Authors: Clarissa Pincola Estes
dismal choices that have blown us off course—too far from what we need—hold faith, for within the soul is the homing device. We all can find our way back.
The Lonely Man
In a story similar to the core of this one, it is actually a human woman who lures a whale-man to copulate with her by stealing his fin. In other stories, the offspring is sometimes a girl, sometimes a fish boy. Sometimes the old one out in the sea is a venerable old female. Because there is so much gender exchange in stories, the maleness and femaleness of the characters in the story are far less important than the proscribed process.
In this spirit, let us consider that the lonely man who steals the sealskin represents the ego of a woman’s psyche. The health of the ego is often determined by how well one measures boundaries in the outer world, how strongly one’s identity is formed, how well one differentiates past, present, and
future,
and how closely one’s perceptions coincide with consensual reality. It is a timeless motif in human psyche that the ego and the soul vie to control the life force. In early life, the ego, with its appetites, often leads; it is always cooking something up that smells really good. The ego is very muscular during this time. It relegates the soul to back porch kitchen duty.
But at some point, sometimes in our twenties, sometimes our thirties, most often the forties, although some women aren’t really ready until they’re fifty or sixty or even in their seventies or eighties, we begin at last to let the soul lead. The power shifts away from brickabrack and firick-frack to soulfulness. And though the soul does not assume the lead by killing off the ego, the ego is demoted, one might say, and given a different assignment in the psyche, which is essentially to submit to the concerns of the soul.
From the time we are born
, there is a wildish urge within us that desires our souls lead our lives, for the ego can only understand just so much. Imagine the ego on a permanent and relatively short leash; it can only go so far into the mysteries of life and spirit. Usually, it becomes frightened. It has a bad habit of reducing all numinosity to a “nothing but’’ It demands facts that are observable. Proofs that are
of a feeling or mystical nature do not very often sit well with the ego. That is why the ego is lonely. It is very limited in its constructs in this way; it cannot fully participate in the more mysterious processes of soul and psyche. Yet the lonely man yearns for soul, dimly recognizes soulful and wildish things when they are near.
Some people use the words
soul
and
spirit
interchangeably. But in fairy tales the soul is always the pro-gynitor and the progenitor of spirit In arcane hermene
utics, the spirit is a being born
of the soul. The spirit inherits or incarnates into matter in order to gather news of the ways of the world and carries these back to the soul. When not interfered with, the relationship between soul and spirit is one of perfect symmetry; each enriches the other in turn. Together, the soul and spirit form an ecology, as in a pond where the creatures at the bottom nourish those at the top and those at the top nourish those at the bottom.
In Jungian psychology, the ego is often described as a small island of consciousness that floats in a sea of unconsciousness. However, in folklore the ego is portrayed as a creature of appetite, often symbolized by a not very bright human
or
animal surrounded by forces very mystifying to it, and over which it attempts to gain control. Sometimes the ego is able to gain control in a most brutish and destructive manner, but in the end, through the heroine’s or hero’s progress, it most often loses its bid to reign.
In the beginning of one’s life, the ego is curious about the soul- world, but more often it is concerned with fulfilling its own h
ungers. The ego is initially born
into us as potential, and is shaped, developed, and filled up with ideas, values, and duties by the world around us: our parents, our teachers, our culture. And this is as it should be, for it becomes our escort, our armor, and our scout in the outer world. However, if the wildish nature is not allowed to emanate upward through the ego, giving it color, juice, and instinctive responsiveness, then although the culture may approve of what has been fashioned in this ego, the soul does not, cannot, will not approve such incompleteness of
its
work.
The lonely man in the tale is attempting to participate in the life of the soul. But like the ego, he is not particularly built for it, and tries to grab at the soul rather than develop a relationship with it Why does the ego steal the sealskin? Like all other lonely or
hungry things, it loves the light. It sees light, and the possibility of being close to the soul, and it creeps up to it and steals one of its essential camouflages. Ego cannot help itself. It is what it is; attracted to the light. Even though it cannot live under the water, it has its own yearning for relationship with the soul. The ego is crude in comparison to the soul. Its way of doing things is usually not evocative or sensitive. But it has a tiny and dimly understood longing for the beautiful light. And this, in some way and for some time, calms the ego.
So, in a hunger for soul, our own ego-self steals the pelt. “Stay with me,” whispers the ego. “I will make you happy—by isolating you from your soul-self and your cycles of returning to your soul- home. I will make you very, very happy. Please, please stay.” And so, as is right in the beginning of feminine individuation, the soul is pressured into relationship with ego. The mundane function of the soul’s subservience to the ego occurs in order for us to learn the world, the ways to gain things, how to work, how to differentiate good from not so good, when to move, when to stay put, how to live with other people, learning the mechanics and machinations of culture, holding a job, holding a baby, taking care of the body, taking care of business... all the things of the outer life.
The initial purpose of developing such an important construct within a woman’s psyche, the marriage of the seal woman and the lonely man, a marriage in which she is definitely subservient, is to create a temporary arrangement that will ultimately produce a spirit child who can cohabit and translate in and between both the mundane and the wildish worlds.
Once this symbolic child is born
, developed, initiated, it resurfaces into the outer world and the relationship with soul is healed. Even though the lonely man, the ego, cannot dominate forever—for someday it must submit to the demands of soul for the rest of a woman’s life—by living with the seal woman/soul-woman, it has been touched by greatness, and is therefore gratified, enriched, and humbled all at the same time.
