The Persian Cinderella Mah Pishooni: The Sieve of Initiation

by Faranak Mirjalili

One of the great losses that many cultures face through Western civilisation is the experience and the wisdom of initiation. Thousands of years of patriarchy has wiped out all the depth initiatory rites that stemmed directly out of the Goddess traditions and have left us with shadowy ghost-like replicas like the famous Dutch ‘ontgroening’ [hazing]: a torturous and often dangerous initiatory experience for juniors wanting to enter University student clubs. 

There are no more temples, authentic priestesses and Magi to initiate us through ceremony and ritual, but we can be plunged into an initiatory process in our confrontation with the unconscious, as pioneered by Carl Jung. These ancient initiatory rites are still alive and it is in the depths of the inner world that we can be led into an authentic initiatory experience. What does it mean to be initiated? Who can initiate us and what is the role of life’s thresholds and difficulties in finding the initiatory thrusts of life? 

Real initiation matures the ego, keeps us grounded, it guards us against inflation and teaches us the small and hidden lessons that are told in the dark places of wisdom. Being initiated cannot be taught or learned through methods and books, it can only be learnt in the empty spaces between words. It is given to us it is a gift of life, of the archetypal world or, in a real esoteric lineage, as a gift and test from a spiritual master.

THE STORY 

In a Persian Cinderella tale called ‘Mah Pishooni’ [The Girl with the Moon Forehead]  we find a story that teaches us about initiation and about the wisdom of walking into the unconscious with an attitude of humility and service and, in some well timed moments; the right kind of trickery.  

Little Mah loses her mother like in all Cinderella tales but in this story the mother dies as part of the grand evil plan by the future stepmother, Mah’s schoolteacher Mollahbaji (a religious title for Islamic educated female authorities). Mollahbaji, finding out about the good financial situation of the father, decides to manipulate Mah to push her own mother in a jar of vinegar and so makes an empty place that can then be filled with a stepmother. Little Mah is soon, after Mollahbaji’s gives birth to her half-sister, treated horrendously and is being given a series a very difficult tasks by Mollahbaji. Little Mah accepts them much like Psyche does in the story of Psyche and Eros, in which Aphrodite is  the initiatory figure. The heroine in the story quietly suffers them, often weeping in despair upon which unexpected forces in the form of animals come in to help her. The most important animal is a yellow cow that after some time, appears in the jar of vinegar where her personal mother once was shoved into. 

Cow Mother by Mohadeseh Pilehvarian

During one of her initiatory tasks she is given a sack of cotton to thread and spin while she takes the yellow cow to pasture. The wind blows her cotton balls into the well upon which she is guided by the benevolent cow mother to go into the well and find her cotton in the house of an old hag in the hidden forest at the bottom of the well. She is told by the yellow cow to greet the old woman and to do what she says or, in some versions to do the opposite of what she says. The wisdom of the cow mother gives little Mah not only the courage to go on into this terrifying darkness of the underworld but also have the right attitude towards the figures she encounters there. 

When she arrives at the old hag’s house she greets her politely. In some versions the old hag is somewhat fierce and crazy and asked her very unusual tasks like throwing a rock at her head. Her cow mother has warned her that she must do the opposite so she starts combing the old woman's hair upon which cockroaches come out from it, but she perseveres and gives the old lady the care and disentangling she needs. The tasks continue and little Mah finds herself cleaning a very dirty house and courtyard, and even praising the old woman for being much cleaner and more beautiful than her stepmother. The old woman then directs her into the room next door to find her cotton. When she enters the room, she sees it is filled with wonderful jewels and golden coins, but she only takes her cotton balls and goes back. The old hag sends her off into the first, second and third garden that leads onto a magnificent river. She is told to bathe in the river and wash her face with it. After she does that, she is astonished by the beauty of her own face in the reflection of the water, where she sees that she now has a glowing crescent moon on her forehead and a star on her chin. 

She is sure to hide it well when she travels back home and carries on with her chores. The stepmother eventually finds out and demands that Mah takes her half-sister to ‘get one of those too’. 

