Wildish Nature
And the ways in which we are uprooted from our own inner authority and guidance.
Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa-Pinkola Estés is a book that I come back to repeatedly. I find the wisdom in this book timeless and ever-helpful, especially when my consciousness tugs at the periphery of my awareness, encouraging me to acknowledge and learn new things about myself. Estés discusses the concept of wildish nature and soul fire throughout the book as a way of being rooted in our ability to create, and design life based on our inner authority, guidance, and intuition.
The concept of Wildish nature refers to a sixth sense of perception that functions like an antenna. It operates beyond our conscious awareness and attempts to communicate its findings to us through dreams, serendipitous occurrences, symbolic signs, and more. I find story-telling, mythology, and analysis to be effective ways to decipher and understand this deeply metaphorical world of perception. It is multi-layered and complex, and it demands continuous practice to refine our ability to perceive and respond to meaningful signs as guided by our wildish nature.
Soul-fire is at the core of wildish nature. As I have come to understand it, it is an urge, a yearning to create, to bring an idea into existence, to birth something that has meaning for you, and to share it. Soul-fire is the energy and the vehicle with which to bring an idea out of the ether and realize it as a tangent manifestation of your essence on this physical plane. For example, a writer who writes and publishes their work is exercising a relationship with their soul-fire. By sitting down and allowing themselves to bring forth their writing and sharing it with a wider audience beyond themselves, they are sharing an aspect of their essence with us through their writing. Soul-fire is an aspect of one’s spirit, it is the medium through which the spirit can channel itself on this physical plane.
The story I want to highlight from Women Who Run With Wolves is what Estés calls the “The Feral Woman” and defines it as:
“ [A] feral woman [is] one who was once in a natural psychic state- that is, in her rightful wild mind— then later captured by whatever turn of events, thereby becoming overly domesticated and deadened in proper instincts. When she has the opportunity to return to her original nature wildish nature, she too easily steps into all manner of traps and poisons. Because her cycles and protective systems have been tampered with, she is at risk in what used to be her natural wild state. No longer wary and alert, she becomes easy prey.”
In the book, the chapter is titled Self-Preservation: Identifying Leg Traps, Cages and Poisoned Bait. Here is an audio rendition by Estés of the Red Shoes story, the point of departure in which Estés so deftly examines and shows us the wisdom contained within. I would like to demonstrate the traps and poisons that can undermine our connections to our wildish nature and give examples of them from a modern-day life perspective.
I think any woman who reads this chapter, and this book, can find examples of where she has given up her wildish nature and soul-fire in exchange for comfort, stability, romance… and all types of illusions that promise plenty but in effect, rob her of her ability to create, to live life in accordance to her intuitive nature. ***
There are times I think that we give up our soul-fire unknowingly. There are times when we fail, we lose ourselves, we lose our faith and bearings, this is all part of life. If one does not lose, fail, or fall, one might never know what one does not know and, what one is capable of. It is vital, however, not to hunger for perfectionism and want to get it right all the time in this work. The trap of perfectionism and getting it right stems from fear of doing wrong, being wrong, and wanting to live a life that you fully control. There is no such certainty in life and I think this helps us recognize that there are times when we do make decisions and choices that part us from our soul-fire.
At the same time, we must remain vigilant of the traps that tempt us repeatedly, and quickly move away from them to not participate in the silencing of our soul-fires. We cannot be silent when confronted with our demise, we must fight with all that we have to diminish the forces that wish to disconnect us from our soul fires. It is important to note that this silence is soul-crashing and depleting. The kind that tears one away from one’s creativity, visions, and dreams, joy for life. This type of silence requires a hard fight to not go quietly, especially, if you are aware of it, and/or you feel that participating with/in it, is dangerous to your being.
Life without losing the way is an unattainable goal and temporary parting with soul-fire is unavoidable. What is important then, is to allow ourselves to see the signs and the whispers that call us back into communion with that soul-fire. We will take a look at how the soul-fire tries to reach us even in our most despairing moments in the upcoming newsletter.
The first trap that Estés illustrates for us is titled: The Gilded Carriage, the Devalued Life. In the Red Shoes story, our motherless and poor protagonist meets a rich old woman who promises to take her home and treat her as her daughter. The young girl accepts and off they go to a better life. The old woman does as she promised, and gives the young girl new clothes, food, shelter, her room, new shoes, combs her hair… Our protagonist asks about her old things, her clothes, and especially her red shoes that she fashioned before meeting the old lady. The old lady informs her that she had them burned because of how filthy and ridiculous they were. The young girl is especially saddened about the red shoes that she had toiled to make and was so happy to have something of her own.
