The Pure Fool

 

This post sprang from watching a 'Children's Tale' called Ash-Lad in the Hall of the Mountain-King which was a breath of fresh air to watch in such an age of degeneracy. More than a 'Children's Tale' it is Folklore, even more, it is Eternal Myth, and it served to awaken these ideas by watching it. I have watched it only once, so there may be errors in some of what is to come, but I shall try to keep this as short as possible, since the tale needs telling first. 

A family of father and three children lived in a wooden house deep in the woods; the youngest of the three children was rather a simpleton or fool, and whatever he did seemed to mess everything up. In a large palace nearby lived a beautiful Princess who was coming up to her eighteenth birthday; however, should she not wed by the time she was eighteen the legend held that she would be taken by a troll - The Mountain King - who lived in a vast hall in the mountains. Her father got for her a suitor whom she did not wish to wed. 

From thence the plot unfolds, for the Princess reaches eighteen and is taken by the Mountain King - the troll - and imprisoned in a cave deep in the mountain. There she must be forced to marry the Mountain King and be his slave forever. Meanwhile, the suitor picked by the King, together with three comrades, rides into the forest to look for the Princess, since the King has offered a massive reward for the one who frees here from the Troll. They come across the log-cabin and thus the family find out about the Princess. The youngest son, inside the cabin, starts to mess around in mock sword-play, knocking over a lamp in the process. This causes a fire and the whole cabin is destroyed! The father is furious, as may be expected, and tells the young son to leave; he then tells the other two brothers that they must quest to seek the Princess and bring her back to the King to get the reward, the only means to rebuild the burnt-out house. 

Now, the younger brother had already come across the Princess and fell in love with her; he caught up with his two brothers and they went along together for a while. Then the youngest son heard a cry of distress, which his brothers ignored and carried on, so he went to find out the cause of this. He came across an Old Crone whose long nose had stuck in a tree-stump; he widened the gap so that she could get her nose loose. (The sillier the tale the more it is suited to the minds of the young - or others for that matter.) Finding her, of course, was no accident, for she told him that in order to free the Princess he must slay the Troll, but this can only be done with a Magical Sword that lay in a distant lake. She gave to him a map, which turned out to be blank; to use the map it was necessary to ask politely for the place one wished to go - and this, of course, worked. He set off again and found his two brothers.

Before I carry on, here is the best time to recall one of the most important ideas in the story. The youngest son, throughout the long journey, kept finding seemingly useless objects and picking them up, thus ridiculed by his brothers. These were (as far as I recall) - a broken mirror, a metal helmet, a bear-skin, and a ball of twine. In fact, these seemingly useless objects all have a purpose in his quest - the metal helmet serves as a cooking-pot, the bear-skin serves him when he attacks the suitor and his comrades later, the ball of twine serves him when he enters the labyrinth in the mountain, to get out again, and the broken mirror serves him when he has to face the Troll. 

His brothers come across an enchanted piece of the forest where three beautiful maidens give them food and drink; the young son also comes into this place, but he can see through the deception, since they are Three Hags whose food is maggoty and stale, but looks delightful. To cut this short, the young son is split from his brothers and find the Magical Sword; they find the mountain and the Princess imprisoned inside. The young son fights with the Troll, who knocks the Magical Sword from his hand, which then falls across the edge of the mountain. Noting that the Sun has started to rise, he takes the broken mirror and reflects the Light of the Sun onto the Troll, who is turned to stone. The Princess is taken back to her father who gives the reward, from which the father's house is rebuilt. The young son is united with the Princess and they live happily ever after....

We can see from this that it has for its origins the Aryan Myth of the Sun & Light (Princess) being taken and hidden in a Mountain Cave (Darkness). The Folk-Hero or Sun-Hero (The Fool) takes up the Quest for the Hidden Light, slays the 'Troll' (Powers of Darkness) and releases the Princess (The Divine Light of the Sun). 

(THE PURE FOOL)

Contrary to the usual train of thought the Folk-Hero is often not the macho-hero but is a fool or simpleton, the following being three examples -

• Amlodh - Hamlet.
• Parsifal.
• William Tell ('Tell' comes from 'Tol' meaning 'fool' or 'simpleton'. 

