Shaman's World

Yet separation from her wildish nature causes a woman to become meager, ghostly, anxious about leaping, fearful to create new life.

With the wild nature as ally and teacher,we see not through two eyes only, butthrough the many eyes of intuition.With intuition we are like the starry night;we gaze at the world through a thousand eyes.

The archetype of the Wild Woman carries los bultos, all the bundles for healingand meaning. She carries all the medicines of stories, words and songs, and themending tools of dances, signs and symbols. She is both vehicle anddestination. She is the essence of the female soul.

No matter how many times she is cut back, called unsafe, dangerous, useless ormad, she rises through the psyche regardless. Even La Sombre, the mostrestrained woman, keeps a secret place for the wild nature. Even La Cautiva,the most captured woman, is waiting for an opportunity to hightail it tofreedom.

All women are born gifted. To live close to the instinctual nature does notmean to become undone. It means to establish one's creative territory, findone's pack, be in one's body with certainty and pride. It means to act in one'sbehalf, to find what one belongs to. It means to rise with dignity, to proceedas a powerful being who is friendly but never tame.

The Wild Woman is the one who thunders in the face of injustice. She is theone who keeps a woman going when she thinks she is done for. The Wild Woman isfluent in the languages of dreams, images, passion and poetry. No act of loveor social justice occurs without her.

She lives in women everywhere; in the barrios and in the boardroom, in theprison and on the mountain at the fire, in the penthouse suite and on the nightbus to Brownsville. She is the mother of El Duende, the goblin wind ofcreativity. She leaves footprints behind for us to try on for size.