Some Hillman quotes

Fatalism accounts for life as a whole... Fatalism comforts, for it raises no questions. There’s no need to examine just how events fit in.

― James Hillman, The Souls Code: In Search of Character and Calling  

I’m the result of upbringing, class, race, gender, social prejudices, and economics. So I’m a victim again. A result.

― James Hillman

To be sane, we must recognize our beliefs as fictions.

― James Hillman, Healing Fiction  

Our lives are determined less by our childhood than by the traumatic way we have learned to remember our childhoods.

― James Hillman

To the question, Why am I old? the usual answer is, Because I am becoming dead. But the facts show that I reveal more character as I age, not more death.

― James Hillman, The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life  

Character forms a life regardless of how obscurely that life is lived and how little light falls on it from the stars.

― James Hillman

Our dreams recover what the world forgets.

― James Hillman, Animal Presences  

Our "underdeveloped countries"

Our conscious realm is like a room with four doors, and it will be the fourth door by which the shadow, the animus, and the anima and the personification of the Self will come in. They will not enter as often through the other doors, which in a way is self-evident, because the inferior function is so close to the unconscious and remains so barbaric and inferior and undeveloped that it is naturally the weak spot in consciousness through which the figures of the unconscious can break in. In consciousness it is experienced as a weak spot, as that disagreeable thing which will never leave you in peace but always causes trouble, for every time you feel you have acquired a certain balance or inner standpoint, something happens from within or without to throw you off again, and it is always through that fourth door, which you cannot shut. You can keep the three doors of your inner room closed, but on the fourth door the lock does not work, and there, when you do not expect it, the unexpected will come in again. Thank God, you can say, for otherwise the whole life process would petrify and stagnate in a wrong kind of consciousness. It is the ever-bleeding wound of the conscious personality, but through it the unconscious can always come in and so enlarge consciousness and bring forth new experience.

As long as you have not developed your other functions, your auxiliary functions, they too will be open doors, so in a person who has only developed one superior function, the two auxiliary functions will operate in the same way and will appear in personifications of the shadow, animus, and anima. It is only when you have succeeded in developed three functions, in locking three of your inner doors, that the problem of the fourth door still remains, for that is the one which is apparently not meant to be locked. There one has to succumb, one has to suffer defeat, in order to develop further. So if you attend to your own dreams, you will see that these inner figures, if they appear personified as real persons, tend to choose such personifications. Another kind of personification, which naturally has to do with the shadow, is that the fourth function is contaminated with personifications from the lower levels of the social strata of the population or by the underdeveloped countries. That is a beautiful expression – the “underdeveloped” countries. It is just marvelous how we Westerners in our superior arrogance look down on the underdeveloped countries and project our inferior functions upon them! The underdeveloped countries are within ourselves, and therefore, naturally, because this is such an obvious symbolism, the inferior function for a white person often appears as a wild Negro or a wild Indian. Frequently also the inferior function is expressed by exotic people of some kind: Chinese, Russian, or whoever may give that quality. The unconscious tries in this way to convey the quality of something unknown to the conscious realm, as if it would say: it is as unknown to you as the Chinese are unknown in your culture. The shadow, animus, and anima appear very often projected onto Asian or African or “primitive” people.

- Marie Louise von Franz, “Psychotherapy”

This is why it's so important to come to terms with the people (and creatures) that live within our unconscious; the "primitive" is within us... the criminal, the underdeveloped, all of it is us. Until more of us start to realize that our prejudices are actually the fear and hatred we have of our own shadow, we will continue marching down the road of violence.

Mood of destruction and renewal

A mood of universal destruction and renewal… has set its mark on our age. This mood makes itself felt everywhere, politically, socially, and philosophically. We are living in what the Greeks called the kairos – the right moment – for a “metamorphosis of the gods”, of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious human within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science… So much is at stake and so much depends on the psychological constitution of the modern man.

