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Sleeping Beauty

There's that Gospel episode about Jairus' young daughter whom Jesus raises from a deep sleep which brings to mind all those Sleeping Beauty stories that have become a part of our culture, for instance one we rarely hear about in the Book of Tobit. This one is not so much about a girl gone comatose but about one - named Sarah - who was victimized by a jealous demon named Asmodeus. This demon had already strangled seven successive husbands who dared approach her on their wedding night, so that what began as a tragic predicament was fast becoming a joke. After a seventh night of frustration, Sarah's maids could hardly repress their mirth over her plight.

But every such story has a prince. In Sarah's case it was her distant cousin Tobias assisted by the angel Raphael. Raphael encouraged Tobias to wed Sarah and advised him on how to deal with the demon. So upon their wedding night (even while Tobias's diffident father-in-law was digging an eighth grave in the backyard) Tobias placed the heart and liver of a fish on some burning embers. Hardly an aphrodisiac, the smell nevertheless drove Asmodeus all the way to Egypt, never to return. Sarah was at last free to experience fulfillment.

Now this story, like all stories, has its deeper meaning. The heart and the liver were considered to be the seat of intellect and feeling in ancient times. Possession by Asmodeus could symbolize Sarah's repression of her own intellect and emotions, making her toxic to be with. But Raphael's "heart and liver magic" does the trick: it revives her timid intellect and emotions to release her creative capacity.

As such, Sarah could be a symbol for all women down through the ages, who, because of male dominion, grew up abused and disenfranchised - all the while longing for release, longing to BE in the fullest sense of the word. Perhaps it's that hope that underlies all such Sleeping Beauty stories: Snow White; Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz who fell asleep in that field of poppies; Briar Rose who fell into a deep sleep of 100 years, hedged in by an impenetrable tangle of thorns. And then, again, there's this New Testament account about Jairus' nubile daughter, seemingly dead to the world, surrounded by professional mourners who impeded all access to her until Jesus came along. Of course these stories may also symbolize the repression of the feminine in men as well - insofar as the feminine has long been a metaphor for heart, sensitivity, intuitive intelligence, things men are often too shy to express.

And the stories always have a happy ending. They predict that God by way of some emissary or influence will (despite all frantic patriarchal resistance) eventually release the oppressed and repressed feminine in our world to make its unique contribution toward a better, more candid, playful yet profoundly serious society and Church. The late Dorothy Parker already provided evidence of this in that polite yet caustic poem she once addressed to the condescending men folk in her life:

In youth, it was a way I had / To do my best to please, / And change, with every passing lad, / To suit his theories. // But now I know the things I know, / And do the things I do; / And if you do not like me so, / To hell, my love, with you!

Reprint from 1997.

-- Geoff Wood