A woman’s psyche and the apple tree

The psyche is a grinder of ideas; it masticates concepts and breaks them down into usable nourishment. It takes in raw material, in the form of ideas, feelings, thoughts, and perceptions, and breaks them open in a way that makes them usable for nourishment.

This psychic ability is often called processing. When we process, we sort through all the raw material in the psyche, all the things we've learned, heard, longed for, and felt during a period of time. We break these down into parts, asking, "How shall I use this best?" We use these processed ideas and energies to implement our most soulful tasks and to fund our various creative endeavors. In this way a woman remains both sturdy and lively.

When the creative mill, the grinder of the psyche is unemployed, this means nothing is being done with all the raw material that comes in our lives on a daily basis. And that no sense is being made of all the grains of knowing that blow into our faces from the world and the underworld. If the creative mill is stalled, that means the psyche has stopped nourishing itself in critically important ways.

A woman who feels this thusly senses she is no longer fragrant with ideas, that she is not fired with invention, that she is not grinding finely to find the pith of things. Her mill is silenced. Whether they are being too cool or too well-behaved, in neither state are they responsive to what goes on deep inside, and a sleep gradually covers over their bright-eyed, responsive natures.

Let us imagine that during this time we are offered something for nothing. That somehow we have twisted ourselves around to believe that if we will remain asleep something will accrue to us. Women know what this means.

When a woman surrenders her instincts that tell her the right time to say yes and when to say no, when she gives up her insight, intuition, and other wildish traits, then she finds herself in situations that promised gold but ultimately give grief. Some women relinquish their art for a grotesque financial marriage, or give up their life's dream in order to be a "too-good" wife, daughter or girl, or surrender their true calling in order to lead what they hope will be a more acceptable, fulfilling and especially more sanitary life.

The apple tree and the maiden are interchageable symbols of the feminine Self, and the fruit is a symbol of nourishment and maturation of our knowledge of that Self. if our knowledge about the ways of our own soul is immature, we cannot be nourished from it, for the knowing is not ripe. As with apples, it takes time for maturation, and the roots must find their ground and at least a season must pass, sometimes several. If the maiden soul sense remains untested, nothing more can occur in our lives. But if we can gain underworld roots, we can become mature, nourishing to soul, Self and psyche.

The flowering apple tree is a metaphor for fecundity, yes. But more so it signifies the densely sensual creative urge and the ripening of ideas. All these are the work of las curanderas, the root women, who live deep in the crags and mountains of the unconscious. They mine the deep unconscious there, and deliver up the work to us. We work the work they give to us, and as a result, a potent fire, shrewd instincts, and deep knowing springs to life, and we develop and grow in depth in both inner and outer worlds.

Now a woman's pain becomes conscious. When it is conscious, she can do something with it. She can use it to learn with, to grow strong with, to become a knowing woman. Over the long term, there will be even better news yet. That which has been given away can be reclaimed. It can be restored to its proper place in the psyche. You will see.

Women who Run with the Wolves, La Selva Subterranea, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D