Sublime

raconteur,

As cantadora (keeper of the old stories), and as an ethnic woman from two cultures, it would be

The old fairy tales, we are told by their modern interpreters, Bruno Bettelheim, Robert Bly, Joseph Campbell, and Clarissa Pinkola Estes, are ancient maps, offering their own guidance for the development of full human beings.

Fairy tales, myths, and stories provide understandings which sharpen our sight so that we can pick out and pick up the path left by the wildish nature. The instruction found in story reassures us that the path has not run out, but still leads women deeper, and more deeply still, into their own knowing. The tracks we all are following are those of t

cantadora, keeper of the old stories,

If we listen to dream voices, to images, to stories—especially those from our own lives, and to our art, to those who have gone before, and to each other, something will be handed out to us, even several somethings that are ritual, personal psychological rites, these serving to steady this stage of the process.9

When women reassert their relationship with the wildish nature, they are gifted with a permanent and internal watcher, a knower, a visionary, an oracle, an inspiratrice, an intuitive, a maker, a creator, an inventor, and a listener who guide, suggest, and urge vibrant life in the inner and outer worlds. When women are close to this nature, the fact

Some have said that my work constitutes “a newly emerging field.” I must say, with all due respect, that the essence of the work I’ve been given to do is from very old tradition. This kind of work does not fit restfully under the category of “emerging” anything. Thousands of people in every generation worldwide, mostly old ones who are often “unedu