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One such figure was peculiar to the western Alps. She was the female embodiment of winter, a female figure often called Bertha or Perchta or Befuna. She punished social disobedience and rewarded ‘goodness’. She was always portrayed as an old hag, because she represented cold and winter.

Slowly, and in bits and pieces, the idea of the witch emerged. Very broadly speaking, a witch is a person who employs magical entities, which may include powers she carries within her body, to harm other people. She doesn’t have to be female. She certainly doesn’t have to have a hat and a broomstick. She has to be marred, lopsided. She has to be like the dead: hard, infertile – and she has to hate. The dead hate the living and the witch hates as they do. There is no particular moment when this popular idea is formulated.

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https://youtu.be/QXNhjYB5LfM

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How a 10-year-old girl wrote Japan's most insane horror film

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I bought an amazing pen that can draw three colors at the museum.

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Lovely dolls!

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Scary cartoon characters

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In most children's programs, you can count on the good, visually appealing characters to triumph over the bad, scary-looking ones. Having said that: Once an animated image of pure evil has embedded itself into the malleable mind of a child, not even the happiest of endings can erase it. From The Black Cauldron's Horned King to FernGully 's Hexxus, here's a list of the best (and by "best" we mean "utterly horrifying") cartoon characters from your childhood that you've either successfully repressed or still shudder to think about every single day.

At the very least, Rasputin is a friendly reminder to practice good hygiene habits and always finish the full dose of antibiotics even if you start to feel better. The cartoon version of the infamous Russian mystic is a walking, talking, wart-faced germ who communes with cockroaches and can't keep his head (or any body part, for that matter) on straight. His batty, bright green minions were scary in a conventional way, but it was Rasputin's 2-inch-long fingernails and 4-foot-long beard that really upped the ante in the animated villain game. -Ellen Gutoskey

Before Andrew Scott single-handedly made the clergy cool again with his portrayal of the "hot priest" in Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag, Claude Frollo was giving holy authority figures a bad name. The sinister, spindly-fingered religious zealot demanded that Esmeralda either submit to his lusty desires or burn at the stake, which is enough to make you fear a two-dimensional cartoon character at any age. Have you managed to forget his diabolical eyes and shady sneer? Some of us have not. -EG

Hmm, where to start? How can I adequately capture in words why a 30-foot-tall drooling baby that speaks like Vincent Pastore from The Sopranos is terrifying? Dang. An impossible task.

Clearly, the writers of wanted to prove to all children that the blessing of a baby sibling isn't so bad after all! Unfortunately, in an effort to make their point, they inundated us with repeated scenes of a massive baby with an old man's voice teething on cars and dripping drool over the highway, while threatening to suck on Angelica. Massive missed opportunity, as they could've simply ... not done that. -Adam Weinrib

While the 1940 Disney classic offers tons of colorful sequences full of joy, it comes at a price. Yes, I'm referring to probably the scariest fictional character made for children: Chernabog. Amid having fun with the innocent baby Pegasus and the ever-charming Mickey Mouse, there comes "Night on Bald Mountain," featuring skeletons flying in the sky, menacing music, and the villain himself, glowing eyes and all, literally catching on fire and still controlling his followers from up above. Yeah, no thanks. - Natalie Zamora

In the 1980s, cartoons were often sanitized by watchdog groups-notice that He-Man rarely swung his sword offensively at another human-and largely toothless. For the most part, so was ThunderCats, the mid-'80s adventure series about a band of catlike aliens at odds with Mumm-Ra, the bandage-covered sorcerer who wants the ThunderCats off his planet of Third Earth. In addition to being an undead instrument of pure evil, Mumm-Ra was viscerally ghoulish. Using an incantation, he could also swell to bodybuilder proportions. Nothing about this guy sat well with younger viewers, and for good reason: In a sea of ineffectual cartoon villains, Mumm-Ra stood out as genuinely malevolent. -Jake Rossen

Next to the Horned King from Disney's darker-than-usual fantasy film The Black Cauldron, Voldemort practically looks cute. The skeletal dictator's aspiration to take over the world with his army of undead soldiers was frightening, sure, but it's the memory of his glowing red eyes, crooked teeth, and greenish-brown complexion that really makes you reach for your bedside baseball bat whenever you think you see your coat rack move in the darkness. -EG

The only thing more frightening than Ursula's tacky blue eyeshadow in The Little Mermaid was the fear that she'd show up in your bathtub and magic you into one of her poor unfortunate souls, even if you were pretty positive you never signed a contract for everlasting youth, extra legs, or whatever. The slimy, stumpy little creatures that skulked on the floor of Ursula's dank (and not in the cool way) ocean cave weren't evil or dangerous in any way, but sometimes the 'ew' factor is all it takes to scar you for life. -EG

This cult-classic animated film from the early 1990s is strange, silly, and undoubtedly a ripoff of Alice in Wonderland, but it's still pretty fantastic. It was, after all, written by Chris Columbus (yes, the guy who wrote and The Goonies and directed the first two Harry Potter movies, , and Mrs. Doubtfire). The antagonist is the haunting, amorphic Nightmare King, who mostly manifests itself as a moving, living ocean of terrifying black goop that swallows up everything it touches. It's sort of reminiscent of The Nothing that threatens the world of The NeverEnding Story, except, you know, goopier. He's like an evil, sentient quicksand monster. If being engulfed by a black, sticky nightmare isn't scary enough, the Nightmare King also has a giant, anthropomorphic, gargoyle-esque form that is voiced by William E. Martin, who also voiced Shredder in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (so you know he's sinister). This guy is literally the stuff of nightmares-case closed. -Justin Dodd

The Red Bull is the giant, fiery cherry on top of an ice cream sundae that looks, smells, and tastes like fear from beginning to end. Objectively, Rankin and Bass's The Last Unicorn is a quality animated fantasy, elevated with a soundtrack from the band America and exceptional voice acting from Mia Farrow, Alan Arkin, Jeff Bridges, Angela Lansbury, Christopher Lee, and more. To a very unobjective and easily impressionable child, it's about 90 minutes of all-out terror that this hellish bull is going to destroy the last unicorn on earth (and maybe you, too). -EG

It's a clown. Need we say more? The Pennywise-wannabe from Toaster's nightmare has absolutely nothing to do with the plot of this movie, proving that you really don't need narrative structure to make something scary as all get-out. With crooked, yellowed teeth; red horns; and a devilish grin to rival that of Bill Skarsgård himself, he delivers his one word of dialogue ("Run") with such exemplary malice that he's not only a perfect poster child for coulrophobia, but also for that old acting adage that "there are no small parts, only small actors." -EG

The knowledge that Hexxus is played by musical theater heavyweight Tim Curry makes him a lot less terrifying in retrospect, and his jazzy number "Toxic Love" is nothing short of iconic. As a kid, however, Hexxus was an oozy, oily, amorphous monster who was coming to suck the life out of everything you love and maybe also soak you in acid rain. If you haven't seen the movie, just imagine if the smoke monster from Lost had the voice of The Rocky Horror Picture Show's Dr. Frank N. Furter. -EG

Sure, monsters and goblins were frightening when we were kids, but we were assured by our parents that they were make-believe (though some of us may not have believed them). But what's very real is a wretched, scrawny, terrifying old woman, be it a distant relative, great aunt, grandmother, or whoever. Cruella de Vil is the embodiment of this tangible fear. Her name is literally derived from the words cruel and devil, and she tried to make a giant coat out of dogs' fur. And we loved dogs as kids (and still do)! How was this horrible story written for a young audience? -Thomas Carannante

From his creepy posture to his unkempt hair, Freaky Fred's physical appearance is enough to produce nightmare fuel for people of all ages. However, his freakiness does not stop there-he also suffers from trichotemnomania (an obsession with shaving people until they're bald). And to complement his unsettling voice, he speaks in rhyming quatrains that always end with the word naughty. For example: "Alone was I, with tender Courage / And all his fur, his furry furrage / Which, I say, did encourage / Me to be quite naughty." -Brian Stieve

The pathetic little arms of a Tyrannosaurus rex are unfailingly hilarious in every other context except The Land Before Time, in which they're upstaged by teeth so sharp and eyes so wicked that many a parent had to lull their nightmare-plagued children back to sleep with a nice, happy story about extinction. The aptly named Sharptooth technically terrorized Littlefoot, Ducky, and the rest of the dino gang because he was hungry, but it always seemed more sadistic than that. -EG

In J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Hobbits are supposed to be the good guys. But in Rankin/Bass's 1977 animated TV movie, lead Hobbit Bilbo Baggins is a small freaky dude with premature wrinkles who is only marginally less scary than Gollum and Smaug. This Hobbit presented Bilbo in terrifying chase scenes and dangerous battles sure to provoke existential anxiety rather than pleasant memories of the Shire. With a visual style composed of moody watercolors and voices by John Huston, Otto Preminger, and Thurl "Tony the Tiger" Ravenscroft, The Hobbit was a children's special with adult-level content that creeped out a generation of impressionable youngsters. -Kat Long

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15 Terrifying Cartoon Characters From Your Childhood Who Scarred You For Life

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In most children's programs, you can count on the good, visually appealing characters to triumph over the bad, scary-looking ones. Having said that: Once an animated image of pure evil has embedded itself into the malleable mind of a child, not even the happiest of endings can erase it.

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Mind map

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In this workshop, we were asked to use a random photo to find the connection between the image and our topic.

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I found some interesting connections with seashells, for example, some animals live in their protective shells. For me, the bedroom is my protective shell.

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Love, Actually: The science behind lust, attraction, and companionship - Science in the News

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by Katherine Wu figures by Tito Adhikary In 1993, Haddaway asked the world, “What is Love?” I’m not sure if he ever got his answer – but today, you can have yours. Sort of. Scientists in fields ranging from anthropology to neuroscience have been asking this same question (albeit less eloquently) for…

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/science/hottopics/love/

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The Science of Love

There are three phases to falling in love and different hormones are involved at each stage.

Events occurring in the brain when we are in love have similarities with mental illness.

When we are attracted to somebody, it could be because subconsciously we like their genes.

Smell could be as important as looks when it comes to the fanciability factor. We like the look and smell of people who are most like our parents.

Science can help determine whether a relationship will last.

Cupid's chemicals

Flushed cheeks, a racing heart beat and clammy hands are some of the outward signs of being in love. But inside the body there are definite chemical signs that cupid has fired his arrow.

When it comes to love it seems we are at the mercy of our biochemistry. One of the best known researchers in this area is Helen Fisher of Rutgers University in New Jersey. She has proposed that we fall in love in three stages. Each involving a different set of chemicals.

Three Stages of Falling in Love
Stage 1: Lust
Lust is driven by the sex hormones testosterone and oestrogen. Testosterone is not confined only to men. It has also been shown to play a major role in the sex drive of women. These hormones as Helen Fisher says "get you out looking for anything".
Stage 2: Attraction
This is the truly love-struck phase. When people fall in love they can think of nothing else. They might even lose their appetite and need less sleep, preferring to spend hours at a time daydreaming about their new lover.

In the attraction stage, a group of neuro-transmitters called 'monoamines' play an important role:

Dopamine - Also activated by cocaine and nicotine.

Norepinephrine - Otherwise known as adrenalin. Starts us sweating and gets the heart racing.

Serotonin - One of love's most important chemicals and one that may actually send us temporarily insane.

Discover which type of partner you're attracted to by taking our face perception test.
Stage 3: Attachment
This is what takes over after the attraction stage, if a relationship is going to last. People couldn't possibly stay in the attraction stage forever, otherwise they'd never get any work done!

Attachment is a longer lasting commitment and is the bond that keeps couples together when they go on to have children. Important in this stage are two hormones released by the nervous system, which are thought to play a role in social attachments:

Oxytocin - This is released by the hypothalamus gland during child birth and also helps the breast express milk. It helps cement the strong bond between mother and child. It is also released by both sexes during orgasm and it is thought that it promotes bonding when adults are intimate. The theory goes that the more sex a couple has, the deeper their bond becomes

Vasopressin - Another important chemical in the long-term commitment stage. It is an important controller of the kidney and its role in long-term relationships was discovered when scientists looked at the prairie vole

Find out how the three stages can feel even stronger for teenagers in love, experiencing first love and first sex.

The frisky Prairie Vole

In prairie vole society, sex is the prelude to a long-term pair bonding of a male and female. Prairie voles indulge in far more sex than is strictly necessary for the purposes of reproduction.

It was thought that the two hormones, vasopressin and oxytocin, released after mating, could forge this bond. In an experiment, male prairie voles were given a drug that suppresses the effect of vasopressin. The bond with their partner deteriorated immediately as they lost their devotion and failed to protect their partner from new suitors.

Looking in their genes

When it comes to choosing a partner, are we at the mercy of our subconscious? Researchers studying the science of attraction draw on evolutionary theory to explain the way humans pick partners.

It is to our advantage to mate with somebody with the best possible genes. These will then be passed on to our children, ensuring that we have healthy kids, who will pass our own genes on for generations to come.

When we look at a potential mate, we are assessing whether we would like our children to have their genes. There are two ways of doing this that are currently being studied, (to find out more click on the links): pheromones and appearance.

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BBC Science | Human Body & Mind | Science of Love

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There are three phases to falling in love and different hormones are involved at each stage. Events occurring in the brain when we are in love have similarities with mental illness. When we are attracted to somebody, it could be because subconsciously we like their genes.

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seashell is the symbol of sex and fertility

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https://pajamaprogram.org/tale-as-old-as-timewhy-we-will-always-read-bedtime-stories/

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Imagine this: in 2067, fifty years from now, what will bedtime look like for children?

oday, we already have the technology that makes virtual reality bedtime stories possible-and here's the video to prove it. While it is impossible to say exactly what the future holds, one thing is certain: we are going to hold on to bedtime stories.
What is it about telling a bedtime story that has such an effect on us, adults and children alike?
No one will ever know when the first bedtime story was told. Scholars say it is impossible to determine the origin of storytelling; they believe that humans have been sharing stories ever since we had the ability to speak. Only humans make stories; stories make us human. Myths and legends, fairytales and fables, ghost stories and heroic adventures-no matter the type of story, we are hooked, time and again.

Think about when you were a child: what was the story that changed your life, the book that you will never forget, or the family yarn that still makes you laugh? That is the simple magic that we care about. Pajama Program is dedicated to sharing the transformational power of bedtime stories, especially for children living in vulnerable circumstances.

Here are just a few reasons why bedtime stories matter, and why we will always tell them:

Who am I? This is a question not only asked by high school seniors writing their personal statements or professionals wanting to drastically switch careers; this is the question that we are all faced with every day. We will continually redefine our sense of self in every chapter of our lives. Bedtime stories allow children to form a stronger sense of personal identity by thinking about what they value-what choice they would make in a character's situation-and by unconsciously learning how to wield the power of narrative-making for their lived experiences. With stories, children can better understand their settings and their character development, the conflicts and plot twists that have shaped their personal legends. Young people who grow up in hard situations can begin to define their story, rather than feel defined by their story.

Just as stories help children create their sense of self, they also form a deep sense of connection to others. Children who feel lonely, who long to be understood, can find comfort through relating to a character in a story who is going through similar struggles. They can see how a character they admire handles relationships with others, whether it's dealing with family dynamics or fighting with a friend. For children in uncertain circumstances, it could be invaluable to hear a bedtime story about someone who grew up in a situation like them and successfully created a new reality: a story can help them find their own courage and optimism to persevere, too. This sense of belonging can extend outward, beyond relating to family and friends to feeling connected to their community, their culture, and the world. Through bedtime stories, a child in Atlanta can learn about people living in the Amazon, and can relate to them.

Of course, the simplest, but perhaps most profound, form of connection that bedtime stories give us is the bond between the adult and child sharing a story together. Pajama Program brings adults and children together through the act of storytelling, giving vulnerable children a sense of trust and unconditional love.

Picasso said it took him four years to learn how to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child. The imaginative capacity of a child is beyond anything we might comprehend with our rational minds: they can color the sky purple, envision a whole new dimension, and can believe in the seemingly impossible. Bedtime stories unlock a door to a child's imagination, taking them beyond their circumstances to other realms. When it comes to children's creativity, hearing or reading a story is completely different than watching a show or film: research shows how listening to a story requires them to use their mind's eye to visualize what is happening-meaning they strengthen their power of imagination. Children can then channel this creative force into imagining new realities for themselves. Stories also help us find a sense of purpose, and inspire us to dream.

In this video, actor Kevin Costner and Jillian Estell read Catching the Moon, a true story about a girl in the 1930s who defied any objections to eventually become the first woman to play for an all-male professional baseball team. At the end, Costner offers an inspiring note for children that reminds us why bedtime stories and imagination will always matter:
"Dreams are important. And sometimes you can find dreams in books. That's what makes this story so special-it's important to dream. You can be a lot of things in your life-not just a baseball player, but the person who wrote this book someday...You can be a lot of things. That's what I love about books. They take us places...You know, books can take you around the world and you never leave your house. When I think of a lot of the great things that have come to be in my life, a lot of them have come from books-just like this. I think if you start reading as young as you guys are, you're gonna have a really great life." At Pajama Program, we believe in bedtime stories: not just as a means for literacy development, but as a magical tool that builds children's confidence, trust, and creativity. Learn more about how we are working together to bring new books and pajamas to children who need them and close the 24-Hour Good Day Loop-because Good Nights are Good Days.

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Tale as Old as Time Why We Will Always Read Bedtime Stories - Pajama Program

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Imagine this: in 2067, fifty years from now, what will bedtime look like for children? oday, we already have the technology that makes virtual reality bedtime stories possible-and here's the video to prove it. While it is impossible to say exactly what the future holds, one thing is certain: we are going to hold on ...

