Welcome to episode one of the new (7th) season of Myth Matters!
A new year and a time of change. Is this, as some say, the time of the wise, elder woman, the time of the crone? The Baba Yaga is one face of this archetypal energy.
This episode is the first of two about the Baba Yaga. Baba Yaga is a complex and multifaceted figure in Russian and East Slavic fairy tales. She’s a scary crone with roots in the pre-Christian pagan goddesses that we now call “mother earth,” and expresses the warmly maternal dimension of nature and the fierce wildness. She seems to be full of contradictions. She holds the key to the mysteries of life.
Here we explore some of her complexity through the three of her many stories: “Baba Yaga and the Kid,” “The Step Daughter and the Step Mother’s Daughter,” and “The Geese and the Swans.”
Thanks for listening and keep the mystery in your life alive…
Transcript of Fierce wildness and the Baba Yaga
Hello and welcome to Myth Matters an exploration at the intersection of mythology, creativity and consciousness. I’m your host Dr. Catherine Svehla. Wherever you may be in this wide beautiful crazy world of ours, I’m glad that you decided to join me here today.
I’m going to talk about the Baba Yaga today. She’s an important figure in Russian and East Slovak fairy tales and I sense this is a good time to become better acquainted with her. Baba Yaga is multifaceted. She can be a maternal benefactress or a dangerous witch. She may help you or eat you. And that’s much more to her than these extremes. In some stories, she is killed, but another Baba Yaga always comes to take her place.
Baba Yaga is related to pagan goddesses with deep roots in pre-Christian times. These ancient earth mother goddesses are often triune goddess, meaning they have three different and yet united aspects: the maiden or virgin, the mother, and the crone. In Russia the words “Baba Yaga” are not capitalized because it’s not a name but rather a description of a scary old witch, a knowing and fierce woman. A Baba Yaga is a crone of this ilk, the elder.
There’s been a public surge of crone energy in the last decade or so, as more and more older women champion the beauty of age, the changes in attitude and freedom that come from putting yourself first, and the possibility of wisdom. This catches my attention as I’m in this group but I suspect that you’ve noticed it too.
So, I think it’s good to get to know the baba in her complexity. and “complexity” is probably a better description than “ambiguous,” a term I often see associated with her. She’s ambiguous to the person who expects consistency. Who believes in someone or something that is all good or all bad, always harmful or always helpful, and where is such a figure anyway? Attachment to that type of simplicity creates a big blindspot– and it’s how you get fooled. Teasing out your attitudes about ambiguity versus complexity through the lens of Baba Yaga can help you wise up.
A Baba Yaga is recognizable, but they aren’t the same in every story. The complexity in her nature has been articulated and preserved through the creation of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of stories told by many different people over centuries, through a process of accumulation and elaboration. This complexity becomes apparent if you investigate a handful of the many stories about her, so today I have three stories to give you sampling and sense of the Baba Yaga. I’ve told stories about Baba Yaga in the past and have posted links to a couple of those earlier episodes with the transcript of this one, as well.
A couple more thoughts about the value in getting to know Baba Yaga right now. As a figure tied to the pre-Christian goddesses, Baba Yaga expresses the abundance and wildness of nature. She can remind us of our origins, our dependency on the web of life, and the wild beauty of the earth. A wildness that cannot be controlled. Something fierce. The fierceness that fuels the storms and fires. A fierce wildness that has resisted centuries of suppression. This fierce wildness is in within each of us. What ingenuity and strength might we discover in ourselves, to provide and protect and participate fully in the cycles of life, if we recognize this shared fierceness? If we honor the mysteries that lie beyond the threshold guarded by the Baba Yaga and are, somehow, lived by us?
In these times, the value of goddesses and female figures is often relegated to the realm of women’s lives and the feminine, but the Baba Yaga addresses men as well as women. She can be a threat or a teacher to men and women in her stories. She owns a huge stove and a spinning wheel, and also a horse and a sword. She flies through the air with a mortar and pestle, which are tools for grinding seeds and flax for food and thread, and metaphors for the sex organs. She lives in the forest and is venerated by animals. She tests all humans who cross her path and decides on a case-by-case basis who she will help.
Now I invite you to relax, listen, and let yourself enter the stories. Note the details that call to you or the questions that arise. They are clues to your relationship to the Baba Yaga and the place her stories occupy in your life right now. The first story is called “Baba Yaga. and the Kid.” I am taking all of the stories that I’m sharing with you from a book titled Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales, translated by Sibelan Forrester.
