Clarissa Pincola Estes - Women Who Run With The Wolves - Myths And Storie by the Wild Woman Archetype (65 page)

Read Clarissa Pincola Estes - Women Who Run With The Wolves - Myths And Storie by the Wild Woman Archetype Online

Authors: Clarissa Pincola Estes

BOOK: Clarissa Pincola Estes - Women Who Run With The Wolves - Myths And Storie by the Wild Woman Archetype
13.04Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
  1. This is not to mean one should turn from being warm when warranted and of one's own free choice. The kind of niceness we are speaking of here is a kind that is slavish and borders on fawni
    ng. It is born
    of desperately wanting something and feeling disempowered. It is similar to the child who is afraid of dogs, saying “nice doggy, nice doggy," hoping this will appease the dog.

There is an even more malignant kind of “niceness" in which a woman uses her wiles to propitiate others. She feels she must pleasurably tweak others in order to gain what she believes would not be forthcoming otherwise. It is a malignant form of being nice. It puts a woman in the position of grinning and bowing, trying to make the other feel good so that they will be nice to her, support her, pass her, give her favors, not betray her, and so forth. She is agreeing not to be herself. She loses her shape and takes on the facade the other most seems to desire. While this may be a powerful camouflage tactic in a dire situation in which a woman has little or no control, if a woman voluntarily finds reason to be in this position most of the time, she is kidding herself about something very serious and has relinquished her main source of power: speaking candidly in her own behalf.

  1. Mana
    is a Melanesian word which lung derived from anthropological studies near the beginning of the twentieth century. He understood
    mana
    as describing the magical quality surrounding and emanating through certain people, talismans, natural elements like sea and mountain, trees, plants, rocks, places, and events. However, the anthropological characterization of that time does not take into account tribal people’s personal testimonies that put forth that
    mana
    experience is pragmatic and mystical at the same time; it both informs and moves. Additionally, from the report of mystics throughout
    tíme
    who have documented their ups ami downs with so-called
    maña,
    we know that affiliation with the core nature that produces this effect is much like being in love; one feels bereft without it. Though initially it may take up much time and incubation, later one comes to a rich and deep relationship with it
  2. The homunculi are the little creatures, such as the wee people, elves, and other “little people." Although some say the homunculus is a sub-human, those in whose heritage they figure feel they are supra-human; wisely trickerish and engendering in their own ways.
  3. Some denigrate the concept of the animal psyche, or separate themselves away from the idea that humans are both soulful and animal. Part of the problem lies in the perception that animals are not soulful or soul-filled. But the word itself,
    animal,
    is from the Latin, meaning a living creature, even more properly “anything living," and especially,
    animalis:
    having the breath of life, from
    anima,
    meaning air, breath, and life. At some point in time, perhaps not too far down the road, we may be amazed that this anthropocentrism ever took root, in the same way many are now amazed that discrimination against humans based on skin color was once an acceptable value for many.
  4. Without attention it will continue to be damned in various ways, in those who come after her. She can ease this by giving time to its repair now. We are not speaking of perfection but of building a certain sturdiness.

 

  1. In workshops with women in prison, wc sometimes make twig dolls together. We make dolts out of beans, apples, wheat, com, cloth, and rice paper. Some women draw on these materials with paints, some stitch, some glue them together. In the end, there are dozens and dozens of dolls laid out in rows, many

times
made from the same materials, but all as different and unique as the women who crafted them.

