Have you met La Loba?
Exploring the symbolism in the La Loba story and what it means for our bone gathering
La Loba will be both our guide and our ‘wolf mother’ on our journey of exploration. When we lose our way, we will return to her cave and campfire and let her inspire us again.
You may be familiar with La Loba. You may already have heard her story. But I’ll tell it again in case you need a reminder. This is the version told by Clarissa Pinkola Estes in Women Who Run With The Wolves. La Loba is Wolf Woman, also known as La Trapera, The Gatherer and La Huesera, Bone Woman. Let’s begin.
There is an old woman who lives in a hidden place that everyone knows in their souls but have never seen. She seems to wait for those who are lost, wandering or wondering to come and seek her out. Traditionally, in most tellings of her story, La Loba is circumspect, fat, hairy, avoids company and has more animal sounds than human ones. I like to think of her as a beautiful, robust and healthy wolf-woman with long, lustrous, steely grey hair, who likes her solitude and enjoys a good howl. You may have other visions of her in your mind’s eye.
La Loba’s sole work is to collect bones. Each day she goes out into the desert to gather the bones and bring them back to her cave. She collects and preserves all manner of creatures, but her speciality is wolves. She lights a fire for warmth and light in the darkness of the cave. Gradually, over time, she reassembles the skeleton and when the last bone is in place she sits with her sculpture and inwardly listens for the song she will sing. When the song comes to her, she stands and sings over the bones.
As she sings, the bones start to flesh out and the creature becomes furred again. She sings until the wolf begins to breathe and come back to life. Then she sings so deeply that it resonates around the cave and vibrates out through the desert floor. The wolf opens its eyes, leaps up and runs from the cave.
It runs and it runs, and it runs, until it is suddenly transformed into laughing woman, joyously running free towards the horizon.
So, what does this story tell us?
There is quite a lot to unpack with the symbolism and metaphor of this story, so I’m going to do it in two parts (part 2 next week). If you have the book Women Who Run With The Wolves, you might like to re-read this chapter and see what else resonates for you.
The symbols in the story include the desert, the bones, the cave, La Loba, her singing over the bones and the wolf.
The desert represents the psyche, the landscape and territory of our essential self (soul) when we are feeling lost, fragmented or uninspired. When we hit dry patches, have lost our mojo, can’t find much joy in the world or are deep in grief, we may be experiencing the desert. It can be a place of silence, thirst, emptiness, impermanence, or stripped-to-the-bones simplicity.
“A desert is a place where life is very condensed. The roots of living things hang on to that last tear of water and the flower hoards its moisture by only appearing in early morning and late afternoon. Life in the desert is small but brilliant and most of what occurs goes on underground.” (From Women Who Run With The Wolves, chapter 1.)
La Loba’s work – and ours – is to travel through this arid landscape, searching beneath the surface for the pieces of the self that are lost, forgotten, fragmented, hidden or not yet revealed.
The bones, then, are the pieces we are searching for. The bones represent the indestructible life force that is at the core of our being; the essence of who we are. Our bones are anything that makes us feel alive or are vital to our existence. They can be traits, qualities, values, places, landscapes, passions, states of being, dreams, stories we hold in our hearts, losses or trauma that makes us who we are and often are the source of our gift, art, poetry, relationships, experiences etc. Our bones are individual and unique.
Bones can only be destroyed by extreme heat (such as in cremation) and are otherwise pretty indestructible, but they can be lost, detached, scattered, hidden, broken, invisible, unrecognised or taken for granted. Our work, then, is to unearth, gather and collate those ‘bones’ that are vital for us.
Then we can bring them back to the cave. The cave represents the place within ourselves, which is safe and nourishing. You could think of it as the womb of the earth, where life is created and nurtured until it is ready to be born. Note that La Loba is not just gathering a pile of bones. She meticulously reconstructs the skeleton, finding the right place for each bone, sorting the large supporting bones from the smaller delicate ones. Taking the necessary time to gather and curate our bones is very important. There isn’t a hack for this work. We won’t get it all done in a weekend!
Caves are usually dark, and certainly cooler than the desert. Hence La Loba lights a fire. The fire is a powerful symbol of light, comfort in the darkness and also of transformation. The light of the fire enables La Loba to really examine the bones. This is creative work, mindful, deliberate, gentle reconstruction. She needs both light and warmth to do her work, and also a passion (a fire in the belly) for the work so the magic of transformation can happen. If she didn’t have the ‘fire’ for the work, and left out a few crucial bones, the wolf could not come back to life.
We too need to feel a spark that draws us to this journey of discovery, a desire to feel that aliveness and a willingness to do this mindful, deliberate, gentle reconstruction for ourselves.
It is that spark that has drawn me to dig deep for my own bones and to share this journey with you.
We’ll park here for part one. In the next instalment we’ll consider the symbolism of singing over the bones and the transformation of the wolf.
In the meantime, I invite you to ponder these questions in your journal.
When you think of the desert, what comes up for you?
What have been the ‘dry’ patches of your life?
The desert can be full of life, but it is usually under the surface away from the fierce sun. What is alive in you, but is under the surface – hidden perhaps, ignored, forgotten or kept a secret?
Coming up in November…
Part 2: Singing over the bones with La Loba
A dip into my bookshelf to read The Wisdom of Wolves by Elli.H.Radinger
A visit to the Creative Den for some exploration into visual journaling