“Baba Yaga and the Kid”
There once lived a tomcat, a sparrow, and a young man. The tomcat and the sparrow went to cut wood, and they said to the kid, “You look after the house, but watch out. If Baba Yaga comes and starts counting the spoons, don’t say anything. Be quiet.” “All right,” said the kid. The tomcat and the sparrow lef and the kid climbed up on the stove and sat behind the stove pipe where it was warm.
Suddenly, a Baba Yaga appeared, picked up the spoons and started counting. “This is the tomcat’s spoon, this is the sparrow’s spoon, and the third one is the kid’s”. The kid couldn’t bear it, and he shouted, “Baba Yaga, don’t you touch my spoon.”
Baba Yaga grabbed the kid, got into her mortar and rode off. She pushed the mortar along with the pestle and swept away her tracks with the broom, and the kid started to yell, “Run, cat, fly sparrow.” They heard him, and they came running. The cat scratched Baba Yaga while the sparrow pecked her, and they took the kid away from her.
Now the next day, the sparrow and the cat were getting ready to go into the forest again to cut wood, and again they warned the kid, “Now watch out. If Baba Yaga comes , don’t say anything because this time we’re going to be far away.” And no sooner had the kid settled down behind the stove pipe, than the Baba Yaga appeared again and started to count the spoons. “This is the tomcat spoon, this is the sparrow spoon, and this one is the kid’s.” The kid couldn’t bear it and he shouted, “Don’t you touch my spoon, Baba Yaga.” And the Baba Yaga grabbed the kid and dragged him outside.
The kid was shouting, “Sparrow, sparrow, cat, cat.” Now they heard him and they came running, and the tom cat scratched and the sparrow pecked, and they got the kid away from her and managed to go back home.
On the third day, the cat and the sparrow got ready to go to the forest and cut wood. And once again, they said to the kid, “Look, if the Baba Yaga comes, keep quiet. We are going far, far away.” Now, the tomcat and the sparrow left, and the kid took his seat on the stove behind the pipe ,and the Baba Yaga came and started counting. “This is the cat spoon. This is the sparrow spoon. And the third one is the kid’s.”
The kid kept quiet. The Baba Yaga started to count a second time. “This is the cat spoon. This is the sparrow spoon, and the third one is the kid’s.”
And the kid kept quiet. Now she counted a third time. “This is the cat spoon. This is the sparrow spoon, and the third one is the kid’s.” And the kid couldn’t bear it. He shouted,” Don’t you touch my spoon, you slut.” Baba Yaga grabbed the kid and dragged him away. The kid shouted, “Cat, cat, sparrow, sparrow.”
But this time his brothers didn’t hear him, so the Baba Yaga dragged the kid home, put him in the stove box, stoked the stove fire herself, and then said to her eldest daughter, “Girl, I’ve got an errand to run. You roast up this kid for my lunch.” “All right,” said the daughter. The stove got nice and hot, and the girl ordered the kid to come out. He came out, and the girl said, “Lie down in the pan.”
The kid lay down. He stuck one leg up toward the ceiling and the other down toward the floor. And the girl said, “No, not that way.” “Well, then how” said the kid, “you show me.” The girl lay down in the pan and the kid, he didn’t lose his nerve. He grabbed the oven fork and shoved the pan with the Yaga’s daughter right into the stove, and then he went back to the stove box and sat there to wait for the Baba Yaga.
All at once, the Baba Yaga came running. She said, “I want to roll, I want to loll, in that kid’s bones.” But the kid answered her and said, “Roll around and loll around on your own daughter’s bones.” Baba Yaga gasped and she took a peek in the stove, and it was her daughter who had been roasted. “Oh, you scoundrel,” she said, “Just you wait. You are not going to get out of this one.” And she ordered her middle daughter to roast the kid for her.
So, the middle daughter stoked the stove, and she got out the pan, and she pulled out the kid, and she told him to lay down in the pan. And once again, he stuck one foot up towards the ceiling and one foot down towards the floor. And the girl said, “No, no, no, not like that.” “Well, then show me,” said the kid and the girl lay down in the roasting pan, and quick as a flash, boom. No hesitation. The kid shoved her into the stove and closed the door and sat back down on the stove box to wait for the Baba Yaga.
Well, she came running in at once and said, “I want to roll, I want to loll around on that kid’s bones.” “Well, roll around and loll around on your daughter’s bones,” he said, Well, now the Baba Yaga was really furious. “Just you wait,” she said, “You are not going to get away from me.” And she piled some more wood on the fire in the stove and she called her youngest daughter and said, “Now you roast him.”
