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SALLY RYDER HOGAN

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Sealskin, Soulskin – The Tale

 

During a time that once  was,  is now gone forever,  and  will come  back  again soon, there is day after day of white sky, white snow ... and all the tiny specks in the distance are people or dogs or bear. Here, nothing thrives for the asking. The winds blow hard so the people have come to wear their parkas and mamleks, boots, sideways on purpose now. Here, words freeze in the open air, and whole sentences must  be  broken from  the  speaker’s lips  and  thawed at  the  fire so  people  can see  what  has been  said.  Here, the people  live  in the  white  and abundant hair of old Annuluk, the old grandmother, the old sorceress who is Earth herself. 

 

And it was in this land that there lived a man ... a man so lonely that over the years, tears had carved great chasms into his cheeks. He tried to smile and be happy. He hunted. He trapped and he slept well. But he wished for human company. Sometimes out in the shallows in his kayak when a seal came near he remembered the old stories about how seals were once human, and the only reminder of that time was their eyes, which were capable of portraying those looks, those wise and wild and loving looks. And sometimes then he felt such a pang of loneliness that tears coursed down the well-used cracks in his face. 

 

One night he hunted past dark but found nothing. As the moon rose in the sky and the ice floes glistened, he came to a great spotted rock in the sea, and it appeared to his keen eye that upon that old rock there was movement of the most graceful kind.He paddled slow and deep to be closer, and there atop the mighty rock danced a small group  of  women,naked  as  the first  day  they lay  upon  their mothers’  bellies.  Well, he was a lonely man, with no human friends but in memory—and he stayed and watched. The women were like beings made of moon milk, and their skin shimmered with little silver dots like those on the salmon  in  springtime, and  the  women’s feet  and  hands were  long  and graceful.So beautiful were they that the man sat stunned in his boat, the water lapping, taking him closer and closer to the rock. 

 

He could hear the magnificent women laughing ... at least they seemed to laugh, or was it the water laughing at the edge of the rock? The man was confused, for he was  so dazzled.  But somehow the loneliness that  had  weighed on his chest like wet hide was lifted away, and almost without thinking, as though he was meant, he jumped up onto the rock and stole one of the seal skins laying there. He hid behind an outcropping and he pushed the sealskin into his qutnguq, parka. 

 

Soon, one  of the  women  called in  a  voice that  was  the most  beautiful  he’d  ever  heard...like  the  whales calling  at  dawn...or  no,  may be it  was  more like  the  newborn wolves tumbling down in the spring... or but, well no, it was something better than that, but it did not matter because ... what were the women doing now? Why,  they  were putting  on  their sealskins,  and  one by  one  the  seal  women were slipping  into  thesea,  yelping  and crying  happily.  Except for  one.  The tallest  of  them searched high  and  searched low for  her  sealskin, but it  was nowhere  to be  found. 

 

The man felt emboldened—by what, he did not know. He stepped from the rock, appealing to her,  “Woman...  be...my...  wife.  I am...  a  lonely...man.” “Oh,  I  cannot be  your wife,”  she said,  “for  I am  of  the other,  the  ones who  live  temeqvanek, beneath.” “Be  ...  my...  wife,”  insisted the  man.  “In seven  summers,  I will  return  your sealskin  to you, and you may stay or you may go  as  you  wish.” The young seal woman looked long into his face with eyes that but for her trae origins seemed  human. 

 

Reluctantly  shesaid,  “I  will go  with  you. After seven summers, it shall  be  decided. ”So in time they had a child, whom they named Ooruk.And the child was lithe and fat. In winter the mother told Ooruk tales of the creatures that lived beneath the sea while the father whittled a bear or a wolf in whitestone with his long knife. When his mother carried the child Ooruk to bed, she pointed out through the smoke hole to the clouds and all their shapes. Except instead of recounting the shapes of raven and bear and wolf, she recounted the stories of walrus, whale, seal, and salmon .. for those were the creatures she knew. But as time went on, her flesh began to dry out. First it flaked, then it cracked. The skin of her eyelids began to peel. The hairs of her head began to drop to the ground. She became  naluaq,palest  white.  Her plumpness  began  to wither.  She tried  to conceal  her limp. Each day her eyes, without her willing it so, became more dull. She began to put out her hand in order to find her way, for her sight was darkening.

