Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind. We're pursue wisdom on the past between
primary second day worlds. I'm your host, Andrew Snyder, and I am
truly grateful for your company. All Right, So it's been a little while
sintil last episode. It seems that I overestimated the amount of time that would
have in this new season of my life. But my wife and I have
worked together to coordinate to schedule, and so hopefully I'll be able to do
a little bit better with consistently posting new content for you soon. But for
now, I'm including one of my Grim episodes, which comes from a now
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for now I give you my reading and some reflections on the grim tail of
Little red riding Hood. Once upon a time, there was a dear little
girl who was loved by everyone who looked at her, but most of all
by her grandmother, and there was nothing that she would not have given to
the child. Once she gave her a little riding hood of red velvet,
which suited her so well that she would never wear anything else, so she
was always called Little Red riding Hood. One day her mother said to her,
come, little Red riding Hood, here's a piece of cake and a
bottle of wine. Take them to your grandmother. She is ill and weak,
and they will do her good. Set out before it gets hot.
And when you're going, walk nicely and quietly, and do not run off
the path, or you may fall and break the bottle, and then your
grandmother will get nothing. And when you go into a room, don't forget
to say good morning, and don't peep into every corner before you do it.
I will take great care, said Little Red riding Hood to her mother,
and gave her hand on it. The grandmother lived out in the wood
half a league from the village, and just as the Little Red riding could
enter the wood, a wolf met her. Red riding Hood did not know
what a wicked creature he was, and was not at all afraid of him.
Good day, Little Red riding Hood said, he thank you kindly.
Wolf with her away, so early, little Red riding Hood to my grandmother's
what have you got in your apron cake and wine? Yesterday was baking day,
So poor sick grandmother is to have something good to make her stronger.
Oh, and where does your grandmother live, Little Red riding Hood? A
good quarter of a league farther in the wood. The house stands under the
three large oak trees. The nut trees are just below. You surely must
know, it, replied the little Red riding Hood. The wolf thought to
himself, what a tender young creature, What a nice, plump mouthful.
She will be better to eat than the old woman. I must act craftily
so as to catch both. So he walked for a short time by the
side of the little Red riding Hood, and then he said, see,
little Red riding Hood, how pretty the flowers are about here? Why do
you not look round? I believe too that you will not hear how sweetly
the little birds are singing. You walk gravely along, as if you were
going to school, while everything else out here in the wood is merry.
Little Red riding Hood raised her eyes, and when she saw the sunbeams dancing
here and there through the trees, and pretty flowers growing everywhere, she thought,
supposed to take grandmother fresh nosegay. That would please her too. It
is so early in the day that I shall still get there in good time.
So she ran from the path into the woods to look for flowers,
and whenever she had picked one, she fancied that she saw a still prettier
one farther on, and ran after it, and so got deeper and deeper
into the wood. Meanwhile, the wolf ranch straight to the grandmother's house and
knocked at the door. Little Red riding Hood replied the wolf she had bringing
cake and wine. Open the door, lift the latch, called the grandmother,
I am too weak and cannot get up. The wolf lifted the latch,
the door sprang open, and without saying a word, he went straight
to the grandmother's bed and devoured her. Then he put on her clothes,
dressed himself in her cap, laid himself in bed, and drew the curtains.
Little Red riding Hood, however, had been running about picking flowers,
and when she had gathered so many that she could carry no more, she
remembered her grandmother and set out on the way to her. She was surprised
to find the cottage door standing open, and when she went into the room,
she had such a strange feeling that she said to herself, oh,
dear, how uneasy I feel to day? And at other times. I
liked being with my grandmother so much. She called out good good morning,
but received no answer. So she went out to the bed and drew back
the curtains. There lay her grandmother, with her cap pull far over her
face and looking very strange. Oh, grandmother, she said, what big
ears you have? All the better to hear you with my child, was
the reply. But grand mother, what big eyes you have, she said,
All the better to see you with, my dear. But grandmother,
what large hands you have, All the better to hug you with. Oh,
but grandmother, what a terrible big mouth you have? All the better
to eat you with. And scarcely had the wolf said this, than with
one bound he was out of the bed and swallowed up red riding hood.
When the wolf had a piece's appetite, he laid down in the bed,
fell asleep, and began to snore very loudly. The huntsman was just passing
the house and thought to himself, how the old woman is snoring. I
must just see if she wants anything. So he went to the room,
and when he came to the bed, he saw that the wolf was lying
in it. Do I find you here, you old sinner? He said?