- Jung, CG, (1970) Civilization in Transition

"The Fate of Depth Psychology in the New Millenium"

Analytical psychology is a celebration of becoming. I believe that the image for becoming is the child, and I propose that in this image is to be found our future, and the hope of our work. I’ve been thinking about the child as reality, as image, and as archetype for some time now. This is because I am working on connections I have with my own childhood home, a house on the Connecticut shore where my mother still lives, and where she and her parents spent each summer after her 12th birthday. Where my father courted her. Where my grandmother and my parents and I and my children made four generations together year after year. A house in which I have spent at least a part of every one of the 64 summers since the year after my birth. And this returning and returning and returning of mine has as well a parallel in our work, in the ongoing and returning pattern of analysis.

I go through the front door of my mother’s house and I am surrounded by a slightly sweet, slightly musty atmosphere that has never changed. I walk into my analyst’s office and sit down and begin to enter a timeless realm, sealed off from ordinariness, from the press of things and obligations. Or, a person in my practice finds my office inhabited by her past, the same constant atmosphere, the same air laden with projection, and memory, and image. I walk into the summer house and, if the door to the terrace is open, I can feel the salt breeze from the sound and I can hear small waves breaking and dissolving into foam among the tangles of seaweed and rocks that line the shore just below the house. In the space of analysis the sea, the tides, the wind, the sun rising and setting are the rhythms underneath the work, we go out and we return from dark to light to dark. A child such as I was returning each summer to the same place becomes lost in sameness. I made my own time as an only child will because my parents had their own life more fun and more rewarding for them than a small boy was. So I created a world for myself and then lived in it quite happily. What I was missing went into the dark in the ways you all know so well. Time stopped and the moment of the house stretched out the past of school and schedules was gone and the future became unnecessary or irrelevant all summer long. As in analysis a dream is constellated from a timeless place, it hangs timelessly in the air between two people. It may excite or frighten or seem crazily useless, it may open a deep space. We fall into a shock the surprise of the utterly new.

In the house a storm, in fact a hurricane in 1938, shook the walls wind and rain stripped the leaves from the trees and plastered the south side of the house with them. A gigantic willow tree fell. Gales peeled shingles off the roof and water streamed into the attic and then the bedroom and living room ceilings. Waves and the high tide bent the terrace doors and sea water washed through the hall. We could not hear ourselves over the voices in the wind. The storm passed, the repairs were made. The house like psyche itself is both unchanging and vulnerable, safe and threatened, moving and unmoved. I the child and the timeless realm of summer dropped into the timeless archetypal ground, but that same child growing and exploring this unvarying space found himself caught up in the inexorable flow of time represented by learning to swim, learning to ride a two wheeler, learning to drive, to kiss. One summer an aunt sleeping peacefully died. A few summers later my grandfather, surrounded by medicines and IVs, died in another upstairs room. Years later when my father, a lover of landscapes and gardens, lay dying in that same room he could see outside his window a maple tree I’d just had planted for him. It flourishes now, shading the terrace. Oh, as I was young and easy under the apple boughs time held me green and dying though I sang in my chains like the sea. So in our work we go in and out of time, and thus in every session the child in us experiences both inexorable change and eternal presence. Each year I grew older but each year the tide pools among the rocks filled and emptied, each year the sun sets into the sound beyond Griswold Island or Hatchett's Point. And each year in the gathering darkness the herring gulls and the black crowned night herons squawked their nightly choruses from distant rocks and from a rookery on a nearby hill, shrieking and innocent, and then quieting mysteriously only to start again. Each year lying in the dark with the bedroom window open to the air I listened and wondered. In our work we descend into such dark, timeless realms and we return to the mundane daylight. We provide a place where this is safe and, indeed, honored work. We provide the safety of return together with the threat and the reality of moving toward something as yet unknown to us and to the people with whom we work. We are trained to find these things out for ourselves with necessary help. Tennyson’s Ulysses speaks to us:

“Something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

And here is TS Elliot describing a world both inner and other, a world to be forever explored:

“The river is within us, the sea is all about us;
    The sea is the land's edge also, the granite
    Into which it reaches, the beaches where it tosses
    Its hints of earlier and other creation:

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated, the dead and the living. Here and there does not matter; we must be still and still moving into another intensity, for further union and deeper communion, through the dark cold and the empty desolation.

