A girlfriend read me the folk tale of Baba Yaga and Vasilisa a few days ago. It is a story about a girl growing up and becoming a woman. It starts off as the classic tale of the little girl who lives with her mean step family after her mother dies when she is little. One day her step mother and sisters send her out into the forest to find the cruel witch Baba Yaga to ask for fire...they secretly hope the witch will eat her and then they'll be rid of her for good.
The young Vasilisa finds the witch but aided by her intuitive doll she manages to curry favour with Baba Yaga and is spared being eaten. Instead Baba Yaga sets seemingly impossible tasks for Vasilisa around her home....tasks that involve cleansing, purifying, nourishing and anointing the witch and her house. With the help of her doll Vasilisa suceeds in performing all the tasks and in return is given the gift of fire.
On her journey back to her family home Vasilisa is tempted to throw away the fire....the light it casts allows her to see the world with new clarity; all its bad as well as all its goodness, and this scares her. But the doll encourages Vasilisa to keep hold of it and when she arrives home the fire burns her evil step mother and sisters to cinders.....
The adventures and challenges of the heroine's journey are symbolic of a rite of passage, of the roads the self or psyche must travel on the path to womanhood and to claiming our true feminine power. The witch symbolises the archetype of the old crone, the wild woman of mythology and the bearer of female wisdom & power. The tasks set for Vasilisa by the witch are teaching her how to care for this power (symbolised by the fire) so that she is fully prepared to receive it .
These tasks all revolve around cleansing, nourishing, purifying and anointing...they are the rituals of ancient women (think of the powerful Queen Cleopatra in her famous baths & ablutions) that have become the beauty routines of today.
When choosing new products and brands for LoveLula I am always looking for products that will honour the importance of beauty as a 'sacred' or soulful ritual in our lives (we even stock a Cleopatra Body Oil from the wonderful Alquimia brand for all you Queen Bees). For most of us rituals such as a soak in the bath or caring for our skin represents our only time out from a frenetic world and our only opportunity to perform these all important rituals of caring, not only for our bodies, but for our souls and psyches too, so that we can be the beautiful, strong, wise and intuitive creatures we were born to be! Reverently created natural beauty products carry potent therapeutic & healing properties which support the alchemy of our beauty rituals and help us make the most of our precious moments of me time. So next time you cleanse your skin or run a bath take a moment to breath and connect with yourself and give your psyche some space to blossom!
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