Sleeping with the wolves: a journey into the dream world at 40. Or, why stories are the new God
Lately I've been having vivid, memorable dreams. For instance, the other night I dreamt of the ocean. I was in it – not swimming, but just letting the playful waves throw me around like seaweed.
The water was warm and clear, and I could feel it slowly soaking into my hair. I didn't mind, I wasn't frightened; I felt safe, as if I was being held and protected. I was happy for the sea to take me where it wanted.
Then a couple of nights later I had another dream. There was a male opera singer onstage. He had long dark hair and a beard and was wearing flowing white robes. He was singing one of those arias where the character dies, so it was passionate and powerful. But instead of the singer acting the death, he actually died for real. It was so vivid and upsetting it woke me up.
There have been other dreams too, including the classic one of forgetting your lines. This time it was actually me onstage (I was playing Tinkerbell, for what it's worth), and I woke up just as I stepped onto the set, knowing full well I hadn't a clue what I was supposed to say.
When dreams are disturbing it's a relief when you realise in those few seconds after waking that the events that took place in them, even if ridiculous, didn't actually happen, despite how 'real' they felt at the time. Thank goodness, we say, it was just a dream.
And for me that's always exactly what they always used to be: 'just dreams', figments of my unconscious imagination, as far removed from reality as it was possible to get. I was one of those people who never remembered their dreams anyway, and even if I could I never used to give them much thought. They always seemed to be either completely uninteresting or so ridiculous as to be not worth reflecting upon. Dreams were a form of mental dental floss, my brain/ unconscious, or whatever it was, doing what it had to do to filter out whatever it had been exposed to during the day. I was happy to let it get on with it without my conscious self interfering.
Certainly, subjecting my dreams to Freudian or Jungian-type analysis seemed self-indulgent, unnecessary and a bit old-hat (although I'm always up for a lie down on a couch). How were you supposed to know that any one interpretation was correct? And what was the point anyway in dwelling on intangible, fragmentary events that didn't even exist as such, except in flickers upon my sleeping mind's eye? Getting hung-up on dreams seemed like getting hung-up on memories of past events you can't change. Pointless.
But my view on this is starting to change a bit, and it's partly due to this book. It's a big book, and it's taking me a while to get through it, but that is part of its joy. What is it about? Women Who Run with the Wolves is about many things, but mainly about stories – ancient stories, fairytales – how we read them, what they mean, and how they relate to our lives.
What does this mean? Stories are meant to relate to our lives, of course. That's part of their appeal. And stories remain important to all humans, in cultures all over the world. Not only are we all storytellers, mythologizing ourselves – and each other – on a daily basis, but stories also surround us in the form of gossip, advertising, films, soap operas, actual opera... When I watch my films and read my novels I often want to know what happens next. Who doesn't love a good cliff-hanger?
But stories have a function beyond what happens next. Now, I always knew this, but I never knew what this function was, exactly. Having studied for a degree in English Literature, I figured I was supposed to know. I mean, I understood that fairytales were more complicated than their immediate superficial, surface meanings suggested. I'd often quote those old clichés: 'Fairytales help us to make sense of the world', or 'Fairytales articulate profound truths about humanity.' But it always felt like I was reiterating code. What does that mean? What profound truths?
Well, 'meaning' is the operative word. Using stories as escapism and entertainment is a mighty fine thing, but when it comes to ancient tales the linear narrative of events and the hungering for 'what happens next' after that great cliff-hanger isn't as important as asking the question: 'what does it mean'?
It turns out that in fairy tales pretty characters and narratives exist for reasons other than just for themselves; they exist beyond themselves. They are a means to an end.
How?
Well, once upon a time stories had a more 'psychic' function. Like dropping stones into a lake, they not only caused surface ripples but as they sank deeper down into the water they also sent up clouds of dust that had been laying dormant. Ancient tales were used deliberately to stir up associations, memories, instincts, intuition – the innate knowledge in the furthest recesses of our minds that exists beyond the ego, that we're all born with and that belongs to the ancient collective resource tapped into by generations.
This is knowledge that existed time out of mind and beyond human language, which is why, although stories use words, they also make heavy use of signs, symbols and archetypes – trigger images that our unconscious minds recognise on a very deep primeval level in order to mine this knowledge.
In fact, we are not really meant to take fairytales literally at all. Feminists (myself included) who worked themselves up into a lather about female characters being weak and passive needn't have worried. Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, as well as the wicked witch, the king, giant, fairy godmother, Prince Charming himself and whoever else you care to name – they all represent different aspects of our psyches.
