A Xmas Fairytale (Seminar)
The Shoes that were danced to pieces

Chris Knight will tell this delightful fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm has become a RAG tradition, told every year on the last day of the autumn term, just before Christmas. It’s about twelve princesses and their periodic trips to the underworld, the narrator treating patriarchal marriage as a cruel punishment imposed on a coalition of sisters who had previously been free to dance the nights away. This magical tale introduces us to universal mythological themes which will be explored more fully in the Spring Term. Chris Knight will show how all such tales make sense in the light of the theory that human sexual morality was initially established by women.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCAHD-Qslf0

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Good evening, everybody.

So tonight we have the, well, it’s been such an incredible dark day in London with the sun and the lightning and tonight is also the dark moon.

This, class is, the, last one before winter solstice, and it’s the radical anthropology tradition to, have a grims fairytale that’s particularly relevant for this time of year.

Either it’s an Xmas fairytale or a winter solstice fairytale.

We call it, the shoes that were dance to pieces and as, we’ve sing as you’ve been in other of the classes where Kris did the fairytales at at Halloween with Sleeping Beauty.

We think these fairytales carry messages from before patriarchy.

They’re very ancient stories, and they’re telling us they’re telling us about a time of power.

Before it was assumed men were dominant to women and men had some sort of, advantage over women.

so they really do speak of women’s power and take a position.

It assumes that.

and so I’m going to hand over to Chris. Yeah.

Chris not being so well, so we’re gonna give him an easy night tonight, so you won’t be in the line of the, yeah, you’re all right with the camera.

So, and I’m gonna just mute everybody so we don’t have any interruption.

Yes. So my work on mythology began a long, long time ago.

and in fact here I, I read a PhD thesis on the extraordinary monumental work of Claude Levetro.

four volumes were called Metall, where Levetro analyzed, about a thousand myths from North and then, his conclusion have A hot chocolate as well.

We’re talk about hot chocolate, or are we talking about world mythology? I can’t find, are We muted now? Is everybody muted? I think so. Okay. It’s Why Be very Christmas? Okay. We’ve got a few more people just turned up.

Why don’t I start again? Right. Okay. Yes.

As Kim was saying, in in the Radical Anthrop anthropology group, we have, a ritual and the ritual is that, the last talk here for the winter solstice is always the shoes that were dance to pieces.

One of the stories from the Brothers Grim.

And, I, I think we must’ve been performing this ritual, you talking about this tale, I dunno, 30 years or something, but there was a time when there was a proposal to, change, isn’t it? Getting a bit boring? Why do we always have the same story? And we, we, we’ve had to change it, and there was such uproar that we gave up.

And, here we are once again with the shoes that were danced to pieces.

Now, my understanding of myths and fairytales builds heavily on the work of Claude Le Strokes.

So if you’re interested in myth, in mythology, I do strongly recommend, do not start with Sigmund Freud.

I mean, he said some interesting things or elongated objects.

Our penises and brand ones are vaginas, and it is interesting, but it’s a little bit limited and I would also say, really do not start with Carl Jung.

He has his archetypes and they’re kind of a great, the great mother and whatever archetype, but really seriously, start with Claude Destro.

It’s, and the thing about de Tross is that he has such enormous respect for the intelligence that the collective intelligence expressed in magical myths and fairytales and he, as I was mentioning earlier, his monumental work Metall, was an analysis of nearly a thousand North and South American myth magical tales and he concluded in a chapter one Myth Only, and he shows that fast work, that the different stories are variations on a theme and he takes a myth, shows that it’s various on certain axes, this way of certain mathematical operations.

He can work with a story.

You know, you invert it, you turn it down, dissect you can’t, you get your, it results in another myth and another, and another.

But really underneath it all, there’re they’re all the same story.

So he, his final chapter was called One Myth Only.

and, I think very sadly, because he never made too clear what that, what ultimate structure, that ultimate myth was, people got frustrated and I think very sadly, most social methodologists sort of gave up on the whole thing and decided that probably it’s not true for all the worlds with our variations on athe.

I think that’s a big tragedy.

I think Levy STRs was definitely onto something.

the problem was that he started from a kind of wrong initial assumption.

He started from the idea that men, invented culture by establishing the ancest taboo and he got everything sort of upside down and when he, when he found that the, when he looked at the different rituals, which accompany them as it, he, he, he said his rituals seemed to be doing the wrong thing.

they weren’t separating male from female.

He went from animal life from guessing the way he thought they ought to.

So he, he decided that Richard is a, he actually used the word bastard.

Richard is a bastard.

He keeps trying to mess up all the nice categories, which the mythical mind is trying to establish that and I, I won’t go into all that too much except to say underneath it all, Le Stratus was onto something very, very important.

And, it’s true that in South America, particularly anthropologists have been continuing its work and enormously enriching the, the findings he made in this amazing, full volume work.

meteorologic, I’m gonna read out the story, the shoes that were dance to pieces.

Can I ask you to listen quite carefully and even make a sort of record in your mind may maybe even a record on paper, because when I’ve read the story, I want to, to sort of collectively reconstruct the story from kind of from memory or from whatever notes you’ve taken and we’re gonna show that, let me show it’s right in so many ways.

So let me just, let’s say a few of them.

First of all, in a magical myth or fairytale, every last detail is there for a reason.

These myths know what they’re talking about.

They don’t hop and jump between different topics.

Once you, we code the story at a certain point we should find, this is what says that the myths trying to get across a rather difficult point, actually quite a simple one, but it’s meeting resistance.

Our resistance. And in order to get the message across, he thinks of the, almost like the myth as a, as a creature.

The myth itself has its own intelligence and it’s, if the myth of saying, right, I’m trying to get this message across, I say it this way now, I’ll say it this way, and then another way and another way.

But ultimately the myth is sort of saying the same thing.

That doesn’t mean all exactly the same thing in every myth, but there are obviously very different emphasis on the different stories.

But, in this story, I want you to be able to sort of see for yourselves, if possible, that the story is consistent, logical, and it’s kind of crystallized intelligence.

It’s not muddled thinking, it’s not mixing things up.

These stories know what they’re talking about, and they need to be respective as science from an earlier period.

I mean, science is collective knowledge.

These myths are collective knowledge.

But the, the knowledge, as Camilla was saying, about a period and about a way of life, which we’ve lost sight of, and we’ve only got any way of knowing where these myths come from, the kind of world they came out of, really through the window provided by myths.

Like this one of course live says, dealing with North America and South America and I thought, well, if levies is right, if, if all, if these myths are all like one myth only, why stop at in America? And himself made it clear that he didn’t think he should stop with North or South America.

He made it very clear if he went to Australia or, Siberia or anywhere in the world, really, you should find that the, his basic discoveries would apply.

So for me, I was giving a talk this evening class a very long time ago.

It was about 1978 or nine or something.

And, I was giving a talk on fairytales and, one of the members of the class was a bit more knowledgeable about fairytales than I was and we had a kind of a discussion and interchange and ever since then, I’ve realized that the European fairytales are just as amenable to the methods of drug minister as the, as the story he, he looks at, are perhaps that, perhaps I just should just say one thing.

I want to say it give you a simple version of that ultimate myth.

You, I think if I don’t, I know some of you have heard this before, you’ve beat in these classes maybe before, but if you haven’t heard it, perhaps this is the time to just say it.

It’s almost like the oldest trick or the oldest joke.

think of punching Judy kids, little kids, five years old, six years old.

You’ve got punch and Judy.

So you got Judy with a baby, you’ve got punched and got policeman, and, you need a policeman because he’s law and order, and you need punch.

He is always breaking the law and you’ve got punched in the most terrible wretched dad.

He gets the baby slows up against the Walgreens.

And, anyway, Judy gets the policeman in, then he comes to the instruction and he, he lift instruction and he wh punch on the head and punch falls down and he’s dead.

He pops up again alive, and he calls for the kids.

There’s nothing more funny than punch being dead and then popping up alive and he gets the truck, and then he bangs the policeman on the head and he’s dead and then the policeman jumps up alive and he, that movement between two rivals, death, life, desk life is too different from the key myth of Paul Levi’s mythology.

So the number one myth, the myth with it all starts with in volume one, that’s Levi’s work is about put a bird nester.

It’s about two men, a father and son, and they’re rivals, enemies of each other over the same woman and one kills the other and then he comes alive again and kills his rival and it’s like between earth and sky, up and down, up it’s, it’s very similar idea of death followed by resurrection as a kind of joke.

right.

Where does the idea of dying and then coming alive again come from? Most people who are asked that, who are familiar with mythology will say, well, of course it’s the moon.

It’s after all, what does a moon do? It’s slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly dies and then you’ve got no moon and then, oh, everyone celebrates.

The moon starts coming alive again.

yeah, not bad, but it’s so much deeper than that because I don’t at all think that people kind of notice the moon waxing and waning and thought they’d build sort of fairytales around the fact that the moon ERs and wanes.

I mean, that’s a bit weak, isn’t it? My own view is that life itself had a pulse.

We all know that life has a pulse in our society.

