In fairy tales, there is a recurring motif: things only happen on the third attempt.
According to one of the foremost interpreters of fairy tales—the Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz—this motif is connected with the attainment of maturity. In other words, the first two attempts fail because something in the person’s inner psychic situation is not yet ready for the denouement and the happy ending to occur.
For me, this recurring motif of “the third time” also carries the meaning of repetition as something necessary in order for a person to notice a thing—and thus for that thing to become a fact. I am reminded of the Bulgarian fairy tale of the Golden Girl, which is one of many examples of events taking place only on the third attempt. When the wedding party comes to take the Golden Girl and marry her to the greatest hero in the land, they take instead the stepmother’s veiled dark-skinned daughter. As they set off, the rooster crows, “Cock-a-doodle-doo! The golden sister is under the trough, the dark sister rides the horse!” They glance at one another, hesitate, but continue on their way. They pay him no heed when he sings the same message a second time. Only the third time do they decide to check whether what the rooster is crowing is true, and thus the stepmother’s plan to exchange the girls is revealed.
If we continue interpreting the symbolism of “the third time” in this tale, we may conclude that there are things we do not hear, notice, or bring about because of our “inner stepmother”—that disguised inner voice in which we believe, yet which deceives us. We may, for example, think of ourselves as deeply grateful human beings, yet only after experiencing several serious losses do we begin to feel what genuine gratitude for small things truly means. Or, judging by the qualities of the stepmother’s daughter, we may have a psychic disposition to expect things to happen without much effort (she is lazy), while the purity of our heart has not yet reached the purity of the Golden Girl’s heart—she who is able to care for and feed even the little creatures of the old sorceress (that is, to show mercy toward our own dark side as well).
These are the moments when our inner groomsmen are blind to the signs of Destiny, and so the rooster must crow the truth more than once.
So, if things do not work out for you immediately, do not reproach yourself. There is a hidden order at work here, connected with the processes of ripening; and since ripening is a natural process, it cannot be forced. What we can do, however, is support it through our understanding of the meaning of what is unfolding. The lesson of “the third time” is a lesson in maturation, and although it resembles the lesson of persistence—since repetition is involved—there is an important difference. Persistence often requires far more than three attempts, along with faith in the final outcome; for maturity, however, even three times may be sufficient, and the main result is inner—it concerns ourselves and our inner qualities.
Kameliya Hadziyska