As does the traditional geography of fairytales. Those mountains, seas, rivers, hills, roads and forests (oh man, those forests), they all represent our own psychic terrain, often the unconscious mind itself. Whenever a character journeys into a forest or up a mountain, it's a journey deep into the self for inner wisdom.
Our ancient ancestors understood this. They would have been less concerned with events, however graphic, than with what it means psychically. Most probably they would not have taken violent events entirely literally. This is borne out by the apparent child-friendly 'airbrushing' of the old tales we all think we know so well – Snow white, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, Rumplestiltskin, Beauty and the Beast – as they were collected and written down for modern audiences. As Clarissa Pinkola Estes says, "... in the case of the Brothers Grimm (among other fairytale collectors of the past few centuries), there is a strong suspicion that the informants (storytellers) of that time sometimes 'purified' their stories for the religious brothers' sakes. Over the course of time, old pagan symbols were overlaid with Christian ones, so that an old healer in a tale became an evil witch, a spirit became an angel... Sexual elements were omitted. Helping creatures and animals were often changed into demons and bogeys."
The patriarchs knew the power of good storytelling, and it's interesting how stories have been used by religions as tools to influence, dominate and indoctrinate societies en masse. Who knows why Christianity insisted that animals were mere 'beasts of burden', rather than friends and equals? Perhaps for the same reason as it took against women: that they were worshipped as gods/ goddesses. Christianity obviously wasn't having that.
Neither was it going to let us think for ourselves, use our brains and find our own answers to life's problems. While old stories and fairytales encourage an exploration of the unconscious mind, a diving within to access the pre-historic, instinctive wisdom that is available to us all, by and large religion tells us what to think. Not only does it tell us the buildings to meet in, where to sit and when to stand, it commands us with a set of patronising rules that, once you start to think about it, is really kind of laughable ('Thou shalt not kill'? Thanks for that)...
Stories were used by pre-Christian societies so extensively, and were such a deeply-entrenched part of life that somehow Christianity had to redesign them to suit its own ends. It's no mistake that old wise women – the healers, hedgewytches and midwives – who used stories as part of their craft were recast as ugly, evil witches, that black cats were often seen as their companions (while snakes have suffered from the most disastrous PR job in human history)... In fairytales, animals too represent the unconscious mind, particularly cats whose mindful, meditative qualities must have been part of their appeal to the ancient Egyptians. Even in the context of viewing them as evil, however, it is much more helpful to view witches, cats and snakes as aspects of our own psyches, rather than taking them in a literal, fundamentalist sense.
How we relate stories to our psyches has become a lost art. Although illiterate in a modern sense, our ancient ancestors, in the days before religion and the industrial revolution took them away from it, were literate in the old ways of the land, and would have been adept in the art of 'reading' stories in ways more powerful and beneficial to people than they are used for nowadays. As we have become more 'literate' and 'educated', stories are no less important to us, but so fixated are many of us on our egos, lost in slumber, in thrall to consumerism, anxious about ageing, and worn out with work and keeping up with the Jones', we've fallen back on stories for escapism and entertainment alone, when in fact what we could be using them for much more. While cliff-hangers evaporate as soon as they are resolved, and on we move to the next thing, understanding how a story's different components relate on a psychological level stays with us forever.
So how do we do this? Much will depend on what the individual needs to know. In Women Who Run with the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes explains how many ancient tales relate to our wild natures – that aspect of ourselves that exists deep below the ego, below language, in a world of feelings and instinct, signs and symbols, and which over the years has been distrusted, neglected and suppressed. It is the individual woman (or man) from the title who runs with the wolves (who have also received bad press over the years for supposedly being 'big' and 'bad'), as opposed to the sheep who is herded by religion. "Wildlife and the wild woman are both endangered species," says Dr Estes in the first line of her book. She goes on to say that, "Healthy women and healthy wolves share certain psychic characteristics: keen sensing, playful spirit, and a heightened capacity for devotion."
According to Estes, who retells and deconstructs various old tales in detail, The Ugly Duckling is about the exile of the wild nature, its endurance and how it finally acknowledges itself and finds its home. Bluebeard is about its predator and captor, while Vasalisa is about its individuation, and The Red Shoes is about how a naive young girl's wild nature is stolen, before being reclaimed (it may also be about a girl's first period – the red shoes symbolising blood running down her legs to her feet: needless to say, I've not been able to look at my red Dr Marten's in the same way since I learned that).
