So it's not the 'elves' exactly - and the shoemaker.
The Grimms put this collection of three stories together, concerning 'elves' with the main story being the one about the poor but honest shoemaker who only had enough money to purchase leather for just one pair of shoes.
...And there he is, one evening, tired and, well, still basically extremely poor, and he decides to call it a day and leaves the unfinished pair out on his workbench and goes to sleep.
The story in the original German is 'Die Wichtelmanner.'
And 'Wicht' is from the Old Norse - Vaettir.
Pic from our friend Hugo, in Paris. |
These are beings who look 'whitish' or grey - of course - and the interesting thing about these two little men who finish the shoes while the shoemaker is sleeping, is that they start off being completely naked.
Anyway, don't worry too much about this 'naked' thing, it's kind of interesting for reasons we don't need to talk about here, but the fact that eventually when the shoemaker and his wife spy them working one night, they feel sorry for the poor little guys and decide to make them some tiny clothes and tiny shoes.
By this time, the shoes that had been made by the elves have been achieving great prices and in fact, as soon as they get clothed, they nick off! LOL
Never mind because the shoemaker has plenty of trade by now, and money, and his own handiwork is not less than what the elves were doing. He was able to afford better food for one thing and so his eyesight remained sharp and his hands no longer shaky.
It's straight out traditional lore about elves that they are able to time travel and they in fact, usually move around much faster than the human eye can see in most circumstances.
Did they know the shoemaker and his wife would make them some clothes and shoes because they knew the future? And thus it was just the right thing to do to help him out, as it were, before the fact yet after the future fact...
There is much more, philosophically, to this story than meets the eye too, because we have to ask, is there something intrinsically valuable, regardless of linear time and apparent 'pre-destiny,' in the actual personal handiwork and most especially, in my view, the sentiments of the shoemaker and his wife towards the little men?
Also Paris. I'll tell you a secret about this kind of place one day... |
Oh yes, I do think so.
'Elves' they may be, because that is after all, our English word for them, but the very very ancient (and let's not go into the historically factually slightly unsound ideology of 'proto-Indo European...) word the Germans and Old Norse had, is from the Sanskrit 'Vitarka.'
'Vitarka' means super-logic.
Super logic is something way beyond what ordinary humans maintain is their best kind of thinking, which is namely, logical thinking.
Super-logic has no equivalent meaning in English or Western Culture - other than maybe by way of very deep and occultic meanings of ancient traditional fairy tales like the Elves and the Shoemaker.
Sanskrit super-logic already admits of this 'time-traveling' aspect that is available to certain kinds of beings.
Humans are only acquainted with linear causality logic, albeit still they have to include the prior presence and existence of shapes and numbers and relationships of those things.
But humans tend to only be able to project forward in a cumbersome style of envisaging 'if this, then that.' Which is frankly, not all that difficult or challenging you wouldn't suppose, although they still don't really seem to be able to reliably handle just even that much.
Were the shoemaker and his wife really 'poor?'
By standard linear logic you would 'calculate' that yes they were, because at step 1 they didn't have the means to make enough shoes to grow their material wealth to get to a step 2 that would imply actual 'growth.'
And even if we were to insert in (to the calculation) the actual reality of the existence of 'elves,' then still we would not be able to say by linear causality alone that the elves would necessarily help the shoemaker and his wife.
If, there are such things as invisible elves, then, dimensionality becomes hugely important to logical calculations, because of considerations like motivation and ethics and ethos, too.
Jesus: 'Use Peitho' to persuade the angels.
He says it right there in the Bible!
It isn't about your ethics, it is about the ethos that you are part of, intrinsically.
'Ethics' is simply the integrity of one characteristic with subsequent actions. Well, governments have integrity. So do law courts and police and the justices and lawyers and doctors and politicians and many academics, probably most of them; the modern day ones. Oh yes.
They are wicked and Evil to begin with, motivated by greed for money and public approval and recognition. So naturally everything they do - its conclusion - has 'integrity' with that original start of things.
The shoemaker was not greedy for money, he needed some.
Naturally you cannot know what the elves want from you unless you see them, perhaps, in want of clothing, for example.
But don't wait. Put out some small silver in the moonlight, under some bushes where you can find it again and where no one else can steal it. Just lend it to them...
Henri Cartier-Bresson. |
Even if this is simply to signify to them that you would like to know what you might be able to do for them. The only thing you can do for them is to feel. In certain ways. And that feeling comes from your ethos.
When I think of 'shoemaker' I can also think about Henri Cartier-Bresson in the same light.
He never had great equipment. Well, it became great after he used the things that he did have and then used. He never used a flash. He said it was 'impolite.' He like darkness.
The shoemaker had to live in the dark because he did not have enough money for candle-wax. I'm not sure if the shoemaker actually liked darkness. Probably, he did not.
You know, I wonder if I can improve on the Brothers Grimm's version, by making out that the shoemaker worked by the light of a full moon one time, and...
Oh shame on me. So arrogant to think that I can improve on the Grimms.
Hey but hang on just a minute here! ...If there is something much more significant to the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale about the 'elves' than would seem to be merely the 'moral to story' aspect, then Dr. Stephen Greer's CE5 protocol does not sound so silly nor as totally unfounded as many people suppose, is it?
The vocalist in this is rarely credited online anywhere; but it is Shirley Randall: