PIED PIPER

Who was the Pied Piper of Hamelin and why is he still playing the tune?

3rd January 2024

WHO REALLY WAS THE PIED PIPER OF HAMLIN?

With his colourful suit , appearing like the joker in a card deck, the Pied Piper is an archetype etched in our consciousness. His legacy has meant that today he is a metaphor for any false prophets and ‘time to pay the piper’ is another way of saying that you the hour has come to settle your spiritual debts.  

 The legend of the Pied Piper is a dark, mysterious tale and is attached to what appears to be a real event in history that occurred in Hamlin (Hameln), Lower Saxony, in Germany on  26th June 1284. (Day of John and Paul). The earliest account known is a version of the story etched on a beam on a wall of the ‘Rattenfangerhaus’, which is on the site of the medieval East gate of Hamelin. 

This describes the following:

‘In the year 1284 on the day of John and Paul, the 26th June, 130 children born in Hamelin were led away by a piper dressed in many-coloured clothes to Calvary close to the Koppen and were there lost’

So the story goes, the piper led the children through the medieval east gate of Hamelin and to their fate.  

By the 16th Century we have rats entering the equation and the pipe playing trickster sometimes portrayed as a devil. In 1565  an account written by Count Frozen Christoph von Zimmern describes a miracle of God whereby a stranger agreed to rid the town of rats for a fee and when he is not paid in return he leads the children to the mountainside where a portal appears and they vanish forever.  Around the same time Johannes Weier identifies the piper as a ‘blood-sucking demon’.

In a 1557 account by Hans Zeitlos, on reaching the hill at ‘Calvary’ two naked children get left behind, one deaf and one dumb. This piper claimed he would return after 300 years. This is a reference to a second coming, and 300 could be a covert reference to a 30 percent slice of the circle of the great year which equals 2160 years and is the time usually counted as one age or eon.

Other accounts have the children being led by the piper to drown in a river and/or one or two children  left behind.  One account has one lame child left behind. In Leviticus 21 (v23) there is a possible reference to disability. It states:

‘ but he shall not go through the veil or approach the altar because he has blemish; that he may not profane my sanctuaries’

Hameln lies along the Weser River. It was a market town and dependent on the Abbey of Fulda until 1259. The town was founded by Benedictine monks from Fulda in 851 AD around the Abbey of St. Boniface.   Benedictine monks were known as ‘black monks’ and wore black robes. The Coat of Arms of the Fulda abbey had a black cross on a white background and some of the Fulda monks were no doubt members of the

Teutonic Knights secret order which has similar monastic military roots as the Knights Templar. Black and white is the original meaning of ‘pied’, hence ‘mag ..pie’.  Or ‘pie ..bald’ pony. Pied could be just be a reference to dark and light.

 Hameln passed into the hands of the Dukes of Brunswick and became a member of the Hanseatic League, a powerful and influential trade guild. The house of Brunswick is what we now know as the House of Hanover, i.e. the house of Queen Victoria. It seems the Pied Piper might have been a pedigree piper. And with that in mind it is tempting to go further back into history to look for the origin of this folk tale.  Countless children have perished throughout history, so why are the children of Hameln so special and why is the loss of the mothers of Hameln something that we are all supposed to grieve? 

Looking back to the year 807, in the town of Fulda whose monks first founded Hameln,  an epidemic is supposed to have claimed much of that town’s population.  The third abbot of Fulda at that time was a monk called ‘Ratgar’. He was carrying out construction on a new church.  Clearly he was not liked and although many excuses are given for this, it seems the main reason may have been connected with the Synods of Aachen (816-819)  which drastically reformed the Benedictine orders and brought them much more under imperial control.  Obedience to this revised Benedictine rule now became central for all the orders. Ratgar was opposed to all the property of the Abbey being made  public. The reigning Carolingian dynasty was attempting through their reforms to get hold of ‘episcopal states’ of which the Frankish Bishops had previously assumed control.  Ratgar’s attempts to keep property in the hands of his monastery and out of the hands of the ruling dynasty was probably the real reason he was eventually exiled by Louis the Pious (son of Charlemagne). 

