Jungian Coaching Room Podcast EP2 – Fairytale Magic and Story Medicine

Written by Dana Kabaila

In this episode, the magically soulful Rachael Wildman (@wildmancreates) treated me to a telling of ‘The Miraculous Broth’ (also known as ‘Stone Soup’) on the floor of my apartment. This experience transported me outside of linear time; a welcome slowing and deepening. Rachael’s storytelling crafts were playful and rich, including environmental sounds, audience engagement, playing with pace, character’s voice, responsive laughter, and exclamations. At times, Racheal reveres the story by positioning it as the subject rather than the object. An example of this is the statement that this story “comes to life” in times of scarcity and suffering when there is a distinct need for tenacity and healing.

I was fortunate to grow up with fairytales and enjoy engaging with their whimsy and often cottagecore aesthetic. I reflected on a story beginning shared by Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes in Women Who Run with the Wolves “Once there was, and once there was not…” and how this paradoxical phrase alerts our soul to the story taking place both in the world and between worlds. With these playful invitations to absorb myself in tales, I am so often bowled over by the power and complexity of fairytales when explored through a Jungian lens. Some unspeakable topics, barely graspable concepts, and universal experiences are folded into the forests and talking animals, the youngest child, and the wildest danger.

Rachael shares her admiration for Martin Shaw and his view of stories as our ancient technologies. Rachael also notes that this story has migrated as our own ancestors did, as settler Australians. I drew on the quote “Knowledge is archived in the land (which I refer to as the master archive)” from Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters. I also mentioned the book First Knowledges: Astronomy. These are texts that I highly recommend, as while not all people are living on stolen land, the call for anti-colonial practice is needed everywhere.

The Miraculous Soup offers a range of rich archetypal character exploration. This telling re-dignifies the outcast stranger as a trader of physical and intellectual ideas, and what Rachael refers to as a “visionary fire”. I later comment that this character also has the lofty qualities of air, coming down from the mountain, pausing in town, and then moving on. There are both intersections with and deviations from the trickster character as a symbol of murkiness and ambiguity; A depth draws attention, while evading definition. The curmudgeon character is also explored through the Rider-Waite tarot deck of the 4 of pentacles (stagnant as movement might cause the coins to roll away), the hermit, and the 7 of swords (ambiguous as we do not know who this character is serving). He is re-dignified with the name Ernie and the possession of the needed bowls and spoons. This character could be seen as a counterpoint to the wanderer, as one who grounds and provides the cynicism needed to contain miracles.

Listening back, I wondered about the last-minute additions to a story as possible unconscious contributions – our own ingredients of the Magnum Opus. This included the dog character bestowed with as a border collie breed and the implication of rounding up a herd. We note that Marie Louise von Franz’s work around the animals is symbolic of our instincts. Also, the tender uttering of “Oh love” at the start of the David White poem, Lough Inagh:
There is a door
beneath everything
we’ll walk right by
if we don’t stop to look
with our troubled hearts
and a loving eye.

We conclude with sharing some sister (or perhaps cousin) stories: For a cheerful uplifting ‘Bone Button Borscht’ and for a devastating resonance with the archetype of The Orphan ‘Warming the Stone Child’. Also, a huge range of tales is shared by Michael Meade.

If you would like to listen to the episode, you can do so here. Please do share, like, and subscribe. I invite you to email me with any questions or reflections at dana.kabaila@iajcc.org.

Our next episode, “Returning Death to Community,” navigates the reclaiming of end-of-life and funereal practices.