The Tale of the Smith and the Devil Retold

It was time for a mental reset. Joe had been deployed to the Ukraine. Arianna was alone but thank to the Internet, they had weekly contact. She, had to deal with life. She was no stranger to hardship. Arianna had learned to master some of life’s avoidable mistakes. With a devil-may-care attitude, she concluded that there is no advantage to suffering disappointment because reality does not compare to some imaginary ideal.

She was proud of Joe and grateful that she lived in a country that was not devastated by war, drought, fire, flood, or famine. Arianna was thankful that she did not suffer a lack of bare necessities. There was clean water, good nutrition, health care, reasonable education, and shelter. Relatively speaking, she was physiologically and emotionally stable, which was more than could be said for many.

Arianna had firm foundations. Her parents had provided her with love and a good education. Her Yaya had offered Arianna some useful tools to escape a tedious life of labour. Yaya would say, “ An idle brain is the devil’s workshop and idle hands are the devil’s playthings. Most people consider the work world is reality. What the devil, we know better. We work like the devil, to establish a reality that holds the warmth of an inner spirit that emanates from those who we love, and who love us, now, and always."

Yaya had introduced Arianna to a world view, that telescoped ancient beliefs and history’s lessons, through music. She often played Johann Sebastian Bach’s, Ik habe genug. Once she explained, “This song translates as ‘I have enough’, or ‘I am content’. Most of humanity does not appreciate when there is enough. In my generation, we would say, ‘Be happy with what you have. You’ve got to make the best of it.’ Mankind often wants more. This song proclaims that ‘enough is enough’, and that there is a time to let go of wanting more.

“Bach influenced Beethoven, supported his contemporary of Napoleon. Beethoven appreciated anti-monarch ideals and originally created symphony no. 3, Eroica, for Napoleon. Later, he wrote the piano sonata, Les Adieux, to express despair when Napoleon declared himself Emperor after he conquered Germany in the early 1800’s. Beethoven lent his deaf ear, to more than friends and countrymen. He captured how the strength and resolve of ideals, wax and wane. He expressed how humans, condemned to fight a hopeless cause with a tragic fate of an inevitable death sentence, can use art to improve society when politics fail.

“Tchaikovsky wrote the 1812 overture to describe the defeat of Napoleon. Later, he used stories scribed by the Brothers Grimm that recounted oral traditions along the German Fairy Tale Route, as the framework for compositions.

"The Grimms lived up to their name. They were part of an intellectual resistance and recounted grim tales of the occupying French tyrants. They recounted tales of how relatives, strangers and officials could not be trusted. The Disney versions sugar-coat the Grimm’s tales. They do not include how Rapunzel’s father sold her to repay for what he had stolen from the wicked witch. Nor how Cinderella used peace-loving doves to peck out the eyes of her evil stepsisters as punishment for their wickedness.

"Speak of the devil, the Grimm tales describe how Hansel and Gretel escaped the cannibalistic witch, through their wits. The unsuspecting Little Red Riding Hood gave crucial information to the big, bad wolf that resulted in the sick old Grandmother, and Little Red being eaten. Officials, who failed to pay the Pied Piper of Hamelin, eventually paid the price by having their children taken from them.

"The Brothers Grimm published the oldest tale ever told, the Smith and the Devil, that was renamed ‘ the tale of the Cold Heart’. It recounts how a blacksmith, makes a contract with the devil, offering his heart as payment. The demon takes the smitty's heart and replaces it with his Cold Stone Heart. Void of feelings and emotions, the smith realizes that without the drumbeat of the heart and feelings of love, empathy, or appreciation of beauty, there is moral misery, and bad temper. The smith hears the voices of dreams that say, 'Get a warmer heart.' An imp tells the Smith how to trick the devil.

"In some tales, after losing his heart, the smith told the devil that he did not have a heart of stone. The devil took the smith's heart from his own chest, and to test if the stone heart worked, replaced it into his own. This allowed the smith to escape. In another version, the smith tricks the devil to become small enough to be held in a purse. The devil does so and is clasped within. When released the devil runs away. The smith followed the devil to the gates of Hell, but the devil refused to let him enter. A version of this story was retold in the film Errementari.

