When Bluebeard Rules the World

Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Jungian analyst and brilliant folklorist, writes about the myth of Bluebeard in her seminal work, Women Who Run with the Wolves. The story of Bluebeard, also told as the story of Mr. Fox in the English folklore tradition, is a core myth revealing the workings of the Western mind. In the tale, a young woman is captivated by the charming mysterious powerful bachelor. Never mind that he has a string of failed marriages behind him. Nevermind that he is distracted by his own sense of power and conquest. He gives her the Master Key to all of the rooms of his sprawling mansion. There is only one door she must never open, but the rest of the doors of his life are open to her.

Her sisters visit, and we all know the trouble we get into when the sisters are gathered. They encourage our blushing bride to peek behind the forbidden door. The door she has pressed her ear to in the night. The door whose keyhole she has pressed her eye to when he is off on business trips. Women’s intuition and curiosity have been blamed for stirring all sorts of trouble. We just can’t leave “well enough” alone can we sisters? No, we can’t. Not when we can smell rot coming up through the floorboards.

So, with the strength of her sisters, our heroine opens the forbidden door and her worst fears are realized. It is a crypt. Worse than a crypt, it is a killing floor. A vault of corpses. The forbidden room is a morgue, filled with the dead bodies of his previous lovers, and probably also of his mother and sisters. Maybe his Sunday school teacher. His childhood neighbor’s dog.

She has seen the truth about him. He is a psycopath. A murderer. A predator. In some versions of the story he returns with another victim while she is hidden in the room. In other versions she runs out of the room but drops the key in a pool of congealed blood, and then the key begins to bleed of its own power, staining her dress. Her hands. Her shoes. She has seen the truth, and there is blood on her hands now too.

The white hot terror of realizing she is wedded to a monster fractures her mind. Luckily, the sisters are still gathered. Bluebeard returns and discovers her crime, which was his plan all along because now he is justified in adding her youthful innocence to the pile of rotting corpses in his hidden vault. Innocence must be destroyed in the mind of a predator, and curiosity is the baited hook to lure the innocent one into his claws.

Now the real magic happens. The innocent one has glimpsed the darker reality of the world she lives in. She has lost her innocence, but not her power. She calls out to her sisters for help, who in turn call out to their brothers. Our heroine is not alone. She is part of a network of belonging, and she activates this network to overcome the predator and save her own life.

Her brothers arrive just in time. Bluebeard is dismembered and his body parts fed to the carrion birds. Vultures, crows, ravens. They take the fractured predator into their own bodies and transform his evil darkness into life once again.

Here in the United States, women are awakening to the reality that Bluebeard has made his way to the White House, to the entertainment and wellness industry, to the seats of Prime Minister, CEO, head coach, Duke and Dutchess and Headmaster. The halls of power in our world are occupied by the Predator. And just like our sisters, the Predator also a has a network of power where he finds protection, and a steady supply of innocents as prey for his predilections.

In the Great Work of alchemy, we know that the world within reflects the world outside, and vice versa. The Bluebeard story teaches about how to deal with the predator that rises up in our own psyche when we are growing, maturing, facing hard realities, and maturing our sense of innocence into real power in the world. It teaches us just as directly how to deal with the Bluebeard archetype that fully posseses the psyche of a person.

People can be “shadow possessed” in any number of ways. Qualities from the dark side of the human psyche can infiltrate the person and drive behavior, crowding out other parts of the personality, and eclipsing the soul. This shadow possession can look like grandiosity, control, addiction, chronic self sabotage, etc. In the instance of a Bluebeard possession, we have the network of elite predators that is being exposed currently at the highest levels of power. This is shattering a sense of safety for a lot of women. We have known, loved, and narrowly escaped our share of Bluebeards throughout our lives, and helped protect our sisters and daughters from their snares. The sobering reality that we suspected but is now confirmed, that this archetype has actually wrapped its tentacles around the systems of power in our world, suddenly turns the ground we stand on into a trap ready to spring.

We are all in Bluebeards mansion.

We know that he is galloping home at full speed form his hunting trip. We can feel the hoofbeats against the living ground, and the ripples come racing to our feet to warn us of his imminent arrival. He knows that we have opened the vault. He knows his darkness is exposed. And now the trap springs…

Will our brothers come to our aid?

The lack of response to the climate crisis, to the humanitarian crisis and genocide in Gaza, the lack of willpower to heal our soil, water and air, to preserve the lives of songbirds and insects and ocean creatures, all makes perfect sense when we accept the reality that those making our policy decisions are in the grip of the archetype of the Predator.

What does it mean to fracture this archetype, with the help of our brothers, and feed the dismembered pieces to the carrion birds?

We must become experts at hunting this Predator. How does it move? What is the flavor of the charisma it uses to draw our curiosity? What are the lies it tells to set the trap? How does it carry itself?

Intimately knowing the tells of this Predator puts us in the position of hunter, rather than hunted. We can recognize the posture of the Predator in the school board president, the priest in the pulpit, the man buying our friend drinks at the bar, and we can stop deluding ourselves, second guessing ourselves, or blaming ourselves and get to work stripping the Predator of all power and all access to victims.

And we can call out to our brothers. And with their swords and muscles, they can wrestle the Predator from all positions of influence.

We have collectively lost our innocence. Humanity stands on a threshold. Our worst nature has been exposed, broadcast for the world to see. Our collusion is evident. We have blood on our hands. For too long we have looked the other way. For too long we have made excuses for the Predator. For too long we have denied what we know. And as a result, our systems and institutions of power have been groomed by the Predator to elevate and protect the Predator. And we have fed these institutions and systems with the ritual sacrifice of our daughters, our sons, our own creative impulse and vital life force.

It is time to rally our sisters. To call out to our brothers. And together, to pull the Predator off of the platforms of power, and get to work feeding the parts to the carrion birds so that this shape never fits the seats of power in our world again. Instead, we are the Hunters and Huntresses of the Predator archetype within ourselves and in the world, and all efforts by the Predator to claim power are met with skillful aversion, transmutation and annihilation.

Jung said that the Predator, or the Killer of the Psyche, is a force that cannot be rehabilitated. It cannot be transformed. It must be skillfully eluded, and the coherent parts of the Psyche edified to prevent this killing force from getting any traction within the individual mind. It is time that we encounter the shadow-possessed person in our society with the same sober reality. They must never hold power of any kind. Never. And we must be wise enough to recognize them.

Blessings of the Hunter and the Huntress.