago memories" of our early childhood account for the curious change which comes over us when we hear the words, "Once upon a time . . ." or "Long ago and far away . . ." as a fairy tale begins. We are transported to our early childhood again where magic was as real as elves and fairies and giants. And when the fairy tale ends with, "And they lived happily ever after." we imagine that the people and beings who inhabited the fairy tale are yet alive today.

[page 7 ] The first thing we must do in order to understand the meaning of genuine fairy tales and myths is to stop regarding them as fantasy derived from folk imagination; they are never that. The starting point of all true tales lies in time immemorial, in the time when those who had not yet attained intellectual powers possessed a more or less remarkable clairvoyance, the remains of the primeval clairvoyance. People who had preserved this lived in a condition between sleeping and waking where they actually experienced the spiritual world in many different forms. This was not like one of our dreams today, which have for most people (but not for everyone) a somewhat chaotic nature. In those ancient times, people with the old clairvoyance had such regular experiences that everyone's were the same or very similar.

If you have small children and have avoided reading fairy tales to them because you thought they were silly stories made up out of whole cloth, because they might scare your children, because you couldn't answer their questions about the stories, you are cheating them from learning about what it is to be a human being. You are shielding them from the great mysteries of life which are preserved in fairy tales specifically to help us understand these mysteries as we mature. Take away fairy tales from your children and they will likely grow up into fine, rational adults living in a desolate world which contains no magic, no mysteries, just one bland thing after another. How much better to answer those questions from your children after reading them a fairy tale, "It's a mystery." Mystery will fructify their lives. Absent mystery they will lead lives of "quiet desperation" unsure of why life holds no meaning for them and wondering, "Why bother to stay alive?" They will learn about the surfaces of life and wonder, in the words of the Peggy Lee song, "Is that all there is?"

Giants as we know from fairy tales are big, strong, and basically stupid. They rely on their brute strength to get everything they want. They are usually male. When we encounter an old woman in a fairy tale, she usually has special powers and we call her a wise woman. These two archetypes, the giant and the wise woman, represent our two aspects of soul, the sentient soul and the intellectual soul. Since every human today has the sentient soul, intellectual soul, and consciousness soul in them, fairy tales of giants and wise women will activate those aspects of the soul. Giants represent the sentient aspect of our soul, and wise women represent the intellectual aspect of our soul, so both of these archetypes live within each of us whether we are consciously aware of them, up until now.

To understand the complexity of our soul, we need to examine its three aspects or members: the sentient, the intellectual, and the consciousness member. Understanding these aspects will help us to understand immediately why in fairy tales the giants are stupid and the old women are wise.

[page 8] We have, to begin with, three members of the soul: sentient soul, intellectual soul, and consciousness soul. As the eye and the ear each have a different relationship to the surrounding world, so has each of these three members of the human soul its quite distinct relationship to its surrounding world. We become aware, in this intermediate state, of one or another part of our soul, which is directed to its surroundings. If the sentient soul especially is directed to its spiritual surroundings, we will see all those beings that are intimately connected with the ordinary forces of nature. People do not themselves see the active forces of nature, but they do see what lives in that activity: wind, weather and other natural phenomena. The beings that express themselves within it are perceived through the sentient soul. When that soul is especially active, it is exactly as if we were still living at the time when neither the intellectual soul nor the consciousness soul had yet been developed; we are transported back and see our surroundings as we did in ancient times, just as when we did not know how to use our intellectual and consciousness souls.

In ancient times humans lived in only the sentient soul and possessed great powers to tear up trees and do the other great feats that giants are portrayed to do in fairy tales. When we allow ourselves to be taken up by a fairy tale, it seems plausible because we actually re-enter that intermediate state of consciousness we experienced as a very young child which corresponds to a time when humans had only a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and a sentient soul. We do not call children stupid, and because they are so small, we do not recognize their similarity to the giants of fairy tales. But if you listen to how children talk about the giants in fairy tales you read to them, you'll notice how well the children understand the actions of those giants.

[page 9] In such an intermediate state of consciousness, we see giants as real figures, representing a quite definite kind of being, men possessed of gigantic strength. The giants are also stupid, because they belong to a time when people could not yet use an intellectual soul — they are strong and stupid.

Our intellectual soul developed as we grew up in childhood, and soon we began to see how dumb the giants were, and we looked forward to when the heroes in our tales stumbled upon a wise woman who helped them to do deeds which were ingeniously clever instead involving only brute strength. This stage of our growth marked the advent of the intellectual aspect of our soul.

