Podcast Benomtad

Von Schonwerth’s “The Scorned Princess”

Von Schonwerth’s “The Scorned Princess” 
Three soldiers are finished with their tour of duty, and they are camping in the forest on their way home.  Having built a bonfire to protect themselves, they each guard against the night successively, and each is approached by an old woman seeking warmth by the fire.  Each in his turn refuses, but relents when offered a magical gift (a hat that whisks one to a wished destination, a horn that calls forth armies of the exiled, and a purse of gold that never empties).  The next day they continue on and only reveal their experiences to each other after Fortunatus pays for their meal with his magic purse.  He continues to pay their way until they go their separate ways – the other two to marry and settle, Fortunatus to live a worldly life.  
Now Fortunatus and his retinue come to a kingdom and he is invited to the castle since the king thinks he must be a wealthy prince.  The princess, interested in him, grows enamored when he refuses to marry her.  She plies him with food and wine and he reveals her secret, and she replaces his purse with a forgery and kicks him out.  Back on the road, his funds dwindle, his servants leave him and he is reduced to the station of a beggar. So he goes to his old mate, who recuperates him, giving him the Hermes hat, which lay around unused, to boot.  
The Fortunate hero returns to the princess and the same process repeats.  He goes to his other mate, whom he’d also taken care of, and he is taken care of in turn.  This time he gets the unused martial cornucopia, and he returns to the city a conqueror at the head of an army.  The king begs parley, and the worldly soldier is again fooled with wine and woman.  He is to be executed but is saved from death by the princess, who still hopes his mind will change.  
Destitute and starving on the road again, he spots a luscious apple tree, but taking a bite of a fruit, a horn sprouts from his forehead.  Moving on, he decides to eat from another he sees, and the horn disappears.  Now he gathers apples in a cart, and in the city within eyeshot of the prince’s chambers, he sells enough to buy new clothes and disguise himself.  The princess and her maid cannot resist the best apples he puts within their view and cries are heard throughout the castle when horns sprout on their foreheads.  A general call for help is put out but no one shows up.  
Fortunatus, now disguised as a healing priest, proves his abilities by curing the maid first.  Now with the princess, he tells her to confess her sins, else the cure won’t work.  She admits to the seduction and thefts, and shows him the items, but the apple he gives her sprouts a second horn.  He takes the hat, whisks off to the city’s outskirts, calls up his army, and burns the city to the ground.  The king, princess, and the whole court perish in the flames, and he ruled the land as king for a long time.  
This story might be troublesome when viewed from a certain moral perspective – Fortunatus, after all, can be seen as a cruel and vengeful conqueror.  But I look at it as a story about basic justice.  First, the first two soldiers choose a life of moderation – they don’t even use their magical items – and they get and give moderately, and are presumably happy.  Now Fortunatus chooses a worldly life, living large, and so he enters the world of drama, of striving and strife, which is a kind of Darwinian and political competition, and he suffers humiliation, starvation, and near death.  The naive king and princess, protected by the castle walls and bolstered by their position, do not understand this world, and they suffer in confusion because of their ignorance and egoism. The royals have stumbled into the Machiavellian world, but they do not know it. And when they, at different times, make naive decisions – like the first invitation, or letting Fortunatus escape execution – in the classic formulation, this hubris leads to their nemesis, their downfall.
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About our guest:
Ian Reclusado is currently off exploring the poetic wilds of psychology, neuroscience, and spirituality. 
He also offers guidance services for those interested in delving into their own inner wilderness.
You can find his weekly dispatches at www.thekindknife.com or follow him on Instagram: @ian_reclusado
 
I plan to conduct more interviews with various guests, so please check back later for those.

Grimm’s “Cinderella:” Feminine Work and Shaping the Masculine (Clip)

Grimm’s “Cinderella:” Feminine Work and Shaping the Masculine (Clip)
Why does Cinderella run from the prince at the end of the dance?  Is she trying to get the prince to give chase to open his eyes?  Mostly, this story does not say much about the prince.  The third time, he finally has the stairs tarred, which gives him the slipper so he can find her.  The stepsisters compete by denigrating and hiding Cinderella.  Cinderella’s work in the household and in enchanting the prince and animating him to give chase are the beginnings of her own household and happiness.  The male characters, by contrast, are shaped by the females.
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For the full episode, go to:
https://benomtad.podbean.com/e/the-brothers-grimm-s-cinderella/
For more in this podcast, please go to:
Podbean:
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Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-benomtad/id1748320863
YouTube:
https://m.youtube.com/@scissorsandpaper/videos
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I plan to conduct more interviews with various guests, so please check back later for those.