By showing us how we can deepen our relationship with stories by viewing them as templates emanating from an oceanic source, through which we can mine our own inner archaeology, in many ways Women Who Run with the Wolves is a blueprint for life, and one that I wish I'd read many years ago. Looking back, perhaps we can all see examples of the wolf poking its head out of its shelter, only to have it shoved back in by society – overbearing parents, anxious teachers, peer pressure. The good news is that the wild woman/ man is still there in all of us, and we can bring her back by accessing and trusting this ancient, instinctive part of ourselves. As I turn 40, perhaps it's no mistake that this book arrived at this time. Reading it has made me want to find my own wild woman again. I think she has heard my call, and – in the same way as God is believed to have spoken to people according to the stories in the Bible – has been responding through my dreams.
That one about the sea – from what I can gather, it's the wild woman introducing herself as the ocean, which symbolises my unconscious power and intuitive powers. That the sea is calm means that I need not be afraid and that all will be well. My dream about the opera singer dying means the ending of an old life, with a new one beginning (40!), while my dream about forgetting my lines suggests an anxiety about this new life, which manifests itself in procrastination. Since starting to write this blog piece I've had various other dreams, too many to go into here, although one that stood out in particular involved me eating shellfish from a silver plate with a wealthy Victorian-looking gentleman. Glittering and shimmering like jewels, this really was a feast from the sea and could symbolise money, although even more interestingly, it could also mean that by literally putting the contents of the sea into myself, I'm now starting to acknowledge the merging of my unconscious life – the wild woman – with my conscious life. This I find really exciting.
Fairytales and dreams have a lot in common – they both deal in the same currency and it's no coincidence that stories were traditionally told at night round a campfire, and do often feature sleep (think Snow White and Sleeping Beauty). As Clarissa Pinkola Estes says, they can be used as medicine: by learning to 'read' both psychically, we are in effect consulting a vast medicine chest that has existed time out of mind, and which can have positive effects on our mental health. Understanding stories and dreams can help diagnose and treat deep unease.
So is this what is meant by those old chestnuts 'Fairytales help us to make sense of the world', or 'they articulate profound truths about humanity.' ? Maybe I'm getting somewhere now.
If you don't understand why you keep repeating the same old scenarios in your life in the form of experiences that leave you feeling cheated, gullible and foolish, going back to old stories and examining your dreams can help you realise why you make those mistakes. If you've suffered a trauma – been bullied, betrayed, your gullibility exposed – this may mean your wild woman is being hunted as prey. You need to acknowledge her, trust your instinctive nature and use the wild woman as your guide, your wolf's nose for knowledge, and stand with her in confidence.
While it is true that 'Mankind can't bear too much reality' and that stories can help us escape these painful scenarios, they can also help us face reality and understand it. That is, after all, what they were used for originally. The original psychologists, the storytellers of old passed on their understanding of stories as medicine, which, as healing as conventional medicine and as spiritual as religion, could fortify against conditions we now recognise as depression and phobias (I cured myself of a fear of spiders this way). By examining our dreams we bring matters up from the unconscious into our conscious awareness, and by doing so, initiate a process of coming to terms. In this sense, not only do we live our stories, but they live us. This is reflected in the words such as 'relate' and 'history', which are used in relation to storytelling, while the French use histoire to mean both 'story' and 'history'.
I just wish it hadn't taken me until now to get all this. 20 years ago as a student I was given lengthy reading lists of heavyweight classics, some of which I read, many of which I didn't. These lists included choice texts considered to comprise the 'canon', written mostly by men and selected for me mostly by men, and considered sufficiently scholarly. Many of these novels, plays, poems – and yes, short stories – were written by the big names we've all heard of. But even though I was studying for a degree, I still didn't understand how these worthy texts fit into the grand scheme of storytelling, and why stories were so important.
I wish I'd read Women who Run with the Wolves back then, it would have put everything into context. If the real power of storytelling was more widely understood as an essential part of life that not only binds people together, but which also puts us in touch with the numinous and sacred that exists not just outwardly in the form of a 'god', but as a healer within us all, then the arts may not be suffering such harsh cuts as they are currently. Far from being an unnecessary luxury, the symbolic, psychic function of stories can help relieve anxiety about all sorts of things, both personal and public. These include the publication and broadcast of problematic, potentially offensive content. I don't know about anyone else, but I'd rather have violence on a screen or stage, or in a book on my shelf, than in my life happening for real. Part of stories' original use was to act as a release valve, to mop up tensions and anxieties that might lead to these occurring for real.
Like wolves, stories will always call us. It's a call I want to follow. Stories are the new God. Or the old one before Him. Or something. You know what I mean.
The water was warm and clear, and I could feel it slowly soaking into my hair. I didn't mind, I wasn't frightened; I felt safe, as if I was being held and protected. I was happy for the sea to take me where it wanted.
