The Wolf, The Woman, and The Goddess who Bleeds.

The last few days have been busy. I made it outside for the first time since almost dying in hospital last Sunday. We had my students over and although circle was brief I got some simple candle meditation as well as a great field trip down. We went barefoot on a specially designed barefoot trail in Trentham Gardens. Mini witch, myself, E, D, and TK (though he did not take off his shoes) did the trail. Even in the light rain it was fun and enlightening as an exercise in "thinking, seeing and being" in your feet. Grounding, sensing space and so on. Walking on the grass and through the two little streams were my favorite parts, yet even some of the rougher man-made surfaces brought back memories (municipal paddling pools, playing in streams and rivers in hot summers, rainy Welsh pebble beaches and sandy egg sandwiches.) It was a great idea and one I hope to repeat again soon. After a good and very filling meal I was exhausted.

I have had the pleasure of spending some one on one time with E this week, and it was lovely. I gave her a book that weekend. It is a book I return to again and again. Ritual and narrative space often have the same depth and quality. A dreaming, healing space that symbolic, archetypal and "inconscious" speaks and is heard, not only within the psyche, but within the whole body. The idea of wolves came up in conversation. We were discussing Red Riding-Hood. Stories that do not make sense or feel off often show spaces we can grow. We discussed many things. Why doesn't the Wolf just eat Red in the forest? Why does he disguise him self as Granny? The red of the hood? How can the wolf swallow them whole, and yet be able to emerge from the belly of the "beast"? What if the wolf is the red-hood, the wild, the powerful, the freedom? What if the maiden and the Crone are immune or not under the control of a man? What if the wolf swallowing them whole is about a joining, embracing of this power? What if the real villain is the woodsman and his axe? Cutting open the wild, the powerful, the collective, the creative, rendering them a child and elderly woman again? Yet be both agreed, you can never fully kill the wolf. While she wears her red cape, while Granny chooses the forest, wolves will always be close, watching and waiting again. This ritual of blood, of wearing red, or embracing the wolf, reminds me of ancient menses rites of passage. (separation, transition, incorporation*) The untamed in every woman. The wild nature in her blood, and hands, and belly. The times and ways that no matter how "domesticated" the woman she gnashes her teeth, growls, jumps, plays, and howls.

Men, of course, can be "domesticated" too. Yet culturally men are still permitted many freedoms women struggle for. When a man is busy, his business is "more important" that a woman's. From pay, to the value of a painting, to the acceptability to interrupt her work. When a child is sick, she must take the time off work. If she is creating, singing, meditating, there is not the hushed respect there is when a man is doing the same. Even the acts of nurturing, nursing, cleaning, cooking and organizing the home are not seen as "work".
Yet that creative nature can never be fully erased. From tiny fragments a womb-man can grow her own wolf. She can create, heal and play. Her cycles of creating, listening, dreaming and destroying are woven into the fabric of her body, because her Goddess bleeds.
*Van Gennep (from Victor Tuners From Ritual to theatre)