And she left, and the daughter got out the pan, and she told the kid to get in the pan. And once again, he did the same thing with his legs, and asked the daughter to show him. And well, you know, she ended up being roasted too. And when the Baba Yaga came back the third time, she was so angry. “All right,” she said, “I’m going do it myself. Get in the damn pan.” And the kid laid down in the pan, and he put one leg up towards the ceiling and one leg down towards the floor.
“No, not like that,” said the Baba Yaga. But the kid acted dumb.”I don’t know how to do it,” he said, “You show me.” Well, the Baba Yaga laid right down and curled up in the pan. And the kid did not hesitate. He shoved her into the stove, and then he ran home and told his brothers, “Let me tell you what I did to the Baba Yaga.”
So, here’s a story of the scary Baba Yaga. She wants to eat the boy. Baba Yaga’s cannabalism and her taste for children and Russians in particular, is a common theme in her stories. This story also contains some of the paradoxes Baba Yaga contains. Somehow she has 3 daughters although she is a solo old woman. The existence of these daughters– and in some stories she has sisters- points to her multiplicity and immortality. If one of her is killed then another appears. There’s always Baba Yaga force, energy, or truth around. That Baba Yaga can be killed and still live is one of the many paradoxes contained in her complex character.
We also notice that she’s good at goading the kid into revealing himself and yet she’s as dim as her daughters when it comes to the pan and gets cooked. And she’s a mother who will eat a child, who feeds on children, which brings to mind a fact of our material existence that has troubled humans for a very long time. The fact, the paradox, that death is essential to life, that life feeds on life. That said, the kid passes the test. He’s clever and brave enough to survive.
Now, let me tell you the next story. This one is called “The Stepdaughter and the Stepmother’s Daughter.”
Once there lived an old man and an old woman, and they had only one daughter. The old woman died and the old man remarried, and he had a daughter with his second wife as well. Well, the second wife didn’t like her stepdaughter and was always trying to hurt her, so she sent her to the river to wash thread one day, and told her, “Watch out. If you let the threads sink to the bottom don’t even bother coming home.”
Well, the girl went to the river and laid the thread on the water, and the thread floated along the river. She walked slowly along the bank after it, and then the thread floated all the way to the forest and sank. Well, she went into the forest, and she saw a little house on chicken legs. She said, “Little house, little house, stand with your back to the woods and your front to me,” and the little house obeyed. The step daughter went into it and saw a Baba Yaga.
Her head was in one corner of the house and her feet were in another. And when the Baba Yaga saw her, she said, “Fi I smell a Russian soul. What are you up to girl? Are you doing a deed or fleeing a deed?” And the girl told her that her mother had sent her to wash thread and said that if she let it sink, she shouldn’t go home.
The Baba Yaga said, “I want you to heat up my bath house.” And the girl asked the Baba, “well, where is your firewood?” “My firewood is behind the bathhouse,” she said. But when the girl went back there, the fuel stacked up was really human bones. Well, she went to the bathhouse and hauled in a lot of bones and put them in the stove. But no matter how much she tried, she couldn’t make them catch fire. They just smoldered.
So she sat down on the ground and cried.
A sparrow came flying up to her and said,” Don’t cry girl. Come into the woods, gather firewood there, and use it to stoke the stove.” Well, the girl took this advice, and that’s what she did. And then she went in and told the Baba Yaga that the bath house was heated, but the Baba Yaga said, “Now go and bring water in a sieve.”
She went out and thought, “How am I going to bring water in a sieve?” The sparrow flew up to her again and said, “Why are you crying? Smear the sieve with clay.” And the girl did as the sparrow suggested, and she brought plenty of water and then went to call the Baba Yaga to the bath house. But the Baba Yaga answered, “You go to the bathhouse. I’ll send you my children now.
Well, the girl went into the bathhouse and suddenly she saw worms and frogs and rats and all sorts of insects come crawling up to her in the bathhouse. She washed all of them and gave them a good steaming. And then she went to get the Baba Yaga and she washed her too. And then she washed herself.
When she came out of the bath house, the Baba Yaga told her to heat up the samovar. And she did and they drank tea. So, now the Baba Yaga told her to go down into the cellar. “There are two trunks in my cellar,” she said, “a red one and a blue one. Take the red one for yourself.”
The girl took the red trunk and went home to her father. Her father was very glad to see her, and when they opened the trunk, the trunk was full of money.
Now the stepmother started to envy her, or rather envied her even more, and so she decided to send her own daughter to the Baba Yaga. The girl went into the forest and found the house, and once again, the Baba Yaga told the girl to stoke the bath house with bones.