  1. One of the most central problems of older theories about women’s psychology is that the views of women’s lives were quite limited. It was not imagined that she could be as much as she is. Classical psychology was more the study of women all folded up, rather than women trying to break free, or women stretching and reaching. The instinctual nature demands a psychology that observes women striving as well as women who are uncrinking from years of living hunched over.
  2. This intuition we are speaking of is not the same as the typological functions Jung delineates: feeling, thinking, intuition, and sensation. In the female (and male) psyche, intuition is more than typology. It is of the instinctive psyche, of the soul, and it appears to be innate, having a maturation process, having perceiving, conceptualizing, and symbolizing abilities. It is a function belonging to all women (and men) regardless of typology.
  3. In most cases it appears that it is best to go when you are called (or pushed), when you have some semblance of being able to be nimble and resilient, than to hold back, resist, hold off, until the psychic circumstances erupt and drag you bloody and bruised through it all anyway. Sometimes there is no possibility of being poised. But when there is, it is less energy-consuming to proceed than to resist.
  4. Mother Night, one of the Life/Death/Life Goddesses from the Slavic tribes.
  5. Throughout
    Mezo-
    America,
    la máscara,
    the mask, connotes that a person has mastered union with the spirit portrayed by both the mask and the spirit-clothing
    one wears. This identification with spirit through clothing and face adornment
    has almost faded away completely in Western society. However, spinning of thread and weaving of cloth are ways to invite or be informed by spirit all in itself. There is serious evidence that the making of thread and cloth were once religious practices used to teach the cycles of life and death and beyond.
  6. It is good to have many personae, to make collections, sew up several, collect them as we go along in life. As we become older, with such a collection at our behest, we find we can portray any aspect of self most anytime we wish. However, at some point, most particulaily as one grows into and past mid-life and on into old age, one’s personas shift and meld in mysterious ways. Eventually, there is a kind of “meltdown,” a loss of personae complete, thereby revealing what would, in its greatest light, be called “the true self.”
  7. To work in an organic manner, one simplifies, stays more toward sensing and feeling, rather than toward over-intellectualization. Sometimes it is helpful, as one of my late colleagues, J. Vanderburgh, used to say, to think in teams that would be understood by a bright ten-year-old.
  8. These coincidentally are also the same qualities of successful soul life, but also of successful business and economic life.
  9. Jung felt one might be able to contact the oldest source through night dreams. (C. G.
    Jung Speaking
    , edited by William McGuire and R.F.C. Hull [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977].)
  10. It is actually a phenomenon of hypnogogic and hypnopompic states that are somewhere between sleep and waking. It is well documented in sleep laboratories that a question asked in the beginning “twilight” stage of sleep seems to sort through the brain’s “facts on file” during later stages of sleep, increasing the capability of bringing a direct answer to mind upon awakening.
  11. There was an old woman who lived in a shack in the woods near where I grew up. She ate a teaspoon of dirt a day. Said it kept the sorrows away.
  12. Throughout the oral and written fairy-tale tradition, there arc many contradictions regarding this. Some tales say that being wise when one is young will cause one to live a long time. Others caution that being old while young is not so gooa. in comparison, some of these arc proverbs that can be understood many different ways depending on the culture and time period from which they derive. Others however, to my mind, seem to be a kind of koan rather than an instruction. In other words, the phrases are meant to be contemplated rather than understood literally, a contemplation that might eventually bring a satori or sudden realization.
  13. This alchemy may have derived from observations far older than metaphysical writings. Several old woman storytellers from both Eastern Europe and Mexico have told me that the black, red, white symbolism derives from the menstrual and reproductive cycle of women. As all women who have menstruated know, black Is representative of the sloughed lining of the uterus that is not pregnant. Red symbolizes both the retention of blood in the uterus during pregnancy as well as the “bloody show." that spot of blood that announces the commencement of labor and hence the arrival of new life. White is the mother's milk that flows to teed the new charge. This is considered a complete cycle of intense transformation. It causes me to muse over whether alchemy was a later effort to create a vessel similar to the uterus and an entire set of symbols and actions that would give some proximity to the cycles of menses, gravida, delivery, and nursing. It seems likely that there is an archetype of pregnancy that is not to be taken literally and that it affects or rouses both genders who then must find a way to meaningfully symbolize it for themselves.
  14. I’ve studied the color red in mythos and fairy tales for many years; the red thread, the red shoes, the red cape, and so forth. I believe many fragments from mythos and fairy tales are derived from the old “red Goddesses” who are deities governing the full spectrum of female transformation—all “red” events—sexuality, birth, and the erotic, and originally part of the three sisters archetype of birth, death, and rebirth, as well as part of the rising and dying sun mythos throughout the world.
  15. Nineteenth century anthropology erroneously characterized that tribal reverence to deceased elders and grandparents, and the ritual preservation of elders’ life stories, were a form of “worship.” This unfortunate projection still permeates various “modem” literatures. By my lights, however, having decades of leading the family ritual of
    Dia
    de los muertos,
    “ancestral worship,” the term coined long ago in classical anthropology, ought to more accurately be called ancestor
    kinship,
    dial is, ongoing relationship with one’s venerated elders. The kinship ritual respects the family, blesses the idea that we are not separate from one another, that a single human life is not meaningless, and especially that the good and remarkable deeds of those who have gone before us are of immense value to teach us and guide us.
  16. Many female bones have been found at
    Çatal
    Hiiyiik, a Neolithic town under excavation in Anatolia.
  17. There are other variations of this story as well as other episodes and in some cases, epilogues or anticlimaxes tacked onto the end of the central story.
  18. We see the highly symbolized pelvis shape in bowls and icons from East Balkan and Yugoslavian sites which Gimbutas dates to 5-6000 B.c. Marija G
    imbuías,
    The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths and Cult Images
    (Berkeley; University of California Press, 1974. Updated edition, 1982).
  19. The image of the dit also appears in dreams, often as a something that is transformed into a useful thing. Some of my colleagues who are physicians speculate that this may symbolize the embryo or egg in its earliest stage. The story givers in our family often refer to the dit as the ova.
  20. It is possible that the spirit and consciousness of an individual has a genderlike “feel” to it, and that this masculinity or femininity of spirit and so forth, regardless of physical gender, is innate.