"We shall not cease from exploration
    And the end of all our exploring
    Will be to arrive where we started
    And know the place for the first time."

We know these things. This is what we honor in our work. We provide a space both safe and hazardous, known and unknown, all at once; a space charged with all the contradiction and opposites but nevertheless humane and sympathetic, a space in which the gestures and images of the inner life are honored and sustained, the whole informed by an idea of order. It is the space we deserve as children but seldom, if ever, had. Such a space has unmeasurable value. We provide it; this is why we have a future.

- Dan Lindley, PhD, LCSW (Jungianthology Podcast, 1/1/18)


See also:
House
Child
Ocean
Journey


Links:
Dan Lindley, PhD, LCSW (CG Jung Institute of Chicago)
"Ulysses," by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
"Four Quartets," by T.S. Eliot
"Little Gidding," T.S. Eliot

The Archimedian point

Do things happen accidentally, or do we call them to us? An easy, and true answer, is yes to both; to only believe that one is true is to become one-sided, the great sin of the psyche.

Another good, and true, answer is to say yes... but it’s not in a blaming way. If we call negative experiences to us then it’s not our conscious, not our ego (“ourselves”) that’s doing it but another part of us, one which is as alien and other as another person entirely.

The other thing, and probably most important thing, is that these opposites - “It’s all your fault if bad things happen to you!” And “How dare you say it’s someone’s fault! Are you saying an innocent child asks for bad things to happen to them?????” - these opposites are secretly united. This is why, for example, Erykah Badu’s response that even Hitler has something good about him both irritated but also failed to arouse the truly strong, almost violent, reactions that others got. The sinner and the righteous warrior of goodness and purity are two halves of the same whole. The light, by it’s very existence, calls darkness into existence. One half can never defeat its other half... or if it does it risks self-annihilation. This why we must find a dialectical solution, one which gets beyond the pair of opposites. An Archimedean point outside the battle. It’s only when you get beyond sinner and saint that a true peace can be attained.

Status update

Apologies! I lost track of what was going on here due to school stuff. I noticed there have been several comments and I would like to thank everyone for taking the time to write.

I have several projects in the works: amazing excerpts from some of my favorite books, and more symbol posts. The problem is, everything takes so much time! ;_;

In the mean time, I'm trying to post smaller things while I work on these other projects. And I will be sure to respond to your comments!

The golden shadow

I've been thinking about the shadow, thinking of all the ways that we fail. How most people refuse to face the truth of what they've done/are doing. That is the shadow, the thing that most people are so terrified of that they can't admit that it exists (even though everyone around us is quite aware of our failings.)

The shadow isn't evil, it's just weak and stupid and selfish, helpless and incompetent. It's just human; it is, in fact the most human part of us. The heroic side of us isn't our brightness, it's our clumsy, awkward shadow. To accept our shadow - to admit that it is a part of us - is to feel our full humanity, to embrace it. To embrace our own humanity is to embrace the humanity of others. Whatever your weakness is, to embrace it is to embrace the childishness of our full humanity... the child of all humanity, the Golden Child. The Golden Child - the new God we've been waiting for - isn't a perfect hero, he's a fragile child, the weakest and least able of us. He doesn't save us by rescuing us, he saves us though our compassion. And we can only have compassion for others if we first have compassion, and acceptance, for our own weakness and frailty.

To open to, to embrace and fully accept, our shadow side is to relax into our totality. Every part of us, not just the commendable part. To seek glory and perfection is to fall into ego; it's precisely the thing we don't need. Being judgmental and perfectionistic are poison. To accept our imperfections, and those of others, is the only way out... but only by facing, accepting, and lovingly embracing our own imperfections can we do the same for others. The hero is the devil, and the devil is the savior. When we accept the devil, we finally see his true face; the Child. This is why the Child has snakes in his basket.

Our shadow is the sacred Child who lives inside each of us. The path to God - that is, wholeness - is accepting this Child.


