Finist the Bright Falcon: Baba Yaga, soul quests, and shamanic journeys

The final episode in a three-part exploration of the mysterious Baba Yaga, a scary crone in Russian and Slavic fairy tales. Who or what is she?

The fairy tale “Finist the Bright Falcon” opens up some interesting possibilities.

Transcript of “Finist the Bright Falcon”: Baba Yaga, soul quests, and shamanic journeys

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 have one more Russian fairy tale that includes the Baba Yaga for you today. Lots of us are fascinated by this figure of a scary old witch, a cannabalistic crone who might help you or eat you, who lives in a hut on chicken legs deep in the forest. Who is she? What does she signify? The archeologist Marija Gimbutas, who did much of her work into the origins of human culture in Eastern Europe, considered Baba Yaba “the ancient Slavic goddess of death and regeneration” (Gimbutas, 1999, posthumous publ.).

The connection between the Baba Yaga’s complex nature and the mysteries of life and death link her to initiatory experiences. That is, journeys into liminal spaces, into the unknown dimensions of time, space, and psyche, where transformation takes place. As I mentioned in one of the previous episodes about the Baba Yaga, as a crone figure, she contains all of the earlier permutations of life experience. In the language of the triple goddess, this means that she contains the maiden and mother. 

More broadly, the Baba Yaga has been around and through it all. She’s linked to the earth– to the cycles of nature and all earthly creatures and beings– and she knows the working of the human world, of human society and psychology. This is her great wisdom.

The story that I have for you today is new to me although it’s apparently quite popular in Eastern Europe and Russia. There are many variants. It’s called “Finist the Bright Falcon” and the version that I’m referencing is found in the collection titled Baba Yaga, The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales, translation by Sibelan Forrester. This story contains some motifs and plot twists that you may recognize from other stories about quests. Quests for what the heart and soul desire most. Quests that challenge us to become a person worthy of success.

Let me tell you the story and I’ll share some of my thoughts about it. For now, I invite you to relax and listen and let yourself enter the space of the story. Note the details that call to you or the questions that arise. These might be something you like or something that bothers you. Whatever the nature of it, these are clues to the place this story occupies in your life right now.

Finist the Bright Falcon

Once upon a time, there lived an old man and an old woman. They had three daughters, and the youngest was such a beauty that it can’t be told in a tale or written down by a pen. One day, the old man was getting ready to go to the city for the market, and he said, “My gracious daughters, whatever you wish, give me your orders and I’ll buy everything at the market.” 

The eldest daughter said, “Buy me a new dress, Father.” The middle daughter said, “Buy me a shawl kerchief, Father.” But the youngest daughter said, “Buy me a little scarlet flower. “The father laughed at the youngest daughter and “What silly little thing” he said. “Do you need a scarlet flower for? A lot of good it would do you. I’d do better to buy you fancy clothes.” But no matter what he said, he couldn’t persuade her to change her mind. “Buy a little scarlet flower” she insisted, and that was all she wanted.

The old man set off for the market. He bought his eldest daughter a dress and the middle one a shawl kerchief. But he couldn’t find a little scarlet flower anywhere in the whole city. He was getting ready to go home and already at the very gates of the city, when he happened to meet an old man he didn’t know who was carrying a little scarlet flower in his hands.

“Sell me your flower old man” he said. “Well,” said the other man, “it’s not for sale. It’s special. If your youngest daughter will marry my son, Finist the Bright Falcon, then I’ll give you the flower for nothing.” The father thought about it. Not taking the flower would cause his daughter grief, but taking it would mean having to marry her off, and God knows to whom. He thought and thought and finally, he took the little scarlet flower. After all, it’s not a misfortune, he decided. This young man will come courting later on, and if he’s no good then we can still turn him down.

The old man came home and gave his eldest daughter the dress and his middle daughter the shawl kerchief. But he gave the youngest one the little flower and said to her, “Your flower doesn’t please me, my dear daughter, it doesn’t please me at all.” And he whispered into her ear, “You know, the flower was special. It’s not for sale. I got it from an old stranger on the condition that I marry you to his son, Finist the bBight Falcon.”

