Welcome to the 2021 A to Z Blogging Challenge! My theme this year is Tarot Tales. I am making a selection of folktales, legends, and other traditional stories that correspond to tarot cards. Storytelling and tarot go well together. Do other stories come to mind? Let me know in the comments!
The card: The World
Meanings: The World is pretty much what is sounds like. It's an all-encompassing card. It's about completing something, arriving to a destination, achieving an accomplishment. It is a view of a whole, an understanding of how things fit and work together. It also stands for travel, because the more one travels the world, the more they see the bigger picture.
Selection process: This is one of those abstract cards that was hard to find a tale for at first. I wanted the story to have to do with travel, but also achieving something universal and infinite. Then, it clicked.
The story: The prince who sought immortality
Origin: Hungary
So, he keeps going. Eventually he finds the floating palace of the Queen of Immortality. He happily moves in and marries her, and forgets all about the outside world. Eventually, however, he becomes homesick and wants to visit his family (against his wife's warning). He sets out on the journey, only to find out that thousands of years have passed unnoticed. All the kingdoms he'd visited are deserted. He uses magic water to bring them back to life. Eventually, he arrives to the ruins of his former home - and there, waiting for him, is Death.
Death begins to chase the prince, who flees back towards the floating castle. The people he'd helped try to slow Death down, but they don't succeed. Just when the prince reaches the castle, Death grabs him by the ankle, and the queen grabs him by the hand. A tug-o-war ensues. Eventually they agree to throw the prince up in the air, and see whose side he lands on. Luckily, he lands inside the castle. He lives with his wife in blissful immortality ever after.
Sources & notes: You can read the story here.
What are your thoughts on immortality? Would you have stopped in any of those kingdoms?
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Immortality is a nice concept in stories, but it wouldn't work in real life! I mean, eventually the earth would be full, and there could be no more babies. Unless our minds were cleared of knowledge of children and the desire to have them, that would be cruel! I think rather literally!
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't want to live in any of those kingdoms. How terrible to be right near the last needle, or last piece of tree, knowing everyone will die. No thanks.
The way this story ends makes it memorable. The tossing of the prince reminds me of Charlie Chaplin somehow:)
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking the prince was lucky that the Queen and Death didn't compromise and chop him in half.
ReplyDeleteI think immortality has its downfalls. In all the stories I read, immortality leads to the drastic reduction in fertility rates. And the society stagnates. With fewer new people, change becomes rare and unwelcome. Immortality is not as much a blessing as it is a trap.
ReplyDeleteImmortality would only work if nobody else, or hardly anyone else, was immortal. Poul Anderson’s The Boat Of A Million Years has a small group of immortals, one of whom just lies down and dies, by choice. Of the others, an immortal couple find that they can’t pass it on to their children. They eventually share immortality with the rest of the human race, but it doesn’t work out.
ReplyDeleteMe, I keep imagining what it would be like to be still around at the end of the universe - no, thanks!
I've never actually worn out a single embroidery needle, so I reckon I'll never die.
ReplyDeleteBlack and White: U for Ultima Thule
Foolish prince. All the stories say you shouldn't go outside of the realm you've entered as time flows differently there than where you came from.
ReplyDeleteRonel visiting for the A-Z Challenge with an A-Z of Faerie: Unnatural Magic
I love the ending. I'm not sure immortality is such a great thing, though!
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely, romantic story! I love it.
ReplyDeleteAnne from annehiga.com