Hazel Trees and Glass Slippers

Hello and happy full moon! My first real post on my blog to fulfill a boast I made at our Thanksgiving sumbel. I have a lot of things on my mind, but I thought I would start on one of the most famous stories we know in the west. Cinderella. This story is so powerful and filled with an immense amount of wisdom for the Heathen woman we just need to look for it, and think about it.

There are 2 popular versions of the story one from Grimm and one from Perrault. Both contain a similar story, but with changes to minor details. Here are the links to both versions you can read with a good cup of gingerbread spiced coffee which I am drinking now.

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/perrault06.html
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm021.html

Being of cinder is more than representing a life of service, but a life of mourning. We can see Cinderella mourning the loss of her mother. She mourns the loss of her station in life. She mourns a father who is unavailable and unloving. Grimm brings this home as he said she ‘wept and prayed’. I think of the times when I was in the ashes. Times when all I could do was weep and pray. Some spend their lives in this state. In the tale Cinderella asks for her father “break off for me the first twig that brushes against your hat on your way home." This action is what sets everything in motion. It is this request that propels her into action. As in life usually it is one simple action or decision that changes the course of our lives. Cinderella takes action by planting the twig, and she changes her life.

When faced with the times of the cinder, the times when life is so overwhelming the story teaches Heathen women we can make a difference. There is nothing too bad that we cannot change. There is nothing so mournful we cannot overcome. If we allow ourselves to sit in the cinder nothing good will ever come to us.

The tree she plants turns out to be the powerful Hazel tree. When I read that for the first time I think my head spun around. Holy crap she planted a Hazel tree!!! A reaffirmation these stories germinated from our own Heathen culture. To Celtic Irish the Hazel & nut were regarded as symbols of wisdom and knowledge. And like other nuts there existed the tradition of procreation and fertility. It is also said hazelnuts are bringers of good luck. I have also read where Irish immigrants immigrating to Vinland carried hazel twigs in their pockets for luck and protection. And it is with this rich back drop we are presented with the Hazel tree in the story.

Cinderella goes to the tree asking for help. For us we recognize exactly what she is doing here. The tree is part of her ancestral worship. And it is this tree that gives her the necessary skills to do what has to be done. The idea of dresses falling from the tree is so magical, but I like to look at things from a pragmatic point of view. If the tree is ancestral knowledge then she would have been shown the way to rise above her current situation. “Borrowing” a dress or as in the movie Ever After it is her rightful dress she puts on again. However she got the dresses, magic, stealing or family inheritance the fact of the mater is the same; she disobeyed her step mother. She was told not do something and that is exactly what she did. That is a powerful lesson for women, following orders is not going to get us what we desire in life. Especially when those orders are against our nature or against our station in life.

For Cinderella to be a capable mother she needed to go through this period in her life. I love when reading commentary about this story sometime we forget this is not a tale of rags to riches. This is a tale of a woman taking her rightful birth place. She takes action when it appears as if no action could be taken. As the cliché is born out we are our deeds.

Moving through the story Grimm gives us a shocking glimpse into the thought process of the family. The shoe is taken and given for the ladies of the household to try on. The first step sister cuts off her big toe as her mother says to her “When you are queen you will no longer have to go on foot." The next sister cuts off her heel and the mother says the same thing to her.

This tale seems shocking at first blush, but the more I thought about it the less shocking it became as I look at what women in our society do to make themselves eligible for marriage. Plastic surgery, cosmetics tested on animals, cosmetics that cause deliberate imbalances to our hormones, starvation and overall plain torture. Cinderella just was. Beautiful inside and out. Perrault shows us this in her kindness in dealing with her stepsisters.

I picked up a copy of Rosemary Gladstar’s book on beauty remedies. The preface of her book is very interesting as she refers to the Greek goddess Cosmeos. I find her description similar to our Idunna. A natural sense of beauty balance and harmony. These goddesses teach us to accept our innate beauty, not changing who we are to fit in. Through the goddesses or our Disir we are can learn how to be beautiful in our own way. We are told in this society you have to look a certain way to be beautiful. These rules we should challenge and look at every woman as holding beauty in her own way.

On the new moon 2 months ago I got an organic facial. The woman giving the facial asked me your pores are so clean what do you use? I am very careful about what I put on my body and in my body. I make my own face wash which is the best I have ever used in my life. Someone randomly told me this recipe at a women’s conference I was at. It is:
1 Part Raw Honey
1 Part Castille soap
1 Part Rose Water
I am about out of my first batch. With the second batch I am going to add some essential oils to make it smell better and provide some additional health benefits to my skin. Here is a good example of how beauty can be simple, joyous and non lethal to our bodies and the earth.

This simple familiar story teaches us so many things I could go on, but won’t. Heathenry is rich with real world examples that are applicable for women today. We need to search them out. These stories are our birth right, love them, live them, cherish them.