But the half sister fails miserably as she does not have the guidance from the yellow cow nor does she have the humility, patience and devotional attitude that Mah has. She enters the house of the hag with demands, impatience and rudeness. She insults the dirty old woman and, being focused on her goal only,  doesn’t want to clean the hair of the hag and her house as thoroughly as little Mah and insults the old woman for being disgusting. When she is directed into the room next to find her cotton, she is mesmerised by all the sparkles and grabs the jewels and coins, almost forgetting about the cotton. When she then bathes in the same river, she finds in her reflection the most horrendous sight; a donkey’s penis is growing out of her forehead and a scorpio’s tail out of her chin. 

MIRROR, MIRROR IN THE RIVER

The unconscious shows us the face we show it. — Carl Jung

In the story we find the opposite of Mah Pishooni’s humility and simplicity  in her half-sister that goes into initiation for all the wrong reasons. Firstly she demands the initiation, not even from her own will but from her mother's. She is completely in the grip and in compliance with the archetypal Death Mother, who is a shadowy aspect of the dark feminine, the devouring witch archetype that is sucking the life energy out of her children through her toxicity, manipulation and unconscious power-drive. Secondly the stepsister goes into initiation not because she is given it through life's difficulties and her accepted suffering, but out of sheer greed, lust and desire for the glorious beauty that her sister has been given through her noble efforts. We can already sense in the story that trouble is about to happen when one sets foot in the dark well of the inner worlds from the ego’s desires and wants. 

Even if her desires are not rooted in an obvious greed and power hunger, but in a lack of true mother love to which she has fallen victim to, we see the relentless and severity of testing that the archetypal mother puts us through as to test and torture the ego into maturity that contains a submission and service that stretches beyond the individualised and egoistic patriarchal patterning we can carry with us. We cannot enter the realm of the dark feminine without both a spiritual and ego maturity. This comes with our efforts to separate and heal from our parental complexes and doing the most difficult thing of rejecting the old patterns that gripped our personal mother. Mah Pishooni is first rooted in her relationship to the archetypal mother, imaged as the benevolent cow mother, who is the one that helps guide her in her encounters with the unconscious in the ways that are both unknown and invisible to her half-sister. 

What is interesting in this story is that the benevolent cow mother did not come from Mah Pishooni’s innocence or goodness only,  it came from her own magnetic pull towards the dark feminine, first in the shadow form of Mollahbaji, who is the one that prompts her to put her own mother to death by shoving her into a jar of vinegar. Mah Pishooni is therefor the one that helps to bring the dark feminine into her own house and life. I like this version of Cinderella as she is not just the innocent little girl who has fallen victim to a dark mother, but has a role in it. It illustrates how psyche is always seeking wholeness and how we are prompted in life to engage and even devote ourselves to shadowy figures as they could be holding the key to the start of our individuation journey. Mah Pishooni cannot find her own authentic, direct connection to the Mother archetype if she first does not symbolically reject her personal mother. It is only when she is suffering at the hands of her stepmother that her unconscious symbioses with the personal mother is being transmuted (inside the jar of vinegar) into a relationship to the archetypal Mother,  symbolised by the yellow cow. Vinegar is one of the major catalysts and symbols in this story. Besides having its importance to the Persian cuisine and culture, it is an alchemical symbol of death and rebirth into new life through an acidic immersion into the vessel of alchemy. It is in vinegar only that we can separate the impurity of the lesser metals in gold into a pure gold, which is imaged in the yellow cow of wisdom. 

From a cultural perspective, this story offers a compensation to the overly loyal parental relationship that is dominant in Persian culture. Children, no matter how old, are very loyal towards their parents and this is amplified even more in the relationships between mothers and daughters. It is remarkable that such a counter-intuitive motif, of killing one’s own mother, has found itself in the Persian folktales; it really demonstrates the compensatory function of fairytales for the collective psyche of a culture. 

