Every Slav since very childhood knows that Baba Yaga is a popular character of folk tales. She is an old crone, a sorceress who flies in a mortar, lives in a a hut on the chicken legs and puts children on a shovel to roast them in an oven and, of course, eat. At first, such a “resume” proves my attraction to its dolls a bit strange, but the “evil sorceress” has its own captivating history.
Let’s begin with a fact that in pre-Christian time the nature spirits, such as satyrs, river-horses, sprites and other characters of folk tales as we know them, weren’t considered as evil forces. A satyr protected the forest, a water-horse was a water spirit and Baba Yaga was a Forest Mistress. There are several ideas as to where the image of Baba Yaga came from.
According to one of them, Baba Yaga was a priestess in Slavic tribes who killed the livestock to burn in a sacrficial fire.The other version states that Baba Yaga is a spirit of a dead achestor. In ancient times the dead weren’t buried in the grounf, but in domovinas – small huts placed above the ground on the high tree-stubs, whose bottoms were covered with roots (this is where the accociation with chicken legs came from). The opening of a domovina was directed away from the settlement, to the forest (“...turn your back to the forest, and your face to me” – as folk tales heroes would say to the hut on the chicken legs). If you were brave enough to look inside, the only thing you would see would be the feet of the dead (and here is the so called “bone leg”, a necessary attribute of Baba Yaga). The dead anchestors were treated with great reverence and never bothered, but in times of need it’s the achestors who were asked for help and advice.
The most trivial prototypes of Baba Yaga could be wisewomen and white witches who lived deep in the forest, often completely alone, and gathered roots and herbs to make balms and curatives.
Anyway, Baba Yaga is a woman who has secret knowledge and controls nature. Her belonging to both living world and the world of the dead allows Baba Yaga to be a guide and a protector, that is why her image in the house is an undeniable symbol of prosperity and protektion from malefice.
Anastasia Gerasimovich.
