Clarissa Pincola Estes - Women Who Run With The Wolves - Myths And Storie by the Wild Woman Archetype (62 page)

CHAPTER 15

Shadowing:
Canto Hondo,
The Deep Song

Shadowing means to have such a light touch, such a light tread, that One can move freely through the forest, observing without being observed. A wolf shadows anyone or anything that passes through her territory. It is her way of gathering information. It is the equivalent of manifesting and then becoming like smoke, and then manifesting again.

Wolves can move ever so softly. The sound they make is in the manner of
los ángeles tímidos
, the shyest angels. First they fall back and shadow the creature they’re curious about. Then, all of a sudden, they appear ahead of the creature, peeking half-face with one golden eye from behind a tree. Abruptly, the wolf turns and vanishes in a blur of white ruff and plumed tail, only to backtrack and pop up behind the stranger again. That is shadowing.

The Wild Woman has been shadowing human women for years. Now we see a glimpse of her. Now she is invisible again. Yet she makes so many appearances in our lives, and in so many different forms, we feel surrounded by her images and urges. She comes to us in dreams or in stories—especially stories from our own personal lives—for she wants to see who we are, and if we are ready to join her yet. If we but look at the shadows we cast, we see that they are not two-legged human shadows but the lovely shapes of a something free and wild.

We are meant to be permanent residents, not just tourists in her territory, for we are derived from that land: it is our motherland and our inheritance at the same time. The wild force of our soul-

psyches is shadowing us for a reason. There is a saying from medieval times that if you are in a descent, and pursued by a great power—and if this great power is able to snag your shadow, then you too shall become a power in your own right.

The great and good wild force of our own psyches means to place its paw on our shadows, and in that manner she claims us as her own. Once the Wild Woman snags our shadows, we belong to ourselves again, we are in our own right environ and in our rightful home.

Most women are not afraid of this, in fact, they crave the reunion. If they could this very moment find the lair of the Wild Woman, they would dive right in and jump happily into her lap. They only need to be set in the right direction, which is always down, down into one’s own work, down into one’s own inner life, down through that tunnel to the lair.

We began our search for the wild, whether as girlchildren or as adult women, because in the midst of some ardent endeavor we felt that a wild and supportive presence was near. Perhaps we found her tracks across fresh snow in a dream. Or psychically, we noticed a bent twig here and there, pebbles overturned so their wet sides faced upward ... and we knew that something blessed had passed our way. We sensed within our own psyches the sound of a familiar breath from afar, we felt tremors in the ground, and we innately knew that something powerful, someone important, some wild freedom within us was on the move.

We could not turn from it, but rather followed, learning more and more how to leap, how to run, how to shadow all things that came across our psychic ground. We began to shadow the Wild Woman and she lovingly shadowed us in return. She howled and we tried to answer her, even before we remembered how to speak her language, and even before we exactly knew to whom we were speaking. And she waited for us, and encouraged us. This is the miracle of the wild and instinctual nature. Without full knowing, we knew. Without full sight, we understood that a miraculous and loving force existed beyond the boundaries of ego alone.

As a child, Opal Whitely wrote these words about reconciliation with the power of the wild.

Today near eventime I did lead

the girl who has no seeing

a little way into the forest

where it was darkness and shadows were.

I led her toward a shadow

that was coming our way.

It did touch her cheeks

with its velvety fingers.

And now she too

does have likings for shadows.

And her fear that was is gone.

The things that have been lost to women for centuries can be found again by following the shadows they cast. And make a candle to Guadalupe, for these lost and stolen treasures still cast shadows across our nightdreams and in our
imaginai
daydreams and in old, old stories, in poetry, and in any inspired moment. Women across the world—your mother, my mother, you and I, your sister, your friend, our daughters, all the tribes of women not yet met—we all dream what is lost, what next must rise from the unconscious. We all dream the same dreams worldwide. We are never without the map. We are never without each other. We unite through our dreams.

Dreams are compensatory, they provide a mirror into the deep unconscious most often reflecting what is lost, and, what is yet needed for correction and balance. Through dreams, the unconscious constantly produces teaching images. So, like a fabled lost continent, the wild dreamland rises out of our sleeping bodies, rises steaming and streaming to create a sheltering motherland over all of us. This is the continent of our knowing. It is the land of our Self.

And this is what we dream: We dream the archetype of Wild Woman, we
dream of reunion. And we are born
and reborn from this dream every day and create from its energy all during the daytim
e. We are born
and reborn night after night from this same wild dream, and we return to daylight grasping a coarse hair, the soles of our feet black with damp earth, our hair smelling like ocean, or forest or cook fire.

It is from that land that we step into our day clothes, our day lives. We travel from that wildish place in order to sit before the computer, in front of the cook pot, before the window, in front of the teacher, the book, the customer. We breathe the wild into our corporate work, our business creations, our decisions, our art, the work of our hands and hearts, our politics, spirituality, plans, home- life, education, industry, foreign affairs, freedoms, rights, and duties. The wild feminine is not only sustainable in all worlds; it
sustains
all worlds.

Let us admit it We women are building a motherland; each with her own plot of soil eked from a night of dreams, a day of work. We are spreading this soil in larger and larger circles, slowly, slowly. One day it will be a continuous land, a resurrected land come back from the dead.
Munda
de la Madre
,
psychic
motherworld,
coexisting and coequal with all other worlds. This world is being made from our lives, our cries, our laughter, our bones. It is a world worth making, a world worth living in, a world in which there is a prevailing and decent wild sanity.