Links:

Glossary: Inferior Function
Symbolism: Child

The anima of the animus

Whenever you have a Bluebeard, you have a witch standing behind him, and whenever you have a witch, you have a Bluebeard. A woman who is possessed by the witch, either in her persona or in her shadow, is the prisoner of the man eating troll or the evil magician, and vice versa.

It's fairly clear if a woman is possessed by the witch because of her aggressive, power-hungry behavior, but if the woman doesn’t normally express the witch (except when she “acts out of character"... but in character for the anima behind the animus), then the witch is her shadow. The man who is possessed by Bluebeard, either in his persona or in his shadow, is the captive of the evil witch. And standing behind the troll or the witch is the witch or the troll. The four characters - passive Kore/evil Witch, ineffectual Son/brutalizing Bluebeard - form a prison. So long as we simply take up one role or another, we do nothing more than send back the other half of the syzygy into the shadows of the unconscious. We remain imprisoned.

The Bluebeard animus is as much a captive of the witch as the woman is of the animus, and vice versa. That’s why women act out the witch; they’re possessed by the power-driven animus. That’s why it’s important for women to admit this about themselves - both when it starts criticizing the woman as well as making nasty judgments about others - and just let it go. But the animus wants to hold onto his grievances and his anger, just as the anima wallows in a man's black mood of self-hatred.

Maybe what Eckhart Tolle says about the pain body applies here; Tolle says the pain body, the thing that tortures us, wants to live, and since it feeds off pain it does everything it can to cause us suffering. Maybe the negative animus (and negative anima) are the similar; the animus feeds off anger, so it’s always finding things to rage about. For men, the anima cuts them down, tells them they will never amount to anything so they might as well give up. It seems as if the negative animus and anima, like Tolle’s pain body, feeds on us to perpetuate its own existence.

Women can escape the Bluebeard animus by agreeing with the animus and then leaving emotionally, just as we often humor and then deflect the Bluebeard men in our outer lives. “Yes, yes, you are absolutely right. Yes, that’s awful. I’m awful. You are absolutely right.” And then leave, let go.

The negative anima is a poisoning witch. If a man’s anima is masculine, he’s leaving to Her to act assertive, and has nothing left for himself. If a woman is aggressive, she’s leaving to the men in her life to live out her inner passivity (the negative of the anima). By refusing to feed the negative anima or animus, we free ourselves to get in touch with our strengths as women and as men. I suspect that we also free our significant others to find their strength, as well.

The Animus can torture a woman, feeding her ruminations and thoughts about failure. To step out of this internal conflict, the best way is to say to the Animus, “Ah, you are right, it is too late, I am a failure, so let’s not speak about it anymore”. This allows the energy to move forward and not to dissipate in the internal conflict and the woman is left alone to try her hand at whatever she is doing anyway.

When the Animus is arguing and criticizing, the right approach to deal with this, is to say to the Animus, “Since you are so opinionated about what is wrong with others, let’s look at my shadow”. These two opposing forces, the shadow and the Animus, results in consciousness. This consciousness allows her to discern what her own ideas and opinions really are, and the difference between her feminine ego and masculine Animus.

Animus Possession: Are you a ball busting bitch?

When the man finds himself lost in ambiguity and at a loss on what to do, he needs to act. The Anima is an expert on implanting doubt. He must step into life to get out of this trap. He needs to act in some way. He must escape the repetitive pattern of getting excited about ideas and then discussing it to death until he is totally uninspired. He needs to develop a disciplined consciousness for solutions and directions. The correct attitude is to accept that it may not work, or that it is possibly not the right thing to do, but taking action anyway. One must take action based on the knowledge and understanding available at that point in time. Overcoming the Anima is through experiencing reality and the unknown, not talking about it.

Anima Possession: Are you a spineless wimp?



Links:

When the Pain-Body Awakens, Eckhart Tolle

The Tall Man

I’m working on another symbolism post – this time on the Parrot – but I’ve had some interesting dreams relating to the animus lately so I wanted to write a quick post about it.