PATIENCE, DEVOTION & SERVICE IN INITIATION 

There are different initiatory levels to be found in this story. The first one is the catalyst of the individuation journey by the rejection/killing of the personal mother. Though this is still a very unconscious act, it nevertheless counts the initiatory spark set in motion. We can see this reflected in the difference between Mah and her half-sister, who is completely loyal and thus in the grip of her mother and therefor fails the tests miserably.

The old hag being combed thoroughly by Mah Pishooni. Drawing by Laura Krusemark

The second layer of initiation, which is still a preparation for the real initiation by the Underworld, is the acceptance of the suffering that comes out of the act of going against the collective thought (i.e. loyalty towards parents, society etc). One could say that little Mah is being punished by life for rejecting and killing her own mother, but when we look at the whole story we see that she is actually being taught the right attitude to enter the Underworld. Through accepting and suffering her fate, she is being readied into a relationship to the Otherworld. 

When she finally arrives at the final and most important initiatory moment in her encounter with the hag, the old woman in the well, she showcases all the virtues of spiritual maturity that are needed in such an encounter: humility, patience, service and the right kind of trickery. 

It is this patience that is required of us when we go down into the underworld. We will find in those depths figures that are like the old hag, cast out into the unconscious who might even turn out to be a little mad. It is our attitude towards these figures that is decisive of whether or not we are initiated into the next step of our journey. The old hag tests the girl by giving her unusual tasks and watching her actions and reactions. When she finally completes all of the tasks which results in having cleansed not only the disgusting hair but also the entire house, the old woman sends the girl into the room next door to find her cotton. Then the next initiatory test takes place as the room is filled with jewels, gold coins and all kinds of wonderful distracting sparkles a girl might like. What will the girl do? Will she be distracted or will she grab only that for which she came and return to the ordinariness of her [very difficult] life?

THE CORRUPTION IN NEW AGE SPIRITUALITY

Let us spend some time in this part of the story to really marinate in it, and reflect these images into our current culture and the attitude in spirituality that has started to ruin the very fabric of mystical and spiritual life in the West.

We are too often distracted by the sparkles we find in the inner worlds and any supernatural or spiritual experiences and dreams we are given. The ego wants to take hold of them, even monitoring these experiences by making it into a commodity. Sometimes seekers are distracted by the sparkles as it makes them forget or transcend their problems and forget the ordinary life imaged here by the cotton balls. It is exactly this problem, the danger of inflation and ego-hijacking, that this story warns us against, as does this famous Zen Koan. 

“Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.” 

In the story little Mah is not distracted and only takes what she came for;  those little cotton balls that a symbol of her simplicity and her ordinary human life. The old woman is pleased and as she has passed this final test she is given the guidance to go and find the magic river and is told the she can always call upon her help in case she needs it. It is only in this final test that she proves to be worthy of a constant and direct relationship to her divine feminine nature. Truth is, it is far too dangerous to enter the sacred river if we are not ready! 

The reflection of this river gives Mah her beautiful and authentic feminine nature. She has polished the mirror of her heart through her sufferings and has shown real service and a mature attitude towards the depths of the unknown; for this she is rewarded with a beautiful crescent moon (a symbol of the Persian moon Goddess Anahita) shining on her forehead and in some versions a star on her chin. She rejected being distracted by the sparkles of ego-inflating promises and was therefore given the real spark that belongs to the depths of her Soul.

Mah Pishooni’s half sister receiving a scorpio tail and a donkey’s penis as a reflection of her own shadow. Drawing by Laura Krusemark

On the contrary, the half-sister not only rejects the tasks that she is given by the old lady but complains and even offends her. We might fall into the pitfall to think that we do not have such an obviously grotesque attitude. But fairytales are an amplification of patterns present in the psyche of humanity and this motif specifically speaks to one of the biggest problems in the encounter with the unconscious.  The attitude the sister has towards the unconscious is one of control, greed and superiority; all the traits of an unhealthy and weak ego. She also does not show the devotion and patience to the figures of the unconscious that are necessary for an authentic relationship to the depth of her own feminine nature. I see this in my practice when people start off enthusiastically or are given a boost of energy and awe by an archetypal dream in the beginning of their analytical process. But they then fail to carry through the difficult part of ‘combing the old hags hair’ and ‘cleaning her house thoroughly’. They lack the dedication and humility to sit down with their images and the contents of the unconscious everyday and work with them. These are traits of Mah Pishooni’s shadow sister; spiritual laziness and capitalist entitlement, now turned toward the unconscious and the Feminine which is, in my experience, far worse than material greed.