Could Ratgar have been the ‘rats’ that were driven out?  Could this incident have a connection with the myth of the Pied Piper? Could Louis the Pious be the Pied Piper? Louis is depicted as a Soldier of Christ with a red shield, red hair , red tunic with green robe and large red cross. Something seems a little Khazarian here.

And Martian.

The Midsummer Pagan festival of course  could, instead, be the guilty party here.  Near to Hameln was a place called Coppenbrugge and a hill there could be what the ‘Koppen’ refers to. According to Julian Scutts, in his book ‘The Pied Piper of Hamlin’, Nikolai von Spiegelberg took up residence at Coppenbrugge and could be associated with the piper. He and his two brothers wanted to suppress heathen or heretical rites from being performed on the Koppanberg (a rocky elevation) nearby. Julian Scutts also finds a possible Piper references in Shakespeare’s Richard III.  There are similarities between the legendary piper and the pagan God Pan of course.  Pan is a Satyr and a figure associated with fertility, music and wine.  There are also numerous reports of crazy  and mysterious dancing ‘plagues’ occurring in the middle ages.

It is possible that those afflicted by this dance fever had ingested ergot, the mould on damp rye which is a psychedelic substance and poison. Some people believe this dance affliction is the origin of the pied piper myth,  but this would not be likely to be confined to just children or young people, since both old and young would eat bread (or drink alcohol) made with rye. Although this could have been some kind of ‘play that funky music medieval boy’ excuse for an orgy, the concept of Calvary is more typically symbolic for the equinoxes  when the sun ecliptic path crosses over the celestial equator.  Or it could be symbolic of the winter solstice as according to Peter Joseph, the sun hangs around the southern cross (crux) constellation for the three days  at the winter solstice (effectively dying and rising again on the cross).

Films are littered with piper themes. The Child catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is an interesting piper type figure.  When he tempts the children into his wheeled cage, the symbolism is literally screaming out at you.  There are sunflowers, symbolising Leo , purple diamond shapes, alternating light and dark and more purple and white striped canvas.  Purple is the colour of royalty which derives originally from the power of the menses ‘blood of purple hue’. Diamonds are the jewel of Taurus. There is a joker/court jester on the side of the cage between two pillars and when the child catcher sets off with his haul, the pillars which cover two corners of the vehicle collapse and the whole external cover of the vehicle comes off so just the bars of the cage are now visible with the children inside. You can check it out here:

This seems like collapse of the temple into manifestation. Revelation begun again.

Fagin in Oliver Twist is a piper archetypal character too.  He is both God and demon to the waif and strays he collects.

An alternative possibility for the origins of the pied piper could be a reference to a guy called Nicholas of Cologne.  He led children or young people in poverty (known as pueri) on crusades to take Israel back from the muslims in 1212.  A call to arms. He and his followers used the symbol of a Tau cross, a living T-cross, as depicted in the hanged man of the tarot.  It’s 1212 and the hanged man happens to be key XII. Nothing to see here.

Below is Tau Cross.

The tau cross was used by Francis of Assisi as a symbol of salvation. It happens to be the same imagery as the Hebrew letter ‘zayin’, which is the seventh letter in the Hebrew script.

Zayin is ‘G’ in roman script. Possibly the G on the masonic square and compass.

We don’t have to confine the pied piper in a western straight jacket. Chinese sinful monsters were punished for the sin of upsetting the calendar. One Chinese myth involves a green ox  or one-legged dragon like creature  of the Eastern Sea, known as K’uei, who was made ‘master of music ‘ by Emperor Shun. The legendary Yellow Emperor had also used this beast’s his skin to make a drum to invoke wind and rain.   K’uei was both Master of the Dance and Master of the Forge in true shamanic style. The creature was brought to court because only he could bring into harmony the six pipes and the seven modes. Shun also made sacrifices to ‘six honoured ones’. He could cause the ‘100 animals to dance’ by touching the musical stone and helped ‘regulate the rivers’. Emperor Shun was of the Confucian school of thought and the 100 animals likely refers to the ‘hundred schools of thought ‘ (zhuzi baijia) prevalent in ancient China. Sixes and sevens is a phrase in the west which means a state of confusion.  Do they really mean a state of confucianism?

