Sublime

The chapters of this book follow the stages of spiritual work as I see and have experienced them. This is, fundamentally, the journey from the outermost layers of our consciousness, through the obstructions, into our innermost core. Chapter 1 encourages us to accept our flawed human nature and to honor our spiritual longing. Chapter 2 reinforces

The king is a wisening creature in the underworld psyche. He is not just any old king, but one of the chief watchers of a woman’s unconscious. He watches over the botany of the growing soul—his (and his mother’s) orchard is rich with the trees of life and death. He is of the family of the wild Gods. Like the maiden, he is able to endure much. And

We elicit the wildish Self through specific questions, and through examining tales, legends, and mythos. Most times we are able, over time, to find the guiding myth or fairy tale that contains all the instruction a woman needs for her current psychic development. These stories comprise a woman’s soul drama. It is like a play with stage

Here is the promise from the wild psyche to all of us. Even though we have only heard about, glimpsed, or dreamt a wondrous wild world that we belonged to once, even though we have not yet or only momentarily touched it, even though we do not identify ourselves as part of it, the memory of it is a beacon that guides us toward what we belong to, and

Fairy tales, myths, and stories provide understandings which sharpen our sight so that we can pick out and pick up the path left by the wildish nature. The instruction found in story reassures us that the path has not run out, but still leads women deeper, and more deeply still, into their own knowing. The tracks we all are following are those of

the Mother, the Hetaira, the Amazon, and the Medial Woman.24 Wolff argued that although every woman has the potential to embody all of these four archetypes at various stages of her life, one or more of them tends to be of primary importance to each of us.

Under the tutelage of Wild Woman we reclaim the ancient, the intuitive, and the passionate.

Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had