The Season of Baba Yaga

We are officially autumn here in Ontario. The colours are late and the temperatures unseasonably warm, but the releasing and letting go, characteristic of the season, is underway. The gardens are harvested and the soil prepared for next year’s seeds. I think we will wait to plant the garlic and the tulip bulbs until the temperatures moderate. Even in the warm days and nights, this shoulder season is a time of gathering and preparing. Like the squirrels and forest critters, this is a busy time of storing up energy for what is inevitable. Despite the double digit temperatures, the cold blasts of wintertime are not far behind.

We are into our final preparations for an international fairytale intensive planned for the 1st weekend in October. Guests as far away as Australia and Colombia are expected. Far away and close by. These students of fairytales will gather here at FoxHaven and spend a four day weekend exploring the Russian tale, Vasilisa the Beautiful. It promises to be a rich and illustrious time of deep contemplation, communal meals, and collegial companionship. Some of these students have been studying with me for over 5 years. This is the first time that we will gather in person. Like the squirrel folk scurrying in the forest, our preparations have been extensive. The outer world and the inner world are made ready.

The mystery of the fairytale is exhaustive. That a tale such as Vasilisa the Beautiful, from so far away a culture as Russia is from ours, should still speak to us today, is the eternal delight of studying fairytales. They know no political or geopolitical borders. I think they are making a resurgence. One need only note the number of Jungian analysts and institutions or societies offering fairytale exploration to confirm this impression. There is such timeless wisdom in the tales. We are surely made of story. We are made of these stories. I have written a psychodrama of Vasilisa the Beautiful to enact with my students when they come. We will use the script to lament the loss of the natural mother, speak the bitter disdain of the stepmother and stepsisters, whisper the redemptive intuition held in the doll, and constellate the eternal power of the Baba Yaga. This is her season. Giving voice to this impulse, in of itself, is soul stirring. It is my hope and intention that in these students, on this land, in the emergent field yearning for manifestation, we will begin to change the world. I think we have a better chance of this than is found in the current politics of the day. Ambitious? Yes. Possible? Yes. Needed? Most assuredly, yes!

The eternal secret of Vasilisa the Beautiful is that she goes into the dark forest, the mystery, the unconscious to obtain the lost fire. This is not a Promethean theft, nor is it a Raven trick. This tale shows the uniqueness of the feminine path. This is the maiden’s quest. Not the hero’s journey. What is heroic in the feminine is the willingness to redeem and trust the intuition gifted to her from her maternal lineage. Contained in the pocket doll, Vasilisa discovers that feminine intuition must be attend to. Listened to. Fed and served. The heroic in the feminine has service at its core. Service. She serves even that which she fears and knows can devour her. This is as about as courageous as it comes. Unlike like the brother-self with his sword and his might, the sister-self does not slay dragons; rather, she serves all that has been neglected. Children. Old women. Wounded animals. Fallow gardens. Silent voices. Her tasks are endless. Who knew that making beds, sorting seeds, preparing meals, tending children, and spinning straw could be acts of heroism. While the tasks she is given oftentimes seem impossible, endless, even demeaning, seeded in her psyche are the supports necessary for inner and outer transformation. However does the caterpillar trust that in the cocoon, spun from his own essence, there are wings? In time, in service, in her indenture to the mysteries of life and death, she finds a way. The ways find her. Unconscious service is just as destructive as unconscious questing. Our culture is victim to both. In conscious service to Baba Yaga, in conscious service to what has been neglected or maligned or forgotten, Vasilisa remembers why she has come into the forest. For the light. For the warmth. Yes, even at the bequest of her wicked stepmother and stepsisters who wait in the dark and in the cold. The dark and the cold of their own making. Vasilisa as our heroine, is the bridge to another way. She holds the longing and the possessing in balance. The light she gains is for us all. For us all! The warmth of this gathered light will melt the unconscious bitterness that freezes our hearts against one another. It is a light that will show us the way. A better way.

Each of the students who come to our Fairytale Intensive will be offered time alone in the Baba Yaga hut. Poised on chicken legs at the edge of the forest, she will welcome them into her lap. This will be private time to journal, meditate, pray, read, or nap. I trust that what has gone into preparations will be revealed, and each maid or matron will find the ember she seeks. And when that ember is taken from these lands back into the world, the story will live again. More fully. The age of the heroic masculine will yield to the age of the heroic feminine. We are so ripe for this. So, turn to the fairytales. Seek their counsel. Surrender to their wisdom. A deeper story than the current carnival is calling. And when asked, “Do you come of your own accord or by compulsion?”, be sure to answer correctly. There are far too many heads on stakes at the threshold of our times. Just read the screaming headlines for proof. The either/or questions are dripping with the trickery. Do not be tricked. Do not be fooled. Do not join the carnival. Do not feed the clowns. Hold the tension. Serve. Listen. Wait. And when the time to act is given, you will know. The call and the compulsion will be a whisper. A whisper of wisdom from within. This is how worlds change. Winter waits. Spring thrusts. Summer produces. Autumn surrenders. The cycle of life eternal knows its season. Do you?