Get lost in the woods. Smell the cooking fire. Follow the little path that emerges out of nowhere, lined with skulls and knock on the door. 

Baba Jaga rides a mortar & pestle because she is always stirring the pot, transforming, metabolizing. The Trickster, in the form of Baba Jaga, challenges us to travel deep within, to confront our fear and find our wisdom. 

In this world, in this life, we are caught in the play of opposites. We exert an ENORMOUS amount of energy in zero sum polarities, us vs them, good vs bad, the right vs wrong, the more vs less, culture vs nature, beauty vs ugliness, believing we will achieve comfort from control. We see this play out in myriad, horrible and (self) destructive ways. 

What’s real is that we are all in the same bubbling soup.

This is why we honor the Tricksters. The Trickster archetype is a doorway into paradox, the TRUTH that shit is interwoven, complex, contradictory and overwhelming. The instability of this overwhelm is hard, and our sympathetic nervous system gets activated and our vision goes tunnel, our minds and hearts constrict because we are in survival mode.

Yet it is only the limits of our minds, our hearts, our perception that we have any control over. The Trickster, in their multidimensional, malevolent and benevolent aspects remind us of the inherent and changeable cosmic flexibility of every moment, and that there is no external or eternal right, safe or solid place.  

Tricksters can be hard characters to like because they fuck with us. 

They scare us to our bones, they threaten to eat our children and trick us then laugh in our faces. 

But, really, they are mirrors reflecting the contradictions that we try to hide or hide from.

Baba Jaga eats ego for breakfast and liberates the self imposed constraints that keep creativity of heart bound.

We crush as a way to welcome her into the mix to teach us about growing and holding more of it all.

We evoke Baba Jaga during this time of one more atrocious example of perpetual horror, violence and hate. 

We ask that Baba Jaga, in her embodiment of reality of being paradoxical, changeable, flawed, we are expanded to see possibility, and find profound, world altering empathy that comes from knowing we are all connected. When we expand our hearts to include it all, the world changes.