The cave being booby-trapped represents the labyrinth that you must travel to find your way in and out. The conscious mind is the mental prison that you unknowingly create, not realizing that you are a slave to an uncontrolled mind. Aladdin finds himself trapped within this cave.
In the story above, the cave represents the conscious mind. The sorcerer gave Aladdin a magic ring to protect him, but didn’t explain that the cave’s spells required that only the sorcerer could receive the lamp from another. He instructed Aladdin to find an oil lamp deep within the cave. The sorcerer led Aladdin to a booby-trapped cave. Aladdin’s mother, also blind to the sorcerer’s true intentions, granted permission for Aladdin to work with him. He recruited Aladdin to work with him by convincing him that he would turn Aladdin into a wealthy merchant.
One day, an African sorcerer approached him while he was playing in the streets and claimed to be Aladdin’s uncle. He was a feral child with little adult supervision. Aladdin lived with his mother in a Chinese town, as his father has died. One such fairytale is the story of Aladdin and his magic lamp, from the Arabian Nights tales.
Fairytales are mythological in nature and have deep esoteric meanings that are cloaked in allegory, parables and symbolism. A wise man once told me that many great truths are hidden within children’s fairytales, if you look deeply enough to find them.