“Oh, don’t grieve Father,” answered the daughter. “He’s so good and affectionate. He flies as a bright falcon through the sky but as soon as he strikes the damp earth, then he turns into a fine young man.” “Well, can it be that you know him?” asked the father. “Oh, I know him. I know him Father, “she said. “Last Sunday he was at church. He kept looking at me, and I spoke to him, and you know, he loves me, Father.” The old man shook his head, looked closely at his daughter, made the sign of the cross over her, and said, “Go to your room, my dear daughter, it’s already bedtime. Morning is wiser than the evening, and we’ll make sense of it all later.” 

But the daughter locked herself in her room, put the little scarlet flower into water, opened to the window and looked out into the blue distance. Out of nowhere, there before her appeared Finist the Bright Falcon with jeweled feathers. He swooped in through the window, struck the floor and turned into a fine lad. At first the girl was frightened, but once he began to talk with her, she felt ever so merry and good. 

They conversed until dawn. I don’t know about what. I only know that when it began to get light, Finist the Bright Falcon with the jeweled feathers kissed her and said “Every night, as soon as you put the little scarlet flower on the window sill, I’ll come to you, my dear. And here’s a feather for you from my wing. If you need any kind of fine clothes, go out on the porch and just wave the feather to the right. In an instant everything your soul might desire will appear right in front of you.” He kissed her once more, turned back into a bright falcon and flew away over the dark forest.

The girl watched her intended leave, closed the window, and lay down to rest. From then on, every night, as soon as she put the little scarlet flower in the open window, Finist the Bright Falcon would come flying to her. 

Sunday came and her older sisters began to dress up for church, and they teased her, “What will you put on?” they said, “you have nothing new.” “Well, that’s all right,” said the youngest daughter, “I can pray at home too.” So, the older sisters went off to mass but the little one sat by the window. She watched all the people going to God’s Church, and she waited long enough for them to pass, and when the coast was clear, she went out on the porch, waved the jeweled feather to the right and from out of nowhere a beautiful carriage appeared before her with a team of horses, a servant to drive, and beautiful clothes and jewelry for her to wear. 

The young woman got herself dressed in a minute, got into the carriage and hurried off to church. And when she got there, the people didn’t recognize her. They marveled at her beauty and whispered to each other, “wow, you see that some kind of Princess has come this morning.” When the service was over, she jumped up, hurried out to her carriage and quickly rode home. The other people came outside of the church and looked around, hoping to catch another glimpse of her, perhaps meet her. But she was long gone, and no sooner had she driven up to the porch of her house, but she jumped out, waved at the feather to the left and the carriage and the dress and everything disappeared. 

She was sitting there at her window just as before, as if nothing had ever happened, as all the people filed home. And eventually her sisters came home too, and they said, “Well sister, you really missed something at church today. There was this beautiful woman. I mean, she was a real pleasure to see. No tale could tell it. It must have been a queen from a foreign land who came visiting. She was magnificent. All dressed up.” 

Well, a second Sunday came, and a third ,and this young woman kept teasing the Orthodox people and her sisters and her father and her mother. She kept waiting until they were all gone, and then mysteriously showing up and then rushing back home. But then one time, when she was taking off all of her fine clothes, she forgot to take a diamond pin out of her hair. Her older sisters came from church, and they were telling her about the beautiful princess as they had been in the past, but then they took a good look at her, and that diamond pin was there in her hair, blazing away. “Sister, what do you have there?” they cried. “Why the princess today had exactly that kind of pin in her hair. Where did you get it?”

The young woman gasped and ran off to her bedroom. There was no end to the questions and the guesses and the whispering back and forth, but she kept quiet. She did not reveal anything, and privately laughed to herself.

The thing is, the older sisters started paying very close attention to her and listening at night, outside of her bedroom, and once they heard her conversation with Finist the Bright Falcon. They stayed up and watched, and at dawn they saw him with their own eyes as he shot out of the window and flew off over the dark forest.

Maybe they were evil girls. At the very least, they were quite envious these two big sisters, and they decided to hide knives on the window of their sister’s chamber in the evening so that Finist the Bright Falcon would injure his jeweled wings. Once they got the idea, well, they followed through. They did it, and the younger sister didn’t suspect anything. She put her little scarlet flower on the window sill, as she had in the past, lay back on her bed and fell sound asleep.

But when Finnist the Bright Falcon came flying in that night, he swooped into the window and cut his left leg. He was very angry, but the young woman didn’t know anything about it. She was deep in a sweet and peaceful sleep, and so the falcon soared up into the open sky and flew away over the dark forest.

In the morning, the young woman woke up and looked around in every direction. It was already light, but there was no sign of the handsome young man, and as soon as she glanced out the window she saw the sharp knives sticking out this way and that, and she saw the blood dripping from them onto the little flower.

For a long time, she cried bitter tears. She spent many sleepless nights by the window of her chamber. She tried waving the jeweled feather. But all in vain. Finist the Bright Falcon didn’t come flying to her, and he didn’t send his servants either. 

Finally, she went to her father with tears in her eyes and asked for his blessing. “I’m going,” she said, “I don’t know where.” She ordered three pairs of iron shoes forged for her, and three iron crutches, three iron caps, and three iron loaves. She put a pair of the shoes on her feet, a cap on her head, a crutch in her hands, and she set off in the same direction Finist the Bright Falcon had always come flying from to see her. 

She walked along through a deep, dark forest over stumps and stiles. The iron shoes were already getting worn. The iron cap was wearing out, the crutch was breaking, the loaf was gnawed away. But the fair maiden kept walking and walking while the forest grew blacker and blacker and thicker and thicker. Suddenly she saw standing in front of her, a cast iron hut on chicken legs that constantly turned around. The maiden said, “Little house, little house, stand with your back to the woods, your front to me.” The house turned its front toward her. 

She went into the house, and a Baba Yaga was lying inside from corner to corner, lips on the railing, nose stuck in the ceiling. “Fi, before the Russian smell couldn’t be seen with the sight ,couldn’t be heard with the hearing. But now the Russian spirit walks over the free world and appears before my very eyes, ” she said. “Where does your road lead, fair maiden? Are you doing a deed or fleeing a deed?”

“Granny,” she said, “I had Finist the Bright Falcon, jeweled feathers, but my sisters harmed him. Now I am searching for Finist the Bright Falcon.” “You willhave to go a long way, little one,” said Baba Yaga. “You must pass through thrice nine more lands. Finist the Bright Falcon, jeweled feathers, lives in the 50th kingdom, in the 80th state, and he’s already betrothed to a princess.”

Baba Yaga fed the maiden, gave her something to drink, and put her to bed. In the morning as soon as the light began to spread, she woke her up and gave her a precious gift, a little gold mallet and 10 diamond nails. And she instructed her. “When you come to the blue sea Finist the Bright Falcon’s bride will come out on the shore for a stroll, but you take this golden mallet in your hand and hammer in the diamond nails, she’ll ask to buy them from you. Don’t you take anything fair maiden, only ask to see Finist the Bright Falcon. There now, go and see my middle sister.”

Again the young woman walked along through the dark forest, further and further into a deeper and deeper and denser and black woods. The treetops were curling up to the sky,and her second pair of iron shoes was already down at the heel. The second cap was already worn out. The second iron crutch was breaking, and there was nothing left of that second loaf, and there standing before her was a cast iron house on chicken legs, turning round and round and round.

“Little house, little house,” she said, “Stand with your back to the woods and your front to me. I must climb inside to eat some bread.” The little house turned with its back to the woods and its front toward the maiden. She went inside, but a Baba Yaga was lying inside the house from corner to corner, lips on the railing, nose stuck to the ceiling. “Fie, fie, fie! Before the Russian smell couldn’t be seen with the sight or heard with the hearing. But now the Russian smell has started walking all over the world. And where does your road lead, fair maiden?” 

