Skeleton Woman
Long ago, in the icy lands of the far North, there lived a girl whose father was a fisherman of terrible temper.
One day, during a violent outburst of rage, he dragged his daughter to the cliff’s edge and threw her into the freezing sea.
She sank beneath the waves.
Fish nibbled her flesh.
Crabs took her eyes.
The sea currents rolled her bones for years.
In time, she became nothing but a tangle of white bones drifting with the tides —
a skeleton woman moving with the deep rhythms of the ocean.
She lay at the bottom of the sea for a long, long time, forgotten.
Until one day, a fisherman came.
He was a lonely young man, seeking food and fortune.
He cast his line far out into the waves, feeling it sink deep, deeper still…
and suddenly — a pull.
A heavy pull, snagged on something solid.
“Ah,” he thought,
“a great fish. A prize.”
He reeled in his line with excitement.
But when he drew it up from the depths,
from the dark waters rose not a fish,
but a skeletal hand, grasped tight around his hook.
He screamed.
Terrified, he scrambled backward in his boat, splashing water everywhere.
But as he paddled, the Skeleton Woman — tangled in his line — rose up and over the side,
her ribs clacking, her teeth shining like stones, her long bones knocking against the wood.
He paddled harder, desperate to escape.
But she, caught in his line, was dragged behind him across the sea,
her bones bobbing, bumping, rattling across the waves.
When he reached shore, he leapt out of the boat and ran, stumbling up the snowy cliffs toward his small igloo.
Still, she followed — dragged by his fishing line, by fate, by the long cord that binds all souls in the dark.
He scrambled into his igloo, panting, thinking he was finally safe.
But as he lit his oil lamp, he saw her again — a heap of bones crumpled at the door, still tangled in his gear.
Something shifted in him then.
Maybe it was the flicker of the flame.
Maybe it was the long loneliness that had lay across his life like winter.
Or maybe it was the ancient truth:
that when Death comes knocking, one must look at her directly.
He knelt beside her.
Very gently, he began to untangle her from the fishing line —
her ribs from the knots,
her skull from the weights,
her delicate finger bones from the hooks.
And as he worked, his heart softened.
He felt no fear, only a strange tenderness.
He wrapped her bones in soft furs.
He laid her beside the warmth of the fire.
He fell asleep.
During the night, a drop of tear leaked from his dreaming eye.
One single tear — from the deep place where longing and sorrow meet.
The Skeleton Woman saw it.
She leaned forward and drank that tear —
for the tear of a human heart is the most potent nourishment for one who has forgotten life.
She drank another.
And another.
Then she reached into his chest and took his heart —
not to harm him, but to beat for herself.
She pounded it like a drum.
She pounded life back into her bones.
Tum. Tum. Tum.
And as she beat the heart, her bones grew flesh.
Flesh grew skin.
Skin grew warmth.
Warmth grew breath.
By morning she was a living woman again — soft, warm, breathing — lying beside the sleeping fisherman.
And when he woke, he found not a monster beside him,
but a woman who had died once and come back through love.
They stayed together from that day forward,
learning the long, essential dance between life and death,
between closeness and fear,
between holding and letting go.
The Meaning
Clarissa uses this story to teach the Life/Death/Life cycle of relationships.
• The Skeleton Woman represents the parts of love that people fear — vulnerability, loss, depth, intimacy.
• The fisherman running away is the instinct to flee when love reveals its darker, needier, or more frightening aspects.
• The untangling of her bones is symbolic of the work of intimacy — learning another’s wounds, fears, needs.
• The drinking of the tear is the deepest truth:
love cannot survive without shared vulnerability.
• The pounding of the heart is the transformation of fear into genuine connection.
• The return of flesh is the return of trust, warmth, eros, and emotional life.
It is a story about how love matures:
not by avoiding the parts of the beloved that are frightening or painful,
but by meeting them, tending to them, and letting both people be remade by the exchange.
The Handless Maiden
There was once a miller who had fallen upon very hard times.
He was poor, worn thin, and desperate.
One day, as he swept the mill floor, a stranger appeared — a figure with hooves instead of feet, a being who glimmered in the dim light.
The stranger said,
“I will make you rich if you give me what is behind your mill.”
And thinking only of the apple tree growing there, the miller agreed.
But when he returned home, his heart broke, for behind the mill stood not only the tree,
but his daughter, sweeping the yard.
The Devil had claimed the girl.
But when he came for her, he found her so pure, so innocent, so untouched by the world,
that he could not lay a single finger upon her.
She washed herself daily, and her cleanliness — spiritual, not earthly — made her untouchable.
The Devil returned to the miller and said,
“Smear her with filth. She must not wash.”
The father obeyed.
But even covered in grime, the girl wept, and her tears cleansed her.
So again, the Devil could not touch her.
Enraged, he ordered,
“Cut off her hands, or I will take you instead.”
And in his fear, the father — trembling, ashamed — obeyed.
The girl held out her arms and said,
“I am your daughter. Do as you must.”
Her hands were severed from her wrists.
But even then, the Devil could not claim her.
Her purity — the purity of a soul that had done no harm — protected her still.
So she left her father’s house.
She walked into the forest on her stumps, guided only by the light within her.
She walked until she reached a royal garden, surrounded by a great moat.
But because she had no hands to feed herself, she wept, and her tears formed a path across the water.
The moat opened for her.
Inside the garden, she ate the pear that hung from the king’s own tree.
She took it not from greed but from hunger, from the simple instinct to live.
The gardener saw the eaten pear and told the king.
The next night the king hid in the garden.
He saw the maiden approach, weeping, eating another pear with the soft insides of her arms.
