The Hidden Meaning of Snow White (Part I): Colour Symbolism & Alchemy
In his book, The Uses of Enchantment, child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim says that explaining a fairy tale can detract from the story’s enchantment, ‘which depends to a considerable degree on [us] not quite knowing why [we are] delighted by it’.
While I understand this sentiment, my view is more in line with sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who argues that ‘the analysis of a work of art, far from reducing it or destroying it, intensifies the literary experience’.
In any case, in terms of fairy tales, you cannot explain away their enchantment; they are like dreams ‘dreamed in public’ (Carter), in that their symbols are inexhaustible. Despite their simplicity, each symbol has several layers. This means that, as the German poet Schiller once said: ‘Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told to me in my childhood than in the truth that is taught by life’.
It is for this reason that I propose a series dedicated to the hidden meaning of ‘one of the best-known fairy tales’ — Snow White. In each part, I present a different interpretation or a different version of the story. In this first installment, we’ll look at Snow White as an allegory for an alchemical process known as the Magnum Opus (the Great Work).
The ‘Brothers Grimm’ version of the story begins with a queen sewing beside a black window frame, looking out at the snow:
As she worked, gazing out on the snow, she pricked her finger with the needle and three drops of blood fell upon the snow. Seeing how beautiful the red looked on the white snow, the Queen thought to herself, If only I had a child as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as this frame.
Time passed and soon after the Queen had a little daughter, whose skin was as white as snow, cheeks as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony, and therefore she was called Little Snow White.
In the hermetic tradition — which is an esoteric doctrine originating in Ancient Egypt — these three colours represent the three stages of the Great Work; nigredo, (blackening), albedo (whitening), and rubedo, (reddening). In alchemy, aka the ‘hermetic art’, the Great Work is the process of turning the prima materia into the philosopher’s stone (a legendary alchemical substance capable of turning base metals into gold).
However, the Great Work is not just a chemical process, it is also a spiritual journey — a transmutation like lead into gold:
this process [corresponds to] human developmental psychology; the various stages of life from childhood via youth to adulthood — rites de passage. And this progression through three stages is very clearly legible in Little Snow-White [starting] with her name. Little Snow-White — that’s the pristine white of innocence, purity. The black window-frame of ebony — an exotic timber — represents the first level of the alchemistic act, nigredo. Niger: that is the black, the alien, the dark, the night. At the same time, the window-frame is a threshold between interior space and outside world. It is snowing outside, an indication of the albedo phase. The snow begins to enshroud the world. The queen seems to be leaning through the window out of the interior world into this other world. Lost in thought, she begins to muse over the beauty of three drops of blood in the snow. Here there is a lovely analogy to medieval grail legends, such as those by Chretien de Troyes or Wolfram von Eschenbach: three drops of blood in the snow cause the hero to fall into a trance and thus obtain a vision of his beloved (Remo Albert Remo)
As well as colour symbolism, Grimm’s Snow White includes two significant numbers from the hermetic tradition: three and seven. In Hermeticism, there are ‘three parts of the wisdom’ — a phrase referring to the three hermetic disciplines: alchemy, astrology and theurgy. In Snow White, there are three colours, three drops of blood, and three temptations from the evil queen. In terms of the number seven, hermetics believe that there are seven heavens, which correspond to the seven hermetic principles:
1. The principle of mentalism
“The All is Mind; the Universe is Mental.”
2. The principle of correspondence
“As above, so below; as below, so above.”
3. The principle of vibration
“Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates.”
4. The principle of polarity
“Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.”
5. The principle of rhythm
“Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure…
Read more:
https://eejjbair.medium.com/the-hidden-meaning-of-snow-white-part-i-colour-symbolism-alchemy-4b9a2fe14b60
