The Wolf of Forgetting (Tryptich)
A mythic spell-story of remembering Red --for wild sons and daughters
The Wolf of Forgetting
A mythic spell-story for the wild ones, forgotten grandmothers, and the red-cloaked memory
Artist: Agata Juscak, The Visitation
Threshold
I’ve followed the red thread for years—through unraveling cloaks, shadowed woods, wolf bellies, and along the tangled path wrapped around the wild daughter’s ankles. It winds through story and thorn, through memory and myth, until it reaches the river—the one that runs behind everything, where forgetting and remembering meet.
The red roses are blooming outside my window as I write this. I am always amazed by the power of red to awaken the rise. To awaken potency.
Too much red can blaze hot. Red will take over if you give it room to roam. But just the right amount—stitched behind the heart, brushed across the tongue, threaded through the fingertips, or rooted deep in the marrow of becoming—can do wonders.
Follow the Red thread of creativity. Follow the Red thread of remembering.
Follow the Reverse Ritual Red thread into spell breaking and spell making.
Follow it into the deep belly of myth and forgetting—or, just close enough to glimpse its teeth. Take the thread and Run. Wild.
Thread it through the forest of the self and back out again. Changed.
Artist: Hazel Terry, Call of the Wild
I. The Descent
The thread is spun
of marrow and bloodline.
The wolf of forgetting hungers
for the Wild remembering.
It tracks and stalks Red.
It is sneaky. Masterful. Deceptive.
It devours what is alive.
The challenge of aliveness
in our whitewashed
brainwashed
fast-walking
spintruth-talking times
is that the grandmothers have been devoured.
We need to track their stories through the drum beat of memory
backwards and blindfolded. In order to see and hear
the truth of their wisdom ways
ripped up,
chewed up,
mashed into gruel.
The wolf of forgetting is ravenous
for old ways—
old bones,
old blood,
old stories.
The wolf of forgetting is hell-bent
on breaking stories apart.
It is a seam ripper.
A chaos inseminator.
A numbing agent.
Addiction magnified.
Hunger turned inward.
Amplification of over-processing.
Lock and chain.
The grandmothers are in the belly—
Sleeping.
Singing.
Feasting.
Threading.
Embroidering sigils.
Spinning.
Waiting for the wild sons and daughters
to wake Red,
to bring Red into the world again.
The wolf tracks Red
in apples
in every wild rose,
every bright bloom,
every bud.
It sews thorns into the forest
so that it can smell the blood waking on our fingertips.
Artist: Tetuhiro Wakabayashi, Snow White
II. The Belly
Red follows chaos and patterns
to find its way
into the belly—
into the arms of the grandmother.
Red brings offerings:
acorns for remembering,
rose hips for the heart,
hawthorn and rowan berries for protection,
elderflowers for the threshold.
The grandmothers need to be fed.
The ancestors are waiting for Red
to raise the night,
to bring down the moon,
to wake the sun,
to reanimate the forest
with song.
Red and grandmother
change places in the belly.
The remembering songs stitch them back together whole.
the Red thread stitches the old stories
into the hem of the cloak,
embroider the power of blood
into the heart hearth.
The flame is passed
from Red to grandmother
and back to Red.
They are born again—
out of the wolf of forgetting,
into renewed, rewilded remembering.
Artist: Rachel Tudor Best, Cunning Little Vixen
In the even older stories,
the grandmother does not come out of the belly.
There is an ocean of grief
inside the loss of remembering.
we need to cross rivers of tears.
To be reborn
isn’t just a snip-snap-come-out.
We have to taste the blood of the story.
We need to chew on its gristle.
We need to become Red again.
Fiercely.
Edge close to the strange wolves.
See them.
Outwit them.
Some paths lead us to sleeping with them.
Some paths lead us to a strange wolf shadow dance.
Other paths scream out….Take the thread and Run.
Artist: Yoko Yamamoto
III. The Return
In the old old story—
in the deep spell-tale—
the grandmother is taken.
Snip.
Snap.
Snout.
Her story is told out.
When Red tastes a drop of the grandmother’s blood
Red remembers.
Wild.
Red.
Power.
Voice.
Sight.
Body.
Red becomes more Red
and runs—
like fire
and flame,
bird and wind,
wild and spark
to the river
that flows
and cleanses
and purifies
forgetting.
Three white crones
stand at the water’s edge
washing white sheets,
cleansing what has been soiled with forgetting.
Making a spirit-bridge for Red
across the river of time and memory.
Red crosses.
The wolf of forgetting
is too dense for the bridge.
It takes leaden steps and falls through white linen
into the roaring, raging river.
I do not know what happens —only that the river moves quick travels back to sea. I do not know if Forgetting has been purified or cleansed or if it sinks, or if it makes it back to the shore. but I do know that after thorns and ordeals, Red is awake—in legs, sight, clarity, and might.
I know that Red is in me.
I see the Red in you.
I see her blood-stained lips,
the power of the grandmothers behind her—
raising their fists, their hearts,
beating the heart drum,
bringing truth to lips,
power to voice,
strength to knowing. Singing the true songs.
Some wild sons and daughters are destined to get lost and find their way inside a thick dark wolf belly. others must choose the path of needles or the path of pins, and follow their instinctual body out of the forest—blazing new paths, embroidering new stories, stitching old threads back together again
into the hem of their cloaks.
To rewrite.
To re-rite.
The old stories—
into new spells.
Image: Artist: Kiki Smith, Title: Born (2002)
Join me for a wild year of writing through brambles and forests, into the mystery and sensual spell of myth making, creative rites of passage, storybody tracking and moving the story into a whole new world of words, embodied renewal and ensouled, enlivened creative potency.
It’s going to rewild your remembering into the color Red. Part mythopoetic rewilded feminine mystery school, part writes of passage. You will create an apothecary of story —a sacred manuscript of your own becoming.
There are stories to release. Stories to reclaim. Stories to Retrieve. Stories to rewind. Stories to rebirth. Stories to re-rite.
Join me! Click this sentence to enter the spiral of the wild remembering. Only 13 spots available.