“The Water of Life” by The Brothers Grimm

A king is very sick and this distresses his three sons.  In a palace garden an old man tells them the water of life can save him, but it is very dangerous to obtain.  The first decides to get it, thinking it will ensure the inheritance of the kingdom.  The king resists, but then relents, but on the road a dwarf asks the firstborn where he is going, and he gets trapped in a ravine when he insults the dwarf…
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For more in this podcast, please go to:
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Apple Podcasts:
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I plan to conduct more interviews with various guests, so please check back later for those.

The Poor Brother Gives All in The Grimm Brothers’ “The Turnip” (Clip)

At the story’s beginning, the poor brother throws off his red coat of soldiering and becomes a farmer, a major life transformation that makes him his brother’s opposite. Ian and I contrast these brothers, including in comparison to The Bible’s Cain and Abel.  A fruit of his labor is an enormous turnip.  He does not know what to do with it, so he gives it to the king as a mark of respect. So he is poor, but he gives his most extraordinary thing, and not out of calculation, but a spirit of benevolent ignorance.
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For the full episode, go to:
https://benomtad.podbean.com/e/grimms-the-turnip-getting-not-what-you-seek-but-what-you-need/
 
For more in this podcast, please go to:
Podbean:
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Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-benomtad/id1748320863
YouTube:
https://m.youtube.com/@scissorsandpaper/videos
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The Brothers Grimm’s “Cinderella”

A daughter promises her dying mother she’ll remain good and pious, and does so.  Her father remarries and his stepdaughters consign Cinderella to housework.  She asks her father for a humble gift – a hazel tree branch that touches him on the way, and she plants it and everything transforms for her.  
Join us for this discussion on quiet, hidden virtue and loud wrangling, about work and faith vs. denigration of your competition.  
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For more in this podcast, please go to:
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I plan to conduct more interviews with various guests, so please check back later for those.

The Turnip as the Prince’s Soul in Von Schonwerth's "The Turnip Princess" Pt. 2 (Clip)

The turnip, grown underground, could symbolize the soul, and the prince, whose task is to combine the nail from the cave wall, would recover his self.  “He has a place for the thing that he is longing for,” and this is shown by the impression of the princess in the transformed turnip bowl.  This is the clue that allows him to find the cave again. 
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For the full episode, go to:
https://benomtad.podbean.com/e/von-schonwerths-the-turnip-princess-pt-2/
For more in this podcast, please go to:
Podbean:
https://benomtad.podbean.com
Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-benomtad/id1748320863
YouTube:
https://m.youtube.com/@scissorsandpaper/videos
Spotify:
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X:
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Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/benomtad
 
About our guest:
Ian Reclusado is currently off exploring the poetic wilds of psychology, neuroscience, and spirituality. 
He also offers guidance services for those interested in delving into their own inner wilderness.
You can find his weekly dispatches at www.thekindknife.com or follow him on Instagram: @ian_reclusado
 
I plan to conduct more interviews with various guests, so please check back later for those.

The Brothers Grimm’s “The Riddle”

The Brothers Grimm’s “The Riddle” 
 
A king’s son goes off into the world with only his trusted servant and encounters three deadly places to sleep, wandering in the forest and the world for a long time.  He encounters beautiful and good maidens but tries to marry the third: a bewitching lover of riddles who has already dispatched nine suitors.  His harrowing experiences provide him a riddle she cannot guess, and which he uses to pass on poison that gets past her defenses.  He plays along, however, and her ruse is exposed to twelve judges, to whom he presents proof in the cloth of maidenhood and her distinctive identity.  It is decreed that that proof be embroidered as a sign of their matrimony.
 
We hope you enjoy our discussion of this story of adventure, slaying dragons and liberating people from them, and finding love.  This story is about demons that come when you are vulnerable and using what they give you to defeat them.  In doing that with cleverness and intrepidity, in blindly moving forward with your trusted servant, you gain wisdom to emancipate good people, and even a whole kingdom, and magically transform ignorant, immature malice into prolific, mature good.  In other words, this story is about faith.
 
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For more in this podcast, please go to:
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YouTube:
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Grimm's "The Turnip:” Getting Not What You Seek, but What You Need

Grimm's "The Turnip:” Getting Not What You Seek, but What You Need 
There are two brothers – one rich, the other poor.  The poor one wants to better himself so he casts off his red coat and becomes a gardener, digging a well and sewing turnips.  One turnip grew larger and larger.  He reasons that he can sell it only at the same price as the others, and the little ones are better for eating.  He decides to take it to the king as a sign of respect, and loads it onto his cart, filling that up, pulled by two oxen.
The king, who has seen many strange things, is astonished, and asks where the gardener got this monster; is it luck? If so, you must be a child of fortune, he says.  But the gardener responds he is only a poor soldier and gardener, and it is his brother who is the one that the king and all the world knows.
The king takes pity on him and gives him enough gold, land, and flocks to be richer than his brother.  But when his brother heard this, he was envious.  He devises a plan to gift a large treasure to the king to receive even more than his brother has, but when the king receives this gift graciously, he professes that he knows not what is more valuable than the wondrous turnip.  Forced to drag this home in his cart, the brother, full of rage and spite, resolves to kill his brother and hired murderers to ambuscade him.
 
