Beauty and the Beast: The Timeless Tale of the Divine-Human Journey
The further we get from the certainty of our religious programming and previous worldview, the more the existential questions arise within…
The further we get from the certainty of our religious programming and previous worldview, the more the existential questions arise within us. Who am I now? If I’m not a “sinner saved by grace,” what am I? If I’m not here to “snatch souls from the flames of hell before it’s too late,” why am I here? What other mental shackles have the religious hierarchy, with their long tradition of disempowerment, led me to believe falsely about my essence and existence? And how can that knowledge now empower me on my path?
In my future blog entries, I would like to explore personally and practically this complex, multi-faceted topic. Let us begin by going big picture, borrowing a little help from one of my favorite allegories of the human journey (a.k.a. fairytales):
Tale as old as time
Tune as old as song
Bittersweet and strange
Finding you can change
Learning you [are God]
Certain as the sun
Rising in the east
Tale as old as time
Song as old as rhyme
Beauty and the Beast
Tale as old as time. Beauty and the Beast, originally penned by French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, was published in 1740 but was influenced by previous metaphorical tales (e.g. Cupid and Psyche from Metamorphosis, by Lucius Apuleius, 2nd Century AD, and even the story of King Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4:28–37 as you will come to understand it here). It surely came to offer an array of meanings to different times and peoples, but as I contemplate it with my new worldview, I think it’s telling us a far more important truth than simply, “real beauty is found within.”
The modern (Disney) fairytale presents the story of a handsome prince-turned-hideous beast, living in a cursed castle in the dark, ominous woods, frozen (literally) in time. He, and everyone within his domain, have been locked into soulless shadows-of-their-former-selves after he heartlessly judged and rejected an old, hunched, unsightly beggar woman who knocked on his door and implored him for help. Caught in the trap of appearances by his egoic, loveless, and selfish nature, he abruptly sent her away in disgust. But then, transforming before his eyes into a divine messenger from beyond the veil, she calmly handed him a red rose suspended magically behind a glass dome, and told him that he must learn to love before the last petal falls from the flower, or he will be trapped in the form of an ugly beast forever.
Juxtaposed to the Beast is the innocent Belle, a lovely, wide-eyed, open-hearted, intelligent beauty living in a local village, who always has her head in fairytales, dreams, and fantasies of being whisked away, out of the boring, sleepy village life of shallow gossip, unquestioning conformity, and contentment with status quo. Unlike the others she encounters in her daily life, she isn’t content to settle for the mind-numbing monotony that others seemed to have settled for in their quiet provincial life.
One day, Belle’s father, an eccentric inventor, traveled to the city to sell his latest invention but he got lost in the woods. As chance would have it, he wandered into the castle of the Beast, looking for help, but instead he was met with rabid hostility and taken prisoner.
After a time, when Belle’s father had not returned, she went into the woods to search for her him, also encountering the austere castle. When no one answered the door, she let herself inside and wandered around until she found her father, locked in a dungeon. On her way through the house, it didn’t escape Belle’s curious attention and fascination that the inanimate furnishings in the house could speak to her. The Beast, discovering her waiting at her father’s prison cell, proposes that he will let her father go if she agrees to stay in his place. Fearless, without a thought for herself, she instantly accepted.
And so begins a slowly developing love story between Captor and Captive. Despite his fearful demeanor, she is deliberate and open-hearted with him, perhaps recognizing that the life of adventure and opportunity she craved has finally found her, albeit in a lonely and frightening manner at first. She is the one who is able to see beyond appearances, and teaches the Beast, by example, how to love the seemingly unlovable. He receives from her the grace that he doesn’t deserve as she mirrors to him glimpses of what is lovable and buried within him, despite his beliefs about himself to the contrary. He softens and begins to vacillate between the hope that there is a chance to break the curse after all, and the deep, paralyzing fear that he is too hideous — inside and out — for anyone to love.
In the end, the Beast realizes he has grown to love Belle (love always wins, even the hardest of cases), perhaps the first “other” he has ever loved; but he is aware that she is there out of coercion and has not yet verbalized the return of love. One of his greatest tests, his death of ego (crucifixion) appears when the last petal on the rose is threatening to fall — his last opportunity for redemption — yet he sets Belle free to go help her father, who she has learned is ill. Seemingly gone is his dream of ever being transformed back into a prince. He is left with the bleak outlook of being a Beast for all time. But…he sacrifices himself for love. It is in this final act of letting go and self-sacrifice that he will ultimately win Belle’s love in return.
In the final scene, the last petal has already fallen — all hope is gone. To add to the bleakness of the situation, the Beast had been stabbed in a final, fateful scene and left for dead by the angry mob of villagers led by the jealous Gaston. Belle searches for him and finds his lifeless form. Aware that she’s too late, she cries over him inconsolably, expressing her unrequited love for him.
Suddenly, life stirs. Before her very eyes, the Beast is transformed into a magnificent God-like prince. Finally, the curse is broken and his entire realm is restored to light, warmth, life, and beauty.
The traditional view of BATB is a lesson in not judging based on appearances, learning to see the beauty within others, and of course, the transformation that ensues. However, there is another, deeper interpretation, incorporating the hero’s journey (Joseph Campbell), or the journey of the Fool (tarot), where all of the characters in the story are the elements of one individual psyche on their journey from reckless, youthful, egoic naivety (the sleeping God within), to the newly integrated, recreated divine human who stands in their power as the Immanent (here and now) God, walking the earth.
In this view, we all have a Belle identity (the divine spirit inviting us toward love by invitation) and a Beast identity (the unawake soul that comes to this plane with the perception of being separate and self-preserving) within us, vying for power over our mind and actions. We each experience the collective and individual voices of many “personalities” within us, sometimes called “archetypes,” in the course of our journey (the eccentric but kind-hearted creator/ inventor father; the competitive, impulsive, overly identified masculine or animus energy (Gaston); the judging, punishing villagers, the nurturing, morally guiding mother (Mrs. Potts), the peacemaker (Lumiere), the snide, entitled voice that strokes our ego (LeFou), the super-ego teacher who guides our transformation journey (the fairy disguised as the old beggar woman), etc.
The real tale as old as time begins with a transcendent divinity who, out of playfulness and desire for an experience, has plunged himself into the realm of forgetful immanence into billions of particles, or souls. For an extra challenge, all of the elements/voices in the psyche of each of his manifestations are working against his waking up into his Divine Self by proliferating duality consciousness. These are the voices that are always telling us that we are separate from God (and each other), that we are on the outside looking in, that we are insignificant, that we are powerless, that we don’t belong.
But the waking up — the transformation into our unified, re-collected, re-membered God-consciousness (Higher Self) cannot be stopped. This is the way the Story is written. We, all of humanity, individually and collectively comprise the Immanent God, waking up to walk the earth in our loving, liberated power. And it can’t be stopped. Our transformation will unfold, sure as the sun, rising in the east.