Once upon a time there were a King and Queen who wanted a child more than anything, but they couldn’t have one no matter how many fertility clinics they went to.T2he Queen heard about this Wise Old Woman in the woods who knew about such problems and went to see her. The Old Woman told the Queen she could help her conceive if she would carefully follow her instructions. “Take a bath and throw the water under your bed. In the morning there will be two flowers—a red one and a white one. Eat the white one and not the red one and you will give birth in nine months.”
The Queen did what she said except for—you guessed it—she ate both flowers.
Nine months later the King called for a midwife to deliver the baby. The Queen gave birth first to a little black snake. The Midwife knew no one likes snakes so she threw it out the window without showing it to the Queen. Then the second baby appeared, who would grow up to be the golden-boy Prince who made Mom and Dad very happy. He made straight A’s, captained the football team, and graduated from Kingdom-Come College Summa Cum Laude. Now it was time for him to get married. The King told the Prince to go to the next kingdom over and court the Princess and marry her.
The Prince drove over one day and in the middle of the road stood this huge, ugly snake. “Where the hell do you think you are going?” he hissed at the Prince.”I’m going to date a Princess and marry her,” the Prince replied.
“Oh, no, you’re not. The Older Brother has to marry first, according to our customs. No bride for you until I get a bride for me.”
Well, all this confused the Prince, and he went back and told the King. The King said it must be a mistake and to go out again. But the same thing happened, two more times. The Snake blocked his way and demanded that he be married first. Finally, the King spoke to the Queen, who didn’t have a clue. They called in the Midwife and right away she confessed.
So the King decided to find the ugly Snake a bride and he put an ad in the classifieds saying, “Single snake seeking life-long partner, must be slithery and slimy. Table manners unnecessary.” You’d be surprised how many takers there were. Women love snakes, it seems, especially the long, dark ones, with lots of intensity and potential.
A beautiful bride was selected, there was a glamorous wedding, and on the wedding night the snake ate his bride. The King ran another ad and there was another wedding and again on the wedding night the snake ate his bride. And so it went with a third, fourth and fifth bride, and new ones got harder to find.
However, there was a woodcutter’s daughter who decided to go for it. She went to find The Wise Old Woman in the woods—the same one who helped the Queen get pregnant– and asked her for advice. The Old Woman gave it gladly but insisted that, unlike the Queen, the woodcutter’s daughter follow the instructions to the letter or she’d be snake food like the others. The Old Woman told her to take her time and not rush into anything. Make seven beautiful wedding blouses and wear them all on her wedding night and take a bucket of sweet milk and a steel brush with her to the bedroom. The woodcutter’s daughter took about a year making these blouses, which made the snake hungrier. On their wedding night he closed the door and was ready to have some wife food. But first he wanted a little pre-dinner show so he said, “Take off your blouse.”
“I’ll take off my blouse if you will take off one of your skins,” she replied.
”Do what? You’ve got to be kidding. That would hurt like hell. No one ever asked me to do that before.” But he was starving, so he began taking off his skin, and you should have heard the shrieks and cries. It hurts to shed a skin, and.it hurts to learn how to love.
The woodcutter’s daughter took off her blouse only to reveal another one under it. The snake was perplexed and more than a little frustrated.
”Take off the blouse,” he growled.
”I’ll take off my blouse when you take off your skin.”
”I can’t believe you’re asking me to do all this crap! Every woman I’ve ever eat—I mean, loved—has never asked me to do this before.”
Once again, you should have heard the moaning and groaning as the snake shed another layer of skin. The woman removed her blouse only to reveal another one.
Well, the snake was irritated, to say the least. He began to see that this bride knew how to take care of herself, ask for what she wanted, and not settle for anything less than what she deserved.
To make a long story a bit shorter, this went on for seven times until finally there was nothing left of the snake except a little puddle of his former self on the floor. That’s what learning to really love will do to a snake or a man. The bride took her bucket of sweet milk out from under the bed and dipped her steel brush into it and scrubbed what remained of the snake for about an hour or so. She loved him well. She prepared herself to love well and in so doing prepared herself to be well loved.
The next morning the wedding chamber doors opened and out stepped a handsome prince with his smart, self-confident bride. They called their families together, had a great feast, and lived happily ever after.
* * * * *
So what are the lessons? The next morning a very thoughtful fellow who had hung on every word of the story the night before said, “I had dreams all night about snakes and midwives and flowers. But I am hoping you will make sense of the story. I know a lot about math, science and computers, but, I haven’t a clue why you told it to us.”
“Yes, you do. You aren’t used to thinking metaphorically and symbolically, but your mind that dreams uses symbols and metaphors every night. These are the languages dreams speak. There is an old Arabic proverb that says, ‘An uninterrupted dream is like an unopened letter.’
”Dreams are a lot like fairy tales,” I said. “Every character, object, idea, and feeling is some part of you. Different characters or objects in the story may strike you more than others. For example, the first time I heard the story, I related to the snake. The second and third time I connected more with the women the snake ate on his wedding nights. And the fourth time I heard it I finally identified with the King and the Queen, because I was in a place in my marriage where my wife and I were trying to get pregnant and couldn’t.
“It would take a day or two to go over every detail in the story,” I said to the man, “so let’s start with what touched you or interested you the most, shall we?”
“That would be the snake shedding his skins and the bride and her seven blouses,” the man said. “Oh! and also the bucket of milk and the steel brush. I haven’t a clue as to what they mean.”
”You know more than you think you do. The maidens who came to marry the snake didn’t know what they were getting into. The snake didn’t know the women he married and then ate. Jung refers to these women as the ‘False Brides.’ The True Bride is the woodcutter’s daughter who made the seven blouses, took her time, took care of herself, and would only take a husband who truly knew himself and her. The snake thought he was simply a big snake but there was much more to him. The bride-to-be knew this, and she was wise and patient enough with him that he had the time to find what his true self was.
”The woodcutter’s daughter was not one of those women who’s always looking for a wounded animal to take home, feed, and care for, get healthy, and help find his true potential. She did not take on the snake as her next ‘project.’ She challenged him to uncover and discover who he really was and had been all along. And what did he say to her every time she asked him to take off another layer of skin — or, as the psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich would say, ‘body armor’? ‘No one has ever asked me to do this before.’
“That’s because the woodcutter’s daughter knew she had to protect herself. She sought out the Wise Old Woman to get guidance on how to be safe. The snake respected her for having her own way of doing things. He was attracted to her keeping her distance and making demands. He pulled off every layer of armor he had built up by having been abandoned by his parents, community, and kin. Something in him knew this was the woman he had been looking for all his life. All he had to do was discard his old patterns of behavior and show her he was willing to go to any lengths to prove his love for her.
And if he wasn’t sure how much she loved him, he found out when she caressed him with milk — the milk, we might say, of human kindness, or even the mother’s milk — he had never gotten from his own mother. Had she only given him the milk, as many women do who try to ‘mother’ their men into consciousness and health, he would have eaten her too. First, she used a strong steel brush, which many women forget to bring to the marriage. The brush and the milk. Sad to say, some women bring only the brush because of their own past abandonments, hurts, and grief.
“So because we’re everyone in the story, it’s telling us men what it’s telling the women. Take your time. Take care of yourself. Seek wise counsel. Be clear what your requirements are. Be ready to expose yourself — slowly — even though doing so is painful. Expect to have your hurts redressed and comforted.”
*John Lee will be leading a workshop Jan 26-28, 2007.
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