Then a couple of nights later I had another dream. There was a male opera singer onstage. He had long dark hair and a beard and was wearing flowing white robes. He was singing one of those arias where the character dies, so it was passionate and powerful. But instead of the singer acting the death, he actually died for real. It was so vivid and upsetting it woke me up.
There have been other dreams too, including the classic one of forgetting your lines. This time it was actually me onstage (I was playing Tinkerbell, for what it's worth), and I woke up just as I stepped onto the set, knowing full well I hadn't a clue what I was supposed to say.
When dreams are disturbing it's a relief when you realise in those few seconds after waking that the events that took place in them, even if ridiculous, didn't actually happen, despite how 'real' they felt at the time. Thank goodness, we say, it was just a dream.
And for me that's always exactly what they always used to be: 'just dreams', figments of my unconscious imagination, as far removed from reality as it was possible to get. I was one of those people who never remembered their dreams anyway, and even if I could I never used to give them much thought. They always seemed to be either completely uninteresting or so ridiculous as to be not worth reflecting upon. Dreams were a form of mental dental floss, my brain/ unconscious, or whatever it was, doing what it had to do to filter out whatever it had been exposed to during the day. I was happy to let it get on with it without my conscious self interfering.
Certainly, subjecting my dreams to Freudian or Jungian-type analysis seemed self-indulgent, unnecessary and a bit old-hat (although I'm always up for a lie down on a couch). How were you supposed to know that any one interpretation was correct? And what was the point anyway in dwelling on intangible, fragmentary events that didn't even exist as such, except in flickers upon my sleeping mind's eye? Getting hung-up on dreams seemed like getting hung-up on memories of past events you can't change. Pointless.
What does this mean? Stories are meant to relate to our lives, of course. That's part of their appeal. And stories remain important to all humans, in cultures all over the world. Not only are we all storytellers, mythologizing ourselves – and each other – on a daily basis, but stories also surround us in the form of gossip, advertising, films, soap operas, actual opera... When I watch my films and read my novels I often want to know what happens next. Who doesn't love a good cliff-hanger?
But stories have a function beyond what happens next. Now, I always knew this, but I never knew what this function was, exactly. Having studied for a degree in English Literature, I figured I was supposed to know. I mean, I understood that fairytales were more complicated than their immediate superficial, surface meanings suggested. I'd often quote those old clichés: 'Fairytales help us to make sense of the world', or 'Fairytales articulate profound truths about humanity.' But it always felt like I was reiterating code. What does that mean? What profound truths?
Well, 'meaning' is the operative word. Using stories as escapism and entertainment is a mighty fine thing, but when it comes to ancient tales the linear narrative of events and the hungering for 'what happens next' after that great cliff-hanger isn't as important as asking the question: 'what does it mean'?
It turns out that in fairy tales pretty characters and narratives exist for reasons other than just for themselves; they exist beyond themselves. They are a means to an end.
How?
This is knowledge that existed time out of mind and beyond human language, which is why, although stories use words, they also make heavy use of signs, symbols and archetypes – trigger images that our unconscious minds recognise on a very deep primeval level in order to mine this knowledge.
In fact, we are not really meant to take fairytales literally at all. Feminists (myself included) who worked themselves up into a lather about female characters being weak and passive needn't have worried. Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, as well as the wicked witch, the king, giant, fairy godmother, Prince Charming himself and whoever else you care to name – they all represent different aspects of our psyches.
As does the traditional geography of fairytales. Those mountains, seas, rivers, hills, roads and forests (oh man, those forests), they all represent our own psychic terrain, often the unconscious mind itself. Whenever a character journeys into a forest or up a mountain, it's a journey deep into the self for inner wisdom.
Our ancient ancestors understood this. They would have been less concerned with events, however graphic, than with what it means psychically. Most probably they would not have taken violent events entirely literally. This is borne out by the apparent child-friendly 'airbrushing' of the old tales we all think we know so well – Snow white, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, Rumplestiltskin, Beauty and the Beast – as they were collected and written down for modern audiences. As Clarissa Pinkola Estes says, "... in the case of the Brothers Grimm (among other fairytale collectors of the past few centuries), there is a strong suspicion that the informants (storytellers) of that time sometimes 'purified' their stories for the religious brothers' sakes. Over the course of time, old pagan symbols were overlaid with Christian ones, so that an old healer in a tale became an evil witch, a spirit became an angel... Sexual elements were omitted. Helping creatures and animals were often changed into demons and bogeys."