He tells his brother that he’s found a great treasure, and that they should go dig it up.  As they traveled, they were ambushed and the murderers tied the gardener brother up.  But they were frightened by an oncoming horse and pushed the prisoner neck and shoulders into a sack and swung it up by a tree, dangling, and ran away.  But he worked and worked and made a hole to push out his head.  
The student on his nag came up; a merry fellow, he was singing.  The brother addressed him, “Good morning, friend!” The student could not see anyone and cried out, “Who calls me?” and the man in the tree told him to look up. “Behold, I sit in the sack of wisdom.  In a short time I have learned great and wondrous things.  School-learning is nothing by comparison.  Soon I’ll know all.  With but one time here, one would feel and own the power of knowledge.”
The student asks to go up, but the man acts reluctant, but seems to acquiesce, saying that there is a bit of space next to him.  Tells him to tarry a bit because he still has some learning to do.  So the student sits but is soon overcome with impatience and begs to ascend, and the other tells him to let the sack descend, and enter!
The student began to go in feet first, and the other corrected him, pushing him in head first.  He pulls the student up and asks how he is.  Says he’ll rest in peace and soon be wiser than he was.  Then he trotted off on the student’s nag until someone let him down.
We discuss this story, seeing it as about the character transformation of the poorer brother, sacrifice, being lost and finding one’s way, and gaining wisdom.  For wisdom, the poorer brother, even after his reward from the king, still has to learn savvy from his brother, and he then transmits wisdom to the naive student.  Wisdom here seems to be about personal transformation, and seems to be a theme as touched on by the various instances of characters who get not what they sought, but what they needed.
Ian Reclusado is currently off exploring the poetic wilds of psychology, neuroscience, and spirituality. 
He also offers guidance services for those interested in delving into their own inner wilderness.
You can find his weekly dispatches at www.thekindknife.com or follow him on Instagram: @ian_reclusado
 
Thank you for the likes! A comment and a subscribe helps out!
 
For more in this podcast, please go to:
Podbean:
https://benomtad.podbean.com
Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-benomtad/id1748320863
YouTube:
https://m.youtube.com/@scissorsandpaper/videos
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/4kJPGlaJjGVyLa9AKhci6t?si=8XXrX9FUT3CU71reCfA5kQ
X:
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Facebook:
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I plan to conduct more interviews with various guests, so please check back later for those.

Love, Governance and Civilization in Von Schonwerth’s “The Sun’s Shadow” (Clip)

When the Titans’ Committee is trying to figure out what to do with Death, a white weasel comes and licks their eyes.  Was it sent by Death?  What does it mean?  And what of the balancing of the relationship between Death and the Sun?  Is it only a commentary on male-female love relations, or does it have a larger import on government and civilization?  Either way, I think this story is poetic commentary on the opposites we see every day.
In a violent and chaotic world, an arrogant Death is humbled and pitied but ever-present.
What stands out to you?
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For the full episode, go to:
https://benomtad.podbean.com/e/the-suns-shadow-by-von-schonwerth-from-the-turnip-princess/
 
For more in this podcast, please go to:
Podbean:
https://benomtad.podbean.com
Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-benomtad/id1748320863
YouTube:
https://m.youtube.com/@scissorsandpaper/videos
Spotify:
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I plan to conduct more interviews with various guests, so please check back later for those.

Von Schonwerth's "The Turnip Princess," Pt. 2

We discuss the turnip as Jungian symbol of the soul and continue our analysis of this fascinating, fecund folktale.
 
For the first “Turnip” episode, go to:
https://benomtad.podbean.com/e/the-turnip-princess-by-fxv-schonwerth-with-ian-reclusado/
For more in this podcast, please go to:
Podbean:
https://benomtad.podbean.com
Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-benomtad/id1748320863
YouTube:
https://m.youtube.com/@scissorsandpaper/videos
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/4kJPGlaJjGVyLa9AKhci6t?si=8XXrX9FUT3CU71reCfA5kQ
X:
https://x.com/Benomtad
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/benomtad
 
About Our Guest:
Ian Reclusado is currently off exploring the poetic wilds of psychology, neuroscience, and spirituality. 
He also offers guidance services for those interested in delving into their own inner wilderness.
You can find his weekly dispatches at www.thekindknife.com or follow him on Instagram: @ian_reclusado
 
I plan to conduct more interviews with various guests, so please check back later for those.