the wild woman archetype

"Like a trail through a forest which becomes more and more faint and finally seems to diminish to a nothing… traditional psychological theory too soon runs out for the creative, the gifted, the deep woman. Traditional psychology is often spare or entirely silent about deeper issues important to women: the archetypal, the intuitive, the sexual and cyclical, the ages of women, a woman’s way, a woman’s knowing, her creative fire. This is what has driven my work on the Wild Woman archetype for over two decades. 

A woman’s issues of soul cannot be treated by carving her into a more acceptable form as defined by an unconscious culture, nor can she be bent into a more intellectually acceptable shape by those who claim to be the sole bearers of consciousness. No, that is what has caused already millions of women who began as strong and natural powers to become outsiders in their own cultures. Instead, the goal  must be the retrieval and succor of women’s beauteous and natural psychic forms.

Fairy tales, myths, and stories provide understandings which sharpen our sight so that we can pick out and pick up the path left by the wildest nature. The instruction found in story reassures us that the path has not run out, but still leads women deeper, and more deeply still, into their own knowing. The tracks we all are following are those of the wild and innate instinctual Self.

It is into this fundamental, elemental, and essential relationship that we were born and that in our essence we are also derived from. The Wild Woman archetype sheaths the alpha matrilineal being. There are times when we experience her, even if only fleetingly, and it makes us mad with wanting to continue. For some women, this vitalizing taste of the wild comes during pregnancy, during nursing their young, during the miracle of change in oneself as one raises a child, during attending to a love relationship as one would attend to a beloved garden. 

A sense of her also comes through the vision; through sights of great beauty. I have felt her when I see what we call in the woodlands a Jesus-God sunset. I have felt her move in me from seeing the fishermen come up from the lake at dusk with lanterns lit, and also from seeing my newborn baby’s toes all lined up like a row of sweet corn. We see her where we see her, which is everywhere.

She comes to us through sound as well; through music which vibrates the sternum, excites the heart;  it comes through the drum, the whistle, the call and the cry. It comes through the written and the spoken word; sometimes a word, a sentence or a poem or a story, is so resonant, so right, it causes us to remember, at least for an instance, what substance we are really made from, and where is our true home.

These transient “tastes of the wild” come during the mystique of inspiration - ah there it is, now it has gone. The longing for her comes when one happens across someone who has secured this wildest relationship. The longing comes when one realizes one has given scant time to the mystic cookfire or to the dreamtime, too little time to one’s own creative life, one’s life work, or one’s true loves.

Yet it is in these fleeting tastes which come both through beauty as well as loss, that cause us to  become so berefit, so agitated, so longing that we eventually must pursue the wildest nature. Then we leap into the forest or into the desert or into the snow and run hard, our eyes scanning the ground, our hearing sharply tuned, searching under, searching over, searching for a clue, a remnant, a sign that she still lives, that we have not lost our chance.

And when we pick up her trail it is typical of women to ride hard to catch up, to clear off the desk, clear out one’s mind, turn to a new page, insist on a break,, break the rules, stop the world…. for we are not going on without her any longer.

Once women have lost and found her again, they will contend to keep her for good. Once they have regained her, they will fight and fight hard to keep her, for with her their creative lives blossom; their relationships gain meaning and depth and health; their cycles of sexuality, creativity, work and play are re-established; they are no longer marks for the predation of others; they are entitled equally under the laws of nature to grow and to thrive, Now their end-of-the-day fatigue comes from satisfying work and endeavors, not from being shut up in too small a mindset, job or relationship. They know instinctively when things just die and when things must live; they know how to walk away, they know how to stay.

When women reassert their relationship with the wildish nature, they are gifted with a permanent and internal watcher, a knower, a visionary, an oracle an inspiratrice, an intuitive ,a maker, a creator, an inventor, and a listener who guide, suggest and urge vibrant life in the inner and outer worlds. When women are close to this nature, the fact of that relationship glows through them. This wild teacher, wild mother, wild mentor supports their inner and outer lives, no matter what.

So, the word “wild” here is not used in its modern pejorative sense, meaning out of control, but in it’s original sense, which means to live a natural life, one in which the criatura (creature) has innate integrity and healthy boundaries. These words, “wild” and “woman”, cause women to remember who they are and what they are about. they create a metaphor to describe the force which funds all females. They personify a force that women cannot live without.

The wild woman archetype can be expressed in other terms which are equally apt. You can call this powerful psychological nature the instinctive nature, but Wild Woman is the force which lies behind that. You can call it natural psyche, but the archetype of the Wild Woman stands behind that as well. You can call it the innate, the basic nature of women. You can call it the indigenous, the intrinsic nature of women. In poetry it might be called the “Other” or the “seven oceans of the universe” or “the far woods” or “the Friend”

In various psychologies and from various perspectives it would perhaps be called the id, the Self, the medial nature. In biology it would be called the typical or fundamental nature.

But because it is tacit, precient, and visceral, among cantadoras it is called the wise or knowing nature. It is somethings called “the woman who lives at the end of time” or the “woman who lives at the edge of the world” and this criatura is always a creator-hag, or a death Goddess, or a maiden in descent, or any number of other personifications.

She is both friend and mother to all those who have lost their way, all those who need a learning, all those who have a riddle to solve, all those out in the forest or the desert wandering and searching."

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves.