The Little Mermaid

by Frai Jonah

Brothers and Sisters of Sorrow;

The Little Mermaid by H. C. Andersen is at heart a story of the soul's passage into the third density, of individuation, pain and of the forces which spin threads of destiny from the entangled fibers of the wool of collective soul; and of course of the love which propels the ascending spiral of creation.

We see the Little Mermaid as a fragment of the soul pool of mermaidenhood, attracted by the lights of the ship, by the handsome prince, by the life form across the watery divide. The one breathing the next element, as it were, usually only glimpsed through the distorting lens of the waves.

Might we be as bold as to equate the Little Mermaid to the organic portal, being of two densities? Or might we see the Little Mermaid as the human soul seeking to escape the ocean of transitory forms for the higher ground of the palace steps?

Yet it is explicit in the story that it was an individuated soul the Little Mermaid sought, more than it was the transient glory of the palace life, or even the temporal love of the prince. Rather it was ultimate unity in the heavens, however abstractly or dimly grasped, which propelled the daughter of Poseidon on her quest. Thus the Little Mermaid saves the prince from the shipwreck, leaving him upon the beach by the temple cloister. Little does she know that she is thus an agent of a destiny beyond her reckoning, which ultimately will endow her with soul, albeit not as she imagines, but rather through more complex and all-encompassing designs.

The longing for the new life precipitates the 'fall' of the princess of the sea, where she seeks the help of the Sea Witch in order to affect a transition into a new physicality. Allegorically the price is the loss of her tongue, in other words of the telepathic connection to her peers, leading to the awkwardness and ambiguity of communication we of this world know only too well.

The second price is the pain felt at every step, however outwardly gracious her gait may be.

And of course in the Sea Witch we see the scaley Maker of Man presiding over her serpentine court. Nor is it by coincidence that even the Witche's ability to offer the ticket to the far country is contingent on the season, as in the naturally cycling densities of planetary influences.

Yet our earnest student catches the age of third density in the nick of time and emerges from the foam on the palace steps, naked and beautiful - with legs but without the capacity to explain her precise situation.

Warm affection grows between the prince and the mermaid, however never does the prince quite feel as if she were his kind, alluring and devoted as she may be.

And so comes the denouement, where the prince meets the polar opposite, the princess of the other kingdom, the girl who first found him after the Little Mermaid deposited him on the beach by the temple. In the consummation of the union of the prince and princess we may see intimations of the Age of the Holy Spirit, where the organic portal finds the true possibility of individuated soul if, and only if, the Prince and the Princess find each other.

Thus as events take their course and one moves on, so can the other proceed.

The nature of the lower centers comes back to tempt the Little Mermaid, symbolized by her sisters handing her the knife with which she must kill the prince to survive herself. The Little Mermaid turns her back on the survival response of the red ray of nature and embraces the green ray of unconditional love and the striving for fourth density instead. The break of dawn sees her flinging herself into the ocean, where she for a moment feels as if being pulled back into the foam of the sea - the anonymous soul pool of mermaidenhood. But she emerges victorious - as the wave passes - and rises into the air, into her new company of daughters of Eos.

Maybe her new estate symbolizes a service to others reality of the next page of the book of third density, where the individuated soul is naturally grown and will in time join the stellar realms of the higher densities.

So do we find different accounts of love that may be as diverse as their authors - the worldly Flaubert, in his own words, 'had in his life more concupiscence than he had hair fallen from his head'. Andersen on the other hand, so history tells us, never found reciprocity in matters of love, sensual or spiritualized.

Andersen is idealized and shy, speaking in a clear, logical, soothing language of symbolism whereas Flaubert is bold and surrealistic, as if prefiguring the sometimes chaotic flights of Fancy of Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Apollinaire.

Shall the Little Mermaid extract faith in cosmic order, in the rightness of ultimate unity, no matter how different and inscrutable the paths of entities may be?

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