by Jenny Rose | Feb 7, 2019 | A Flourishing Woman, Creativity
Photo by Linda Xu on Unsplash
The Storm Moon’s cradle is empty; her wild daughter delivered into the grim, pale days to whirl in crystal smoke under polished bone sky.
Heedless of secrets and scars, she weaves through ice-bound shadows, the Storm Moon’s wild daughter, in and out of blanched forests of memories, sorrows and fears beneath the drumming woodpecker. She puts her mouth to the crack between window and leaning wall and takes in air breathed too many times, wan and desiccated with furnace and stove and a thousand ashy ghosts, exhaling platinum spiderwebs of frost . . . silvery sharp feathers
and flowers of frost.
She is the icy scent of eucalyptus and peppermint, knifing through the sinus-clogging cold that is reluctant to loosen its thick clutches. She is the rich taste of chicken stew made in the ponderous red Dutch oven, its chipped white interior stained with a hundred hearty meals.
Photo by Das Sasha on Unsplash
She is the stinging slap, the bitter bone ache, the ice needle under our fingernails that thrusts us out of apathetic futility. Love is not pointless. The grim, pale days pass away. The hoary sun warms again. We have tended our souls’ graveyards long enough. Our lives await an end to our grieving.
Her skirts layer the numb ground in a frozen froth of salt and snow creased with ash and sand while she cavorts and teases, naked iron and pearl, in the arms of the wind, their mingled hair crusted with silver.
Her step echoes in the sleeping roots; trees shudder at her passing caress; far below the ice, frogs stir in their cold, muddy blankets, the green sound of spring mute and patient in their chilled throats.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
The Storm Moon feels herself age and leaves motherhood behind, looking down as ewes labor to give birth to early lambs; as her wild daughter whirls with tempest and tumult, careless and thoughtless with youth; as we struggle with chapped hands, clumsy layers of clothing, ice-muffled pipes and feeding the insatiable maws of furnace and stove.
And this, too, shall pass. The Storm Moon shall fade into crone darkness, cradle left behind as a planter for violets. The wild maiden shall learn the secrets of womanhood, her draggled skirts unraveling and sinking beneath a green mist. The blanched forests shall warm into leafy suppleness, intoxicated with clear-running sap. Glaze of ice and frost shall soften and fall away, drop by drop, and frogs wake and release their insistent song of mate and spawn. Water shall once more run effortlessly through pipes, breath effortlessly through body, and the furnace hibernate, the fire go out.
In our souls’ graveyards, grey stones lean and weather, draped with moss and lichen. There is no clash of voices, no agony, no anguish. There is a bench in the sun, a bird on a branch and a puddle of bluets where the Storm Moon’s wild daughter trod when she passed by.
Photo by Nyana Stoica on Unsplash
All content on this site ©2019
Jennifer Rose
except where otherwise noted
by Jenny Rose | Apr 20, 2017 | Power
I came across a prayer to Baba Yaga recently. I’ve spent a lot of time with Baba Yaga, who is a supernatural female figure out of Slavic European folklore. I’ve told stories about her for years, and she’s an important character in my book. She’s a powerful life-death-life-death figure and has many names, among them Storm Raiser, Primal Mother, Lady of Beasts and Mother of Witches. In spite of our long acquaintance, I’ve only lately begun to love her.
Photo by ivan Torres on Unsplash
Sometimes I think the most important thing to understand about life is power. It structures every single relationship, most of all our relationships with ourselves. Power creates wars, cults, murderers, abusers, tyrants, rebels and perhaps angels.
I believe we have a great longing for our individual mislaid power, such a longing that we’ve lost track of what it is or how to recognize it in our hunger and desperation. I don’t know how else to explain our mindless obedience to the media, to our culture, to our religions, to the almighty “they” who instruct us how to live, how to eat, what to believe, how to look, how to buy and how to be.
At this time in my life, and at this time in my country’s history, I cling to Baba Yaga, because she represents sanity in a world becoming more insane by the day. The prayer reminds me of what true female power is — and is not.
True female power wastes no time on despots and bullies who conceal their fear and impotence behind dishonesty and the willingness to use force. It’s not her business to prop them up. They have nothing she needs and they’re not worth her attention, for they shall not endure.
