Dirty work is demanded
at the Yaga’s place
if you’re to be granted a horse
that can carry the weight of a dream.

Her wooden hut squats in the trees like a sail
It bends and sings with the wind
Creaks and sways and you are shaken
Upon this island of plenty.

Hag comes, guffaws at your stumblings, croaks,
‘The medicine is right here’, (she jabs a soily finger)
‘Awaiting the mortar and pestle,
Awaiting the one who knows which parts to choose,
The one who knows how to grind’.

Your survival requires that you toil
To keep fire in the hearth, horses fed,
Belly full and roof over your head.
But too much doing will deaden a life
And Yaga knows how to keep the balance.

So she demands creation too.
And here is a place from which to perceive
The needs of this world, the requirements of the Other,
To compost wounds and the patters of the heart,
Transmute them into wonders that ignite
Or soothing balms to quell the writhings of holey souls.

Hers is a sky palace in which to sit
To listen to the messages of gods
Who do not speak in a linear tongue.
To hear them you must relent to wilderness.

Yes, Yaga’s place is a crucible, a dreaming hut,
A catalyst to alchemise pain and longing into substance
And for a price she’ll teach you
What ground must be prepared in the Otherworld
For, as the old wisdoms say,
Only when that has been done
Will the material world transform.

∼Heather Jane 2022

(If you have yet to meet Baba Yaga, she is your your cannibalistic Russian auntie. If you pass her initiatory tests, she will help you while pretending not to. And she’ll roast you in her oven and gobble you down if you don’t. She lives in a hut on chicken legs in the woods. )