Clarissa Pincola Estes - Women Who Run With The Wolves - Myths And Storie by the Wild Woman Archetype (20 page)

The ancients who sought this life and death knowledge called it the Pearl of Great Price, the Inimitable Treasure. Holding the threads of these mysteries and untangling them brings a powerful knowing about Fate and Time, time for all things, all things in their own time, rolling with the rough, gliding on the smooth. There is no knowledge more preserving, more nutritive, more strengthening of love than this.

That is what awaits the lover who will sit by the fire with Skeleton Woman, who will contemplate her and allow the feeling for her to rise. It waits for those who will touch her not- beauty and who will untangle her Life/Death/Life nature with tenderness.

The Sleep of Trust

In this stage of relationship, a lover returns to a state of innocence, a state in which he is still awed by the emotional elements, a state in which he is full of wishes, hopes, and dreams. Innocence is different than
naiveté.
There is an old saying in the backwoods I come from: “Ignorance is not knowing anything and being attracted to the good. Innocence is knowing everything, and still being attracted to the good.”

Let us see how far we have come now. The fisherman-hunter has brought the Life/Death/Life nature to the surface. He has, outside his will, been “pursued” by her. But he has also managed to face her; he has felt compassion for her tangled state, and he has touched her. All these are leading him into a full participation with her. All these are leading him into a transformation, into love.

While the metaphor of sleep can denote a psychic unconsciousness, here it symbolizes creation and renewal. Sleep is the symbol of rebirth. In creation myths, souls go to sleep while a transformation of some duration takes place, for in sleep, we are re-created, renewed.

... Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care, [sleep is] sore labor’s bath, [the] balm of hurt minds, great Nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast.

—Shakespeare,
Macbeth
, II, ii, 36

If you could lay your eyes upon the most fire-hardened, most cruel and unpitying person alive, during sleep and at the moment of waking, you would see in them for a moment the untainted child spirit, the pure innocent. In sleep we are once again brought back to a state of sweetness. In sleep we are remade. We are reassembled from the inside out, fresh and new as innocents.

This state of wise innocence is entered by shedding cynicism and protectionism, and by reentering the state of wonder one sees in most humans who are very young and many who are very old. It is a practice of looking through the eyes of a knowing and loving spirit, instead of through those of the whipped dog, the hounded creature, the mouth atop a stomach, the angry wounded human. Innocence is a state that is renewed as one sleeps. Unfortunately, many throw it aside with the coverlet as they arise each day. It would be better to take an alert innocence with us and draw it close for warmth.

Though an initial return to this state may require scraping away years of jaded viewpoints, decades of callous and carefully constructed bulwarking, once one has returned one never has to pry for it, dig for it, ever again. To return to an alert innocence is not so much an effort, like moving a pile of bricks from here to there, as it is standing still long enough to let the spirit find you. It is said that all that you are seeking is also seeking you, that if you lie still, sit still, it will find you. It has been waiting for you a long time. Once it is here, don’t move away. Rest. See what happens next.

This is the way to approach the Death nature, not as wily and shrewd, but with the trust of spirit. The word
innocent
is often used to mean a person of no knowing, or a simpleton. But the roots of the word mean to be free of injury or hurt. In Spanish, the word
inocente
is understood to mean a person who tries not to harm another, but who
also
is able to heal any injury or harm to herself.

La
inocente
is the name often given to
a
curandera
healer, one who heals others of injury or harm. To be an innocent means to be able to see clearly what is the matter and to mend it. These are the powerful ideas behind innocence. It is considered not only an attitude about avoiding harm to others or self but also an ability to mend and restore oneself (and others). Think of it. What a boon to all the cycles of loving.

By way of this metaphor of innocent sleep, the fisherman trusts the Life/Death/Life nature enough to rest and to revivify in her presence. He is entering into a transition that will take him to a deeper understanding, a higher stage of maturity. When lovers enter this state, they are surrendering to the forces within themselves, those that have trust, faith, and the profound power of innocence. In this spiritual sleep, the lover trusts that the works of his soul will be worked in him, that all will be as it should be. This lover sleeps the sleep of the wise instead of the wary.

