9 posts tagged “clarissa pinkola estes”

"The shadow life occurs when writers, painters, dancers, mothers, seekers, mystics, students or journeywomen stop writing, painting, dancing, mothering, looking, peering, learning, practicing..."
~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With The Wolves


Of our Devil's bargain;
Jealous, jealous!
Your music,
your voice,
your power -
your red gloves
confident upon the life
not chosen.

What have you to envy, Shadow girl?
What bargain shall we strike?

How is it, I negotiate for a life
that is already my own?

"Compliance causes a shocking realization:
To be ourselves causes us to be exiled by many others,
and yet, to comply with what others want causes us to be exiled from ourselves."
~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With The Wolves [p81]


I begin to suspect
you have the best of me.
I am your disarticulation
alive, less than well
the one, on the wrong
side of your looking glass.

I am the Sin Eater, the fetch
who swallows your regrets;
fruit rotting in my belly
that never touched my lips.
Mine the exile, my life
your spectral evidence.

The term sin-eater refers to a person who, through ritual means, would take on by means of food and drink the sins of a deceased person, thus absolving his or her soul and allowing that person to rest in peace.
~Wikipedia

This notion has gotten under my skin today. Originally, I was drawn to it via some reading I have been doing, and referencing, from Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With The Wolves. She suggests that the carrion birds who eat the remains of the predator [Bluebeard, pp 36-40] are 'as sin eaters' -- that is, they metaphorically consume the negative aspects of the psyche, facilitating cleaning and release.

It's a startling idea - with strong overtones of the scapegoat archetype I was recently writing about. The notion that someone or something, can be made (or choose) to bear the burden of our wrong-doing and thus liberate us from our own responsibility, accountability etc. In fact, this also parallels the idea of confession - again the idea that we can have our transgressions lifted from us by someone/something else.

I have to wonder about the Sin Eater, as scapegoat; are they born, or made? Is a Sin Eater something one 'is' or something one 'becomes'. Is sin-eating a type of personal legend? An accidental occupation? A punishment?

Wikipedia provided the following:

The 1926 book Funeral Customs by Bertram S. Puckle mentions the sin-eater:

"Professor Evans of the Presbyterian College, Carmarthen, actually saw a sin-eater about the year 1825, who was then living near Llanwenog, Cardiganshire. Abhorred by the superstitious villagers as a thing unclean, the sin-eater cut himself off from all social intercourse with his fellow creatures by reason of the life he had chosen; he lived as a rule in a remote place by himself, and those who chanced to meet him avoided him as they would a leper. This unfortunate was held to be the associate of evil spirits, and given to witchcraft, incantations and unholy practices; only when a death took place did they seek him out, and when his purpose was accomplished they burned the wooden bowl and platter from which he had eaten the food handed across, or placed on the corpse for his consumption".^[3]

Howlett mentions sin-eating as an old custom in Hereford, and thus describes the practice: 'The corpse being taken out of the house, and laid on a bier, a loaf of bread was given to the sin-eater over the corpse, also a maga-bowl of maple, full of beer. These consumed, a fee of sixpence was given him for the consideration of his taking upon himself the sins of the deceased, who, thus freed, would not walk after death.'"

Taking on the sins of others .... a sixpence doesn't seem hardly worth it ....

"Many women's alacrity and fighting natures are not as close to consciousness as is efficient."
~  Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With The Wolves

Two words I have been called my entire life; fighter, and survivor.
It is ironic that when I actually look back I feel I seldom fight until I am cornered with no conceivable escape.
Even so.
Do I fight?

I am more like a turtle, or a porcupine - one of those creatures, who when feeling threatened, burrow within themselves and trust their natural armor to keep them safe.

What happens when you are woman: flesh, breath, terrorous heart?
There is no natural armor.
Is there?

Can it be, I have a badger's heart and the fighting skills of a possum?

Oh yes, I am a Virginia Possum, who, when it thinks it is being threatened will switch into a catatonic state where it appears to be dead; limp, breathing almost undetectable. I awaken when the perceived danger passes.

What opportunities are lost, while I sleep?
Do not think on it;
I won't.

I am not a fighter. I am a resister.
I'm not knocking it. I survive. A feral possum.

"Analysis, dream interpretation, self knowing, exploration, are all undertaken because they are ways of backtracking and looping. They are ways of diving down and coming up behind an issue and seeing it from a different perspective."
~  Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With The Wolves

There are so many different ways to 'process' through a thing. I open a door and I keep opening doors until my psyche reaches a flash point of understanding.

Some people call this 'over thinking' - I call it survival.
Anything less is a refusal to 'see' - a resistance to consciousness.

A girl can get dis(re)membered while she sleeps.