Clarissa Pincola Estes - Women Who Run With The Wolves - Myths And Storie by the Wild Woman Archetype (67 page)
Authors: Clarissa Pincola Estes
In th
e 1960s in the United States, many newly militant women avoided makeup in order to make a political statement, essentially saying they did not wish to present themselves as delectables to be consumed by men. In comparison, both genders in many native cultures don face and body paint to both repel and attract. In essence, for women, self-decoration is a creative province of the feminine, and how or whether one chooses to decorate oneself is a personal language either way, conveying whatever a woman wishes.
- Fora very fine biography of Janis Joplin, who lived
a
modera
version of “The Red Shoes”, see Myra Friedman,
Buried Alive: The Biography’ of Jams Joplin
(New York: Morrow, 1973). There is an updated version published by Harmony Books, NY, 1992. - This is not to overlook organic etiology and in sane cases iatrogenic deteriorations in some.
- The most modem versions we have of “The Red Shoes’* story probably show mane clearly how the original matter of these rites were distorted and corrupted than a thousand pages of historical research. Nevertheless, the remaining versions, though remnants, are invaluable for sometimes the more recent and brutal overlays
of
a fairy tale tell us exactly what we need to know in order to survive mid thrive in a culture and/or psychic environ that mimics the destructive process shown in the tale itself. In that sense we are lucky in an odd way, to have a fragmentary tale that clearly marks the psychic
traps
waiting for us in the here and now. - The rite; of ancient and contemporary aboriginal women me often called “puberty” and “fertility” rites. However, those phrases have been envisioned from a mostly male viewpoint in anthropology, archeology, and ethnology since at least the
middle of the nineteenth century. They are phrases that unfortunately distort and fragment the process of women’s lives rather than representing the actual reality.
Metaphorically, a woman passes both upward and downward through the bone holes of her own pelvis many times and in different ways and each time there is potential to gain new knowing. This process goes on throughout a woman’s entire life. The so-called “fertility” phase does not
begin at menstruation and end at menopause.
More properly all “fertility” rites ought to be called threshold rites; each one named according to its specific transformative power, not only what might be accomplished overtly but what is accomplished internally. The
Diñé
(Navajo) blessing ritual called “The Beauty Way” is a good example of language and naming that
defíne
the heart of the matter.
- Mourning Unlived
Uves—
A Psychological Study of Childbearing Loss
by Jungian analyst Judith A. Savage is an excellent book and one of the few of its kind on this issue of enormous significance to women (Wilmette, Illinois: Chiron, 1989). - Rites, such as hatha and tantric yogas, and dance, and other enactments that order one’s relationship with one’s body are immensely re-empowering.
- In some folklores, it is said that the Devil is not comfortable in human form, that the fit isn’t quite right, thereby causing the Devil to limp about. In fairy-tale sense the girl in “The Red Shoes” comes to be severed from her feet and therefore has to limp about too for she has “danced with the Devil” so to speak, having taken on his “limping,” i.e., his subhuman excessive and deadening life.
- In Christian times, the ancient shoemaker’s tools became synonymous with the devil’s torture tools: rasp, pincers, pliers, nippers, hammer, awl, and so forth. In Pagan times shoemakers shared the spiritual responsibility of propitiating the animals from which shoe leather, soles, linings, and wrappings came. By the 1500s, it was asserted throughout non-Pagan Europe that “fals prophetes are maid of Tinklaris and schoeclouters ... false prophets are made [up] of tinkers and shoemakers”
- Studies
on
normalization of violence and learned helplessness have been conducted by experimental psychologist Martin Seligman, Ph.D., and others. - In the 1970s in her landmark
bock
oh battered women (
The Battered Woman
[New York: Harper
8c
Row, 1980edition]), Lenore E. Walker applied this principle to the mystery of why women stayed with partners who grossly mistreated them. - Or to those around us who are young or helpless.
- The women’s movement, N.O.W., and other organizations, some ecologically oriented, others educational and rights oriented were/are headed up by, developed, and expanded by, and the memberships composed of many, many women who took great risks to step forward and speak out, and perhaps most importantly, to continue, in full voice. In the area of rights there are many voices and directives from both men and women.
- This keeping a woman in line by her female peers and older women lessens controversy and enhances safety for women who must live under hostile conditions. Under other circumstances however, this psychologically pitches women into full scale betrayals of one another, thereby cutting off another matrilineal inheritance— that of having elders who will speak for younger women, who will intervene, adjudicate, go to council with whomever in order to maintain a balanced society and rights for all.
In other cultures where each gender is understood as either sister or brother, the hierarchical parameters imposed by age and power are softened by caretaking relationships and responsibility for and to each person.
For women who have been betrayed as children, there is a continuing
expectations
that one will also be betrayed by lover, employer, and culture. Her first experiences with betrayal often came from an incident, one or many, from within her own female or familial lines. It is another miracle of the psyche that such a woman can still trust so very much even though she has been betrayed so very much.
Betrayals occur when those who have power see the trouble and look away. Betrayal occurs when people break promises, hedge on vows of help, protection, speaking for, standing with, withdrawing from acts of courage and acting preoccupied, indifferent, unaware, and so forth instead.
- Addiction is anything that depletes life while making it “appear” better.
