The King & the Corpse (Part 1 of 2)

Like Abu Kasem’s Slippers, this is another great Persian tale from a collection by Heinrich Zimmer (edited by Joseph Campbell), called The King and the Corpse: Tales of the Soul’s Conquest of Evil. “Soul’s conquest of evil?” you ask.

Part of maturing and evolving our consciousness is continually challenging our cherished self-image. It’s rather hard to do this, I mean, I’m mostly perfect, aren’t you? But luckily for us, life often conspires to bring us the lessons we need and offers up treasures in the most banal wrappings. Sometimes they come in the form of a good story.

One of my favorite things about this story is the riddling tales that it contains. Riddles have long been a tool wielded by mysterious creatures and spirits (the sphinx for example) to test the mettle of would-be heroes.

MITM theme music by Travis Rosenberg. Thanks to Radio Free Joshua Tree for providing MITM a home on internet radio-- and thank you for listening!

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