Bess Livings
Alchemy is a topic I know virtually nothing about (unless you count Harry Potter, explained below), but a couple posts on other blogs have introduced me to a completely new way of thinking about/interpreting fairy tales.
A while back,
Spinning Straw into Gold provided a link to this article,
Snow White and the Philosopher's Stone, by John Patrick Pazdziora, which sheds light on the color symbolism in Snow White. Christie and her readers go on in the comments to consider the colors in Little Red Riding Hood as alchemical as well. From the article:
Arthur Rackham
"If you’ve read
Harry Potter, you’ve encountered a great example of
literary alchemy, though the tradition is hundreds of years old. Here’s a crash
introduction.* Each color represents a different phase of the alchemical
process, or Great Work as the alchemists called it. Black signifies the
nigredo stage, where the lead or base metal is burned, to remove its
impurities. White is the second stage,
albedo, where the purified matter
is washed repeatedly to transmute it into the final stage,
rubedo,
signified by (you guessed it) red and gold. The beginning of the
rubedo
is signified by the blossoming of streak of red on the white metal; the metal is
put into a container, symbolised by burial or interment in a coffin, until the
transmutation is complete. The elements in the metal that were in
opposition—fluid and solid, female and male, life and death, and so on—become
reconciled; this is called the alchemical marriage."
Eleanor Vere Boyle
Recently, reader Kelli Orazi of
The Middle Page wrote an
excellent post which looked at Beauty and the Beast as a potential alchemical tale.
As Christie and Kelli point out, this was not necesssarily the author's intentions when writing the tales, but something to consider, especially when looking at earlier versions of fairy tales. It would certainly help to explain why the colors black, white, red, and gold are so prevalent across stories from multiple cultures.
Thanks for pointing me to Kelly's excellent essay.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading my post and mentioning it! I'm so glad to have sparked your (already quite knowledgable and imaginative) mind!
ReplyDeleteKelly-any time!
ReplyDeleteHey! I (very stupidly) changed the url of my blog and wanted to update you so that your readers don't get a dead link. The url for my alchemical look into the Beauty and the Beast is http://the-middle-page.blogspot.com/2013/02/alchemical-framework-and-imagery-in.html
ReplyDelete(and my url for my site is http://the-middle-page.blogspot.com)
Thanks!
Thanks! Glad you thought to update that!
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