“Fire, light and the dazzling luminosity of the starry dimension are all images that were associated through the ages with the radiance of Wisdom, which, as a fusion of love and insight, or gnosis, expresses the union of queen and king, the highest feminine and masculine qualities of the soul. In the fairy-tale these are personified by Cinderella and the Prince. . . .

Cinderella’s dresses, her “robe of glory”, are described as “blue like the sky”, woven of the stars of heaven, of moonbeams, sunbeams, or made of all the flowers in the world. Sometimes the metaphor of the sea appears and her dress is “sea-coloured” or “like the waves of the sea” or “as the sea with fishes swimming it” and as the “colour of the sea covered with golden fishes”. . . . Sometimes her dresses shine like the sun or gold, covered in diamonds and pearls, “of spendour passing description”. . . .

Cinderella’s shoes or slippers are described as made of crystal, or gold or blue glass, or embroidered with pearls. Without her glass slipper, Cinderella would not have been recognized, and it could fit only her whose standpoint had become translucent to the light of Wisdom.”

—Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, from The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image, 2005.