We have day and we have night, we have summer, and we have winter.

We used to have waxing moon and waiting room, full moon and dark moon and obviously today because of light pollution and all sorts of various things, patriarchy, we’re not so aware of the moon as probably we were when homosapiens evolved.

But there was a time when in order to plan any events, you need to triangulate, you need to just, if you’re planning in the future, you need to say the first full moon after say the tum Equinoxs, you have to cut, triangulate with the sun and the moon to get a date in advance, in order to plan anything to probably any, with anything.

and then we have the fact that all over the world, and whenever I talk about this, I have to be a little bit careful, all over the world, the word for female periodicity, which we call menstruation all over the world, it’s the same word as the word for moon change.

Okay? It’s just language.

It’s just verbal tradition.

In our culture, the word menstruation means ring change all over the world.

World for menstruation has something to do with on your period, you visit the moon, you, your husband is a moon, you are with the moon, you are consorting with the moon.

The moon’s coming down to have sex with you.

Many tricks or jokes, describe it in that way.

Why are you bleeding? It’s because I’m having sex with the moon.

It’s quite a common idea.

and of course we think, okay, that’s kind of quaint.

It’s a tradition. People seem to link menstruation to the moon.

It’s a little bit more than that, of course, because the length of the human female menstrual cycle on average works out as, guess what? 29.5 dose, which of course could be a coincidence dose average.

That’s, that’s the average for average women in, for the average, the max on the period of maximum fertility.

So when you’re young in your teens, it’ll be a little bit longer than that.

I’m only, I’m not telling you anything interesting, everyone knows this.

But the point is that we, humans are special because chimpanzees have a mixture cycle that it’s got nothing to do with the moon.

It’s 36 tape on average.

The other gray tape that were very closely related to the bonos, the average length cycle is 40 dose.

So the different primates have length cycle longer than the length of the moon.

Shorter than, but we have, on average, you have to be quite careful here, but we now have lots and lots of statistics.

cause we have these menstrual apps, and it’s no doubt about it at all.

we have precisely the length of cycle.

You would predict if in the evolutionary past, some adaptive advantage was gained by women synchronizing with each other using the moon, the prop, 29.5 states, that’s the length of time take for the moon, it pass through it.

Shades are seen from the earth.

So if the idea was that the moon dies, once a month in terms of life again, and women traditionally are linked to the moon, you can see why women would undergo temporary deaths.

It’s like when you believe you are dying, but it’s okay.

It is a little death, it’s a temporary death.

You’ll come back to life after having died.

So it’s not that, it’s not the kind of, you’re dead, but that’s it.

That’s it. You’re dead.

It’s, you’re gonna come back to life.

The world’s magical myths and fairytales are about this.

I’ll just describe it in simplest possible terms.

First of all, we’re all alive.

We’re in this world, the world of the living and in this world, usually there’s light, you can see what you’re doing.

The sun’s often shining and the moon’s bright.

people are doing normal activities.

People are cooking, having sex, looking after the kids, wandering around all sorts of normal things are happening and then in the story, you start out in this world and then triggered by a flow of blood or something, evidently symbolic of its well blood.

You move from this world into the world of the dead.

So first you’re alive, and then you’ve moved into the land of the dead.

You’re dead. And there’s nothing at all magical about that.

It’s just, you were alive and now you’re dead and now comes a magical bit. You come back from the dead.

That’s the magical book and makes it clear that is the, the, the one myth only that all these myths can be related to him.

He says, in a rather more complex way, he ends up with things like to be, and not to be in all kinds of philosophical stuff, but in, in essence that’s it and then a little bit more than that because there has to be something consistent about the features of the other world that under the debt, so that where you are and something consistent about the features of this world, again.

So that when you hear those features being, being discussed okay, we’re in the world of the living.

So the, the, the things going on in the world of the bed have to be consistently different from the kinds of things we’ve go on in the world of the living well in the world of the living.

I mean we are sort of upright.

We eat, I know we, we took them food, we, I mean, all sorts of ordinary things happening in the daylight and then during the period when we’re dead, there’s certainly not gonna be any cooking fire.

It’s going to be wet.

If there is any intimacy, it’s certainly not gonna be marital relationships.

It’s not gonna be husband, wife, sex.

there won’t be nice sweet music in the land of the day.

If there is any sound, which there usually is actually.

It’ll be kind of noisy cacophony, maybe like thunder, loud sounds loud noises, and all those things, loud noises, witness intimacy between blood, kin, darkness, seclusion, all those things go together and if a storyteller was to mix up so that while you’re in the land of the dead summons, pushing meat and having a feast that just wouldn’t work.

The dead don’t do that. The dead eat raw meat.

If they eat anything at all, it’s gonna be lots of blood around them within other worlds.

So those features are consistent across all the world’s myths.

And, in this story, you’re going to be able to, hello? Have you got your hand up? Yeah, I was just wondering about the point about feasting.

Feasting, Yeah.

Ing Yes, it’ll be the, the time when you’re feasting on, on cooked meat will be linked to the time when you are dead, but it won’t be sort of mudded up with it.

You’ll see that there’s a, there’s a movement between two states.

so let me just read out the story.

I mean, obviously it’s great that a bit about other myth, other myths.

So I’m gonna read this out and what I, as I said before, I want you to, see whether we can actually, it’s quite short, luckily whether we can, reconstruct the story and as we reconstruct it, kind of decode it.

What, so right, the shoes that were danced to pieces, there was once upon a time a king who had 12 daughters, each one more beautiful than the other.

They all slept together in one chamber, in which their beds stood side by side and every night when they were in them, the king locked the door and bolted it in the morning.

When he unlocked the door, he saw that their shoes were worn out with dancing, and no one could find out how that had come to pass.

Then the king caused it to be proclaimed that whosoever could discover where they danced at night to choose one of them for his wife and be king after his death.

But that whosoever came forward and had not discovered it within three days and nights should have forfeited his life.

He was not long before a king’s son presented himself and offered to undertake the enterprise.

He was well received, and in the evening was led into a room adjoining the princess’ sleeping chamber.

His bed was placed there and he was to observe where they went and danced in order that they might do nothing secretly or go away to some other place.

The door of their room was left open, but the eyelids of the prince grew heaviest legs and he fell asleep and when he woke in the morning, all 12 had been to the dance, but their shoes were standing there with poles in the soles on the second and third night, six fell out just the same and then his head was struck off without mercy.

Many others came after this and undertook the enterprise, but all forfeited their lives.

Now it came to pass that a poor soldier who had a wound and could serve no longer found himself on the road to the town where the king lived.

There. He met an old woman who asked him where he was going, oh, I hardly know myself, ity and added in just, I have half of mine to discover where the princesses darts their shoes into holes and thus become king.

Act is not so difficult.

So the old woman, you must not drink the wine, which will be brought to you at night.

I must pretend to be sound asleep.

With that, she gave him a little cloak and said, if you put on that, you will be invisible and then you can steal.

After the 12, when the soldier had received this good advice, he went into the thing in Es, took heart, went to the king, and announced himself at a suitor.

He was as well received as the others and royal garments were put upon him.

He was conducted that evening at bedtime into the anti chamber and as he was about to go to bed, the eldest came and brought him a cup of wine that he had tied a sponge under his chin and let the wine run down into it without drinking a drop.

Then he laid down, and when he’d lay a while, he began to snore as if in the deepest sleep, the 12 princesses heard that and laughed and the over said, he too must as well have saved his life without they got up open water, press his cupboards and brought out pretty dresses, dressed themselves before them are, is spring about and rejoiced at the prospect of the dance.

Only the youngest said, I’m not, no, not how it is.

You are very happy. But I feel very strange.

Some misfortune is certainly about to befall us though are goose, who are always frightened to the eldest, has that forgotten how many sons have already come here in vain, I had hardly any need to give the soldier a sleeping drop.

In any case, the clown would not have awakened when they were already, they looked carefully at the soldier, but he had closed his eyes and did not move or stir.

So they felt themselves quite secure.

The eldest then went to her bed and tapped it.

It immediately sank into the earth and one after the other, they descended through the opening, the eldest going first.

The soldier who had watched everything carried no longer put on his little cloak and went down last with the youngest halfway down the steps, he just trott a little on her dress.

She was terrified of that. He tried out, what’s that? Who’s putting my dress? Don’t be so silly to the others, you’ve caught it on a nail.

Then they went all the way down and when they were at the bottom, they were standing at a wonderfully, pretty avenue of trees, all the leaves of which were silver and shun and glistens with sold the thought, I must carry a token away with me and broke up a twig from one of them on which the tree cracked with a loud report.

The youngest cried out again, something is wrong, did he hear the crack? But the elder said, it is a gun fired for joy because we have got rid of our prints.

So quickly after that, they came into an avenue where all the leaves were look gold and lastly, to a third where there were right diamonds, you broke off a twig from each, which made such a crap each time that the youngest started back in terror.

But the eldest still maintained that they were gun salutes.

They went on and came to a great lake where, where on 12 little boats and in every boat setter, handsome prince, all of whom were waiting for the 12 and each took one of them with him.