[page 9] . . . the intellectual soul . . . can see that things were fashioned in accordance with a certain wisdom. Through strength, through the giant in man, everything was formed and brought about; through what is in our intellectual soul when we are alive to it, we see beings around us who bring wisdom into everything, who regulate everything wisely. While the giants are generally seen in male form, we see the images of the intellectual soul as constructive female beings who bring wisdom into the activity of the world. These are the "wise women" of the tales, working behind everything that is formed and themselves forming everything. In these figures we see ourselves over and over again as we once were when we had acquired an intellectual soul but not yet a consciousness soul. Because we see ourselves intimately connected with such wise rulers at the back of things, we often feel when we enter an intermediate state of consciousness: "The wise female beings I see there are really related to me." Therefore the idea of "sisters" often arises when these female beings appear.

The intermediate state of consciousness referred to earlier is akin to our night-time consciousness, of which we are usually unaware, except as it sometimes flows over to day-time consciousness in dreams. Things are reversed between day and night consciousness and fleeting impressions from the day-time may appear as frozen stiff figures in night-time consciousness. This juxtaposition of stiff versus moving aspects is often portrayed in fairy tales where some person is enchanted and lies in suspended animation, such as Sleeping Beauty, until she is awakened by the Prince's kiss. By this means fairy tales reveal to us the difference between the day-time sentient soul aspects of reality and the night-time intellectual soul aspects of reality.

[page 10] Things during the day appear to us as though they were bewitched, with their real nature held prisoner within them. Wherever a plant or being appears bewitched, it has happened like this: we see the substance of a wise being behind the physical appearance and we remember, "Yes, by day that is only a plant; it is separated from my intellectual soul so that I cannot really reach it during the day." When we feel this estrangement between the objects by day and what is behind them, for example the perception of the lily in the daytime and the form behind it related to our own intellectual soul, we will perceive that our intellectual soul has a strong kind of longing to unite with what is behind the object or the lily; it would be a "marriage", a union of the night-form with the day-form.

The advent of our consciousness soul allowed us, in effect, to achieve through cleverness what previously we could achieve only through brute force.

[page 11] If a person is especially shrewd in life and not only dry and prosaic but able to conceive the relationship of life to spiritual reality, particularly in such states in which human beings can still know something of spiritual reality, the following may happen. If he is a somewhat thoughtful person, he will observe that certain people with shrewdness are able in all sorts of clever ways to overcome the crude forces that otherwise dominate people's lives. He will then tell himself: "What actually happens in life is that rough strength is overcome by cleverness; for this we can thank the powers behind us, to whom we are related, for they have allowed a force to become conscious in us that overcomes rough strength with cleverness, the rough strength that we ourselves possessed when we were at the stage of the giants."

That force in us which becomes conscious is known as the consciousness soul whose age we entered about six centuries ago and whose benefits to human evolution have become stronger and clearer with each passing century. And if we attempt to explain how we accomplished something remarkable through the aegis of our consciousness soul, whose forces reach us from the spiritual world, we find ourselves using words like this: "What I have seen and related happened once upon a time, and is still happening behind the world of sense in the spiritual world, where there are different conditions of life." (Page 12) In other words, we use the language of fairy tales. Steiner explains how a genuine fairy tale begins:

[page 12] "Once upon a time it happened — where then was it? Where indeed was it not?" That is the correct beginning of a fairy tale, and every fairy tale must end with, "I once saw this, and if what happened in the spiritual world did not perish, if it is not dead, it must still be alive today." That is just the way every fairy tale should be related. If you always begin and end this way, you will create the right sort of sensitivity to what you are telling.

Once upon a time it happened — where then was it? Where indeed was it not? There was a man who was alone in a new town, with a new job, and knew very few people. He was working very hard, had dated a few women, but loved none of them. He wanted nothing less than a wife who would be faithful and loyal to him, but he didn't know how to go about finding such a woman.
      One day a genie visited him and said, "I will help you. I will grant one wish for anything you want." The man decided that he would wish to fall in love three times before Spring. This seemed more impossible to him and more difficult to achieve than finding a loyal wife, which also seemed impossible to him. One August afternoon he wrote his wish down on a piece of paper with other goals, put it in the bottom of a drawer in his room, and forgot about the piece of paper.
      About three weeks later he was invited to a picnic in the city park and met a woman there. He dated her and was soon smitten by her beauty and charm. He was in love. They dated for a month or two, but began to separate. Then one evening he was at a friend's office and met another woman whom he began dating and soon he was in love again. He had forgotten about the piece of paper with his goal on it completely, so busy was he with his new love. But soon that love grew cold. At a Christmas party, he danced with a beautiful redhead and soon they were dating regularly and he was in love again. Again, he never thought about that piece of paper with his goals on it tucked away in his drawer.
      One night he was invited to a friend's house where some people had gathered and he met another woman. He had heard about this woman and had wanted to meet her, but things kept happening to keep him away from her. At last, he was introduced to her. They hugged each other as was the custom of the group of friends. It was a warm hug, a yielding hug, a hug, which it seemed to him, he had been waiting his entire lifetime for. He wanted to date this woman, to know her better. A week later, he called her for a date, and she told him, "No, I have plans with some girl friends of mine. But I'll give you a rain check."
      "No," he said, "I want a sunshine check." She laughed and they began seeing each other. It was Springtime. Soon they were living together and enjoying each other's company so much that they decided that a piece of paper to recognize their union would be appropriate. They got married.
      Only then did he find that piece of paper with his goals from that August day written on them. He recalled how his super-impossible goal had come true: He had fallen in love and out of love three times by the Spring. And after that was over he had achieved his impossible goal of meeting the woman who would become his faithful and loyal companion and wife for the rest of his life.
      He lived together with her in great happiness, and they were abundantly blessed with children and children's children for many generations. They lived for a long, long time. No one knows how long, but if they have not died, they must still be alive today.