The sparrow flew down to her and said, “Go into the woods and gather firewood.” But she swatted the bird away with her hands. Go away,” she said, “I don’t need you to tell me that.” But she couldn’t get the bath house heated. And then the Baba Yaga told her to bring water in a sieve. And once again, the sparrow flew up to her and said, “You could smear the sieve with clay.” And the girl hit the bird again. “Go away,” she said, “I don’t need you to tell me that.” But then she saw the rats and the frogs and all sorts of vermin coming into the bathhouse, and she squashed half of them, and the others ran home and complained about her to their mother.
Well, the step mother’s daughter went back to the Baba Yaga, and the Baba Yaga told her to heat up the samovar, and she did, and they had tea, and the Baba Yaga sent her to the cellar and told her to take up the blue trunk. Well, the girl was very happy. She ran into the cellar, grabbed the trunk and ran home. Her father and her mother were waiting for her at the front gate, and she and her mother went into the shed and opened the trunk, but there was fire in it, and it burned them both up.
In this story we find another common theme in Baba Yaga tales, a girl or young woman who is badly treated by a hateful stepmother. The young woman goes into the forest– a liminal, wild space– and meets the Baba Yaga. Baba Yaga gives her a series of tests in the form of tasks to complete and rewards her when she succeeds. What message is contained in her success, do you think? How does the young woman manage it? She’s courageous and resourceful– and this important– and I sense something more.
First, it’s interesting that the river and thread led her to the forest. Then the young woman listens to the sparrow, to a small wild bird, one that is easily dismissed as we see in the example of the stepmother’s daughter, and in this attention she displays humility. The young woman sees herself as part of the world of the sparrow, as part of nature, and so she believes that the advice she receives is valuable. She doesn’t set herself apart and above. She even cleans the rats and insects.
Through this attitude, the young woman respects Baba Yaga. Baba Yaga drinks tea with her and sends her down to the cellar to take the red chest full of money home to her father. The stepmother and her daughter, on the other hand, don’t show this respect or acknowledge this kinship. They are burned up by the Baba Yaga fire contained in the blue chest.
The stove, food, cooking and eating are common features in a Baba Yaga story. The Baba has a tremendous appetite. Her eating fuels the fire of transformation and creation that is her nature. Baba Yaga’s element is fire. Destructive, yes, a death dealing power. Also purifying and transformative, a step in the process of renewal. Fire clears away what is no longer useful– what is overgrown or rotten or too old to support life as it once did, and creates condition for new life to begin.
I have one more story for you today but first let’s pause to give a big welcome to new email subscribers to Myth Matters: Aliza, Don, Leticia, Elisabeth, Lisa, Jerry, Amit, Bob, Puero, Stephanie, Anne, Karen, Nicky, Janice, Laura, David, Nancy, Leslie, Ayan, Mark, Saä, Ellen, Bonita, Linda, Amara, Martin, Susan, Sara, Gregory, Sere, Thea, and Tanya.
Welcome to Myth Matters! I took a little break since December and I’m so pleased that you found Myth Matters.
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Now let me tell you the last story for today, “The Geese and the Swans.”
There once lived an old man and an old woman, and they had a daughter and a baby son. One day, the mother said, “Daughter, we’re going to work. We’ll bring you a bread roll. We’ll get you a dress and buy you a handkerchief. Now be good and take care of your little brother and don’t go out of the yard.” The parents lef but the daughter forgot what they told her, and she set her brother down on the grass under the window, and she herself ran out into the street, and she lost track of time, playing and running around.
Some geese and swans flew over, grabbed the boy and flew away with him. The girl came back and looked, and her brother wasn’t there. She gasped. She ran here and there, but he wasn’t anywhere. She called, she sobbed, she lamented. She was going to be in tremendous trouble with her father and her mother, and she missed her brother, but her brother didn’t answer. She ran out into the empty fiel and she caught sight of the geese and the swans far away as they disappeared beyond the dark forest.
These geese and swans had a bad reputation for stealing children and the girl guessed that they were the ones who had taken her brother. She ran off after them. She ran and she ran, and she came across a stove standing in the forest. “Stove, stove, tell me, where did the geese fly?” “Eat my rye pastry, and I’ll tell you.” “Oh,” said the girl,” in my dad’s house, we don’t even eat wheat ones.” And the stove wouldn’t tell her.
She ran farther and she saw an apple tree standing there. “Apple tree, apple tree, tell me where the geese flew.” “Eat some of my wild apple and I’ll tell you.” “Oh,” she said, “in my dad’s house, we don’t even eat the orchard apples.” So, the apple tree kept quiet.
