Clarissa Pincola Estes - Women Who Run With The Wolves - Myths And Storie by the Wild Woman Archetype (68 page)
Authors: Clarissa Pincola Estes
urging her to act as though she
is
the “great healer But for a human to attempt to enact an archetype is rather like attempting to be God. This is not possible to achieve in actuality, and the effort put forth to attempt such is completely draining and very destructive to the psyche.
While an archetype can withstand the projections of human men and women, humans cannot withstand being treated as though they are themselves an archetype and therefore invulnerable and inexhaustible. When a woman is asked/expected to enact the untiring archetype of the great healer, we see her going down for the count in burdensome and negatively perfectionistic roles. When asked to step into the luxurious
confines
of the archetypal robes of any ideal, it is best to look off into the distance, shake your head, and keep walking toward home.
- Adrienne Rich, from
The Fact of a Doorframe
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), p. 162. - In other tales, such as “The Sleeping Beauty." the young sleeping woman awakens, not because she is kissed by the prince, but because it’s
time...
the hundred years' curse is up and it is time for her to wake up. The thorn forest surrounding the tower falls away, not because the hero is superior, but because the curse is up and it is time. Fairy tales instruct us over and over: when it’s time, it's time. - In classical Jungian psychology this child would be called a psychopomp, that is, an aspect of
anima
or animus, so named after Hermes, who led souls to the underworld. In other cultures, the psychopomp is called
juju
,
bruja
,
anqagok
,
tzaddik.
These words are used both as proper names and sometimes as adjectives to describe the magical quality of an object or person. - In the story, the scent of the sealskin causes the child to feel the full impact of his mother’s soulful love. Something of the shape of her soul blows through him, not hurting him, but making him aware. Still among some contemporary Inuit families, when a loved one dies, the deceased person’s furs, head coverings, leggings, and other personal articles are donned by those who still live. The family and friends so dressed consider this transmission soul to soul and necessary to life itself. It is believed that a powerful remnant of soul is held in the cloth, pelt, and tools of the deceased.
- Mary Uukulat is my source and gave me the old idea of the breath being made of poem.
- Ibid.
- Oxford English Dictionaiy.
- Women tend to take adequate time away to respond to crises of physical health—particularly the health of others, but neglect to make maintenance time for their own relationship to their own souls. They tend to not understand soul as the magneto or central generator of their animation and energy. Many women drive their relationship to soul as if it were a not very important instrument. Like any instrument of value, it needs shelter, cleansing, oiling, and repair. Otherwise, like a car, the relationship sludges up, causes deceleration in a woman's daily life, causes her to use up enormous energy for the most simple tasks, and finally busts down out on heartbreak ridge far away from town or telephone. Then, it is a long, long walk back to home.
- Reference from Robert Bly in an interview published in
The Bloomsbury Review
(January 1990), “The Wild Man In the Black Coat Turns: A Conversation” by Clarissa Pinkola
Estés,
Ph.D. © 1989, C. P.
Estés.