I had an incident at work, where I felt a great deal of shame, and like I was a failure. My usual way of dealing with negative feelings is to sit with them and move into them. First off, this allows the emotion to slowly dissipate. But I’ve also found it to be a great method of “firing up” the furnace that burns away the ego. But then, a few days ago, I had the following dream:

Something about a hard world (post-apocalyptic? or just a hard, dangerous world?); it’s a barren wasteland. I wash/rinse myself with water running down a wall or hill or something outside. The water is actually really dirty; it’s toxic, and if the residue stays on me it will make me sick. I think to myself that I need to find some clean water to wash myself with, to rinse off the black, toxic particles but there’s no water anywhere. I try to think of other solutions, maybe find the water in other things (like plants?)

Interpretation:

I think this fragment in particular was speaking to what I’m going through, but I don’t know what else to do other than sit with my feelings. It seems to be saying to try to find the water in other things, but where???

So maybe not all emotions are good, all the time. Right now my dream seems to be saying that there’s good “water” (water that cleanses) and bad water (water that just makes you sick). This may be related to my repeated dreams of bathrooms, urine, and feces. But I don’t know what to do, or where to look. I’ve spent years – decades really – learning these techniques of staying in my emotions. But it seems to be making me sick.

This sounds like the disease of extroverted feeling: excessive judgment. We extroverted feeling types (even though EF is my inferior function) are extremely judgmental, but we're never more judgmental of others than we are of ourselves. Maybe this dream is saying that this aspect of extroverted feeling is harmful and is making me sick. But what is the cure? Does it have to do with the head (the bit about my nice hair, and the fragment about the cat’s head sticking out of the cage)? Maybe what it’s saying is that I need to use my strength (my mind) when I fall into these emotional quagmires?

After a lot of musing the last few days, agonizing even, over this question I had these dreams last night:

A very tall man asks somewhat judgmental, demanding questions. My impression now that I’m awake is that he’s pale and cold. He’s very, very tall, like almost twice as tall as I am. I kind of fob him off, answering with a deflecting answer. I walk away from him. I don’t think he follows, I think my answer was good enough.

And:

I’m with a bunch of women at an exhibition or a counter of some kind. They all have these tiny keys on their key rings and ask me why I don’t have mine. I say I don’t even know what they are. They explain that they’re something that they got from the authorities or the train station or something. All women get them but I don’t have one. The keys are used by women to get into safe rooms when they’re attacked by men. I think I go and try to get a key.

I interpreted these dreams in the following way:

Tall man: Definitely an animus figure. I immediately felt that he was a) related to the negative animus/brute (he seems to be a development of this figure); and b) related to the dirty water from last night’s dream. He’s very judgmental – very lofty – and cold (unemotional). What is the difference between me/J (my aunt) and Grandma (my Italian-American paternal grandmother and J’s mother)? It’s the judgmental, German animus. It’s definitely from Grandpa... or at least his side of the family (probably Great Grandma, from all the stories I’ve heard). Also, this figure may have something to do with giants, particularly frost giants (which are also Germanic!). Giants have no hearts; they kill mercilessly. You have to destroy them by finding and crushing their hearts. It looks like, by not accepting his dirty water judgment, I've escaped him, although this may only be temporary.

Safe room keys: I didn’t think I could get a lot out of this fragment but now that I've re-read it after doing the interpretation I think this may actually be a KEY part of the dream (lol). A large part of this (and last night’s) dream is about dealing with cold, brutal, dangerous men (the Tall Man). This dream is telling me how to do it: go to the safe room. The key to the safe room is received from an authority through... a spiritual authority? It’s related to the train (travel/ journey). Could this be the Self? The Self is the journey’s guide, the (train) conductor so to speak. There are two authorities: the Tall Man, and the train authority. There are two kinds of water: the dirty, toxic water, and the clean water, the water that comes from plants (that I was looking for at the end of the dirty water dream last night). The first authority is the brutal, rigid, righteous, but cruel and destructive (he reminds me of the torturer priest in Berserk). The other authority is quiet, still, natural, dispassionate. I think this may be the train authority. I can get the key to the safe room from him; this is the key that women have to protect themselves from the brutal animus, the Tall Man.