Unfortunately in New Age spirituality this narrative has become a dominant factor to the horrifying extend that it has become normalised, making it very difficult to discern for the seeker. Perhaps this started with the famous bestseller self-help book The Secret, where the reader is being taught the ancient ways of the imagination, for the benefit of the ego and its multitude of desires. This horrifying book set the tone for an era of plundering spirituality where we are now not only using the Earth’s recourses for our own wealth and wellbeing but also the invisible Otherworld. 

Marie-Louise von Franz calls this the famous PPFF problem: Power, Prestige, Fame and Fortune. These are the dominating narratives of our culture and we are, whether we like it or not, ruled by these principles. With the emergence and dominance of technology, social media and instant ‘insta-fame' we are, as a culture, even more in the invisible grips of this problem. The problem of PPFF has now also gripped spirituality and polluted it with its toxic tentacles.

Therefor when we enter the unconscious, the dangers of bringing these attitudes into our inner work and encounter with the spirit of the depths is evident and something we need to be on the watch for constantly. The story gives us a visceral image of what the consequences are of such an attitude toward the unconscious: the half-sister is forever doomed with a phallic forehead as a symbol for her patriarchal attitude and a poisonous tail on her chin, representing the poison in her speech and tongue. Every doctor in town tells the horrified Mollahbaji that her daughter cannot be healed as the root of the penis [in some versions the serpent] and scorpio tail are deep in the girls heart. All that she can do is cut them every other day and sprinkle some salt over it. 

THE FINAL SACRIFICE

The story continues with Mah Pishooni going into even more initiatory cycles of losing her yellow cow mother and being left with her bones, getting to the famous ball after completing yet another set of impossible tasks [separating a sack of various seeds and filling the fountain in the courtyard with her tears]. When she pleas for help and turns to the old lady in the well, now her fairy god mother, she is helped miraculously by the hens and chickens in the courtyard and given her beautiful red embroidered dress and golden sandals to wear at the feast where she finally meets, loses and re-unites with the Prince. 

But the story still does not end here as Mah Pishooni stands before her final task of resurrecting her dead cow mother through her sorrow to then perform the excruciating sacrificial act of having to skin her alive, as instructed by her cow-mother, who finally reveals her new human form. It is this final refined act of skinning with a cold, sharp blade, a symbol of her new found masculinity that she can bring the new feminine into consciousness. The reborn mother is, from a Jungian perspective, not simply the return of the old personal mother but the personified mother that comes out of the archetypal mother cow. In some ways this is a refined continuation of her initial, still unconscious, act of throwing her mother into the vessel (and womb) of transformation who was reborn as the archetypal mother and now is again being brought into a new level of consciousness by the act of skinning (which is another death-rebirth cycle).  The double motif of the death-rebirth of the Mother archetype makes this version of Mah Pishooni one of the most complete Persian fairytales I’ve encountered.

There is even a version of this tale where Mah Pishooni has to destroy the projection (romantic ideals) she holds on her newly wed Prince by shitting in his bed and making him believe it was him. The old hag, whose hair she combed earlier, here is the Wisdom guide giving her this advice that helps her in an impossible situation where she risks being cast out of the castle through a final trap the evil stepmother had created. The absurdity of these motifs really shows the wisdom of psyche from her most intimate depths, teaching the initiate, who has the ears to hear, not only how to find her true feminine essence and beauty, but also how to actually live it in this world. That practical and immediate intelligence is what makes Wisdom not only a theory or an ethereal magical being, but a reality and a companion that comes alive in the ordinariness of our everyday lives. 

Storyline artwork by Laura Krusemark, made during our Fairytale Kitchen storytelling event “Cinderella Around the World”