But the soldier seated himself by the youngest, then her prince said, I can’t tell why the boat is so much heavier today.

I shall have to grow with all my strength if I’m to get across it, which should cause that to the youngest.

But the warm weather, I feel very warm too.

On the opposite side of the lake stood a splendid, bright knit castle from went za, the joyous music of trumpets and kettle drums.

They rode over there, entered, and each prince danced with the God who loved.

But the soldier danced with them unseen and when one of them had a cup of wine in her hand, he drank it up so that the cup was empty when she carried it to her mouth.

The youngest was alarmed at this, but the eldest always made her be silent.

They danced there till three o’clock in the morning and all the shoes were danced into holes and they were forced to leave off and princes rode them back again over the lake and this time the soldier seated himself by the eldest on the shore, they took leave of their princess and promised to return the following night.

When they reached the stairs, the soldier ran on in front and laid down in his bedroom.

When the truck had come up slowly and weirdly, he was already slurring so loudly that they could all hear him and they said, so far as he is concerned, they’re safe.

He took off their beautiful dresses, laid them away, kicked the worn out shoes under the bed, and laid down.

Next morning the soldier was resolved, not to speak, but to watch the wonderful goings on and again, went with them.

Then everything was done just as it had been done the first time and each time they danced until their shoes were worn to pieces.

But the third time he took the cup away with him as a token.

When the R had arrived for him to give his answer, he took the three tweaks and the cup and went to the king.

But the 12 stood behind the door and listened for what he was going to say.

When the king put the question, where have my 12 daughters danced their shoes to pieces in the night, he answered in an underground castle with 12 princes and related how it had come to pass and he brought out the tokens.

The king then summoned his daughters and asked them if the soldier had told the truth and when they saw that they were betrayed and the falsehood would be of no avail, they were obliged to confess all that upon the king asked which of them he would have to wife.

He answered, oh, I’m no longer young. So gimme the eldest.

Then the wedding was celebrated on the same day and the kingdom was promised him after the king’s death, but the princes were bewitched for as many days as he had dance nights with apol.

So, I mean, what do you think? would it possible, we construct the story here.

I mean, it’s easy in a little workshop, but we, because we’re on zoom, not a bit a table and do workshops, but I’m gonna, I’m gonna see how did it all start? Once upon a time, Sleeping together.

12, right? Okay. 12 daughters. Sorry. Yeah.

In one, they all sleep together in one chamber. Okay? Yes. So if you were to say bedside side by side, sorry, bedside side by side, you got the bedside side by side.

Yes. So I suppose you could ask a question.

If you’re a bunch of girls, what’s the best way to get into the other world? Make sure you’re all sleeping together.

and what’s the sort of mechanical technique to getting into the other world? Remember, we’ve just tap on the bed, it’s magic.

It sort of sinks into the ground and, anyway, off we go down into the other world.

Okay? so, why does the, why is the king in the first place? I mean, what if it’s all a secret? How does the king know that something’s odd about it? Because I mean, the king locks the door then in the bedroom.

So what’s it, what’s he Yes. Okay.

Choose with hold. So, okay. Holes in the soles. Yes.

Gimme the exact words. Yes. What did the king find? Holes? All their shoes have got holes in the soles, right? Well, I mean, maybe Freud did possibly come in at this particular point in time, I suppose.

I mean certainly shoes feature a lot in fairytales, but Cinderella of course says all about shoes, slippers and stuff and these holes, sorry, I got it wrong around.

These shoes have got soles with holes in them.

so should we just leave it there having thought about it just a little bit? okay. right.

The king is determined to find out where on earth they go.

and so he tell me the rest of it, what he will do.

He makes an announcement, Find, we get to be king when I die.

They can’t three days. Yes, Sure. Can you see, there’s an interesting thing about the kingship, isn’t it? Because the, the person who has to come from somewhere else and find out what, how the girls dance all night and then he will be king in that country.

So it’ll be king in the country where the he will become king when the existing thing dies in the country where these girls are. How Would we describe that in anthropological plans? Yes. It seems in terms of residence, it seems in if, in anthropological parlance, and this is really strange, and I think it’s true to say that in just about every single European fairy tale, the king, the young hero who wins the prize of marrying a daughter king, a king’s daughter, he himself becomes king and he, he marries, he, he would say, ma locally.

So it’s ma local residents, and you see what I mean? Not that, not that the hero wins a award and he is able to take the girl as his bride sees her, and then carry her back to his own country.

He’s gonna become king where his bride that he marries on resigned already.

So that is called mat to local residence in, and we think in rank, without any shadow of doubt, that mat to local residents would’ve been the, the normal situation.

That certainly is a lot of freedom of choice to where hunter gatherers lives and where we were once all hunter gatherers, people who had a lot of freedom exactly where to set up when they get, when they get together now, and a woman.

But the choice for the woman would always be pretty much always, certainly for the first child to live with mom, she, to live with her mom and to bring her fellow in to live with her there and it’s just so interesting that in these stories, which seem to go back a long way, we find that’s similar pattern of, of what’s called postmarital residence matter local residence.

Okay. so now, okay, so the, a number of, royal persons, king’s sons, hear about the proclamation.

They want to be king, and the old king dies and so they, they volunteer. So now what happens? The king tells ‘em what to do and what are they gonna do? They all Fail. Well, they all fail, that’s for sure.

Why, why do they fail? What happens? They, That’s right. So what happens is that the eldest of sisters gives the, the, the soldier not soldier, the, the, the, the king’s son who wants to be the king, gives him a drink of wine, and, but not tell the color of the wine.

Do you think it would be white wine? I think, I think anyone who did a Panama version of this, and it was white wine would be what you play, yet, of course it’s red, it’s bull’s blood, it’s proper wine proper red wine.

So, they’re given the wine to drink.

and so I, do you remember when I was saying what happens? You have this world and the other world and what shifts you into the other world is a flower of blood, or something which is clearly symbolic of blood.

There’s actually quite a lot of blood in this story and you never find, like even with sleeping beauty and very clear stories about which are clearly about menstruation, it’s always a little bit secret.

Something directly menstrual blood, it’s gonna be sleeping beauty, of course, it, she clicks a finger and bleeds.

So here there’s quite a lot of blood.

and it seems to coincide with or trigger this extraordinary adventure when all that goes together go into the other world.

but there’s a little bit more blood to come, to come, isn’t it? It’s not just the wine, the red wine, because of course, the king’s son, he, he stays three nights, with a door open, supposedly watching what the girls get up to.

and after three nights what happens? You still on fat? Yeah, I think his head is chopped off and without mercy.

So there you are. That’s what happens.

I think we’re heading is very neat than it.

I mean it’s it’s a quick, nice, easy way of using lot supply.

They’re making sure it’s really, I mean, I mean it’s certainly true that a lot of, a lot of clon ne osis myths, there’s a severed head and it’s someone sometimes rolls around.

Sometimes it, by the way, it turns into the moon, by the way, the head, John, you wanted to say something? Having Some instruction from the zoom? Yeah, Zoom. John, do you wanna say something? I’ll have to amplify it because we haven’t got you on the speaker at the moment. Go on.

Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you, but I’ll have to talk to the room I’m gonna Put up with this once.

Yep. well I was just thinking about the business of the three nights, which is, as far as I know, the moon always disappears for three nights.

Yeah, okay. So three nights the moon disappears for three nights. Okay, well that’s, Can, can disappear for four, Maybe four.

Pan is a bit of four, but, but it, but, but but always for three. That’s Right. Okay.

So sort of irreducible period for the disappearance of the moon.

So so it becomes a bit like an accompanying the moon into the underworld story. No.

Yep. Okay. That’s good. That sounds good. Right? Okay.

I mean, it won’t work very well if we have too much interchange between the zoom and this will it? I dunno what you think, Kim. It’s fine. I mean it’s really Having the zoom people got as much right.

Alright. Zoom people. That’s right.

Zoom uprising. Okay. Alright. Zoom uprising.

Thank you so much. Anyway, so now we know why it is that three Power and get the speaker, but anyway, do you want do that? I’ll keep, I’ll keep zoom outta control. Okay.

Okay. You stand up from the zoom people.

So we’ve been reminded that in all these fairytales, the period of death, and of course it’s true with, with Christianity, Jesus dies for three days and then comes alive again.

So that’s extremely recurrent motif.

It’s, it’s because the, the sun disappears and what John’s must have been saying, it could really be four nights without fever.

The the moon disappears, Sorry, the moon disappears for four nights before being seen, but it, it’s gonna be at least three and I suppose three is the sort of normative, you don’t wanna be wandering around between three and four.

It’s a bit messy. So let’s, let’s just stick to three like the fairytales do.

Okay, so where were we now? the Head being chopped off it Head dropped off. Yes. Maybe Even that represents something to do with the movement.

Where, where else is there blood in the story? Soldier with a wound? Right. Okay, so we we’re moving on a bit.

We’ve had three, enthusiastic young men, princes, and each one has his head cho off.

and presumably there’s plenty blood in that.

as that happens and now we have, now we have a soldier and we are told something very important about him. He has a wound, That’s why he can’t be a soldier anymore.