I have long sought you. But just as he was going to fire
at him, it occurred to him that the wolf might have devoured the grandmother,
and that she might still be saved. So he did not fire,
but took a pair of scissors and began to cut open the stomach of the
sleeping wolf. When he had made two snips, he saw little Red riding
Hood shining. And then he made two snips more, and the little girl
sprang out, crying, Ah, how frightened I had been, how dark
it was inside. After that, the aged grandmother came out alive, also,
but scarcely able to breathe. Red riding Hood, however, quickly fetched
great stones with which they filled the wolf's belly, And when he awoke,
he wanted to run away, but the stones were so heavy that he collapsed
at once and fell dead. Then all three were delighted. The huntsman drew
off the wolfskin and went home with it. The grandmother ate the cake and
drank the wine which Red Riding Hood had brought and revived. But Red Riding
Hood thought to herself, as long as I live, I will never leave
the path by myself to run into the wood. When my mother has forbidden
me to do so. It is also related that once, when Red Riding
Hood was again taking cakes to the old grandmother, another wolf spoke to her
and tried to entice her from the path. Red riding Hood, however,
was on her guard and went straight forward on her way and told her grandmother
that she had met the wolf, and that he had said good morning to
her, but with such a wicked look in his eyes that if they had
not been on the public road, she was certain he would have eaten her
up. Well, said the grandmother, we will shut the door so that
he cannot come in. Soon afterward, the wolf knocked and cried opened the
door, grandmother, I am little Red Riding Hood, and I am bringing
you some cakes. But they did not speak or open the door. So
the graybeard stole twice or thrice round the house, and at last jumped on
the roof, intending to wait until Red Riding Hood went home in the evening,
and then to steal after her and devour her in the darkness. But
the grandmother saw wolves in his thoughts. In front of the house was a
great stone trough, so she said to the child, take the pail.
Red Riding Hood, I made some sausages yesterday to carry the water in which
I boiled them to the trough. Red riding Hood carried until the great trough
was quite full. Then the smell of the sausages reached the wolf, and
he sniffed and peeped down, and at last rushed out his neck so far
that he could no longer his footing, and began to slip and slip down
from the roof straight into the great trough, and was drowned. But Red
riding Hood went joyously home, and no one ever did any harm to her
again. Okay, so the chief characters in the story are little Red riding
Hood, the grandmother, the wolf, and eventually the hunter. So starting
with Red, now she's a young girl loved by all. She obviously symbolizes
innocence, which, to be clear, it is not the same as being
virtuous true innocence. It's a kind of pre moral naivete. Virtue, on
the other hand, is chosen in conscious opposition to evil, to immorality.
So the mother is really not doing her job appropriately when she sent her little
girl out into the forest. And remember that the force is a classic symbol
of the chaotic and the unknown. It's uncultivated, it's undomesticated, it's unexplored
territory. Okay, So this is the kid sent off to college or honestly
even public school without being taught how to engage in moral reasoning. And this
is basically non debatable that in each of these scenarios we're dealing with a kid
being sent right into the mouth of a wolf. That are being sent into
the forest without being taught how to navigate up properly. Okay, So the
girl's given a red velvet hood. Okay, why red? Well, Red
is sometimes a symbol of blood, such as with sacrifice or courage. It's
also sometimes a symbol of passion and even sexuality, and that certainly might be
a theme at play here beneath the surface. But Red goes out into the
woods to visit her grandmother and she's met by the wolf. We're told that
she doesn't know how wicked the wolf is, and so she doesn't properly fear
him. And again she's innocent, and in this context that means she's naive.
She doesn't notice that the wolf is engaging in some classic predatory behavior.
He's coming beside her as a friend, he's digging into her life and her
goals, and he's contemplating how he can bend those goals in service to his
aims. To this extent, he doesn't mind preying on the young and the
elderly, which are typically the most vulnerable groups of people. So now the
wolf is going to speed ahead that he might devour the grandmother and then make
use of Red's compassion to feed his hunger. You see, this is what
makes the wolf so diabolical. He takes her concern for others and he's going
to make sure that he capitalizes on it for his own sake. And this
is what predators do. They get involved in the lives of their prey in
such a way that in the end their prey becomes willingly victimized. Okay,
so you know what happens next. The wolf runs ahead, he devours the
grandmother, and then Red finally makes it and checks things out. She discovers
that the wolf is masquerading as her grandmother because again he wants to relate to
her from a position of trust. Now, of course, the lesson to
be gained here is certainly not that you shouldn't trust anyone. The lesson here
is that we need some discern him. We need wisdom, We need to
know how wolves think, and we need to recognize that virtue is ultimately superior
to childish innocent. It's virtue that enables us to recognize the wolf into combat
it appropriately, at the very least to avoid it. Innocence will not grant
us this, and so of course we need to trust people worth trusting.
But it is also imperative that we don't just naively and trust ourselves to a
wolf. And so when you start to notice that someone you thought was a
friend has big teeth, hands, ears, and eyes, well that's someone
that you need to evict from your inner circle immediately, because I mean,
you show kindness to a wolf and pretty soon you're a shepherd without a flock.
Okay, So read, however, didn't practice this kind of discernment,
and she ends up getting herself eaten. Now, when I first read the
story for this episode, you know, I hadn't read it for quite some
time, and so I admit that I was shocked by the turn of events.
But of course you have to remember that this is a fairy story,
which typically means that there's going to be an unexpected happy turn at some point.
