Authors: Clarissa Pincola Estes
The Wolfs Eyelash
and peered through
and saw their motives
as she had not see them before.
And the next time
the butcher weighed the meat
she looked through her wolf's eyelash
and saw that he weighed his thumb too.
And she looked at her suitor
who said “I am so good for you,”
and she saw that her suitor
was so good for exactly nothing.
And in this way and more,
she was saved,
from not all,
but from many,
misfortunes.
But more so, in this new seeing, not only did she see the sly and cruel, she began to grow immense in heart, for she looked at each person and weighed them anew through this gift from the wolf she had rescued.
And she saw those who were truly kind
and went near to them,
she found her mate
and stayed all the days of her life,
she discerned the brave
and came close to them,
she apprehended the faithful
and joined with them, s
he saw bewilderment under anger a
nd hastened to soothe it,
she saw love in the eyes of the shy
and reached out to them,
she saw suffering in the stiff-lipped
and courted their laughter,
she saw need in the man with no words
and spoke for him, she saw faith deep in the woman
who said she had none,
and rekindled hers from her own.
She saw all things
with her lash of wolf,
all things true,
and all things false,
all things turning against life
and all things turning toward life,
all things seen only
through the eyes of that
which weighs the heart with heart,
and not with mind alone.
This is how she learned that it is true what they say, that the wolf is the wisest of all. If you listen closely, the wolf in its howling is always asking the most important question—not where is the next food, not where is the next fight, not where is the next dance?—
but the most important question
in order to see into and behind,
to weigh the value of all that lives,
wooooooooor
aieeeee th’
soooooooool?
wooooooooor
aieeeee th’
soooooooool?
Where is the soul?
Where is the soul?
Go out in the woods, go out. If you don’t go out in the woods, nothing will ever happen and your life will never begin.
Go out in the woods,
go out.
Go out in the woods,
go out,
Go out in the woods
,
go out.
Excerpted from “The Wolfs Eyelash," original prose poem by C. P.
Estés,
copyright @ 1970, from
Rowing Songs for the Night Sea Journey, Contemporary Chants
AFTERWORD
:
STORY AS MEDICINE
Here I will lay out for you the ethos of story in my family’s ethnic traditions, those that my storymaking and poetry are rooted in, and a bit about my use of
las palabras
, words, and
los cuentos
, stories, for assisting the life of the soul.
To my eyes,
Historias que
son
medicina
: Stories are medicine.
.. Whenever a fairy tale is told, it becomes night. No matter where the dwelling, no matter the time, no matter the season, the telling of tales causes a starry sky and a white moon to creep from the eaves and hover over the heads of the listeners. Sometimes, by the end of the tale, the chamber is tilled with daybreak, other times a star shard is left behind, sometimes a ragged thread of storm sky. And whatever is left behind is the bounty to work with, to use toward the soul-making..
My work in the humus of stories does not come from my training as a psychoanalyst alone, but equally from my long life as the child of a deeply ethnic and non-literate family heritage. Although my people could not read or write or did so haltingly, they were wise in ways that are often lost to modem culture.
There were times in my growing-up years that stories and jokes and songs and dances were demonstrated at the table during a meal or at a wedding or wake, but most of what I carry, tell raw, or write into literary stories, was received not while sitting in a
formai
circle but during hard work, tasks requiring intensity and concentration.
To my mind, story, in every way possible, thrives only on hard work—intellectual, spiritual, familial, physical, and integral. It never comes easy. It is never “just picked up,” or studied in one’s “off t
imes.” Its essence cannot be born
nor maintained in air- conditioned comfort, it cannot grow to any depth in an enthusiastic but non-committed mind, neither can it live in gregarious but shallow environs. Story cannot be “studied.” It is learned through assimilation, through living in its proximity with those who know it, live it, and teach it—more so through all the day-to-day mundane tasks of life, much more than the clearly ceremonial times.
The healing medicine of story does not exist in a vacuum.
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It cannot exist divorced from its spiritual source. It cannot be taken on as a mix-and-match project. There is an integrity to story that comes from a real life lived in it. A story is clearly illumined from being raised up in it
In my family’s oldest traditions, which stretch far back, as my
abuelitas
say, “for as many generations as there are generations,”
- the times for story, the tales chosen, the exact words employed to convey them, the tones of voice used for each, the endings and beginnings, the unfolding of the text and especially
the intention
behind each are most often dictated by an acute inner sensibility, more so than any outer pull or “opportunity.”
Some traditions set aside specific times for telling stories. Among my friends from several pueblo tribes, stories of Coyote are reserved for winter telling. My
comadres
and relatives in the south of Mexico tell about “the great wind from the east” in the springtime only. In my foster family certain tales cooked in their Eastern European heritage are told only in autumn after harvest. In my blood family, my
El
dia
de los muertos
stories are traditionally begun in early winter and carried on through the dark of winter until the return of spring.
