9. Interpretations of Fairy Tales

This is now a different, somewhat more complicated fairy tale that contains a wide variety of features. Until we are in a position to say more about the interpretation of this particular fairy tale, let us allow it to sink into our souls so that we can unravel for ourselves the various features that come together so wonderfully in this fairy tale. Of course, what has been added through false tradition will have to be discarded. But if you look at it according to the principle that has been described today, you will be able to find the thread running through everything that appears here: the dragon motif, the motif of the three sisters who are cast out, the motif of overcoming the dragons by fire, the motif of cleverness, the motif of the marriage of the intellectual soul with the outer world; and now, once again in a unique way, the motif of cleverness in the form of subtle magical powers. Then Nemesis, karma, appears in a strange way when the king's son confronts his sisters again: the three brothers have cast out their higher sisterly nature, hence the slaying of the dragon by fire, and so on. Such fairy tales are experiences of people from the common people who are in such intermediate states. Similarly, the great myths of the gods of the peoples are representations of what the initiates experience on the astral plane and the higher planes. Fairy tales relate to the great myths of the peoples in the following way: We can reveal the great myths of the peoples if we take the great, comprehensive conditions of the cosmos as our basis, and we reveal the fairy tales if we take the secrets of the people as our basis. Everything in fairy tales appears in such a way that the various events and images are nothing other than retellings of astral experiences. All human beings had such astral experiences in a certain primeval time. Then they became rarer and rarer. Some people told them to others, others took them up, and so fairy tales migrated from region to region. They appeared in a wide variety of languages, and we noticed the similarity of the treasure trove of fairy tales throughout the world when we were able to extract the astral experiences underlying them.