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“Bir kadının içine doğduğu ve altında yaşadığı en yıkıcı kültürel koşullar, insanın ruhuna danışmadan boyun eğmesinde ısrar eden; bir kadını ruhu ile toplum arasında seçim yapmaya zorlayan; ekonomik zümreler ya da kast sistemleri nedeniyle başkalarına merhameti engelleyen; bedenin 'temizlenmesi' gereken bir şey ya da emirle düzene sokulacak bir tapınak olarak görüldüğü; yeni, olağandışı ya da farklı olanın hiçbir zevk uyandırmadığı; merak ve yaratıcılığın ödüllendirilmek yerine cezalandırılıp küçümsendiği; ruhun kendi başına bir varlık olarak kabul edilmediği toplumlarda görülür. Yasaklamalarına uymak için sizden ruhunuza zarar vermenizi talep eden bir kültür, gerçekte çok hasta bir kültürdür. Bu 'kültür' kadının içinde yaşadığı kültür olabileceği gibi, bundan daha kahredici olmak üzere, kendi zihninde taşıdığı ve uyum gösterdiği bir kültür de olabilir.”

“The word pneuma (breath) shares its origins with the word psyche; they are both considered words for soul. So when there is song in a tale or mythos, we know that the gods are being called upon to breathe their wisdom and power into the matter at hand. We know then that the forces are at work in the spirit world, busy crafting soul.”

“Each woman has potential access to Rio Abajo Rio, this river beneath the river. She arrives there through deep meditation, dance, writing, painting, prayermaking, singing, drumming, active imagination, or any activity which requires an intense altered consciousness. A woman arrives in this world-between-worlds through yearning and by seeking something she can see just out of the corner of her eye. She arrives there by deeply creative acts, through intentional solitude, and by practice of any of the arts.”

“The Virgin Mary is a girl gang leader in Heaven. She is a Hell’s Angel and she rides a Harley. This I know for I come from people who think axle grease is holy water. They hold Mass out in the driveway under the hood on Saturdays. The engine is their altar. They genuflect and say prayers all day, and baptize themselves in crankcase oil. The soles of their shoes always smell like gasoline. I come from people who think Confession a necessity only the moment before a head-on collision.”

“Among wolves, when the bitch leavers her pups to go hunting, the young ones try to follow her out of the den and down the path. She snarls at them, lunges at them, and scares the bejeezus out of them till they run slipping and sliding back to the den. Their mother knows that they do not yet know how to weight and assess other creatures. They do not know who is a predator and who is not.”

“Fortunately, no matter how many times she is pushed down, she bounds up again. No matter how many times she is forbidden, quelled, cut back, diluted, tortured, touted as unsafe, dangerous, mad, and other derogations, she emanates upward in women, so that even the most quiet, even the most restrained woman keeps a secret place for Wild Woman, Even the more repressed woman has a secret life, with secret thoughts and secret feelings which are lush and wild, that is, natural. Even the most captured woman guards the place of the wildish self, for she knows intuitively that someday there will be a loophole, an aperture, a chance, and she will hightail it to escape.”

“As a woman lives them, she will understand more and more of these interior feminine rhythms, among them the rhythms of creativity, or birthing psychic babies and perhaps also human ones, the rhythms of solitude, of play, of rest, of sexuality, and of the hunt.”

“From her very flesh and blood and from the constant cycles of filling and emptying the red vase in her belly, a woman understands physically, emotionally, and spiritually that zeniths fade and expire, and what is left is reborn in unexpected ways and by inspired means, only to fall back to nothing, and yet be reconceived again in full glory.”

“Many women do not even have the basic teaching about predators that a wolf mother gives her pups, such as: if it's threatening and bigger than you, flee; if it's weaker, see what you want to do; if it's sick, leave it alone; if it has quills, poison, fangs, or razor claws, back up and go in the other direction; it it smells nice but is wrapped around metal jaws, walk on by.”