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Thursday 5 September 2013

Fairytale Grimoire: Goldilocks



Hello there. Welcome to the Fairytale Grimoire and read through carefully without burning the paper. I want to educate you on a journey of magic and stories. You know the popular fairy tales? These are just about them, and digging deeper to find the hidden nuggets and crystals within these folktale legends, stories of fantasy and myths. Perhaps you might want to skip? Fine if you do.

This is about "Goldilocks" most well known from the story "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." I could introduce you to the main character herself and make it easier or just narrate it?

An outline of the story:

Goldilocks is the name of a girl with full golden hair. She finds herself lost in the woods, and discovers a house. When no one answers to her knocks, she discovers that the door is open and she enters. She finds three bowls of porridge and so hungry that she tastes one. The biggest one. It's too hot. She tastes the porridge from the middle sized bowl. It's cold. She tastes the porridge from the smaller bowl and it's yummy so she eats it all. She wants to sit down after finding three chairs. She goes to the biggest chair and finds it too high. She doesn't stay sat on the middle sized chair because it's too soft. Yet she goes to sit on the smaller chair and breaks it. Upstairs to check out the beds, she wants to go to sleep. She tries laying on the largest bed and it's too hard. The medium bed is too lumpy. The smaller bed is just right and she snoozes off. While asleep, three bears return to their home after being out in the woods. They notice someone's been eating their porridge, and someone's been sitting in their chairs but the little bear cries because the smaller chair was broken and someone's gobbled up the little bear's porridge. The bears go upstairs to look for the culprit. They find Goldilocks asleep, then they wake her up. She flees from the house and is never seen again.

Puzzles:

As simple as it sounds. The story centres around the number three. Three is a sacred number. It centres on the Goldilocks character heroine. It's also surrounded by bears. Porridge is the focus diet. Wooden chairs and beds are the prime household objects. All is circulated by a forest or wood. The magical three bears go out of their central house/heart/hearth and in goes Goldilocks. She intrudes the house, steals the food and breaks things. She sleeps in the house that isn't her own. Many look upon her as a type of burglar. Some folklorists say that she's no different to when princess Snow White found the home of the seven dwarfs and ate their food and slept in their beds. So who was Goldilocks? Why was she lost in the woods? Where did she come from? The answer lies in the origin of the story, the magic of number three and the bears. 

Number three:

Three appears in the ancient triquetra symbol. Three is for time meaning past, present and future. There are three headed gods and goddesses in ancient cultures, sometimes three sets of divinities owning time and destiny. Pyramids contain three shapes and three sides. There are three dimensions (length, height and depth). Our home world Earth is the third planet away from the sun. Three primary colour bands, red, blue and yellow. A triangle is of three sides that are the most rigid of all the shapes. Three is a prime number. Ancient people wrote in three glyphs. Three is also III in Roman numerals and it means "giant star". The number three appears in all religions and belief systems. Three is associated with superstitions. In other fairy tales, there are three little pigs and three wishes.    

Bears:

The bears represent the mystical prime number three. This could indicate that the bears are a cosmic order. Big, middle and small. Man, woman and child. The earliest version of the "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" has three fully grown adult bears. Bears appear in myths and legends as a sacred noble animal. Bears are omnivorous and have a more powerful sense of smell than dogs. Like humans, bears are able to stand upright, walk upright and sit upright. Bears are daytime animals instead of nocturnal. Unlike other mammals, bears are more likely to keep themselves to themselves. Bears love to sleep during winter. The bear is a national animal of Finland, Greenland, Russia and Taiwan. Bear worship and bear cults have existed throughout the ancient world. The celestial bears are Ursa Major (great bear) and Ursa Minor (small bear).

Goldilocks:

Before the character we know as girl with golden hair was "Silverlocks", an old woman. But the original character before she became known as "Silverlocks" was a fox! It was a story about a naughty vixen that crept into the home of three mature bears while they went out. The fox, being nocturnal, was tired and fancied herself a lie down in the beds after eating food. This later was changed so the vixen was no more and an old woman replaced her but the idea was quickly altered to make her into a child. "Goldilocks" was named but the girl also took on the early traits of the fox who stole food and broke things. So the original Goldilocks was a cheeky fox! The fox, entering the home/centre and hearth of the magical three bears could be looked at as a symbol of disorder and rebellion. However, Goldilocks' name is given to a type of planet.

Links on the subject:

Goldilocks planet
Arctolatry - Faith of the Bear
History of Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Triquetra
Artist Jasmine Becket Griffith "Goldilocks".

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