When we think of reclamation it may bring to mind bulldozers or carpenters, the restoration of an old structure, and that is the modem usage of the word. However, the older meaning is this: The word
reclamation
is derived from the old French
reclaimer
, meaning “to call
back
the hawk which has been let fly.” Y
es,
to cause something of the wild to return when it is called. It is therefore by its meaning an excellent word for us. We are using the voices of our minds, our Uves, and our souls to call back intuition, imagination; to call back the Wild Woman. And she comes.

Women cannot get away from this. If there is to be change, we are it We carry
La Que Sabe
, the One Who Knows. If there is to be inner change, individual woman must do it. If there is to be world change, we women have our own way of helping to achieve it. Wild Woman whispers the words and the ways to us, and we follow. She has been running and stopping and waiting to see if we are catching up. She has something, many things, to show us.

So, if you are on the verge of breaking away, taking a risk— daring to act in proscribed ways, then dig up the deepest bones possible, fructifying the wild and natural aspects of women, of life, of men, of children, of earth. Use your love
and
good instincts

to know when to growl, to pounce, to take a swipe, when to kill, when to retreat, when to bay till dawn. To live as closely as possible to the numinous wild a woman must do more head tossing, more brimming, have more sniffing intuition, more creative life, more “get-down-dirtymore solitude, more women's company, more natural life, more fire, more spirit, more cooking of words and ideas. She must do more recognition of sorority, more seeding, more root stock-keeping, more kindness to men, more neighborhood revolution, more poetry, more painting of fables and facts, longer reaches into the wild feminine. More terrorist sewing circles, and more howling. And, especially, much more
canto hondo
, much more deep song.

She must shake out her pelt, strut the old pathways, assert her instinctual knowledge. We can all assert membership in the ancient scar clan, proudly bear the battle scars of our time, write our secrets on walls, refuse to be ashamed, lead the way through and out. Let us not overspend on anger. Instead let us be empowered by it. Most of all let us be cunning and use our feminine wits.

Let us keep in mind that the best cannot and must not hide. Meditation, education, all the dream analysis, all the knowledge of God's green acre is of no value if one keeps it all to oneself or one’s chosen few. So come out, come out wherever you are. Leave deep footprints because you can. Be the old woman in the rocking chair who rocks the idea until it becomes young again. Be the courageous and patient woman in “The Crescent Moon Bear” who learns to see through illusion. Don’t be distracted by burning matches and fantasies like the Little Match Girl.

Hold out till you find the ones you belong to like the Ugly Duckling. Clear the creative river so
La Llorona
can find what belongs to her. Like the Handless Maiden, let the enduring heart lead you through the forest. Like
La Loba
, collect the bones of lost valuables and sing them back to life. Forgive as much as you can, forget a little, and create a lot. What you do today influences your matrilineal lines in the future. The daughters of your daughters of your daughters are likely to remember you, and most importantly, follow in your tracks.

The ways and means of living with the instinctive nature are many, and the answers to your deepest questions change as you

change and as the world changes, so it cannot be said: “Do this, and this, in this particular order, and all will be well.” But, over my lifetime as I’ve met wolves, I have tried to puzzle out how they live, for the most part, in such harmony. So, for peaceable purposes, I would suggest you begin right now with any point on this list. For those who are struggling, it may help greatly to begin with number ten.

GENERAL WOLF RULES FOR LIFE

1.
Eat

CHAPTER 16

The Wolf’s Eyelash

If you don't go out in the woods, nothing will ever happen and your life will never begin.

“Don’t go out in the woods, don’t go out,” they said.

“Why not? Why should I not go out in the woods tonight?” she asked.

“A big wolf lives there who eats humans such as you. Don’t go out in the woods, don’t go out. We mean it.”

Naturally, she went out. She went out in the woods anyway, and of course she met the wolf, just as they had warned her.

“See, we told you,” they crowed.

“This is my life, not a fairy tale, you dolts,” she said. “I have to go to the woods, and I have to meet the wolf, or else my life will never begin.”

But the wolf she encountered was in a trap, in a trap this wolfs leg was in.

“Help me, oh help me! Aieeeee, aieeee, aieeee!” cried the wolf. “Help me, oh help me!” he cried, “and I shall reward you justly.” For this is the way of wolves in tales of this kind.

“How do I know you won’t harm me?” she asked—it was her job to ask questions. “How do I know you will not kill me and leave me lying in my bones?”

“Wrong question,” said this wolf. “You’ll just have to take my word for it.” And the wolf began to cry and wail once again and more.

“Oh, aieee! Aieeee! Aieeee!

There’s only one question

worth asking fair maiden,

wooooooooor

aieeeeeth’

soooooooool?”

“Oh you wolf, I will take a chance. Alright, here!” And she sprang the trap and the wolf drew out its paw and this she bound with herbs and grasses.

“Ah, thank you kind maiden, thank you,” sighed the wolf. And because she had read too many of the wrong kind of tales, she cried, “Go ahead and kill me now, and let us get this over with.”

But no, this did not come to pass. Instead this wolf put his paw upon her arm.

“I’m a wolf from another time and place,” said he. And plucking a lash from his eye, gave it to her and said, “Use this, and be wise. From now on you will know who is good and not so good; just look through my eyes and you will see clearly.

For letting me live,

I bid you live

in a manner as never before.

Remember, there’s only one question

worth asking fair maiden,

wooooooooor

aieeeee th’

soooooooool?”

And so she went back to her village,

happy to still have her life.

And this time as they said,

“Just stay here and be my bride,”

or “Do as I tell you,”

or “Say as I want you to say,

and remain as unwritten upon

as the day you came,”

she held up the wolfs eyelash