Safe house

(Image from: Frog Machine (Deviant Art)



The images in this post are from the Japanese manga Berserk. I'd like to do an interpretation of this story - there's a lot of deep symbolism in it - but at the very least I'm going to do a couple of posts on the man (who reminds me of The Tall Man), the priest Mozgus, and the master of the green house in the image above, the nature witch Flora. They shed a lot of light on the themes of this post. In addition, I will be posting an excerpt from Marie Louise von Franz's interpretation of the Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body, which is also related.


See also:
The Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body
Mozgus
Flora

Reference: The Giant Who Had No Heart In His Body

Once on a time there was a King who had seven sons, and he loved them so much that he could never bear to be without them all at once, but one must always be with him. Now, when they were grown up, six were to set off to woo, but as for the youngest, his father kept him at home, and the others were to bring back a princess for him to the palace. So the King gave the six the finest clothes you ever set eyes on, so fine that the light gleamed from them a long way off, and each had his horse, which cost many, many hundred pounds, and so they set off. Now, when they had been to many palaces, and seen many princesses, at last they came to a King who had six daughters; such lovely king’s daughters they had never seen, and so they fell to wooing them, each one, and when they had got them for sweethearts, they set off home again, but they quite forgot that they were to bring back with them a sweetheart for Boots, their brother, who stayed at home, for they were head over heels in love with their own sweethearts.

But when they had gone a good bit on their way, they passed close by a steep hill-side, like a wall, where the Giant’s house was, and there the Giant came out, and set his eyes upon them, and turned them all into stone, princes and princesses and all. Now the King waited and waited for his six sons, but the more he waited, the longer they stayed away; so he fell into great trouble, and said he should never know what it was to be glad again.

“And if I had not you left,” he said to Boots, “I would live no longer, so full of sorrow am I for the loss of your brothers.”

“Well, but now I’ve been thinking to ask your leave to set out and find them again; that’s what I’m thinking of,” said Boots.

“Nay, nay!” said his father; “that leave you shall never get, for then you would stay away too.”

But Boots had set his heart upon it; go he would; and he begged and prayed so long that the King was forced to let him go. Now, you must know the King had no other horse to give Boots but an old broken-down jade, for his six other sons and their train had carried off all his horses; but Boots did not care a pin for that, he sprang up on his sorry old steed.

“Farewell, father,” said he; “I’ll come back, never fear, and like enough I shall bring my six brothers back with me;” and with that he rode off.

So, when he had ridden a while, he came to a Raven, which lay in the road and flapped its wings, and was not able to get out of the way, it was so starved.

“Oh, dear friend,” said the Raven, “give me a little food, and I’ll help you again at your utmost need.”

“I haven’t much food,” said the Prince, “and I don’t see how you’ll ever be able to help me much; but still I can spare you a little. I see you want it.”

So he gave the raven some of the food he had brought with him.

Now, when he had gone a bit further, he came to a brook, and in the brook lay a great Salmon, which had got upon a dry place and dashed itself about, and could not get into the water again.

“Oh, dear friend,” said the Salmon to the Prince; “shove me out into the water again, and I’ll help you again at your utmost need.”

“Well!” said the Prince, “the help you’ll give me will not be great, I daresay, but it’s a pity you should lie there and choke;” and with that he shot the fish out into the stream again.

After that he went a long, long way, and there met him a Wolf which was so famished that it lay and crawled along the road on its belly.

“Dear friend, do let me have your horse,” said the Wolf; “I’m so hungry the wind whistles through my ribs; I’ve had nothing to eat these two years.”

“No,” said Boots, “this will never do; first I came to a raven, and I was forced to give him my food; next I came to a salmon, and him I had to help into the water again; and now you will have my horse. It can’t be done, that it can’t, for then I should have nothing to ride on.”

“Nay, dear friend, but you can help me,” said Graylegs the wolf; “you can ride upon my back, and I’ll help you again in your utmost need.”

“Well! the help I shall get from you will not be great, I’ll be bound,” said the Prince; “but you may take my horse, since you are in such need.”