So he is a wounded soldier. He’s a yes, he was a soldier.

He had a wound. Let’s just think about that.

He has a wound.

I mean, the wounded man, isn’t that always trickster? Sorry, The wounded man isn’t that, per definition is the trickster? I think so. I think it’s almost the definition of a trickster is a man with a wound.

I mean, of course the wise wound is menstruation.

It’s often metaphorically a wound, a woman’s wound, of course.

animals are hunted and, and speared and they have a wound and it’s often leaked to the, to the, to the other wound.

but this man is like, he’s, he’s died already.

He’s had a wound, but maybe it’s a little death.

He’s, he’s, he’s, he, he’s died and come alive again and that’s what a wound is.

It’s like a kind of died but not quite when he come alive again.

So he is kind of, he’s kind of immune to some of the dangers that the other, young and succumb to and okay, so how did it And, and how else does he gain? Yes, he, I mean, he has other connections.

He’s got a wound, which is a huge advantage in Madic.

but he is got a huge extra advantage, hasn’t he? Has the, the old old witch has befriended him and told him when they meet, he says, oh, I good mind become king, sort out where the sisters go, and she gives them a bit of advice.

and the, and he and his advice is, remind me, don’t drink that wine.

Okay. and also another bit, he’s given a gift, isn’t he Invisible? So he is gonna, he doesn’t drink the wine and by wearing the cloak, he’s going to be, invisible Potter Like Harry Potter. Yes.

Or like the moon. Yes.

I mean, of course lots of things are like Harry Potter. That’s ‘cause Harry Potter’s copied the fairytales, the Fair.

Harry Potter’s copied the fairytale, both the fairytale Harry Potter.

I know that. I know you. Yeah.

So, but of course, as Kim has said, the point about the moon each month is that it’s invisible.

It comes down to earth, and it can’t be seen.

so and, and of course the right, right across the world, the idea is that when women do bleed, if you have cycling, it’s precisely because the moon has come down to earth, cause that blood flow.

So it’s the moon’s blood that flows in you when you, when you, anyway, he, he, he, he’s obviously a man, but he’s kind of an odd one because he’s got, he’s had this, these secrets given to him courtesy of a woman.

So without, without the old, the old witch, it’s doubtful whether he would’ve got away with his, his, frick of spying on the girls and, revealing their secret to the authorities, to the, to the king.

so, okay, so what happens? He, remind me again.

He’s, he’s, he is, he’s, he’s got there, he’s, he’s sitting by the, the girls.

He’s, he, he hardly to avoid drinking the wine.

Yeah. He has a sponge on him. It all soaks up.

So, so they double spill all over the floor so they can’t see that he hasn’t drunk it.

and so, okay, so the girls are get very excited.

They’re quite sure that the silly old man is gonna have his head chopped off like the others.

They’re delighted about this prospecting front, about the open, all their wardrobes, they get out the finest dresses, they scam around you.

Very, very excited. And, they all get into bed together, and then they tap the bed and down it goes and down goes the wounded soldier and of course, he treads on skirt Might be something about the youngest being worried and the eldest.

Yeah. Right. Yes. There’s no, there’s no doubt about that.

Yes, it’s a persistent, so, I mean, that’s an interesting thing about the European tales.

we, we need to remember that these tales were told during initiation.

These tales weren’t just abstract stories told at bedtime.

These are stories about deaths and rebirth, accompanying a a an experience of deaths and rebirth that young people would go through as they came of age.

So a girl when she had her first menstruation would go through a ritual during which she would kind of die to the world and then come alive again and boys, when they made their first kill as hunters, they would also have an initiation ritual.

and these rituals, would be sort of explained by, the stories and what’s, what, what you find and I I, I think you spotted this already, is that is a, a tendency certainly in the European very, I don’t think it’s quite the same in North and South America, but it’s the youngest sister or the youngest brother who is the hero is, is the clever one.

It’s like, it’s like the, the storytellers are trying to say, isn’t she clever? Isn’t he clever? They pick the youngest and instead of saying the youngest hasn’t learned anything yet, they’re still green.

They take the youngest as the hero who who’s, who’s most alert to what’s going on.

So it’s the youngest who, who’s constantly aware something’s wrong.

So she’s just going, the youngest is just going down the stairs when she she, the soldier treads on her skirt and, and she thinks, oh, something I’m, I’m worried something’s wrong here and of course, the elder, okay, she’s, she’s the eldest one, but she’s not really so clever because she says, oh, you just got your dress on her nail.

But she should have been a little bit more alert to she should have been a bit more suspicious of what’s really going on.

Anyway, down they go.

and, perhaps we should just kind of hurry up a little bit. So three times E Ah, right. One Thing, Elise, I think it’s the i if it’s the one, it’s not just, she said something.

Well, when she’s in the boat, when they’re hot, It’s still, She feels anxious.

Yes. The youngest feels anxious. She feels Anxious. And then, and then her anxieties are confirmed when she feels her, The skirt Caught on stairs, the nail and then when the o old, the old soldier gets into the boat, the prince says, this is so heavy.

And, and that’s her boat.

Yes. But before we get to that, of course, the, the old soldier has gotta have proof The Gun prove to the authorities to, if you like, the patriarchy of the king Mm-Hmm.

Everything which he claims has been happening.

So he has to have some evidence.

So his evidence is okay, he, he plucks, a branch from one of the trees and the trees have got, gold branches and silver branches, diamonds, right? And then diamond branches, there’s three types of, of branch and he, he, he cracks, he pulls, a, a a branch which is made of silver and now, now what happens? Big loud noise and remember I was saying one of the, one of the findings of clo certain is meteor logic is the function of noise and loud noises go with movement into the other world.

And, and he, he, he comes up with one of the strangest of conclusions in mythology, which is that noise is antithetical, is the way he puts it to cooking.

So when you’re cooking a, a large game animal, but in an earth avenue takes a long time to cook.

Everyone’s going. And that’s because any loud noise, it’s a, it’s a sound of blood.

It’s going to be loud noises, bring up blood.

and when you’re cooking, you want the blood to disappear.

That’s the whole point of cooking, to remove the visible blood for the meat.

So if you make a loud noise, more blood’s gonna bubble up, and your cooking is gonna go into reverse and if you’re not, if you’re not careful with dead animal, instead of getting cooked, it’s going gonna get more and more raw until it jumps up alive and scammers off.

So you can be really careful with noise, but noise goes with movement into the other world along with blood and what we’ll find, with all the different details from all the, the stories in, in, in so many ways, the noise kind of is the, the sound of the blood.

The blood goes with noise.

It’s not music, it’s not soft, gentle noise.

It’s not the ca noises that a couple would want you in the honeymoon.

It’s a ca s disturbing noise.

It breaks up relationships between the sexiest and it takes you into the world of the, of the dead.

Anyway, it’s a loud bang, a a loud report and of course, the youngest sister is disturbed by it and says, what was that? And the older sister says, it’s a gun salute. Don’t worry.

It’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a, our princes are firing off their canon, outta joy because we’ve, we’ve succeeded So, so, so early in getting rid of our, our, our, our, our prints Old soldier, sorry, the old soldier, the old, and in this case, well, finally would be the old soldier.

Yes, yes, that’s right. On this last occasionally.

so anyway, now they write, they reach, he takes, he takes, a silver branch, a gold branch, and a he takes a a cup, doesn’t he? From the, the other side of the river, from the, from the feast, they’ve been having a golden golden cup.

so okay. Anyway, they reach, a river and on the other side of the river is this castle, and they can hear the kettle drums, all the dancing, all the music from, its from, from, from, its, palace they’re gonna go to.

And, it’s a river and it’s, it’s a river that is really difficult to cross.

You need a boat. but they cross the river and they dance and dance and dance and dance on the other side of it and it’s only when their sh their shoes have been danced to pieces and there are holes in the souls that they have to stop.

and then they come back across the river and so we we’re dealing now with the last episode, and, as the girls are putting the, the cups of wine to their lips, the soldier steals the wine and thinks it himself.

and, the young sister’s puzzled by this.

the older sister says, don’t worry about it, but it’s something interesting, isn’t it? About drinking wine? Is it a good idea? If you are trying to find out where those girls have gone to and you want to eventually be king, you can’t really make a generalization, can you, about whether it is good or it’s not good to drink red wine.

What’s the actual situation here? But spelled out quite clearly in the story.

It’s not good to drink wine in this world, but when you’re in the other world, it’s very good to drink.

So the soda’s doing all the right things to avoid being seen and detected by drinking the wine himself.

obviously having to be a bit careful not to be too obvious what he’s up to and then there’s, and then they, they get in their boats and, and try to road back and of course, it’s very, very, it’s a difficult river to cross.

It’s sticky, it’s warm.

anyways, you, you are doing, you’ve done a whole lot of work on rivers in the, the, the wire and rivers becoming sort of persons and rivers becoming creatures and of course, we, we know in so many of the world’s myths about rivers that the river are rivers of fertility and rivers of blood, indeed, this, and of course there’s the, in Greek mythology, there’s the river sticks isn’t there, which is river central.

So this is one of those rivers.

But anyway, they finally get across, and although the, he Comes back with the different princess, doesn’t he? He goes with the young one. Yeah and he comes back with the older one who’s gonna be the one he married.

He, he goes three times.

Does he come, he comes back just twice with the youngest and then the oldest. Is that what Happens, on, well, as they described the first journey journey, he goes across with the young one where it, so they feel the, the boat is very heavy, but he can’t, but it says he comes back with the fold, one doesn’t happen.

Am I right? Yeah. He went And came to a great lake where answered 12 little boats and in every boat set a handsome prince, all of whom were waiting for the 12^th.

Okay. they danced till three, they four, two this time the soldier seated himself by the eldest.

I see. So it, the youngest going, it’s the O’clock in the morning when all the truth were dancing and to hold, and they were forced to leave off the princes rode them back again over the late.

I see. Yes. The princes rode them back.

It’s only the Elvis that, that, that the soldier that seats himself next to the Elvis.

Yeah. He doesn’t do the rowing, does he? But, No, but he’s invisible in the boat and the, when he is going, he’s with the prince, with the young one and when he is coming back, he said the prince, the old one.

okay. so the soldier has, got his evidence, and he reports to the king, that he knows how it is that the shoot that the sisters disappear, on what it, what they’re up to when they do.

and that’s an interesting question here.

So many stories end with, the beautiful mag who’s rescued by the prince, and he kisses her, she wakes up and they get married, and they all live happily ever after and why is this story so different? What is it about marriage in this story, sorry, From the marriage, because they get married, but then the other sisters are curse for as many days as, as they have Done. Yes. But what do the sisters think? What do the sisters think about marriage? I mean, what, how is marriage sort of meted out? What what’s the function of marriage in this story? I mean, it’s, it’s fairly obvious that marriage is a punishment, isn’t it? It’s the punishment for being found out.

The one thing those girls do not want is to get married.

I mean, they’re desperate not to be, not to be caught, not to be married.

They want fun and they want to have fun.

Girls, fine marriage is not gonna be such fun.

It looks as if, oh my God, we’re gonna have be married.

We’ve been having such fun. so They have absolutely no compunction in these princes being killed.

They just won the chop their heads off, chop their heads.

Not only do they not, was it royal princes? They’re quite happy to see their heads chop.

If we think about sleeping beauty and the princes all hanging on the thorn hedge.

Yeah, that’s very fair. But there isn’t much a, it’s a very similar thing to the Princes, but there isn’t the same agency as the agency of these Goats. That’s right.

The story of the secret beauty.

We have the head of Thorn, and that’s been conjure up by the 13^th Ferry as punishment for the king, not wanting his daughter to bleed.

So you get these young men turning up, wanting, they’ve heard this story about there’s a Be the Burst, beautiful maiden, all the world, somewhere in this dark hidden castle beneath all these sorts of great hedge thorns all around you and they, they think, okay, get off my horse, get my sword out and hack my way through and make my way to the girl.

but bad idea and they, of course, they get, they get the thorns, pierce them, and they, the whole, the whole head of thorns after a while, it saw these skeletons of these princes.

But there’s a very similar thing that Illa says in this story.

In here we have, we have probably more agency, but the girls themselves actively work together, consciously, actively work together to make sure these husbands would be, husbands get, get the heads dropped on.

It’s not just like a, a sort of magic spell cast by, a witch does it for them.

They, they, they’re active about it.

and then, okay, are you fairly happy about what’s happened so far? There’s one very important, last detail to be sorted out with maybe a couple of Q3 details to be sorted out.

um about the 12 Daughters of the King, who are the princes? I’ll just simply say, I suppose that, I mean, in, in the group we’ve had all these, we’ve had quite a few discussions.

We have a book club. We discuss these things in the west under patriarchy.

We have one concept and call it sex.

the magical tales divide sex up into different categories, and it can have lots of intimacy and erotic pleasure, which is a heterosexual sex.

It can have pleasure dancing together, which is dancing within the framework of one love, people related back that can have a, a good time, if you like and in fact, levies argues that the, the, the stories that he deals with, both the first burden estimates and all the others, they have this, he just, I mean, it’s, the language is very difficult because we just don’t have the right terminology.

but he uses the term incest, by which he means excessive intimacy between kin, not talking about sexual abuse, far as having sexual s or all he’s talking about kind of intimacy between people of the same blood.

and he’s, he, he says that stories have a, an ambivalent attitude towards it.

They, they’re never condemning that form of intimacy.

In fact, quite the opposite.

It’s actually the, and I’ll have to use the word nces with scare for, right? cause it’s such a misleading term, but it’s the, it’s the hero who engage in that kind of sex and lets be clear, it’s the kind of sex that won’t get anyone pregnant.

It’s not, it’s, it’s to do with the blood, it’s to do with menstruation.

It’s pleasurable and, and very often explicitly erotic, but it’s not, if you like Darwinian sex, it doesn’t lead to pregnancy.

It’s a different kind of intimacy.

But LeRose points out or makes the point that the, a hero who emerges from the story with rain, rainmaking power, who’s a shamer, who does all sorts of, all sorts of magic, we bring down thunderstorms and so many things.

He is the one who’s engaged in that kind of, intimacy.

Whereas marital sex, okay, you may get babies from it, but it’s, you don’t, it’s not magic.

It doesn’t, it doesn’t give you that magic and the myths are, it’s like when they get married, it’s like the, the, the story fizzles out and they all never have the ever after.

Whereas the, the magical heart of the story relates to a completely different kind of, much more collective intimacy.

Having said, which, I’ll just ask this question again.

Who are those 12 fences in the underworld? I mean, I mean, we can’t say exactly who they are, but it was sort of guesswork.

But sort of logically, when you think about it, who do you think they might be? And sort of is there some ideas we might sort of explore in testament, Like related? I think so. I mean, the king’s got, well, I think you’re saying that they’re brothers.

Yeah. It could be brothers.

It could be brothers. I think that’s right, because the king has 12 daughters, and we’re not told about those.

Those other ones don’t.

So it’s like, what the girls are enjoying is intimacy, which is slightly opposite of marriage and in anthropological kinship theory, we say relationships are either by blood or by marriage.

You have, you have your mother or your mother-In-law, you have your brother, your brother-in-law.

So, so kinship and affinity.

Kinship is relationships by blood, definitively relationships with people who aren’t, related to you.

These look, all the indications are that this is not marriage, and it’s the opposite.

Kind of of, pleasure, dancing, pleasure.

So they’re like, they’re their brothers about.

But of course, the story has to be a bit careful about that one patriarchy, huge taboos around those topics and increasingly, of course, patriarchy celebrates one kind of sex, and that’s the kind that gets people pregnant. What, we don’t actually have a queen, a mother in the story.

Are we proposing that a woman that doesn’t exist has like 12 daughters and 12 sons? Or how are we explaining this? Yes.

What is this form of kinship are that we, that we are arguing? It is strange that there’s, there’s a king, but no Greek.

No, I don’t quite know any ideas if he Knows everything.

Sorry. The Witch know the old lady I calling her? Yes. The old lady.

I suppose the old lady is, I mean, she’s not the queen, the old lady. No, It really seems, Yes.

Okay. I mean, it’s like, who needs a queen when you’ve got a witch? Sorry, what if It’s the old lady’s son? It’s her son’s. But in terms of anthropology, what are we talking about here in terms of kinship? Maybe we need to explain a little bit more.

are these really brothers and sisters or, right. Okay.

What would be the form of Yeah. Of Ken that it’s talking? That’s right. So I mean, Kim is pointing out, of course, that hunter gatherers have a system of kinship terminology, which is, we call it classification.

So almost all hundred gatherers, but not just hunter gatherers, nearly all society that don’t have a headman or structure, hierarchical structure, including hor develop societies.

The kinship system is classification, which means that the word mother won’t refer to an individual, refer to a class of people who are your mothers and that comes from the, the sort of logic, because you have two sisters, and they won’t have sort of private property in children.

One sister will say to, her sister, my sister’s son is my son, your child, your son is my son.

So they treat each other’s sons as their sons and their daughters as their daughters.

and so over the generations who get, everyone’s got a whole bunch of sisters, and, and every child has got not just like somebody they’re called mommy or mother.

You’ve got a whole class of people called mother, all of whom in some way will regard themselves as the mother of the child.

So when you, when somebody says, oh, my mother’s, my mother’s not feeling well today until you find out a little bit more, you don’t know which of the many mothers that child is referring to.

So we have a classification kin system, and I think come is right.

I think this story with the 12, daughters and then the 12 princes, it’s, it is a collectivist form of kinship.

He is not talking about a nuclear family, although of course it is a, it’s already patriarchal.

There is a king there. But it looks as if the kings needing to establish sort of his authority.

it’s not going too well until he manages to do that.

He does, he establishes authority by introducing this new system called marriage, marrying off his, daughters to, in this case, of course.

