‘Fairy tales matter because at the heart of every one of them is transformation.'
In this world in which all our old certainties seem to be crumbling, many women feel lost. In Ripening, Sharon Blackie insists that fairy tales are precisely the stories we need for such times.
Long before they became bywords for people-pleasing princesses, these old stories – passed down to us through generations by our peasant ancestors – told us everything that women need to learn about the world. They might be set in difficult and dangerous times, but they insist that their heroines face the unfaceable and dig deep for previously unimagined inner resources. They teach us to be savvy, inspire us to grow in confidence, show us how to be bold and claim the future we dream of.
More than anything, fairy tales are soul-food. They show us how to take hold of our own personal narratives and transform them into stories that might begin with trauma, but end with empowerment. They offer us images of startling resonance and beauty, while showing us how to recognise and make use of the possibilities that rise to the surface when broken systems are cracked open.
Hardback.
£9.99
£25.00
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Ethel Archer (1885-1962), the daughter of a clergyman, was born in Sussex, and expelled from school at the age of fourteen for asking questions in Scripture class. In 1908 she married the aspiring artist Eugene Wieland, and lived with him in West London. The couple made the acquaintance of Aleister Crowley, joined his A∴A∴ magical organization, and set up a publishing company called Wieland and Co., to publish Crowley’s periodical The Equinox, as well as other texts, including Archer’s first poetry collection The Whirlpool (1911). She published two other books, Phantasy and Other Poems (1930) and the occult novel The Hieroglyph (1932).
This 32-page chapbook assembles together twelve poems never collected in the author’s lifetime, which originally appeared in such places as The Equinox and The Occult Review.
Paperback.