With this book, the author opens up a new dimension to the best-loved fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm - so familiar to us and yet so full of unfamiliar imagery and inexplicable plot twists. He reminds us that these are stories originally aimed at adults, and that they carry in their imagery a symbolic understanding and a worldview that can offer us a key to overcoming our otherwise insoluble challenges: thus through the Anthroposophical worldview, these fairy tales become the springboards to spiritual insights.

For centuries, these myth-like stories have been retold and spread across generations. When the people in the countryside had finished their work in the fields and in the kitchen, they came together and tried to fathom the secrets of life by sharing their experiences and immersing themselves in symbolic images. At a time when the rational view of life has almost completely suppressed the mysteries of existence between earth and heaven, perhaps this is the time for us to perceive the cosmic archetypes on which these tales rest.