Daughters of wolves?

... A return to nature.

Raised by wolves. This isn't about feral children but those who were living with wolves. The closeness of animals and humans with the loving/touching emotional bond between people and wild wolves. This is a spiritual quest for a lost age. In the mists of time, primitive people were much closer to the Earth and animals. People are a domestic breed who domesticated wild animals. The idea of anyone being raised by wolves is MYTH and it has no widespread fact to it. On the other hand some children in history have been living with these creatures of the forest. Sometimes we come across stories about kids being raised by wild animals, wolves, ect. This is not a post about that but about the mindset of people and why this idea grips.

Cool.

The 1997 Japanese animated film, "Princess Mononoke", tells a story of a young woman, San, who'd been raised by "Moro", a mother goddess in the form of a huge wolf. This film focuses on animal gods and the exploitation of the natural world by humans. The corrupted animal gods turned into demonic giants that raged through villages. The theme of this film is humans Vs nature. Humans are looked upon as vermin and evil, who pollute and destroy life with a quest for making machines (Iron Town). The powerful Lady Eboshi, the owner of Iron Town, sets out to kill the forest god and keep its head as a trophy. It's a nice film and full of magic, including the little Kodama, or forest spirits (that look like cute ghosts in this animation).

Other feral child stories play with the idea of (bad) humanity versus (good) nature. 

I've just finished reading the autobiography of Misha Defonseca called "Surviving with Wolves". This tells the epic journey of a Jewish girl wandering across Europe during World War Two, in search of her missing parents. She was suffering starvation and wandered forests, excaping Nazis and stealing food and clothes. She encountered death everywhere. She escaped a concentration camp (after walking right into one!). She witnessed horrible executions of many innocent people. She even killed a German soldier who would've killed her... Sometimes she found herself in a forest living with wolves. They looked after her in these hard times. One maternal shewolf became her foster mother for a while, until a tragic ending for this animal. The death of her second mother she-wolf made her filled with pain. She'd lost her mother again. This book was made into a 2007 French film called "Survivre avec les loups". It was a powerful story but a few things didn't quite add up.

 It turns out the bestselling book was a load of BS! This woman author wasn't Jewish and her parents were part of a Belgian resistance who got arrested by the Nazis. She'd lived with her grandfather in Brussels and schooled there, not struggling over war ravaged Europe. She's really called Monique de Wael and said:

"Ever since I can remember, I felt Jewish. . . . There are times when I find it difficult to differentiate between reality and my inner world. The story in the book is mine. It is not the actual reality - it was my reality, my way of surviving. "        

She apologised. What kind of a woman would do such a thing? There is a lot of anger towards her because of this exposure. The book was first published in 1997 and it wasn't revealed until over 10 years later. Yet knowing this\is fake, I continued reading until the end. If it was all made up, why were there such vivid details about living rough, going hungry, meeting various people and animals across her imagined journey? I don't think all of it could've been made up. She obviously has a close affinity with nature, animals and wolves especially. She also lost her pet dog that might've brought on grief. Then I only imagine that here was a girl in the war who lost her parents, lived in fear and experienced loneliness, almost aversion to humanity. She felt at one with nature instead. She prefered animals. The company of wolves. Is she a real wolf woman? YES she probably is.

Is this not the real "Princess Mononoke"? She too despised human society and defended nature. I don't think so but she might've felt the true spirits of gods and goddess, not being aware of that. Spirits and gods do call to people via the animals in some way. She presented her wolf/war story wrong though for making up events that were misleading. If she'd written the story and said it was fiction based on some historical fact to begin with, this would've been far better. I think this fairy tale should be republished under the genre of FICTION and not told as a true story.  

Links

Film "Survivre avec les loups" 
Film "Princess Mononoke"
Feral children - wikipedia


The above art is "Sisters of the Moon" by Lindsay Archer