Here Estés shows us how the gilded carriage represents the illusionary nature of things that promise us better circumstances, more comfort, and less toiling.
“Climbing into the old woman’s gilded carriage here is very similar to entering the gilded cage: [it] supposedly offers something more comfortable, less stressful but in effect, it captures instead. It entraps in a way that is not immediately perceivable, since gilt tends to be dazzling at first… It often happens in women’s lives. We are in the midst of an endeavor, and feeling anywhere from bad to good about it. We are just making up our lives as we go along and doing the best we can. But soon something washes over us, something that says, This is pretty hard. But look at that beautiful something-or-other over there. That gussied-up thing looks easier, finer, and more compelling. All of a sudden the gilded carriage rolls up, the door opens, the little stairs drop down, and we step in. We have been seduced.”
I think there are times when these seductions are more prevalent than other times. I think times of major life transitions (graduating and coming into the workforce, marriage, having children, buying a house, switching careers, moving, death of a loved one, divorce…) are such points. At such times, there are many seductions and promises of shortcuts to living the life that you want because transitions are usually a time of death and renewal. They are a point in which one gives up a certain aspect of self, for something new to emerge. At such times, we are vulnerable and easily susceptible to guile, especially when these pivotal moments are challenging.
The gilded carriage may appear as the high paying job that offers financial security but you have little time to focus on your passion side-gig, the secure stable relationship that looks like happily ever after, but if we are being truthful, it is not what you want, the circle of friends that you have known for a long time but upon closer inspection, your bonds are transactional and situational, the town from which you come that offers comfort and familiarity, but it would never give you growth opportunities...
There is a strange discomfort in admitting to ourselves that we have entered the gilded carriage. At times we know immediately we have entered it and other times, we might suspect that something is wrong without knowing the exact cause of our discomfort. A part of us, when we have entered the gilded carriage, defends our choices and protects us from the discomfort. It is natural for the ego to desire ease because leading life with soul-fire is hard work. It requires so much of us and from us that we do at times crave and invite situations that lull us into a stupor and dampen our connection to our soul-fires. We admire artists and others who lead a life with their soul-fire, but only from afar because a closer look would invite us to deeper depths of existence that we care not to know.
This is precisely why the gilded carriage becomes such a compelling alternative, it comes just at the right moment to delay the journey and the calling of a soul-fire-led life. It continuously amazes me how powerful our mechanisms of self-protection are, and how much we would rather tolerate unfulfilling life circumstances than attempt change. Moreover, with all our intellect and abilities we would rather do anything else than know ourselves. The gilded carriage is a representation of all how we delude ourselves; at times unknowingly and at times, by choice.
The second trap that Estés demonstrates for us is titled: The Dry Old Woman, the senescent force. The old woman represents two important aspects of inner and outer life. Firstly, with her action of throwing away our protagonist’s things, she symbolizes a part of the psyche that does not recognize the symbols of soul life. Instead, she is frozen in time and is “dedicated to the repetition of a single value without experimentation or renewal.” From her training as a Jungian psychologist, Estés explains the word senex as “the archetypal figure of the elder [that] is sometimes called a “senex” force.” Without the gender ascription as defined in Latin as “old man”, Estés defines the term as “the symbol of the elder [that] can be understood as the senescent force; that which acts in a way that is peculiar to the aged.”
Ideally, the old woman as an archetypal symbol should represent one who is dignified, a mentor, wise, self-knowing, tradition-bearing, has well-defined boundaries, and plentiful experience. Instead, she represents that which has ossified and atrophied, no longer connected to the soulful nature. She fails to understand that the shoes the young girl has fashioned for herself are the connecting link to the internal soul-fire that needs to be tended to, sharpened, molded, and welcomed into life. Instead, the old woman kills this young emerging soul-fire when she burns the shoes, symbolically communicating to the girl that her soul-fire is something to be sacrificed, to be ashamed of, and not respectable to the outside world. How many times have you been shamed, ridiculed, and made to sacrifice your soul-fire creations by those closest to you? As you answer that question, notice if there are any buts of defense defending why it has happened. That’s protective armor that has been conditioned to respond.
In this story the girl is motherless but I think in many women’s lives, the voice that most strongly silences our soul-fire creations may be our mothers, aunts, grandmothers, female friends... Perhaps that is why mother-daughter relationships are fraught with so much discord because our mothers have been stripped and alienated from their soul-fires. In seeing emergent soul-fires in their daughters, mothers are reminded of what they have foregone. Remembrance for mothers as it is awakened by the soul-fires of their daughters, either startles them into awakening or leads them to pull their daughter down with them into the same soul-less planes in which they exist. Unfortunately, I think the latter happens more often than the former.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, are the mothers, the aunts, the grandmothers, and female friends… whose voices are absent and therefore cannot adequately guide the young women as they navigate the world of soul-fire energy. This leaves young women vulnerable to all types of predators and destructive callings that look promising on the outside but ultimately, kill the soul-fire. Those who are called to guide, do not have the capacity nor the tools to recognize soul-fire, nor know what it needs to be nourished and kept alive. As such, young women find themselves in the care of clueless and psychically unknowing women frozen in a naiveté stage without guidance themselves. As such, young women find themselves counseled by either strongly critical and silencing women or by absent women. Neither has the tools to adequately nourish soul-fire.
It is critical to understand that this is not normal and rather poignantly highlights what happens to a society when women’s needs are not met physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. I believe that the old woman archetype safeguards against the destruction of womanhood and her loss leave us unrooted and absent in our lives. Please note that there are wonderful mothers, aunts, grandmothers, and female friends… who know the secrets and the ways of the old woman and know how to tend to the soul-fire. It is not all pessimistic and hopeless.
The loss of the old woman archetype is by no means accidental in our patriarchal-centered society. The old woman plays a vital role in shaping and aiding naive women ( as we all are in our youth) to sharpen intuition, strengthen our connection to our soul-fire, understand the phases of life/death/life cycles, recognize the psychic and life-vitality stealing forces abound, foster healthy romantic and platonic relationships, and learn the mystical aspect of life. When women are left without these essential life skills, it becomes much easier to degrade, suppress, and rob them of their essences without much of a fight. Subdued quiet women are easy to exploit, abuse, and control. In the loss of the old woman archetypal, we lose so much and gain very little in return.
The old woman in the story additionally symbolizes a “rigid keeper of collective tradition [and] an enforcer of the status quo.” In the story, our protagonist goes with the old lady to pick new shoes for a religious celebration known as The Day of Innocents.1 The young girl still mourning her red shoes, chooses exquisite red shoes at the shoemaker’s unbeknownst to the old lady due to her poor eyesight. The shoemaker gives his sign of approval when he winks at her for her choice. Upon arriving at church, church members are aghast to see such sinful shoes on the young girl’s feet to which the young lady pays no mind. By the end of the ceremony, the old lady informed by her community of the red shoes, forbids the young girl from wearing them ever again.
The old woman does not interrogate nor question why the red shoes are sinful but rather upholds the collective idea that they are and to show her solidarity with her community, forbids the girl from wearing the shoes again. I think what Estés argues so brilliantly is that the collective will should not impose rigid systems that diminish our connection to our soul-fire. Rather, we should have the flexibility and the choice to choose which aspects of our shared collective we will uphold based upon how supportive and nourishing they are to our soul-fires.
Regardless of collective affiliations or influences, our challenge [on] behalf of the wild soul and our creative spirit is not to merge with any collective, but to distinguish ourselves from those who surround us, building bridges back to them as we choose. We decide which bridges will become strong and well traveled, and which will remain sketchy and empty. And the collectives we favor with relationships will be those that offer the most support for our soul and creative life.
Hence the goal of the collective is not to enslave but rather, to act as a permeable membrane that mirrors the values of its dynamic and ever-evolving participants and allows them to choose and uphold values that sustain a nourished life.
Estés further states:
“if a woman attempts to be part of an organization, association, or family that neglects to peer into her to see what she is made of, one that fails to ask “What makes this person run?” and one that does not put forth the effort to challenge or encourage her in a positive manner… then her ability to thrive and create is diminished. The more harsh the circumstances, the more she is exiled to a salted barrens where nothing is allowed to grow.”