“Granny,” she said, “I’m searching for Finist the Bright Falcon.” “Well, he’s about to get married,” said, Baba Yaga. “They’re already holding the party for the bridesmaids.” She gave the young woman food and drink and put her to sleep. And in the morning, as soon as it got light, she woke her up, gave her a golden saucer with a diamond ball, and ordered her firmly, very firmly. “When you come to the shore of the blue sea, start rolling the diamond ball on the golden saucer. Finist the Bright Falcon’s bride will come out to you and start trying to buy the saucer with the ball. But don’t you take anything for it. Just ask to see Finist the Bright Falcon, jeweled feathers. Now go on and see my older sister.”

Again the young woman walked through the dark forest into an area even deeper and darker and blacker and thicker. The third pair of shoes was now well worn and the third cap completely worn out. The last crutch was breaking and the last loaf was gnawed away. Before her was a cast iron house standing on chicken legs, turning and turning and turning. “Little house, little house,” she cried. “turn your backs to the woods, your front to me. I must go inside to eat some bread.”The house turned.

Once again, there was a Baba Yaga in the house, and once again, she lay there from corner to corner, lips on the railing, nose stuck in the ceiling. “Fie, fie, fie, before the Russian smell was not to be seen with the sight, not to be heard with the hearing. But now the Russian smell walks all over the world. Where does your path lead, fair maiden?” “I’m looking for Finist the Bright Falcon, Granny.” “Ah, fair maiden, he’s already married. Here’s my swift horse. Mount it and ride as fast as you can.”

The maiden mounted the horse and raced onward. And gradually the forest got thinner and thinner. And then there was the blue sea, wide and free, spreading out before her, and there in the distance, blazing like fire, golden roofs burned on high towers of white stone. “That must be the kingdom of Finist the Bright Falcon,” thought the young woman. She sat down on the shifting sand and began to hammer in the diamond nails with the golden hammer. 

Suddenly, a princess came walking down the beach with her nurses and her nannies and all of her faithful servants. She stopped and began to bargain for the diamond nails and the golden mallet. “Princess” said the young woman, “just let me have a look at Finist the Bright Falcon and I’ll let you have them from nothing.” “But Finist the Bright Falcon is sleeping now. He ordered that no one be let in to see him. Hmm. Well, so be it. Give me your wonderful nails and mallet, and I’ll show him to you.” 

The princess took the mallet and the little nails, ran back to the palace, and stuck a magic pin into Finist the Bright Falcon’s clothes so he would sleep more soundly and couldn’t be shaken from it. Then she ordered the nurses to lead the young woman into the palace to her husband, Finist the Bright Falcon, while she went for a walk.

The falcon was deep asleep and for a long time the young woman wrung her hands and cried over her darling. She shook him, but there was no way she could wake him. And once she had strolled all she wanted, the princess came home, told the young woman, that it was time to go, and when the door closed behind her, pulled out the pin.

Finist the Bright Falcon woke up. “Oh, my God. How long have I been sleeping?” he said. “Someone was here and kept weeping and lamenting over me, only there was no way I could open my eyes. It was so hard for me.” “You were dreaming,” answered the princess, “there was nobody here.”

The next day, the young woman sat on the shore of the sea again, and this time she rolled the diamond ball on the golden saucer. The princess came out to stroll. She saw it and said, “Sell it to me.” “Let me just take a look at Finist the Bright Falcon and I’ll let you have it for nothing.” The princess agreed and again, she stuck a pin in Finist the Bright Falcon’s clothes. And again, the young woman wept bitterly over her darling and couldn’t wake him. 

