Tales of Wild Woman Archetype

Have you ever felt you could fly free defying all physical constraints?  If you could what would you do?  Being confined to a wheelchair I have reawakened and re-realized this ability in me.  Writing allows me to do this.  Blogging helps me work with ideas and thoughts in a manageable format that I can post and share.  Perhaps a book will grow out of this, but in the meantime I will continue to blog.

So today I will introduce the place where I often connect with my muse, and to one of the many archetypes that guide me.  It is the Garden Of Soul which lies just a little way down the road, to the left, and across a bridge that leads off the beaten path.  It is where my creative self resides.  Over that bridge lies my wild, instinctual, and creative being. It is in this landscape that I have met another of my archetypes, La Loba, the wolf woman, and through my writing and story telling she borrows my voice.

Gather close and I will share her story with you:


There is an old woman who lives in a hidden place that everyone knows but few have ever seen.  As in fairy tales of old this woman waits for lost or wandering seekers to come to her place.
 

She is circumspect, often hairy, always fat, and especially wishes to avoid most human company.  She is a crower and a cackler, and has more animal sounds than human ones.

Some say she lives among the granite slopes in the Tarahumara Indian Territory.  Others say she is buried outside of Phoenix near a well.  She has been seen traveling south to Old Mexico in a burnt-out-car with the back window shot out.  Others have seen her living under a bridge in a city much like the one you come from, and still others say she can be found walking the shores of the rivers and streams that wind their way through this prairie land.  She is called by many names in many places – she is La Huesera, the bone woman, La Trapera, the gathering woman; but today we will call her La Loba, the Wolf Woman.

La Loba’s soul work is the collecting of bones.  She is known to collect and preserve that which is in danger of being lost to this world.  Her cave is filled with the bones of all manner of creature; the deer, the rattlesnake, the crow, the owl – but her true specialty is said to be wolves.

She creeps and crawls and sifts through the hills, valleys, and the riverbeds looking for wolf bones.  When she has assembled an entire skeleton, when the last bone is in place and the beautiful white sculpture of the wolf is laid out before her, she sits by her fire and thinks and dreams about what song she will sing.

When she is sure of the song she stands over the skeleton, stretches her arms over it, and sings out.  As she sings the rib bones and the leg bones of the wolf begin to flesh out and to be covered with fur.  La Loba sings her song loud and clear and more of the wolf comes into being; its tail curls upward, shaggy and strong..

And La Loba sings more and the wolf creature begins to breath.

And still La Loba sings so deeply the earth shakes with the force of her song, and as she sings the wolf opens its eyes, rolls over, leaps up and runs away down the stream and riverbed of this land.

Somewhere in its running, whether by the speed of its running, or by splashing its way into a stream or river, or perhaps by a ray of sunlight or moonlight hitting it right in the side, the wolf is suddenly transformed into a laughing woman who runs free toward the horizon. 

Now it is said that if you wander La Loba’s land, and it is near sundown, or perhaps sun rise, and if you are a little bit lost, and most certainly very tired, that you are most lucky, for La Loba may take a liking to you and show you something – something of the soul.

 

La Loba began visiting my dreams many years ago.  It was a time in my life where I wanted guidance, and from the first remembered appearance of La Loba she began to offer that to me.  She tested and teased my ideas of reality, taught me not to take myself too seriously, and to let go of my expectations.  If I wanted to live with my creativity I had to let it grow.  I had to nurture my creative self like a child giving it room and letting imagination roam free.  So I began with tentative steps and La Loba pushed me to take more steps, bigger steps, and stronger steps.  In that time she was the crone who arranged my bones and laid them out in her cave next to the fire.  La Loba's voice rang out over me as she sang her song through me and my bones fleshed out and I emerged as my wild woman self running free toward the horizon.

La Loba searches for nearly extinct species, like wild woman, and she breaths, sings, and dreams us back to full productive lives.  At times she is a clear presence in my life; at other times she is a shadow trailing just beneath my conscious awareness.  She is always there, recognized or unrecognized, encouraging me into a life filled with adventure.  

Have you met La Loba?  If not I hope you will.  If you are fortunate enough to meet her know that  she will teach you something, something of the soul....  It is her gift to all of us beings in human form.