Jack the Giant-Killer and Ourselves

In this age of technical science, Man's intelligence, which once flowed into him from the Gods, now breaks free and confronts him in his own inventions. Demonic powers, which seek to make him a soulless robot, slip into his machines, and his mechanised civilization plunges towards the abyss. It can be saved only by the rebirth in him of a form of perception which can penetrate spiritual realms and so alter the direction of his course. But where formerly this higher perception was instinctive, god-bestowed, now it must be striven for and wholly conscious. Can any contemporary question, then, be more urgent, more fundamental, than the question as to how we are to encompass this rebirth?

The suggestion that fairy-tales could have a vital bearing on any contemporary question must seem to modern thinking bizarre beyond belief. Yet Rudolf Steiner includes an understanding of them among the approaches to this supersensible sight. "In our time," says Dr. Steiner, "begins that new age in winch it becomes necessary again to find access to higher worlds. For this a certain transition must be established; and it is scarcely possible to make this transition more simply than by a sensible revival of a feeling for fairy-tales. Between that spiritual world to which Man can raise himself by clairvoyance and the world of the intellect and the senses, the fairy-tale is perhaps the truest of all mediums. The very way in which the modest fairy-tale approaches us, not laying a claim in any sense to be an image of external reality, but boldly disregarding all outer laws of external realities, makes it possible for the fairy-tale to prepare the human soul to receive again the higher spiritual world." (Symbolism and Fantasy).

Fairy-tales, then, are not written in earthly language, about earthly events; they are written in supersensible language about supersensible events. For the world of the fairy-tale is this very world to which we ourselves must now aspire. In the fairy-tale are preserved records of what that earlier god-bestowed perception saw and experienced there. Thus the fairy-tale can familiarise us with the sort of world we ourselves shall find there when we reach it, as travellers' tales can prepare us beforehand for a sojourn in some land beyond the seas.

"The first starting-point of all true fairy-tales," says Dr. Steiner, "was the remains of a primeval clairvoyance. In conditions between sleeping and waking, the veil of the physical world was lifted, and the spiritual world became visible." (The Interpretation of FairyTales). In these intermediate states, atavistic instincts and impulses which had outgrown their legitimate limits of space and time were seen by a man as giants — "the facsimile of his own former figure in those olden times, when he had not yet withdrawn himself from the Nature-forces, where men could control the weather, and in the howling windstorm tear up trees — men of immense strength, men possessed of a giant form. Through that which is the giant in man, through strength, everything was fashioned. But the giants are stupid, because they belong to a time when men could not use the Intellectual Soul; they are strong, but stupid." (The Interpretation of FairyTales).

The giant, then, belongs to the astral world, in which Man still legitimately becomes a giant, his astral body in sleep expanding over the whole realm of the stars. But when the giant powers encroach, they become inimical and destructive. Then those who experienced that spiritual vision which gave us our fairy-tales saw another figure set over against them, a figure small and young and physically weak, but conscious, wide-awake, endowed with keen reasoning and nimble presence of mind.

"Shrewdness, aptly applied skill, is the quality of the Conscious ness Soul, far removed from the strength of the giants; and these shrewd forces, in all sorts of cunning ways, overcame the rough forces which otherwise would have dominated life. The inadents of Ms own inner life which can still be perceived by Man in the spiritual world include the overcoming of the rough forces of the giants by the forces of intelligence and shrewdness." (The Interpretation of FairyTales).

Sometimes, in the fairy-tale, this small, shrewd figure is a poor boy helped by a precocious cat or fox; sometimes he is a clever little tailor. He is small and young because he is man's latest attribute, the then newly dawning Consciousness Soul. In English fairy-tales he is often named Jack; we meet him in Jack and the Beanstalk, in Jack and the Snuffbox, in How Jack went to seek his Fortune, and we meet him in purest archetype in Jack the Giant-Killer, a fairy-tale of particular significance to the English-speaking peoples on account of the light it throws on their own tasks and nature, and the increase in self-knowledge it can bring to them.