 

And so it went until one night when the child Ooruk was awakened by shouting and sat upright in his sleeping skins. He heard a roar like a bear that was his father berating his mother. He heard a crying like silver rung on stone that was his mother. “You  hid  my sealskin  seven  long years  ago,  and now  the  eighth winter  comes.  I want  what  I am  made  of returned  to  me,”cried  the seal woman. “ And  you,woman,  would  leave me  if  I gave  it  to you,”  boomed  the husband. “I  do  not know  what  I would  do.  I only know  I  must have  what  I belong  to.” “And  you would  leave  me wifeless,  and  the boy  motherless.  You are bad.” And with that her husband tore the hide flap of the door aside and disappeared into the night. The boy loved his mother much. He feared losing her and so cried himself to sleep ... only to  be  awakened by  the  wind.A  strange  wind...it  seemed  to call  to  him, “Oooruk,  Oooruuuuk.

 

And out of bed he climbed, so hastily that he put his parka on upside down and pulled his mukluks only halfway up. Hearing his name called over and over, he dashed out into the starry, starry night. “Ooooooomuuuk.” The child ran out to the cliff overlooking the water, and there, far out in the windy sea, was a huge shaggy silver seal... its head was enormous, its whiskers drooped to its chest, its eyes were deep yellow.“Ooooooomuuuk.” The  boy  scrambled down  the  cliff and  stumbled  at the  bottom  over a  stone—no,  a bundle—that had rolled out of a cleft in the rock. The boy's hair lashed at his face like a thousand reins of ice.“Oooooooruuuuk.”

The boy scratched open the bundle and shook it out—it was his mother's sealskin. Oh, and he could smell her all through it. And as he hugged the sealskin to his face and inhaled her scent, her soul slammed through him like a sudden summer wind.“Ohhh,”  he cried  with  pain and  joy,  and lifted  the  skin again  to  his face  and  again her  soul  passed through  his.  “Ohhh,”he  cried again, for he was being filled with the unending love of his mother. And the old silver seal way out ... sank slowly beneath the water. The boy climbed the cliff and ran toward home with the sealskin flying behind him, and into the house he fell. 

 

His mother swept him and the skin up and closed her eyes in gratitude for the safety of both. She  pulled on  her  sealskin.“Oh, mother,  no!”cried  the  child.She scooped up the child, tucked him under her arm, and half ran and half stumbled toward the roaring sea. “Oh,  mother!No!  Don’t  leave me!”  Ooruk  cried. And at  once  you could  tell  she wanted  to  stay with  her  child,she  wanted  to,but something called her, something older than she, older than he, older than time. “Oh,  mother,  no,no,  no,”  cried the  child.  She turned to him with a look of dreadful love in  her  eyes.She  took  the boy’s  face  inher  hands,  and breathed  her  sweet breath  into  his lungs, once, twice, three times. Then, with him under her arm like a precious bundle, she dove into the sea, down, and down, and down, and still deeper down, and the seal woman and her child breathed easily underwater. And they swam deep and strong till they entered the underwater cove of seals where all manner  of  creatures were  dining  and singing,  dancing  and speaking,  and  the great silver seal that had called to Ooruk from the night sea embraced the child and called him grandson. “Howfare  you  up there,  daughter?”  asked the  great  silver seal. The  seal  woman looked  away  and said,  “I  hurt a  human  ...a  man  who gave  his  all to have me.  But  I cannot  return  to him,  for  I shall  be  a prisoner  if  I  do.” “And  the boy?’  asked  the old  seal.  “My grandchild?’  He  said it  so  proudly his  voice  shook. “He must  go  back,father.  He  cannot stay.  His  time is  not  yet to  be  herewith  us.”  And she wept. And together they wept.

