he Magic Orange Tree The Magic Orange Tree
A tale from Haiti Retold by Diane WolksteinCRIC? CRAC!
There was once a girl whose mother died when she was born. Her father waited for some time to remarry, but when he did, he married a woman who was both mean and cruel. She was so mean there were some days she would not give the girl anything at all to eat. The girl was often hungry.
The stepmother showed the cruel side of the Great Mother - the girl starved and might have died.
Where was the father? His absence exposed the girl to hurt. Marie-Louise von Franz, a close colleague of Jung, showed that the father-mother or king-queen balance at the beginning of a tale, together with the change in balance at the end, suggests the psychological issue which is the subject of the tale. The father represents yang, the bright phallic spirit which asserts, penetrates, fertilizes, separates, distinguishes, reflects, illuminates, makes conscious, burns, and sometimes kills. In this story the father was absent and his daughter was starving, probably because he was absent. At the end of the tale she was well fed.
One day the girl came from school and saw on the table three round ripe oranges. Hmmmm. They smelled good. The girl looked around her. No one was there. She took one orange, peeled it, and ate it. Hmmm-mmm. It was good. She took a second orange and ate it. She ate the third orange. Oh-oh, she was happy. But soon her stepmother came home.
Oranges.
Oil painting: Joni DiPirro, 2009.
Sunlight, which epitomizes yang, falls from heaven and is stored in oranges. This is true both on a literal level (photosynthesis stores energy from sunlight in the tree's fruit) and on a symbolic level: several independent myths state that sunlight is stored in oranges. In our story oranges fed the girl, a repetition which supports our guess that the father's absence caused starvation; the absence of personal yang was compensated for by the impersonal yang of sunlight.
"Who has taken the oranges I left on the table?'' she said. "Whoever has done so had better say their prayers now, for they will not be able to say them later.''
The girl was so frightened she ran from the house. She ran through the woods until she came to her own mother's grave. All night she cried and prayed to her mother to help her. Finally she fell asleep.
The girl had the good sense to leave the evil mother and pray to her own good mother. Lacking her father's protection, she drew upon her own protective instincts. The oranges have nourished her own potential for discrimination and action, her own yang.
In the morning the sun woke her,
(another repetition: impersonal yang has woken her up to her situation)
and as she rose to her feet something dropped from her skirt onto the ground. What was it? It was an orange pit.
A seed of yang. That it was on her skirt sugests the Annunciation: Mary was not touched by any personal man but was impregnated by the Holy Spirit, imagined as a ray of sunlight. Likewise the girl had no contact with her personal father; her own yang was quickened by the sun.
Annunciation Fra Angelico, 1435
Prado
Annunciation Robert Campin, Oil on wood, 1425.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The star of light on Mary's bright red dress suggests that her body is being fertilized.
And the moment it entered the earth
(earth is the Great Mother, the dark principle of yin which receives indiscriminately, holds, gestates and feeds indiscriminately)
a green leaf sprouted from it. The girl watched, amazed. She knelt down and sang:
Orange tree, Grow and grow and grow. Orange tree, orange tree. Grow and grow and grow, Orange tree. Stepmother is not real mother, Orange tree.
Song and poetry are yang because they belong to the spirit world. Magic is yang. The girl fertilized the plant with her song.
The orange tree grew. It grew to the size of the girl. The girl sang:
Orange tree, Branch and branch and branch. Orange tree, orange tree, Branch and branch and branch, Orange tree. Stepmother is not real mother, Orange tree.
And many twisting, turning, curving branches appeared on the tree. Then the girl sang:
Orange tree, Flower and flower and flower. Orange tree, orange tree, Flower and flower and flower, Orange tree. Stepmother is not real mother, Orange tree.
Beautiful white blossoms covered the tree. After a time they began to fade, and small green buds appeared where the flowers had been. The girl sang:
Orange tree, Ripen and ripen and ripen. Orange tree, orange tree, Ripen and ripen and ripen, Orange tree. Stepmother is not real mother. Orange tree.
The oranges ripened, and the whole tree was filled with golden oranges. The girl was so delighted she danced around and around the tree, singing:
Orange tree, Grow and grow and grow. Orange tree, orange tree, Grow and grow and grow, Orange tree. Stepmother is not real mother, Orange tree.
But then when she looked, she saw the orange tree had grown up to the sky, far beyond her reach. What was she to do? Oh she was a clever girl.
Clever is yang.
She sang:
Orange tree, Lower and lower and lower. Orange tree, orange tree, Lower and lower and lower, Orange tree. Stepmother is not real mother, Orange tree.
When the orange tree came down to her height, she filled her arms with oranges and returned home.
The Magic Orange Tree
Painting: A.M. Maurice, 1950s-2000. Petite-Riviere de l'Artibonite, Haiti
The moment the stepmother saw the gold oranges in the girl's arms, she seized them and began to eat them. Soon she had finished them all, ''Tell me, my sweet,'' she said to the girl, "where have you found such delicious oranges?"
The stepmother's teeth represent an undifferentiated, unconscious state in which yang is contained within the Great Mother. Because it is unconscious, yang tends to be greedy and destructive (the same is true for other archetypes when they are unconscious).
The girl hesitated. She did not want to tell. The stepmother seized the girl's wrist and began to twist it.
''Tell me!" she ordered.
The girl led her stepmother through the woods to the orange tree. You remember the girl was very clever? Well, as soon as the girl came to the tree, she sang:
Orange tree, Grow and grow and grow. Orange tree, orange tree, Grow and grow and grow, Orange tree. Stepmother is not real mother, Orange tree.
And the orange tree grew up to the sky. What was the stepmother to do then? She began to plead and beg.
"Please" she said. "You shall be my own dear child. You may always have as much as you want to eat. Tell the tree to come down and you shall pick the oranges for me", so the girl quietly sang:
Orange tree, Lower and lower and lower. Orange tree, orange tree, Lower and lower and lower, Orange tree. Stepmother is not real mother, Orange tree.
The tree began to lower. When it came to the height of the stepmother, she leapt on it and began to climb so quickly you might have thought she was the daughter of an ape.
A repetition which supports our interpretation that she represents undifferentiated, unconscious yang.
And as she climbed from branch to branch, she ate every orange. The girl saw that there would soon be no oranges left. What would happen to her then? The girl sang:
Orange tree, Grow and grow and grow. Orange tree, orange tree, Grow and grow and grow, Orange tree. Stepmother is not real mother, Orange tree.
The orange tree grew and grew and grew and grew. "Help!" cried the stepmother as she rose into the sky. "H-e-e-lp...."
The girl cried: "Break! Orange tree, Break!"
The orange tree broke into a thousand pieces and the stepmother as well.
Clever is yang and yang can kill.
Then the girl searched among the branches until she found ... a tiny orange pit. She carefully planted it in the earth. Softly she sang:
Orange tree, Grow and grow and grow. Orange tree, orange tree, Grow and grow and grow, Orange tree. Stepmother is not real mother, Orange tree.
The orange tree grew to the height of the girl. She picked some oranges and took them to market to sell. They were so sweet the people bought all her oranges.
Because of the girl there was now a productive balance between yang and yin.
Every Saturday she is at the marketplace selling her oranges. Last Saturday, I went to see her and asked her if she would give me a free orange. "What?'' she cried. After all I've been through!'' And she gave me such a kick in the pants that that's how I got here today, to tell you the story.
Commentary
When a child is born in the countryside, the umbilical cord may be saved and dried and planted in the earth, with a pit from a fruit tree placed on top of the cord. The tree that grows then belongs to the child, who can barter or sell it. (Young children in Haiti very quickly become economically active.) Trees in Haiti are thus thought to protect children and are sometimes referred to as the guardian angel of the child. However, if the tree should die or grow in a deformed manner, that would be considered an evil omen.
There is another image of yang in this tale. The orange tree expanded upwards and then shrank back repeatedly, a distinctive movement which suggests the repetitive cycle of an erection. The tree, growing out of the earth, represents the earth father in contrast to the sky father (Jahweh, Zeus, Thor, Odin). The earth father is seen in the celtic horned god, the greek god Pan, and in the egyptian god Geb. Geb was black and lay on his back on the earth underneath the sky goddess Nut: she arched over him carrying the stars and the sun on her body. Geb had a black erection reaching up towards Nut. Our Haitian story shows that the earth father embodies the sun's yang.
Nut and Geb
Papyrus scroll: Egyptian Mythology, Veronica Ions
Aphrodite, Pan and Eros
Statue from island of Delos: 100 BC
PhotoSeek.com: National Archaeological Museum, Athens
Amongst Haitian folktales there are few images of positive fathers. When there are dominant male characters they are likely to be exploitative white men. This reflects the history of slavery and subsequent commercial exploitation by europeans and americans, in which cunning, cerebral power (the destructive potential of the sky father) disempowered Haitian men, raped the island, and starved its people. The Magic Orange Tree portrays a life-giving earth father who compensates for the destructive sky father.