"The Handless Maiden" a sermon by Rev. Brian J. Kiely
Unitarian Church of Edmonton January 24, 1999

The Story

There once was a man - a miller who had been grinding the grain of the village for as long as anyone could remember. Everyday he worked so very hard, turning the millstone by hand and making the grain into flour. It was honest work. The miller was an honest man making his contribution to the village with the strength of his back. It was honest, but slow and very tiring.

Towards the end of one long day the devil appeared and says, "For a fee I will show you how to grind your grain much faster and with much less effort." The miller was intrigued and asked the price. "Only that which stands out back of the mill." Thinking the devil meant the old tree out back, something the miller thought was quite worthless, he readily agreed. Imagine, to get more work for less effort for an old tree trunk!

The devil brought his mechanical expertise and made adjustments showing the miller how to create a water wheel that turned the stone continuously grinding and grinding the flour. The miller was delighted as he considered what to do with his new found leisure. His wife became engaged in using all that extra income. Meanwhile, their young daughter remained unconcerned and continued her innocent life.

Some time later the devil returned to collect his fee, and the miller happily led him out back to the old tree, but was horrified to see his daughter standing in the yard. The devil claimed her as his price. They argued. The miller said she wasn't there when the deal was struck but the devil will have none of it. He would get the girl or he would take back his water wheel. The miller was desolated, but unwilling to give up his mill, so he agreed. The devil then chopped off the girl's hands and carries them away leaving her behind. The daughter did not object to her horrible fate.

For some time, the handless maiden was content with her situation and did not complain. After all, there was enough money now to have servants in the household and she no longer had to do the work that required her hands. In time, however, she became unhappy at her inability to do things and she grew more withdrawn, more distressed. Finally, she began to weep and was unable to stop.

She left home and went alone into the forest. There, in that dark and quiet place, she found solitude, and it brought her relief and a measure of peace. She stopped from crying. She began to journey through the woods.

She crossed through a thick and soupy bog growing in fear and despair but made it through to the other side. By chance she found her way into a garden, and not just any one, but the king's garden. Very hungry, she found a pear tree, so well prized by the king, that every single piece of fruit was numbered and catalogued. Somehow she worked out a way to eat a succulent pear without her hands and felt so much better. She went back to the woods to sleep in a leafy bower.

The next day, the king's gardener noticed the missing pear and informed the monarch. The king was angry at the theft, but he was a kind and just man. He decided he had to find out who was taking his pears and why. So he hid himself in the garden and waited. In time the handless maiden returned, hungry again. He watched her first with compassion and then with growing love as she struggled to feed herself. The king finally stepped from his hiding place and fed the girl.

The king took her home to asked her to be his queen. At first she refused saying she could not possibly be queen without hands. He assured her that she would have everything done for her and that she would never need hands. And so she consented to marry.

However it was awkward to have a queen without hands and in time he summoned his magicians. They fashioned for her a magnificent pair of silver hands which made her the delight of the court as she demonstrated her silvery grace. And for a time she was pleased with the hands, and the many compliments they brought.

A year or so passed and the queen gave birth to a baby boy. With all the servants to care for him things went well for a time. But unaccountably, the queen began to weep again one day and could not stop. She longed to care of her own baby, to cradle him in her arms, to smooth his hair with her own fingers. The king tried to convince her that the servants could do all that, but still the tears flowed. Her cold, hard silver hands could never convey the gentleness of a mother's love.

In desperation one day she took the child and fled again into the safe and secret forest. She lived with the child in seclusion existing on the simplest possible fare, and for a long while everything was fine again. Until the day the toddler fell into a stream and was in danger of drowning. Frantic the queen called for her servants, who are of course, not there.

In a moment of sublime strength she plunged her silver hands deep into the water to rescue her child. When she drew the boy from the water choking and sputtering, miracle! the baby was safe and her hands were restored to flesh and blood!

Homily

In the first service in this series, we parsed out the meanings of the story of the Fisher King learning, according to psychologist Robert A. Johnson, that his castration symbolized the wounding and healing of the male feeling function. Today we consider the somewhat gruesome story of the Handless Maiden. According to Johnson it tells about the damage done to the feminine feeling function. but as the stories are different, so too are the wounds different.

Says Johnson, "A woman suffers an equal incapacity...when her feeling function is wounded. But this wound appears in a woman in her inability to do, and it is no surprise to find in our myth of the woman's wounding that it is her hands that are damaged. In a wounded woman her great cry is, What can I do ? I feel so useless or second-rate and inferior in this world that puts its women on the rubbish heap when they are through with courtship and child bearing!'"

But understand, the woman's way of 'doing' ( or more correctly the feminine way of doing, for this can be true in men) is different from the masculine. The masculine want to be heroic and do or fix something. Johnson suggests, "But woman's genius is quite the reverse... Women's heroic way is based on an entirely different view of reality. When the feminine is faced with conflict, it is her nature to search out the opposing forces...and put an end to the battle. A man wants to ensure the triumph of good over evil; a woman wants to diminish the opposition between them. He fights; she reconciles."

In other words, the feminine in us calls us to work relationally to solve problems. That is the feminine way of doing. To be successful it requires conscious awareness of the problem and the power to intervene. As we shall see, the Maiden's difficulties arise because at different times she lacks one or the other.

As we begin to look at the story again, notice a singular difference. In The Fisher King no woman played a significant role. In this story of women, however, there are three major male figures affecting the life of the maiden: her father, the devil and the king. The Maiden's wounding and journey towards wholeness is fraught with male energy.

Now of course, life was different in the Middle Ages. Men controlled more of women's destiny than even today, but these characters are more than men in the story. In any mythic tale, according to Carl Jung, all characters represent some dimension of our psyches. We play every part in our dreams and in our myths. And so in this story the men also represent the masculine dimension in the female. One only has to look at the anti-feminist actions of conservative groups like REAL Women to realize that the masculine side of some females tyrannizes femininity as much any man could. As all men have a feminine side, so, too, do all women have a masculine side that often challenges and denigrates the value of their femininity.

The story begins with the miller, the maiden's father. He is an honest and hard working man, but given the back-breaking nature of his work he is easily tempted when the devil comes along, apparently offering something for nothing.

Now just what is the miller's bargain? He gets the advances to the mill at the cost of his daughter's hands. What does this mean? Johnson suggests that the miller gains a mechanical advance, which is to say an innovation which changes or interferes with the natural world. It brings increased productivity but at the price of something natural. In this case, the cost is assessed against the female feeling function, that part of us which 'does' relationship.

Johnson argues that this is the bargain of modernism and one we make a hundred times a day. We buy into technology at the cost of the human and the feeling. We use bank machines instead of talking to people. We use answering machines to screen us from the rest of the world. We use cars instead of walking in nature. We try to figure how much to cram into one day, allowing little time for leisure, self or relationship. In the new war film The Thin Red Line, there is an opening sequence where an AWOL soldier spends time in a stone age native village in the South Pacific. In every scene fathers and mothers are spending time with their children and with each other, teaching, playing, grooming. Nowhere do you see anyone walking alone. They are in constant relationship. They do not yet have the technology that will divide and separate people. The feeling function in both women and men is allowed to rule.

In our tale, the technology is brought by the devil, a symbol of trickery, and Johnson makes the point that is our own inner devils, our own inner trickery that is the most dangerous to us. When you allow yourself to rationalize away feeling, you cut off your hands. Trickery, especially psychological self-trickery exacts a heavy price.

The miller allowing his daughter's hands to be cut off is no different from the bargain any woman or man makes when they choose work over family or computer games and television over communication. It is self-imposed isolation. We cut ourselves off from feeling.

Says Johnson, "Women are much wiser than men in this regard; few women make so clumsy and devastating a choice as the miller. but our masculine-dominated society has made many such choices and we have a huge legacy of mechanical advantages that are being paid for by a loss of feeling. To bring a bargain home from the marketplace is not wrong ... But to bring a bargain at the expense of some inner value is extremely dangerous. To gain affection from someone without providing one's own part in the relationship is a devil's bargain. If one wants relatedness but will not give relatedness, this is the devil's bargain at it's worst... And who pays the bill for this bargain? Generally it is not the mature feminine - the miller's wife - for she is too hard boiled, too canny to accept such a price, but the young feminine, the tenderest of one's feelings."

Happily, myths always contain the healing solution as well as the wounding, although the maiden's cure is a curious one.

For awhile the maiden is happy and unconcerned about her wound. In fact, she is unaware on a surface level of what her wound is costing her and happily makes do with the ministrations of servants...another mechanical trick.

But in time, the inability to do the relational...the inability to become valid begins to gnaw and so come the symptomatic tears, sign of inner distress struggling to reach the conscious level. The eating disorders of many young girls may possibly be symptoms of this invalid feeling.

In her tears the maiden sees only one solution. She leaves home and family and seeks the solitude of the forest. Confronted with such a dilemma, men want to be heroic and do or fix something as we have noted. But as I quoted Johnson earlier, "Woman's genius is quite the reverse. When a woman is aware of her problem, the healing comes spontaneously and from the depth of her nature. Solitude is the feminine of masculine heroic action... Women's heroic way is based on an entirely different view of reality. A man wants to ensure the triumph of good over evil; a woman wants to diminish the opposition between them. He fights; she reconciles."

And so the Maiden withdraws to the forest to make and find peace. Like the water in the Fisher King the forest is a place of reflection. "The Handless Maiden listens to her innermost wisdom, goes to the woods and is quiet. There is immediate relief in this since it is less lonely to be alone than to be in false relationships."

The journey is hard through the bog, but she makes progress to the innermost and safest of womanly places, the garden. And there she eats, what? A pear. In the mythology of the time the pear was a symbol of the Virgin Mary and the goddess because of its feminine and maternal shape. So in the safest place she consumes womanly wisdom and she survives.

In the next episode she meets the king who is smitten with her. Sometimes we have to go through the worst woundings and the deepest introspections in order to come to a place where we can move on and find good things in life. Wounded by the masculine, the Maiden keeps faith with the feminine curative side and finds a degree of healing and is ready to re-engage with the male in relationship.

But here we have the masculine asserting itself again. The king persuades her to marry and then has his magicians fabricate a new set of silver hands. We're back to where we started! Here's the man trying to fix something with yet another bit of trickery. And the woman once again goes complacently along, gulled into another version of the same situation that caused her earlier distress..

For a while the couple has love, approval and in time, even a son. The mechanical gain has allowed them what they think they want, but at what price? The maiden functions, but there is something cold and lifeless and hollow to her functioning. She cannot cradle her son. She cannot find her way into a true loving relationship with him. Once again the mechanical device cuts her off from giving the nurture that feeds her feeling function.

And so predictably the tears begin to flow again, and when they cannot be controlled, she again retreats into the curative feminine forest, this time with the child she so desperately needs to love.

For a time there is peace and contentment. The boy, the masculine, is young and undeveloped. He poses no threat and she is able to believe that the silver hands are no longer a problem. But the boy grows into a toddler. The masculine develops and is able act independently of her control. The child playing in the water shows her lifelong problem beginning to assert itself once more, but this time, by falling into the water this growing masculinity forces the conflict hidden deep in the waters of the unconscious out into the open. The Handless Maiden must now resolve the tension within her, or else lose what she most wants.

It is said that the maternal instinct in play is one of the most powerful forces on earth. With her child in danger the maiden is finally able to overcome all the tricks and obstacles put in her way by men and by her own masculine side. She breaks through the barrier and rescues her child. She acts, she leaves the paralysis inflicted on her and reaches into the water, emerging a whole being again.

Like the Fisher King, the final breakthrough comes when she is willing to surface the problem, to bring it up from her own inner depths and confront it. It is here that the trickery ends. It is hear that the rationalizations stop. It is here, that in the words of Joseph Campbell, she begins to follow her bliss.

For the man the healing of the feeling function comes from acknowledging not only that he carries wounds, but that the healing is beyond the ability of self and ego. He must surrender to something greater. By contrast the woman's feeling wound is to her ability to value her role as a relational being. Where the man must give up control of self and ego and action, the woman must surrender her sense that the relational is inferior. She must claim self and ego and find her way to do what she must to assert her validity and her power to create and maintain relationships.

Long before we had psychiatrists and psychologists and therapists of every sort, we had stories. The stories used common, everyday symbols and characters we knew and recognized. And using the magical to change and recreate these beings, the stories found ways to communicate deep truths that made sense. That these stories have survived is testament to their power to transform and heal us...so always believe what the storyteller tells you!