Heeding the bone mother
They said to avoid you.
You were dangerous. Uncontrollable and unpredictable.
Definitely NOT for “nice girls like me.”
No need to question things when the ones who know best can tell me what is what and what is not.
I tried.
Honestly I did!
So badly yearning for approval from those content with surface.
Yet your call a relentless screeching impossible to ignore; like a scratching on my bones that cannot be shut out; always there, always there, always there, always…
I watched in horror and arousal while indelible engravings of ancient truth, so painful and sweet, began to spiral up from the ground.
Three pairs of bodiless hands, your ‘soul friends’ you say, meticulously infusing forbidden thoughts across the milky white surface of my skeleton.
Have I been cursed or chosen??
Others couldn’t see what was scrawled upon my inner sanctum; that delicious frightening knowing, but that didn’t diminish its effects.
The trance was broken and the veil lifted.
Bitterly mourning my lost innocence while villagers clucked their tongues, I set out for the unknown, heeding my destiny.
Eyes flashing, teeth bared.
I AM THE SKULL ON FIRE.
Behind the scenes
During an integrative healing session this week with a client, I heard a name I had never encountered before. “I am Baba Yaga,” said the crone.
Intrigued, I asked her why she was here and what she wanted my client to know. She spoke of ancient magic and a deep knowing that cannot be escaped.
“Life, death, life,” she whispered, showing me a tree with deep strong roots going back many generations, it’s branches sprouting green with new life, then withering, over and over.
After the session, I googled her name and came across many versions of her myth. One of the most famous is told by Jungian analyst and storyteller, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, in “Women Who Run With The Wolves“:
“To my mind, the old Russian tale ‘Vasalisa’ is a woman’s initiation story with a few essential bones astray. It is about the realization that most things are not as they seem.
As women we call upon our intuition and instincts in order to sniff things out.
We use all our senses to wring the truth from things, to extract nourishment from our own ideas, to see what there is to see, to know what there is to know, to be keepers of our own creative fires, and to have intimate knowing about the Life/Death/Life cycles of all nature – this is an initiated woman.”
Another blogger explains further:
“Like other fairy tales, the witch in this story – Baba Yaga – is superficially portrayed as someone to be feared and avoided. And while we should respect Yaga’s formidable power to create and destroy, avoid her we should not. For she is the embodiment of the Wild Feminine archetype – numinous life bursting with intuition and unapologetic enthusiasm.” rite in the wild
So many of my counseling and coaching clients have experienced disillusionment, rejection, and even deep trauma at the result of her awakening, whether sexual, religious, cultural, or philosophical.
Our work together is to reclaim her rites of initiation.
This is for every woman who has ever been told she is too much.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tamara Powell, LMHC is a licensed therapist, university psychology instructor, and empowerment coach who believes life should be lived as a journey that is “anything but ordinary.”
Passionate about holding sacred space for the rebels and mystics of the world – the healers, the visionaries, and the creatives, she guides them in bringing their soul driven purpose to the planet in a very practical and powerful way.