Become Saints
We adorned the Baba Yaga hut with paint. Blackboard grey exterior with white trim and a blood red door. Her chicken feet are school bus yellow. She seemed happy with the new dress. I have yet to arrange the animal skulls on fence posts. A buffalo skull hangs over the entrance. A long ago gift. A beaver, bear, and of course, a fox skull, gifted to us by the forest will complete the quaternary. This animal elementals will substitute for the human skulls of the Russian fairytale trope. Her mortar and pestle sits on a shelf and a straw broom stands ready in the corner. I slept in Her on the night of the Full Flower Moon. She is a colourful hermitage in the forest. In a “journey” a few years ago, I was given the message to built this abode. A prayer hut. A she-shed. A ‘room of one’s own.’ I have been asked what She is for and how She will be used. I have never had a full answer. I trusted that if “I build it…”. You know how it goes.
On the night of the Full Flower moon, as I lay in my berth and watched the illuminated moon dance with the dark forest, I glimpsed more of Her purpose. She will hold me, cradle me, and in time, She will whisper to me what She wants of me. For now, I listen. I consent. I obey. I awoke to a beautiful dawn and lingered in her hold and prayed the Sorrowful Mysteries on my rosary beads. One of the things She told me in my Full Moon prayers, was that she wanted a Russian Birch tree and a wild rose bush in her front garden. We complied. Travelling to Yesterdays Garden in Hanover, the same nursery that sold us the trees for our orchard, we found the tree we sought. Of course we did. A beautiful clump of white birch. The wild roses we found at Riverbend Gardens in Howich. Both nurseries are local to us and it feels so right to support these independent growers. They become part of the mystery of this Baba Yaga manifestation without even know it.
In the Russian fairy story of Vasilisa the Beautiful, Baba Yaga has a birch tree that threatens to lash out the eyes our our heroine. A menacing birch, a hungry dog, a wild cat, and a rusty gate adorned with human skulls keep Vasilisa indentured to the hag. Servitude is not always a bad thing. Sent by her wicked step mother and equally cruel sisters, our heroine does the bidding of the kinswoman or else she be devoured. And when the heroine finally succeeds in escaping the clutches of the hag, she does so with empathy and kindness. A maid of the Baba Yaga in fact shows her the way. The cat and dog are fed, the gate oiled and the tree is adorned with ribbons. Vasilisa brings the light home contained in a skull. But, the light is so powerful, so good, so true, it incinerates the destructive trio of her stepmother and stepsisters. That which comes from source is powerful. Make no mistake about this. As if to depotentiate or mediate the power of this light, Vasilisa plants the light in her garden under a rose bush.
I will be teaching this fairy story at my Fairytale Intensive here at FoxHaven in October. I guess getting the hut prepared for the event is part of what She wants of us. Many of my ideas about the fairytale intensive are arising from spending time in my Baba Yaga hut. One idea is that I will ask my participants to bring two small gifts with them to the weekend’s event. One gift they will offer to a fellow participant and one they will bury in Baba Yaga’s garden. Gifting is such a misunderstood ceremony these days. We have lost the plot in the West when we see gifting outside of the archetypal field of indebtedness. When you give a gift to someone or something, you are asking them or it to hold your indebtedness. To hold you. To carry you. We fall into reciprocity too quickly and the nature of indebtedness that builds deep community is lost. We find it so hard to carry one another. To carry indebtedness. We find it so hard to gift freely. To surrender to indebtedness.
In each place I have lived, I have left gifts buried in the earth. Ceremonial gifts. In so doing I was asking Mother Earth to hold me. To carry me. To receive my gifting. Most remembered are the gifts offered by my Women’s group. We buried mementos under a lilac bush as we closed and decommissioned our group. I sold that property and the new owners have no idea what is buried under the blooms. I drove by the old house a few weeks ago and I was amazed at how high and lush and full of bloom the bush had become. Purple. So deeply purple. It was well fertilized. Fertilized with love, yearning, and a deep desire to know the nature of the feminine divine.
Another remembered ceremony of gifting was along the Bonnechere River, the river of abundance and time. As part of an Old Women Dreaming Intensive, my participants buried gifts to Mother Earth under a cedar tree chosen for that purpose. After offering our gifts, we tied colourful ribbons to her branches. For the time I lived there in Golden Lake, I marvelled at the newly planted cedar’s unparalleled growth. Some centuries from now, these treasures may be unearthed by some would be anthropologist. What story will they tell of the finds? Gifts from the past offered up to the future. It is not so difficult.
The Earth gifts us so much. Gifting her in return seems the least we can do. To ask her to hold us. Receive our gifts. Carry us. It probably does more for us than it does for her. It feels so good to be held. Seeding the soil with the gifts selected is a beautiful ceremony. We take so much. Giving back seems a Vasilisa corrective. So, this weekend we planted both the birch tree and the rose bush. We also painted up the other bunkies that will house our participants. This will be our inaugural gathering at FoxHaven. Vasilisa will be our sister guide. Baba Yaga will be our mother guide. Even in this fairy story, Vasilisa the Beautiful, Baba Yaga is not fully understood. Her wisdom is hidden in the tale. It is not what she threatens or what she demands that redeems our heroine, but together, they become gift to one another. The Baba without the maid has become bitter and devouring. She has stagnated. She has failed to oil the gate, feed the dog, groom the cat, or water the birch tree. Vasilisa is naive in her generativity. She has the secret guidance of the doll in her pocket, yet she has to find the light of consciousness to do more than survive. She has to take action and defeat her wicked sisters and stepmother. Vasilisa and Baba Yaga need each other. The crone needs someone to mentor and the maid needs the wisdom that only comes from experience. This is a hieros gamos - a sacred marriage.
I told an old client of mine last week that she needed to step up and offer up her well earned wisdom to the future. Jung called this the guilt of individuation. This guilt is what demands us to offer back to the collective we worked so hard to leave. Without this, individuation becomes the wicked step sister we know all to well as individualism. This client is not only old to me, but old in years. She has worked tirelessly to build consciousness and she has done remarkably well. Now, she has to turn toward the future. Erickson said that the task of the last lap was Generativity vs. Stagnation. Those of us in the last lap, need to plant trees for shade that we will not live long enough to enjoy. I am learning that psychology is not the end of the story. Spirituality is. As Saint Paul chides us, we need to become saints.
“If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3).
We are called to become actualized. Actualized by love. We need to live our lives in service to something greater than us. Carry our gifts and acknowledge our indebtedness to the gifter. The Gifter. Sainthood is not a prideful goal. It is intensely humble. It is how we are to live. With love.