Baba Yaga, The Confounding Crone of Slavic Folklore
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Baba Yaga is considered one of the most intriguing characters from Slavic mythology. As ambiguous as she is hideous, Baba Yaga has been described by scholars as an anomaly, both a maternal, mother-nature figure and an evil villain who enjoys eating those who fail to complete her tasks. Though the origins of her name are as unclear as her purpose tends to be, it is believed that baba means something akin to “old woman” or “grandmother”, while yaga has conflicting theories of meaning ranging from “snake” to “wicked.” Regardless, even Baba Yaga’s name emphasizes the strangeness of her person, making her an interesting character to decipher.
The most common portrayal of Baba Yaga is as either one old woman or a trio of old sisters, all of whom are depicted as skinny, with iron teeth, and noses so long that they touch the ceiling when they sleep.
Baba Yaga is commonly illustrated as riding around on a mortar rather than a broom, wielding a pestle as both a flying aid and a wand. Tales involving her usually take place at her hut. It is found deep in the woods, standing on magical chicken legs, with a rooster's head on top. Legend says her hut is surrounded by a fence made of human bones.
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Inside her hut, heroes usually encounter her stretching across her cooking stove, the enormous stove itself reaching from one side of the hut to the other, subtly emphasizing her size and magic. The stove is another common detail in tales of the Baba Yaga as the punishment for the failure of certain tasks is a fate of being cooked and eaten. Despite an ambitious appetite, however, Baba Yaga is always portrayed as skinny and bony, with her own epithet of “the bony one”.
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Sculpture depicting the gnarly-faced character of Baba Yaga. Public Domain
The characterization of Baba Yaga is where much of the uncertainty surrounding her comes from. She varies between acting as a benefactor and a villain, either helping the hero of the Slavic myth or hindering him or her. Though it appears she never goes after anyone unprovoked—that is to say, without the person at least coming to the door of her hut—she appears to follow little or few morals. Nevertheless, whatever promise she makes to the hero after his completion of her tasks, she keeps.
Most of the prominent stories about Baba Yaga are not about her directly but about heroes who encounter her.
In one story, “Vasilisa the Beautiful”, Vasilisa is a Cinderella type character with a magical doll, whose mother died and father remarried a horrible woman with equally unkind daughters. When Vasilisa's father goes away for a trip, the new stepmother sells their house and moves her and the three girls to a cottage in the woods, giving the daughters impossible tasks to complete by candlelight. It is when Vasilisa ventures out of the house at the demand of her stepsisters to find more light that she encounters Baba Yaga, who presents numerous difficult chores to Vasilisa in exchange for a fire to take back to her household. With the aid of the doll, Vasilisa completes all the tasks and is given a fire in a skull lantern which incinerates her horrible new family upon her return home. Inevitably, Vasilisa's story ends on a happy note, with her wedding the tsar of Russia, but it is Baba Yaga’s role in her tale that is most intriguing.
The heroine Vasilisa outside of the hut of Baba Yaga as depicted by Ivan Bilibin (1902). Public Domain
Baba Yaga acts both an obstacle for Vasilisa as well as a savior, as without the lantern Vasilisa would never have been free of her cruel stepfamily. However, the way in which Baba Yaga frees her is terrible, revealing her as an unmoral, dangerous woman. Unlike the fairy godmother from the original Cinderella story, Baba Yaga appears more like the wicked stepmother who allows her daughter to cut off her foot so it will fit in the glass slipper. Baba Yaga goes to extraordinary lengths to free Vasilisa, instigating three painful deaths—as well as causing Vasilisa much grief before letting her leave the hut—rather than merely helping Vasilisa escape her stepfamily.
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Comments
Baba (or more soft - Babushka) means Grandmother in Russian. Not sure about Yaga, but it rhymes with "bony leg" and therefore her full name is "Baba Yaga The Bony Leg". She is not Mother Earth's archetype, of course. :) She is just an old witch that lives in the deep dark forest. Some sort of an obstacle that one can encounter along the way towards his/her goal. Someone unpredictable and with no morals, but as an old lady she has typical weaknesses that are being used by the Hero of the quest for his / her advantage. Courage, pure heart and honesty - that's what usually makes people win over her powers. But in some cases, a Hero has to act like her in order to escape (for example - "Tale about Tereshecka" - horrible script, I wouldn't tell it to children).
as a polish i can tell you with some level of confidence that baba means old peasant woman and Jaga (not Yaga) may have developed from the name Jagoda (blueberry) or Jagna (another slavic female name).
Her chicken legged hut was made out of gingerbread.
She was believed to be eating children lost in the woods.
Woitek Pindelski
In Serbia she is called Baba Roga (Grandma Horn), since she had demonic appearance (ugly face and horns). It is told that she lives in deserted watermills, wells and woods. And like you said, she really liked children. Btw jagoda in serbian is strawberry and like some other fruits, it is a real female name (if you want to know that is).