There is wariness that is real, when danger is near, and wariness that is unwarranted and that comes from having been wounded previously. The latter causes men and women, both, to act touchy and disinterested even when they feel they would like to display warmth and caring. Persons who are afraid of being “taken for a ride” or of “being trapped”—or who vociferously state their claims over and over again of wanting to “be free”—are those who let the gold slip right through their fingers.

Many times I’ve heard a man say he has “a good woman” who is enamored of him and he of her, but he just can’t “let go” enough to see what he really feels about her. The turning point for such a person is when he allows himself to love “even though” ... even though he has pangs, even though he is nervous, even though he has been wounded previously, even though he fears the unknown.

Sometimes there are no words to help one’s courage. Sometimes you just have to jump. There has to be at some point in a man’s life a time when he will trust where love takes him, where he fears more being trapped in some dry cracked riverbed of a psyche than being out in lush but uncharted territory. When a life is too controlled, there becomes less and less life to control.

In this stage of innocence, the fisherman returns to being a young soul, for in his sleep he is unscarred, and there is no memory of what he was yesterday or before. In sleep, he is not striving to gain place or position. In his sleep he is renewed.

Within the masculine psyche, there is a creature, an unwounded man, who believes in the good, who has no doubts about life, who is not only wise but who also is not afraid to die. Some would identify this as a warrior self. But it is not that. It is a spirit self, and a young spirit at that, one who regardless of being tormented,
wounded, and exiled continues to love, because it is in its own way self-healing, self-mending.

Women will testify to seeing this creature lurking in a man outside of his awareness. This young spirit's ability to bring the power of healing to bear on his own psyche is so awesome that it is astounding. His trust is not dependent on his lover not to hurt him. His is a trust that any wound that comes to him can be healed, a trust that new life follows old. A trust that there is deeper meaning in all these things, that seemingly petty events are not without meaning, that all things of one's life—the ragged, the jagged, and the lilting and the soaring—all can be used as life’s energy.

It must be said too that sometimes as a man becomes more free, and closer to the Skeleton Woman, his lover becomes more fearful and has some work of her own to do regarding untangling, observing, the sleep that returns innocence, learning to trust the Life/Death/Life nature. When both are well initiated, they together then have the power with which to balm any hurt, outlive any pain.

Sometimes a person is afraid to “go to sleep” in the other’s presence, afraid to return to a psychic innocence, or afraid the other person will take advantage of him. Such people project all manner of motives onto the other, and simply do not trust themselves. Yet, it is not their lovers they mistrust. It is the Life/Death/Life nature they have not yet reckoned with. It is this Death nature that they need to trust as in sleep, the Life/Death/Life nature in its most wildish form is as simple as a graceful exhalation (ending) and inhalation (beginning). The only trust required is to know that when there is one ending there will be another beginning.

In order to do this, if we are lucky, we are worn down and slip into trust by giving in to its pull. The steeper way is by forcibly throwing ourselves into a trusting state of mind—forcing ourselves to remove all the conditions, all the ifs and onlys. However, there is usually no sense waiting till we feel strong enough to trust, because that day will never come. So yes, we take the chance that what we have been taught by the culture to believe about the Life/ Death/Life nature is wrong, and that our instincts are right.

For love to thrive, the mate must trust that whatever will be, will be transformative. Man or woman, each must let themselves enter that state of sleep that returns one to a wise innocence, one that creates and re-creates, as it should, those deeper coils of Life/ Death/Life experience.

Giving the Tear

As the fisherman sleeps, a tear is released from the comer of his eye. Skeleton Woman spies it, is filled with thirst, and awkwardly crawls to him to drink from the cup of his eye. What, we ask, could he be dreaming that would cause such a tear to come forth?

Tears carry creative power. In mythos, the giving of tears causes immense creation and heartfelt reunion. In herbal folklore, tears are used as a binder, to secure elements, unite ideas, join souls. In fairy tales, when tears are thrown, they frighten away robbers or cause rivers to flood. When sprinkled, they call the spirits. When poured onto the body, they heal lacerations and restore sight. When touched, they cause conception.

When one has ventured this far into relationship with the Life/Death/Life nature, the tear that is cried is the tear of passion and compassion mixed together, for oneself, and for the other. It is the hardest tear to cry and especially for men and certain kinds of “street-tough” women.