So when the Wolf had eaten the horse, Boots took the bit and put it into the Wolf’s jaw, and laid the saddle on his back; and now the Wolf was so strong, after what he had got inside, that he set off with the Prince like nothing. So fast he had never ridden before.

“When we have gone a bit farther,” said Graylegs, “I’ll show you the Giant’s house.”

So after a while they came to it.

“See, here is the Giant’s house,” said the Wolf; “and see, here are your six brothers, whom the Giant has turned into stone; and see, here are their six brides, and away yonder is the door, and in that door you must go.”

“Nay, but I daren’t go in,” said the Prince; “he’ll take my life.”

“No! no!” said the Wolf; “when you get in you’ll find a Princess, and she’ll tell you what to do to make an end of the Giant. Only mind and do as she bids you.”

Well! Boots went in, but, truth to say, he was very much afraid. When he came in the Giant was away, but in one of the rooms sat the Princess, just as the Wolf had said, and so lovely a princess Boots had never yet set eyes on.

“Oh! heaven help you! whence have you come?” said the Princess, as she saw him; “it will surely be your death. No one can make an end of the Giant who lives here, for he has no heart in his body.”

“Well! well!” said Boots; “but now that I am here, I may as well try what I can do with him; and I will see if I can’t free my brothers, who are standing turned to stone out of doors; and you, too, I will try to save, that I will.”

“Well, if you must, you must,” said the Princess; “and so let us see if we can’t hit on a plan. Just creep under the bed yonder, and mind and listen to what he and I talk about. But, pray, do lie as still as a mouse.”

So he crept under the bed, and he had scarce got well underneath it, before the Giant came.

“Ha!” roared the Giant, “what a smell of man’s blood there is in the house!”

“Yes, I know there is,” said the Princess, “for there came a magpie flying with a man’s bone, and let it fall down the chimney. I made all the haste I could to get it out, but all one can do, the smell doesn’t go off so soon.”

So the Giant said no more about it, and when night came, they went to bed. After they had lain a while, the Princess said:

“There is one thing I’d be so glad to ask you about, if I only dared.”

“What thing is that?” asked the Giant.

“Only where it is you keep your heart, since you don’t carry it about you,” said the Princess.

“Ah! that’s a thing you’ve no business to ask about; but if you must know, it lies under the door-sill,” said the Giant.

“Ho! ho!” said Boots to himself under the bed, “then we’ll soon see if we can’t find it.”

Next morning the Giant got up cruelly early, and strode off to the wood; but he was hardly out of the house before Boots and the Princess set to work to look under the door-sill for his heart; but the more they dug, and the more they hunted, the more they couldn’t find it.

“He has baulked us this time,” said the Princess, “but we’ll try him once more.”

So she picked all the prettiest flowers she could find, and strewed them over the door-sill, which they had laid in its right place again; and when the time came for the Giant to come home again, Boots crept under the bed. Just as he was well under, back came the Giant.

Snuff—snuff, went the Giant’s nose. “My eyes and limbs, what a smell of man’s blood there is in here,” said he.

“I know there is,” said the Princess, “for there came a magpie flying with a man’s bone in his bill, and let it fall down the chimney. I made as much haste as I could to get it out, but I daresay it’s that you smell.”

So the Giant held his peace, and said no more about it. A little while after, he asked who it was that had strewed flowers about the door-sill.

“Oh, I, of course,” said the Princess.

“And, pray, what’s the meaning of all this?” said the Giant.

“Ah!” said the Princess, “I’m so fond of you that I couldn’t help strewing them, when I knew that your heart lay under there.”

“You don’t say so,” said the Giant; “but after all it doesn’t lie there at all.”

So when they went to bed again in the evening, the Princess asked the Giant again where his heart was, for she said she would so like to know.

“Well,” said the Giant, “if you must know, it lies away yonder in the cupboard against the wall.”

“So, so!” thought Boots and the Princess; “then we’ll soon try to find it.”

Next morning the Giant was away early, and strode off to the wood, and so soon as he was gone Boots and the Princess were in the cupboard hunting for his heart, but the more they sought for it, the less they found it.

“Well,” said the Princess, “we’ll just try him once more.”