In the old and integral healing rites germane to
curanderismo,
and the
mesemondók
, every detail is weighed very carefully against the tradition: when to tell a story, which story, and to whom, how long and in what form, what words, and under which conditions. We carefully consider the time, the place, the health or lack of health of the person, the mandates in the person’s inner and outer lives, and several other critical factors as well, in order to arrive at the medicine needed. In the most basic ways there is a spirit, both holy and whole, behind our ages-old rituals; and we tell stories when we are summoned by their covenant with us, not vice versa.
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In using story as medicine, as in a vigorous psychoanalytic training as well as in other rigorously taught and supervised healing arts, we are trained carefully to know what
tò
do and when, but most especially we are trained in
what not to do.
This, perhaps more than anything, separates stories as entertainment—a worthy form in and of itself—from stories as medicine.
In my “farthest-back” culture, although we bridge the modem world, there is at die root a timeless storyteller legacy, wherein one teller hands down his or her stories and the knowledge of the medicine in them to one or more
las semillas
“seed” persons.. “Seeds” are people “who have the gift from birth onward.” They are the future story-keeps whom the elder has hopes for. Those who have shown a talent are recognizable. Several old ones will agree and squire them, help and protect them while they learn.
The lucky ones will, with much difficulty, discomfort, and inconvenience, enter a rigorous and many-years-long course of work that will teach them to carry on the tradition as they learned it, with all the proper preparations, blessings, percussions, essential insights, ethics, and attitudes that constitute the body of healing knowledge, according to its requirements—not theirs— according to its initiations, according to its prescribed forms.
These forms and lengths of time “in training” cannot be shunted aside or modernized. They cannot be learned in a few weekends or a few years’ time. They demand long periods of time for a reason, and that is so that the work does not become trivialized, changed, or misused, as it often does when in the wrong hands, or when used for the wrong reasons, or when appropriated with all good intention coupled with ignorance.
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No good can come from that.
How “seeds” are chosen is a mysterious process that defies exact definition except for those who know it well, for it is not based on a set of rules, nor imagination, but rather on time- honored relationship, face-to-face, one person to another. The
elder chooses the younger, one chooses another, sometimes they find their way to us, but more often we stumble over each other, and both recognize the other as though over eons. Desire to be like this is not the same as being this.
Typically those in family who carry this talent are called out in childhood. The elders who carry the gift have their eyes peeled, often looking for the one who is
“sin piel,
”
the skinless one, the one who feels so much and so deeply and who observes the larger patterns of life and the smaller details as well. They are looking as I, now in my fifth decade, look for those who have come to certain acuities from having, for decades, and for a lifetime, lived in careful listening.
The training of
curanderas, cantadoras y cuentistas
is very similar because in my heritage, stories are considered to be written like
un tatuaje
del
destino
, a light tattoo on the skin of the one who has lived them.
It is believed that talent in healing derives from the reading of this faint writing upon the soul and the development of what is found there. Story, as one part of a five-part healing discipline, is considered the destiny of one who carries such inscribing. Not all carry such, but those who do have their own futures written upon them. They are called “
Las únicas,
” those who are one of a kind.
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So, one of the first questions we ask when we meet a teller/healer is, “
Quienes
son
tus familiares? Quienes
son
tus
padres?”
“Who are your people?” In other words, from what family line of healers do you come? This does not mean what school did you go to? This does not mean what classes did you take, what workshops have you been to? It means literally, from whose spiritual lines do you descend? As always, we look for authenticity in age, knowing rather than intellectual smartness, a religious devotion that is unshakable and imbedded in daily life, the gentle courtesies and attitudes that are clearly inherent in a person who has knowledge of that Source from which all healing derives.
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In the
cantadora/cuentista
tradition, there are parents and grandparents and sometimes
madrinas y padrinos,
Godparents of a story, and these being the person who taught the story and its meanings and momentum to you, who gifted you with it (the mother or father of the story), and the person who taught it to the person who taught it to you
(
abuelo o abuela
, grandfather or grandmother of the story). This is as it should be.
Gaining explicit permission to tell another’s tale and the proper crediting of that tale, if permission to it is given, is absolutely essential, for it maintains the genealogical umbilicus; we are on one end, the life-giving placenta on the other. It is a sign of respect, ai\d one might say, of befitting manners in one properly raised in stories to ask and receive permission,
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to not take work that has not been given freely, to respect the work of others, for their work and their lives together make the work they give out. A story is not just a story. In its most innate and proper sense, it is someone’s life. It is the
numen
of their life and their firsthand familiarity with the stories they carry that makes the story “medicine.”
The Godparents of the tale are those who gave a blessing along with the gifting of the story. Sometimes it takes a long, long time to tell the ancestry of a story before we can begin the story proper. This listing of the mother of the story, and the grandmother of the story, and so on, is not a long, boring preamble, but spiced with small stories in and of itself. The longer story that follows is then like a second course, like that at a feast.
In every authentic story and healing tradition that I know, the relating of a story begins with the bringing up, hauling up of psychic contents, both collective and personal. The process is a long exertion in time and energy, both intellectual and spiritual; it is in no way an idle practice. It costs much and takes long. Though there are
intercambiamos cuentos
, story trades, wherein two people who have come to know each other well exchange stories as a gift to one another, this occurs because they hav
e developed, if they are not born
to it, a kinship relationship. And this is as it should be.