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https://mythsymbolsandplay.typepad.com/my-blog/2016/06/shell-symbolism-.html

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conch shell

Along the coastlines of the world, a great variety of shells can be found. Seashells are made by the animals that live inside them and all shells grow steadily outward. Shells are among the most remarkable designs found in nature. Examples are the chambered nautilus, the sundial shell, and the triton shell. Shells are usually perceived as feminine; a symbol of birth, good fortune, and resurrection. Bivalved mullusks represent the womb and fertility.

shell: life protector; in Tibetan Buddhism, symbolizes hearing; one of the eight emblems of good luck in Chinese Buddhism

conch shell: in Buddhism, symbolizes the voice of Buddha; deity summoner; emblem of Aphrodite, Saint Michael, Saint Sebald, and Triton; Vishnu's trumpet used to awaken followers from ignorance; Navajo Indian jewel of the sea

cowrie shell

c owrie shell: may be one of the first yonic symbols, its name derived from Kauri, a pre-Vedic Indian goddess; represents rebirth and the female Gate of Life; used throughout the Middle East, Egypt, the South Pacific, and the Mediterranean as a charm for healing, fertility, magical power, or good luck; Romans call the cowrie the matriculus, meaning little matrix or little womb; among the Greeks, the word kteis meant vulva, a cowrie shell, a scallop, or a comb (an attribute of mermaids and sirens); Gypsy women valued the cowrie, worn as an amulet, as a focus of their feminine powers

scallop shell

scallop shell: symbol of light; couch of sea deities; in Christianity, represents salvation; used to sprinkle baptismal waters, also worn by Christians to indicate completion of a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint James in Spain, originally the shrine of the Goddess Bridgette, the Celtic version of Aphrodite; the scallop shell is associated with the goddess Venus "born of the sea" as she was carried to shore on a scallop shell; scallop shells are a symbol of the Hindu version of Aphrodite, the goddess Lakshmi "born from the churning of the ocean", consort of Vishnu and mother Kama, represented beauty and good fortune

fan coral

coral: the ocean's Tree of Life; throughout the Mediterranean, red coral necklaces for children were valued as magical; red coral also symbolizes life giving feminine blood; powdered red coral was used to increase fertility; coral was used as an apotropic (to avert evil) in rituals; in China, called shang-hu, emblem of longevity

pearl: pearl symbolism is closely associated with the shell and represents moonlight, purity, tears, wealth, the power of the waters, and wisdom; believed to be the result of lightning penetrating the oyster, and as such, regarded as the union of fire and water; Moslems use the pearl to symbolize paradise, believing the blessed lived in pearls; called tama, the third eye of Buddha and Siva, the symbol of spiritual enlightenment and transcendent wisdom; in the east, divine essence which controls the tides; the flaming pearl is the union of fire and water believed to be the pearl of perfection.

View sea themed miniatures for sale at my Etsy shop. link is in upper right hand corner of my blog, above the dragonfly photo or use this link: http://mythsymbolsandplay.typepad.com/

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conch shell Along the coastlines of the world, a great variety of shells can be found. Seashells are made by the animals that live inside them and all shells grow steadily outward. Shells are among the most remarkable designs found in nature. Examples are the chambered nautilus, the sundial shell,...

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https://www.epidemicsound.com/sound-effects/?_us=adwords&_usx=11440449514_sounds%20effects&utm_source=google&utm_medium=paidsearch&utm_campaign=11440449514&utm_term=sounds%20effects&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-vX1n-79-gIVG-vtCh36YgaFEAAYASABEgJS1fD_BwE

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Royalty Free Sound Effects - SFX | Epidemic Sound

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Looking for the perfect sound effects for your videos? We produce cutting-edge sound effects, all expertly curated to fit your production needs. Try now!

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https://www.livescience.com/33041-why-do-seashells-sound-like-the-ocean.html

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(Image credit: MAR007/Shutterstock)

When you hold a seashell up to your ear, you hear the quiet roar of waves crashing on a distant beach, as if sounds from the shell's past environment are still echoing within it.

As lovely as that concept might be, though, it's only a metaphor: When you listen to a shell, you're not really hearing the sound of the ocean. The shape of seashells just happens to make them great amplifiers of ambient noise.

Any air that makes its way into a shell's cavity gets bounced around by its hard, curved inner surfaces. The resonating air produces sound.

The pitch of the sound depends on the size of the shell. Air takes longer to bounce back and forth in a bigger shell than it does in a smaller one, so you'll perceive the pitch of sound emerging from a bigger shell as being lower than that from a smaller one. Whether high or low in pitch, almost all shells sound pleasantly ocean-like.
Original article on Live Science.

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(Image credit: MAR007/Shutterstock) When you hold a seashell up to your ear, you hear the quiet roar of waves crashing on a distant beach, as if sounds from the shell's past environment are still echoing within it.

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Unpacking is a game about the fa-miliar experience of pulling possessions out of boxes and fitting them into a new home.

Players are given a chance to experience a sense of intimacy with a new character.

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Surrealist aesthetic,
Dreamlike imagery,
Not high quality,

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Question
Starting points:
Fairytale and intimacy/closeness
Analyze theme/character
How do they approach the idea of love and intimacy

The impact of bedtime stories on people‘s perception of love and closeness.

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How do bedtime stories affect a child's mental health?

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How do bedtime stories affect a child's mental health?

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Characters in the story,
Dreams /nightmares,
Imagination,
Anxiety and stress,
Personalities
Connection to parents

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https://revistia.org/files/articles/ejls_v2_i3_16/muhammed.pdf

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“When we connect with the characters in a story, our brain releases  oxytocin. Oxytocin is associated with empathy, a building block in helping us connect and deepen our relationships."

https://www.verywellmind.com/daniel-block-md-4779186

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Highlights

Owner of Daniel B. Block, MD, solo private practice of adult psychiatry in West Grove, Pennsylvania

Provides two hour comprehensive psychiatric evaluation, individual and marital psychotherapy, medication management

Board certified in psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology

Experience

After completing residency Dr. Block was recruited to begin and chair a new department of psychiatry at what was then Southern Chester County Medical Center (now Jennersville Regional Hospital) to begin offering services to what was at the time a highly underserved population.

He was also named the medical director of the Addiction Recovery Center at the hospital. Before the hospital was sold to a for profit company, he had a department that offered individual, group and marital therapy, the addictions program, and his own practice, which also included consultation and liaison work on the inpatient units.

Dr. Block also recruited child psychiatrists to the department and was a co-chair on the hospital's ethics committee. After the sale of the hospital effectively ended all psychiatric services there, Dr. Block moved his office locally and has continued to run his solo practice in West Grove.

During his time in practice Dr. Block has been a staunch advocate for his patients, particularly in the area of insurance denials and has been equally passionate about patient education. He was awarded the Medical Service Advisor Award in 2000 for his work as the medical adviser to New Directions in Wilmington, Delaware, a chapter of the DBSA (Depression Bipolar Support Alliance).

Education

Dr. Block received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1985. He earned his medical degree from Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia in 1989, then began his psychiatric residency at Temple University Hospital and finished at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia in 1993.

About Verywell Mind

Verywell Mind, a Dotdash Meredith Brand, is an award-winning, trusted, and compassionate online resource that provides the guidance you need to improve your mental health and find balance. We take a human approach to health and wellness, and reach more than 150 million readers annually. Verywell Mind content is fact checked and reviewed by our Review Board for accuracy and integrity. Learn more about us and our editorial process.

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Owner of Daniel B. Block, MD, solo private practice of adult psychiatry in West Grove, Pennsylvania Provides two hour comprehensive psychiatric evaluation, individual and marital psychotherapy, medication management Board certified in psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology After completing residency Dr. Block was recruited to begin and chair a new department of psychiatry at what was then Southern Chester County Medical Center (now Jennersville Regional Hospital) to begin offering services to what was at the time a highly underserved population.

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https://somethingtoreadforthetrain.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/baba-yaga-my-love/

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https://hedgespoken.wordpress.com/2014/10/31/baba-yaga/

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https://youtu.be/PC_sWpWn8wE

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Step 1Pick one strategy below to begin:

Sequence

Overlay/overlap

Affix/attach

Step 2Bring together two or three parts using this strategy and make notes: what meaning does each have singularly and then in combination?

Step 3Take another strategy and, using the same parts, make further notes on meaning(s) that are revealed/made/communicated by their combination.
Step 4Document/record the process of the parts coming together in still or moving image.

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Annabelle: Creation Trailer Reveals the Doll's Evil Origin

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The bedtime story has long been a carrot that tired and stressed young parents look forward to throughout their day. Like so little else in their lives, it lives up to the picture - an oasis of familial bliss that makes raising a family in today's chaotic world worth it. What many of these bleary-eyed parents probably do not realise is that these fuzzy Kodak moments are also sparking real language development in their children.

Many modern parents are turning to technology to help give their children's language development an edge. It is clear, however, that the decidedly old-fashioned bedtime story should not be dumped into the digital trash bin. It seems to have valuable benefits for young children's language development, and may also help their storytelling abilities and their understanding of others' mental states.

The bedtime story, or any form of shared book reading, has long been described as a vocabulary acquisition device (Ninio, 1983). More recently, studies have shown that children who start school with a larger vocabulary have a distinct advantage; and vocabulary is the best predictor of later reading comprehension (Biemiller, 2001; Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998). In a long-term study, book reading in the home between the ages of one and three years was associated with reading comprehension at seven years (Wells, 1985). In a very large study of low-income families, frequent book reading by English-speaking mothers was related to children's vocabulary at 14 and 24 months and to comprehension at 36 months, while the last was also true for Spanish-speaking mothers (Raikes et al., 2006).

Read to them early
Shared reading as early as eight months, but not as early as four months, has been found to predict later expressive language scores at 12 and 16 months (Karrass & Braungart-Rieker, 2005). This suggests that parents should bring out the books before their children can understand what is being read to them, but not before the infant can sit up. The fact that reading to a preverbal infant has a bearing on later language is surprising to many of us who would have thought that shared book reading should begin when we hear the infant's first words, usually about one year of age.

Starting to read early (by eight or nine months) may also make parents more sensitive to their infants' developing language abilities and specific vocabulary. They may then structure interactions so that they are at an appropriate level for the child (Fletcher & Reese, 2005).

Not all storytellers are equal
Most of us do read to our children. In a large American study of mostly middle-class families, 81 per cent of parents reported that they read to their two-year-olds four or more times a week (Huebner, 2000); and half of the mothers in a study of low-income families reported reading every day to their 14-month-olds (Raikes et al., 2006). But not all of us are born to be Hans Christian Andersen. Most of us need a little guidance to make our shared reading effective.

In a series of studies, Whitehurst and his colleagues (e.g. Whitehurst et al., 1988) found that the key to effective shared reading was parental style. They trained parents, teachers and librarians in what they called 'dialogic' reading. This programme is based on letting the child take the lead through the use of open-ended questions, with adults giving informative feedback and adapting the interaction to the child's level. In their studies, children in the adult-trained group always do better on language measures by comparison to children who are read to an equal amount by untrained adults. Even though the untrained adults are quite motivated, these researchers concluded that their reading behaviour is not optimal.

So what other factors make a good bedtime storyteller? For toddlers, simple labelling has sometimes been found to have a negative relationship with their language; but this may be because it often occurs when the children do not know a word (Ninio, 1983). In another study, labelling a picture for a nine-month-old while pointing to it was related to vocabulary size in the same infants six months later (Blake et al., 1996).

It is also relevant that shortly after they can sit up, infants begin to engage in what can be called 'triadic' communication (Adamson & Bakeman, 1984). They move from simple face-to-face communication with the adult to communication with the adult about an outside event or object. An example is reaching to request an object while looking at the adult. This sharing of attention to the outside world by parent and child is considered to be crucial to vocabulary development (Tomasello & Todd, 1983). We found (Blake et al., 1996) that more labelling occurred when parent and infant were both looking at the same picture in a book, so that parents understood that infants should be looking at the relevant picture to benefit from the label.

Attention-getting statements to infants were frequent (Blake et al., 2006); and pointing, itself, may serve to recruit attention (Sénéchal et al., 1995). An example of an attention-getting statement, followed by a label, is 'OK, look. There's a worm'. Game-like animating activities can also be used to keep infants' attention on the book (Blake et al., 2006; Sénéchal et al., 1995). Such animating activities include animal noises to pictures in the book and other noises, such as 'This is how airplanes fly - wooh, wooh'.

Interestingly, when young children's eye movements are monitored while looking at the printed text and illustrations of books on a computer screen, they fixate on the pictures and not on the print. Furthermore, when the person reading the text highlights details, the children's attention to these details in the illustration increases (Evans & Saint-Aubin, 2005).
With older infants and two-year-olds, labelling may cede its importance to positive feedback, questions, and relating the book events to the child's experience as the child's language develops. Positive feedback is simply the next logical step to effective labelling. Instead of pointing and labelling to a two-year-old, a mother points and asks for a label ('What's that?'). The child responds 'Ernie', and mother says 'Ernie, right'.

For the two-year-olds, parental questions about the book and imitations of the children's statements are also related to their language (Blake et al., 2006). For example, a parent reading a book about monkeys may ask 'What do monkeys do?' An example of imitation is that the child says 'A big boat', and father repeats 'A big boat', Since imitation is a form of feedback, these results are consistent with those of Whitehurst and his collaborators stressing the importance of open-ended questions and feedback.

Parental verbalisations that relate the events in the book to the child's experience are also found to be important for their vocabulary and the complexity of their language (Blake et al., 2006). For example, a parent reading a story about a farm may relate the story to the child's world by commenting 'Chickens. Look, like Grandpa's chickens'.

Getting dads on the same page
Not only do mothers still do the majority of shared reading, studies suggest that they do it more effectively than fathers. In a sample of approximately 100 infants from predominantly white, middle-class homes, 66 per cent of the mothers and 42 per cent of the fathers reported that they read with their infants (Karrass et al., 2003). Little has been done to compare shared reading led by mothers versus fathers. But the studies there are have found few, but perhaps important, differences in their styles of reading to their children, even to very young children (e.g. Blake et al., 2006).

Sometimes fathers have shown more concern with just reading the story (Conner et al., 1997), a goal which is not optimal for children's language development. They may also ask fewer questions than mothers (Wheeler, 1983), and let their infants control the book reading situation more than mothers (Blake et al., 2006).

Creating a more literate child
Shared reading is not the only measure found to improve language scores. The age at which reading began, the number of picture books in the home, and the frequency of trips to the library with the child - in other words, the whole literacy environment - were also found to be key factors (Payne et al., 1994). A positive literacy environment was also more likely to encourage the initiation of shared reading by the child.

Interest in reading is an important variable that has not received a great deal of attention. Two-year-old children whose parents were given strategies to encourage their interest in reading (e.g. treating reading together as a special time or allowing the child to choose the book) were observed to choose more books and to ask to be read to more often than a comparison group not given these strategies (Ortiz et al., 2001). As a result, preschoolers who display greater interest are likely to be read to more frequently (Scarborough & Dobrich, 1994). These interested readers may be girls at a younger age (14 months), perhaps in part because their language is more advanced than boys' at this age; but the gender difference seems to disappear by the age of two (Raikes et al., 2006).

Moving beyond vocabulary
Shared book reading does more than improve language skills; it also provides a context for the development of narrative skills, that is, retelling the sequence of goal-directed actions. Also, when mothers read, they often focus on characters' feelings. As the explanations of character actions increased with children's age from two to three, so too did the focus of children's utterances (McArthur et al., 2005).

Further, Spanish mothers' use of cognitive or emotional mental state terms (such as 'think' and 'angry') during book reading has also been related to four- and five-year-olds' understanding of the beliefs of others (Adrian et al., 2005). Cross-cultural differences may be an area for further research:?most Peruvian mothers when reading to their three-year-olds adopt a storytelling style in which they use informative narrative utterances, whereas most American mothers use a storybuilding style in which they co-construct the narrative with their child (Melzi & Caspe, 2005). The American children consequently talked more than the Peruvian children.

Finally, sharing a bedtime story with a child may strengthen emotional bonds between parent and child, soothe an upset child, lengthen a child's attention span, and make the child feel special after the birth of a sibling. These non-cognitive benefits need further investigation.

The verdict
The benefits of shared book reading with young children have been debated at length, and not all are convinced. Two meta-analyses of several studies have suggested that only 8 per cent of the range in preschoolers' language and literacy skills is due to the frequency of parental reading (Bus et al., 1995; Scarborough & Dobrich, 1994). More recent work suggests, however, that shared book reading beginning in the preverbal months seems to have valuable benefits for young children's language development.