The film, the Devil and Daniel Webster has been remade several times. Daniel, a cousin of Noah Webster who wrote the dictionary, was the lawyer who successfully plead the farmer’s case to a dead judge and jury, condemned to Hell. He argued that many a man, who is a desperate victim, falls prey to making a promise to the devil for short term ease. Webster swayed the jury with his plea that humans, who easily fall victim to greed or selfishness before realizing the consequences, deserve a second chance. By telling the truth, he shamed the devil and freed the farmer from the contract with the devil.”

Arianna appreciated how Fairy tales teach how to deal with unpleasant situations, misfortune and fear. Arianna’s instincts recognized fear. She was conditioned to imagine what fears might come. She accepted fear as a whetstone used to sharpen instincts needed to deal with change.

She knew what it is to be between the devil and the deep blue sea. She was raised in the “think and do" generation. The demanding, pounding rhythm, of Do, do, do, had once felt to be equivalent to the constant impact of Chinese water torture. She used it as an opportunity to adapt, and constantly revise her contingency planning, to optimize a situation. She had faith in her ability to be resilient, and to reprogram her responses from surviving to thriving. She felt the warmth of those who had loved her. She was determined to thrive on this love, not simply survive by protecting what was.

She looked at the night sky. Under the pale-yellow rays of the sun, reflected in the silver glow of the waxing, waning and full moon, or the darkness when the moon was new, Arianna connected to the source of fluctuations. Arianna felt a mystical, eerie, form of ecstatic, altered consciousness.

She was born of the stars. Her body was a fractal distortion of the star, a living cross, formed of white divine light changed into matter. She saw the five-pointed star Sirius that the astronomer Tycho’s Brahe said is at the center of the universe. Sirius is the star of Hathor and Isis, the divine mother.

Sirius, the Dog star, is a binary star. Sirius A and B obey the same laws of our solar system. The natural oscillations of the twin stars are described in astronomical myths of the Dogon, from the West African Mali tribe, that descended from 3200BC Egypt. Their orbitals resemble the orbitals of Atlas, associated with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, where the center of mass energy is delivered. They form the same pattern of the fascia surrounding the muscles of the body, the path of blood and the twisted double helical path that is reflected in the kundalini, and DNA. They pattern holds the S-shaped curve that has been called the serpent, that has been referred to as both God and the devil over history.

Sin is an abbreviation for the sinusoidal waves that form up and down mathematical periodic curves when a looped conductor passes through a magnetic field. She had no choice but to be carried along the by Sin. Sin is inevitable. The waves are separate parts of the whole, that repeat as an integral part of the universe, and through all nature. Sin moves through active and latent states, following the path of eternal return to the same place. Sin makes the sign of infinity that appears to go forward and reverse, towards what some call positive or negative, without changing direction.

Arianna said to herself, “Everything we need to know comes in due time. Learn to expect variations of cycles that repeat. Be strong, be independent. Observe. Be careful about what you wish.”

Arianna was frustrated at how a simple wish, of a good dream come true, could be shattered. She remembered when she had wished for warmer winters as a child walking through the heavy snowfall of winter as the west winds blew along wind tunnels. Then came global climate changes with rising temperatures, resulting in ocean current changes that melted ice caps that led to floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, and hailstorms.

She recalled learning how to use a slide rule, at the advent of the computer age. She had wished it would be easier to deal with mechanical, arithmetic operations. Then came punch computer cards, forming all or none codes, then calculators and small affordable computers. Now computer technology was being implanted into humans and used to influence and replace human decisions and creativity.

Arianna saw how easily the romantic state of a wish can become easily broken. What can be used for good can also be used for evil. Promises of man using intelligence, to save the environment and ease suffering, were destroyed as mankind was ready to sell their soul to the devil as part of the deal. She knew all too well, the allure of falling prey to short-term gain when times are tough.

Her attention focussed to a talk she was preparing. Her career had led her to becoming one of the dream weavers of the future. She had become an academic. She endured hours reading, researching, and listening to presentations. They offered the exhilaration of running a marathon. Her commitment to precision appeared effortless to the uninitiated. She would work to present her ideas simply and clearly, and people would say, ‘I knew that’ without ever stopping to notice the devil on the shoulder. Most people ignore asking how order is found in the chaos, where magnetic storms form the devil’s triangle that can mysteriously make matter disappear without a trace.

