The town musicians of Bremen key / Blog / Contact

Last week an old friend who was born in Bremen told me how beautiful the city would be, so I decided to give it a try and travel to Bremen to take a look. Before entering the train station from where I depart I have to cross a street, we pedestrians wait at the red light. Diagonally right to me a younger woman turns her head towards me and looks straight ahead again. When crossing the street I see she wears a jacket depicting a large flying white owl on her back.

Only the evening before I had stumbled on a online course on sculpturing and fascinated as I was I booked it.

Also I had ordered "An Astrological Mandala - The Cycle of Transformations and its 360 Symbolic Phases" by Dane Rudhyar, a classic on the Sabian Symbols. Its back reads:

"In the early 20th century, Marc Edmund Jones and a clairvoyant friend formulated the Sabian symbols in an attempt to produce a series of symbols for the degrees of the zodiac that would be relevant to contemporary students of astrology.

Dane Rudhyar then expanded on the symbols, reinterpreting them to emphasize their character as a cyclic series. Rudhyar's model formalizes and reveals the archetypal meaning of 360 basic phases of human experience in a greater holistic context.

Since the book was first published in 1973, it has become a staple in many professional astrologers' toolkits. The images cultivated by Rudhyar are used for further contemplation of every degree of the zodiac..."

Already in the train the sync gears shift smoothly each other and we slide across a river. I take a picture of the other bridge I see maybe two hundred yards upwards stream. Its interlacing arcs form something like a DNA spiral and I enjoy the suns colour play of pastel rainbow on the water and the horizon.

On my phone I see Noah`s I-Ging project "My Sol is Going Through Them Changes" is coming to a full circle after one year, so I ask him what`s next. "Ha! We do it again of course!", he replies. Then...

"I'm prepping for a book about every degree of the Zodiac... potentially I lace some of that in here, but continuing to share our experience with each degree is a crucial journey. To get deeper into it, dig into your own chart placements in each degree... dig into the charts of people closest to you and check out the degrees their chart accentuates... every single degree has its own tale to tell, and when you connect those dots between different peoples stories you can dive in so much deeper into the Zodiac and how it connects us all."

In awe I tell him about the book order only hours before from my side and Noah expresses his happy approval and proceeds to explain how the two systems merge and posts the picture below ("Sub-Pentans"), which I didn´t see in that instance as I was busy sending him my picture I had taken from the bridge. A double-helix-double-sync! :) A good start for the journey.

In Bremen there is a lot to see - a feast for the eyes - and I am amazed by the autumn colours of this medival fairy town.

Crossing a bridge I see a nice mill by the lake. Preparations are done for the Christmas season soon to begin.

At the town hall I meet the Four Musicians of Bremen. To make a wish it is recommended to touch the donkey`s feet.

The dome is impressing with it`s many figures, faces, masks - sculptures!

At both sides of the side entrance opened for visitors, 2 statues take guard: One with a key, another with a sword.

It must be two versions of Peter! One with the key(s) to heaven and hell, another with a sword.

Now I realize, because it`s St.Petri dome! Two Peters had called me last Sunday too. The poster announces: "Night of the lights".

The key is a major feature of Bremen. It was first represented in the seal of the City of Bremen in 1366 and later became the main element of the city's coat-of-arms. There is also the saying: "Hamburg is the gateway to the world, but Bremen has the key to it - Hamburg is the gate to heaven, but Bremen has the key to it."

At the market hall I also find exibited the second edition of The Grimm fairytales, which in 1819 for the first time introduced the story of the Four Musicians of Bremen in printed form.

At the River Weser I find the lions heads from the old bridge, destroyed in WW2, afflicted by weather and frost.

On my way home I read in the next chapters in Christopher Knowles "The Spandex Files" how Comic legend Jack Kirby had a hard life in his old age, this despite his prooven talent, groundbraking performance and status in the scene.

He at least he was - if not more with them - the visual creator of the Fantastic Four(!) including the monstrous Thing (Ben Grimm), yes son, Grimm!

At night I wake up and start to read on the Town Musicians of Bremen on Wikipedia and elsewhere.