Baba Yaga may be a memory embodying the Kven people whom the Slavs encountered during their push northward and westward during the Middle Ages. Adam von Bremen speaks of an Amazon-like tribe that inhabited parts of Finland. Baba might either have been a remnant of this tribe or a member of the related Sami people, who still inhabit Finnmark. Her characteristics match with those of other ancient female deities of the surrounding region, such as Perchta, Hulda, Berchta, the Disir, Frau Holle, Holda, the Cailleach, and others. Like nature, these deities can work for or against a person, depending on how heedful that person is to the needs around them. Baba and these other deities are far more than obstacles. They are a manifestation of the context of life itself, which throws into stark relief the trials that make or break character. They are catalysts and teachers. Baba doesn't kill the family, the fire in the skull does. She simply gave what was requested. Baba is simply a walking contingency theory. In her world, morals take care of themselves. http://voynichbirths.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-baba-yaga-and-dappled-othe...
All the info above is just a first, outer level of understanding Russian folklore and myfology. There are other. 1st thing u should keep in mind always dealing with any folklore tradition is its belonging and being a part of more bright field of language family. It's not a secret anymore the deep relation between old Sanskrit forms and Russian language and especially its northern dialects. 2nd Slavic people weren't christians all the way. The pagan traditions are strong enough. Thus Baba means an old woman - right. But Did and Baba considers as first man and woman, ansciestors. So Baba might be recognised as a feminine helper and she was. "Bereginya" is her other title. "Yaga" or "yagya" in sansktit means an offer. Which is bound with a fire or agni ("agon' -into Russian). Also there were rituals for ill and sick children where kids were settled into big warm oven, stove filled with medical herbs e.c. as well the ritualistic reborn of a person was explained as putting Into fireplace. What about the transport of baba. Its original name is "stupa", wich is right to translate as a mortar. But the word stupa is relative to sansktit again and to Buddhists tradition of stupas. Baba yaga uses magical powers known in india as siddhas. What else...In the city I live there is a river Yagorba. Till 12th century AC here was a religious center of pagan, pre-Christian believes.
Baba most definitely means 'old woman', it's pretty much the same in all Slavic versions. Yaga, as pointed out above, rhymes with 'bone leg' (baba yaga - kostyanaya noga), so it could be there just for the rhyme or not. She is a shamanic-type helper character that allows protagonists to go through a rite of passage which naturally involves suffering, fear, and the need to overcome one's old self. Like all shamanic characters, she exists in between the worlds of the living and the dead, the real and the magic, thus all the death symbols around her. In the end, though, in most fairy tales the protagonists get exactly what they want after encountering her, be it through her voluntary help or through outsmarting her.
The mortar ('stupa') has nothing to do with Buddhist stupas; the word stupa is of ancient Germanic origin and is related to the modern English 'stomp', which is basically what you do with a pestle inside a mortar. It's not entirely clear as to why Baba Yaga used it to travel in, but mortars were traditionally used to create medicines of all sorts, so it seems to be pretty much just another object pointing at her shamanic qualities.
Amanita muscaria is a powerful hallucinogenic mushroom that grows natively in Russia. These illustrations are covered in mushrooms. I suggest a new line of inquiry for your folklore studies.
There are some similarities with Hansel and Gretel as well: the hut covered in bones/candy deep in the woods, the witch, the children, the cooking stove, the children escaping from the hut after completing a task: fooling the witch.
All your statements about Baba Yaga are wrong. According to new research and Slavic-Aryan Vedical Knowledge Baba Yaga is the beautiful sorcerer woman. She was the guardian of the border between world of Navi (world of spirits and dead ancestors) and world of Navi (our world). She also had other responsibilities in the community she was living in because every big community had such druid women for helping them with different spiritual and alike causes. And she was not eating children, but taking orfan children to raise them in the temple as druids or warriors. All this bullshit you are talking about here is made up by Christian Church and dark masonic forces which are trying to kill ancient vedical knowledge of white people. Alexandr Afanasyev , so-called "collector of Russian fairy Tales" was a jew and he just helped the church to reconstruct traditional vedical fairy tales and legends because they didnt manage to erase them totally from russian folklore, so the only option for them was to reconstruct them and gradually replace. For those who want to take a look at more original russian fairy tales I can advise to read Alexandr Pushkins fairy tales.
Баба Яга is in the human testing business. Never eaten anybody, honest and fair. Just QA.
Дед Яга
Thank you for introducing me to a new character. That is what I love about this site. I definitely want to explore more of these tales. Did any of these tales make it into the Grimms' tales?
After reading the article and the comments, I find myself wondering what life could've been like for children in that part of the world and at that time. I feel as though a theme emerges. Female figure, domestic activities, punishment or reward, lessons and survival. Sounds like some kids might have had some mean grandma's.
I have spent much time thinking on the nature of Baba Yaga, and how she may be an old Slavic Deity. I think people often try to make entities and character good or evil, and I think there is a danger of forcing your own principles and views on a different reality there. We do it all the time: "God" is good, vs. Devil, who is bad. The truth is, it would not be so difficult to look at Baba Yaga and analyze her if we didn't try to pigeonhole her into one of the two black and white categories. She is like a force of nature, helping with one hand and harming with the one, all depending on the particular mood of the day, on her state, on her life, and on what she feels like. Like nature, and like humans, she is mercurial and changeable. But her motives? Running the world outside of human society. She is a thinking intelligent rule of the world which we can never control - the un-tamable forest.
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