Gracehopers and Ants in the library

This morning, one of my young students made a very strange request: she brought me a book with a simple version of the story of Snow White and asked me to read it to her, but to substitute the word ants for dwarfs. So in this version of the story, Snow White goes to live with seven ants. I'm not sure where this idea came from, but the girl found it highly amusing.

Around noon, I checked for new comments here and found some from Bill accusing me of laziness for not "putting in the work" of researching all the background behind the story he had been telling before he decided to delete everything. His most recent comment ended with "Lazy lions indeed..." -- a reference to this much-analyzed illustration from Animalia, where two lazy lions are lounging in the local library, and one of them appears to be eating a book:

Shortly after checking the comments, I ran across this meme over at Barnhardt's:

Eating in the library is exactly what one of those lazy lions appears to be doing. The ant is a symbol of industry, the opposite of laziness -- "Go to the ant, thou sluggard!" The classic example of this symbolism is Aesop's fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper. In James Joyce's version of the fable in Finnegans Wake, the Grasshopper is called the Gracehoper, because he hopes for undeserved grace despite his lack of works, and the Ant is called the Ondt, which is Norwegian for "bad, evil." This fits with the meme, where we are warned that "the ants will turn evil."

In Aesop, the Ant is in his home eating the food that he worked hard to get, and the Gracehoper wants to be let in to eat some of it, too. In the meme, interpreted in conjunction with Animalia, the Gracehoper (lazy lion) is in the library eating a book, and he is warned that this eating may attract Ants hoping to share in the feast, which would not be a good thing.

The Dwarfs in Snow White are also hard workers, their signature song in the original Disney film being "Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it's off to work we go." What kind of work do they do?

We dig dig dig dig dig dig dig in our mine

The whole day through

To dig dig dig dig dig dig dig is what we really like to do

It ain't no trick to get rich quick

If you dig dig dig with a shovel or a pick

In a mine! In a mine! In a mine! In a mine!

Where a million diamonds shine!

Digging in a mine is also the work of the brown emmets in Animalia, as discussed in "I've been a miner for a heart of gold" and elsewhere. The picture also includes a reference to that running Arnold meme that's recently resurfaced in the sync-stream:

In the afternoon, I did one of my Tarot meditations, where I draw a single card at random, not for divination but just to spend some time contemplating its symbolism. As usual, I try to perceive psychically what is on the card before I turn it over. This time the main impression I got was that the card was very dark in terms of its color scheme, that it had gold elements (pentacles or cups), and that there was a person with a bowed head, looking downcast, wearing brown fur. This checked out when I turned it face-up and discovered that it was the Five of Pentacles:

Clear Ant-and-Grasshopper vibes here, with two hungry Gracehopers out in the cold on a winter's day. When I looked up Waite's description of the card, I found that it was very brief: "Two mendicants in a snow-storm pass a lighted casement." The string I have bolded jumped out at me as relevant to the Snow White and the Seven Ants story. The beggars are simultaneously Gracehopers and mendic-Ants. The stained-glass window makes it look like they are outside a church, but I've seen libraries with such windows, too.

Even the Ants are really Gracehopers. This theme was reinforced when I read a few chapters in the Book of Mormon today. The last time I read, I had finished Words of Mormon, so today I read the first few chapters of Mosiah -- the sermon of King Benjamin -- where I encountered the only instance in the Bible or Book of Mormon of the word beggars, plural:

Perhaps thou shalt say: The man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto him of my food, nor impart unto him of my substance that he may not suffer, for his punishments are just --

But I say unto you, O man, whosoever doeth this the same hath great cause to repent; and except he repenteth of that which he hath done he perisheth forever, and hath no interest in the kingdom of God.

For behold, are we not all beggars? Do we not all depend upon the same Being, even God, for all the substance which we have, for both food and raiment, and for gold, and for silver, and for all the riches which we have of every kind? (Mosiah 4:17-19)

Again we have a very clear link to the fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper, which ends with the Ant refusing to help the starving Grasshopper because the latter "has brought upon himself his misery" by his idleness. But in the big picture, as King Benjamin says, are we not all Gracehopers?