This tear of passion and compassion is most often wept after the accidental finding of treasure, after the fearful chase, after the untangling—for it is the combination of these that causes the exhaustion, the disassembling of defenses, the facing of oneself, the stripping down to the bones, the desire for both knowledge and relief. These cause a soul to peer into what the soul truly wants, and to weep for loss and love of both.

As surely as Skeleton Woman was brought to the surface, now this tear, this feeling in the man, is also brought to the surface. It is an instruction in loving both self and another. Stripped now of all the bristles and hooks and shivs of the daytime world, the man draws Skeleton Woman to lie beside him, to drink and be nourished by his deepest feeling. In his new form he is able to feed the thirsty other.

Her ghost has been summoned by his weeping—ideas and
powers from far off in the psychic world unite over the warmth of his tear. The history of the symbol of water as creator, as pathway, is long and varied. Spring comes in a rain of tears. Entry to the lower world is upon a waterfall of tears. A tear, heard by anyone of heart, is understood as a cry to come closer. And so does the fisherman cry, and closer she does come. Without his tear, she would remain only bones. Without his tear, he would never awaken to love.

The tear of the dreamer comes when a lover-to-be allows himself to feel and to bind up his own wounds, when he allows himself to see the self-destruction he has wrought by his loss of faith in the goodness of self, when he feels cut away from the nurturing and revivifying cycle of the Life/Death/Life nature. Then, he weeps, for he feels his loneliness, his acute homesickness for that psychic place, for that wild knowing.

This is the man healing, the man growing in understanding. He takes on his own medicine-making, he takes on the task of feeding the “deleted other.” Through his tears, he begins to create.

To love another is not enough, to be “not an impediment” in the life of file other is not enough. It is not enough to be “supportive” and “there for them,” and all the rest. The goal is to be
knowledgeable
about the ways of life and death, in one’s own life and in panorama. And the only way to be a knowing man is to go to school in the bones of Skeleton Woman. She is waiting for the signal of deep feeling, that one tear that says, “I admit the wound.”

This admission feeds the Life/Death/Life nature, causes the bond to be made and the deep knowing in a man to begin. We all have made the mistake of thinking someone else can be our healer, our thriller, our filling. It takes a long time to find it is not so, mostly because we project the wound outside ourselves instead of ministering to it within.

There is probably nothing a woman wants more from a man than for him to dissolve his projections and face his own wound. When a man faces his wound, the tear comes naturally, and his loyalties within and without are made clearer and stronger. He becomes his own healer; he is no longer lonely for the deeper Self. He no longer applies to the woman to be his analgesic.

There is a story that describes this well. In Greek myth, there

was a man named Philoctetes. It is told he inherited the magic bow and arrow of Heracles. Philoctetes was wounded in the foot during battle. However, this wound would not heal, and instead grew so malodorous, and his cries of pain so horrible, that his companions abandoned him on the island Lemnos and left him there to die.

Philoctetes barely escaped starvation by using Heracles’ bow to shoot small game. But his wound festered and the smell grew ever greater, so that any sailor even remotely near the island had to steer clear. However, a group of men conspired to brave the stench of Philoctetes’ wound in order to steal the magical bow and arrow from him.

The men drew lots and the task fell to the youngest.
⁷
The older men encouraged him to be quick and travel under cover of night. And so the young man set sail. But on the wind, and overwhelming the smell of the sea, came another odor so horrible that the man had to wrap his face in a cloth wrung in seawater in order to breathe freely. Nothing, however, could protect his ears from Philoctetes’ terrible cries.

The moon was shrouded in cloud. .Good, he thought as he moored his boat and crept to the side of the agonized Philoctetes. As he reached for the precious bow and arrow, the moon suddenly shed her light upon the haggard face of the dying old man. And something in the young man—he knew not what—suddenly moved him to tears. The young man was overwhelmed with a compassion and mercy that endured.

Instead of stealing the old man’s bow and arrows, the young man purified Philoctetes’ wound, bound it, and stayed with him, feeding him, cleaning him, building fires, and caring for the old man till he could carry him to Troy, where he could be healed by the semi-divine physician Aesculapius. And thus the story comes to a close.

The tear of compassion is wept in
response
to realizing the stinking wound. The stinking wound has different configurations and sources for each person. For some it means spending a lifetime pulling oneself up the mountain hand over hand—belatedly to find we’ve been working our way up the wrong mountain. For some it is unresolved and unmedicated issues of abuse in childhood.