Arianna used silence to connect the rhythm of the song in her heart that pumped the blood from the marrow of her calcium covered bones through her carbon-based body. Arianna said, “Schatzhauser, in the green firwood, thou art many hundreds of years old. Yours is the land where the firs stand, thou shalt only be seen by Sunday’s children.” She was twice born on Sundays between 11 am and 2pm. She could summon the powers of the ‘Schatzhauser’, meaning the house of treasures, where the Glass-imp lives in a Castle, built of sand.

The crystal palace is said to be found in the pineal gland, the seat of the biological soul. Made of calcium microcrystals, the pineal establishes harmonics that lead to symmetry breaking and piezoelectricity. She also had access to the dreams of the Sandman. Sand holds silica, the basis of most rocks. When heated, it forms lave that turns to jet black glass obsidian, that was used for making weapons and tools.

There was no stopping the waning evening or her thoughts, that were usually silent. She watched as the dreams turned to ash. The particles collided in the smoke, forming lightening that rapidly heated the air causing a shockwave to expand and rumble. A quick, loud boom thundered, echoed and became amplified. It shook the foundations at the core of the heart of the carbon and silicon soul. Wood and sand have tendencies to shrink and compress or expand and explosively crack open.

The amorphous, randomly disordered liquids first formed semi-solid transparent glass, instead of crystals. The glass, toughened into solar panels, that in sunlight, freed electrons that were used to generate electricity and create power. The sand was refined into wafer thin semiconductor silica chips, that allow logic functions using transistors that are packed into integrated circuits, within a microprocessor within a computers. Weird fascinating phenomenon occur as electrons leak, jump, or tunnel in a three-dimensional cubic volume. They alter the probabilities of rare events. A volcanic erupted within the crystal palace of the mind, and the fragile, cold, dark stone glass heart of the silicon soul. It discharged the Glass Imp.

The tale of this shapeshifting spirit has been retold over thousands of years. The imp refuse to settle down with just one meaning. In the Sumerian tale, the tyrant king Gilgamesh first encounters the imp in dreams. He whispers that Gilgamesh will meeting his friend, Enkidu, then embrace a meteorite and make an ax to gain immortality. These dream are realized. Gilgamesh and Enkidu find the Huluppu tree, then chase away a snake, a Thunder bird and a Demon-woman pest that infests the tree. They offer the tree, that is the seat of renewal and transformation, to Inanna who makes a throne and bed, and gifts Gilgamesh, with a pukka and mikku, signs of a true authentic man. Cutting down the tree eventually results in the death of Enkidu. Gilgamesh fails to obtain immortality but learns to become authentic, humble, and sincere. He uses clay to fashion humans, and to pass on a written message on tablets of speaking clay, of a spirit that passes through cultures and teaches what it is to be human.

In the tale of the Arabian Nights, Aladdin finds the Genie, called a djinn, in a lamp. Once unleashed, the supernatural force could grant three wishes that could cause doom or fortune. Aladdin uses one wish foolishly, one to acquire what he needs and the last to get rid of the bond of the genie.

The Genie is associated with the transparent green nature Naga spirits of Mekong River. The malleable, shapeshifting, regenerative spirits breath green fireballs when they awaken each year during the late autumn nights of the full moon that ends the Buddhist lent. The spirits grant three wishes that reflect events of the past, present, and future. The wishes often reflect the foolishness of man. A farmer meets the spirit, and first wishes for a sausage, then that it be attached to his wife’s nose , and finally that it be removed.

Over the centuries the spirit has become a moss elf, a wilde Leute, a fairy folk sceaga, of the Black Forest, a leprechaun or a Leutin, that came from the Proto-Indo European ‘weys’. Weys were used as an old British unit of weight of 16 stones 16 pound that eventually flowed into an old Scotch-Irish unit of volume equal to 40 US bushels. A Wey animal, known as a Guey, in Spanish is considered to be a feeble, stupid, slow-witted castrated ox used for meat, sacrifice or labour. The term is used as an insulting slur, word, a curse, or to express shock and confusion. However, it is also used as a term of endearment to a close friend.