True female power is real. It’s authentic. It’s not bound by chains of political correctness, manners, fear or ideology. A woman in her authentic power is, according to need and whim, a child, a wild woman, a bitch, a seductive temptress, a crone, and a creature of magic. Obedience and compliance are not in her nature.
True female power seeks the hidden thing, within and without. She pares away layers, stories, masks, facades, dreams, visions, expectations, and shoulds. She’s a persistent poker, prier and meddlesome busybody in holey tennis shoes. She opens drawers, boxes and jars, looks behind forbidden doors and never stops asking questions. She refuses to shut up, close her eyes or pretend, and views everything by the stark light of a fiery skull without flinching. She doesn’t need anyone to agree with her, and she doesn’t need everyone to agree with her. She doesn’t argue with what is. The truth cannot escape her.
True female power doesn’t prostitute for love and validation. Baba Yaga eats sulfur to make her farts more momentous and fertilizes her body hair to make it grow more abundant. She’s hairy legs and iron-tipped fingers and teeth sharpened on bones. She takes a lover when she feels like it, but she kicks him out of her bed before dawn and doesn’t offer breakfast. Her body is not for sale, her hair is the color it wants to be, and she has no use for a painted mask over her face.
True female power is a teacher of magic. She teaches the sorting of one thing from another, cleansing, lighting a fire, the alchemy of cooking. She’s the power of the cauldron, the cup, the womb and the growing seed. She’s the wisdom of bone and blood, seed and water, life and death. A woman in her authentic female power learns to feed and nurture the magic of her intuition and creativity. She knows they are the most priceless jewels she will ever have.
True female power feels huge, deep feelings of rage, grief, joy and lust. When fear accosts a woman in her power, she spits in its eye and knocks it down on her way forward. An authentically powerful woman knows how to cause earthquakes with her dance, bring rain with her tears, melt rocks with her passion and sow stars with her joy. She allows no one to make her small.
True female power expresses all her fine feelings. She shrieks, curses, cackles, stomps, grumps, slams and mutters. She will not be silent. She stays up all night drumming and dancing if the mood takes her, and sleeps all day when she wants. She collects secrets, stories, marbles and insults with equal enjoyment. In fact, she says and does exactly what she wants to do and say.
(Yes, I said marbles.)
True female power is ancient and enduring. It’s coarse silver hair, aching bones, pearly stretch marks, lumpy thighs, scars and wrinkles and cracks and crevices. A woman in her power bleeds, first red and then the invisible silver blood of wisdom that arrives when the children of her body have become ghosts living only in her memory. A woman in her full authentic power smiles kindly on the young and beautiful, because they are not yet capable of her wisdom.
Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash
True female power knows how to live through the night alone, how to wander in the desert, how to go underground and live in a cave among the roots of life when necessary. She survives the conflagration, the invasion, the prison sentence, the betrayal, the loss, the beating, the chaos, the flood. A woman in her authentic power is rooted in the stars, in the trees, in the mountains, in the sea and in the earth. She welcomes cycles and seasons. Change is her strength. She knows how to bide her time and let die what must, because she knows her power will endure in women who come after her.
A woman in her power is not confused. She knows there’s no authentic power in money or position, youth or beauty or hairless legs. She knows her wellspring of power is internal and if she can’t find it, no one will. True feminine power defines her own success, her own goals, her own agenda, her own spiritual practice, her own beauty and her own rules.
Baba Yaga’s specialty is too-good maidens of all ages. That’s how I met her. When the Baba is finished with such a maiden, she’s either saltier and wiser or dead. Baba Yaga eats the dead ones with vinegar to cut the sweetness.
It’s a good time for prayers. Perhaps it’s always a good time for prayers. Here’s mine:
Baba Yaga, Grandmother, we offer you our sweat, tears, blood, milk and urine. Initiate us into life and death with our own blood and bone. Lead us back into love for ourselves, our bodies and our earth. Help us, your daughters, find our authentic feminine power again.
All content on this site ©2017
Jennifer Rose
except where otherwise noted
