The Howl: Resurrection of the Wild Woman

excerpt from Women Who Run with the Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.  (gracias seniora por sus palabras de sabinduria)

"It is told that there is a place in the desert where the spirit of women and the spirit of wolves meet across time....

There is an old woman who lives in a hidden place that everyone knows in their souls but few have ever seen... she seems to wait for the lost or wandering people and seekers to come to her place.  She calls herself by many names: La Huesera, Bone Woman, La Trapera, The Gatherer, La Loba, Wolf Woman.
The sole work of La Loba is the collecting of bones.  She collects and preserves, especially that which is in danger of being lost to the world. 
She creeps and crawls and sifts through the mountains and dry river beds looking for wolf bones, and when she has assembled an entire skeleton, when the last bone is in place and the beautiful white sculpture of the creature is laid out before her, she sits by the fire and thinks about what song she will sing.

And when she is sure, she stands over the creature, raises her arms over it, and sings out.  That is when the rib bones and leg bones of the wolf begin to flesh out and the creature becomes furred.  La Loba sings some more, and more until the creature comes into being; its tail curled upward, shaggy and strong.  And La Loba sings more and the wolf creature begins to breathe.

And still La Loba sings so deeply that the floor  of the desert shakes, and as she sings, the wolf opens its eyes, leaps up, and runs away down the canyon.  Somwhere in its running, whether by the speed of its running or by splashing its way into a river, or by way  of a ray of sunlight or moonlight hitting it right in the side, the wolf is suddenly transformed into a laughing woman who runs free towards the horizon. 

We all begin as a bundle of bones lost somewhere in a desert, a dismantled skeleton that lies under the sand.

La Loba sings over the bones.  To sing means to use the soul-voice.  It means to say  on the breath the truth  of one's power and one's  need, to breathe soul over the thing that is ailing or in need of restoration.  This is singing over the bones."

My voice rises up in the moonlight.  I sing my joy to the Moon.  My howls will heal my soul.