So she decked out the cupboard with flowers and garlands, and when the time came for the Giant to come home, Boots crept under the bed again.

Then back came the Giant.

Snuff—snuff! “My eyes and limbs, what a smell of man’s blood there is in here!”

“I know there is,” said the Princess; “for a little while since there came a magpie flying with a man’s bone in his bill, and let it fall down the chimney. I made all the haste I could to get it out of the house again; but after all my pains, I daresay it’s that you smell.”

When the Giant heard that, he said no more about it; but a little while after, he saw how the cupboard was all decked about with flowers and garlands; so he asked who it was that had done that? Who could it be but the Princess?

“And, pray, what’s the meaning of all this tomfoolery?” asked the Giant.

“Oh, I’m so fond of you, I couldn’t help doing it when I knew that your heart lay there,” said the Princess.

“How can you be so silly as to believe any such thing?” said the Giant.

“Oh yes; how can I help believing it, when you say it?” said the Princess.

“You’re a goose,” said the Giant; “where my heart is, you will never come.”

“Well,” said the Princess; “but for all that, ‘twould be such a pleasure to know where it really lies.”

Then the poor Giant could hold out no longer, but was forced to say:

“Far, far away in a lake lies an island; on that island stands a church; in that church is a well; in that well swims a duck; in that duck there is an egg, and in that egg there lies my heart,—you darling!”

In the morning early, while it was still grey dawn, the Giant strode off to the wood.

“Yes! now I must set off too,” said Boots; “if I only knew how to find the way.” He took a long, long farewell of the Princess, and when he got out of the Giant’s door, there stood the Wolf waiting for him. So Boots told him all that had happened inside the house, and said now he wished to ride to the well in the church, if he only knew the way. So the Wolf bade him jump on his back, he’d soon find the way; and away they went, till the wind whistled after them, over hedge and field, over hill and dale. After they had travelled many, many days, they came at last to the lake. Then the Prince did not know how to get over it, but the Wolf bade him only not be afraid, but stick on, and so he jumped into the lake with the Prince on his back, and swam over to the island. So they came to the church; but the church keys hung high, high up on the top of the tower, and at first the Prince did not know how to get them down.

“You must call on the raven,” said the Wolf.

So the Prince called on the raven, and in a trice the raven came, and flew up and fetched the keys, and so the Prince got into the church. But when he came to the well, there lay the duck, and swam about backwards and forwards, just as the Giant had said. So the Prince stood and coaxed it, till it came to him, and he grasped it in his hand; but just as he lifted it up from the water the duck dropped the egg into the well, and then Boots was beside himself to know how to get it out again.

“Well, now you must call on the salmon to be sure,” said the Wolf; and the king’s son called on the salmon, and the salmon came and fetched up the egg from the bottom of the well.

Then the Wolf told him to squeeze the egg, and as soon as ever he squeezed it the Giant screamed out.

“Squeeze it again,” said the Wolf; and when the Prince did so, the Giant screamed still more piteously, and begged and prayed so prettily to be spared, saying he would do all that the Prince wished if he would only not squeeze his heart in two.

“Tell him, if he will restore to life again your six brothers and their brides, whom he has turned to stone, you will spare his life,” said the Wolf. Yes, the Giant was ready to do that, and he turned the six brothers into king’s sons again, and their brides into king’s daughters.

“Now, squeeze the egg in two,” said the Wolf. So Boots squeezed the egg to pieces, and the Giant burst at once.

Now, when he had made an end of the Giant, Boots rode back again on the Wolf to the Giant’s house, and there stood all his six brothers alive and merry, with their brides. Then Boots went into the hill-side after his bride, and so they all set off home again to their father’s house. And you may fancy how glad the old king was when he saw all his seven sons come back, each with his bride—“But the loveliest bride of all is the bride of Boots, after all,” said the king, “and he shall sit uppermost at the table, with her by his side.”

So he sent out, and called a great wedding-feast, and the mirth was both loud and long, and if they have not done feasting, why, they are still at it.

http://storyberries.com/the-giant-who-had-no-heart-in-his-body/