Fanciful Fairies or Serious Spirits?

During the nineteenth century, fairies abounded not only in fairytales, but in literature, art and ballet.  Indeed, it is in ballet that these fairytales are still with us today, in those famous ballets such as Giselle and Sleeping Beauty.  Of course, they don’t always have the word fairy attached to them – they are variously named as sylphs, nymphs, shades and even swan-maidens.  But in whatever guise they appear, they are ethereal.  They no longer live in the material world but frequent the realm of the spirits of the dead.  Good spirits dwell alongside evil spirits here, and they conflict with each other.  And, as in all fairytales, the desired outcome is, of course, a happy ending, when the good spirits have triumphed over the evil spirits. 

But is there more to it than that?

Well yes.  Upon closer examination, a deeper level emerges.  Each balletic heroine, like Giselle, the Princess Aurora, the Swan-Princess Odette and the bayadère Nikia, corresponds to the soul of everyman, which, having quit the outward world of matter, retreats into an inner spiritual world (sometimes called the Dark night of the Soul).  There the soul must purify itself before it can resurrect itself into an illuminated heaven.  That happy ending in heaven is really the mystical destination of the soul’s spiritual journey  - a journey which it must undertake of its own accord, alone and unaided, willing each step of the way, like a pilgrim driven to seek salvation.

Margaret  Fleming

Margaret, a former ballerina, will be giving a talk entitled CHARACTERS OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS FROM 19^TH  CENTURY BALLET at the Gnostic Centre of the Theosophical Society, 50 Gloucester Place, London W1U 8EA at 7 pm on Wednesday 14 December 2011.  Admission: £5, £4 concessions, £3 TS members.