- Joanna Blake is a professor emerita in the Department of Psychology at York University, Toronto, Canada
[email protected]
- Nicholas Maiese is a high school teacher of English and journalism in the York Region Board of Education[email protected]

References
Adamson, L.B. & Bakeman, R. (1984). Mothers' communicative acts: Changes during infancy. Infant Behavior and Development, 7, 467-478.
Adrian, J.E., Clemente, R.A. & Villanueva, L. (2005). Parent-child picture-book reading, mothers' mental state language and children's theory of mind. Journal of Child Language, 32, 673-686.
Biemiller, A. (2001, January). Building vocabulary: A key to reading success. Paper presented at the Norma Bossard Memorial Reading Conference, Miami.
Blake, J., Macdonald, S., Bayrami, L, Agosta, V. & Milian, A. (2006). Book reading styles in dual-parent and single-mother families. British Journal of Educational Psychology,76, 501-515.
Blake, J., Vetere, A. & Vitale, G. (1996, April). Shared book reading in Italian-Canadian mother-infant dyads. Paper presented at the International Conference on Infant Studies, Providence, RI.
Bus, A.G., van IJzendoorn, M.H. & Pellegrini, A.D. (1995). Joint book reading makes for success in learning to read. Review of Educational Research, 65, 1-21.
Conner, D.B., Knight, D.K. & Cross, D.R. (1997). Mothers' and fathers' scaffolding of their two-year-olds during problem-solving and literacy interactions. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 15, 323-338.
Evans, M.A. & Saint-Aubin, J. (2005). What children are looking at during shared storybook reading. Psychological Science, 16, 913-920.
Fletcher, K.L. & Reese, E. (2005). Picture book reading with young children: A conceptual framework. Developmental Review, 25, 64-103.
Huebner, C.E. (2000). Promoting toddlers' language development through community-based intervention. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 21, 513-535.
Karrass, J. & Braungart-Rieker, J.M. (2005). Effects of shared parent-infant book reading on early language acquisition. Applied Developmental Psychology, 26,133-148.
Karrass, J., VanDeventer, M.C. & Braungart-Rieker, J.M. (2003). Predictors of shared parent-child book reading in infancy. Journal of Family Psychology, 17, 134-146.
McArthur, D., Adamson, L.B. & Deckner, D.F. (2005). As stories become familiar: Mother-child conversations during shared reading. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 51, 389-411.
Melzi, G. & Caspe, M. (2005). Variations in maternal narrative styles during book reading interactions. Narrative Inquiry, 15, 101-125.
Ninio, A. (1983). Joint book reading as a multiple vocabulary acquisition device. Developmental Psychology, 19, 445-451.
Ortiz, C., Stowe, R.M. & Arnold, D.H. (2001). Parental influence on child interest in shared picture book reading. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 16, 263-281.
Payne, A.C., Whitehurst, G.J. & Angell, A.L. (1994). The role of home literacy environment in the development of language ability in preschool children from low-income families. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 9, 427-440.
Raikes, H., Pan, B. A., Luze, G. et al. (2006). Mother-child bookreading in low-income families. Child Development, 77, 924-953.
Scarborough, H.S. & Dobrich, W. (1994). On the efficacy of reading to preschoolers. Developmental Review, 14, 245-302.
Sénéchal, M., Cornell, E.H. & Broda, L.S. (1995). Age-related differences in the organization of parent-infant interactions during picture-book reading. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 10, 317-337.
Tomasello, M. & Todd, J. (1983). Joint attention and lexical acquisition style. First Language, 4, 197-212.
Wells, G. (1985). Preschool literacy-related activities and success in school. In D.R. Olson, N. Torrance & A. Hildyard (Eds.) Literacy, language, and learning: The nature and consequences of reading and writing (pp.229-255). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wheeler, M.P. (1983). Context-related age changes in mothers' speech: Joint book reading. Journal of Child Language, 10, 259-263.
Whitehurst, G.J., Falco, F.L., Lonigan, C.J. et al. (1988). Accelerating language development through picture book reading. Developmental Psychology. 24, 552-559.
Whitehurst, G.J. & Lonigan, C.J. (1998). Child development and emergent literacy. Child Development, 69, 848-872.

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No fairytale...the benefits of the bedtime story - The British Psychological Society

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The bedtime story has long been a carrot that tired and stressed young parents look forward to throughout their day. Like so little else in their lives, it lives up to the picture - an oasis of familial bliss that makes raising a family in today's chaotic world worth it.

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https://peacingtogether.org/a-thousand-grandparents-bedtimes-stories/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIraH_iMOh-wIVzd_tCh3mzgx6EAAYAyAAEgL3H_D_BwE

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The Delight Makers began with a project called A Thousand Grandparents & Bedtime Stories. It is a gift of love for the world’s children; a treasure trove of wisdom, healing, inspiration, joy and a wealth beyond material accumulation.

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Once upon a time, an animation studio known as the Walt Disney Company cast a magical spell, allowing it to seize control of the fairy tale kingdom and grow into a multinational mass media corporation to dwarf Jack's beanstalk. Ever since, generations of kids the world over have been raised on animated versions of stories that for centuries weren't even written down, let alone accoutred with costly merchandise.

Maleficent, Disney's latest bid for box office gold, seeks to restore some of the darkness to Sleeping Beauty's story. With a budget in excess of $175m, the live-action makeover features Angelina Jolie as the badass fairy whose nefariousness is hammered home via horns, vampiric robes and prosthetically enhanced cheekbones that could cut glass. It's from the viewpoint of this alluringly villainous anti-heroine that the narrative is retold, describing how a pure heart gets turned to stone by a harsh betrayal.

Fairy tales began as oral folk stories. They were, maven Jack Zipes notes in his essay Breaking the Disney Spell, "tales of initiation, worship, warning and indoctrination." As such, they're characterised by a surface simplicity. They are pure story, unhindered by descriptive passages or interior monologues, and peopled by characters who can seem decidedly one dimensional. The good are good and the bad, bad. Their imagery tends to be unsophisticated, their descriptions almost bland: forests are deep, princesses are beautiful and so on. To quote Philip Pullman, writing in The Guardian about his endeavour to retell some of the most popular, "there is no psychology in a fairy tale."

Tell that to Freud or Jung. There may be no explicit psychology, but peer a little closer and their psychological traits become as hard to ignore as Pinocchio's schnozzle. Just think of the way mirrors are used to reflect their viewers' inner selves, as in Snow White, or the use of dream states like Sleeping Beauty's.

The Sleeping Beauty. The Miracle of Love. (Prisma Archivo/Alamy)

Sexual symbols
And that's barely the beginning where this particular story is concerned. The virginal princess, the pinprick of blood, the thorny briar hedge that springs up around her and blooms for the prince: it positively oozes psychological symbolism. If the spindle symbolises penetration, then the spilled blood suggests menstruation and the bush is, well, a vagina. A vagina with teeth, no less, that will emasculate any prince who tries to breach it too hastily.

The stories that are best known today were collected and set down by enthusiasts like the Brothers Grimm, ETA Hoffman and Hans Christian Andersen. In so doing, they codified tales that had always been in flux, passing from teller to teller, acquiring and losing details as in a game of telephone. But once they existed in written form, they became texts that scholars could parse, and for Freud and Jung, they were as productive as the goose that lay the golden eggs.

Both men had their theories as to why these narratives resonate so profoundly in the human psyche. For Jung, their characters are archetypes, and the reason they might seem one-dimensional is that they each represent different facets of our personalities. For Freud, fairy tales stemmed from the same place as dreams, and motifs like forests and thorns indicated repressed desires and wish-fulfilment fantasies. Freud being Freud, these are frequently sexual in nature.

His thinking strongly influenced psychoanalytic theorist Bruno Bettelheim, whose book The Uses of Enchantment became a hit in the late 1970s. In it, he describes how the forest in The Two Brothers "symbolizes the place in which inner darkness is confronted and worked through; where uncertainty is resolved about who one is; and where one begins to understand who one wants to be. Since ancient times the near impenetrable forest in which we get lost has symbolized the dark, hidden, near-impenetrable world of our unconscious."

Bettelheim, who also found Oedipus and Electra complexes in Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, suggested that Jack and the Beanstalk was about masturbation, and saw penis envy and castration anxiety spotlighted in Cinderella.

Snow White (Mary Evans Picture Library/Alamy)

Since his suicide in 1990, former patients' accusations of physical and psychological abuse have cast a shadow over Bettelheim's views but fairy tales remain popular in psychoanalytic circles, where shape-shifting - transformations from frog to prince or from girl to bird - is cast as an allusion to multiple personality disorder, and the impossible tasks that protagonists face - spinning gold from straw, say - as examples of the double-binding found in dysfunctional families. And that's to say nothing of fairy tales' daddy figures, who are ineffectual, ogreish or merely absent.
Never-ending stories
Adaptability is one of the fairy tale's secrets of survival and there are feminist readings (Beauty and the Beast is a parable about women's self-sacrifice in a patriarchal society), Marxist readings (Snow White's seven dwarves epitomise the peasant classes, surviving by dint of hard work and solidarity), even Nazi propaganda readings (the prince must wake the sleeping Aryan beauty from the dense hedge of Jewish and Communist conspiracies). But it is definitely possible to do too much delving, which is why it's refreshing to see these time-worn tales used as a jumping off point for new stories, of which Maleficent is just the latest. Earlier this year, Helen Oyeyemi, one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists, retold Snow White in her mischievous fifth novel, Boy, Snow, Bird, braiding themes of race, gender and ethnicity without sacrificing any of the magic that we associate with the form.

Meanwhile, Michael Cunningham, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours, references Hans Christian Andersen in the title of his new novel, The Ice Queen, which is all about a struggling musician, his gay brother and his dying girlfriend. His next book, due to be released next year, is a collection of short stories that retell fairy tales.

Beauty and the Beast - The Courtship. (Walter Crane/The Protected Art Archive/Alamy)

"They're various but the overriding notion is, what was really going on there? Those of us who were raised on the Disney versions are sometimes shocked to see the kind of murder and mayhem that was excised from the animated stuff. Fairy tales are dark and intense and strange," Cunningham tells me.

If returning to the originals can be disturbing, the sources that inspired them should probably come with trigger warnings. It's Charles Perrault who is responsible for much of what we know about Sleeping Beauty, but he drew in turn on an Italian tale called Sun, Moon and Talia, in which a fair maiden falls into such a deep sleep that a passing king rapes her and impregnates her with twins to whom she gives birth, all without waking. She's roused only when one of the infants accidentally suckles on her finger rather than her breast. It's enough to put a hapless reader into therapy.
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Maleficent: What do fairy tales really mean?

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Once upon a time, an animation studio known as the Walt Disney Company cast a magical spell, allowing it to seize control of the fairy tale kingdom and grow into a multinational mass media corporation to dwarf Jack's beanstalk.

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By Angela Slatter

As an avid reader and self-confessed story junkie I've spent most of my life reading books of fairy and folk tales, legends, myths, religious texts, apocrypha, and demanding the people around me tell me stories. My mind, therefore, is a really big treasure chest of, well, stuff. When I say "treasure chest" I mean like that drawer in the kitchen where you put EVERYTHING: all the useful stuff, like the good scissors, the different lengths of string, the cool cookie cutters, that allen key you need for the Ikea shelves, the last couple of headache tablets and cough drops, the sharpie, a tiny scrap of ribbon for when you're wrapping an emergency birthday present ... you know, the stuff that seems like crap but is in fact entirely useful in the right situation. So I offer some items from the top sedimentary layer of my personal kitchen drawer/brain treasury: my Top Ten Scary Creatures from Fairy Tales and Mythology
1. Trolls
Generally found in Norse fairy tales and mythology, trolls come in various forms, some live in caves, mountains, under bridges, some look more like humans, but most seem to be generally described as lumpy, bumpy and not at all attractive. They're nasty and smelly, overly fond of treasure, not too bright and, if you believe Tolkien, tend to turn to stone in the sunlight. Plus there's their nasty habit of swapping human babies for their own, leaving a squalling changeling in the cradle like a cuckoo for harried parents to bring up. In "Tatterhood" while the ugly sister is fighting the trolls, the pretty sister opens the window to watch − and a troll snatches off her head and replaces it with a calf's (of course!). Eventually the ugly sister beats the trolls and gets her sister's head back, but it's touch and go for the pretty one's modelling career for a while. My favourite version of this story is Mike Mignola's The Troll Witch.
2. Witches
I'm generally pretty fond of witches in fairy and folk tales and think they get a bad rap, but those old-timey ones sure did have a good range in nastiness. Generally pictured as wretched old women with dowager's humps, warts on their noses, no teeth, and questionable eating habits, the fairy tale witch is not the cuddly nanna type. "The Baba Yaga", "Hansel and Gretel", "The Twins and the Snarling Witch", "Rapunzel", "Snow White", "Sleeping Beauty" are all examples of this. You will be tricked into entering a house made of gingerbread, fattened up, then eaten. You will be chased through the woods by an old woman who travels via mortar and pestle. You will be offered a poisoned apple as a snack (hint: don't accept). You will be locked in a tower and kept in ignorance all your life. You will try to learn how to spin as a career move and find yourself sleeping for a hundred years. All thanks to the bad grannies.
3. Wolves
As the poor old wolf is just following his natural urges − to him small children are crunchy, fast-moving canapés − it's a bit harsh to paint him as a villain in a story. So, I'm going to defend the wolf in "Little Red Riding Hood" (seriously, she was warned not to leave the path!) and the one in "The Three Little Pigs" (who doesn't love bacon?). John Connolly's worse-than-wolves in The Book of Lost Things are another thing entirely − there's malice there and the sense that you're being sized up for a proper five-course meal, that the critters are considering which wine to serve you with. Still and all, no one wants to get eaten by a ravening wolf.
4. Grendel
Grendel is the monster from the Old English epic poem Beowulf, and no one's really sure of his true nature. Some say he's a demon, some a kind of troll or ogre, some a giant − the poem itself says he's a descendant of Cain from the Bible, so you know that's not going to end well. Suffice to say he's not a good neighbour: he hates the sound of people being happy, is a fan of neither music nor mead, lives in a marsh or a moor which is wet and muddy and bound to make anyone cranky. Grendel takes the whole party-pooper thing to a new level by charging into the mead hall Heorot and slaughtering the drunken revellers therein. He does this more than once, most definitely harshing the partygoers' squee. Although he's a positive pussycat compared to his mum.
5. Your sister
Yes! Sibling rivalry can get way out of hand in the old tales: in "White Bride, Black Bride" the bad sister colludes with her mum to have the good sister thrown out of the carriage on her wedding day and turned into a duck (as you do). Cinderella's wicked stepsisters are The Literal Worst and not too bright: when the prince brings the glass slipper for them to try on, at least one of them cuts off a small toe so the shoe fits. In "Beauty and the Beast" the older sisters delay Beauty's return to Beast in the hope he'll kill her in a fit of anger. And in "The Three Sisters" the jealous older sisters injure the youngest sister's beloved and she has to kill trolls to cure him − she lives happily ever after but the sisters are thrown in the oven. So, when you're complaining about your sister borrowing your shirt, dress or shoes without permission, consider yourself lucky if that's the worst thing she does!
6. Sirens
The sirens start out in Greek mythology as bird-women, sometimes there are two, sometimes three, sometimes five. Sometimes they have names and sometimes they don't (although one of the names mentioned is Ligeia, and I use that one in my novel Vigil). The earliest sirens had the heads of women, the bodies of birds; later it was more a female form but with feathers and clawed feet. According to the Suda, a tenth-century Byzantine encyclopaedia, they were birds from the chest up, women in the downward direction; later still they were entirely female women, fair of face and form. The things that unite each of these versions of the siren are their lovely seductive voices, singing songs to lure men close, and their unfortunate tendency to eat said men.
7. Bluebeard
The Bluebeard figure has been around in folk tales for a long while in various forms and cultures, but probably the most famous is the one written down by Frenchman Charles Perrault in the seventeenth century. The gentleman is a compulsive widower, marrying then testing his wives with the curiosity test: "Here are all the keys to all the rooms in the castle; you can go into all of them except the room belonging to this hey here. See, this one with Forbidden Room Key engraved on it." The wife always went into that room, which contained all the bodies of all the previous wives, in theory proving things about curiosity, cats and killings. Or perhaps really just proving that some husbands are just psychopaths.
8. The Minotaur
In Greek mythology the Minotaur is the result of Pasiphaë (wife of King Minos) falling in love with a rather handsome looking bull. Totally not her fault: her husband had offended the god Poseidon by not offering up the best possible sacrifice and said god punished Minos via his wife. Because gods are Not Very Nice. The Minotaur has the body of a man, the head of a bull, and likes to eat human flesh. Minos had the labyrinth built to hide the creature in, and every year other subject kings had to send tribute in the form of tasty young people to be sent into the labyrinth as snacks. Basically, you're being eaten by a bovine. For a different perspective, read Lisa L. Hannett's "The Short Go: A Future in Eight Seconds" in Bluegrass Symphony.
9. The Kelpie
Everyone likes a pony but be wary of the kelpie, whose CV reads "child-eating, shape-shifting water spirit." Some are said to be able to take the form of a human, but they're given away by their hooves, which they apparently can't hide (especially as those hooves are reversed). Once restricted to streams − they'd offer to carry travellers across, then transform mid-way and drown, then eat said travellers − they're now associated with most non-oceanic bodies of water. I think they speak to our fear of the things we can't see that brush against us when we're swimming. They can be tamed by use of a blessed bridle and set to work hauling stones for a castle or pulling a grinding stone around a mill ... but beware the curses they deliver when released, you might find your entire family being wiped out! Not one for the My Little Ponies gift pack.
10. Your parents
Your parents sent you to your room? Wouldn't let you have a PlayStation? Don't appreciate your Pokémon obsession? Buck up, buttercup! In the original "Hansel and Gretel" the parents (the actual blood parents, not just one parent and a step-parent) lead their kids off to starve in the woods to save on groceries. In "Donkeyskin", "Doralice", "All-Kinds-of-Fur", "Catskin" (there are a lot of these kinds of tales!), a father wants to marry his daughter as she's the only one as beautiful as her dead mother (faultless logic there!). Rapunzel's parents swap her for salad greens (Homer was right when he said you don't make friends with salad). In "The Girl with No Hands" the miller unwisely promises the Devil whatever is in his backyard in return for treasure − unfortunately it's not the fat grey cat he thought, but his very own daughter.

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Ten Scary Creatures from Fairy Tales and Mythology

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By Angela Slatter As an avid reader and self-confessed story junkie I've spent most of my life reading books of fairy and folk tales, legends, myths, religious texts, apocrypha, and demanding the people around me tell me stories. My mind, therefore, is a really big treasure chest of, well, stuff.