The patriarchs knew the power of good storytelling, and it's interesting how stories have been used by religions as tools to influence, dominate and indoctrinate societies en masse. Who knows why Christianity insisted that animals were mere 'beasts of burden', rather than friends and equals? Perhaps for the same reason as it took against women: that they were worshipped as gods/ goddesses. Christianity obviously wasn't having that.
Neither was it going to let us think for ourselves, use our brains and find our own answers to life's problems. While old stories and fairytales encourage an exploration of the unconscious mind, a diving within to access the pre-historic, instinctive wisdom that is available to us all, by and large religion tells us what to think. Not only does it tell us the buildings to meet in, where to sit and when to stand, it commands us with a set of patronising rules that, once you start to think about it, is really kind of laughable ('Thou shalt not kill'? Thanks for that)...
Stories were used by pre-Christian societies so extensively, and were such a deeply-entrenched part of life that somehow Christianity had to redesign them to suit its own ends. It's no mistake that old wise women – the healers, hedgewytches and midwives – who used stories as part of their craft were recast as ugly, evil witches, that black cats were often seen as their companions (while snakes have suffered from the most disastrous PR job in human history)... In fairytales, animals too represent the unconscious mind, particularly cats whose mindful, meditative qualities must have been part of their appeal to the ancient Egyptians. Even in the context of viewing them as evil, however, it is much more helpful to view witches, cats and snakes as aspects of our own psyches, rather than taking them in a literal, fundamentalist sense.
How we relate stories to our psyches has become a lost art. Although illiterate in a modern sense, our ancient ancestors, in the days before religion and the industrial revolution took them away from it, were literate in the old ways of the land, and would have been adept in the art of 'reading' stories in ways more powerful and beneficial to people than they are used for nowadays. As we have become more 'literate' and 'educated', stories are no less important to us, but so fixated are many of us on our egos, lost in slumber, in thrall to consumerism, anxious about ageing, and worn out with work and keeping up with the Jones', we've fallen back on stories for escapism and entertainment alone, when in fact what we could be using them for much more. While cliff-hangers evaporate as soon as they are resolved, and on we move to the next thing, understanding how a story's different components relate on a psychological level stays with us forever.
According to Estes, who retells and deconstructs various old tales in detail, The Ugly Duckling is about the exile of the wild nature, its endurance and how it finally acknowledges itself and finds its home. Bluebeard is about its predator and captor, while Vasalisa is about its individuation, and The Red Shoes is about how a naive young girl's wild nature is stolen, before being reclaimed (it may also be about a girl's first period – the red shoes symbolising blood running down her legs to her feet: needless to say, I've not been able to look at my red Dr Marten's in the same way since I learned that).
By showing us how we can deepen our relationship with stories by viewing them as templates emanating from an oceanic source, through which we can mine our own inner archaeology, in many ways Women Who Run with the Wolves is a blueprint for life, and one that I wish I'd read many years ago. Looking back, perhaps we can all see examples of the wolf poking its head out of its shelter, only to have it shoved back in by society – overbearing parents, anxious teachers, peer pressure. The good news is that the wild woman/ man is still there in all of us, and we can bring her back by accessing and trusting this ancient, instinctive part of ourselves. As I turn 40, perhaps it's no mistake that this book arrived at this time. Reading it has made me want to find my own wild woman again. I think she has heard my call, and – in the same way as God is believed to have spoken to people according to the stories in the Bible – has been responding through my dreams.
So is this what is meant by those old chestnuts 'Fairytales help us to make sense of the world', or 'they articulate profound truths about humanity.' ? Maybe I'm getting somewhere now.
If you don't understand why you keep repeating the same old scenarios in your life in the form of experiences that leave you feeling cheated, gullible and foolish, going back to old stories and examining your dreams can help you realise why you make those mistakes. If you've suffered a trauma – been bullied, betrayed, your gullibility exposed – this may mean your wild woman is being hunted as prey. You need to acknowledge her, trust your instinctive nature and use the wild woman as your guide, your wolf's nose for knowledge, and stand with her in confidence.
I just wish it hadn't taken me until now to get all this. 20 years ago as a student I was given lengthy reading lists of heavyweight classics, some of which I read, many of which I didn't. These lists included choice texts considered to comprise the 'canon', written mostly by men and selected for me mostly by men, and considered sufficiently scholarly. Many of these novels, plays, poems – and yes, short stories – were written by the big names we've all heard of. But even though I was studying for a degree, I still didn't understand how these worthy texts fit into the grand scheme of storytelling, and why stories were so important.
Like wolves, stories will always call us. It's a call I want to follow. Stories are the new God. Or the old one before Him. Or something. You know what I mean.
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