 

And so some days and nights passed, seven to be exact, during which time the luster came back to  the  seal woman’s  hair  and eyes.  She turned  a beautiful  dark  color,her  sight  was restored,  her  body regained  its  plumpness,and  she  swam uncrippled.  Yet  it came time  to  return the  boy  to land.  On that  night,the  old  grandfather seal  and  the boy’s  beautiful mother swam with the child between them. Back they went, back up and up and up  to the  topside  world.There  they  gently placed Ooruk  on  the stony  shore  in  the moonlight. His  mother  assured him,  “I am always with you. Only touch what I have touched, my firesticks, my ulu, knife, my stone carvings of otters and seal, and I will breathe into your lungs a wind for the singing of your songs.”

 

The  old silver  seal  and his  daughter  kissed the  child  many times;  At  last they  tore themselves away and swam out to sea, and with one last look at the boy, they disappeared beneath the waters. And Ooruk, because it was not his time, stayed. As time went on, he grew to be a mighty drummer and singer and a maker of stories, and it was said this all came to be because as a child he had survived being carried out to sea by the great seal spirits. Now, in the gray mists of morning, sometimes he can still be seen, with his kayak tethered, kneeling upon a certain rock in the sea, seeming to speak to a certain female seal who often comes near the shore. Though many have tried to hunt her, time after time they have failed. She is known as Tanqigcaq, the bright one, the holy one, and  it is  said  that though  she  be a  seal,  her eyes  are  capable of portraying  those human looks, those wise and wild and loving looks.

 

 

Clarissa Pinkola Estes PhD - The Analysis

The seal is  one  of the  most  beautiful of  all  symbols for  the  wild soul.  Like the instinctual nature of women, seals are peculiar creatures who have evolved and adapted over eons. “Sealskin,  Soulskin”  contains   a   retrograde  motif.  Sometimes  we call  such  tales “backward  stories.”

 

In  many fairytales,  a  human is  enchanted  and turned  into  an animal.  But here we have the opposite: a creature led into a human life. The story produces an insight into the structure of the female psyche. The seal maiden, like the wildish nature in women’s psyches,  is  a mystical  combination  that is  creatural  and at  the  same time  able  to live among humans in a resourceful manner. The pelt in this story is not so much an article as the representation of a feeling state and a state of being—one that is cohesive, soulful, and of the wildish female nature. 

 

When a woman is in this state, she feels entirely in and of herself instead of out of herself and wondering if she is doing right, acting right, thinking well.  Though this  state of  being  “in one’s  self’  is one  she  occasionally loses  touch  with,the  time  she has  previously  spent there sustains her while she is about her work in the world. The return to the wildish state periodically  is   what   replenishes  her   psychic   reserves  for   her   projects,family, relationships, and creative life in the topside world. 

 

Eventually every woman who stays away from her soul-home for too long, tires. This is as it should be. Then she seeks her skin again in order to revive her sense of self and soul, in order to restore her deep-eyed and oceanic knowing. This great cycle of going and returning, going and returning, is reflexive within the instinctual nature of women and is innate to all women for all their lives, from throughout girlhood, adolescence, and young   adulthood,  through   being   a  lover,   through   motherhood,  through   being   a craftswoman,  a wisdom-holder,  an  elder woman,and  beyond. 

 

These  phases are  not necessarily chronological, for mid-age women are often newborn, old women are intense lovers, and little girls know a good deal about cronish enchantment. Over  and over  we  lose this  sense  of feeling  we  are wholly  in  our skins  by  means already named  as  well as  through  extended duress.  Those  who toil  too  long without respite are also at risk. The soul-skin vanishes when we fail to pay attention to what we are really doing, and particularly its cost to us. We  lose the  soulskin  by becoming  too  involved with  ego,  by being  too  exacting, perfectionistic, or  unnecessarily martyred,  or  driven by a  blind  ambition,or  by  being dissatisfied—about  self,family,  community,  culture,world—and  not  saying or  doing anything about it, or by pretending we are an unending source for others, or by not doing all we can to help ourselves. Oh, there are as many ways to lose the soulskin as there are women in the world.