On the third day, she sat on the shore of the dark blue sea so sorrowful and sad, feeding her horse glowing coals. The princess saw the horse being fed with fire, and she asked to buy him. “Let me just take a look at Finist the Bright Falcon and I’ll give him to you for nothing.” The princess agreed, ran into the palace and said, “Finist Bright Falcon, let me look in your hair for lice.” She sat down to search his head and stuck a pin in his hair, and he immediately fell sound asleep. Then she sent her nurses to bring in the young woman.

Once again, our young woman came in, tried to wake her darling, embraced him, kissed him, and cried bitter tears, but he wouldn’t wake up. She began to fondle his hair and happened upon the magic pin. She pulled it out. Finist the Bright Falcon, jeweled feathers, woke up right away. He saw the fair maiden and how they rejoiced. She told him everything that had happened, how the evil sisters had begun to envy her, how she went wandering and how she had bargained with the princess. 

He fell in love with her even more than before, kissed her and ordered without delay, a gathering of all of the princes and people of rank in the kingdom. When the crowd had assembled, he asked them, “What is your judgment? With which wife should I spend all my days, with that one who sold me, or with this one who bought me?” All the princes and people of various ranks decided with one voice that he should take the one who had bought him and that the wife who had sold him should be hanged on the gates and shot. And that is what was done by Finist the Bright Falcon, jeweled feathers. 

And so the story ends as perhaps we might have expected. Let’s begin with a few observations about the plot or action in the story and then I’ll focus on two elements that feel central to me, the falcon and the scarlet flower.

What does the youngest daughter want? Her older sisters want beautiful dresses and shawls and she wants a scarlet flower. Some people want the conventional comforts of the known world. The youngest daughter wants something beautiful, something to awaken longing or express desire– we don’t know exactly, at first. She wants adventure, experience, knowledge. Something beyond what a nice dress for church or a dance will bring.

A scarlet flower seems useless to some and as it turns out, it’s difficult to find. The old man has to make a strange bargain to acquire it. He has to promise the hand of his daughter in marriage to Finist the Bright Falcon.

Now, “falcon” is or was a common metaphor in Russian wedding songs for the groom and his retinue. It refers to both man and bird. I’ll say a bit more about this in a minute. In any event, the father thinks that he understands the bargain and that he can prevent any disaster for his daughter so, he accepts the terms and takes the flower back for her.

But she’s already in it, right? She’s already met the falcon/man and had a specific purpose in mind when she asked for a scarlet flower. Her lover comes and for a time, it appears that she has almost everything: love, and beautiful dresses, and a secret, a life that belongs to her, experiences known only to herself. But this state can’t last and she loses it all through a combination of carelessness, envy, and naivete. This part of the story reminds me of Psyche and Eros and of a Norwegian fairy tale about Valemon the White Bear King.

The lover and the love are not quite of this world, and they are vulnerable to doubt and betrayal. You know, the value of most things that are acquired too easily doesn’t last. We give them up or they end, and yet, this is a soul and heart desire, a love between heart and soul, between aspects of the soul– maybe the Jungian inner marriage. 

So, the young woman does more than weep into her pillow every night for a month. She begins the arduous journey in search of what she’s lost. She meets the tests and undergoes the required trials to become the person who not only satisfies her desire and possess it fully, but one from whom it can’t be stolen. Funny how this works. When you are willing to do whatever is necessary to have what you truly want and need, and forsake all other options and temptations, you end up with all the riches that you could want.

The young woman meets the Baba Yaga, actually she meets three of them, and they are helpful. They give her aid and tools, magical tools, to test her rival, the princess who has captured and married Finist the Bright Falcon. She prevails because she doesn’t want anything but Finist, just as she didn’t want anything but a scarlet flower. She knows, she feels, what truly has value for her. What is essential. 

This is a good time to be reminded of this, a good time for me at least. Surrounded by loss, real and imagined, present or future, all of the plans to consolidate wealth and power in the hands of the few. And yet stories like this suggest that when you commit to what is dearest to your heart and soul, the rest falls into place. The threats from the outside are empty.