First Adventure of Jack the Giant-Killer

The first words of Jack the Giant-Killer make the mind sit up with a start. It opens, not with "Once upon a time," but with "When good King Arthur reigned."

What inner connection can there be between Jack and good King Arthur? Dr. Steiner speaks of the "Arthur Stream" as "carrying the cosmic image of Christ as Sun-Hero from Ireland and England across North and Central Europe, bringing the Impulse of the Sun, the Michael Impulse, into earthly civilization." (London Lecture). "The task of the Knights of King Arthur, under the name of knightly 'Adventure,' was to civilize Europe at a time when the spiritual life of Europe still stood under the influence of strange elemental beings who worked right into the life of Man." (Lectures on Karma).

"Legends of King Arthur's Round Table give in pictures the external facts of inner Mysteries taking place in the dawn of our epoch. These pictures point to the efforts made by the souls of men who were making progress in regard to the refining and cleansing of the forces of the astral body, which for the seer came to expression in the imagery of monsters, giants, etc. (The Mysteries of Christianity and of the East).

"The Round Table," Malory tells us, is the round world. So Jack lived and did his doughty deeds in the climate or a community whose mission was to be the core of a world-wide human culture, for which they worked by subduing monsters and giants both in the outer world and in their inner selves.

When good King Arthur reigned, there lived near the Land's End of England a farmer's son called Jack. He was brisk and of a ready, lively wit, so that nothing and nobody could worst him.

Here, indeed, stands the authentic Consciousness Soul! And yet already in it there are glimpses of a realm of life missing in the clever little tailor or the vagrant boy who owns a Puss-in-Boots. His occupation is significant; Jack is a farmer's son. Not only does he stand firmly on the Earth; he also works with the Earth in friendly partnership, each giving the other gifts.

His home, also, is significant. Already this reveals him as in the Celtic stream, for Cornwall is the last stronghold of the Celt in England. Old Cornish folk call Land's End Pen-von-las, the End of the Earth. Beyond it lies the lost land of Lyonesse, its churches, meadows, cornfields, woods, washed over by the sea. So Jack's Earth lies close to Water; master of mineral matter though he is, he lives very near the borders of the etheric.

In those days the Mount of Cornwall was kept by a huge giant named Cormoran. He was eighteen feet in height, and about three yards round the waist, of a fierce and grim countenance, the terror of all the neighbouring villages. He lived in a cave in the midst of the Mount: and whenever he wanted food he would wade over to the mainland and take it, tying sheep and hogs round his waist like a bunch of tallow-dips. He had done this for many years, so that all Cornwall was in despair.

If Jack's home is significant, Cormoran's is even more so. For we know the Mount of Cornwall to-day as St. Michael's Mount, The Book of Landaff calls it Dinsol, the Castle of the Sun, Druidic days it was a centre of solar Mysteries. When, in 495, Michael stood on its rocky side and spoke to fishermen in the bay below, it was given the Saxon name of Mychelyroz, Michael's Place — to whom should the Castle of the Sun belong if not to that mighty archangel who is Planetary Regent of the Sun? When Jack plans to rescue it from the decadent powers who wrongfully hold it to the grievous hurt of the whole countryside, he is already fighting in the spirit of the Arthur Stream, "that carries the Michael Impulse into earthly civilization."

Jack got a horn, a shovel and a pickaxe, and went over to the Mount in the beginning of a dark winter's evening. Before morning he had dug a pit twenty-two feet deep and nearly as broad, covering it over with long sticks and straw. Then he strewed a little mould over it, so that it appeared like plain ground. , Jack then placed himself on the side of the pit furthest from the giant's lodging; and just at the break of day he put the horn to his mouth and blew:

Tantivy! Tantivy!

This noise roused the giant, who rushed from his cave, tumbled into the pit, making the very foundations of the Mount to shake.*

* Visitors to St. Michael's Mount to-day are still shown "the Giant's Well, the pit in which Jack trapped Cormoran."