She ran further and there was a river of milk with banks of custard. ” Milk river, custard banks,” she said, “Where did the geese fly?” “Eat some of my simple custard with milk and I’ll tell you.” “Oh, at my dad’s, we don’t even eat cream.”
Well, she got no answer, and she would have run through the fields and wandered in the forest for a very, very long time. But fortunately, she ran into a hedgehog. She wanted to give him a poke, but she was afraid of pricking herself so, she asked hedgehog, “Did you happen to see where the geese flew?” “Right that way,” he showed her.
She ran off and there stood a little house on chicken legs. It stood there and turned round and round. Inside the house sat a Baba Yaga with a sinewy snout and leg made of clay. She was sitting there and the little boy was on a bench playing with golden apples. The sister saw him, stole up and grabbed him and carried him away. But the geese flew after them and chased her.
The villains were about to catch her. Where could she hide? The milk river was flowing by with its banks of custard. “Mother river hide me.” “Eat some of my custard.” The girl had no choice, so she ate it and the river set her down under its bank, and the geese flew past. She came out and said, “thank you.”
Again she went running with her little brother, but the geese had turned around and were flying toward her. What could she do? Oh, no. And there stood the apple tree. “Apple tree, mother apple tree, hide me.” “Eat my sour apple.” Well, she ate it and on the double the apple tree shielded her with its branches, covered her with its leaves and the geese flew by.
She came out and ran again with her brother but the geese saw them and took off after her. They were ever so close, already hitting her with their wings. Any second they were going to pull her little brother out of his arms. But fortunately, the stove was just ahead of her. “My lady stove, hide me.” “Eat my rye pastry.” The girl popped the pastry right into her mouth, and she herself jumped into the stove and sat down in its mouth. The geese flew and flew, and they called and called, and they finally flew away with nothing.
Then the girl ran home, and it’s a good thing she managed to run home, because her father and mother had just come back.
Here I see the juxtaposition between the peasant family and the human way of cultivation, the apples in an orchard, for example, and Baba Yaga or wild nature. Baba Yaga takes a number of forms in this story. She appears as the old witch. She is also the geese, who are her familiars and one of her animal forms, and the rest of nature in the story. The nature that invites consumption and reminds us that the earth’s abundance, whether it appears through the natural grace of the Baba Yaga or through human efforts, hard work at cultivation, isn’t meant to be hoarded. I’m struck by the girl’s words–“In my dad’s house, we don’t even eat the orchard apples,” the girl says, obedient to the training of her parents, and she doesn’t learn the location of her little brother until she meets the hedgehog and the Baba Yaga.
In this instance, the child is safe with the Baba Yaga, another common theme in contrast to the first story I shared. And the Baba Yaga is overall helpful, instructive. Hedgehogs are wise– they open the path for those who listen- and the hedgehog is, yes, Baba Yaga. So are the geese who stole the little brother. Here the helpful Baba Yaga gives the girl a gift of understanding the abundance around her and within her. And one more thought. There is refuge and help in the wild world.
As a face of Mother Earth and her plenitude, a Baba Yaga is all of the wild creatures and wildness that appear in her stories. She does have a special association with certain wild birds – geese, swans, and eagles. These are hunting birds. They are also psychopomps, beings who bear a dead person on a soul journey or guide a living person to the other world. In many of her stories a Baba Yaga lives in the forest, but no matter where her house is located, it is always at the border of the other realm, the realm of death in the afterlife. This is one of the meanings of the deep forest or an edge by the sea. These are liminal spaces, places where change occurs.
So, another aspect of a Baba Yaga’s earthiness and wild nature is her role as an initiator. She guards hidden wisdom, the paradox of life and death and cycles of being. The paradox of the multitude as one. Meeting a Baba Yaga is an initiatory experience and she is a guide to spiritual transformation. The connection between Baba Yaga and initiatory experiences will be the topic of the next episode. I think we can really use a dose of Baba Yaga fueled insight and awareness, and I hope that you’ll join me for that one.
If we have a better understanding of our need for myth, and all that our old stories offer, we can live more satisfying lives. We can inhabit a better story and create a more beautiful, just and sustainable world.
And that’s it for me, Catherine Svehla and Myth Matters. Lean into the potential of this time, my friend. Take good care of yourself and until next time, keep the mystery in your life alive.
Other episodes that feature the Baba Yaga:
Meeting the Baba Yaga: Witches, magic, and mystery
This episode revolves around a Russian fairy tale called “Vasilisa the Wise.”
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