And then it clicks.... (!) The four animals had been badly treated in their old age, exactly as Jack Kirby had experienced it in his own life!

Confronted with decrepitude and the fear of beeing killed from their owners soon due to their alleged idleness and uselessness,

they leave their homes and go away - onto their journey to the yearned city over the rainbow: Bremen.

Almost like a circus or a rock band (Donkey plays guitar and the dog siriusly on the drums) on tour. Only they are seniours, undiscovered rolling stones. Thrown back on themselves they focus on their talents and know they have to stick together in solidarity in order to make it.

Their trip takes them into the forest. The subconscious.

Where they find a warm cottage full of food but occupied with robbers.

"Standing on each other's backs, they decide to scare the robbers away by making a din; the men run for their lives, not knowing what the strange sound is. The animals take possession of the house, eat a good meal, and settle in for the evening.

Later that night, the robbers return and send one of their members in to investigate. He sees the cat's eyes shining in the darkness and thinks he is seeing the coals of the fire. The robber reaches over to light his candle. Things happen in quick succession; the cat scratches his face with her claws, the dog bites him on the leg, the donkey kicks him with his hooves, and the rooster crows and chases him out the door. The terrified robber tells his companions that he was beset by a horrible witch who had scratched him with her long fingernails (the cat), a dwarf who has a knife (the dog), a black monster who had hit him with a club (the donkey), and worst of all, a judge calling out from the rooftop (the rooster). The robbers abandon the cottage to the strange creatures who have taken it, where the animals live happily for the rest of their days.

In the original version of this story, which dates from the twelfth century, the robbers are a bear, a lion, and a wolf, all animals featured in heraldic devices. When the donkey and his friends arrive in Bremen, the townsfolk applaud them for having rid the district of the terrible beasts.

An alternate version involves the animals' master(s) being deprived of his livelihood (because the thieves stole his money and/or destroyed his farm or mill) and having to send his or their animals away, unable to take care of them any further. After the animals dispatch the thieves, they take the ill-gotten gains back to their master so he can rebuild. Other versions involve at least one wild, non-livestock animal, such as a lizard, helping the domestic animals out in dispatching the thieves."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_Musicians_of_Bremen

Is this a very esoteric clue here? Something must have happened in the forest long time ago, that the robbers would have settled there and occupied and corrupted the place, the center in the dark. And imagine the four animals standing on each other forming a pyramid. And the cats eye in the middle. Some hidden truth to be found here.

The robbers are terrified because they experience what they believe to be true, living in the illusion of the own imagined world, composed of their possible enemies and demons. And the rooster is interpreted by them as a judge! Suddenly the animals have power, used their creativity in a half awaken and half asleep reaction-action (as the animals were already half asleep when the event did happen), have taken back what is theirs.

I feel this fairy tale is written with a secret message for the times we are in now and it has to do with the arriving light in times of darkness and how to cope with them best by learning to trust our intuition and looking for new ways together.

Also I would be curious if the four animals maybe descibe a certain planetary allignment or star constellation area?

At least the rooster (gallus) - of course also connected to PETER in the bible - can be found close to dog-star Sirius ( https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-22795-5_10 ) and both are not far away from cancer which features: Asellus Borealis. Gamma (γ) Cancer, Asellus borealis, the Northern Donkey; delta (δ) Asellus australis is the Southern Donkey. So where is the cat?

UPDATE from Noah (25.11.23):

"Ok, now I would argue that the four animals represent the four archeangels, which are the four fixed signs of the Zodiac.

The cat is obviously Leo the Lion...

The Rooster represents the Eagle of Scorpio (note that as the judge, the constellation of Libra takes up most of the tropical sign of Scorpio)

the Dog who becomes a Dwarf is Aquarius (the cup bearer Ganymede and also.. it's worth thinking about how prominent the dog star is in the winter when the Sun is oppose>)

The Donkey represents Taurus. The Star Aldeberan is the archangel Michael, the eye of the bull, and is on my Sun."

I had overseen the obvious!

In Riga, Latvia is also a St.Petri church (my grand-grand father used to be a pastor there). In 1990 the city received from Bremen another version of the four musicians cracking through the iron curtain, yelling. They are placed behing the curch there.