Jack, the Consciousness Soul at home upon the Earth, the farmer's son in alliance with the Earth, uses farm tools and the Earth itself when he digs his trap for Cormoran. He waits for the helpful moment of sunrise before he wakes the giant and lures him to his doom. For the Night-man, grown as wide as the cosmos, must shrink to the dimensions of the physical body when he becomes Day-man. "In sleep," says Dr. Steiner. "ancient man felt his soul expanded into the universe: at sunrising he contracted into the world of external reality." (Symbolism and Fantasy).

"Oh. Giant," quoth Jack, "where are you now? Oh. faith, you are gotten now into Lob's Pound."

He gave him a most weighty knock with his pickaxe on the very crown of his head, and killed him on the spot.

Jack searched the cave, and found much treasure He was given a sword and a belt, on which was written in letters of gold:

Here's the right valiant Cornishman
Who slew the giant Cormoran.

The death-blow Jack deals Cormoran is described with such precision that the picture conjured up is that of the point pickaxe entering the fontanel and extinguishing the decadent clairvoyant consciousness associated with the pineal sense-organ. Cormoran's accumulated treasure of dream-wisdom becomes Jack's; his exploit is recorded in his aura: with the acquisition of sword and belt he achieves the first stage of his gradual transformation from farmer's boy to Knight of the Round Table.

Second Adventure

Four months later. Jack, on his way to Wales, fell asleep in a lonesome wood near the enchanted castle of the giant Blunderbore, who found him and read his belt. He dragged him to his castle, where the ground was strewn with human bones, and left him a captive there while he went to fetch his brother to share this meal.

Jack saw them coming.

"Now," quoth Jack to himself, "my death or my deliverance is at hand."

In the comer of the room he found two strong cords; in the end of each he made a noose, which he dropped over the heads of the giants as they were unlocking the castle's iron door. The other ends he threw across a beam, and pulled with all his might till they were hanged. Then he slid down one of the ropes and, drawing his sword, killed them both.

Jack took the giants' keys and unlocked the rooms of the castle. He here found three fair ladies, tied by the hair of their heads. He gave them their liberty, and went on his way to Wales.

Now the tables are turned: it is when is dimmed — when he falls asleep — that he in his turn falls prey to a giant. But he turns this peril to profit, for never in all his adventures is he caught unaware again. Indeed, in his next adventure, it is this new heightened consciousness that saves him from death.

Third Adventure

On his way to Wales Jack was benighted, and came to a lonely house, where a two-headed giant gave him shelter with a false show of friendship. After Jack had retired to bed, he heard the giant muttering in the next apartment:

"Though here you lodge with me this night,
You shall not see the morning light,
My club shall dash your brains outright."

So up Jack got from his bed, laid a billet of wood in his place, and hid in a corner of the room. At the dead time of the night, in came the giant, and pounded the bed with his club.

Next morning, Jack gave the giant hearty thanks for his night's lodging.

"How have you rested?" quoth the giant. "Were you disturbed at all in the night?"

"Only by a rat," replied Jack, "who gave me two or three slaps with her tail."

With that, greatly wondering, the giant led Jack to breakfast, bringing him a bowl containing four gallons of hasty pudding. Jack put a large leather bag under his loose coat, and poured the pudding into it unseen.

"Now I will show you a trick," Jack told the giant.

And he took a knife, and ripped open the bag: and out came the hasty pudding.

"I can do that trick myself," the giant vaunted.

But when he did so, he fell down dead.

It is at "the dead time of the night," when normally he would have been unconscious in sleep, that Jack s danger is greatest. But the course of the story hints that a certain occult development is beginning to unfold in him; he is learning to remain conscious during sleep. And when morning comes, so shrewd is his Day-man intellect that he is able to lead the giant into encompassing his own downfall.

Fourth Adventure

Now it happened in these days that King Arthur's only son was journeying into Wales, in search of a beautiful lady who was possessed with seven evil spirits.

His father had given him two horses, one for him to ride, the other laden with money. He came to a market-town, where he beheld a vast crowd of people; when he asked the reason, he was told:

"They are arresting the corpse of a man who has died owing large sums of money."

"Go bury the dead man," said the Prince. "Let his creditors come to my lodging, and there their debts shall be paid."

They did so, and came in such numbers that by nightfall the Prince had only two pence left for himself.

Now Jack the Giant-killer, coming that way was so taken with the generosity of the Prince that he desired to be his servant, and next morning they set forward on their journey together.

As they were riding out of the town, an old woman called after the Prince, saying:

"He has owed me two pence these seven years. Pray pay me as the rest."

So the Prince gave the old woman all he had left.

King Arthur's son gives us, as he gave Jack, an immediate impression of selfless nobility; we recognize in him the personality striving for its highest Egohood. He bears with him a treasure of inherited Sun-forces; for, in the Round Table's reflection of the heavens, King Arthur is the Sun. But the Prince does not selfishly clutch and hide that treasure, as the giants do; in paying the dead man's debts with it he does a free deed of love and sacrifice. While Jack is remarkable for a vigorous working-together of head and will-forces (as in the Consciousness Soul), from King Arthur's son radiate warm heart-forces. He bears within him the faculty of love.

In recognizing the Prince as a being to be served and venerated, and in uniting his own destiny with his, Jack takes a further step forward on his path of transformation. The cunning of the Clever Fox or Puss-in-Boots displayed in the hasty pudding episode is uplifted into the nobler intelligence of the horse. Hitherto Jack has gone on foot; now he rides. To sword and belt he has added a knight's third requisite, a steed.

In the beautiful lady possessed with seven evil spirits, King Arthur's son, the striving spirit, seeks to redeem and tranquillise the still passion-tossed soul. "The storms which rage the human soul must be recognized," says Dr. Steiner. "Only then can we free it from the lower disturbances and bring it into order . . . Backward Luciferic Beings of seven different kinds remained behind upon the Moon and worked upon the astral human body. We know that if our evolution is not carried out aright, it is owing to the power of these seven different kinds of Lucifenc Beings. (Excursions on Mark)

So, in the Apocalypse, the Lucifenc beast who rises out of the sea has seven heads. The fairy-tale reveals itself as well aware of the origin of the lady's seven evil spirits, for with a marvellous sureness of touch it presently mentions Lucifer by name as her secret associate.

And now, with consummate artistry, the story traces the steps by which the Prince's sacrifice in paying the dead man's debts leads eventually to the deliverance of the lady.

When the sun got low, King Arthur's son said:

"Jack, since we have no money, where can we lodge this night?"

"I have an uncle lives within two miles, a three-headed giant," quoth Jack. "Do you stay here until I return, I will go before and prepare the way for you." Jack rode to the gate of his uncle's castle and knocked hard.

"Who is there ?" called the giant.

"None but your poor cousin Jack," Jack replied.

"What news with my poor cousin Jack?" the giant asked.

"Dear uncle, heavy news, God wot," Jack answered him. "Prithee, what heavy news can come to me?" quoth the giant. "I am a giant with three heads; I can fight five hundred men in armour, and make them fly like chaff before the wind!

"But here is King Arthur's son," Jack told him, "coming with a thousand men in armour, to kill you and to destroy all that you have!

"Oh, Cousin Jack, this is heavy news indeed!" groaned the giant. "I will run and hide myself; and do you lock and bolt and bar me in, and keep the keys until the Prince is gone."

Jack therefore secured the giant in a vault underground. Then he went for his master, and brought him into the castle, where they made merry and slept well. Early next morning Jack furnished the Prince with gold and silver, and sent him three miles forward on his journey. Then he led the giant out of his underground vault.

"What shall I give you. Cousin Jack," asked the giant, "for keeping my castle safe?"

"I want nothing," Jack told him, "but the old coat, cap, sword and shoes which are at your bed's head."

"You know not what you ask," quoth the giant. "They're the most precious things I have. The coat will keep you invisible; the cap will tell you all you want to know; the sword cuts asunder what ever you strike; the shoes are of extraordinary swiftness. But you have been very serviceable to me. Therefore take them with all my heart."

So Jack took them and joined the Prince.

It is their lack of money which directs them to the castle of this giant with whom Jack has a blood-connection, whose store of ancient supersensible riches would appear to be honestly come by, and whom Jack does not seek to slay, since this giant uncle's might is not exercised tyrannously, and all he asks is not to be molested as Night-man, but to be left in peace in the darkness of his underground vault till the menace of the Day-man has passed.

Out of this accumulated treasure from the night-world Jack enriches the Prince, and himself bears away a four-fold reward which marks a further stage in his development towards a reawakening of higher organs of the soul.

He receives a coat of darkness to make him invisible. That is, he learns to move in the realms of the night-consciousness with the wakeful awareness of the day-consciousness, even when released from the physical body of which this wakefulness had hitherto been an attribute.

He receives a cap which will tell him all he wants to know, for his strengthened powers of imaginative thought have freed them selves from the limiting logic of the waking intellect.

He receives the sword which cuts asunder whatever you strike; he has made himself master of the destructive forces of the spinal consciousness, that inner will which regulates organic activity during sleep, but which, if it breaks into our waking life, manifests as antipathy.

He receives the sword of swiftness, moving securely in those realms of the supersensible where the earthly physical laws of time and space cease to operate.

The four gifts together reveal Jack as having reaped me harvest of life rightly lived in the sense-world at the level of the Consciousness Soul, in that through this he has become so firmly established within himself that he remains fully self-possessed, vigilant and able to wield sound judgment even in the midst of this other welling, weaving world of perpetual transformations.

In what follows he is able to use the four gifts in the Prince's service.

King Arthur's son and Jack went on tll they came to the house of the lady. She prepared a splendid banquet, after which she told the Prince she had a task for him. She wiped his mouth with a handkerchief, saying:

"You must show me this handkerchief to-morrow morning, or else lose your head."

So saying, she put the handkerchief into her bosom.

The Prince went to bed in great sorrow; but Jack's cap of knowledge told him how to obtain the handkerchief. In the middle of the night the lady called on her familiar spirit to carry her to Lucifer. But Jack put on his coat of darkness and his shoes of swiftness, and was there as soon as she was.

When she entered the palace of the Old One she gave the handkerchief to old Lucifer, who laid it upon a shelf. Jack took it from the shelf, and brought it to his master, who shewed it next day to the lady, and so saved his life. On that day she gave the Prince a kiss, and told him:

"To-morrow morning you must show me the lips I shall kiss to-night, or else lose your head."

"Ah, if you kiss none but mine, I will," replied the Prince.

At midnight she went to the palace of the Old One as before, and was angry with old Lucifer for letting the handkerchief go. "But now," quoth she, "I will be too hard for King Arthur's son, for I will kiss your lips, and how can he shew me those?

This she did. But Jack, when she had departed, unsheathed sword which cuts asunder whatever you strike, and cut off Lucifer's head. He brought this under his invisible coat to his master, who next day pulled it out by the horns before the lady.

This broke the enchantment: the evil spirits left her, and she appeared in all her beauty. The Prince and lady were married next morning and went back to the Court of King Arthur, taking Jack with them. There Jack, for his many great exploits, was made a Knight of the Round Table.

In The Effects of Occult Development on the Self and Sheaths of Man, Dr. Steiner has a passage which throws light on this astonishing sequence.

"Thus inner experience," he says, "teaches us to know Lucifer as the Night Spirit. It is part of the change that goes on in our self and our astral body (during an occult development) that at night we feel ourselves in the company of Lucifer. You may perhaps at first think that it must be disagreeable to a person, when he goes to sleep and becomes clairvoyant, to become aware that during the night he comes into Lucifer's company. But if you reflect more deeply, you will realize that it is better to know that we are in his company than to think that he is not there. ...

"After his first misleading of men, they were not permitted to see him any more; therefore the Divine-Spiritual Being who was watching over the progress of mankind had to draw a veil over the vision of the night. Sleep covers from man with darkness the world in which he is from the time of his going to sleep until he awakens. At the withdrawal of the veil which covers the night with darkness, we should instantly perceive Lucifer by our side. If man were strong enough, this would do no harm; but as at first he could not be strong in the sense required by our earthly development, this veil had to be drawn during his sleep at night, so that no further misleadings, through the direct vision of Lucifer from the time of his going to sleep until reawakening, should come to man. . . .

"Man is now living towards a future when, each time he awakes, he will have — at first like a fleeting dream, but later more clearly — the impression: 'Thy companion during the night was Lucifer.' In the ever-developing clairvoyant conditions of the human soul, the Luciferic influence will work principally during sleep, or in all the conditions which are indeed similar to sleep but in which there is consciousness."

Jack, therefore, through his uncle's gifts (that is, through occult development proper to our times) sees Lucifer as Night Spirit legitimately; the lady, through the possession by the "seven backward Luciferic spirits who had remained behind upon the Moon," sees him irregularly and atavistically, not in accordance with our present stage of evolution, so that it is with profound spiritual exactitude that the fairy-tale characterises him in his connection with the lady as "Old Lucifer" and "the Old One."

The head belongs to the past; it is a metamorphosis, says Dr. Steiner, of the will-forces of the previous incarnation; and the human embryo, like the tadpole, makes manifest that it is from the head that the rest of the body grows. So, in beheading Lucifer, Jack is severing for the lady her wrongly carried-over connection with former conditions of existence, now long passed away.

"Wherever the soul is not governed by the Ego or controlled by the spirit, Lucifer rules; this is the danger of soul without spirit." (Emil Bock, The Apocalypse). But the lady, the soul, appears in all her beauty when she is redeemed by the Prince, the higher, Christ-filled Ego, who, through Jack's instrumentality, liberates her from the Luciferic obstacles to her true evolution and unites with her in love.

Jack, on his part, receives recognition as a soul working in the service of the Michael Impulse — he is made a Knight of the Round Table.

Fifth Adventure

Jack soon went searching for giants again.

Near the entrance to a cave he saw a giant sitting on a block of timber, with a knotted iron club by his side. His eyes were like flames of fire, the bristles of his beard like rods of iron wire, his locks like curling snakes.

Jack alighted from his horse, and put on the coat of darkness; then, coming close to the monster, he struck a sword-blow at his head, but, missing his aim, cut off his nose instead. At this, the giant roared like claps of thunder, and began to lay about him with his iron club like one stark mad.

But Jack, running behind him, drove his sword up to the hilt in the giant's back, so that he fell down dead. This done. Jack cut off the giant's head, and sent it to King Arthur, by a wagoner he hired for that purpose.

Jack now resolved to enter the giant's cave in search of his treasure. Passing along through a great many windings and turnings, he came to a large room, with a boiling cauldron, and a great table, and a window barred with iron, through which he saw great numbers of miserable captives.

Straightway unlocking the door, he set them free, and, searching the giant's coffers, shared the gold and silver equally among them. Then he took them to a neighbouring castle, to celebrate their deliverance.

The giant's locks like curling snakes are reminiscent of Medusa's; like hers, they point to an atavistic mode of apprehension, belonging to a period before the lobes of the brain became static, when to clairvoyant sight they reached forth from the head with searching hands. "Certain lobes of the brain which now lie enclosed in the skull," says Dr. Steiner, "were freely mobile during the Old Moon evolution. To-day they are rigid, and can no longer move physically; but they do move etherically when we think. If we had not this firm skull enclosing the lobes of the brain, we should stretch out these lobes and make gestures with them — but we should not think. The lobes of the brain had first to be made physically rigid, and it had to be possible for the etheric brain to tear itself free." (Occult Reading and Occult Hearing).

