Women Who Run with the Wolves

La Loba: La Loba is an ancient bone collector. When she sings over a skeleton, she can reconstitute it and bring it back to life. Her resurrection of a wolf woman represents the book’s major theme of reawakening the Wild Woman within. 

Bluebeard: Bluebeard represents the dark forces opposing a woman’s awakening to her true nature. He may exist as an actual person in a woman’s life or as the predator who lives within her own psyche. 

Vasalisa and Baba Yaga: Baba Yaga is the crone/death goddess. She is an ambivalent figure who can be perceived as either good or bad. Vasalisa represents a naïve woman who is just beginning her soul journey and learning to heed her intuition.

Manawee and His Dog: Manawee’s courtship of twin sisters indicates that he is supportive of the dual nature of women. His dog functions as the instinctual side of his own nature. It symbolizes his suitability as a mate for the Wild Woman.

Skeleton Woman: Skeleton Woman embodies the dual aspects of love as a life and death cycle. When she is reconstituted as a living woman, this completes the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

The Ugly Duckling: The Ugly Duckling’s search for identity parallels the quest of a woman intent on the finding the wild goddess within. She must surround herself with likeminded people who support her true nature.

Butterfly Woman: Butterfly Woman embodies the diversity of the female form without prejudice against a certain body type, skin color, or age. She blesses all forms without criticism.

The Girl in the Red Shoes: The girl’s determination to wear a pair of cursed shoes symbolizes the addiction that afflicts women whose own creative nature is being blocked in some way. They settle for a temporary high to soothe an existential hunger.

Seal Woman: The seal woman wastes away when deprived of her animal pelt, just as a woman deprived of her real identity would. When the seal woman assumes her true form and returns to the ocean, she is asserting the right to be herself no matter what external threats stand in the way.

La Llorona: The river associated with the La Llorona legend symbolizes the pollution that muddies the clear waters of inspiration. Women searching for inspiration must clear away the muck that prevents them from expressing themselves creatively.

The Little Match Girl: When a poor orphan in dire circumstances despairs of finding a real-world solution to her plight, she retreats into fantasy instead, with fatal consequences.

Baubo: Baubo is an obscene little goddess who teaches people to appreciate bawdiness. Playing in the dirt, sexually speaking, offers a therapeutic cure for Demeter and for all those who need to loosen up a bit. 

The Good Wife and the Crescent Moon Bear: The process of dredging up old injuries can lead to rage. The way that the good wife manages the angry bear offers advice to women who wish to come to terms with past grievances.

The Woman With Hair of Gold: Shameful secrets can stand in the way of spiritual progress. The woman in this story teaches that liberation can only be achieved by uttering the truth about oneself and others. It’s never too late.

The Handless Maiden: The underworld journey of the handless maiden parallels the spiritual quest undertaken by any woman who wishes to connect herself to the Wild Goddess and to her own authentic self.

The Trapped Wolf: In exchange for his rescue, the wolf imparts the essential truth that one must always search for the soul, where all truth is ultimately found.