The Golden Key

The Golden Key: And Other Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm by Philip Pullman collects three tales that presumably didn’t make the cut into Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version. It’s a bit like an outtakes reel, especially since in the introductory material Pullman seems to be shitting on these stories a strange amount. I started to wonder if this was something he was forced into doing, that he didn’t want to do, like Kurosawa being forced by his studio to do Sanjuro as a sequel to Yojimbo (so he went off the reservation, and subverted expectation).

I wasn’t familiar with these stories so they were new to me. Anyhow, they aren’t all that bad. There’s some good moments. It’s short.

I made 10 highlights.

Originally posted on my personal blog at The Golden Key

Consider also:

  1. Trust me, The Librarian’s no Willie Wonka.
  2. Aetheric Mechanics
  3. “I refuse to feed the image egregore by being anything other than what I am.”
  4. A Natural History of Hell
  5. “In being given the formal symbolic secrets the Candidate should reflect that he is receiving a first lesson in a long course of instruction of a private and occult nature; i.e., one not taught outside the Lodge, but hidden from public knowledge and intended to help him upon the path of his personal inner life. For having but just entered upon that path, it is proper that he should now be instructed how to tread it.”