I remember reading when I was little Aesop’s Fables and loving them. I had a pretty, hardcover book with sketch like drawings and thick, yellow pages.
Looking back now I see that I learnt a lot about the world, people, morality from Aesop’s Fables. I did not know this then. As a child I was just enjoying the talking animals, the absurd situations, their whimsical nature.
A few days ago I was looking at some books online and stumbled over an amazingly beautiful edition, this pictured below, and all my memories of reading the fables came flooding in.
Aesop’s Fables, Leo Tolstoy’s stories, Mythology and of course our own Romanian stories, painted my childhood in vibrant colors.
I bought me the book and as soon as I had it in my paws I started to browse through it.
Around 36 years after first reading them, they still enchant me and I am still blown away by the genius of their creator.
To be able to condense in such a small piece of text so much thought and wisdom! Mind boggling!
I think this is where the genius lies, they are so simple, so easy to read but so full of meaning. Reading them now I find the same joy I did when I read them the first time. Maybe now just giving a bit more thought to the author behind them.
I had this thought that Aesop’s fables are basically a manual for humanity. They still speak volumes about who we are, even today.
If you think about it, Aesop is believed to have lived around 620-564 BC(E), so that means he wrote the fables around 2,600 years ago. And yet, his fables are still in print. Still read. Still taught. Talk about a bestseller.
It just goes to show; we evolve, we adapt, we invent all kinds of things... but certain aspects of the human experience are timeless. The fox still tricks. The crow still caws. And we still learn the hard way.
Aesop’s fables are steeped in human archetypes, behind every animal there is a mirror of ourselves. They remind us that art endures not just through time, but as a testament to the essence of who we are.
As a tarot enthusiast I could not help but make a parallel between the two. Both the tarot and the fables offer us condensed wisdom and universal lessons told simply expressed through symbols we intuitively understand and interpret.
I looked through my book to find one of the fables to share with you, very difficult to decide but in the end I found the one below:
Nice, no?
I honestly think that the fables could be used when we need to process things in our lives, to heal ourselves as it were, or to understand ourselves better. The fact that they are short and easy to understand appeals to all ages and also people who are struggling to focus due to burn out or other challenges.
Also they deal with universal themes so it is easy to find the one you need, and using animal proxies makes them easier to use as the animal in the fable is doing something, not you as a human. You are just relating. The moral at the end invites interpretation and prompts discussion.
I hope my trip down fable memory lane brought back some of your early reads memories.
Do you like fables? Do you have a favorite?
Used to read Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopedia as a kid, I'm sure that had some fables in it.
It's one of the foundational works of modern literature- and has provided fodder for very many animation works as a consequence of its status amongst children's books.