In my own opinion, and using the little knowledge of shamanism that I have, this tale would seem to describe in allegory a shamanic journey, at least as I, a non-practitioner, have heard them described. The protagonist in our first tale, The Golden Bird, is the youngest son of a king. The young prince encounters his fetch in the form of a fox, and together they embark upon several trials in which they seek to win various ‘golden’ objects (and we can safely assume this is the gold of deeper spiritual understanding, rather than mundane material gold).
We see the fox advising the boy on the best course of action through each of his trials, eventually leading him to happiness and good fortune.
This tale begins in the ‘pleasure-garden’ of a king, in which grows a tree bearing ‘golden apples’. The king counts the apples every day, and one morning finds one to be missing. This happens on a number of occasions, much to our good king’s consternation, and he summons his eldest son to watch during the night for the thief.
However, his eldest is unable to stay awake throughout the night, and in the morning discovers an apple is missing once again, and is none the wiser for it. The second son suffers a similar fate, and awakens to find yet another apple gone from the tree and cannot explain it. The youngest asks if he may watch, and despite his fathers initial distrust of his third son (this is the first example of the use of the number three in this tale) the young man nonetheless stays the course and discovers that it is a ‘Golden Bird’ taking the apples.
The king orders that someone put an end to this thievery, so of course the eldest son demands that it should be he that sets out on this noble quest, to hunt down the Golden Bird. At this point may I say that I believe that this ‘Golden Bird’ represents enlightenment, spiritual evolution, a higher state of being, and the hunting down of this Golden Bird can be seen as pursuing the quest of an Odin Consciousness, as we would call it.
When the eldest son comes to the borders of a wood, he meets a fox (his fetch) who offers to help in his search. The foolish prince however scorns the fox as an ignorant animal and dismisses the advice, and ends up getting distracted at an enchanted inn, forgetting forever his noble quest. The second son, sent out by the king after his brother fails to return, also ignores what the fox has to tell him, to his doom also. The third and youngest son however heeds the advice of the fox, and is able to proceed with the quest. However, although he listens to the fox at each trial, he does not always do exactly as the fox says, and this always results in problems. Yet the fox returns to help him out of his trouble each time, because the young prince acknowledges him, and we are told the fox feels compassion for him also (as does our own fetch, if we acknowledge and try to listen to them).
So what can we learn from this tale? Well, the story seems to verify the idea of the fetch, and makes it very clear that if one is fortunate enough to achieve communication with one’s fetch, it is in your own best interests to follow as closely as possible the advice and directions given, and never to summarily dismiss that which is offered:
“Make yourself quite easy, dear fox; I will do thee no harm.”, said the young prince.
“Neither shall you repent of your kindness”, answered the fox; “and to enable you to go very fast on your journey, just climb up behind on my tail.”
In the case of this tale, the fetch of the young prince is a fox, yet as we know, our fetch can take on any number of forms, and we are not just limited to one. The fetch appeared to the young prince, for he was sincere and willing to listen, in order to help him along the path of spiritual evolution, to help him to chase and catch the ‘Golden Bird of Enlightenment.’ And in the end, after all his troubles, we see the young prince succeeding in his quest, and despite being waylaid by his devious brothers on the way home, returns not only with ‘The Golden Bird’, but also a ‘Golden Horse’ and the ‘princess from the Golden Castle’ – three ‘golden’ treasures.
It is notable that in this tale we see the use of the number ‘three’ on several occasions: three sons, three challenges and three ‘golden’ prizes, which would seem to indicate that this number was of significance to the Folk from whom this tale evolved. And as we know, three is of course a very important number in our mythology, so this is pattern is of no surprise to us as Odinists.
“Then the fox stretched out his tail, and the king’s son seated himself upon it, and away they went like the wind.”
Remember! This is just a sample.
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