Remembering Briar Rose

Remembering Briar Rose

April 23, 2007

As I walk down the street of the small town with Thieu, I find myself gripped by an awareness of just how tragic the old myths that we try to cling to really are. Always, there is something incomplete and unfulfilled. The old stories always remember some sort of sorrow. But it is only as we approach the old stories with the light of science, that we begin to discover that it is not the spindle which was to blame.

The spindle, of course, was the symbol of a heresy that entered the Lands of the Lily with the return of the paladins of the First Crusade. The heretics rejected the misogyny and brutality which they found in the Old Testament and as a result, insisted that Moses could not have been a Prophet of God. They further rejected the Laws of Power & Control which had created the feudal system, and encouraged their adherents to become free tradesmen. As a result, like the people who now form the economic backbone of Sam Rainsy’s party, they became textile workers.

Curious forms of belief had always flourished among the peasantry, but this creed of the Cathars represented a moral challenge which the Masters of Power could only control by announcing that the honeymoon phase of Christian scholasticism was now over. The heretics would all be burned on stakes, and the angels would blush at the portent. The dawn of the light of reason would be turned into blood by the smoke, and the resulting enchantment would make the European renaissance sleep for at least 100 years.

But did Prince Charming really have the power to break the horrid spell? He believed that when he kissed the princess in the coffin and raised her up out of her trance, everything in the kingdom would also be revived and redeemed.

Briar Rose awakened, but the spell of the Wicked Fairy had not been entirely broken. Ever after, the people of the kingdom blamed their hundred-year stupor on the spindle. As a result, grown-ups became afraid to touch spindles, and the textile industry became afflicted with the curse of child labor.

In addition, the rumor began to be spread that anyone who worked to restore the dignity of the textile industry must be the servant of Satan. As a result, those who worshiped in the Temple of Labor, and did not contribute their alms to the Cathedral, were subjected to horrible tortures. In addition, all of the Jews and the Muslims were given the choice between being bathed in the Blood of the Lamb, or fleeing from the kingdom before the clock could strike midnight.

Briar Rose and Prince Charming believed that they had been redeemed, but all around them, the Devil was taking cotrol of the kingdom. Romantic Love may have survived the inquisition, but it did so at the expense of losing touch with reality. That is why Miss Rose and Mr. Charming could believe that their love had conquered all, and ignore the fact that the cattle cars on the way to the slaughterhouse were filled with real humans.

The people believed, and elected to offer their allegiance to the God of the Lie, whose religion is compulsion, and whose rites demand human sacrifice. Because Ahura Mazda refuses to rule by compulsion, he had to abide by the outcome of the plebecite. And so that is why, on the same morning that Briar Rose was awakened by Prince Charming’s kiss and rose up out of the coffin, God had to lie down like a dead man to take the poor girl’s place.

We walked along, till the road began to speak with Mexican accents that remembered Medieval Spain. As we proceeded we came on a peddlar, whose donkey was pulling a cart.

His cart was all loaded with two grandfather clocks, as well as musical instruments and automotive parts. There, alloyed from various mixtures of copper and brass, were several shining hearts, which became music boxes when they were wound up.⁷ⁱ

I wound up the key, to listen to the melody. And that was when I realized that the heart that was being sold by the pedlar with the donkey cart, was mine.

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