Believe in the Story, Believe in Yourself

Winter is here. Time for a mug of something warm and fireside stories in the dark of night.

The art of stories and storytelling has become a successful way to help folk process their own stories.

Especially when they are faerie tales.  To hear of strange lands, great heroes and terrifying villains makes it easier for us to secretly identify the epic adventure with our own.

I have used stories to inspire me at my darkest and most daring of moments. As you read this, my friends, I have just released my newest album made up of many favourite and inspirational faerietales.

In these tales, I have found courage, wisdom, strength and bravery. I once considered myself a beast.  It took me time and thought to realize that beauty and beastliness come in many forms, not always seen for their truth.

The Blue Rose

One of the things I’ve had to learn in my beastly form, is to be brave enough to love in full truthfulness.  If you love someone, you try to do things that fulfill their needs so that they are happy and comfortable around you.  Oddly, that tends to involve allowing your loved one to do things that take their attentions away from you for a time.

The reality that they will return back to you lies completely in their hands. You can only take the risk and hope for the best. Any resistance can be met with resentment, eventually destroying the bond you want to keep. So, you talk it out and create a plan to allow the freedom they need. They then agree to return, bringing back the love that you will be suffering without.  Hopefully, Hades will not freeze over and their way back be lost.

Your Coming Spring

Sometimes, we fall in love with things or people that are not really good for us.  They are attractive for many different reasons, and those reasons over-ride our sense of safety and boundary.  We allow ourselves to be manipulated into actions and positions that then hurt us and sometimes can cripple for life. 

We fail to see that the thing that is causing us harm is doing so because we continue to allow it.  These things usually won’t or can’t remove themselves. They harm you because of their design.  They have no other choice.  They may even be secretly depending on you to deny them because they know what they are doing is wrong, but they cannot stop it themselves. 

Such is the way, I feel, about most Villains.  Ultimately, they will run around, terrorizing us, promising the impossible, and tempting us into things, but only when we yield to them, will they actually have power over us.  The trick is to see them coming, know them for what they are, see what they truly offer, and refuse to bite no matter how sweet the taste seems to be.

The Apple Changes You

If, in the event we are enchanted by a villain, we lose ourselves in a spell of denial, false reality, or dreamless sleep.  Once asleep, we fear to be awakened.  What awaits us now?  What changes to our world have been made?  Will we be judged for our moment of weakness?  What damage have we suffered while not in charge of our own lives?  Perhaps we are better just staying in this cursed existence.  At least we know how it goes, what happens while we’re in it.  Besides, maybe there isn’t anyone out there who cares. Maybe there is nothing worthwhile anymore now that we lost the control of our story.

Let me inform you, my friends, that the awakened world is huge.  There are as many, if not more, people that will notice you, care about you and stand with you than not.  Happy endings are there for us all, but we are the only ones who can write them.  We must find it in ourselves to break the curses that get cast upon us.  We must see the World that is really there, not the one that we fell into the enchantment of. We alone, must open our eyes when we feel what is nothing less than the World itself giving us True Love’s  Kiss.  

Please Awake

Trials and tribulations are the mark of a good faerie tale.  Our hero must endure scary, horrible, and sometimes deadly challenges in order to bring about something good and worthwhile.

The ability to persevere through the dark chaotic energy of the shadow world is one that is much sought after in the magical realms.  We must be ready to always turn misfortune into opportunity.  Kindness, consideration, and a willingness to help others end up being the ways to ensure our own safety and success in any quest set for us. 

Iconic villains are designed to test our resolve and prove to the world that we can hold up against anything they create. There are adventures where we will have the need to seek out that villain by speaking words to summon them, open doors to their secret lair, or maybe even use that magical incantation to stop a house from moving around on its tall chicken legs.

Izboushka, Izboushka

When asked what my personally favourite story is, I have to say I  first heard it from  Jim Henson’s “Storyteller” series.

“Hans, the Hedgehog” touched me in the beginning in ways I didn’t fully comprehend. 

Hans was born as an ugly beast, loved by his mother, rejected by his father.  As an adult, he was alone with only animals as friends.  By helping a lost king, he was granted the king’s daughter for his wife.  During the first two nights of matrimony, she discovered that he was only a beast by day, and at night he was a man. He asked her to speak nothing of this for a third night and the spell would be broken.  Of course, this was not done, and he was cursed then for eternity into beast form.

He ran away and the princess followed to try to make things right.  When she finally found him, he tried to escape, but she ran up and caught him in her arms.  He turned into all manner of angry, dangerous beast, but still she held on until at last, there was a man in her arms, freed from his curse.

I heard this story before I transitioned from a female to a male.  It worked its magic on me and one day I found the courage to take my true form as a man.  Unfortunately, I crossed paths with a villain who offered me the opportunity to transform but with the caveat that she got to have a say in what I became. It did not go as either of us planned. Testosterone can make beasts of us all.  I would shift into many a fierce, scary animal. She would then beat that animal into behaving the way she wanted.

What finally helped me to stop being a beast and become the man I knew I was, involved a little bit of magic from someone else.  I was lucky to find a woman who was not afraid of my beast, a lady of kindness with the strength and commitment to hold me tightly in love no matter how ugly I became.  She held me when no other would and it was only then that I learned how to hold myself with the same love that she showed me. Without her now, I fear I would still be that beast.

Love’s Embrace

Whatever your story, my dear readers, know that it is completely yours.  The start, the middle, and the end.  You conceive it, you write it, you live it.  You are living it now.  I hope that you hear the story you need to become the hero that you are and achieve your Happily-Ever-After.

Happy Holidays and Sacred Solstice to you all.

For more information about Alexander James Adams, including his collected articles here on Pagan Song, his bio, and links to Alec’s sites on the web, check out Alexander James Adams’ page on Pagan Song.

Have fairy tales or other stories made a difference in your life? We’d love to hear about it–please leave a comment!

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