Is this some pie-in-the-sky fantasy? A spiritual axiom divorced from the real life of ordinary folks like you and me? Or is this a key to transforming ourselves to meet the current chaos and make it an opportunity? I don’t know, my friend. Food for thought.

Now, the falcon. As I mentioned, a “falcon” is a metaphor for a young man and/or the groom in a marriage which is interesting. Falcon are fast fliers and fierce hunters, and falconry– the partnership between humans and falcons– began thousands of years ago in Central Asia. These birds are noble, intelligent, precise, reliable and strong. It’s a wonderful image of man and yet, one thing I appreciate about this fairy tale is the blurring of gender characterization and stereotypes commonly associated with fairy tales. 

The young woman takes action. Her shoes and crutch are made of iron because her quest will take a long time and she endures. She pursues what she wants with courage and intelligence and isn’t just sitting at home by the window hoping someone will save her. 

The Jungian interpretation of a story like this one, which revolves around a marriage, is the notion of the inner marriage, the union and harmonious relationship between the masculine and feminine aspects of an individual’s psyche. Maybe. The notion of masculine and feminine has been important in Jungian psychology and is a concept with a lot of appeal to others working with stories or talking about women and the goddesses, etc. Whether or not we need this terminology to describe how the young woman and her falcon develop over the course of the story, I leave to you to decide. 

And here’s another angle that I find intriguing given the likely origin and long history of stories about the Baba Yaga. This story may be connected to shamanic practices. Here are a few things that I’ve discovered for you to mull over.

Fairy tale scholars, Vladimir Propp among them, suggest that the name “Finist” or “Fenist” is derived from the Russian word feniks, the mythological phoenix. The phoenix is an ancient bird or bird symbol found in disparate parts of the world, perhaps originating in Egypt. The phoenix sets herself on fire and rises, born again, from her own ashes, in response to signals from an inner cycle, a timing that rises up in the bird. The phoenix signifies the cycle of destruction and regeneration that is renewal.

I don’t know if this etymology is accurate but it has been taken seriously, as I say, by scholars like Propp. Returning to the falcon, in his study Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Mircea Eliade notes that Siberian, Eskimo, and North American shamans can fly. Various forms of birds, including falcons, are among their guides. He goes on to explain the connection between birds and souls in these traditions. The soul in the form of a bird and bird as psychopomp, as a guide to the underworld. A shaman who journeys to retrieve the soul of a person assumes a bird form and flies between the worlds.

As for the Baba Yaga, you might recall her association with swans and geese, something I mentioned in earlier episodes. In our mythological traditions, one function of these birds is psychopomp, guide of souls.

About the scarlet flower, the other element in this story that intrigues me and feels significant. The image suggests beauty and passion and danger, red being the color of blood and fire. Literal information regarding the possible identity of this flower is difficult to track down at this time. It could be the scarlet sage, a hardy perennial plant found in Russia and elsewhere. A scarlet flower appears in another Russian fairy tale that’s similar to “Beauty and the Beast.”

My quest for factual information about this scarlet flower in fairy tales from these lands uncovered another possible link to shamanism. I don’t think this is something that can be definitively established and yet it is a possibility that’s largely unexplored at this point. So, while looking at Russian illustrations for the story of Finist and Baba Yaga tales more generally, I noticed the presence of amanita muscaria in the illustration. Amanita muscaria, the red capped mushroom with the white dots that is an entheogen or psychedelic. The power of this mushroom has been known to Siberian shamans and others for thousands of years. It grows in the company of birch and coniferous trees in the forest.

I first noticed these mushrooms in the work of Ivan Bilibin, an artist who also did enthnographic work and was very interested in Russian folk traditions. This included knowledge of shamanism and the use of mushrooms. The inclusion of the amanita mushroom in artwork depicting Russian and Slavic fairy tales became something of a convention in the early twentieth century. Was this simply an attraction to the mushroom as a cool design element, imitation among artists, or something else? I don’t know.