So can we say that we’ve got a, like a, a a model of kind of clan, unilineal clan that would be matrilineal clan in opposition to the king who’s trying to suppress the activities of this, the mysterious activities of this, this clan politics.

something like that.

What about the very end of the story? Yes.

I mean, the, the end of the story, we’ve all over so many years, we’ve sort of puzzled over this last line and I, I mean, I’m anyone can make sense of it.

Please help out with this.

So then the wedding was celebrated on the self same day and the kingdom was promising after the king’s death.

But the prince princes were bewitched for as many days as the dance nights with the trails.

So the, which means, you can’t marry.

So that’s usually what being good, which when the spell breaks, you get married and you live happily ever after.

When you be bewitch, sometimes you’re tend into some animal and that’s how you bewitched.

But somehow the bewitching side of it, the casting of a spell, one of the features is that you can’t be married while you are bewitched.

and the way I look at that is that if you are bewitched, you are somehow married to the moon, you’re married to your blood, it’s a different kind of bonding.

But, and, and of course, marriage is done the wrong.

It’s a wrong word. So these princes, do not get married and the bewitched for as many days as the advance nights with the 12.

Well, how many nights is that as, I suppose it’s three, isn’t it? it, that’s three nights.

So they must be bewitch for three days. So it’s as if they, Yeah. But this, this thing has been going on for a long time, so they’ve been dancing many, many moons.

Okay. So, So It looks as if the princes, do not get married.

I definitely, they stay bewitched, and they, I mean, that’s kind Of it. But they, they aren’t getting married to the sisters? No, they’re not getting married to the sisters, and they’re not going as far as I can see. I mean, I, But doesn’t the ending, I know it’s, it’s very cryptic. It’s Very Cryptic. But doesn’t it imply that they, that spell will be lifted? So isn’t there some kind of luna key going on in there, there, there’s an oscillation going on in touch terms. Is there any, If they’re only bewitched for as many days as they’ve danced nights through the 12, that would be in budgets of three, wouldn’t it? So they’ve had three nights dancing with their, I think their sisters, and now because they’re bewitched, they’re gonna be spending three days bewitched, Maybe three days. Does it mean just three days or does it mean all the times that they’ve been dancing the systems? We don’t know. Well, Clearly the truth is there’s only so far we can go with.

Yeah. But isn’t the implication that there is a sort of oscillation balance Yeah. In time Somehow, however, somehow that last line speaks of balance, don’t it? The prints, It speaks to the cycle Up nights with the 12.

It’s got a sort of ring to it.

It speaks of symmetry on precision, but quite what it means.

we will never, so yes, There is something that cycle, the eldest is married, and that means that now they have to do something in the daytime.

In the daytime, right? Yes and the marriage is like, well, you need with the, the patriarchal something and out this other, and now with the Yep.

Imagine in the daytime.

Yes. Okay. That’s very nice. Yeah, I agree with that.

That’s lovely. That’s very nice.

I mean, what the king does is not the, he doesn’t, he doesn’t like a forced wedding.

I think the bewitching is coming from the other side, from the old lady, still is a kind of, is a, it’s a magical thing carrying on some part of what the girls were doing each, each each dark moon when they were, on under their own spell.

Yeah.

Do we, oh, go ahead. No, It’s just like when I listened to the fairy tales this time around it, the whole beginning of the description of how the girls were at 12 of them that’s next to each other, locked in a chamber, it sounded very much like a clock that was sticking very nicely and now the, all the other is gone.

It sounds all very bewitching.

Yeah. There’s, there’s Completely deregulated by this.

It’s taken out something.

So yeah. But there’s also the factor, the coming back to the moon and John’s suggestion about the disappearance.

You got 12 es 12 princesses plus the odd one Yes.

In the middle who’s like wounded, who’s gender and the valent, trickster. So it’s just As with, just as with the sleep, beauty, sleep, beauty.

Yeah. And the 13, yeah.

You have the 12 and the 13, in this case, the 13^th in each case is the betrayal, the traitor.

Mm-Hmm. The intruder. Yeah, or, or the sort of weak point, or the point where, or the point where the ballot, the shift, the time switches, it changes, Gets one thing.

The sense can be seen symbolically, not because she does it willingly, but is the one that has broken the pick line.

So in a sense when you talk about women, the women coalition is the one that kind of breaks up.

Coalition is forced to break that coalition and in a sense, it seems to that point of being won over to the patriarchal system, which then, I mean, she was the one who was most careless about keeping the secrets.

Yeah. And so she was, she was almost responsible for allowing the disaster of getting married.

So maybe for her, she’s sort, as you say, more accepting of the, that fate.

Isabel, we need to tell the questions to Zoom because they, they aren’t, anyway, go, go on.

Yeah.

Marriage about like intimacy, intimacy not producing a baby, essentially.

So, but marriage is gonna produce a baby, which is just like a huge transition from being bleeding, but without child Yeah.

To, and then you don’t bleed.

Yeah. So you’re not, but There’s also that link for not bleeding and being in the daytime, which in the day, married to the man, are you having baby sex? So when you’re not bleeding, you’re not the witch, is that right? Well, you’re having sex with a husband and reproducing it.

There’s no, there’s no myth or richer, which says that the way to get rich power and medical power is to have sex with your husband.

That’s always the way to lose it.

Well, that’s what they’ve done. Yeah. They’ve lost.

But it, but it’s the movement between this world and the other world really, because, pregnant women are still part of the Sex strike Coalition.

They’d still be part of the magic.

it’s about whether they’re in a, in a the situation of marriage with a husband or whether they’re with their Ken coalition.

So, so I, I’m not sure we can say What, what we haven’t quite done is it, we haven’t quite fixed where the girls are or where they go to when they get into bed together and get into the underworld.

But, I think men committed the, the social media advertising of tonight’s talk.

We have the, the beautiful pictures, which so often go with this, story.

All the artists that depict, whether sisters ago, they depict a, a kind an underground world with beautiful trees.

But up in the sky there’s a stars and there’s a crescent moon.

Mm. it’s always a crescent moon.

And, and, and I mean, knowing, say, particularly like North American myths and rituals, we have a thing called the sweat lodge.

So the girl, the, the, I’m just thinking of, the, the, the, the, the, the Y for example, what, what happens that all the women, traditionally, this is what they say at rate, they would all go up to a sacred moon time pond when they’re having their periods.

and the men would go into a sweat lodge because they had to, they, it sort of similar things like cut cutting their legs to make themselves bleed just so that they could be doing the same thing, the kind of bleeding that the, that the women were doing.

But, these, these special houses, called sweat lodgers, right across North Amer, north North America, where be they were kind of almost like observatories.

There were places from which you could watch the stars and watch the, the, the movements of the moon.

and there would be, there, there would be places to go into for seclusion.

But Europe would argue that, that when women go into seclusion and they go into this lodge, and I, all I’m saying is that, that the illustrations of this fairytale, they just, they make it beautifully clear that these girls are going into seclusion, going to this magical world of, of darkness with the, with the, the, with the, the, the trees made of silver and gold and diamonds.

I mean, these are clearly this the night sky.

so I’m just saying this, I, to me it’s just so clear that something like going into seclusion with the flowing of the light is the place to which these, these systems are going and it’s just that that seems to apply to all these fairy tales.

There’s always a, a movement from this world and into the other world.

It’s triggered by a flow, one example or another and what’s different is, is that the degree of enchantment of magic and joy depicted as you go into that other world.

I mean, it can be, of course going into the other world, the land of the dead can be pictured very negatively.

And, and marriage can be pictured as a, as a, there’s a liberation from a wicked, wicked witches evil spell.

It’s just that in this story, it’s all turned upside down, isn’t it? The, the joy and the magic and the power goes with getting to bed together, going to the other world and the, the, the, the wedding is enforced by the king as a punishment on his el daughter and everything’s turned around just enabling us to see the range of possibilities of all these stories.

Instead of just thinking that wicked, wicked witches quote, cast evil, evil spells.

We could see a whole nother side of things, a real collectivism and joy in being together as we’re in before, before marriage.

So is this story patriarchal or not? Or does anyone think Well, I would, the question is, is this story patriarchal? I suppose all the stories are patriarchal, but they’re always wonderfully ambivalent, wonderfully contradictory, wonderfully mixed.

There’s so much of matriarchy and patriarchy in all the stories that are alive with conflict and ambivalence and contradiction.

So it’s actually one of the most matriarchal of all Grimm’s fairytales, which ends up with a victory for patriarchy.

because the king does have his way in the end, But it’s not permanent.

This last line sounds as though there’s gonna be a release for the princes at some point.

Yes, that’s a good one. Cilla. Yes. Okay. That’s nice.

Is it a permanent victory? The patriarchy? I, that’s, I I’m, I’m persuaded by that.

That’s a more convincing argument than before the King wins. We’ve Got another, The king wins, but the princes were bewitched for as many days as they had Dance Knight for the 12.

It’s, I suppose it’s just a question of what do we mean by bewitched? is bewitched to be sort of, um frozen punished, unable to be married or was to be bewitch the kind of joy and magic and Sisters Themselves enjoyed when they were, bewitched.