The above story is an Archetypal Myth of The Fool; we need now to look at Norse Mythology and Germanic Mythology to trace this theme further. If we trace the 'Folk-Hero' who slays the 'Monster' (Troll or Serpent) this takes us back to Thor. So let us look at the myths that concern Thor -

• When the dwarf Brock was making Thor's Hammer he was stung by Loki who assumed the shape of a gadfly. The shaft of the hammer was thus made too short. Some feel that this is a clever dig at the 'phallic' nature of Thor's Hammer.
• On his journey to Utgard with Loki, Thor slays his goats and revives them magically, but the sly Loki entices Thialfi to break the bone of one of them to eat the marrow - thus one of Thor's Goats is lame! Thor and Loki sleep in a Giant's Glove which they think is a house. This giant, Skrymir, slept and his snoring kept Thor awake, to which the Thunder-God dealt him three mighty blows, which only made the giant ask if a leaf had fallen upon him. 
• In the hall of Utgard-Loki Thor is seemingly made to look a fool when he is matched against three opponents, though these are Wildfire, drinking from a horn whose other end was the ocean, trying to lift a 'cat' which was the Midgard Serpent, and Old Age. 
• When Thor's Hammer was stolen he dressed as a woman to regain it from the Giants. 

From these examples, and others we can find within Norse Mythology, Thor is sometimes portrayed as being rather 'foolish', or seeming to be foolish. Like the young son in the tale above, although he appears to be a 'fool' in fact he is very wise indeed. We can see this in the tale where every one of the seemingly useless objects has some purpose in his quest to find the Princess. His 'foolish' actions seem to harm, but underlying this is the theme that everything turns out right in the end. In the Norse Myths it is Loki that causes the problems, and Thor that sets them right. This seems to show that the original tale of 'The Fool' has been broken into two different figures - Loki and Thor. That this does link to Thor seems to be clear when we compare him with the Greek Hero, Hercules; Hercules wantonly slays his own wide and children in a most foolish act. 

The 'saviour' is always the man dressed in 'motley garb'; he is either The Clown or The Harlequin, two aspects of 'The Fool'. The Harlequin is more related to Woden as the Wild Hunter-God. But we see here the link between Thor and 'The Fool', since he is the Folk-Hero. The term 'fool' stems from the Latin follis which means 'wind-bag', and folles meaning 'puffed cheeks'; hence the 'raspberry' blown by the Jester. The Fool is 'silly', a word derived from the Germanic selig meaning 'holy' or 'blessed'. The one thing that stands out is that the 'saviour' is a madman, a fool, is 'possessed', is 'The Innocent Fool'. 

The Long Man of Wilmington is the 'April Fool'; this is the force that we all feel with the advent of the Spring, a wantonness and irresponsibility, something 'childlike' in its essence. At this time the Sun enters Aries the Ram. 'The Fool' is 'Pure Being' and this force - The Cosmic Joker - arises at the end of a Cycle of the Ages as Old Chaos (The Void) returns. He is the Be-Ginn-Ing and the End - the First and the Last, and yet he is Number 0. He is 'The Hooded Man', for Robin Hood dresses in Lincoln Green, he is the 'Green Man'; the Long Man was once called 'The Green Man'. 

Wid-Ar is the Silent God since he is Pure Being, an aspect of Pure No-Thing-Ness; the unformulated impulse takes place in The Silence - an absence of vibration and movement - Ginnungagap. This is above The Abyss where the opposites are united. Wid-Ar the Silent waits his time to manifest as Wid-Ar the Avenger - the 'Saviour of the World'. Ginn is the Jester or Fool - the Cosmic Joker. This is why the name Wid-Ar stems from one meaning 'wide' since this is the 'Wide-Land' spoken of in Aryan Lore - as high state of consciousness. AR is the Black Sun, the Source of Everything. AR - VAR - ALDA. 

The Silent God is called Hoor-par-Kraat (Egypt) or Harpocrates (Greece), and he is 'Horus the Child' seen above with his finger on the bottom lip of his mouth. This is where the gesture of the finger placed over the mouth (shhhh) as a sign to keep silent. Horus, like Wid-Ar is the Son of the Sun, and both are Avenging Gods. The father of Horus (Osiris) is slain by his brother (Set) and Horus sets out to avenge this death by slaying Set. This is the tale of 'The Fool' - Hamlet. The Egyptian Heru  is the basis of the name 'Horus'. 'Heru' is related to the word 'Arya'. He is silent because he has not uttered The Word.