got my first tattoo today.
i absolutely love it.

thank you, more please.

luz del abismo
the light from the abyss
its a term used in spanish folklore to represent the wild woman archetype.

She is both friend and mother to all those who have lost their way, all those who need a learning, all those who have a riddle to solve, all those out in the forest or the desert wandering and searching.

In actuality, in the Psychoid unconscious-the layer from which the Wild Woman emanates- Wild Woman has no name, for she is so vast. But, since this force engenders every important facet of womanliness, here on earth she is named many names. Not only in order to peer into the myriad aspects of her nature but also to hold on to her. Because in the beginning of retrieving our relationship with her she can turn to smoke in an instant, by naming her we create for her a territory of thought and feeling within us. Then she will come, and if valued, she will stay.

So, in spanish she might be called Rio Abajo Rio, The river beneath the river; La mujer Grande, the Great Woman; Luz del abismo, the light from the abyss. In Mexico, she is La Loba, The wolf woman, and La Huesera, the bone woman.

She is called in Hungarian, O,Erdoben, She of the Woods, and Rozsomak, The Wolverine. In Navajo, she is Na;ashje’ii Asdzaa, The spider woman, who weaves the fate of humans and animals and plants and rocks. In Guatemala, among many other names, she is Humana del Niebla, the mist being, the woman who has lived forever. In Japanese, she is Amaterasu Omikami, The Numina, who brings all light, all consciousness. In Tibet she is called Dakini, the dancing force which has clear seeing within women. And it goes on. She goes on.

The comprehension of this Wild Woman nature is not a religion but a practice. It is a psychology in its truest sense: psukhe/psych, soul; ology or logos, a knowing of the soul. Without her, women are without ears to hear her soultalk or to register the chiming of their own inner rhythms. Without her, women’s inner eyes are closed by some shadowy hand, and large parts of their days are spent in a semi-paralyzing ennui or else wishful thinking. without her women lose the sureness of their soulfooting. without her, the forget why they are here, they hold on when they would best hold out. Without her they take too much too little or nothing at all. Without her they are silent when they are in fact on fire. The Wild Woman is their regulator, she is their heart, the same as a human heart regulates the physical body.

….she is what she is and she is whole……

…even the most captured woman guards the place of the wildish self, for she knows intuitively that someday there will be a loophole, an aperture, a chance, and she will hightail it to escape…..

…the wild nature has a vast integrity to it. It means to establish territory, to find one’s pack, to be in one’s body with certainty and pride regardless of the body’s gifts and limitations. to speak and act  in one’s behalf, to be aware, alert, to draw on the innate feminine powers of intuition and sensing, to come into one’s cycles, to find what one belongs to, to rise with dignity, to retain as much consciousness as possible….

…as in all art, she resides in the gut, not in the head…

~Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Women Who Run With the Wolves