Dancing With Bluebeards and Red Shoes
"While the cause of much human suffering can be traced to negligent fostering, there is also within the psyche naturally an innate contra naturam aspect, an "against nature" force. The contra naturam aspect opposes the positive: it is against development, against harmony, and against the wild. It is a derisive and murderous antagonist that is born into us, and even with the best parental nurture the intruder's sole assignment is to attempt to turn all crossroads into closed roads."
"Bluebeard represents a deeply reclusive complex which lurks at the edge of all women's lives, watching, waiting for an opportunity to oppose her."
~ from Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D.
Bluebeard is an archetype I have spent quite a lot of time with over the years. He is portrayed in story as a failed mage but he is an adept shapeshifter. It is said that Bluebeard is an aspect of all our psyche's but sometimes it is easier to see someone outside of our selves as the Bluebeard who needs to be vanquished. This can be helpful in protecting ourselves from toxic relationships, but I tend to believe that the Bluebeard acquaintance is merely the activator of our own shadow lurker - the key to the blood-stained room.
Bluebeard is a force that seeks power-over and control and when we meet a person who wants to control us or stop us from being ourselve or meeting our own needs, we may find ourselves strapping on a pair of red shoes and dancing to someoone else's drumbeat. A codependent dance of what goes around comes around, giving as good as one gets and focusing so much on not being over-powered and controlled that we mirror the intruder and become him. We give our power away which of course means we find ourselves feeling disempowered.
As the red shoes crafted by another spin us out of our own centre, we lose sight of the light and get tangled in shadows and become disconnected from our Wildish authentic self.
Dear Bluebeard, I am too busy hand-stitching myself a new pair of dancing shoes to accept your invitation to distraction. I will be dancing where there is no path and leaving footprints. You may choose to follow, to lurk and to try and throw me off course but you will never stamp out my light.
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Tags: archetypes, bluebeard, innate predator, inner critic, predator, women who run with the wolves
Posted on March 25, 2009 in Ponderings, Storytelling.
Nothing and no-one could ever ’stamp out your light’….you shine too brightly honey….
What a beautiful entry–so vivid…I want to stitch my own dance shoes and leave my own footprints…
Stagwoman’s last blog post..Five Really Good Things