Moved to the soul, he came forward.
“Who are you? Why are you in such sorrow?”
She explained her story.
The king felt compassion, not pity.
He said,
“I would not leave such a one alone. You shall be my wife.”
And he married her.
He had silver hands crafted for her, exquisite and strong, and placed them upon her wrists.
In time, she bore a child.
But while the king was away in battle, the Devil returned.
He waited by the road where messages traveled between the queen and the king.
He twisted the letters.
Where she wrote,
“A son has been born,”
the Devil made it read,
“A monster has been born.”
Where the king wrote,
“Cherish them both,”
the Devil made it read,
“Kill the mother and the child.”
The old mother-in-law, heartbroken by these orders but obedient to her king, could not bring herself to kill them.
Instead she wrote a lie:
“We have done as you commanded.”
Then she bound the maiden and her infant child and set them on a path into the forest,
telling them to flee, to survive, to trust their fate.
The maiden wandered again, carrying the child pressed to her chest.
She found a hut where an angel lived — the angel of the forest, the angel who had watched over her since her first exile.
There she stayed.
And in that time, because of her suffering and her devotion,
her real hands grew back.
The silver hands fell away,
and flesh and bone returned — the hands of a woman now wise, now tempered, now whole.
After seven years of wandering, the king returned home and learned of the Devil’s deceit.
He sought his wife without rest.
He traveled through forests and over mountains.
And at last he came to the hut of the angel.
There he found the maiden sewing — with real hands.
He fell to his knees.
“You have hands again,” he whispered,
and wept with joy.
“Yes,” she said.
“Through my suffering and my journey, my own hands have returned.”
And they embraced.
They returned to the kingdom, reunited — not as the helpless maiden and the rescuing king,
but as two souls who had endured, learned, and transformed.
Meaning
Clarissa says this is one of the central stories for a woman’s soul-life.
It is a tale of:
• betrayal
• exile
• endurance
• initiation
• and the return of power after a long dark night
It is the map of how a woman loses her instinctive life and then slowly recovers it.
1. The Bargain — when a woman’s life is traded away
The father, in desperation, bargains with the Devil and unknowingly offers his daughter.
Symbolically:
This represents when a woman’s psyche is betrayed early in life — by family, society, a partner, or circumstances that put her soul at risk.
Clarissa says:
It is when a woman’s innocence and natural power are sacrificed because others do not understand her value.
This could be:
• a childhood wound
• growing up in a loveless environment
• being emotionally neglected
• or being pushed into roles that cut her off from her true self
The Devil represents predatory energy, the forces that drain a woman, shame her, or use her.
2. The Cutting Off of the Hands — the loss of agency
Because her purity protects her, the Devil demands her hands be cut off.
Hands = ability to create, hold, choose, act.
So the cutting of the hands is symbolic of:
• losing the ability to defend oneself
• losing the capacity to act freely
• feeling powerless
• being severed from one’s own instincts
• being wounded in one’s ability to “grasp” life
Clarissa says:
This is the moment when the inner wild woman goes quiet from trauma.
3. The Exile — the sacred wandering
The maiden leaves home and enters the forest.
The forest in Clarissa’s work is always the symbolic place of wildness, instinct, initiation, and healing.
She wanders without hands, which means:
• she must rely on spirit, not on survival mechanisms
• she is in the stage of “just enough” — the raw stage of becoming
• she must learn to trust her inner guidance again
4. The Garden & the Pear Tree — nourishment of the soul
The miraculous opening of the moat happens because of her tears.
Clarissa says this means:
• her sorrow is holy
• her suffering opens paths
• the soul responds to true emotion
The pears she eats are soul-food — intuition, creativity, nourishment from the unconscious.
The king witnessing her is the emergence of the healthy inner masculine — the part of a woman that can:
• protect
• commit
• focus
• build
• hold boundaries
Not a man in the outer world — the inner king in the psyche.
5. The Silver Hands — temporary adaptations
The king gives her silver hands.
Silver hands represent:
• coping mechanisms
• ways women function after trauma
• polished but not yet fully alive tools
• “beautiful compensations” before true healing arrives
A woman may function well, be admired, even achieve success —
but she knows the hands are not yet her own.
6. The Letters Distorted by the Devil — fear of abandonment
The Devil twists the messages between her and the king.
Symbolically, this is when:
• old traumas distort love
• fear whispers lies
• a woman believes she is unlovable
• communication breaks down
• the past interferes with the present
• she thinks she is being rejected or punished
Clarissa teaches that this is the moment when the predator in the psyche attacks love, and the woman flees again.
7. The Second Exile — the deep feminine initiation
Carrying her child, she wanders into the wilderness again.
This is the great psychological initiation.
She must:
• mother herself
• protect her inner child
• travel deeper into the unconscious
• find the spiritual nourishment she was denied earlier
The angel in the hut is her inner healer, the archetypal guide who re-grows what was lost.
8. The Regrowth of the Hands — true healing
Her real hands grow back — not silver, not borrowed, not compensations.
Her hands return as they were meant to be.
Clarissa says:
This is when a woman finally returns to her instinct and intuition after long suffering.
She gets back her ability to:
• choose
• touch
• create
• defend
• love
• act
• embrace life
The return of the hands is the return of her wild woman self.
9. The Reunion — integration
When the king finally finds her, she is no longer the girl he married.
She is a woman.
He meets her not as a protector to a victim, but as an equal to an equal.
Clarissa says:
This represents the integration of the inner masculine (discipline, commitment, focus) and the inner feminine (intuition, instinct, wildness, soul).
The psyche becomes whole.
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