Red Riding Hood
After posting the bit on Genesis, I was challenged, jokingly I’m sure, to explain Little Red Riding Hood in the same way. Challenge accepted.
The redness of the girl’s cloak is a later embellishment. We don’t need it to understand the symbols, but it helps. This is another transformation story, only the subject matter is pretty well restricted to a young girl’s awakening to grown-up sexual experience. The wolf is an agent of transformation. One of Loki’s children is Fenrir, the Great Wolf who will kill Odin at the Ragnarok. The point of killing a god is to pass on his … Continue Reading