In this giant, then, Jack has to overcome a decadent form of cognition inimical to the clear and highly conscious thinking right for the present stage of evolution; and it is significant that he does so by running his sword into the giant's back, man's most unconscious part.

The picture of the head is unfolded further when Jack enters the cave, traversing there the many windings and turnings of the labyrinth of the brain within the hollow rock of the enclosing skull. A vision of the night-activity of the etheric body, the sheath that builds and nourishes, meets him in the boiling cauldron, preparing food to be set on the great table (for in sleep the digestive processes penetrate to the head), and in the captives, who, through their window, receive this nourishment only through the sense-impressions of sight, smell and sound.

For it is thus that Dr. Steiner, in The Effects of Occult Development on the Self and Sheaths of Man, describes that experiencing of the etheric body at the moment of going to sleep which he calls the Grail Imagination — the wounded earth-man in an inner room within the skull's stone walls, and, streaming up into the head to nourish and renew him, and with him the noblest portions of the brain, the purest and finest products of the senses, the purest and finest extracts of the metabolism's alchemy.

The fairy-tale even indicates that it is, as Dr. Steiner says, at the moment of going to sleep that Jack meets this experience. For it tells us that he alighted from his horse (the waking day-intelligence) and put on his coat of darkness (the night-consciousness which remains aware, though freed from the physical body).

The brain is quite specially the organ of the Consciousness Soul; it is the Consciousness Soul that shapes the convolutions of the grey cortex. When the Consciousness Soul can perceive and control the etheric body, it unfolds its highest faculties and ripens into the Imaginative Soul — that is to say, it becomes that which Michael wills it to be in our time. The fairy-tale would seem to hint that Jack at this point reaches this stage of development.

Sixth Adventure

In the midst of all this mirth, a messenger brought news that one Thunderdell, a giant with two heads, having heard of the death of his kinsmen, had come from the northern dales to be revenged on Jack. He was now within a mile of the castle, which stood on a small island, surrounded by a moat thirty feet deep and twenty feet wide, over which lay a drawbridge. Jack had this bridge cut through on both sides alost to the middle; then, putting on his coat of darkness and taking his sword of sharpness, he marched against the giant.

Although the giant could not see Jack, he smelt his approach and cried out:

"Fee-fi-fo-fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman.
Be he alive or be he dead,
I'll grind his bones to make my bread."

"You have first to catch me," quoth Jack.

And, putting on his shoes of swiftness, and throwing off his coat of darkness that the giant might see him, he ran from Thunderdell, who followed him like a walking castle, so that the very foundations of the Earth seemed to shake at every step.

Jack led him a long dance, and at last ran lightly over the draw bridge, the giant pursuing him at full speed with his club. When the giant reached the middle of the bridge, where Jack had had it cut, his great weight broke it down, and he tumbled headlong into the moat, where he rolled and wallowed like a whale.

Jack now got a cart-rope, which he cast over Thunderdell's two heads, and, with the help of a team of horses, drew him ashore. Then, cutting off both heads with his sword of sharpness, he sent them to King Arthur.

The Consciousness Soul is an island in its detachment, its separation. The Imaginative Soul is an island in that its core of Earth is embraced on all sides by Water. Both aspects play into this Thunderdell adventure. It is by means of the etheric (by plunging him into water) that Jack subdues this giant, passing confidently from waking night-to-day-consciousness, in which, with most practical application of intelligence, he uses a team of horses to bring his victim to land.

By sending to King Arthur first the head of the giant with the snake-locks, now Thunderdell's heads, and later that of Galligantua, Jack continually renews connection with the fountain-head of his striving.

Seventh Adventure

After some time Jack, taking leave of the knights and ladies he had rescued, set out for new adventures. Through many woods he passed, and came at length to the foot of a high mountain. Here, late at night, he found a lonesome house, and knocked at the door. It was opened by an aged man with a head as white as snow.

"Father," said Jack, "can you lodge a benighted traveller that has lost his way?"

"Yes," said the old man. "You are right welcome to my poor cottage."