I’ll post a few examples on the Mythic Mojo website along with the transcript to this episode. I’ll also post a portrait of Bilibin himself in which he is wearing a scarlet flower and bears a resemblance to a falcon, I think. Intense eyes. Go to mythicmojo.com and take a look for yourself.

According to Frank Dugan of Washington State University, linguistic and enthnographic analyses link the words “baba”, “witch, and “midwife” with dead female ancestors generally, and with water birds, bird maidens, and mushrooms. One ancient Slavic name for the earth mother deity is “Mother of Mushrooms.” 

Again, there are a number of possible meanings. Mushrooms are or were plentiful in this part of the world and many are edible. Mushrooms are food. And there are connections, right, in both our material and storied worlds, between mushrooms, fungi, and the mycelium network or “wood wide web” that connects us all…decay, the fertility of soil, death, what is underground and the underworld realm…toadstools and poison and a witch’s brew.. madness and ecstasy and inner knowledge…and the complex mysteries of life cycles and the cosmos.

Mushrooms and psychedelic mushrooms in particular, have been teachers for a very long time. Teachers, guides, initiators. Is this part of Baba Yaga’s history, of her complex otherworldliness? Does it shed light on the significance of her strange home in liminal space, her connection to earth goddesses, threshold guardians, and psychopomps? Food for thought.

I have one more reflection to share with you but first, a big welcome to new email subscribers:  Jane, Elisabeth, R, Peter, Santhi, Michael, Miriam, and Doug. Welcome to Myth Matters.

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Now, one parting thought about the Baba Yaga, her nature and wisdom. I guess this is an idea, image, metaphor, art object– it’s all of these things– that feels like a useful place to end this exploration of the Baba Yaga and the ideas that cluster around her: fierce wildness and the call of the earth, complexity, kinship, initiation, and the deaths and transformations that occur in liminal spaces, in the mythic dimension. The idea or image is the matroyshka, the Russian nesting doll. 

In her book Mother Russia: The Feminine in Russian Mythology, Joanna Hubbs begins with a discussion of the matryoshka doll. A matryoshka is a wooden, egg shaped doll, usually painted as a peasant woman, that has smaller and smaller versions of the peasant woman inside of them. When you pull apart the two halves of the outer doll you find another smaller version inside, and there’s usually four or five or six of these layers. This is a really interesting metaphor for the Baba Yaga, and for the deities that proceeded her and are part of the lineage of this fairytale character. 

Today, these dolls are typically considered to be folk art, a toy, and the dolls that are currently produced usually contain only smaller and smaller images of the woman as I just described to you. But the matryoshka is a symbol of mother Russia, that is, Mother Earth, whose body contains multitudes. The soil that is female, and in this figure we see her fertility and her creative powers.

The oldest matryoshka around today is from the 19th century. The doll is a girl in a peasant dress carrying a black rooster under her arm. Inside her is first a boy, then another girl, and finally a baby in swaddling clothes. A beautiful reminder of lineage and ancestry and life passed down, life and DNA and knowledge shared between species, between all earth forms, that connects us to the origins of everything. 

Note, the craftspeople who make matryoshkas create the smallest one first and fashion each larger doll based on the one that came before. A technical matter I imagine and yet this process mirrors the truth of our dependency, heritage, and evolution. Today, many of us live in cultures based on the biggest doll, the doll that contains only smaller and smaller images of itself. But this is a debasement of the truth of our legacy, kinship, and origins. I suspect this is the wisdom of the Baba Yaga.

Thank you so much for joining me in this exploration. If you have thoughts or experiences of the Baba Yaga, feel free to email me or use the text link that accompanies this episode on podcast platforms, as I would love to hear from you. Next month, April, is National Poetry Month here in the United States, so the next time we meet I will have some poems for you.

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. Take good care of yourself and until next time, keep the mystery in your life alive.

For more images of the long relationship between the people of central Asia and falcons, check out the work of Vadim Gorbatov, a Kazakhstan painter specializing in wild animals, birds, and their history with humans