This man had his deeper forces awakened in him by the mysterious genie who gave him his wish for his heart's desire. But first he had to endure three difficult tasks. This is the structure of a fairy tale.

[page 14] When some external happening like searching for a bride is pictured in such tales, it usually takes place not in an ordinary way but in circumstances where someone comes into contact with a sort of soul-shepherd, who will awaken the deeper forces within him, as the hermit did for the king. He is led thereby to the forces that make everything in the physical world appear unreal for a time; he needs this if it is going to be possible for him to discern the truth. And so we see that while outer conditions seem to be the source, other states of consciousness are present, calling forth genuine vision.

Often in fairy tales, some human, animal, or plant is enchanted, and they appear frozen as Snow White or completely changed in appearance as in the Frog Prince tale. What is the meaning of these spells?

[page 14, 15] Every fairy tale can be explained in this way, but the explanation should come forth out of the spiritual reality that lies in back of the whole world of fairy tales. Everything that occurs in a tale, including all the small details, can gradually be found and interpreted. For example, the mysterious connection between the active forces of perception and the hidden forces of ordinary life can become visible when we begin to look at it more inwardly. This is beautifully symbolized in the touch of the little golden bird on the lily. Delicate, significant spiritual forces are indeed latent in the lily, but they only appear when they have been aroused by the golden bird.
      The established belief that everything around us is bewitched spiritual truth and that we attain the truth when we break the spell, is the basis of the realm of the fairy tale.

Fairy tales often have in them humans and other beings who have remained in the stage of the rough forces. Giants, ogres, and dragons are examples of beings of great evil forces which must be overcome in fairy tales. They play a large role in the modern fairy tales of Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling. These grotesque beings represent earlier stages in our human development which we had to grow out of in time. Therein lies the unconscious attraction we have to tales involving such beings: it strikes a chord in us from our own distant past back in the aeons of time. Once upon a time has in effect come again when we get involved with such tales.

[page 15] Wherever something evil appears and has to be overcome, something that has remained stationary on the astral plane, it always appears as a "dragon" or something similar; this is none other than the grotesque form, transformed in the spiritual world, of what human beings had to change and cast forth from themselves. We must be aware that this corresponds to an absolutely certain fact.

How is it possible that we could have cast such forms from us? It existed at a time when we humans still had astral experiences. We create fairy tales by carrying those gigantic and popular astral beings into our physical world so that we might create for ourselves a tale to tremble by once again.

[page 23] Fairy tales stand in relation to the great popular myths of the gods in the following manner: The myths can be understood when we realize the huge comprehensive circumstances of the cosmos underlying them, and fairy tales can be understood when we realize that the different happenings and pictures are nothing but the repetition of astral events. In far remote times everyone had astral experiences. They became fewer and fewer. One person told them to another, the other took them up, and so the fairy tales were carried from place to place. They appeared in the most varied languages, and we can note the similarity of the fairy tale treasures the whole world over, when we unveil the astral events that serve as their basis.

Children love fairy tales because they still have an active memory of astral events, that is, until they grow older and become inwardly entangled with the physical plane, and, by the time they are adults, lose all connection with the underlying spiritual reality of fairy tales. But, amazingly, they become parents with their own children, to whom they must read fairy tales, and thus they have a chance once more to kindle their own childhood memories of the astral events which live in fairy tales.

[page 24] Nowadays, however, we can very seldom find anyone who can relate things from a genuine source, and it will be said of fairy tale experiences: "They happened once upon a time, and if they did not perish, these fairy tale experiences are still alive."