Six is the first perfect number to the pythagoreans. The hexagram known as K’uei in the I Ching signifies ‘opposites’ and in the field of music, for tuning there were six yang (pitch) pipes (male) and six yin pipes (female). This must correspond with six lines (Yang old or young) and Yin (old or young) in each hexagram of the I ching and both the I ching and the sex magic of the Taoists are alchemical processes. The Chinese character 7 also looks like a cross and is called ‘qi’ … known in the west as chi

which means the breath/life force. The character 6 is liu which means battle-axe or slaugher/death. 

If you imagine Liu superimposed on Qi you will get a kind of human figure with a tail. Opposites , Qi and Lui, 7 and 6 are just waiting to be reunited.

But it seems resolution is only obtained by paying the piper.  Up till then there remains a state of tension. When we mere mortals attempt to resolve issues by striking a bargain, we merely create a new tension. A new debt is born, time and time again, until we hand it all over. Any attempts at holding onto that little stash for a rainy day keeps the tension going. This echoes the stages of grief which can involve denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance .

Is it possible that the pied piper is really about the lost ‘children of Israel’?  If we count 13 tribes, then that would be represented by 130 children, because number symbolism in sacred geometry works the same regardless of whether  any number is in 10s, 100s or 1000s or more. Remember that in some versions of the Piper story , two children are left behind perhaps hinting at the 2 tribes of Judah and Benjamin. That would leave 10 tribes lost plus the mystery 13th tribe. And it would mean the Pied Piper represents the Assyrians who conquered the Northern kingdom. The ‘children’ were lost on a hill or mountain (koppen) and in astrology high places indicate North (the pole star).

Joseph was of course given an ‘amazing technicolour dreamcoat' and the story of Joseph in Genesis, in relation to Potiphar’s wife, is partly based on an Egyptian myth called ‘The Tale of Two Brothers’ which describes  one brother as married (not particularly happily) and the other spending his time in the field ploughing oxen.   The married brother has a jealous wife who uses deceit to cause a rift between the brothers. This rift becomes a river full of crocodiles. A metaphor for the subconscious.  The ‘K’uei rears its beastly head. It is important to remember that the day of the supposed abduction in Hamlen was the ‘day of John and Paul, the martyrs. They were eunuchs for Constantine’s daughter. And Joseph is to some a gay icon. And he was the archetypal scapegoat. The scapegoat is always the beast through which man sees his own demons. Those naked souls whom he blames for his own layers of masks behind which he hides.

The concept of a ‘coat of many colours’ could also be meant to indicate a changeling.  Or a deceptive force.  The pied piper has been depicted as both God and Satan.  And perhaps he is both. God works in mysterious ways and Satan comes in many guises. Temptation rears its ugly head in many forms.  Is there really no choice but in the end to pay for your ‘sins’?

Our biggest adversary is our own inner demons. 

Ultimately passing through the Eastern Gate of Hamelin means the piper is moving us into a new age . The old faces judgement and renewal begins. It is not the young that are losing out in this story, it is the old. They face the loss.  As written in Matthew 2 v.18

‘A voice is heard in Ramah

weeping and great mourning

Rachel weeping for her children

and refusing to be comforted

because they are no more’

The piper is playing the tune that you have no choice but to dance to. It is a tune of time and that is emotion itself. And emotion is the door of magic. The ups and downs we feel, the ebbs and flows, the peaks and troughs, they provide the keys. Dance or die, that’s it. The colourful clothes of the piper are merely the many shades that he comes in. The green of spring, summer yellows, autumn golds, winter greys. And as the solar energy provides our warmth, our fuel and our harvest to feed our children, so, when the day is done, and the crumbs swept under the table, we are obliged to write the cheque payable to the life-giving sun in return. And the piper calls the tune once more and the children return as fuel to the stars.