The old woman unknowingly suppresses the young girl’s soul-fire as she is not connected to her own and is the symbol of the rigid, outdated, and unsupportive status quo. In her choices and influence over the young girl, we see how the silencing of the girl’s natural soul-fire which was life-giving, leads to a search to retrieve that which has been lost leading to tragic consequences and ultimately loss.
Estés goes on to describe the actions and consequences that follow as the girl attempts to retrieve and reconnect back to her soul fire and wildish nature. I hope to explore that in a second essay as it highlights a nuanced perspective on what it is like to live a life untethered.
Ultimately, I think this chapter attempts to clearly illustrate what happens when we are disconnected from ourselves due to various factors. Often, it is complex and the reasons behind disconnection are often in the liminal space, between the psychological and the spiritual, between the emotional and mental. We can understand the psychological, the emotional, and the mental perspectives but it is often that the spiritual aspect is lacking.
We try so hard to understand life through those three lenses (psychological, mental, and emotional) and I believe it has been helpful to us. Many people in our lifetime are recognizing and changing patterns of being that are maladaptive but have been utilized without question by our lineages, our society, and as a collective consciousness. I only hope to add to the discourse and say, there is more that needs to be explored.
It is within the liminal space that the rapture of disconnection occurs. Our actions and reactions affect our physical being and also affect our energetic field and our connection to our spirit. When we unknowingly or at times knowingly choose to enter the gilded carriage, the result is twofold, both physical and spiritual. It signals to our Spirit that we are abandoning our seat of authority- our soul fire and wildish nature to follow the authority of another. What this does is it diminishes our capacity to recognize, and be in our connection to our spirit and allows for an energetic vulnerability that makes us susceptible to anything that comes our way.
In our society, we are often taught and required to give up our seat of authority within ourselves in various ways. It is how we are taught to be polite when our inner authority feels endangered and acts fiercely, it is when we are silenced by those who have the means and the power to blackmail us, threaten us, and coerce us into actions that are against our inner authority, it is when we are told to keep secrets because telling them means exposes the Jekyll within a certain structure, a certain dynamic, it is when we are advised to choose lucrative careers over what we truly love doing because there is no money in it, it is when we adopt politics, beliefs that go against humanity but ensure safety for our family and the people that look like us… I could go on but I hope you get the idea. This role is adopted by the grandmother in the story, the one of an enforcer and a keeper of a world that kills the soul-fire instead of nurturing it.
What we have been taught therefore is to abandon ourselves, our wildish nature our soul-fires to live in the world that we do. The world that we have built reinforces the stifling and killing of our soul fires, our wildish nature, and our inner authority by the laws, structures, and systems that govern us. Across the world, there is a fear of soul-fire, of spirit life as it directly threatens the foundations on which most of the world is built. It is no wonder that many Indigenous cultures have perished or live at the marginal surfaces and consciousness of our collective.
We have created a world that cares very little for the profound depth and nature of our spirit, and this is the first source of disconnection that leads us all to enter the gilded carriage at various stages in our lives. Without this connection to our spirit, to the energy that emanates forth from our non-physical existence, we deny ourselves, each other, and the planet the connection and the tools to truly create a world that is fit for us and all other life forms here with us.
The point of this story, and stories in general, is to help us find the entry points into which we can find our way back to living within our centers of authority, our wildish natures whilst maintaining connection to each other and the energy of life within us and around us. It is an art, a negotiation that deepens as we learn to care for ourselves. We learn to allow the energy of our spirit to flow through us and interact with others fusing, growing apart, but always flowing, always humming with the vitality of life in our actions, in our interactions and relations, and our senses and perceptions.
Stay tuned for the next chapter of this story as we explore what Estés calls Hambre del alma and the profound impacts of shame on our psyche and spirit.
Estés mentions at the beginning of this chapter that this story is of Magyar-Germanic origin and told to her by her aunt Tereza. Perhaps in older retellings, the Day Of Innocents symbolized something different than the biblical connotation it is known for today.
*** I think this book can be read by a wider audience as it contains wisdom that transcends our quantifiers of who we are. However, it is also important to notice how the book fails to understand the nuanced human experience and to use that as a point of departure, to offer something beyond what is written within these pages. I think that if we are to criticize, then we must also exercise the ability to create, to add to the discussion. Criticizing alone is not helpful, but creating, adding, and subtracting what is there can be a meaningful and productive way to engage and contribute. We are all in this experience together.