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Night terrors and nightmares are different and happen at different stages of sleep.

During a night terror you may talk and move about but are asleep. It's rare to remember having a night terror.

Nightmares are bad dreams you wake up from and can remember.

Night terrors are most common in children between the ages of 3 and 8, while nightmares can affect both children and adults.

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Causes of night terrors and nightmares

Common causes of night terrors and nightmares include:

being very tired or unwell

sudden noises at night or needing to pee during the night (which can affect your deep sleep)

something that's frightened you (such as watching a scary film) or made you stressed, anxious or worried

They can also be caused by:

taking certain medicines, such as antidepressants

conditions that affect sleep, such as restless legs syndrome or sleep apnoea

mental health conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

conditions that affect the brain, such as dementia

Night terrors are more common in people with family members who have had night terrors or who sleepwalk.

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Nightmares in children can happen at any age, but they usually start between the ages of 3 and 6, and decrease after age 10. After age 12, girls are more likely than boys to have nightmares.

Types of nightmares differ by developmental stage. Younger kids are likely to have nightmares about being separated from their caregivers or seeing a monster. Older kids are likely to have nightmares related to scary movies, or upcoming stressors like starting a new school.

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Witches are a folkloric archetype of character that commonly appears in fairy tales, such as Hansel & Gretel, Rapunzel, and many more.

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Witches are a folkloric archetype of character that commonly appears in fairy tales, such as Hansel & Gretel, Rapunzel, and many more.

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Witches in fairy tales do certainly seem to adhere to a single stereotype,

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What do witches represent in fairytales?

Traditionally in fairytales witches represented the dark or shadow side of ourselves:- aspects that we have repressed. The word 'witches,' originates from the word wica meaning wise. They were, in real life, herbalists, healers and often midwives – not the dark force they have become in fairytales.

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https://www.anngadd.co.za/2014/12/fairytales-symbols/

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Common Symbols in fairytales and what they mean.

Wicked witches, enchanted forests, magic beans and speaking animals:- fairytales are rich in symbols and archetypes. Insight into the meanings of these symbols, allows the reader to understood the tales on a deeper level.

The interpretation of symbols can differ from culture to culture. For instance, in the West, we lovingly adorn bay girls in pink, while in the East, traditionally baby boys are associated with that colour and girls with blue. The Eastern interpretation is easily understandable: pink:- being closest to red on the colour wheel is a masculine 'fire' colour, as opposed to the watery feminine blue.

Popular fairytales, in the form we know them, originated from a European culture, from where most of us have originated as well, so that the meaning of the symbols would still hold true for us.
Let's look at a few of the most popular symbols.
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Witches

Traditionally in fairytales witches represented the dark or shadow side of ourselves:- aspects that we have repressed. The word 'witches,' originates from the word wica meaning wise. They were, in real life, herbalists, healers and often midwives - not the dark force they have become in fairytales. Their persecution occurred as a result of the Christian need to separate God from nature and the pagan religions who worshiped animal and earth related divinities. If Divinity resided in the air/heaven then the Devil must surely reside in the earth. These women, (who related to the earth) often did have strong healing and psychic powers and so were presumed to be working with the Devil.
Sometimes used in place of witches, are step-mothers, who have a similar meaning. Like witches, they are the force that must be destroyed for the heroine to survive (and thrive). The very opposite of the nurturing mother. They refer to the ego nature within us, that must be brought to the light of consciousness for us to spiritually transcend.

Like these witches, the ego is cunning, just as the witch in Hansel and Gretel, who tricks the children into believing that she is going to help them by giving them food and a warm bed, only to attempt to eat Hansel. (The ego attempts to devour our higher being.) So long as we crave things, we are under the power of the ego. The craving the children have for the house made of sweets and cakes, leads them into trouble. Think of the Buddhist philosophy that the root of all suffering is attachment. The ego feeds our desire and attachment to all things, so that we fall under its illusion, which traps us, just as poor Hansel becomes trapped by the witch in a cage.
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Birds

Because of their ability to fly, birds are seen as messengers from higher realms - a way we humans can connect or receive messages from the Divine. (Think of the expression: "A little bird told me.") Shamans across cultures adorn themselves in feathers and attempt to communicate information from the gods to us. Birds also represent the ability to soar or rise above our problems, as well as the human soul. They normally assist their fairytale heroes/ines and are often able to speak and offer sage advice.
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Roses

In earlier versions of Hansel and Gretel, Gretel turns herself into a rose. Snow White pricks herself on a rose and Beauty, in Beauty and the Beast asks her father for a rose. It is a symbol that occurs frequently. A rose is a symbol of the sacred path. A red rose was said to spring from the blood Christ shed on the cross. In other words from his sacrifice came the opportunity through the path he showed, to overcome our karma and find our way to our divine home. Orders such as the Rosicrucians or Rosycross have adopted this symbol as part of their name and teachings.

The rose has thorns that prick our flesh, symbolizing our negative karma in the form of pain and suffering we must endure on our paths to balance and transcendence.

The five sepals, which are green and leaf-like at the top of the stem can be seen to represent the 'five-fold path' of the initiate in Western mystery schools and of the Buddha in Eastern mystery schools.
Love, perfection, beauty and the heart are also strongly associated with the rose. Jung saw the rose as representing the integrated self because of the male (thorn) aspect and the female (the seeds and the red petals = menses). Next time then, when you give or receive roses, consider the deeper meaning of their gift.
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Mirrors

In days past, mirrors were expensive and a luxury reserved for the wealthy. They were commonly used not only to check one's beauty, but used for predicting the future and seeing the past. It was said that they were treated with specially alchemically prepared chemicals to enhance the viewer's psychic abilities.

The mirror then, is not simply a mirror as we know it, but rather the tool of a seer and as such often able to speak, as in Snow White's step-mother's mirror. Crystal balls and water have similar properties. Consequently mirrors are seen as the gateway between this world and other realms or levels of consciousness. As a unemotional reflection of events and in some belief systems the soul, the mirror is not able to lie, just as our mirrors today, cannot, in spite of our desire, shed 10 kilos for us or lose those wrinkles!.
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The Wolf and Other Tricksters

In Christian symbolism, the parishioners are often referred to as sheep, while the wolf, in being the sheep's predator, is seen as the devil or instrument of Satan. The wolf is also associated with a man who is sexually predatory. In some versions of Red Riding Hood she actually gets into bed with the wolf, believing that he is the grandmother.

Because of its relation to sex, in a time when sex was seen as separating us from divinity (while interesting enough at the same time in the East, with Tantric practices etc, it was seen as having the opposite effect), the wolf was associated with base desire and the lower aspects oneself. This lower self, in the form of the wolf, wants to devour/rape pure little Red Riding Hood and arrest her (spiritual) journey. She is innocent and unable to distinguish between the sweet goodness of Grandma and the inherent evil of the wolf. (Most of us have met a couple of wolves along the way!) The wolf is cunning and demands attention, seeking gratification at any cost. He has no conscience about eating grandma and tricking them both.

Another way of looking at the wolf is as the Trickster, similar to the hare, cat, fox, coyote, or raven in other tales. These tricksters are often demi-gods in disguise, wise-fools who use tricks and cunning as a way of teaching.

Like the court jester in days of old, the trickster brings to light flaws in our society and natures in such a way as to avoid recrimination himself. He is a fool, after all and how can anyone blame a fool? He is a rebel, a joker who makes fun of authority and plays with the laws of the universe and accepted norms. Like the fool in the Tarot card who gaily steps off a cliff, he is the number zero - the beginning and the end. Because he and his work are illusionary, he can live, die, change appearance, perform magic, and even in animal form, speak.

The Trickster appears in history as teachers such as Hermes Tremegistus, the master of all arts and sciences, ruler of the three worlds of physical, astral and mental planes, the scribe of the gods and keeper of the Book of Life or Akashic records. As Hermes or Mercury (the Roman form of Hermes), the Trickster is often portrayed wearing a broad traveler's hat or winged cap, with winged sandals and carrying his staff or caduceus. (For example, Puss in Boots is portrayed as having a large feathered hat and boots.) The Trickster, was also the Egyptian god Thoth, the scribe, who was regarded by the ancient Egyptians as the embodiment of the universal mind. He is also associated with the magician Merlin in Arthurian legend.
As the Trickster, Hermes represents good versus evil and consequently duality as well as the chaos of creation, as opposed to the reality of order. He is both destroyer and creator of the world and yet not of the world. Through his antics and questioning of norms, he transforms those around him and fools his pupils into seeing through the illusion of time and the physical world. He was said to teach by tricking his pupils, much as happens in the Native American tradition of Coyote medicine, described in the books by Carlos Castaneda or Brer Rabbit in the books of the same name by Joel Chandler Harris. Brer Rabbit is a practical joker and clever trickster.

Part god, part animal, the Trickster is the divine and wise fool who answers to no one. Most often he focuses on his own gain and rebels against authority, pokes fun at the serious and creates ingenious plans which often are his undoing. His purpose is to get us to question established ways of thinking and take a hard and humorous look at ourselves. In doing so, he is a change matrix. The Trickster often appears in mythology in response to a problem, dragon/witch/negative demon.

The Trickster is referred to as male because he carries attributes often associated with men, such as aggression or anger, sexual promiscuity and self destruction, associated with our lower selves or ego. However a trickster can be either male or female.
When we find trickster symbols or people appearing in our own lives, it is an indication that changes or transformation is taking place, which could be internal, external, or probably both.
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The forest or wood

[su_nt_quote name="Dante" meta="from the Divine Comedy"]Midway upon the journey of our life. I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost. [/su_nt_quote] At times in our lives we lose our way in a dark impenetrable emotional forest. Like the twelfth century writer and poet Dante, many fairytale heroes and heroines find themselves in that predicament. They have been betrayed and they are afraid, alone, and craving physical/spiritual food. Remember Snow White being left alone in the forest when her step mother has demanded that the woodcutter kills her? At the time the world is depressing and we cannot seem to find a way out of the situation - we can't see the wood from the trees. We only see the details and miss the bigger picture in this dark night of the soul. Yet it is this very confusion that gives us the opportunity to turn our lives around and start on a more meaningful path.

A forest is seen as the feminine principle or unconscious, as the light (male principle) cannot shine through its depths. In order to heal we need to deal with the unconscious shadow sides of ourselves - those aspects that we have hidden away for fear that they are not acceptable. If we don't engage with, "know thyself," then we cannot become whole. No matter how many good deeds we may do.

The forest, though has a positive side. Like the nurturing female energy, it can offer refuge and protection. It symbolizes going into the unconscious aspects of ourselves to make them conscious. This entry into the dark unknown sides of ourselves is common in most fairy tales and represented by enchanted forests, fierce animals, deep oceans, deserts, wildernesses, and wastelands amongst others. (Even in religion, Jesus goes into the desert as does The Prophet Mohammed.) This is the place where we get tested and we must learn to replace fear with faith. We cannot find our way out of the forest or turn back until we have completed this stage of our journey, but to do so also carries danger and we need courage to surpass its perils. In the forest, we must fight against the forces of darkness within ourselves, if we are to emerge into the light.
[su_nt_quote name="Carl Jung"]But what if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea the very fiend himself - that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved - what then?[/su_nt_quote]

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Common Symbols in fairytales and what they mean. Wicked witches, enchanted forests, magic beans and speaking animals:- fairytales are rich in symbols and archetypes. Insight into the meanings of these symbols, allows the reader to understood the tales on a deeper level. The interpretation of symbols can differ from culture to culture.

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https://steelthistles.blogspot.com/2013/09/good-witches.html

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In this third post about witches, I’m considering some children’s books in which the characters are recognisably witches, but good ...

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https://exploringyourmind.com/fairies-witches-female-stereotypes-fairytales/

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Traditional children's literature represents a sexist view of reality. The fairies and witches we see in them are some of the best examples, especially in traditional children's stories and movies with female protagonists. In that particular genre, boys and girls have a strong emotional connection to the stories and take the story's message to heart.

While some modern stories are more contemporary, others have proven to be closed off, unchangeable, sexist, and discriminatory. Let's delve a little deeper into this.

The implications of fairies and witches

Stories are often a reflection of people's culture and worldview. These fairytales, in particular, illustrate the idea that men are better than women. In these types of stories, the gender roles that men and women take on have a strong influence on how children see themselves and the world.

In fairytales, women are often represented as either fairies or witches. Although they're different, they all tend to have some kind of magic power or skill. Fairies are beautiful and kind, while witches are ugly and solitary.

Women have a secondary role in fairytales. They're relegated to the home, raising children, and taking care of everyone. Their main purpose in fairytales is to dedicate their lives to serving others. Their only goal is to get married.

Symbols of gender roles in fairytales

When the characterization and distinction of characters depend primarily on the sex (female or male), the message about values leads to different sexual roles and functions that are often completely opposing.
Turin (1995) analyzed some of the most representative symbols in fairytales:

Glasses: male characters don't tend to use glasses. Glasses usually symbolize wisdom in the face of beauty.

Household items (handkerchief, apron, mop, broom, etc.): these symbolize the perfect housewife and mother who dedicates her life and time exclusively to her household chores.

Windows: fairies and princesses tend to hide from the world around them, which signifies apathy and impassivity.

Male characters, on the other hand, are usually strong and brave. If they're butlers or servants, they symbolize submission. So why don't you ever see male characters doing household chores in spite of the fact that they're strong or brave?

Fairytales

Classic tales like Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty are some examples of stories in which all the princesses and fairies are beautiful. Their only job is to do housework and none of them have a social life. In these stories, ugliness is always related to evilness. Most of the conflict is due to jealousy and the fight over who is more beautiful and who gets the prince.

Fairies and witches portray this idea of the "perfect" housewife as if it were a gift or some kind of ability that only women have. These stereotypical values devalue women's work and make it hard to educate people about gender equality.

These representations of women only serve to perpetuate the tired old ideas that society has about gender roles. It feeds the system that rewards some behaviors and punishes others.

In fact, nowadays, these kinds of ideas are becoming obsolete in the young generation. Nevertheless, it's important to keep working on other ingrained ideas and stereotypes such as good vs. evil, the value of work, the value of respect, friendship, etc.
It might interest you...

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Fairies and Witches: Female Stereotypes in Fairytales

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Traditional children's literature represents a sexist view of reality. The fairies and witches we see in them are some of the best examples, especially in traditional children's stories and movies with female protagonists. In that particular genre, boys and girls have a strong emotional connection to the stories and take the story's message to heart.

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https://otherworldlyoracle.com/witches-in-fairy-tales-shamanic-elements-in-bedtime-stories/

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As a child, I was obsessed with fairy tales and nursery rhymes. They took me out of this world and into a realm of magic and fantasy. Into a world where witches existed...both good and bad. As I grew older, I realized there are witches in fairy tales for a few reasons. One, because they make the story exciting. And two, because they almost always teach the hero or other characters in the story a valuable lesson. In this article, let's meet the fairy tale witch archetype and explore the shamanic elements in our favorite bedtime stories.

Fairy Tales: True Shamanic Beginnings

Fairy Tales are essentially folk tales passed down through word of mouth over the centuries. For hundreds of years, fairy tales were an oral tradition. However, in more recent centuries, folklorists and writers dedicated these old nursery stories and rhymes to paper. I believe these fairy tales echo ancient myths in many different cultures. We see key examples of comparative mythology in stories like Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. If you're unsure what comparative mythology is, listen to our podcast on the topic here.

The Darker Elements to our Favorite Fairy Tales

First, let's talk about the true roots to our favorite fairy tales, specifically the darker aspects, shamanic aspects and the lessons within. Interestingly, the fairy tales we tell our children as bedtime stories were once much darker. And remember how I said I believe they echo ancient myths? My reasons lie in the many shamanic elements throughout including: shapeshifters, goddesses turned enchantresses and witches, the act of spinning, curses, spells, talking animals and the color red.

The darker aspects in fairy tales were erased or changed over time to make them tolerable for kids and society overall. A good example is Cinderella. While a seemingly innocent "happily ever after" story, the original includes the stepsisters cutting off their heels to fit into the glass slipper. And in the end, birds peck out their eyes.

Who Recorded Witches in Fairy Tales?

The Grimm Brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm, lived in the early nineteenth century. These German folklorists collected regional stories and documented them in a book that would become the famous Grimm Brothers' Fairy Tales. Jacob, in particular, was inspired by old mythology and spent much of his life researching, studying and writing about German Mythology (i.e. Teutonic Mythology). His writings often included anecdotes on old gods, traditions, folk tales and more. He was one of the first to conceptualize the Comparative Myth of the Wild Hunt.

While the Grimm Brothers were undoubtedly the most famous of fairy tale writers, there have been others. Hans Christian Anderson, Andrew Lang, Charles Perrault, and in more recent times we could add JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis to the list. What I find most fascinating is these writers weren't just interested in folk tales, they were typically submerged in the occult. And/or were rebels in one way or another. Perrault, for example, was an iconoclast who bucked against the classical education of the seventeenth century.

The Fairy Tale Witch Archetype

To quote author Judika Illes, "Fairy tales helped perpetuate the worst stereotyping of witches, but fairy tales also helped preserve and transmit witchcraft and shamanic traditions." The witch is an archetype seen throughout fairy tales that often demonstrates the worst in a person - evil, greed, homicide, etc. Yet the witches in fairy tales also play good roles. But when these witches are considered "good" they are labeled something else. For example fairy godmother, goddess, crone, fortune teller, or wise woman. Yet whether they are good or bad, these witches almost always teach a lesson or challenge the hero/heroine in the tale.

Now to the good stuff. The Magic and Witches in Fairy Tales.

Hansel and Gretel and the Candy Witch

The world-famous fairy tale Hansel and Gretel was collected by Jacob Grimm in 1817. This is a tale of two children who are led into the forest and abandoned by their father (a request by their evil stepmother.) The children find a house made of gingerbread and candy, a witch residing inside. They eat the house and the witch finds them. Then leads them inside only to kidnap them. She attempts to feed them to fatten them up, planning to eat them.

The girl tricks the witch and throws her into her own oven. The children take the witch's jewels, ride on the back of a swan across the lake, and return home to find their father alive. Note - the stepmother has died of unknown causes. Scholars believe this shows a connection between the stepmother and the witch.

The swan (often excluded from modern versions of the tale) and the lake: is this an otherworldly journey, possibly? The swan could be a psychopomp that leads the kids back to the physical plane? Perhaps the woods are in the Otherworld and they're led there to learn a lesson. Also note, in Norse mythology, the swan is linked to the Valkyrie. Scholars have also linked Hansel and Gretel's tale to a Proto-Indo-European coming of age ritual. One in which they're made to go deep in the forest. Could act echo of past shamanic initiations?

Sleeping Beauty / Briar Rose:

Briar Rose is the German version of Sleeping Beauty. Though the stories are the same: a beautiful princess is born. The king invites twelve wise women to the party, forgetting to invite the thirteenth. The thirteenth is offended and crashes the party. And puts a curse on the princess that when she's fifteen she'll prick her finger on a spindle and die. Notice the number thirteen used in this fairy tale. This is a number that's feared by many yet tied to shamanic tradition and mythology. Jesus and the twelve disciples (Judas often being the thirteenth), Loki as the thirteenth Norse god, thirteen witches in a coven, and thirteen moon cycles.

Mother Holle: Goddess, Fairy Godmother & Witch?

One of my favorites fairy tales is Mother Holle. This story showcases Holle also known as the goddess Holda, who is associated with the goddess Berchta (a goddess dear to my heart). The story goes, there were two daughters. One lazy and one hard working. The hardworking one is spinning near a well, pricks her finger, and goes to wash off the spindle in the well when it falls in, submerged. The mother sends the daughter to the bottom of the well to retrieve it.

Gold...Or Tar

The girl wakes up in another world - a beautiful meadow, flowers, birds singing, the whole Otherworldly bit. She meets Mother Holle, an old woman with large teeth, of whom she stays with and helps with the chores. The girl asks to go home one day, and Mother Holle leads her through a door home...showering her in gold on the other side. The lazy sister proceeds to do the same, to acquire the gold for herself, but treats Mother Holle with disrespect. And so Mother Holle sends the lazy girl through the door...showering her in deadly tar on the other side. Interestingly, Mother Holle is the only name provided in the story.

Rapunzel

Rapunzel's story is one we all know and love. A poor couple become pregnant. The woman is starving and asks her husband to get her some of the vegetables (called rapunzel) from the neighbor's garden. He doesn't ask for it, buy or barter for it, but instead climbs the wall and steals it. The neighbor is actually a "witch", "enchantress" or is even called a "fairy" in some versions of the story. This witch is clearly well-off if she has a stocked garden during a time of famine and a wall that protects her garden. The witch catches the man stealing from her, and tells him she'll give him more in exchange for their unborn child.

The Witch Comes to Collect...

When the child is born, the witch comes to collect and names the girl Rapunzel. She shuts the girl in a tower in the forest and visits by climbing her long hair. A prince eventually comes across the locked-away princess, climbs up, falls in love with her and in earlier versions of the fairy tale impregnates her. The witch finds this out and cuts off Rapunzel's hair and banishes her from the forest. The prince climbs into the tower and discovers Rapunzel is gone and a witch is in her place. The witch doesn't push him, as is often the story told, but the prince jumps out of the tower and falls into bramble, blinding himself.

The "witch" may have just been a rich woman accused of witchcraft in Medieval Times as was the case with a single woman with wealth. Or perhaps was indeed a priestess or witch. We surmise that Rapunzel's hair may be the source of psychic power. So once the girl gives up her virginity, the witch feels Rapunzel is no longer worthy of these an initiation process into witchcraft and banishes her.

The Little Mermaid

Another famous fairy tale featuring the witch archetype is The Little Mermaid By Hans Christian Andersen. A mermaid lives in the ocean with her father (the sea king), grandmother and five sisters. At the age of fifteen, she is permitted to go to the ocean surface. And she does so finding a ship, with a hot prince, who is being thrown a birthday party. She watches from a distance, but when a storm sinks the ship, the little mermaid saves the young man. Then she asks her grandmother about humans and her grandmother tells her humans have an eternal soul and that mermaids do not. Apparently mermaids are destined to turn to sea foam after they die. The little mermaid wants to be a "part of that world" and seeks advice from the local sea witch.

The sea witch warns the little mermaid against using magic and following through, but ends up giving the little mermaid a spell to transform her into a human. Then the witch tells her she must get the prince to fall in love with her and marry her in one day. Else she'll lose her soul and life. Well, there's problems in paradise when the prince decides he loves another princess of whom he confuses for his savior on the seashore that day. In the Disney movie, he marries the little mermaid and they live happily ever after. In the real story, the prince marries the other princess, and the little mermaid dies of a broken heart and turns to sea foam the following day.

Let's focus on the sea witch, of whom I always felt was seriously misunderstood. A. In the original tale, she warns the little mermaid against making these choices. And B. in the Disney movie, she has character...PLUS truly she's just seeking power. And aren't we all looking to dominate our slice of the sea? Ursula is hands down one of the most dynamic Disney villains.

Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes

Mother Goose was first documented in France and was originally the keeper of Fairy Tales, rather than the Mother of Rhymes. The first time she's mentioned is in 1650 and then further detailed by Charles Perrault in 1697 in which he publishes the 'Tales of Mother Goose'. It was a collection of fairy tales including Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Red Riding Hood and Puss in Boots. Mother Goose is shown on the cover with a cat, children, and a man and she's sitting at a spinning wheel. Looking at it from a witch's perspective, we see a witch with her familiar and spinning wheel of fate.
"Old Mother Goose, when she wanted to wander, Would ride through the air On a very fine gander. Mother Goose had a house, 'Twas built in a wood. An owl at the door. For a porter stood."
Interestingly, a porter's job in Medieval Times was to guard the door of a church. It's almost like Mother Goose's house is a sacred sanctuary, of sorts, and she needs a guardian to protect her and her space. And again, an animal is mentioned, an owl. This bird is inextricably linked to the goddesses of ancient times and witchcraft in general.

In addition to Mother Goose "spinning her fairy tales", the precursors to Mother Goose in France and Italy were figures called "Queen Bertha" and "Goose Foot Bertha". The name plus the goose foot reference links Mother Goose to the Germanic goddess Berchta, who manifests with one goose-foot. Clearly this is a nod to her shamanic, shapeshifting nature. Mother Goose is also thought to be the goddess Holda or Frau Holle, another folkloric figure in Germany. Another witch goddess who manifests with a goose-foot is Lilith and the infamous Queen of Sheba.

I recommend purchasing a copy of Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes and reading through it. Many are spells rather than just mere rhymes or stories. Some folks believe the English nursery rhymes may have been passed down orally from the time of the Druids.

Listen to our FULL Podcast episode on Witches and Shamanism in Fairy Tales here:

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Witches in Fairy Tales & Shamanic Elements in Bedtime Stories

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As a child, I was obsessed with fairy tales and nursery rhymes. They took me out of this world and into a realm of magic and fantasy. Into a world where witches existed...both good and bad. As I grew older, I realized there are witches in fairy tales for a few reasons.

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https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/journey-into-witchcraft-beliefs/

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The history of witchcraft is complex, and often raises more questions than it answers. Where did witches come from? And did they always arrive on broomsticks? We asked Professor Diane Purkiss to take us inside the minds of ordinary people and intellectuals in medieval and early modern England to reveal how the figure of the witch was born.

Travel with us from the pre-Christian world to the burial mounds of the English landscape, where an underworld of elves, demons and familiars came alive in the popular imagination. Out of these murky beginnings, we discover how the witch became the subject of the chilling persecutions of the 16th and 17th centuries.

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The history of witchcraft is complex, and often raises more questions than it answers. We asked Professor Diane Purkiss to take us inside the minds of ordinary people and intellectuals in medieval and early modern England to reveal how the figure of the witch was born.

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Suggestion :
Making my cpp as a documentary, to record the facts about which ( witch trails, hunting, witchcraft….)

Creating a story (probably like a bedtime story but it’s not for children) based on the character —witch, for example, the story behind their dark, evil, scary stereotypes)

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https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/eight-witchcraft-myths/

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Witchcraft is an area of history that most people feel familiar with. From the Salem Witch Trials to the witches of Macbeth, the figure of the witch is embedded in our culture. The problem is that most of what we think we know is wrong.

Professor Diane Purkiss debunks eight of the most common myths about witchcraft.

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Witchcraft: Eight Myths and Misconceptions

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Witchcraft is an area of history that most people feel familiar with. From the Salem Witch Trials to the witches of Macbeth, the figure of the witch is embedded in our culture. The problem is that most of what we think we know is wrong.

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The Crucible, Arthur Miller's 1953 realist play, is based on the historical events of the 1692 Salem witch hunts. Although partially fictionalised, it depicts the very real consequences of false accusations based on blind religious faith, as Miller displays the dangers of such baseless rumours.

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The Crucible, Arthur Miller's 1953 realist play, is based on the historical events of the 1692 Salem witch hunts. Although partially fictionalised, it depicts the very real consequences of false accusations based on blind religious faith, as Miller displays the dangers of such baseless rumours.

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1. Valais: France/Switzerland, 1428-1447

Often considered to be the first in Europe, the Valais trials began in the French-speaking southern region of Valais and spread to German-speaking Wallis. The trials claimed at least 367 victims (the actual toll may be higher), with just as many men as women killed. It all began in August 1428, when delegates from seven different districts demanded investigations into any accused witches or sorcerers. They established a rule that if any single person was accused of witchcraft three times, they were to be arrested. Once arrested, there was no way to escape; those that confessed were burned at the stake and those who didn't were tortured until they did confess. While the trials were poorly documented, there are a few records that remain from the local clerk of the court, Johannes Fründ.

2. Trier: Germany, 1581-1593

One of the largest witch trials in European history started in the rural diocese of Trier in 1581, eventually reaching the city itself six years later. The motives behind this massive witch-purging were likely political. Wanting to prove his loyalty to the Jesuits, the newly-appointed Archbishop Johann von Schöneburg ordered a purge of three groups of nonconformists: Protestants, Jews and witches. Very few of those accused of witchcraft were ever released. Between 1587 and 1593, 368 of the accused from 22 villages were burned alive, almost all confessing under torture. Almost a third of the victims were nobility or held positions in the government or local administration, including judges, burgermeisters, councilors, canons and parish priests.

3. North Berwick: Scotland, 1590-1592

When King James VI of Scotland sailed to Copenhagen to marry Princess Anne of Denmark, a severe coastal storm forced him to land in Norway and take refuge for several weeks. The storm was blamed on witchcraft, which brewed the king's obsession with eliminating the practice. He became so obsessed he even penned a book, Daemonologie, endorsing witch hunting. The first to fall victim was Gilly Duncan. Accused of using healing cures and subject to prolonged torture, Duncan confessed to having a contract with the devil. She was burned at the stake for her crime. In total, 70 people were accused of witchcraft, including several members of Scottish nobility, although the actual number of those killed remains unknown. These events had such a profound effect that it's believed Shakespeare adapted parts of the trial-including the torture rituals-into "Macbeth." The North Berwick witch trials were the first major trials in Scotland, but many followed, claiming an estimated total of 3,000-4,000 lives between 1560 and 1707.

4. Fulda: Germany, 1603-1606

After returning from a 20-year exile from his post, Balthasar von Dernbach, the prince-abbot of the Fulda monastery, joined the ongoing efforts of the Catholic Counter-Reformation to thwart perceived religious liberalism. Dernbach launched an aggressive investigation into witchcraft and sorcery to purge the city of Fulda of "improper" things. The most well-known victim was a pregnant woman named Merga Bien. Accused of murdering her second husband, their children and a family member of her husband's employer, she was tortured and forced to confess. Found guilty, Bien was burned at the stake. The witch hunts were stopped upon the death of Dernbach in 1605.

5. Pendle: England, 1612-1634

Taking place in Pendle Hill-a poor, lawless region in Lancashire, England, where begging and magical healing were common-these trials were among the most famous and well-documented of the 17th century. The previous decades had been rife with a fear of witchcraft, which was only magnified by the obsession of James VI (now also King James I of England) in purging his lands of witches and sorcerers. Required to report anyone who refused to attend the English Church or take communion, the local Justice of the Peace, Roger Nowell, was also tasked with investigating claims of witchcraft. One such claim was made by a local Halifax peddler who accused a local woman, Alizon Device, of giving him a stroke through witchcraft. Device freely confessed to the crime and implicated many of her family members. Other locals implicated their families, only later to be accused themselves. Altogether, 12 were accused of using witchcraft to murder 10 people. Eleven of the accused went to trial-nine women and two men-and 10 were found guilty and hanged.

6. Torsåker: Sweden, 1674-1675

The largest witch trial in Swedish history-and one of the largest mass killings of witches in recorded history-saw 71 accused witches, including 65 females, or roughly one-fifth of all women in the region, beheaded and burned in a single day. The bloodshed began when minister Laurentius Christophori Hornæus of Ytterlännäs was instructed to investigate witchcraft within his parish. He ordered two young boys to stand at the doors and identify witches by the invisible devil's mark on their forehead as they walked into church. Much to the dismay of Hornæus, one of the boys identified the minister's wife, a situation that was quickly hushed up.

The accused were suspected of abducting children and taking them to Satan's Sabbath (eight festivals celebrated by Wiccans and Neopagans) at Blockula (a meadow popular in Swedish folklore where the devil held court). Relying mostly on children, testimonies were extracted through whippings, forced bathing in frozen lakes or by threats to bake the children in an oven. There were very few records of these trials, and the primary source was recorded 60 years after their conclusion by the grandson of minister Hornæus, who recorded his grandmother's eyewitness account to the proceedings. The trials were thought to have shaky legitimacy since the commission and local courts failed to report the death sentences to a higher court before carrying them out.

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Beyond Salem: 6 Lesser-Known Witch Trials | HISTORY

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These six trials were part of the worldwide witch hunt frenzy.

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The exact number of people executed during the European witch-hunting craze is unknown, though estimates run to the tens of thousands. In some parts of Europe, such as Germany, the majority of the accused were female, whereas, in Iceland, male witches predominated. A papal bull issued in 1484 by Pope Innocent VIII denouncing witches was seized upon by German Inquisitor Heinrich Kramer, who wrote a handbook on the identification and treatment of witches in 1486. There were various signs that a person was a witch, and there were several methods used to extract a confession from the accused.

The Valais Witch Trials: The First Systematic European Witch-Hunt

In 1428, the first systematic European witch-hunt began in Valais, Switzerland. This witch-hunt lasted eight years and resulted in the deaths of 367 people. To be condemned, a person had to have at least three neighbors publicly state that they were a witch. The majority of those accused in the Valais witch trials were male peasants. These individuals were subjected to torture, under which confessions were extracted concerning meetings with the Devil - who had supposedly urged the accused to avoid mass and confession, in exchange for the reward of the ability to fly. Others confessed to having the power to kill their neighbors or to change into werewolves.

The condemned were mostly burnt to death, with a few being beheaded. Victims were tied to a ladder that was pushed into a pyre. As final mercy, the authorities tied bags of gunpowder around the witches' necks to hasten their deaths in the flames.

Joan of Arc: Witch-Hunt Cause Célèbre

Possibly the most famous victim of burning at the stake for witchcraft and heresy was Joan of Arc. However, Joan was not killed during the witch-hunting craze period, rather, she was more a victim of politics. Witchcraft was simply a convenient way to get rid of her.

Joan had been subjected by her English captors to 15 examinations, both public and private, before being subjected to a trial in an ecclesiastical court, who found her guilty of heresy. A translation of her trial records stated that "the poison of heresy" had had a transformative effect, turning her into a "member of Satan". It was determined that Joan was "a blasphemer against God", and thus she was burnt at the stake in 1431 in Rouen, where it is said she died of smoke inhalation before the flames consumed her.

One of the biggest European witch-hunts took place in Bamberg, Germany, from 1626 to 1631. Of the one thousand people convicted, 900 were burnt at the stake, some of whom were fortunate enough to have been beheaded first. This was one witch-hunt that did not discriminate; people of all ages, genders, and classes were killed during the Bamberg Witch Trials.

It all began in 1626 when people petitioned the local authorities, asking why witches and wizards had sent frosts to destroy their crops. The Prince-Bishop, Johann Georg Fuchs von Dornheim, launched an investigation, and before long one woman was arrested and confessed to causing the frost.

This was one witch-hunt where torture could be used without restriction, resulting not only in confessions but in the extraction of new names. Under torture, the accused confessed to participating in the Witches' Sabbath, malevolent magic, and sexual intercourse with Satan and his minions. There were so many victims of this witch-hunt that a special building, the "Witch House", was built in 1627. Torture methods used at this time to extract confessions and accusations from victims included the use of thumbscrews, leg vises, and strappado.

Finally, the husband of an accused woman called Dorothea Flock managed to escape to nearby Nuremberg and made a complaint to the Emperor, who intervened. The Prince-Bishop who spearheaded the Bamberg Witch Trials was removed from his position of power, but not until after he had made a very handsome profit seizing the lands of those he sought to destroy.

