"According to many English and Celtic tales, any human who enters a fairy ring will be forced to dance with the creatures, unable to stop until they go mad or perish of exhaustion," explains Ariel Kusby in Garden Collage magazine. In the same way that Coraline enters the Beldam's world, partakes in its delights, and can't leave, entering a fairy ring harbors dark consequences. The mouth of the well is buried beneath the earth, hidden and surrounded in a fairy ring.įairy rings can often demarcate old wells due to the moisture, but folklore and legends surrounding them mirror the story of the Beldam's Other World. The first time Coraline goes out to explore her new Oregon home, she's trying to find an old well by water witching. A "fairy ring" is a naturally occurring growth of mushrooms that forms a circle, typically in grass. One prominent symbol that serves as foreshadowing in the film is the fairy ring that Coraline stumbles into. Obvious symbols like the black cat, the water witching, and the tea-leaf readings are present, but even the buttons, the mice, and the bleeding hearts in the garden are packed with relevant meaning: Bleeding heart flowers are meant to symbolize the bridge between life and death, and similar themes are certainly present in the Other World. They’re created to help fill a need of the practitioner, just as the Other Mother needs to fill her void with a new child. The doll itself, of course, is a totem, like the poppets used in magical practices for over 4,000 years (often for less-nefarious purposes than the Beldam’s dolls were). They’re also used for protection.įorcible and Spink possess what's commonly known as “the sight” or " second sight" (typically some kind of precognitive or clairvoyant ability), as shown when they read Coraline's tea leaves and see that she's in “terrible danger.” They also see a “tall, handsome beast,” and while this reading was a bit off the mark, the Other Mother certainly transforms into a tall, spindly beast by the end of the film. Outside of the story, these objects are commonly known as hagstones or fairy stones, but they’re used for the same purpose shown in the film: to see what can’t be seen. The blind souls of the children the Beldam has discarded plead with Coraline to find their eyes so that their souls may be set free.Įven the tool Forcible and Spink give to Coraline is called a "seeing stone" - it allows her to see what's invisible to her eyes alone. Across many different cultures, eyes symbolize the soul and protection. Within the opening doll sequence, this symbolism begins with the eyes and mouth - features commonly associated with human identity that are repeated throughout the film. The spooky symbols and objects in Coraline aren’t just for set dressing or mood-setting much of what's on screen is relevant to the story.
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