 

CHAPTER FOUR

The Mate: Union With the Other

  1. This rhyme at the end of the story is traditional in west Africa. It was taught to me by Opaianga. a
    griot.
  2. There is a child’s song in Jamaica that may be a remnant of this tale:
    "Just to
    wafer
    save the yes/ is a yes to the end
    / /
    ask her again
    /
    and again and again and again
    ~ This song was given into my care by V. B. Washington, who has been
    a
    cros
    s
    all my living, a mother to me.

3. The dog acts somewhat differently in a community of dogs than as a pet in a handy of humans.

  1. Robert Bly, personal communication, 1990.

 

CHAPTER FIVE

Hunting: When the Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

  1. Tins does not mean that the relationship comes to an end, but that certain aspects of relationship shed their skins, lose their shells, disappear without a trace,leaveno forwarding address, and then suddenly show up again in a different form, color, and texture.
  2. During one of my visits to the verdantland of Mexico, I developed a toothache, and
    a
    boticario
    sem
    me to a woman who was known for casing the pain from teeth. While she applied her medicines, she told me about
    Txati,
    the great spiritwoman. It is dear from her rendering that
    Txati
    is a Life/Death/Life Goddess, but as yet I find no re
    f
    erences to her in academic literature. Among other things
    mi abuelita, la avtmdera
    told me was that
    Txati
    is a great healer who is both the breast and the grave.
    Txati
    carries with her a copper bowl; turned one way, it contains and spills forth nourishment, turned the other way it becomes the container for the soul of the newly dead.
    Txati
    is the watcher over childbearing, lovemaking, and death.
  3. There are many versions of the Sedna story. She is a powerful deity who lives beneath the water and who is propitiated by healers who ask her to restore health and life to those who are ill or dying.
  4. Certainly the “taking of space” can be a valid need for solitude, but it is perhaps the most popular “white lie” of relationships of our time. Rather than talking about what is troubling, one “takes space” instead. This is an adult version of “the dog ale my homework,” or “my grandmother died...” for the fifth time.
  5. And also the not-yet beautiful.
  6. From the haunting poem “Integrity.” Adrienne Rich,
    The Fact of a Door- frame. Poems Selected and New. 1950-1984.
    New York: W. W. Norton, 1984.
  7. The inclusion of the younger binding the wound of the elder is an inclusion from our familial story “The Wound That Stank.”
  8. This is a condensation of a very long story that usually takes “three evenings during lightning-bug season” to tell properly.

Other books

Orchestrated Death by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
PLATINUM POHL by Frederik Pohl
Pagan's Daughter by Catherine Jinks
Shaking Off the Dust by Rhianna Samuels
American History Revised by Seymour Morris, Jr.
Moonscatter by Jo Clayton
Showdown in Crittertown by Justine Fontes