Who is Puella?

People often ask me, “Who is Puella? Or, “What does Puella mean?”  I have come to realized that for me there is something so personal about her and also that this topic can offer a larger meaning in our world today.

As a Natural Dreamwork Practitioner, I practice a deep presence in working with my own dreams as well as standing with others as we explore their dreams. It is meaningful work, a path for those who seek healing and wholeness. It is heart work.

Artist: Stephen Bauman

Puella is the Latin word for “girl”.  In Jungian purview she is often viewed as the girl who never grows up, as having a child-like demeanor, and as the feminine component within the male psyche which Carl Jung referred to in his public, professional life as "puella anima". In Natural Dreamwork, the girl in a dream is not an archetype per se, because she typically represents the manifestation of the dreamer's soul. I think of her as Puella Aeterna, the Eternal Girl, not in a Jungian sense but as the eternal innocence of the feminine. She is present in both men and women as the essence of vulnerability and innocence in relationship to the Divine. And she is seeking to come into relationship with us. I believe that our very existence hinges on our desire and willingness to accept her, to accept our own divinity as the vulnerable innocent one in relationship to the Divine. Even Dr. Jung acknowledged her powerful presence within his dreams in his personal writing contained within the posthumously published The Red Book (2009).

Sometimes she will bubble up in our life with a burst of carefree love and innocence that leaves us filled with desire to know her more. She holds the place of the innocence and creativity, the vulnerable aspect of the soul self in connection with the Divine which always seeks dominion in us. But we do not know this, or we are terrified, or we buy the lie that the feminine represents original sin rather than divine innocence.

The world-side has been violent toward the feminine. Some speak of how we need to return the earth to the feminine, that the masculine energies are destroying the earth. But the feminine always needs the balance of the masculine, just as the masculine needs the balance of the feminine. And it is true that we are out of balance. The world fears the feminine. She is the creator and the destroyer. We have  repressed her, stoned her, bound her feet, cut off her hands. We have burned her at the stake. We have defined her as the seductress, the temptress, and we have held her responsible for the moral failings of men. And, when she has spoken, we have often not believed her.