The Archetype of the Singer

by Seena Frost (November, 2004)

Singing Over the Bones

Hello and welcome to all who are browsing this website for the first time. Enjoy looking through the gallery of cards, and then consider beginning your personal creative journey with SoulCollage. Greetings as well to the many SoulCollagers who have trained as facilitators, and who are checking in here for thoughts about how to introduce this work to their communities.

Today I want you to remember the archetype called by some The Singer Over the Bones. Surely this Singer is the archetype who is urging so many of us to do this deep soul-work with images. I created a Council card for the Singer several years ago, after reading the La Loba story found in Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ marvelous book, Women Who Run With the Wolves. You may remember the story, and even if you do, find your copy and reread the book’s first chapter. As you do this, think about the SoulCollage process of gathering and cutting out powerful images, and then of collaging them on to cards that reflect our many inner selves, our guiding archetypes, and our one Soul Source. Estés tells of La Loba, an ancient Indian woman, who painstakingly gathers all the scattered bones of a long dead wolf from the desert floor. She places them, slowly, carefully, on the floor of her cave until every bone is there. Then she sings and sings over them, until the wolf bones take on flesh and blood again, and new life. As the wolf jumps up and runs away into the desert, it turns into a wild and laughing woman. A woman vibrant with life and joy and purpose.

Don’t we all often feel our lives fragmented and scattered like the bones of this wolf? Don’t we yearn for a sense of wholeness, of vibrancy, of knowing who we deeply are and who we are becoming? In SoulCollage, we follow the urging of the Singer, La Loba, the wise woman within, and gather images that powerfully speak about our selves. And we piece them together on to cards, and lay them out to love and honor. Then we share them with others. This honoring and sharing is our form of “singing over our bones” and bringing ourselves back to awakeness, to wholeness, and to joy. One caution with this metaphor of the Singer: SoulCollage envisions a dynamic, never-ending gathering of our pieces, and we begin our singing as soon as we have made the first cards. There is never one last piece waiting to be found, nor is there ever an end to our singing. It is a practice, a way of life.

There is more in the first chapter of Estés’ book that gives words to what we are doing. If you have her audiotapes, you can listen to them as well, to recall many of these words. Interestingly, on the audiotapes Estés changes La Loba to an ancient Indian man. He becomes the wise old man within us, the one who knows. So take your pick. Perhaps you will want to make a SoulCollage card for this archetype, The Singer. You can check my card in the Website Gallery under Council cards. Jennifer Colby also has a Singer card in the Gallery.

I plan to begin a series here in this column space, beginning next month, around the middle of December. I’ll start with the Source card and the concept of the One and the Many, which is basic to SoulCollage. Then in January I will begin to discuss each of the suits, one at a time, beginning with the Committee. I will talk mainly about my personal experiences with each suit over the fifteen years I have been working with my cards, and I will try to answer some of the common questions people ask.

Blessings to you all, and try your best to call Gratefulness into your hearts this Thanksgiving season. Make a card for this archetype. She is present in the depths of all of us… no matter who we voted for.