Archetypal Seeking Truth Tale
Brothers Grimm’s Fairy Tale : Tom Thumb
Archetypal Seeking Truth Tale
It is a fairy tale full of interesting meanings.
A journey in search of the truth hidden within us.
The truth that we will make us free.
Tom Thumb may well represent the point in human evolution where the conscious soul appears, which in fact has as its prerogatives cunning, intelligence and being ‘a quick-witted little thing’.
That Tom Thumb represents the birth of the conscious soul can perhaps be read in one of the groupings of the constituent parts of man given in Theosophy in which the conscious soul is the 5th element, namely:
1 – physical body
2 – etheric body
3 – sentient soul body
4 – rational soul
5 – conscious soul pervaded by the spirit
The fairy tale seems to retrace the entire cosmic evolution given by “The Occult Science”, which begins with the warmth of Saturn (the peasant father stoking the fire), passing through the intervention on the ancient Moon of the forces of the obstacle when “at a turning, while the little one cried out for the horse (astral element arising on the ancient Moon) to bend to the left, two foragers passed by”. All the way to the bottom of earthly reality with Tom Thumb’s entry into the mouse’s den.
“Once upon a time there was a poor peasant who sat by the hearth one evening and stoked the fire”. Tom Thumb is the child of an old humanity in the twilight. It is indeed evening and the peasant father is stoking the fire, which means that the fire is dying out.
Tom Thumb is born to activate the evolutionary process of man, to kindle the fire. His first active intervention in the fairy tale is in fact to help his father fetch wood with the cart.
Tom Thumb is the human individuality inserted not in some remote epoch but in our own: therein lies the magic and wonder of fairy tales. In fact, the farmer’s wife says that ‘only one’ child would suffice. And that one, alone, masterfully indicates the indivisibility and therefore the loneliness of the human individuality of our times, compared to the dying group soul represented by the farmer’s wife, who in fact ‘feels ill’ before giving birth.
Indeed, often the mothers or queens of fairy tales even die after giving birth to the human individuality. That is, the female element dies, the one in which the clairvoyance given in the blood flows, and instead the male element is activated, from which separation, individuality and the loss of ancient wisdom arise.
This transition between old and new humanity is wonderfully shown to us in the fairy tale.
It occurs when the father sells Tom Thumb to the foragers for ‘a nice gold coin’. The wealth, i.e. the wisdom previously given in clairvoyance, becomes worthless because Tom Thumb has to win it for himself through the influence of the two strangers.
Confirming Tom Thumb as an emblem of intelligence and powers of intellect is the image of the protagonist of the fairy tale leading the horse by shouting in his ear what to do.
According to spiritual science, it is thanks to the sacrifice of equines that man obtained intelligence. That is, if man is endowed with intellect, it is because the horse took on the forces that hindered this development and which we expelled from us.
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Hope you Enjoy the story.
with love,
Giuliana