Der goldene Vogel

The Golden Bird

Every year, a king's apple tree is robbed of one golden apple during the night. He orders his sons to watch what is going to happen. The first two sons fall asleep, whereas the youngest stays awake to see a golden bird stealing an apple. His attempt to shoot down the golden bird fails. However, his bullet knocks one of its feathers off which settles on the king's ground.

The feather is found so valuable by the experts that the king decides he must have the bird in his possession. Therefore he sends his three sons out, one after another, to capture this priceless golden bird.

The sons each meet a talking fox, who gives them advice on their quest:

The first two sons don't heed the advice and, in the pleasant inn, abandon their quest.

The third son obeys the fox about the inn, but when the fox advises him to take the golden bird in a wooden cage rather than a golden one, he disobeys, and the golden bird rouses the castle, resulting in his capture.
He is sent after the golden horse as a condition of his life. The fox advises him about a wooden rather than a golden saddle, but he fails again to comply the advice and is sent after the princess from the golden castle.
The fox advises him not to let her say farewell to her parents, but he disobeys, and the princess's father orders him to remove a hill as the price of his life.

The fox removes it, and then, as they set out, he advises the prince how to keep all the prizes he won. It then asks the prince to shoot it and cut off its head. When the prince refuses, it warns him against buying 'gallows flesh' and sitting on the edge of wells.

He finds that his brothers are to be hanged (on the gallows) and buys their liberty. They find out what he has done and, when he sits on a well's edge, push him in. They take the bird, the horse, and the princess and bring them to their father. However, all three of them grieve for the prince.

The fox rescues the prince, and when he returns to his father's castle dressed in a beggar's cloak, the bird, the horse, and the princess all recognize him as the man who won them, and become cheerful again. His brothers are put to death, and he marries the princess.

Finally, the third son cuts off the fox's head and the four feet at the creature's request. The fox is revealed as a man, the brother of the princess.

The Golden Bird – Synopsis

Now came the turn of the third son to watch, and he was ready to do so; but the king had less trust in him, and believed he would acquit himself still worse than his brothers, but in the end he consented to let him try. So the young man lay down under the tree to watch, and resolved that sleep should not be master.

When it struck twelve something came rushing through the air, and he saw in the moonlight a bird flying towards him, whose feathers glittered like gold. The bird perched upon the tree, and had already pecked off an apple, when the young man let fly an arrow at it. The bird flew away, but the arrow had struck its plumage, and one of its golden feathers fell to the ground: the young man picked it up, and taking it next morning to the king, told him what had happened in the night. The king called his council together, and all declared that such a feather was worth more than the whole kingdom.

Sri Aurobindo [LoC 605] (1872-1950) Indian British philosopher, mystic, The Golden Bird, an early work

A man found an eagle's egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen.
The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.
All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken.
He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled.
And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air.

Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky.
It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.

The old eagle looked up in awe.

So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that's what he thought he was.

Source: Anthony de Mello, S.J., Awareness, Center for Spiritual Exchange, published by Doubleday, 1990

The father of a poor family is reborn as a swan with golden feathers. He invites his former family members to pluck and sell a single feather from his wings to support themselves, returning occasionally to allow them another. The greedy mother of the family eventually plucks all the feathers at once. However, they turn to ordinary feathers. When the swan recovers its feathers they too are no longer gold. The moral drawn there is:

Contented be, nor itch for further store.

They seized the swan – but had its gold no more.

Suvannahamsa Jataka, 4th section of the Buddhist book Vinaya

Rachel Naomi Remen examines the role of mystery in a healing context. She shares a story of her client who had advanced prostate cancer. He told her twice:

One day after he had passed away she was thinking of him and how she missed him. Entering the elevator she lost her balance and checked the floor at her feet. There she saw it: a big white feather.
A synchronicty, a sign of spirit.
Rachel''s final comment an that encounter with spirit is:

Source: Audio presentation by Rachel Naomi Remen, US American storyteller, Discovering Mystery in Daily Life, part 2 of 2,
presented by Shiftinaction, minute 14 , 22:02 minutes duration, MP3, 10. September 2007

• Life is larger than science, and if we allow science to define life for us, we will always be defining life too small. Rachel Naomi Remen