Unlike the Persian mystical works, most notably Rumi’s Mathnavi in which the stories are narrated in the service of conveying a spiritual message and are usually followed by some keys to their deeper meanings, the epical Shahnameh is silent for the most part on the possible symbolic readings of the stories therein. In preface to the Shahnameh, however, Ferdowsi invites the reader to understand symbolically the things that are not compatible with her wisdom, and thus leaves the task of contemplating the deeper meanings of the stories to the reader. In this study, we present a few medieval and pre-modern works that offer symbolic readings for the Shahnameh and examine their methods of interpretation and their motivations for offering mystical readings for an essentially epical work. The examined works are: the mystical readings of the stories of Jamshid, Bijan and Manijeh and occultation of Kaykhosrow in Elahi Nameh(EN) by Attar (13th century AD), the story of Rostam and Esfandiar in Kadu Matbakh-i Qalandari (KM) by Adham Khalkhali (died ca. 1642 AD) and the story of Siyavash and Afrasiyab in Latife-ye Gheybiyeh(LG) by Muhammad Darabi Shirazi (died ca. 1717 AD). Regarding the methods of interpretation, most of the accounts read the stories allegorically by projecting the conflicts in the original story onto internal conflicts among man’s various faculties, e.g., KM makes the following parallels: Esfandiar=the carnal soul, Rostam=mind of a disciple, Rostam’s arrows with no effect on Esfandiar=disciple’s thoughts and practices, etc. The conflict between Rostam and Esfandiar, therefore, represents the situation where the disciple is unable to save himself on his own; rather, he needs the help of a perfect master just as Rostam could only win with the help of Zal. In EN’s account of Jamshid and Kaykhosrow, the author uses the contrast between the rather different destinies of the two figures to convey the distinction between the literal meaning of the cup of Jamshid, i.e., mastering the world’s mysteries, and its real meaning, i.e., the heart of a realized mystic who can see the Truth. Finally, we argue that in spite of Ferdowsi’s silence on the symbolic interpretations of the Shahnameh, medieval authors who considered Ferdowsi as a sage, do offer symbolic meanings for the stories to the extent that for some of them, reading the stories otherwise is not worth it, even though ‘they are as sweet as sugar’.