 

The only way to hold on to this essential soulskin is to retain an exquisitely pristine consciousness about its value and uses. But, since no one can consistently maintain acute consciousness, no one can keep the soulskin absolutely every moment day and night. But we can keep the theft of it to a bare minimum. We can develop that ojo agudo, the shrewd eye that watches the conditions all around and guards our psychic territory accordingly. 

 

The  “Sealskin,Soulskin”  story,  however,is  about  an instance  of  what we  might  call aggravated theft. This big theft can, with consciousness, be mediated in the future if we will pay attention to our cycles and the call to take leave and return home. Every creature on earth returns to home. It is ironic that we have made wildlife refuges for ibis, pelican, egret, wolf, crane, deer, mouse, moose, and bear, but not for ourselves in the places where we live day after day. We understand that the loss of habitat is the most disastrous event that can occur to a free creature. We fervently point out how other creatures’  natural territories  have  become surrounded  by  cities,ranches,  highways,  noise,and other dissonance, as though we are not surrounded by the same, as though we are not affected also. We know that for creatures to live on, they must at least from time to time have a home place, a place where they feel both protected and free.We traditionally compensate for loss of a more serene habitat by taking a vacation or a holiday, which is supposed to be the giving of pleasure to oneself, except a vacation is often anything but We can compensate our workaday dissonance by cutting down on the things we do that cause us to tense our deltoids and trapezii into painful knots. And all this is very good, but for the soul-self-psyche,vacation  is  not the  same  as refuge.  “Time  out”or  “time  off”is  not  the same  as  returning to  home.  Calmness is  not  the same  as  solitude.

 

We can contain this loss of soul by keeping close to the pelt to begin with. For instance, I see  in  the talented  women  in my  practice  that soulskin  theft  can come  through relationships  that are  not in their  rightful skins themselves,  and some  relationships are downright poisonous. It takes will and force to overcome these relationships, but it can be done, especially if, as in the story, one will awaken to the voice calling from home, calling  one  back to  the  coreself  where  one’s immediate  wisdom  is whole  and  accessible.

 

From there, a woman can decide with clear-seeing what it is she must have, and what it is she wants to do.The aggravated theft of the sealskin also occurs far more subtly through the theft of a woman’s resources  and  of her  time.  The world  is lonely for  comfort,  and for  the  hips and  breasts of women. It calls out in a thousand-handed, million-voiced way, waving to us, plucking and pulling at us, asking for our attention. Sometimes it seems that everywhere we turn there is a someone or a some-tiling of the world that needs, wants, wishes. Some of the people, issues, and things of the world are appealing and charming; others may be demanding and angry; and yet others seem so heartrendingly helpless that, against our wills, our empathy overflows, our milk runs down our bellies. But unless it is a life-and-death matter, take  the time,  make  the time,  to  “put on  the  brass brassiere.”Stop running the milk train. Do the work of turning toward home. Though we see that the skin can be lost through a devastating and wrong love, it may also be lost in a right and deepest love. It is not exactly the rightness of a person or thing or its wrongness that causes the theft of our soulskins, it is the cost of these things to us. It  is what  it  costs us  in  time,energy,  observation,  attention,hovering,  prompting, instructing, teaching, training. These motions of psyche are like cash withdrawals from the  psychic  savings account.

 

The issue is  not  about these  energic  cash withdrawals themselves,  for  these are  an  important part  of  life’s give  and  take.But it  is  being overdrawn  that  causes the  loss  ofthe  skin,  and the  paling  and dulling  of  one’s most  acute  instincts. It is lack of further deposits of energy, knowledge, acknowledgment ideas, and excitement that causes a woman to feel she is psychically dying. In the story, when the young seal woman loses her pelt she is involved in a beautiful pursuit in the business of freedom. She dances and dances, and does not pay attention to what is going on about her. When we are in our rightful wildish nature, we all feel this bright life. It is one of the signs that we are close to Wild Woman. We all enter the world in a dancing condition. We always begin with our own pelts intact.