I, there there was a Hi. Excuse me.

There was, there was someone here and then cause Isabel you Yeah.

Trying to why marriage ends the fun or ends the magic and is it linked to this sort of interview spike between order and disorder that you have without so many creation myths? Or is it, is it something else? So the questions about does this, this, marriage stopping the magic, is there a link between order and disorder, order and chaos really impressing? It’s very interesting.

So in rag, we have a view as to how society was before patriarchy and we say it wasn’t really matriarchy, it was never been, we don’t think it was ever a period of moment.

We kind of go where women seize power, hell power kept the power and use the power against men, rather what we think of as more like what Mona Finnigan describes as communism in motion, which means that women did take the power and then surrendered it and then took the power and then surrendered it and a very good model for some close to that.

Not exactly, it is what Jerome Lewis describes going on with Evangelic people in the, in the, in the, in the Congo Forest people where the women have a, a ritual called ku and the, it is this rawest, wonderful, joyful seizure of the whole camp by the, by these girls taunting the men, making fun of them, making quite rude comments about their, the men’s bits kind of thing and having a great time kind of sex education among other things going on in, in that ritual.

But then the women get a bit right, almost like bored with being on top and so, okay, we’ve made our point.

Let’s get back to there’s a bit of a period of normality and then, the men struck their stuff and they have this thing called agen, which is men strut ing real men.

and that could, that could get a bit out of hand if that went on too long.

So the women sort of make it, yeah, you make your point.

Yeah. You make your point. And agen stops.

So you get women’s rule, men’s rule, women’s rule.

So to answer your question, the problem with marriage is that you’re stuck.

Mm-Hmm. You are a man, married a woman.

She said yes for sex. Okay.

She can’t be raped ‘cause she said yes all those years ago.

Whereas with what you think it was communism emotion.

Women say yes and no, and yes and no women in control of their bodies collectively controlled.

They, the, the, the no signal is as valid and powerful as the yes signal.

and that’s a very different model from patriarchal marriage, which I said, right? You said yes all those years ago.

You know, my wife is contract you, I have conjugal rights in you because, you said yes all those years ago.

So that is how we think.

I mean, there’s a whole lot of interesting stuff going on in Anology today as a result of a book called The Dawn of Everything by David Gray and David Winer and the, the question asked by this amazing book is, how did we get stuck? This is how we got stuck. This story is telling, So the story is talking about getting stuck, getting stuck, but it, but still the last line suggests it’s still resisting Last line. Yes.

Well, Where they married is like Covid work and then break it by saying, we’re not married.

It sounds like the had are The Hadza might do that.

I, I remember with the Hader talked to, something like that.

The Hads are, I, I was with Camilla did some field work there, and we had a whole bunch of us doing field work that had said I was there for this short.

But I just remember this friend of mine who I actually walked back to Hackney, he said, Chris I can marry a woman and then she’ll say, tomorrow, by the way, I’ve changed my boss.

So it’s just like, yeah, Pretty normal with hunter gatherers to just be decide we, no, we’re not married anymore.

I mean, the marriage is like by the moon, if you like, for the hazer.

It’s actually observable that two people are married if they, maintain certain taboos or menstruation and their behavior around menstruation.

So it’s like each moon you’re making a decision, are you gonna be married in front of the eyes of the community? So, so according to the abstract model, you’d be, you’d husbandman and wife would be divorced around menstruation at Dark Moon, around full moon.

You know, we all know Full moon, honeymoon, moon and June, all of our fairytales boys and girls come out to play the moon to shine as bright as David.

Full Moon is the time for romance, but dark Moon at the time for blood and, and sort of witchcraft in, in all those traditions.

So you, you try to, you get married, you get divorced, you get married, you get divorced, but the, but the divorce is not quite quite the right word.

But when you divorce your husband, you recontact your brother and sister.

So, and that, and that’s the, when I was start, when I was starting this this evening, I was mentioning the, the burden of the stories.

What’s happening is that you have two relatives, father and son, and they come together and divorce, come together and divorce and what’s really going on behind the scenes actually is that, men are dying as husbands becoming alive as brothers, women are dying as sisters becoming alive as wives or dying as wives becoming alive as sisters.

So all this death and me birth is partly that your roles are changing.

Mm-Hmm. So as a, as a wife, you die around new boob, but the menstruated, So maybe that’s what, that’s what these, that’s what this last line is about, that those princes die the witch because they’ve become husbands elsewhere or something like That. Never. Now quite what that last, I mean no change, but the point about deaths in reverse is that you die in one role.

So all husband around, okay, in the, in the sort of rather abstract model around dark moon, blood should be flowing.

and all husbands die to be replaced by brothers because husbands turn into brothers.

All wives die because in the role of wives, they cease to exist and they’ve come, but they come alive, of course, they’re sisters, they’re brothers and sisters come together.

But at Full Moon, the witchcraft spell breaks and then brothers who’ve been attached to their sisters in some ritual ways, kind of are no longer brothers.

They’ve become husbands. And the women they’re related to now are oth other women who are now their wives.

So you get a death in rebirth in terms of roles, on, on a, an essentially, once a month basis and that’s the kind of magic from which if we’re writing drag, all these stories are emerged.

Oh, really? I just wanna say, I mean, is it plausible because Liz and Myth, which is primarily about initiation as well, right? Value? Yes. That’s good. Yeah. Could it just be that within that reverse frame, which is essentially reverse frame form from a primarily matriarchal idea, essentially the, the whole system, the whole story is kind of like a moral story about the moral and that last line ude to the fact that either in a patriarchal system, you get married and you get cursed as in like menstruation turns into, into a curse.

Yes. As in, so that’s how I interpret it as well as in, in that kind of reverse perspective, where everything that needs to do with the female is either subjugation or us in terms of ation now be seen as something that big witches.

Right? I’m not sure how to tell the zoom this. Well, Once marriages established What was marriage establ Official system and is your blessing, you’re blessed by getting married, what one consequence of that marital blessing if, if you like, is that menstruation is is correspondingly turned into a curse, or even, of course, the curse.

So blessing and the curse sort of changed places. What? To which perspective? You reproductive patriarchy when it turns marriage into the ultimate reward, you marry your prince, you, your princess, that’s and you all, they all live happily ever after.

The corollary of that is that menstruation has turned into the opposite of ing, then the curse Makes opening initiation story. So something Yes, that’s a point I, that’s a point I, yeah, I really, I, yes, I left that out.

Really. I didn’t make that strong. Powerful enough.

This is clearly, again, another way of putting it is this whole experience described as these girls go to the underworld and dance and dance and dance is their collective initiation into adult life and of course under patriarchy, that becomes a, a preparation for marriage.

You’re not allowed to get married until you’ve been initiative and so this movement from the underworld relationships to the above world, marital relationships would be quite accurately reflected in what really to women where you get initiated Mm-Hmm.

With a whole bunch of other girls and then that’s the end of all the fun and you are, you’re married off. Yeah. Very nice.

That was an important part of the story, which I didn’t stress enough Thank. Yeah. the, in terms of stories that this, that are comparable to this story, what is the most obviously comparable and how similar and how different is it? Which story most compares with this? We, we shoes that were dance to pieces, girls going to dance for three nights, silver, golden Diamonds, Cinderella.

So this is a, a like a counterpart to Cinderella.

But how similar or how different is it and what is the, so I mean the link with Cinderella here, Do we want to go quickly into Cinderella? so Well what is any, anybody think on that one? Is it, I mean, what differences and similarities? Well, they both got shoes in.

The one’s got shoes in and Cinderella’s got shoes in.

What happens to the shoes in the Grims version of Cinderella? There are different versions, but they kind of, do you remember what happens to the Shoes? It makes the symbolism of the shoes very, very clear if we look at it in Cinderella, because what happens? She, Right. So that’s right because the this, okay, so in there Are sisters in Cinderella, So, so we have, so, and we don’t have 12 sisters in cinder, but we have two.

and then we have their sort of stepsister who’s Cinderella.

Cinderella is cooked, she’s Cinderella, she’s the Mrs of the hath.

She lives among the cis.

The other sisters are not cooked the opposite of crook.

Oh, blue sisters Raw.

They’re so raw that they bleed, they’re Always bleeding. And the point is that the word ugly just means not marriageable.

So the, so the, the so-called ugly sisters are with their each, with each other and their mother Cinderella is supremely manageable.

If she’s got no mother or sisters, she’s got no kids.

She’s all on her own. and of course what happens is that, their mother, the younger sister, so ugly sister’s mother wants them to be eligible for marriage and they’ve only got these predictive shoes, per version always made a glass.

But anyway, they, the point is that the, the stepmother, sidra stepmother, their mother, the youngests mother, she says, right, you can easily put the foot into this suit, just chop your toe off and chop your heel off and it’s only when these, the one of those systems is on horseback crossing the grave of Cinderella’s mother on, which is a little tree on which is a little bird.

The little bird sings this, turn and deep turn, turn deep turn pee.

the, the false, the forced bride rise with you. Mm-Hmm.