Johann Georg Fuchs von Dornheim was replaced as Prince-Bishop in 1631, thus ending the Bamberg Witch Trials. Yet the European witch-hunting craze was not finished. It would rage on for another 20 years, and the last execution for witchcraft in Europe did not take place until 1782.

The greatest number of executions for the crime of witchcraft occurred in Germany during the European witch-hunting craze of the early modern period, with modern data estimating that 42 percent of witchcraft trials that ended in death took place there.

Burning was the most common method of execution for witches in Europe; in England and Northern America hanging was the order of the day.

Methods of Identifying a "Witch"

There were several ways that a witch could be identified, according to the witch-hunters of the era. One such sign that a person was a witch was any mark on the skin, such as a mole, an age spot, or a birthmark. These were seen as a mark of the Devil, and one which the witch used to suckle her " familiar " - a demon that helped the witch in their evil-doing, disguised as a domestic pet such as a cat or a dog. Given that most people have some sort of blemish on their skin, witch-hunters were assured of unearthing a witch by using this method.

Another method of uncovering a witch's true identity was to prick them with pins. If they did not bleed, then it was a sure sign that they were under the Devil's control. Some unscrupulous witch-hunters used a retractable pin, so once again, the accused had no hope of passing this test.

Early on in the European witch-hunts, women who were single or elderly were vulnerable to suspicion. Historians attribute this to patriarchal attitudes; single women and widows lacked male protection. Similarly, a woman with a bad temper or a loose mouth was deemed highly suspicious. Men and women who had healing powers using herbal medicine were also targeted.

The "swimming of witches" was another method of identifying a witch during the European witch-hunts. The accused was stripped and thrown into a body of water, with a rope tied around their waist. It was believed that the waters would reject those marked by the Devil, so if the person floated then they were denounced as a witch. If they sank, then they would be pulled out of the water by a rope around their waist. Unfortunately, many people drowned in this manner. Whilst this method was used in Western Europe, it was more widespread in Eastern Europe; water ordeals used by Slavic communities tended to use them as an antidote to periods of drought.

The last official witch trial may have taken place in Poland in 1775 (though there are conflicting records about this). The Doruchów Witch Trial allegedly began after members of the community asked officials in a neighboring village to investigate evidence of sorcery. It was said that 14 women were arrested after being accused of using magic to harm the wife of a local nobleman. Three of these women died after being tortured, with the remaining women being burned at the stake. This witch trial is credited by some historians as begetting the Polish government's 1776 ban on torture and witch trials.

The End of European Witch-Hunting

There are several theories as to why the European witch-hunting craze happened, such as Catholicism and Protestantism vying for dominance, and the Little Ice Age that caused widespread loss of crops and livestock that resulted in sickness and starvation. These witch-hunts were further fuelled by greedy and unscrupulous witch-hunters, who stood to make considerable financial gains from finding and executing so-called witches in large numbers.

Various political factors which historians have identified as contributing to the European witch-hunting craze, such as the Thirty Years War, eventually came to an end, thus ending a period of political instability. Intellectual factors also helped bring the European witch-hunts to an end, with the Enlightenment encouraging people to take a more rational approach to the concept of witchcraft and to reject superstition. Advances in science meant that moles and birthmarks could be explained as a normal part of human physiology. Thankfully, many European countries began to issue laws that abolished the hunting of witches. Essentially, when there was stable government and economic security, paranoia surrounding witchcraft declined.

The European witch-hunts were good examples of the abuse of localized power. There were many incidents of witch trials in Europe that happened under the jurisdiction of village authorities, where "justice" was meted out by local judges and priests. Germany, France, Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands saw the greatest number of prosecutions for witchcraft; the Catholic countries of Italy, Spain, and Portugal had fewer prosecutions and far fewer executions of "witches" (and these countries were more interested in the persecution of heresies not related to witchcraft).

The last person executed for witchcraft in Europe was a woman called Anna Göldi. She died in Switzerland in 1782, at the age of 48. Anna was born into a poor family. She had an illegitimate child with a mercenary, and this child died in infancy. Anna was accused of murdering her baby, so she fled to another canton. There she found work serving a wealthy family. She lost this job after her employer's daughters accused her of witchcraft. One claimed she had found needles in her milk and the other claimed to have vomited metallic items. Anna left the family's service and afterward her employer accused her of witchcraft.

Under torture, Anna confessed, and she was found guilty and decapitated. It was revealed much later that Anna had had an affair with her employer, and when she threatened to reveal it, he conveniently took care of her with an accusation of witchcraft. Anna exemplified the most represented demographic murdered during the European witch-hunts - female, single, over 40, and poor.

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European Witch-Hunting (A Brief History)

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The exact number of people executed during the European witch-hunting craze is unknown, though estimates run to the tens of thousands. In some parts of Europe, such as Germany, the majority of the accused were female, whereas, in Iceland, male witches predominated.

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Our understanding of medieval women is often overshadowed by their male counterparts. This article will explore the lives of some impressive women of the medieval period.

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Witches’ Sabbath - Francisco de Goya y Lucientes - Google Arts & Culture

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This impressive painting by Goya was part of a series of six on the theme of witchcraft commissioned by the Dukes of Osuna to decorate their “El Capricho”…

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1. The witch was any mark on the skin, such as a mole, an age spot, or a birthmark. These were seen as a mark of the devil.

2.Another method of uncovering a witch’s true identity was to prick them with pins. If they did not bleed, then it was a sure sign that they were under the Devil’s control.

3.single or elderly were vulnerable to suspicion

4.The “swimming of witches” was another method of identifying a witch during the European witch-hunts.

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Ugly History: Witch Hunts - Brian A. Pavlac

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When did witchcraft become a crime?In 1542 Parliament passed the Witchcraft Act which defined witchcraft as a crime punishable by death. It was repealed five years later, but restored by a new Act in 1562. A further law was passed in 1604 during the reign of James I who took a keen interest in demonology and even published a book on it.

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When did witchcraft become a crime?In 1542 Parliament passed the Witchcraft Act which defined witchcraft as a crime punishable by death. It was repealed five years later, but restored by a new Act in 1562. A further law was passed in 1604 during the reign of James I who took a keen interest in demonology and even published a book on it.

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is a German fairy tale collected by the German Brothers Grimm and published in 1812 in Grimm's Fairy Tales (KHM 15).[1][2] It is also known as Hansel and Gretel, or Little Step Brother and Little Step Sister.

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https://storiestogrowby.org/story/hansel-and-gretel-bedtime-stories-for-kids/

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Once upon a time a brother and sister named Hansel and Gretel lived in a hut in the woods with their father. Their father was a poor woodcutter. His wife, their mother, had died when the two children were very young. Their father thought he would not be lonely anymore when he finally re-married. But the new stepmother made life very hard for Hansel and Gretel. The children were not allowed to eat until after the stepmother had taken everything she wanted off the plates. Most of the time, there was only a crust of bread left. And all day long were hard chores for them to do.

Hansel and Gretel tried to tell their father about this but he would not hear of it. It seemed the only one he would listen to was his wife. And all the stepmother talked about was how much trouble it was to have children in the hut, and how much she wished they would go away forever.

Each day there was less and less food for the boy and girl to eat. Yet the stepmother gave them more and more hard work to do. One day Gretel begged her father, "Please, Father! All day long we work hard and we're hungry!" But the stepmother slapped her face. "You ungrateful brats!" she yelled. "You will eat us out of house and home!"

That night the two children were not allowed to sleep in the hut. Outside in the cold, they shivered and tried to keep each other warm. Winter was coming, and the clothes they wore were so thin it felt almost as if they had no clothes on at all.

The next morning when the sun rose, Gretel turned to her little brother. "Hansel," she said, "we cannot stay here. We must escape now, today, into the woods! Surely we will find more to eat when we are on our own than what we get here at home."

"Do you think?" said Hansel. "But what if we get lost?"

"We won't!" said Gretel. "I will take bread. We will drop breadcrumbs behind us. If we have to, we can follow the crumbs back home."

And so the two of them went off into the woods and left their hard life behind.

They went deeper and deeper into the woods. Gretel was careful to drop one crumb and then after a bit, another.

But alas! They looked and looked for any sign of something to eat - an apple tree, pear tree, some nuts on the ground, or even dried-up berries. There was nothing to eat! They got hungrier and hungrier. At last, poor Hansel and Gretel knew they must return to their hut or they would surely starve. They would just need to find the breadcrumbs and that would lead them home. Yet when they looked for breadcrumbs, there were none to be found - all the breadcrumbs were gone!

A bird whooshed up into the air and in its beak was a large crumb. Hansel and Gretel were struck with grief - the birds must have taken all their breadcrumbs! A wolf howled in the distance. The sun was setting. Hansel and Gretel were lost and hungry. Now they were scared, too.

"Gretel," whispered Hansel in fear, "what will we do?" She did not know what to say. All she could do was to hug her little brother. Each minute it was getting darker and darker. Again, a wolf howled in the distance.

All of a sudden, Gretel saw a small light shining far away. Could it be someone's hut this deep in the woods? "We must find out!" cried Gretel. "Maybe whoever lives there is kind and will take us in."

The two children sped as fast as they could to the light.

When they got closer, they could not believe their eyes! If you can imagine - from top to bottom the hut was made all of candy! From its gingerbread roof, with frosting all over the walls, and with candies tucked into the frosting, what a sight to see!

"Gretel!" Hansel cried out. Before Gretel could say: "I bet it will be okay if we have just a little taste," both of them were already biting off small chunks and licking the sweet candy.

A sharp voice!- "WHO is nibbling on my house?" Hansel and Gretel spun around. An old witch!

Stunned, Gretel could only curtsy. "If you please, ma'am," she said, as sweetly as she could. "There was so much candy on your house. And we are so hungry!"

"You have that right, MY house!" snapped the witch. Her voice dropped. "Well then," said the witch in a gentler tone, "come inside. I'll get something for you to eat."

Hansel and Gretel looked at each other in delight. They skipped into the witch's hut.

A fine meal of soup and bread. As they licked the last crust of bread and looked around the hut, what the brother and sister saw made their hearts turn cold. Piles and piles of bones in the corners! Yet the two children were very tired, and so they slept.

The next morning when they woke, Hansel found himself locked in a cage. The witch roared, "That's where your brother will stay! Every day I will fatten him up. Soon he will make me a fine dinner!" She laughed and laughed, rubbing her hands with glee. "Till then," she said sharply to Gretel, "you will work for me."

Indeed, Hansel was well fed and Gretel worked hard all day doing chores for the witch.

Each morning the witch said to the boy, "Show me your finger. I will feel how plump you are getting." For the old witch could not see well. Hansel held out his finger as he was told. The witch smiled when she felt how plump he was getting.

"Gretel," Hansel whispered in fear. "What are we to do? Soon I will be plump enough and the witch will want to eat me!" His sister wished she had a plan, but could not think of anything.

One night when the witch was sleeping, Gretel had an idea. She picked up a bone from one of the piles on the floor and woke her brother. "Hansel," she said, "the next time the witch asks to see your finger, hold out this bone to her instead."

The next morning, he did just that. "Hmph!" said the witch, touching the bone and thinking it was the boy's finger. "This is going to take longer than I thought!"

"At least I have more time," Gretel thought. But still, she could not think of any way they could get out of there.

Each morning when the witch said, "Show me your finger," Hansel held out the thin bone. One day the witch yelled, "I will not wait another day! The boy will be my dinner tonight, no matter how skinny he is!" The witch ordered Gretel to start the fire in the oven at once. She must get it very hot. Gretel worked as slowly as she could. Why was the witch looking at her with such a sly smile?

"Be a dear," said the witch with a slow grim. "Go inside the oven, won't you? Tell me if it is hot enough."

Gretel's heart skipped a beat. If she did that, the witch could push her inside and she would eat them both!

She looked down. "I am not sure how to tell."

"Nonsense!" said the witch. "Nothing could be easier. Just go in!"

"Um," said Gretel slowly, "please show me first?"

"Stupid girl!" snapped the witch. Mumbling and grumbling, she stepped in the oven. The moment the witch was inside Gretel quickly slammed the door.

"Gretel!" Hansel cried out. "You saved us!"

The sister tried to think fast. "Where is that key to your cage?" She looked and looked. At last she found it at the bottom of a vase. She freed her brother from the cage right away. Then she went back to that vase. For what had she felt under the key? Why, the vase had precious jewels inside!

With their pockets filled with the jewels, they ran outside as fast as they could.

In the daylight they soon found a small path and followed it. It led to a wider path and that path led to a road. They waited by the roadside hoping someone would ride by. When a horseman trotted up, Hansel and Gretel waved their hands. When the horseman stopped, the children offered one of the small jewels and the horseman was happy to give them a ride ho me.

When the brother and sister opened the door to their home, their father was wild with joy to see them. He had worried and looked for them night and day since they had vanished. They learned their stepmother died very soon after they left. For many years to come, Hansel and Gretel lived very happily with their father in the hut in the woods.

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Hansel and Gretel Bedtime Stories for Kids. When Hansel and Gretel go in search of food, they find a gingerbread house. But who is inside?

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https://allthatsinteresting.com/hansel-and-gretel-true-story

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When a great famine struck Europe in 1314, mothers abandoned their children and in some cases, even ate them. Scholars believe that these tragedies gave birth to the story of Hansel and Gretel.

The notorious tale of Hansel and Gretel has been translated into 160 languages since the Brothers Grimm first published the German lore in 1812.

Dark as it is, the story features child abandonment, attempted cannibalism, enslavement, and murder. Unfortunately, the origins of the story are equally - if not more - horrifying.

Most people are familiar with the story but for those who aren't, it opens on a pair of children who are to be abandoned by their starving parents in the forest. The kids, Hansel and Gretel, get wind of their parents' plan and find their way home by following a trail of stones Hansel had dropped earlier. The mother, or stepmother by some tellings, then convinces the father to abandon the children a second time.

This time, Hansel drops breadcrumbs to follow home but birds eat the breadcrumbs and the children become lost in the forest.

The starving pair come upon a gingerbread house that they begin to eat ravenously. Unbeknownst to them, the home is actually a trap set by an old witch, or ogre, who enslaves Gretel and forces her to overfeed Hansel so that he can be eaten by the witch herself.

The pair manage to escape when Gretel shoves the witch into an oven. They return home with the witch's treasure and find that their evil matriarch is no longer there and is presumed dead, so they live happily ever after.

But the true history behind the tale of Hansel and Gretel is not so happy as this ending.

The Brothers Grimm

Modern readers know Hansel and Gretel from the works of German brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. The brothers were inseparable scholars, medievalists who had a passion for collecting German folklore.

Between 1812 and 1857, the brothers published over 200 stories in seven different editions of what has since become known in English as Grimm's Fairy Tales.

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm never intended that their stories be for children per se, but rather the brothers sought to preserve Germanic folklore in a region whose culture was being overrun by France during the Napoleonic Wars.

In fact, the early editions of the Grimm brothers' work published as Kinder und Hausmärchen, or Children's and Household Tales, lacked illustrations. Scholarly footnotes abounded. The stories were dark and filled with murder and mayhem.

The stories nonetheless quickly caught on. Grimm's Fairy Tales had such universal appeal that eventually, in the United States alone, there have been over 120 different editions made.

These stories featured an all-star lineup of well-known characters including Cinderella, Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, and of course Hansel and Gretel.

The True Story Behind Hansel And Gretel

The true story of Hansel and Gretel goes back to a cohort of tales that originated in the Baltic regions during the Great Famine of 1314 to 1322. Volcanic activity in southeast Asia and New Zealand ushered in a period of prolonged climate change that led to crop failures and massive starvation across the globe.

In Europe, the situation was particularly dire since the food supply was already scarce. When the Great Famine struck, the results were devastating. One scholar estimated that the Great Famine impacted 400,000 square miles of Europe, 30 million people, and may have killed off up to 25 percent of the population in certain areas.

In the process, elderly people chose voluntarily to starve to death to allow the young to live. Others committed infanticide or abandoned their children. There is also evidence of cannibalism. William Rosen in his book, The Third Horseman, cites an Estonian chronicle which states that in 1315 "mothers were fed their children."

An Irish chronicler also wrote that the famine was so bad people "were so destroyed by hunger that they extracted bodies of the dead from cemeteries and dug out the flesh from the skulls and ate it, and women ate their children out of hunger."

And it was from this grim chaos that the story of Hansel and Gretel was born.

The cautionary tales that preceded Hansel and Gretel all dealt directly with themes of abandonment and survival. Almost all of these stories also used the forest as a tableau for danger, magic, and death.

One such example comes from the Italian fairy tale collector Giambattista Basile, who published a number of stories in his 17th century Pentamerone. In his version, titled Nennillo and Nennella, a cruel stepmother forces her husband to abandon his two children in the woods. The father tries to foil the plot by leaving the children a trail of oats to follow but these are eaten by a donkey.

The grimmest of these early tales, though, is the Romanian story, The Little Boy and the Wicked Stepmother. In this fairy tale, two children are abandoned and find their way home following a trail of ashes. But when they return home, the stepmother kills the little boy and forces the sister to prepare his corpse for a family meal.

The horrified girl obeys but hides the boy's heart inside a tree. The father unknowingly eats his son while the sister refuses to take part. After the meal, the girl takes the brother's bones and puts them inside the tree with his heart. The next day, a cuckoo bird emerges singing, "Cuckoo! My sister has cooked me, and my father has eaten me, but I am now a cuckoo and safe from my stepmother."

The terrified stepmother throws a lump of salt at the bird but it just falls back on her head, killing her instantaneously.

An Evolving Story With New Takes

The direct source for the story of Hansel and Gretel as we know it came from Henriette Dorothea Wild, a neighbor of the brothers Grimm who narrated many of the tales for their first edition. She ended up marrying Wilhelm.