 

Yet,  at least  till  we become  more  conscious,we  all  got hrough  this  stage in individuation. We all swim up to  the  rock,dance,  and  don’t pay  attention.  It is then that  the more tricksterish aspect of the psyche descends, and somewhere down the road we suddenly look for and can no longer find what belongs to us or to what we belong. Then our  sense of  soul  is mysteriously  missing,  and more  so,  it is  hidden  away.And so we wander about partially dazed. It is not good to make choices when dazed, but we do. 

 

We know poor choice occurs in various ways. One woman marries too early. Another becomes pregnant too young. Another goes with a bad mate. Another gives up her art to “have  things.”  Another is  seduced  by any  number  of illusions,  another  by promises,  another  by too  much  “being good”  and  not enough  soul,  yet another  by  too much  airiness  and not enough earthiness. And in cases where the woman goes with her soulskin half on and half gone, it is not necessarily because her  choices are wrong so much as that she stays away from her soul-home too long and dries out and is rather of little use to anyone, least of all herself.There are  hundreds  of ways  to  lose one’s  soulskin. 

 

If  we delve  into  the symbol  of  animal hide,  we  findt hat  in  all animals,  including ourselves, piloerection—hair standing on end—occurs in response to things seen as well as to things sensed. The rising hair of the  pelt  sends a  “chill”  through the  creature  and rouses suspicion, caution, and other protective traits. Among the Inuit it is said that both fur and feathers have the ability to see what goes on far off in the distance, and that is why an angakok, shaman, wears many furs, many feathers, so as to have hundreds of eyes to better see into the mysteries. 

 

The sealskin is a symbol of soul that not only provides warmth, but also provides an early warning system through its vision as well. In hunting cultures, the pelt is equal to food as the most important product for survival. It is used to make boots, to line parkas, for waterproofing to keep ice hoar away from the face and wrists. The pelt keeps little children safe and dry, protects and warms the vulnerable human belly,  back,  feet,hands,  and  head.To  lose  the pelt  is  to lose  one’s  protections,one’s  warmth,   one’s  early   warning  system,  one’s   instinctive  sight. 

 

Psychologically,   to  be  without  the pelt  causes  a woman  to  pursue what  she  thinks she  should do,  rather than what  she  truly wishes.  It causes  her to  follow  whoever or  whatever  impresses her  as strongest—whether it is good for her or not. Then there is much leaping and little looking. She is jocular instead of incisive, laughs things off, puts things off. She pulls back from taking the next step, from making the necessary descent and holding herself there long enough for something to happen.

 

So you can see that in a world that values driven women who go, go, go, the stealing of soulskins is very easy, so much so that the first theft occurs somewhere between the ages of seven and eighteen. By then, most young women have begun to dance on the rock in the sea. By then most will have reached for the soulskin but not found it where they left it.  And,  though this  initially  seems meant  to  cause the  development  of a  medial structure in the psyche—that is, an ability to learn to live in the world of spirit and in the outer  reality as well—too often this progression is not accomplished, nor is any of the rest of the initiatory experience, and the woman wanders through life skinless.

 

Though  we may  have  tried to  prevent  a recurrence  of  theft by  practically  sewing ourselves into our soulskins, very few women reach the age of majority with more than a few tufts of the original pelt intact. We lay aside our skins while we dance. We learn the world, but lose our skins. We find that without our skins we begin to slowly dry away. Because  most women  were  raised to  bear  these things  stoically,  as their  mothers  did before them, no one notices there is a dying going on," until one day...When we are young and our soul-lives collide with the desires and requirements of culture  and the  world,  indeed we  feel  stranded far  from  home. 

 

However,  as adults  we continue to drive ourselves even farther from home as a result of our own choices about who, what, where, and for how long. If we were never taught to return to the soul-home in childhood,  we  repeat the  “theft  and wandering  around  lost”pattern  ad  infinitum.But, even when it is our own dismal choices that have blown us off course—too far from what we need—hold faith, for within the soul is the homing device. 

 

We all can find our way back.

 

Memento Mori #1

Catch the Moon

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