There’s blood in the shoe. There’s blood in the shoe.

There’s blood in the shoe. But anyway, it’s only when the, the prince sees the blood in the shoe that he recognizes that this is not Cinderella.

It’s not Cinderella. The only way he can tell the difference between Cinderella and the other sisters is whether they’re bleeding Is ridiculous. I mean, he, he’s obviously entrance with them.

It’s just that they’re menstruating, but, and they’ve, the fact that they’ve got blood in the shoe, clearly that’s, it’s more explicit than Cinderella that the bleed that the shoe with a hole in it is, is menstruation than it is in this story we’ve been looking at.

But I mean, really, it’s fairly clear either way. Yes. How long did it go tell you they between hold in sold and sitting on the earth and breathing? Except that, Can we just repeat for Yes. the question, is there a connection between the hole in the shoe? If there’s a hole in your shoe, you’re clearly walking on the earth cause your shoe’s got a hold in it.

and if it’s blood in the shoe, then that implies you’re just bleeding on the earth in, in a heart or whatever. Yeah.

Yes, of course. The rule is the classic rule that, so James Fraser worked out in the golden and bow, the girl, when she’s in seclusion, her head must, the sun must not shine on her head and her feet must not touch the ground.

She has to be twigs heaven and earth.

so I mean, yes, but it wouldn’t be ordinary earth, it would be the inside of a special sacred part raised, probably raised above the ground as well. So, Which is the castle, which is the, the beautiful castle.

Yeah. Which is, I mean they, they’ve obviously got a giant menstrual hut, which is more like a, a temple than a menstrual hut.

That’s an interesting, with their, with their clan brothers, they’ll ing away.

So Yes, I mean, you probably know that, in societies which have recently become, or society where men monopolize ritual power in those societies, men kind of menstruate they nose speed or various, various ways of men imitating menstruation and they do that from the great men’s house and some days these, this men’s house is an enormous building, but the building in all the myths, they say this was originally a women’s house and men one day got fed up with women ruling and, the men rebelled and expelled the women and took over the house for themselves.

So Camilla’s point here is, and in this story across the river, that castle would be kind of men’s house, except it would be not a men’s house.

It would be, yeah, the women’s, a women’s house.

Women are still with not getting mad off.

So that’s another interesting point, which I suppose I hadn’t noticed a pic.

You you picture that castle and it’s Yes, it’s a women’s house.

Yeah. Right.

Have we got how much, how, yeah.

Have we got any more thoughts here or thoughts on zoom? John, you were saying about the, John was just talking about this idea of lunar appropriation in this Lionel Sims model.

The initiates of Avery, for instance, accompany the moon through the underworld in a ritual that lasts at least three periods, day, night, day.

So is this a kind of lunar appropriation by the men, the men pretending or masquerading as women or taking over the powers of women? Well, it is interesting that the only way the, that the women’s secret can be betrayed when the world turned against them and marriage, I stalled is by a man being a kind of menstruating man.

Women. Women, an old soldier with a wound And be very knowledge secret. Knowledge.

Yes. If you’ve been wounded, you’ve nearly died. who’s This witch Then? And he gets this witch who is the witch. Yeah. Yeah.

We hardly have anything.

We dunno who she’s, You dunno, you dunno.

It makes it personal Story. Yeah. She, she seems to have given the game away very much. Yeah. Yeah.

I, i, perhaps I should stress something which is important and lemme stress.

So I mean, lemme stress, since you just cannot make sense of Amy, you have to date one variant, another variant, another variant, another variant.

So with one myth you can get so far, but in order to really understand what the myths saying, you have to look at as many different versions of the myth as you can and I mean, maybe there are quite a few other versions of the shoes that were dance to pieces.

I mean like direct, there’s certainly other versions of grievance of the 12 concessions.

It may have a slightly different name.

and of course there are plenty of stories which never got into grievance, which have been accord, the Russian ones, Eastern European ones.

Mm-Hmm. But I’m just saying, every stress was saying don’t really think that you can look at a myth and read it and read it and read it and, and work out what it means.

It’s most unlikely that you’ll be able to do that.

But what you can do is get enough different versions to be able to increasingly find out sort of underlying continuities within these versions and not just continuities other logical operations contrast as well.

They, they’re also very helpful.

so in the end of the day, the more versions you have, the better and this evening we’ve been looking at one story, obviously with a little bit of reference to the beauty and Cinderella.

Is that always helpful? But it’s just that we really need to kind of welcomes as many magical tales as possible because they’re all telling us something very, very important about what it means to be human and how life once was and all sorts of things which have been long forgotten. Somebody else on Zoom, It’s Eleanor, or is it Ian? Eleanor Maki or Ian? Who is it? Hello? Need to unmute.

Yeah. There’s a French version of the shoes that would dance to pieces. Mm-Hmm.

There’s a French version of the shoes that dance to pieces.

Pieces, okay.

At the very end. Right. I think in that version he mar he does marry the youngest daughter, which, and, and the magic he acquired originally was, took the form of, two bitter laurel trees.

Oh, right. He had to another Person where the old man, this wounded soldier mar the youngest no.

Is the youngest. And where he has two laurel trees.

Are those instead of the twigs in No. That, that’s what gives him the magic, the fir the first one, The original magic Gives him the power to be invisible and second one, I can’t remember offhand the point, what the point is is, is, well there are two points.

One, one is that as he’s not a wounded soldier, he’s a shepherd.

Mm-Hmm. But, and so the, the point to emphasize there is this other theme is turning traditional medieval, hierarchical aristocratic power upside down the wounded soldier or the shepherd.

I see. Yeah. Is Is that the, the, the, the, the, his bride, the first, the first thing she does once they get married is make sure that he, that she, she cuts down the two laurel trees to make sure that he doesn’t have that kind of magic power anymore.

Okay.

Do you think the laurel trees are re related to something like trot? What are they related to? Like the Delphi? Well, I, yeah, I can guess so, yes.

I mean, I think that was one of the things that were part of women’s ritual were then banned Say In on the zoom is saying it was a French version of the story.

I haven’t read the version. but in saying that, although it’s not, a wounded soldier who is a sort of, what’s the word? What’s the, what’s the word they sort of wrong.

Antihero, I suppose you could call him. It’s a shepherd.

But both a wounded soldier and a shepherd are like the lowest of the low in society.

They not part hierarchy Clings. And, and for him to be become king is turning the world upside down in some sense and he marries the youngest daughter. Mm-Hmm.

But in, but he, he’s given his power, not by an old lady giving him an invisible cloak, but by two laurel trees and when he marries the youngest sister, first thing she does is get rid of those neural trees so that he doesn’t have any more magic.

So she can keep them under control.

Keep him under control, I guess That, yeah. Which all the trees that both then represents the earth and the, and the earth.

Which right now I’m getting a little bit right.

Chris, you have enough? I’ll, I’ll sit down. I’m not, see it’s getting My bedtime. So way.

Chris, Chris was, I’ve Actually been Not that well. Yeah, not very well. Been having a bit of a Are you okay, fine.

so we probably, unless there’s some burning more questions or comments, we are probably gonna pull this to an end and say, yeah, tha thanks very much for coming from this term and I hope you’ll be able to come back next term.

We will have some more fairy tales as well as a lot of hunter gatherer talks and, talks on origins of language and whole variety.

Shakti Lamba as well will be talking about her work, her Indian, work in India.

so there’s gonna be quite a variety. And next term, next term has traditionally been an intensive study of mythology.

Mythology. And we are going to be doing the bird nester.

We are gonna be doing rainbow snake.

We are gonna be doing with Helena from Slovakia.

We’re gonna be doing a specific Slovakian story, which could be related to bird nester.

So, so there will be some more magical myths and fairytales.

Definitely the program for that all.

Well, the first talk is gonna be January the ninth.

So we are looking four weeks from now, I’m gonna do that on how egalitarianism made us human and why Graver and we grow are wrong.

so if you, I can find out about that.

It’s a bit provocative.

and that’s generally the ninth and Chris is gonna do a couple Jerome who had to go home tonight.

He’s gonna do a talk on women’s biggest husband is the moon, the communism emotion of the eng Goku of the Baca women with the a Jangi, the Baca man.

and we also have Ucls, Sali, who’s just done some, wonderful work on multiple caregiving for Bayaka, children.

So Baca infants have at least three carers who as soon as they cry will come and, um support those infants.

so that there, there’s several, excellent talks there and I, I’ll put up details for those on the event right in the next few days.

So you’ll soon find out if you, if you, wanna find out more.

Otherwise it’s just, Well, nobody get in the pub.

I reckon. I’ll, I’ll Have a very quick one. I think We not have a Christmas drink, so let’s very Quick Christmas drink.

We, we’d go to the Tavistock Hotel, which is down at the, bottom of Taza Tavistock Square.

It’s just around the corner. so anyone who’s wants to join us.

Otherwise, I hope you have a lovely holiday and lovely solstice, and that this has put you in the mood for some partying and magical nights.

Thanks everyone for the help, the story. Yes, Thank you very much.