But before that point, the wolf has a full belly, and so
he goes asleep and he begins to snore. Now the huntsman hears the snoring
and decides to check things out. He sees the wolf and he identifies him
as a sinner. Now note that the words sin literally means something like to
miss the mark, and so the wolf is someone who has lost sight of
the proper path. We aren't meant to trick, to deceive, and to
consume others. We're meant to take responsibility for our actions, to live with
integrity, defeat monsters, and share their plunder with the community. Well,
the wolf didn't do any of that. He missed the mark of proper existence,
and now he's going to lose what he unjustly gained. And this is
what happens when you refuse to sacrifice and instead well, instead you do the
opposite of sacrifice, which is something like unjust consumption. See, in sacrifice,
you give up what you recognize never really belonged to you. The opposing
action here would be you unjustly claim what doesn't belong to you. In sacrifice,
you seem to lose something, but then you end up gaining it.
More truly. See lately, I've been spending a lot of time with Guard's
fear and trembling, which is centered around Abraham's sacrifice of his son Isaac.
Now, Kurt Guard makes the point that Abraham wasn't a murderer. You see,
God commanded Abraham to give up his promise son, but God also promised
that he would fulfill his covenantal promises through Isaac. And so Abraham was obedient
into the commandment while maintaining faith in the promise. He went up with Isaac's
and Mount Mariah and believed with the apparently absurd faith that somehow or another,
he would come back to mountain with his son. See. Faithful sacrifice is
the giving up of what never really belonged to you, with the hope that
it will be returned to you anew This is why Christians are always told to
hold this world in open hand, and even more so, to be crucified
to the desires of this world, only to have the world renewed through crucifixion
and return to us more whole, more eternally ours. Alternatively, those who
grasp of finite passing things with a thieving hand will only find that they are
chasing after vapors here today and gone tomorrow. So surely enough the wolf loses
what he gained by sin. He missed the target, and he lost his
bounty as the huntsman cut into his belly and freed Red and her grandmother.
Now worse still for the wolf, Red filled the wolf's belly with so when
and try to run, it collapsed and died. There is a way that
seems good to man and to beast, but it is a path that is
swallowed up in misery and death. Now after this there is an epilogue which
shows the new awareness of evil that Read possesses. Another wolf meets her on
the road and tries to lure her from the path, but she ignores it,
and it's feigned pleasantries, and she continues on the road. And so
we see here that she is a different character than she was at the beginning
of the story. She isn't naive any longer. She recognizes the reality of
malevolence, of evil. She knows that not everyone who wishes her a good
morning truly wishes that her morning be good. She hasn't lost her devotion to
goodness, and her relationship with her grandmother is likely better than ever. So
on one hand, she isn't jaded or bitter, as it is easy to
become when you've suffered at the hand of gross malevolence. I mean, consider,
for an instance, the old stories about werewolves. Now, typically you
become a werewolf because you are once prey. You were bitten by the beast,
and you got away. However, you didn't really get away because you
came to identify with your victimizer. And that is not victory. Fortunately,
that isn't what Red does here. She doesn't become a wolf, but now
she does know how they think she is more discerning, she's more wise.
She's a shrewd as a viper, but innocent as a dove. And she
won't be lured off the straight and narrow road to her proper destination. And
this is so important. She has learned not to be distracted. She has
learned to see the path through the forest. She has learned to navigate the
order amidst the chaos. And so keep your eyes on the proper path and
you'll find your way to where you need to be going. Lose focus and
you'll lose yourself. Lose focus and you will find yourself in the belly of
a wolf, whether it be a foreign beast or one of your own making.
So she continues to her grandmother's house. This new wolf shows up,
but read in her grandmother are ready. This time, they lured it into
a trough where it drowns itself. And of course, remember that while evil
can certainly be intelligent, it isn't very wise, and so it can generally
be outwitted by its own misplaced passions. Pursuing its own hunger, the wolf
grasp at the vapors of satisfaction, leading to its own demise. And this
is the ultimate fate of evil. It can never produce, It only takes
until finally it takes of its own being. It is the consuming abyss that
inevitably consumes itself. If you want a life of despair, then simply follow
your unbridled passions, and I can guarantee that you will find it. But
if you want to know joy, regardless of what might try to take you
off the path, I'm regardless of what malevolence might target you or what suffering
you might endure, you will endure and you will be victorious if you cease
your endless consumption and learn the power of sacrifice, and so I end with
a passage that a quoted from C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. He
writes, give up yourself and you will find your real self. Lose yourself
and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and
favorite wishes every day, and death of your whole body. In the end,
Submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life.
Keep back nothing, Nothing that you have not given away will really be
yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the
dead. Look for yourself and you will find the long run only hatred,
loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ
and you will find him and with him everything else thrown in. Thank you
for joining me on this adventure. I hope to have brand new content for
you soon, but for now, I encourage you to support my efforts by
subscribing to this podcast, as well as the Mythic Mind Humanity's Guild podcasts,
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road to go ever on But that's it for now. Until next time,
I wish you many meaningful roads ahead.