Cinderella is a NECROMANCER | Healing Childhood Maltreatment

Cinderella is classified as ATU 510A and has variations all over the world. It’s not just a Disney movie based on Brother’s Grimm, it’s found in Finland to Sardinia, from Slovakia to Japan, from India to North American First Nations, from Chile to Egypt, from Namibia to South Africa. 

So what is the Cinderella folktale type? In this story, a young woman is mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters, and forced to live in the ash as a servant. When they all go to a ball or to church, they give Cinderella an impossible task which she manages to accomplish with the help of birds. Then she gets beautiful clothing from either a supernatural being or a tree that grows on the grave of her mother–and this is where the title of this video comes from, because in the Grimm’s version, Cinderella actually recites a magic verse that summons the spirit of her dead mother, who bestows a beautiful dress on her. So yeah, Cinderella is a Necromancer. Metal AF. I wish Disney had stuck with this version. Bippity-boppity-BOO. 

Anyway, Cinderella next goes to the ball unknown to the others and a prince falls in love with her but she has to leave early. This happens on the next evening but on the third evening she dops a shoe. The prince says he will marry only the woman whom the shoe fits, and the stepsisters cut pieces of their feet to fit the shoes, but the birds call attention to this lie, and Cinderella is ordered to put the shoe on, and because it fits, of course, she gets the prince.

Cinderella - Deeper Meaning

So what’s this story REALLY about? Remember, folktales have very special qualities because they are told, in some cases, over literally thousands of years, which means hundreds and hundreds of retellings. Folklorists have noted that folktales have a peculiar quality of being “sticky” and resist changes made to them once they settle into a given form like this one. But why is that? Well, if you’re new to this channel, you’re in for a treat, because there’s about a zillion videos where I get into this very interesting phenomenon, first identified by Carl Jung and his followers, particularly Marie-Louise von Franz, and subsequently bolstered by newer findings in metaphor theory, spontaneous thought, evolutionary psychology, and all kinds of other stuff. You can check out the links on my website for my academic writings on this.

But if you’re just here to vibe, welcome aboard–and lets pick apart what Cinderella is all about. See, here we have like other folktales, a given situation which is of universal significance, and the folktale provides the answer to it, provided you understand that the fantastical elements in particular are symbolic of inner psychological dynamics. Therefore, the witch in Hansel and Gretel is a malicious negative mother-complex, the Prince is often the Animus figure leading to the alchemical wedding of Hermetic tradition, so forth. But without getting too deep into the weeds with all that, you can see here that Cinderella is about childhood maltreatment, specifically from social-kin and family complexities from non-biological family members, i.e., step-sisters and step-mother. This is pretty consistent in this folktale, unlike, say Snow White, where sometimes the evil step-mother is actually the mother (yikes). But where Snow White is about what happens when mother-daughter relationships are soured by jealousy and bitterness, Cinderella is more about simply being bullied by a step-mother and step-sisters. So it dives into damaged female bonding that is supposed to happen in healthy families, treating one sibling as the whipping boy as it were. 

Hansel and Gretel, by contrast, is about childhood neglect. So you see many of these folktales describe universal situations of great emotional challenge for children and young adults, and the stories then sneakily provide the solution to them, if only in allegorical form. The key element here is the “necromancy” of Cinderella, that is, cueing into her “true” mother, i.e., the archetypal mother, whether it is via her dead spirit, or a “fairy godmother”, the emphasis being on the “god” part. A fairy godmother is depicted in Disney as a kindly and slightly doddering old woman with a wand and a silly song, but this character is actually incredibly powerful. The critical piece here, the essence of all these variations, in any case, is the fact that she is connecting with an imaginal mother, one which can provide the needed nurturing and love. This leads to Cinderella getting a “dress”, which is a symbol for a powerful persona complex. Confident, beautiful, arresting, and most of all unknown--i.e., she temporarily lets go of her previous self which is identified with the ashes and cinders of servanthood. She lets herself be as beautiful as a princess. Bolstered by her “true” mother, and by trusting in her own instinctive voices–represented by the birds, and this is a very common element you see not only in folktales but in dreams. Only with the hard work of accepting these helpers from outside her egoic self, does she gain the confidence to shine to her full potential despite her mistreatment and damage to her self-worth. 

Transcending Maltreatment

But this is no mere charade. She is being authentic as well, which is what the shoe is all about. The shoe signifies her authenticity within this new persona, which, through the dancing with the prince, is finally revealed to the world to be real. No one else can fit into her shoes, thought the step-sisters try through procrustean means unsuccessfully. These step-sisters can be seen as negative complexes filled with thoughts of self-doubt, self-deprecation, and generally the internalizing of the emotional abuse Cinderella suffers. But they are not HER. They are not authentic nor true. They can never fill in the shoes of the true Cinderella, and they represent the false self. Once she comes out of hiding–another key detail–she is revealed to be the beauty all previously adored, and the kingdom, village, tribe, or whatever are all surprised to learn that Cinderella is and always was the universally admired mysterious lady at the ball, church, or gathering. 

Incredible, isn’t it? Once you see what the symbolism is really about here. And there are male versions of this too, Beowulf is one example, of a youth who is low-rated for being an “ash lad” who hangs around the hearth instead of going forth to do great deeds. In the male version its his own cowardice that is holding him back. But here we see the solution provided by the folktale is beautiful, healing, and quite amazing too, considering how in modern life we tend to dismiss folktales as children’s fancies, “mere escapism”, or silly nonsense. But here at the imaginarium, of course, we know better don’t we? We realize the amazing power of folktales and the ancient truths they contain. Because of the way oral traditions “filter” stories down to only those most “sticky” i.e., emotionally resonant elements, we get tales that contain concentrated wisdom in symbol and image dealing with universal problems spanning all cultures and times.

So I hope you liked that. If you want to see what my own mythic storytelling is like, you can check out my debut novel King of the Forgotten Darkness, the first book in the Raven’s Tale series.  It’s a grown up Narnia meets Pan’s Labyrinth:

KOTFD

See ya next time.

EG