- The starvation, ferality, or addiction is not the cause of psychosis per se, but rather a primary and on-going attack on the strength of the psyche. An opportunistic complex could theoretically inundate the weakened psyche. This is why it is important to repair injured instinct so that insofar as possible the person does not continue in a deteriorative or vulnerable condition.
- Charles Simic,
Selected Poems
(New York: Braziller, 1985). - “The Elements of Capture,
” © 1982, C. P.
Estés,
Ph.D., from post-doctoral thesis.
Take an original.
Domesticate her early, preferably before speech or locomotion.
Over-socialize her in the extreme.
Cause a famine for her wild nature.
Isolate her from the sufferings and freedoms of others so she has nothing to compare her life with.
Teach her only one point of view.
Let her be needy (or dry or cold) and let all see it, yet none tell her.
Let her be split off from her natural body, thereby removing her from relationship with this being.
Cut her loose in an environ where she can over-kill on things previously denied her, things both exciting and dangerous.
Give her friends who are also famished and who encourage her to be intemperate.
Let her injured instincts for prudence and protection continue without repair.
Because of her excesses, (not enough food, too much food, drags, not enough sleep, too much sleep, etc.) let Death insinuate itself close by.
Let her straggle with “good-girl” persona restoration and succeed at it, but only from time to time.
Then, and finally, let her have a frantic reinvoivement in psychologically or physiologically addictive excesses that are deadening in and of themselves or through misuse (alcohol, sex, rage, compliance, power, etc.).
Now she is captured. Reverse the process, and she will learn to be free. Repair her instincts and she will become strong again.
CHAPTER NINE
Homing: Returning to OneSelf
- The core theme of this story, the finding of love and home, and the facing of the death nature is one of many found throughout the world. (Also the device of “having to break off frozen words from the lips of the speaker and thaw them by the fire to see what was said,” is found worldwide throughout the cold countries.)
- It is also said among various ethnic groups that the soul does not incarnate into the flesh or give birth to the spirit until it is assured that the body which it is to inhabit is truly prospering. In our oldest traditions, that is why a child is often not
named until seven days after birth, or else two lunar cycles after, or after even a longer time has passed, thereby proving the flesh is strong enough to be invested with soul that in turn gives birth to spirit. Further, many hold to the sensible idea that therefore a child should never be beaten, for it drives the spirit out of its body, and it is a very long and arduous process to retrieve it and return it to its rightful home again.
- The initiatory process—the word
initiation
comes from the Latin
initiare
, meaning to begin, to introduce, to instruct An
initiate
is (me who is beginning a new way, who has come forward to be introduced and instructed. An
initiator
is one who commits to the deep work of recounting what they know about the path, who shows the “how-to” and guides the initiate so that she will master the challenges and thereby grow in power. - In botched initiations, the initiator sometimes looks only for the foibles of the initiate and forgets or overlooks the other seventy percent of initiation: the strengthening of a woman’s talents and gifts. Often an initiator creates difficulty without support, contrives perils and then sits back. This is a carryover from a fragmented male style of initiation; one that believes that shame and humiliation strengthen a person. They deliver the difficulty, but not the support. Or there is great attention to procedure, but the critical needs of feeling and soul life are tacked on as afterthought. From the soul’s and spirit’s points of view, a cruel or inhumane initiation never strengthens sorority or affiliation. It is beyond comprehension.
Lacking competent initiators or in a milieu of initiators who suggest and support abusive procedures, a woman will attempt self-initiation. Hers is a very admirable undertaking and a dazzling accomplishment if she even three-quarters attains it. It is extremely commendable for she must listen closely to the wild psyche as to what comes next, and then after that, and next after that, and follow it without the assurances that it has been done this way and produced the proper effect a thousand times before.
- There is negative perfectionism and positive perfectionism. The negative sort often revolves around the fear of being found inadequate. A positive perfectionism gives best effort, stays with something productive for mastery’s sake. Positive perfectionism urges the psyche to learn to do things
better,
how to write better, speak, paint, eat, relax, worship better, and so on. Positive perfectionism makes certain actions consistently in order to recognize a dream. - “Putting on the brass brassiere” is a stock phrase from Yancey Ellis Stockwell, a vibrant therapist and a fine storyteller in her own right.
- Sponsored by Women’s Alliance and many gifted healers, one being the very gentle physician at the prison, Dr. Tracy Thompson, and the energetic healer-teller Kathy Park.
- From the poem, “Woman Who Lives Under the Lake,” © 1980, C. P.
Estés,
Rowing Songs For the Night Sea Journey; Contemporary Chants
(Privately published, 1989). - From the
poem, “Come Cover Me With Your Wildness,” © 1980, C. P.
Estés.
Ibid. - Translated into English from the poem
La
bolsita
negra,
© 1970, C. P.
Estés.
Ibid. - Their
word-pictures and say-it-like-it-is phrases found their way into both the Hispanic and Eastern European ethnic groups in that part of the country. - It need not be the kidlets. It can be anything. “My houseplants. My dog. My schoolwock. My mate. My petunias.” It’s all just a ruse. At heart the woman is trembling to go, but trembling to stay as well.
- The “be all things to all people” complex attacks a woman’s adequacy.