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Unearthing Wild Woman

An exploration of female fitrah through myth and story

Online Journey starting on 9th of January

Gathering on Zoom 1pm EST- 6PM BST (tentative)

with Medina Trevathan

This four week course is an invitation to enter into the fecund and moss laden realm of myth and the feminine. An invitation to allow deep listening in order to receive the gift of knowing the will and force of the wild feminine within story and within ourselves.

The purpose of this journey is allow these myths of old to alchemise our own life experiences, to understand them within the greater web of being, to find relief in their universality, to resolve, to move, to shift through.

Every encounter with Beauty is an encounter with Eternity.

I believe that true Beauty is truth, and stories are a wild way of telling the truth.

In these darker months, when full permission for descent has finally arrived, when the inner lights begin to twinkle and the numinousity of our inner worlds slowly begins to awaken, we shake the snow from our coats and boots and close the door to the outside world behind us. The deep cold has settled now and all the world is asleep.

The pantry is full of the hours spent in the autumn kitchen making jams and tomato sauce, honey jars stuffed with garlic ginger and lavender, bottles of fire cider and cardamom biscuits, dried meats and figs. It is time for the deep slow. A long-awaited time of retreat from the wild, uncertain outdoors—a period for turning inward while the world outside lies still.

Nestled in the long winter hours, the inner lights call us to gather by the hearth, there is tea brewing and the time for storytelling has arrived. The invitation to become seal, head bobbing in the frozen winter sea singing to the full moon in the in the dead of night, to become old woman wandering the forest, listening, watching, prowling. To become the maiden in the castle at the cusp of a great journey, to also become the frightful thing that pursues her. To become warrior woman on the mountain, encountering bear, wolf and deer kin. In this cocoon of introspection, we are both the storyteller and the story, the dreamer and the dream.

Together during four sessions we will delve into four myths exploring the archetype of Wild Woman, from the seminal work of Clarissa Pinkola Estes: 'Women Who Run With the Wolves'.

As a very young woman I picked up the book Women Who Run with the Wolves, it has been a constant companion for me over the years. It deeply formed my understanding of my psyche and made me inquire of the nature and cyclicality of the feminine force in the world. Through these ancient myths I was able to transmute and alchemise my own experience, to return to a wildish sense of self. It addressed most crucially the unnamable wild, mystical and profoundly feminine love I experienced for the world and for God. It constantly pointed towards this ethereal, inherent, universal principle of the feminine which manifest itself in womanhood but was not bound to woman.

A particular passage caught my eye as Clarissa described this archetype of Wild Woman:

“You can call this powerful psychological nature the instinctive nature, but Wild Woman is the force that lies behind that. You can call it the natural psyche…You can call it the innate, the basic nature of women. You can call it the Indigenous, the intrinsic nature of women. In poetry it might be called the “Other” or the “seven oceans of the universe,” or “the far woods,” or “The friend”….. it would be called the Self, the medial nature. In biology, it would be called the typical or fundamental nature.”

As a muslim, raised under the strong wing of traditional Sufism, the link to what we would call 'fitrah' felt poignant. Fitrah is the essential nature of a given thing, the inherent or primordial natures of God's manifestation in the world. And this is what Islam and the message of the blessed Prophet concerns itself with: what is the nature of the human fitrah? What is our primordial state? How can we achieve that? Our fitrah is to be in remembrance and submission to the Beloved. In the Quran, the term fitrah refers to the natural ability of humans to recognize the oneness of God.It is often interpreted as a holy and potential state. I find in the alchemical potential of theses stories a certain ‘fitrih’ sense, often swapping the use of "Wild Woman" archetype to "the fitrah of womanhood"

This heart of this course is to cultivate a space of exploration on these themes and connections, to nurture a broadening sense of togetherness as women by interacting truthfully, bringing all of ourselves to the table. This is not a journey that aims to give concrete answers, but instead an invitation to steal a peak at the great mystery of life.

The women that I have drawn from for this course are Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ayesha Bewley, Camille Helminski, Marion Woodman & Sharon Blackie. The men I have drawn from are Martin Lings, Martin Shaw, William Chittik & John O'donohue. Their words and insights will form part of this journey.

This course was created with Muslim women in mind, it is also truly for any and all women. We will be exploring Islamic themes which are fascinating and will ensure that everyone feels welcomed in this. You do not have to be Muslim to engage, you do not have to be anything or anyone in order to join. The richness that I have found from multifaith spaces is something I always welcome and encourage.

Martin Shaw, the great mythopoetic story teller says this of the power of myth telling:

"Myth is promiscuous, not dogmatic. It moves like a lively river through swarthy packs of reindeer, great aristocratic families, and the wild gestures of an Iranian carpet seller. Myth is not much to do with the past, but a kind of magical present that can flood our lives when the conditions are just so. It is not just the neurosis of us humans trying to fathom our place on earth, but sometimes the earth actually speaking back to us. That's why some stories can be hard to approach, they are not necessarily formed from a human point of view"

If these words, this offering is beckoning you, whispering to you in any way, or unearthing some old longing that is an invitation.