The leutin are associated with the Middle Low German wose, the muddy, slimy glutinous foam and froth found in the Wase, the mires that oozes along the slippery clay slopes of the earth from which humans were formed. The wood wose, was considered a hairy wild man carrying a club. They were a close relative of the Green Man who became the bogeyman. They had superhuman strength and were deaf to the word of God, therefore considered a dreaded evil minor demon troll that some call the devil.

The many tales reveal the devil cannot make you do anything. The devil offers a mean to fill a feeling of lack, that becomes an insatiable appetite. The devil is found in the details. The devil will honour a wish in unexpected, and unwanted ways. A person makes a pact with the devil and must be clever. Arianna recalled the tale of a farmer accepts seeds from the devil, in return for share half of what was grown. The farmer planted turnips , which the farmer harvested then gave the devil the leaves and stems. The next year the devil asked that everything below the ground was his. The farmer planted wheat.

Arianna was present, awake to her thoughts. She was a wordsmith. She knew the devil could be found anytime, anywhere and by anybody. She heard the devil whisper from within the frail and fragile glass heart, “You cannot weather the storm” She replied, “I am the storm.”

Her research was on the intruder effect, caused by the introduction of exotic, non- native species, that have been intentionally or inadvertently brought into an area. According to the World Conservation Union, invasive alien species are the second most significant threat to biodiversity after habitat loss. Invasive species often become predators, competitors, parasites, hybridizers and bring diseases. From zebra mussels to purple loosestrife to pandemics, novel encounters with intruder species can promote or limit diversity. The point of contention is that introduced species elicit a complex social feedback response to new situations. The introduced species can gain advantage and hold the potential to destroy the balance and threaten ecosystems when they take more than they give.

Arianna had to demonstrate that the ladybug beetle, whose genus name is Harmonia, was an influence that could not be removed. It had to be dealt with. Change is inevitable. The Japanese harlequin ladybug was invited to North America as a chemical-free, pest control alternative. It consumes aphids in orchards, roses, and tobacco. Their natural predators were left behind. At first, their constant presence was ignored until it overtook population numbers of native species. Harmonia has warning coloration. Within the hemolymph of ladybugs, symbiotic microsporidium manufacture a bad-tasting yellow chemical, Harmonine. It is used as a weapon and to inhibit mycobacterial growth.

She had to design a way to outsmart this new devil. She had to choose between the devil she knew and that she did not know.

Arianna put down her work. It was time to call Joe. They had found a way into each other’s lives. That man. In a flash she remembered the warmth of Joe’s laughter. It was perpetual puppy love. Each welcomed the other when they came home, to each other. They say a pet shares its spirit with its owner. They were each other’s pet and owner.

She knew their relationship would change, but his deployment and the war would have untold effects. War changes people. War holds the spirit of an invasive species that alters balance. The effects can only be managed. She prayed that she and Joe would not become destructive invasive intruders to each other but could work together, as symbiotes, to create what beauty might come to be.

Arianna called upon the silicon soul to dial his number. The imp, that could bring them together, formed a musical song. She felt the connection of the pneumatic force, then Joe picked up. They were entangled as part of a wave within nature, where each particle communicates instantaneously, in a condition called nonlocality. Joe and Arianna were together, here, and now again, ready to find balance.

They shared moments of their week that had not been written in emails. Then, before saying goodbye, Arianna reminded Joe of times that they had spent together, that had served to forge their attachment to each other. She took them back to when they were walking along the side of a lake, on a cool spring afternoon, as light filtered through the trees, dotted with newly formed buds. She helped him remember late summer, when cicadas and crickets formed a chorus that sang of how and what their future should be. She reminded him of when they sat under the midnight cobalt blue of the autumn sky, as the stars flew, and a halo formed around the rare supermoon. Then, she transported them both to the winter when they had made a quinzhee, a snow shelter, from snowdrifts, the qin uqsuq, and the qanik caq, the snow of the ground. It was a devil of a job.

Before saying goodbye, Arianna reminded him how mixing the pukak, the sugar crystalline snow, with the matsaaruti, the wet snow, had caused the two materials to be remarkably sintered, welded together through heat and pressure without melting. They held the same potential and had the means to avoid using the devil's forge. They could master the alchemical arts of their attachment, and hammer and shape what could test the true mettle of their connection.