The Spirit Child
So we see that the union of opposites between ego and soul produces something of infinite value, the spirit child. And it is true that even when the ego roughly intrudes upon the more subtle aspects of psyche and soul, a cross-fertilization is taking place. Paradoxically, by stealing the soul's protection and its ability to vanish into the water at will, the ego participates in making a child who will claim dual heritage, world and soul, one who will be able to carry messages and gifts back and forth between the two.
In some of the greatest tales, such as the Gaelic "Beauty and the Beast,” the Mexican
“Bruja Milagro,
” and the Japanese
“Tsukino Waguma:
The Bear,” finding the way back to one’s rightful psychic order begins with the feeding of or the caring for a lonely and/or injured woman, man, or beast. That such a child, who will have the ability to traverse two very different worlds, can come from a woman who is in such a skinless state and "married” to something in herself or in the outer world that is so lonely and undeveloped is one of the constant miracles of the psyche. Something occurs within us when we are in such a state, something that produces a feeling state, a tiny new life, a small flame that thrives under imperfect, arduous, or even inhumane conditions.
This spirit child is
la niña milagrosa
, a miracle child, who has the ability to hear the call, hear the far-off voice that says it is time to come back, back to oneself. The child is a part of our medial nature that compels us, for it can hear the call when it comes. It is the child rising out
of sleep, out of bed, out of the house, and out into the wind-filled night and down to the wild sea that causes us to assert, "As God is my witness, I shall proceed in this way,” or "I
will
endure,” or "I shall not be turned away,” or “I shall find a way to continue.”
It is the child who brings the sealskin, soulskin back to his mother. It is the child who enables her to return to her home. This child is a spiritual power that impels us to continue our important work, to push back, change our lives, better the community, join in helping to balance the
world...
all by returning to home. If one wants to participate in these things, the difficult marriage between soul and ego must be made, the spirit child must be brought to life. Retrieval and return are the goals of mastery.
Regardless of a woman's circumstances, the spirit child, the old seal who rises up from the sea calling his daughter home, and the open sea are always near. Always. Even in places and at times one might least expect them to be present.
Since 1971, Fve taught writing as contemplative practice in prisons and penitentiaries across the nation. On a particular trip to a federal women’s prison with a group of artist/healers,
7
in order to do performance and teach a group of a hundred women who were intensely involved in a spiritual growth program there, as usual, I saw few “hardened” women. Instead, I saw dozens of women in various stages of seal-womanness. Many, many had been figuratively, but also literally, “captured” through their intensely naive choices. Whatever their reasons for being there, in spite of the most constrained conditions, each woman in her own way was clearly in the process of creating a spirit child, carefully and painfully fashioned from her own flesh, from her own bones. Each woman was searching also for the sealskin; each was in the process of remembering the way back to the soul-home.
One artist of our troupe, a young black violinist named India Cook, played for the women. We were outdoors in the open yard; it was very cold and the wind was making an
Ooooooo
sound around the backdrop on the open stage. The violinist drew her bow across the strings of her electrified violin and played sternum- piercing music in a minor key. Truly, her violin wept. A big Lakota woman pounded on my arm and hoarsely whispered, “This sound ... that violin unlocks a place in me. I thought I was locked up good and tight and forever.” Her broad face was both puzzled and ethereal. My heart broke on itself, but in a good way, for I saw that no matter what had happened to her—and
much
had happened to her—she could still hear the cry from over the sea, that call from home.
In the “Sealskin, Soulskin” story, the seal maiden tells her child stories about what lives and thrives under the sea. She instructs through her stories
, shaping this child who was born
of her union with the ego. She is forming the child, teaching it the terrain and the ways of the “other.” The soul is preparing this wildish child of the psyche for something very important
Drying Out and Crippling
Most of a woman’s depressions, ennuis, and wandering confusions are caused by a severely restricted soul-life in which innovation, impulse, and creation are restricted or forbidden. Women receive enormous impulse to act from the creative force. We cannot overlook the fact that there is still much thieving and hamstringing of women’s talents through cultural restriction and punishment of her natural and wildish instincts.
We can break away from this condition if there is an underground river or even a little freshet pouring from somewhere soulful into our lives. But if a woman “far from home” surrenders all power, she will become first a fog, then a vapor, and finally a wisp of her former wildish self.
All this secreting away of a woman’s natural pelt and her subsequent drying out and crippling reminds me of an
oíd
story that circulated in our family among the several old country tailors. My late Uncle Vilmos once told it to calm and teach an angry adult in our extended family, one who was being too harsh with a child. Uncle Vilmos had infinite patience and tenderness toward humans and creatures. He was a natural storyteller in the
mesemondók
tradition and skilled in applying stories as gentle medicine.
A
man came to
a SZABÓ,
tailor,
and tried on a suit. As he stood before the mirror, he noticed the vest was a little uneven at the bottom.
“Oh,” said the tailor, “don’t worry about that Just hold the shorter end down with your left hand and no one will ever notice.”
While the customer proceeded to do this, he noticed that the lapel of the jacket curled up instead of lying flat.
“Oh that?” said the tailor. “That’s nothing. Just turn your head a little and hold it down with your chin.”
The customer complied, and as he did, he noticed that the inseam of the pants was a little short and he felt that the rise was a bit too tight.