Although some use stories as entertainment alone, and although television in particular too often uses storylines that depict the necrosis of life, tales are, in one of their oldest senses, a healing art. Some are called to this healing art, and the best, by my lights,
are those who have genuinely lain with the story, and found all its matching parts inside themselves and at depth... they have had a long mentorship, a long spiritual “discipleship,” and a long time perfecting their disciplines. Persons such as these are immediately recognizable by their presence alone.
In dealing with stories, we are handling archetypal energy, which we could metaphorically describe as being like electricity. This electrical power can animate and enlighten, but in the wrong place, wrong time, wrong amount, wrong teller, wrong story, unprepared teller, person who may know some of what to do, but does not know what
not
to do,
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like any medicine, it will not have the desired effect, or else a deleterious one. Sometimes people who are “story collectors” do not realize what they are asking when they ask for a story of this dimension, or attempt to use it without blessing.
Archetype changes us. Archetype infuses a recognizable integrity, a recognizable endurance—if
the
re
is no change in the teller, there has been no fidelity, there has been no real contact with the archetype, no transmission—only rhetorical translation or self-interested aggrandizement. The handing down of story is a large and far-reaching responsibility. To detail the parameters of such would fill several volumes were I to attempt to describe the healing processes in their completeness using story as a single component among many. But i
n the limited space here, let th
e most important part be conveyed—that we are charged to make certain that people are completely and fully wired for the stories they carry and tell.
Among the best of the teller-healers I know, and I have been blessed to know many,
their stories grow out of their lives
as roots grow a tree. The stories have grown
them
, grown them into who they are. We can tell the difference. We know when someone has “grown” a story facetiously and when the story has genuinely grown them. It is the latter that underlies the integral traditions.
Sometimes
a stranger asks me for one of th
e stories I've mined, shaped, and carried over the years. As the keeper of these
stories, given to me on the basis of promises asked for and promises kept, I do not separate them from the other words and rites that surround them, especially those developed and nurtured in the roots of
familia.
This choice depends on no five-point plan, but on a science of soul. Relationship and relatedness are everything.
The master-apprentice model provides the kind
of careful atmosphere in which I
have been able to help my learners seek and develop the stories that will accept them, that will shine through them, not just lay on the surface of their being like dime-store jewelry. There are
ways and there are ways. There are few easy ways but no easy ways that I know of that also have integrity. There are much more and far more tortuous and difficult ways that have integrity and are worth it.
Absolutely, one is enabled in the healing art, in the medicine of story, by the amount of self that one is willing to sacrifice and put into it, and I mean the word
sacrifice
in every nuance of the word. Sacrifice is not a suffering that one chooses oneself, nor is it a “convenient suffering” in which the terminus is controlled by the “sacrificee.” Sacrifice is not a great striving or even a substantial discomfort. It is in somewise “entering a hell not of one’s own making,” and returning from it, fully chastened, fully focused, fully devoted. No more, no less.
There is a saying in my family: the gatekeeper of stories will exact their due from you, that is, force you to live a certain kind of life, a daily discipline, bend you to many years of study—not idle study as ego finds it convenient, but one built upon exacting patterns and requirements. I cannot emphasize
filis
enough.
In the family traditions of dealing with story, in the
mese-
mondók
as well as the
cuentista
traditions I learned and have used since I was a child, there is what is called
La invitada
, “the guest” that is, the empty chair; this being present at every telling in one way or another. Sometimes during a tell, the soul of one or more of the listeners comes and sits there, for it has a need. Although I may have an entire evening of material I had carefully considered,
I may change the progression to accommodate, to mend, or play with the sense of spirit that comes to the empty chair. “The guest” speaks for the needs of all.
* * *
I tell people to do their own mining of stories from their own lives, and insist upon it with those
I
teach,
especially
the stories from their own heritages, for if at the least, one turns always to the tales directly from the translators of Grimms, for instance, then the tales of their personal heritage—as soon as their old ones die off— shall be lost to them forever. I am a strong supporter of those who bring back the stories of their heritages, preserving them, saving them from death by neglect. Of course, it is the old people who are the bones of the entire healing and spiritual structures everywhere on the face of the earth.
Look to your people, your life. It is not by accident that this advice is the same among great healers and great writers as well. Look to the
real
that you yourself live. The kinds of tales found there can never come from books. They come from eyewitness accounts.
The authentic mining of stories from one’s own life and the lives of one's own people, and the modem world as it relates to one’s own life as well, means that there will be discomfort and trials. You know you are on the right path if you have experienced these: the scraped knuckles, the sleeping on cold ground—not once, but over and over again—the groping in the dark, the walking in circles in the night, the bone-chilling revelations, and the hair-raising adventures on the way—these are worth everything. There must be a little, and in many cases, a good deal of blood spilled on every story, on every aspect of your own life, if it is to carry the
numen,
if a person is to carry a true medicine.
I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories from your life—your life—not someone else’s life—water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom. That is the work. The only work.
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