The original versions of the Grimm brothers' Hansel and Gretel changed over time. Perhaps the brothers were aware that their stories were being read by children and so by the last edition that they published, they had sanitized the stories somewhat.

Where the mother had abandoned her biological children in the first versions, by the time the last 1857 edition was printed, she had transformed into the archetypal wicked stepmother. The father's role, too, was softened by the 1857 edition as he showed more regret for his actions.

Meanwhile, the tale of Hansel and Gretel has continued to evolve. There are versions today that are meant for preschoolers, like children's author Mercer Mayer's story which doesn't even try to touch any of the child abandonment themes.

Every once in awhile the tale attempts to go back to its dark roots. In 2020, Orion Picture's Gretel and Hansel: A Grim Fairy Tale will hit theaters and appears to hedge on the side of creepy. This version has the siblings looking through the forest for food and working to help their parents when they meet the witch.

It seems that the true story of Hansel and Gretel may still be darker than even this latest version.
After this look at the history of Hansel and Gretel, check out more folktale origins with this quick bio on Charles Perrault, the French father of fairy tales. Then, discover the true story behind the legend of Sleepy Hollow.

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'Mothers Were Fed Their Children': The Horrifying True Story Behind Hansel And Gretel

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In one of the most disturbing retellings of Hansel and Gretel, Hansel is murdered by his mother and prepared for dinner by his sister.

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http://unomoralez.com/

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Pixel arts from unomoralez. Moscow. Pixel painter

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https://oleole.tumblr.com/

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Contemporary interpretations of French illustrations from the end of 19th and the beginning of the 20th century

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Robert Eggers' "Hansel & Gretel" (2006) | Famous First Films

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Queen Ravenna from Snow White and the Huntsman

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Queen Ravenna from Snow White and the Huntsman

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The Blind Witch is the main antagonist of the fairy tale " Hansel & Gretel" who lives in a house constructed of cake and confectionery.

The Blind Witch is a hideous old hag who lives in house constructed of cake and confectionery with window panes of clear sugar, set in the middle of the forest. Using her house as a lure for lost and hungry little children, the Blind Witch convinces them to enter her house with the promise of more delicious food and warm beds, but instead entraps the children, fattens them up with her cakes and candies, and cooks them in her oven to eat them.

One day, the Blind Witch is visited by two young siblings named Hansel & Gretel. After luring them inside her ginderbread house, the Blind Witch locks Hansel up in a cage and chains Gretel up, force-feeding Hansel to fatten him up and forcing Gretel to be her slave and clean for her. The Blind Witch measures Hansel's finger to see how fat he is becoming, but the boy tricks her by offering the same bone over and over so it looks like he is never gaining weight.

Unable to wait any longer, the Blind Witch prepares the oven to cook Hansel, and tries to trick Gretel into leaning into the oven to check if its hot enough. Gretel pretends not to know how, so the Blind Witch shows her. Using his bone to pick the lock of his cage, Hansel escapes and both siblings push the Blind Witch into the oven and lock the door so she burns alive.

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The Blind Witch is the main antagonist of the fairy tale "Hansel & Gretel" who lives in a house constructed of cake and confectionery. The Blind Witch is a hideous old hag who lives in house constructed of cake and confectionery with window panes of clear sugar, set in the middle of the forest.

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https://fairytale.fandom.com/wiki/Sea_Witch

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Sea witches have been featured in European folklore for centuries. The most well-known one is the Sea Witch from “The Little Mermaid” by Hans Christian Andersen. When the Little Mermaid first meets the Sea Witch, she is described as a disgusting old hag who allowed a toad to eat from her mouth and h…

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https://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a37681530/types-of-witches/

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https://folklorethursday.com/folktales/fire-and-fur-the-many-guises-of-the-grimms-fairy-tale-witches/

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The fairy-tale witch is a compelling, frightening, and reliable stock character in our contemporary society. Mention "witch" and the hag of fairy-tale picture books for children comes to mind far more frequently than any other, more nuanced image. As fairy-tale scholar Jack Zipes puts it, "[w]e use the word ['witch'] 'naturally' in all Western countries as if we all know what a witch is". The witch of our most well-known and well-loved fairy tales is, however, a far more versatile figure than the one-dimensional crone with a wart on her nose and a cartoonish cackle on her lips. In this article, we will explore the witch of the Grimms' fairy tales in her many guises, from mother to monster, from helper to heroine.

The witches that appear in folklore - in fairy tales, legends, and other folk narratives - are often deeply ambiguous. Rarely are they purely good or evil. Consider, for example, the famous Russian folkloric witch Baba Yaga. In some tales, she is an evil monster... in others, she is the main character's only hope - "she is not just a dangerous witch but also a maternal benefactress". Witches are liminal, creatures of thresholds and becomings who resist simple binaries. They frequently have close ties to the natural world. They are associated with healing and knowledge as often as they are with dark magic, but, in either case, "[w]itchcraft is all about power" (Reiti 3). Witches of folklore invite change and galvanize transformation.

In 1812, the brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm released the first edition of their Children and Household Tales. Though they revised the tales many times over the next four decades, their fairy tales were always populated with witches and witch-like figures. Though we readily acknowledge that Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm themselves did not share today's expansive view of what witches can represent, here are just a few of the vibrant and varied roles that witches play in the brothers' book of fairy tales.

Witch as Monster

The fairy-tale witch that almost certainly first comes to mind is that of the monstrous witch. She is the hooked-nose, cackling, long-nailed nightmare of haunted forests, stolen children, and the spookiest of Halloween dolls. This is the cannibalistic witch in the Grimms' famous fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel" who builds an irresistible house out of cake and sugar to lure starving children into her clutches. She is, undeniably, a monster: she is an incarnation of uncontrollable hunger in a world where starvation was an all-too-real possibility (Tatar 229-232).

While the witch of "Hansel and Gretel" is beyond redemption (again: cannibalism!), we do want to note that "monster" does not have to mean "evil." "Monstrousness" is frequently attributed to anyone who challenges social order or ruptures the fabric of the expected. A witch who is deemed to be monstrous may indeed be violent or cruel, but she may just as easily be kind or neutral - monstrosity is often not about the actions or character of the one deemed to be "monstrous" but about the way that others perceive her. In "Mother Holle," another fairy tale in the Grimms' collection, the witch seems frightening at first, with huge teeth, but turns out to be a kind figure who rewards those who help her.

Witch as Mother

It must be said that parents are rarely positive figures in fairy tales. When they aren't dead, they are often neglectful, and they can even be malevolent or murderous. The Grimms' tales feature many terrible witch-mothers, and perhaps the most famous are the stepmother of "Snow White," who is knowledgeable in certain magical arts and attempts to poison her stepdaughter, and the witch of "Rapunzel," who takes a child in payment for stolen vegetables from her garden, blinds Rapunzel's prince, and casts her out into the wilderness alone and pregnant.

However, there are positive versions of witchy motherhood to be found in the collection, as well. In "The Goose Girl at the Well," a witch takes on the mothering role with fierce protectiveness and compassion, guiding the young princess in her care and helping her to better her life.

Witch as Helper

Witches can offer aid and guidance as often as they hurt or hinder. A fascinating instance of the witch as a helper figure occurs in the Grimms' little known tale "The Three Spinners," parallels the much more famous "Rumpelstiltskin." In "The Three Spinners," three strange, witch-like women come to the aid of a young, lazy girl who hates to spin. Instead of requiring jewelry and her firstborn child as payment for their help, the women ask only to be invited to her wedding and to be called her aunts. Instead of fracturing family, as Rumpelstiltskin would do, the spinners help to strengthen and reinforce community ties. In the end, they even help ensure that she never has to spin again by convincing her new husband that spinning is what made them ugly!

Witch as Lover

At first brush, "Frau Trude" might seem to be a story about another monstrous witch. After all, it appears to be a cautionary tale about a girl who seeks out a witch and is transformed into a log and set on fire by that witch for her trouble. On the other hand, folklorist Kay Turner has argued that the tale might instead be interpreted as one in which the young girl seeks out Frau Trude because she is drawn to her, a feeling that the waiting witch reciprocates. In this reading, the girl's transformation into "fire" is a metaphor for her sexual awakening, her "flames of passion" (Turner 261), and the tale becomes a queer love story of two outcasted women finding each other (Turner 2012).

Witch as Princess

If a witch can play so many of the traditional roles for women in the Grimms' fairy tales, the question must be asked: can a witch also be a princess? We would argue yes. In the tale "All Kinds of Fur," the princess protagonist is distinctly witch-like - at one point in the text, she is even called a witch! She is not afraid to be ugly, even gender-less, while wearing her furs, she is skilled in witch-associated crafts like cooking, and she somehow manages to put three enormous ball gowns and three golden objects into a nutshell! While we don't endorse the simplistic statement that fairy-tale princesses are generally passive, the princess of this story moves through her tale with a versatility and ambiguity that suggests a kinship with the witch. She is, after all, "largely responsible for her own transformations" (Yocom 104). Thus, yes, we contend that witches can also be princesses.

The witches of the Grimms' fairy tales occupy a far more diverse set of roles than is frequently assumed. By turns dangerous and kind, hideous and beautiful, outcasted and social, they are often at the heart of their tales, a perfect reminder that fairy tales are never as simple as they first seem.

References & Further Reading

Rieti, Barbara. Making Witches: Newfoundland Traditions of Spells and Counterspells. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2008.

Tatar, Maria. "Introduction: Tricksters." The Classic Fairy Tales, edited by Maria Tatar. 2 nd Ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2017. 229-235.

Turner, Kay. "Playing with Fire: Transgression as Truth in Grimms' 'Frau Trude.'" Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms, edited by Kay Turner and Pauline Greenhill. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2012. 245-274.

Yocom, Margaret R. "'But Who Are You Really?': Ambiguous Bodies and Ambiguous Pronouns in 'Allerleirauh.'" Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms, edited by Kay Turner and Pauline Greenhill. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2012. 91-118.

Zipes, Jack. The Irresistible Fairy Tales: The Cultural and Social History of a Genre. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012.

Grimm Tales Mentioned:

"All Kinds of Fur," "Frau Trude," "The Goose Girl at the Well," "Hansel and Gretel," "Mother Holle," "Rapunzel," "Rumpelstiltskin," "Snow White," and "The Three Spinners."

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Fire and Fur: The Many Guises of the Grimms' Fairy-Tale Witches

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The fairy-tale witch is a compelling, frightening, and reliable stock character in our contemporary society. Mention "witch" and the hag of fairy-tale picture books for children comes to mind far more frequently than any other, more nuanced image.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_Queen

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The Evil Queen

First appearance

Grimms' Fairy Tales (1812)

Created by

The Brothers Grimm (adapted from pre-existing fairy tales)

Occupation

Queen consort, witch (secretly)

Spouse
King

Children

Snow White (daughter in the original version, stepdaughter since the 1819 revision)

The Evil Queen, also called the Wicked Queen, is a fictional character and the main antagonist of " Snow White", a German fairy tale recorded by the Brothers Grimm; similar stories exist worldwide. Other versions of the Queen appear in subsequent adaptations and continuations of the fairy tale, including novels and films. One particularly notable version is Disney's depiction, sometimes known as Queen Grimhilde. The character has also become an archetype that inspired unrelated works.

The Evil Queen is Snow White's evil and vindictive stepmother who is obsessed with being "the fairest in the land". The beautiful young princess Snow White evokes the Queen's sense of envy, so the Queen designs a number of plans to kill Snow White through the use of witchcraft. A driving force in the story is the Queen's Magic Mirror. In the traditional resolution of the story, the Queen is grotesquely executed for her crimes. The tale is meant as a lesson for young children warning them against the dangers of narcissism, pride, and hubris.

In some retellings of the fairy tale, the Queen has been re-imagined or portrayed more sympathetically, such as being morally conflicted or suffering from madness instead of being simply evil. In some of the revisionist stories she serves as the protagonist and has even been portrayed as an antihero or a tragic hero.

In "Snow White"

The Evil Queen is a very beautiful but proud and arrogant woman who marries the King after the death of his first wife, the mother of Snow White. The Evil Queen owns a magic mirror, which one day informs her that her young stepdaughter Princess Snow White has surpassed her in beauty.

After deciding to eliminate Snow White, the Queen orders her Huntsman to take the princess into the forest and kill her. The Queen tells him to bring back Snow White's lungs and liver, as proof that the princess is dead. However, the Huntsman takes pity on Snow White, and instead, brings the Queen the lungs and liver of a wild boar. The Queen has the cook prepare the lungs and liver and she eats what she believes are Snow White's organs.

While questioning her mirror again, the Queen discovers that Snow White has survived. Intending to kill Snow White herself, she takes the disguise of an old peddler woman. She visits the dwarfs' house and sells Snow White laces for a corset that she laces too tight in an attempt to asphyxiate the girl. When that fails, the Queen returns as a comb seller and tricks Snow White into using a poisoned comb. When the comb fails to kill Snow White, the Queen again visits Snow White disguised as a farmer's wife and gives Snow White a poisoned apple.

Snow White is awakened by a Prince from another kingdom, and they invite the Queen to their wedding. Although fearing what will happen, her own jealousy drives her to attend. There she is forced to put on red-hot iron shoes and "dance" until she drops dead.

In the classic ending of "Snow White", the Evil Queen is put to death by torture. This is often considered to be too dark and potentially horrifying for children in modern society. Sara Maitland wrote that "we do not tell this part of the story any more; we say it is too cruel and will break children's soft hearts." Therefore, many (especially modern) revisions of the fairy tale often change the gruesome classic ending in order to make it seem less violent. In some versions instead of dying, the Queen is merely prevented from committing further wrongdoings. However, in the same 2014 nationwide UK poll that considered the Queen from "Snow White" the scariest fairy tale character of all time (as cited by 32.21% of responding adults), around two-thirds opined that today's stories are too "sanitised" for children.

Already the first English translation of the Grimms' tale, written by Edgar Taylor in 1823, has the Queen choke on her own envy upon the sight of Snow White alive. Another early (1871) English translation by Susannah Mary Paull "replaces the Queen's death by cruel physical punishment with death by self-inflicted pain and self-destruction" when it was her own shoes that became hot due to her anger.

Other alternative endings can have the Queen just instantly drop dead "of anger" at the wedding or in front of her mirror upon learning about it, die from her own designs going awry (such as from touching her own poisoned rose) or by nature (such as falling into quicksands while crossing a swamp on her way back to the castle after poisoning Snow White), be killed by the dwarfs during a chase, be destroyed by her own mirror, run away into the forest never to be seen again, or simply being banished from the kingdom forever.

In the first edition of the Brothers Grimm story, from their 1812 collection Kinder- und Hausmärchen ("Children's and Household Tales"), the Queen is Snow White's biological mother. In subsequent versions after 1819, this was changed; text was added to include that Snow White's mother died and the king remarried. Jack Zipes said that the change was made because the Grimms "held motherhood sacred." According to Sheldon Cashdan, Professor of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts, a "cardinal rule of fairy tales" mandates that the "heroes and heroines are allowed to kill witches, sorceresses, even stepmothers, but never their own mothers". Zipes' 2014 collection of Grimm fairy tales in their original forms reinstated the Queen as Snow White's mother.

However, the wicked stepmother was not unknown in German versions predating the Brothers Grimm's collection. In 1782, Johann Karl August Musäus published a literary fairy tale titled " Richilde" which reimagined the folktale from the villain's point of view. The main character is Richilde, arrogant Countess of Brabant, who as a child received the gift of a magic mirror invented by her godfather Albertus Magnus. Many elements of the Grimms' Snow White appear in this story, including the wicked stepmother, the magic mirror, the poisoned apple, and the punishment of dancing in red-hot shoes.

Diane Purkiss attributes the Queen's fiery death to "the folkbelief that burning a witch's body ended her power, a belief which subtended (but did not cause) the practice of burning witches in Germany", while the American Folklore Society noted that the use of iron shoes "recalls folk practices of destroying a witch through the magic agency of iron".

Rosemary Ellen Guiley suggests that the Queen uses an apple because it recalls the temptation of Eve; this creation story from the Bible led the Christian Church to view apples as a symbol of sin. Many people feared that apples could carry evil spirits, and that witches used them for poisoning. Robert G. Brown of Duke University also makes a connection with the story of Adam and Eve, seeing the Queen as a representation of the archetype of Lilith. The symbol of an apple has long had traditional associations with enchantment and witchcraft in some European cultures, as in case of Morgan le Fay's Avalon ("Isle of the Apples").

Oliver Madox Hueffer noted that the wicked stepmother with magical powers threatening a young princess is a recurring theme in fairy tales; one similar character is the witch-queen in " The Wild Swans" as told by Hans Christian Andersen. According to Kenny Klein, the enchantress Ceridwen of the Welsh mythology was "the quintissential evil stepmother, the origin of that character in the two tales of Snow White and Cinderella".

Equivalents of the Evil Queen can be found in Snow White-like tales from around the world. In the Scottish Gaelic oral tale " Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree", the Queen is named Silver-Tree and is the heroine's biological mother. A talking trout takes the place of the Queen's mirror and the huntsman figure is the princess' own father. The villain's relationship with Snow White can also vary, with versions from around the world sometimes featuring wicked sisters or sisters-in-law, or a wicked mother of the prince. One early variation of the tale was Giambattista Basile's " The Young Slave," where the heroine's mother is unintentionally involved in putting her to sleep, and she is awoken by her cruel and jealous aunt who treats her like a slave.

The Queen's tricks also vary from place to place. In Italy, she uses a toxic comb, a contaminated cake, or a suffocating braid. In France, a local tale features a poisoned tomato. The Queen's demands of proof from the huntsman (often her lover in non-Grimm versions) also vary: a bottle of blood stoppered with the princess' toe in Spain, or the princess' intestines and blood-soaked shirt in Italy.

According to some scholars, the story is constructed and characters are presented with ageist undertones. The University of Hawaii professor Cristina Bacchilega said, "I think there is still very much an attachment to vilifying the older, more powerful woman." Roger Sale opined that "the term ' narcissism' seems altogether too slippery to be the only one we want here. There is, for instance, no suggestion that the queen's absorption in her beauty ever gives her pleasure, or that the desire for power through sexual attractiveness is itself a sexual feeling. What is stressed is the anger and fear that attend the queen's realization that as she and Snow White both get older, she must lose. This is why the major feeling involved is not jealousy but envy: to make beauty that important is to reduce the world to one in which only two people count." Terri Windling wrote that the Queen is "a woman whose power is derived from her beauty; it is this, the tale implies, that provides her place in the castle's hierarchy. If the king's attention turns from his wife to another, what power is left to an aging woman? Witchcraft, the tale answers. Potions, poisons, and self-protection." According to Zipes, "the queen's actions are determined by the mirror's representations of her as exemplifying beauty and evil, or associating evil and vanity with beauty, and these mirror representations are taken as the truth by the queen. Had she perhaps doubted and cracked the mirror, cracked the meaning of the mirror, she might still be alive today." Deborah Lipp, discussing the character's archetype, stated that "in fact Western culture had, for hundreds of years, associated the idea of powerful, commanding women with witchcraft and evil. That's why, I think, the most interesting women in stories have been villainesses." Zipes opined that the Queen character is much more complex and "as a figure she is much more fascinating than this dumb, innocent, naïve Snow White. So why not focus on this figure who is tragic in many, many ways. We really don't know too much about her - where she gets her powers. She's mysterious."

Whereas Snow White achieves inner harmony, her stepmother fails to do so. Unable to integrate the social and the antisocial aspects of human nature, she remains enslaved to her desires and gets caught up in an Oedipal competition with her daughter from which she cannot extricate herself. This imbalance between her contradictory drives proves to be her undoing.

Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar regard Snow White and her mother/stepmother as two female stereotypes, the angel and the monster. The fact that the Queen was Snow White's biological mother in the first version of the Grimms' story has led several psychoanalytic critics to interpret "Snow White" as a story about repressed Oedipus complex, or about Snow White's Electra complex. Harold Bloom opined that the three "temptations" all "testify to a mutual sexual attraction between Snow White and her stepmother." According to Bruno Bettelheim, the story's main motif is "the clash of sexual innocence and sexual desire" and Cashdan wrote that the Queen's "incessant query, 'Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?' literally reflects her fear that the king will find Snow White more appealing than her. It thus is the implicit sexual struggle between the young girl and the queen." This struggle is so dominating the psychological landscape of the tale, that Gilber and Gubar even proposed renaming the story "Snow White and Her Wicked Stepmother".

According to Bettelheim, "only the death of the jealous queen (the elimination of all outer and inner turbulence) can make for a happy world." Cashdan opined "the death of the witch signals a victory of virtue over vice, a sign that positive forces in the self have prevailed," and "the active involvement of heroine in the witch's demise communicates to readers that they must take an active role in overcoming their own errant tendencies." The evil queen "embodies narcissism, and the young princess, with whom readers identify, embodies parts of the child struggling to overcome this tendency. Vanquishing the queen represents a triumph of positive forces in the self over vain impulses." According to Cashdan, "her death constitutes the emotional core of the tale" as the story could easily end with the resurrection of Snow White, "but there is one detail that needs to be resolved: the wicked queen is still alive. Her continued existence means not only that Snow White's life remains in jeopardy, but that the princess is apt to be plagued by vain temptations for the rest of her days. Unless the evil woman is eliminated once and for all, Snow White will never be free." Similarly, the psychologist Betsy Cohen wrote that "in order to avoid becoming a wicked queen herself, Snow White needs to separate from and kill off this destructive force inside of her. The death of the wicked queen allows Snow White to truly celebrate her marriage, the bringing together of herself." Cohen further wrote that "the queen was forced to face her own mortality, the inevitability of death. As Snow White rids herself of her envious stepmother, she is, at the same time, next in line to become a mother herself-more able, we hope, to deal with envy than her stepmother had been."

Regarding the manner of the Queen's execution, Jo Eldridge Carney, Professor of English at The College of New Jersey, wrote: "Again, the fairy tale's system of punishment is horrific but apt: a woman so actively consumed with seeking affirmation from others and with violently undoing her rival is forced to enact her own physical destruction as a public spectacle." According to Sheldon Donald Haase, Professor of German, and Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Wayne State University, "a measure of justice is achieved" with "the sadistic punishment to some extent fitting the crime. The glowing shoes, an appropriate symbol for her own unbridled envy, bring about her final demise." Likewise, Mary Ayers of the Stanford University School of Medicine wrote that the red-hot shoes symbolise that the Queen was "subjected to the effects of her own inflamed, searing hot envy and hatred." It was also noted that this ending echoes the fairy tale of " The Red Shoes", which similarly "warns of the danger of attachment to appearances."

Should we cheer on Snow White's wicked stepmother as she dances to her death in red-hot iron shoes? Parents may believe in promoting high spirits, but they will not be keen about giving their approval to stories in which 'happily ever after' means witnessing the bodily torture of villains.

John Hanson Saunders of the Pennsylvania State University wrote that the Queen's "rather barbaric...torture and death gives closure to the reader and the death seems more fitting...Her death can provide justice and allows the audience to see good triumph over evil." Cashdan argued that, from a psychological viewpoint, the Queen could not flee or get merely locked up in a dungeon or exiled, as the story has portrayed her "as a thoroughly despicable creature who deserves the worst conceivable punishment." Furthermore, he claims "such a horrible death" is necessary because, like in several other fairy tales, "if the witch is to die - and remain dead - she must die in a way that makes her return highly unlikely," and so "the reader needs to know that the death of the witch is thorough and complete, even if it means exposing young readers to acts of violence that are extreme by contemporary standards." On the other hand, Oliver Madox Hueffer wrote that "it is impossible not to feel a certain sympathy with this unfortunate royal lady in her subsequent fate." According to Sharna Olfman, Professor of Psychology at the Point Park University, "when reading or listening to stories, children aren't assaulted with precreated graphic visual imagery. They don't have to see close-ups of...the agony of pain in the queen's eyes as she dances to her death." Nevertheless, Olfman's personal preference is to "skip the torture scenes when I read these stories to kids." Anthony Burgess commented: "Reading that, how seriously can we take it? It is fairy-tale violence, which is not like real mugging, terrorism and Argentinean torture."

The character was portrayed in a variety of ways in the subsequent adaptations reimagining the classic fairy tale. According to Lana Berkowitz of the Houston Chronicle, "Today stereotypes of the evil queen and innocent Snow White often are challenged. Rewrites may show the queen is reacting to extenuating circumstances." Scott Meslow, of The Atlantic, noted that " Disney's decision to throw out the Grimms's appropriately grim ending-which sentences the evil queen to dance in heated iron shoes until her death-has meant that ending is all but forgotten."

The 1916 silent film was based on the 1912 play Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In the play, written by "Jessie Graham White" (Winthrop Ames), Queen Brangomar is jealous of Prince Florimond's love of Snow White. Brangomar summons Witch Hex (Hexy), a powerful godmother. In the end, Snow White forgives the Queen and, despite objections from the hunter (Berthold) who wants Brangomar dead, lets her go away unharmed. In the 1916 film, Queen Brangomar (played by Dorothy Cumming) and the Witch are two separate characters, and it is the latter who demands to have the heart of Snow White. In the end, Brangomar is punished by being turned into a peacock. Elements from these versions of "Snow White" inspired Disney's film adaptation.

In Disney's 1937 animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the Queen, usually known as the Evil Queen or the Wicked Queen, is the villain. This version of the character was sometimes referred to as Queen Grimhilde in Disney publications from the 1930s, and was originally voiced by Lucille La Verne. The film's Queen, in the form of an old witch, falls to her death after poisoning Snow White. In the film, similar to the Brothers Grimm story, the Queen is cold, cruel, and extremely vain, and obsessively desires to remain the "fairest in the land". She becomes madly envious over the beauty of her stepdaughter, as well as the attentions of the Prince from another land; such love triangle element is one of Disney's changes to the story. This leads her to plot the death of Snow White and ultimately on the path to her own demise, which in the film is indirectly caused by the Seven Dwarfs. The film's version of the Queen character uses her dark magic powers to actually transform herself into an old woman instead of just taking a disguise like in the Grimms' story; this appearance of hers is commonly referred to as the Wicked Witch or alternatively as the Old Hag or just the Witch. The film's version of the Queen was created by Walt Disney and Joe Grant, and originally animated by Art Babbit and voiced by Lucille La Verne. Inspiration for her design came from several sources, including the characters of Queen Hash-a-Motep from and Princess Kriemhild from Die Nibelungen, as well as actresses such as Joan Crawford and Gale Sondergaard. The Queen has since been voiced by Eleanor Audley, Louise Chamis and Susanne Blakeslee, and was portrayed live by Anne Francine, Jane Curtin and Olivia Wilde, and in alternative versions, by Lana Parrilla (Once Upon a Time) and Kathy Najimy (Descendants). This interpretation of the classic fairy tale character has been very well received by film critics and general public, often being considered one of Disney's most iconic and menacing villains. Besides in the film, the Evil Queen has made numerous appearances in Disney attractions and productions, including not only these directly related to the tale of Snow White, such as , The Kingdom Keepers and Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, sometimes appearing alongside Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. The film's version of the Queen has also become a popular archetype that influenced a number of artists and non-Disney works.

In the 1961 film Snow White and the Three Stooges, the Queen is played by Patricia Medina. She transforms into an old witch and the Stooges inadvertently shoot her down from her broom, killing the Queen. She has a companion in the film, the evil wizard Count Oga, who is killed when he falls into a pot of boiling tar.

The 1989 musical film Snow White was one of the nine Cannon Movie Tales fairy tale musicals produced in the 1980s. Diana Rigg starred as the Queen. The plot follows the story of the original fairytale including the three attempts by the Queen to kill Snow White (a tight bodice, a poisoned silver comb and finally the poisoned half of a red and white apple, the white half having no poison in it in order to trick Snow White into thinking the apple is harmless). When she is invited to Snow White's wedding, the Queen damages the mirror in rage, causing her to age rapidly. After arriving at the wedding, she shatters into glassy pieces and disintegrates.

In the 1997 film Snow White: A Tale of Terror, the character is not a queen, but rather a noblewoman named Lady Claudia Hoffman, played by Sigourney Weaver who was acclaimed for her role.

In the 2001 television film Snow White: The Fairest of Them All, a self-loathing crone named Elspeth (Miranda Richardson), who is part of a race of strange humanoid creatures, is transformed into a beautiful queen by her brother, the Green-Eyed Granter of Wishes (Clancy Brown). She becomes jealous when the mirror reveals that her stepdaughter Snow White is the fairest in the land, but in this adaptation she is driven more by insecurities than vanity. She also envies the affection that Prince Alfred shows toward her stepdaughter. She disguises herself as Snow White's deceased mother Josephine and succeeds in poisoning her with an apple. At the climax of the film, the Green-Eyed One turns Elspeth into a withered old crone once again and she is throttled to death off-screen by the dwarves whom she had once turn to stone. Josephine is played by Vera Farmiga and the Old Crone form is played by Karin Konoval.

In the 2012 comedy film Mirror Mirror, Julia Roberts plays the Queen. In this retelling of the story, the Queen's title is Queen Clementianna. She is portrayed as a vain, insecure woman, who married the king, and magicked him into a savage beast using a special necklace. The Queen spends her time by organizing lavish parties in the palace and buying expensive dresses, while neglecting the kingdom which has caused the people to struggle to survive in harsh weather and poverty due to high taxes by her. She often uses her magic to do her bidding but it often backfires with unintended consequences. She uses a magic mirror to talk to a much younger reflection of herself (played by Lisa Roberts Gillan), and the reflection often warns her not to use her magic for selfish short-sighted purposes. In her attempts to kill Snow White, she creates two giant wooden puppets to attack the dwarfs' home, and she also commands the Beast to attack. Once Snow destroys the Beast's necklace, the Queen begins to age as her reflection states that she must pay the price for her use of magic, and she eats her own poisoned apple offscreen at Snow White's wedding.

In another 2012 adaptation, Snow White and the Huntsman, Charlize Theron played the Queen. In this retelling of the story, her title is Queen Ravenna. The Queen is depicted as vain, scheming, and power-hungry. On their wedding night, she kills the King, and fears that Snow White will challenge her rule over the kingdom. The Queen's obsession with power and beauty stems from childhood trauma, when her mother told her that beauty is a weapon to be used for protection. Additionally, the strength of her powers seems to correlate to her appearance, and both begin to fade as Snow White comes into her own. Her Magic Mirror assures her that the only way to render her powers and her youth permanent is to consume Snow White's heart, but she is ultimately killed by Snow White. Director Rupert Sanders said: "It was very important that we didn't have a terrible cut-out villain. We had someone who was doing evil things from a fear and weakness. I think it is important that you do sympathize with her to a degree, but also really understand why she is the person she's become because she wasn't born evil. It was a journey for her to become evil, and I think it was very important to myself and Charlize Theron to play a realistic version of the queen." Theron said about the character: "At first, I didn't really understand why she was evil or losing her mind, but once I understood that it wasn't just the fact that her mortality relied upon finding Snow White, and that knowing that and not being able to do anything and being stuck in a castle. Well, I think that would be maddening for somebody like her. It reminded me a lot of Jack Nicholson's character in The Shining - that idea that you're stuck in this place and you can't escape it, that cabin fever." Theron reprises her role in the film's sequel, The Huntsman: Winter's War, in which she was revealed to have hidden part of herself in the Mirror, allowing her to be restored to life by her sister.

In all seven seasons of the 2011-2017 American TV series Once Upon a Time, the Queen, also known as Regina Mills, is portrayed by Lana Parrilla. Regina saves Snow White's life when they are younger, leading to Regina's unwilling marriage to Snow's father. When Snow inadvertently causes the death of Regina's true love, Regina grows vengeful and becomes the Evil Queen. After years of failing to kill Snow White, the Evil Queen eventually casts the Dark Curse, provided by her mentor Rumplestiltskin, sending all the fairytale characters to the real world and erasing their true memories. During the curse, Regina adopts a son, Henry. Later, Regina's curse is broken by Snow White's daughter, Emma (Henry's biological mother), and Regina decides to try and redeem herself for her son. In time, Regina manages to make amends with Snow White, Emma and her other enemies. She also meets her long lost half-sister, Zelena the Wicked Witch, and falls in love with Robin Hood. In the fifth season, following Robin's death, Regina uses Dr. Jekyll's serum to separate herself from the darkness within her, creating the Evil Queen as a separate individual. In the seventh season, set many years later, Regina is crowned the Good Queen when the realms are united.

In the DC Universe, the Queen of Fables was a scheming, villainous witch who, in her youth, wrought hell on earth until she was trapped in a book by her own stepdaughter, Snow White. Centuries later, she was freed accidentally by Snow White's descendants and has since faced many Justice League superheroes like Superman and Wonder Woman, who the Queen thought was Snow White due to her great beauty.

1. ^ "Snow White 'favourite fairy tale'". News.uk.msn.com. 2014-05-23. Archived from the original on 2014-05-29.

2. ^ Sheldon Cashdan, The Witch Must Die: The Hidden Meaning of Fairy Tales, pages 11, 15, 35-37, 61.

3. ^ Kawan, Christine Shojaei (2005-2006). "Innovation, Persistence and Self-Correction: The Case of Snow White" (PDF). Estudos de Literatura Oral. 11-12: 238.

4. ^ Tatar, Maria (2020). The Fairest of Them All: Snow White and 21 Tales of Mothers and Daughters. Harvard University Press.

5. ^ "Snow, Glass, Apples: The Story of Snow White by Terri Windling: Summer 2007, Journal of Mythic Arts, Endicott Studio". Endicott-studio.com. Archived from the original on 2014-02-22.

6. ^ Kroll, Justin (2021-11-03). "Gal Gadot To Play Evil Queen In Disney's Live-Action 'Snow White'". Deadline Hollywood.

7. ^ "Unveiled: Charlize Theron's evil queen from Snow White and The Huntsman | NDTV Movies.com". Movies.ndtv.com. 2012-05-30. Archived from the original on 2014-01-21.

8. ^ "'Snow White' Lands Julia Roberts As Evil Queen, So How Does She Stack Up Against Charlize Theron?". MTV Movies Blog. 2011-02-08.

9. ^ "'Snow White's Charlize Theron: 'Evil Queen like The Shining character' - Movies News". Digital Spy. 2012-06-07.

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The Evil Queen First appearance Grimms' Fairy Tales (1812) Created by The Brothers Grimm (adapted from pre-existing fairy tales) Occupation Queen consort, witch (secretly) Spouse King Children Snow White (daughter in the original version, stepdaughter since the 1819 revision) The Evil Queen, also called the Wicked Queen, is a fictional character and the main antagonist of " Snow White", a German fairy tale recorded by the Brothers Grimm; similar stories exist worldwide.

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Earwig and the Witch

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https://www.girlmuseum.org/project/little-witches/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI4o_4g_r3-wIVkuvtCh1X2gi9EAAYASAAEgK2cfD_BwE

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What makes a girl a witch? How did girls go from victim to perpetrator? Join us to explore girls' lives as they became little witches