Clarissa Pincola Estes - Women Who Run With The Wolves - Myths And Storie by the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pincola Estes
Authors: Clarissa Pincola Estes
Ads: Link
work in the outer world in a concrete way. A woman with a poorly developed animus has lots of ideas and thoughts but is unable to manifest them in the outer world. She always stops short of the organization or implementation of her wonderful images.
The brothers represent the blessing of strength and action. With them, in the end, several things occur, one is that the vast and disabling ability of the predator is neutralized in a woman’s psyche. And second, the blueberry-eyed maiden is replaced by one with eyes awake, and third, a warrior to each side of her if she but calls for them.
left for the flesh-eaters—the cormorants, raptors, and buzzards— to cany away. Here we have a very strange and mystical ending. In ancient times there were souls called sin-eaters. These were personified by spirits, birds, or animals, sometimes humans, who somewhat like the scapegoat, took on the sins, that is, the psychic waste of the community, so people could be cleansed and redeemed from the detritus of difficult life or life not well lived.
We have seen how the wild nature is exemplified by the finder of the dead, the one who sings over the bones of the dead, bringing them back to life again. This Life/Death/Life nature is a central attribute of the instinctual nature of women. Likewise, indorse mythology, the sin-eaters are carrion eaters who devour the dead, incubate them in their bellies, and carry them to Hel, who is not a place but a person. Hel is the Goddess of life and death. She shows the dead how to live backward. They become younger and younger until they are ready to be reborn and re-released back into life.
This eating of sins and sinners, and the subsequent incubation of them, and their release back into life once more, constitutes an individuation process for the most base aspects of the psyche. In this sense it is right and proper that energy is drawn out of the predatory elements of the psyche, killing them so to speak, draining their powers. Then they may be returned to the compassionate Life/Death/Life Mother, to be transformed and re-issued, hopefully in a less contentious state.
Many scholars who have studied this tale think Bluebeard represents a force which is not redeemable. 5 But I sense additional ground for this aspect of the psyche—not a transformation from mass murderer into Mr. Chips, but more like a person who must be in an asylum, but a decent place with trees and sky and proper nourishment, and perhaps music to soothe, but not banished to a back ward in the psyche to be tortured and reviled.
On the other hand, I do not want to portray that there is no such thing as manifest and irredeemable evil, for that also exists. Throughout time there is the mystical sense that any individuation work done by humans also changes the darkness in the collective unconscious of all humans, that being the place where the predator resides. Jung once said that God became more conscious 6 as humans became more conscious. He postulated that humans cause the dark side of God to become struck with light when they rout their personal demons out into the light of day.
I do not claim to know how it ail works, but following archetypal pattern, it would look and work something like this: Instead of reviling the predator of the psyche, or running away from it, we dismember it. We accomplish this by not allowing ourselves divisive thoughts about our soul-life and our worth in particular. We capture invidious thoughts before they become large enough to do any harm, and we dismantle them.
We dismantle the predator by countering its diatribes with our own nurturant truths. Predator: “You never finish anything you start.” Yourself: “I finish many things.” We dismantle the assaults of the natural predator by taking to heart and working with what is truthful in what the predator says and then discarding the rest.
We dismantle the predator by maintaining our intuitions and instincts and by resisting the predator’s
The brothers represent the blessing of strength and action. With them, in the end, several things occur, one is that the vast and disabling ability of the predator is neutralized in a woman’s psyche. And second, the blueberry-eyed maiden is replaced by one with eyes awake, and third, a warrior to each side of her if she but calls for them.
left for the flesh-eaters—the cormorants, raptors, and buzzards— to cany away. Here we have a very strange and mystical ending. In ancient times there were souls called sin-eaters. These were personified by spirits, birds, or animals, sometimes humans, who somewhat like the scapegoat, took on the sins, that is, the psychic waste of the community, so people could be cleansed and redeemed from the detritus of difficult life or life not well lived.
We have seen how the wild nature is exemplified by the finder of the dead, the one who sings over the bones of the dead, bringing them back to life again. This Life/Death/Life nature is a central attribute of the instinctual nature of women. Likewise, indorse mythology, the sin-eaters are carrion eaters who devour the dead, incubate them in their bellies, and carry them to Hel, who is not a place but a person. Hel is the Goddess of life and death. She shows the dead how to live backward. They become younger and younger until they are ready to be reborn and re-released back into life.
This eating of sins and sinners, and the subsequent incubation of them, and their release back into life once more, constitutes an individuation process for the most base aspects of the psyche. In this sense it is right and proper that energy is drawn out of the predatory elements of the psyche, killing them so to speak, draining their powers. Then they may be returned to the compassionate Life/Death/Life Mother, to be transformed and re-issued, hopefully in a less contentious state.
Many scholars who have studied this tale think Bluebeard represents a force which is not redeemable. 5 But I sense additional ground for this aspect of the psyche—not a transformation from mass murderer into Mr. Chips, but more like a person who must be in an asylum, but a decent place with trees and sky and proper nourishment, and perhaps music to soothe, but not banished to a back ward in the psyche to be tortured and reviled.
On the other hand, I do not want to portray that there is no such thing as manifest and irredeemable evil, for that also exists. Throughout time there is the mystical sense that any individuation work done by humans also changes the darkness in the collective unconscious of all humans, that being the place where the predator resides. Jung once said that God became more conscious 6 as humans became more conscious. He postulated that humans cause the dark side of God to become struck with light when they rout their personal demons out into the light of day.
I do not claim to know how it ail works, but following archetypal pattern, it would look and work something like this: Instead of reviling the predator of the psyche, or running away from it, we dismember it. We accomplish this by not allowing ourselves divisive thoughts about our soul-life and our worth in particular. We capture invidious thoughts before they become large enough to do any harm, and we dismantle them.
We dismantle the predator by countering its diatribes with our own nurturant truths. Predator: “You never finish anything you start.” Yourself: “I finish many things.” We dismantle the assaults of the natural predator by taking to heart and working with what is truthful in what the predator says and then discarding the rest.
We dismantle the predator by maintaining our intuitions and instincts and by resisting the predator’s
Similar Books
