An uncomfortable parallel

As I read the chapter analyzing the tale of Bluebeard in WWRWW, my mind drew an uncomfortable parallel between the Bluebeard scenario and the Garden of Eden mythos.

The two stories have one thing in common: an external power who states a rule that invites the rule being broken. Its a classic tale: "You can do whatever you want. Except this."

And always, the response of the characters given the direction is to do exactly what they were told not to do. Its the classic story of curiosity killed the cat, yet Dr. Estes interprets the symbols in the story of Bluebeard differently.

"The problem posed in the Bluebeard tale is that rather than empowering the light of the young feminine forces of the psyche, he is instead filled with hatred and desires to kill the lights of the psyche." (p. 45)

That there is the main difference between Bluebeard and Elohim (remember that every time I think of that word as the name of God that I necessarily draw on the translation which includes Mother God with Father God--Elohim is not singular). In the Garden of Eden, the purpose of the ultimatum is not to destroy the psyche but to give the psyche the opportunity to move out of naivete and into awareness and knowledge.


Why it had to be structured as a transgression, I still don't understand. I have to believe though that an Eternally Loving God would not seek to destroy their creation through threatening them with death for seeking that which is "virtuous, lovely or of good report or praiseworthy." While the process of maturity and gaining awareness necessarily required the people of the world to experience death as part of the natural order, the end goal in the whole scenario is to "bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of people"--"black and white, bond and free, male and female."


Bluebeard is a predator yet Elohim (our Father and Mother in Heaven) act as gatekeepers who initiate us into an epic journey leading to eternity and the realization of our fullest-selves--godhood, in fact.

In the story of Bluebeard, the older sister plays the role of Eve, awakening her naive counterpart (the wife and Adam respectively) to the danger of staying naive and unknowing of the true nature of the situation in which they find themselves. In this way, Eve portrays the Wild Woman.

"Whatever dilemma [the pysche] finds [itself] in, the voices of the older sister in [the] psyche urge [one] to consciousness and to be wise in [ones] choices. They represent those voices in the back of the mind that whisper the truths that [one] may wish to [seek]" (p.49-50) in order to escape the false Paradise Found and to find the true Paradise available to the wise and aware.

As one continues the epic journey to the celestial kingdom, the people of the world are called to "re-surface from their naivete" and as they do so, "they draw with them and to themselves something unexplored." Life, you could say. Eve through her choice made in Eden  is now a wiser woman who draws an internal masculine energy to her aid (p. 63) which Dr. Estes defines as the Jungian concept of the animus.

The author goes on to say,

"This psychic figure is particularly valuable because it is invested with qualities that are traditionally bred out of women, aggression being one of the more common...The stronger and more integrally vast the animus (think of the animus as a bridge) the more able, easily and with style the [person] manifests ones' ideas and ones' creative work in the outer world in a concrete way. A [person] with a poorly defined animus has lots of ideas and thoughts but is unable to manifest them in the outer world. One always stops short of the organization or implementation of ones' wonderful images."

This can go in two different ways, so first I will take it here:

In the Garden of Eden, Eve is now established as the masculine energy of the story and Adam the young maiden filled with naivete who, one could say, needs "someone older and wiser telling [him] what to do."

Which then, kind of turns on the whole Eve hearkening covenant on its head, doesn't it? If you follow, what I am saying is this: when Eve covenants to listen to the counsels of her husband Adam, it is actually the male, older, wiser part of oneself who is hearkening to the newly aware stereotypical maiden who is discovering the world, making innovative inferences to understand the world in novel and fresh ways. Thus, in the temple one can choose to believe in a scenario where the male energy hearkens to female energy just as one sees the female hearken to the male. Perhaps there is reciprocity where people have struggled to find it, after all.

I will have to come back to get to the other part. Its not as cool as the first, let me tell you.