![]() One of her legs may be distinctive: it may be formed of clay, gold, iron, or steel. She wears a necklace of human skulls and likes to smoke a pipe. She has iron teeth that protrude like boar’s tusks. ![]() MANIFESTATIONS:īaba Yaga flies through the air in a mortar, steers with a pestle, sweeping away her traces with a broom. Witches, herbalists, heroes, and hardworking advocates for wild nature, but be cautioned: Baba Yaga has no patience with slackers, whiners, and ingrates of any persuasion. Russia (maybe originally Scythian) FAVOURED PEOPLE: Baba Yaga is the Mistress of All Witches, Lady of the Beasts, the Primal Mother who rescues, nurtures, and destroys. She allegedly knows every botanical healing secret in existence whether or not she can be persuaded to reveal these secrets is another story. Mercatanteīaba Yaga : Iron Nosed Woman Iron Nosed Witch Grandmother in the Forestīaba Yaga, goddess of birth and death, devolved into the bogeywoman of Russian fairy tales, a cannibal forest-witch, her name used to threaten children into obedience: “Be good or Baba Yaga will get you.” Baba Yaga doesn’t just eat children sometimes she defends them by dispensing justice to evil step-mothers.īaba may be petitioned for fertility by those who lack it. SOURCE:Įncyclopedia of World Mythology and Legend, Third Edition – Written by Anthony S. In a variant tale, however, the girl was broken into little pieces and placed in a basket.Īnatol Liadov’s short symphonic poem Baba Yaga deals with the ogress, as does one section of Modest Moussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, also titled “Baba Yaga,” originally written for piano and transcribed for orchestra by Maurice Ravel in 1923. The girl was saved when a magic comb thrown in Baba Yaga’s path made it impossible for the ogress to catch the girl as she escaped. One Russian folktale, simply titled “Baba Yaga,” tells of an evil stepmother who attempted to have her daughter eaten by Baba Yaga. In some Russian folktales Baba Yaga’s hut is surrounded by a railing made of sticks surmounted by human skulls, which glow at night from candles placed inside them. Sometimes it faces the forest, sometimes the path, and sometimes it moves about from place to place. Baba Yaga usually lives in a hut that stands on hens’ legs. Since the Christian era she has been downgraded to witch status. She is never portrayed as a goddess, but in her earliest form she shows similarity to the Great Goddess, the patron goddess to women. She is mostly malevolent, but sometimes she is a benefactress. She is the best known of all Slavic legendary characters. The Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft and Wicca written by Rosemary Ellen Guiley – Copyright © 1989, 1999, 2008 by Visionary Living, Inc.īaba Yaga (Baba Jaga) (old woman) In Russian folklore, cannibalistic ogress who kidnaps children, then cooks and eats them. Funk & Wagnall’s Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend. Leach, Maria, ed., and Jerome Fried, assoc.She had two or three sisters, also called Baba Yaga. The Bony-Legged One, as Baba Yaga often was called, would cackle at her guests, “Fie! Fie! I smell a Russian bone!” If she didn’t try to get them into the oven, she gave them advice.īaba Yaga possessed a magic wand and flew in an iron mortar (cauldron) that she spurred on with a pestle as she swept away her tracks with a broom. Those who were brave enough to enter the hut usually found Baba Yaga lying on the floor with her right leg in one corner and her left leg in another, sometimes with her nose growing into the ceiling. It stood on chickens’ legs and dogs’ heels and turned on command. She lived in a little hut beyond a river of fire in the “thrice tenth kingdom.” The hut was ringed with stakes topped by human heads. She was as likely to pop a niece in the oven as she was a stranger. Baba Yaga is in Russian folklore, a female witch who loved to roast and eat people, preferably children.
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