Whereupon Jack entered. Down they sat together; and the old man said:

"Son, I see by your belt you are the great conqueror of giants; and behold, my son, on the top of this mountain is an enchanted castle, kept by a giant named Galligantua, who, by the help of an old conjuror, betrays many knights and ladies into his castle, where, by magic art, they are transformed into shapes other than their own. But above all I grieve for a duke's daughter, whom they snatched away from her father's garden, carrying her through the air in a burning chariot drawn by fiery dragons, and securing her within the castle, where they transformed her into a white hind."

"Has no knight attempted," asked Jack, "to break the enchantment and work her deliverance?"

"Many knights have attempted it," the old man told him, "yet none could accomplish it, on account of two dreadful griffins at the castle gates, who destroy all who come near. But you, my son, in your coat of darkness, may pass by them unseen; and on the gates you will find engraven how the enchantment may be broken."

At this Jack gave the old man his hand, and promised him:

"In the morning I will venture my life to free this lady."

In the morning Jack arose, put on his magic coat, cap, sword and shoes, and set out. When he reached the top of the mountain, he passed the two dreadful griffins invisible and without fear. Beyond them, on the castle gates, he found a golden trumpet hung by a silver chain, and under it these words engraved:

Whoever shall this trumpet blow
Shall Galligantua overthrow.
And break the black enchantment straight;
So all shall be in happy state.

Jack blew the trumpet, and the castle trembled to its vast foundations; the giant and the conjurer were in horrid confusion, biting their thumbs and tearing their hair, knowing their wicked reign was at an end. As the giant stooped to take up his club, Jack, at one blow, cut off his head, whereupon the conjurer, mounting up into the air, was carried away in a whirlwind.

At once the enchantment was broken; all the lords and ladies who had so long been transformed into birds and beasts returned to their proper shapes; and the castle vanished away in a cloud of smoke.

The head of Galligantua was conveyed to the Court of King Arthur, whither Jack followed, with the lords and ladies who had been delivered. Whereupon, as a reward for his good services. King Arthur prevailed upon the duke to bestow his daughter in marriage on honest Jack. So married they were; and the whole kingdom was filled with joy at the wedding. Furthermore, King Arthur bestowed on Jack a noble castle, where he and his lady lived in great joy and happiness all the rest of their days.

The old man with the snow-white hair of heavenly wisdom, to whom Jack's way leads him at last, is like a memory of those lonely hermits, guardians of hidden spiritual knowledge, to whom the knights' in Malory, Wolfram von Eschenbach and Chretien de Troyes come on the eve of their initiation. Jack goes forth from him next morning armed with all the gifts his development has brought him, aided by the old man's guidance, fired by a new high quest — the deliverance of the gently-bred duke's daughter who has been reft away from that realm of pure and paradisal life, her father's garden, her innocent sense-longing turned into a white hind. (The stag is frequently a fairy-tale picture for sensitive and delicate heightened sense-impressions.)

In place of the hunting-horn he blew on the Mount of Cornwall to arouse Cormoran, Jack now blows a golden trumpet, which, like Joshua's, can make stone walls tremble. There is even something a little apocalytic in the scene. Gianthood is ended; with the "old conjurer " (the bearer of retarding mediumistic forces) the last of the atavistic clairvoyance in the blood is whirled away; the castle of illusion vanishes; all that is decadent perishes; the lords and ladies under enchantment regain their human forms.

When Dinsol, the Castle of the Sun, lapsed into the hands of Cormoran, atavistic forces seized what had once been given to Man by Michael, Lord of Cosmic Intelligence. Jack redeems that gift. All his exploits, all the stages of his own development, are steps in that redemption. The new faculty by which Man turns aside from the abyss, wresting his own downward path into the parabola of a new ascent, is bound up with this new Michael thinking, this new conscious clairvoyance, in which concept and percept become one. Jack, the brisk young farmer's son, has become a Knight of the Round Table, with a duke's daughter for bride and a castle of his own. In him the Consciousness Soul, furthering Michael's will, has attained nobility.