Who is baba yaga

Or she can be a guardian, giving over all the answers and an enchanted object to boot. Born in eastern Russia, I spent the first five years of my life in the woods of Lake Baikal, and Baba Yaga lived there, too. I felt her among the mushrooms and berries and animals; I imagined her sitting in the dark of her hut, knitting something wily and strange.

Around her head, she wore a kerchief, like any Russian grandmother, and she did feel like a grandmother to me—formidable and unpredictable, sure, but ultimately nurturing and wise. I trusted her to know all that there was to know. I admired her wild life in the woods. I wanted her near me always, setting an example, looking out.

Now I was the one who needed Baba to make sense of things. What would she say about climate change, global disasters, the failure of our leaders and neighbors, identity, and oppressive systems? When I put out a call for more questions for Baba Yaga, worries about what will happen to us in these troubled times surfaced alongside the everyday worries. I was raised to give my unsolvable problems over to something larger than myself, and for me, that larger presence is Baba Yaga.

Is this single-for-life existence the future for women? But none of it is done from fearing. Poke at the fear as into the dying fire in yr hearth: which way do the sparks go, how does the fire hiss?

If you, choose my life—know you are choosing it, not hiding in the woods. How do I connect with people on a daily basis in this ever-changing world?

No mortal is different from you, very few want to hurt you. How to tame a wild bear? Put out crumbs, lump of meat, rip of bread, with yr own living hand, until the bear comes closer. Many cakes later, you may be less feral yrself. They are sometimes Lusty, brooding, always philosophical. They are Earth, animate. How can you please them if you ignore their true beings? Listen close, may-be they do not wish to live in yr house at all. Another version is saying the name of Baba Yaga comes from the old Russian verb yagat which means to abuse, to find fault.

Baba Yaga is single, presumably old spinster. However, some Russian peasants saw her living with a daughter Marinka short from Marina. She lives on the edge of the forest in a wooden hut, but it's like no other that you have ever seen, for it stands on a pair of giant chicken legs. It usually has no windows, sometimes not even a door. The house does not reveal the door until it is told a magical phrase: Turn your back to the forest, your front to me.

The fence surrounding Baba Yaga's palisade is made of human bones with skulls on top, often with one pole lacking its skull, leaving space for another victim. Baba Yaga is usually shown as an ugly old woman and quite unclean. Baba Yaga is often represented as little, ugly, with a huge and distorted nose and long teeth. This can be explained by the lady's place of residence. Far from the civilized world, her hut doesn't have any modern facilities like hot running water or shower.

And she has been enduring these unbearable conditions for an untold number of years, as nobody else knows the age of this lady. However, Baba Yaga knows something that women of all times and ages have been desperately trying to learn: the secret of turning from old into young in a blink of an eye.

Baba Yaga knows a recipe of a special potion that helps her when needed to turn young. Unfortunately she has been known to use this her skill not to arrange her single private life, but to misguide and deceit strangers. She is also rumoured to have only one leg, which is sometimes explained by her relation to a snake. In Russian tales, Baba Yaga is portrayed as a hag who flies through the air in a mortar, using the pestle as a rudder and sweeping away the tracks behind her with a broom made out of silver birch.

Baba Yaga usually uses the chimney to fly in and out on her mortar. To help us, Daniela Frangos did a little research and spoke to our creative team to shed some light on these very questions. The witch archetype frequently rears her usually old and grotesque head in fairytales and folklore — a supernatural, unequivocally evil crone presented in direct opposition to the innocent, beautiful damsel.

A rare exception to the one-dimensional hag is Baba Yaga, a more ambiguous and conflicting foe in Russian folklore, dating back to the 18 th century.

So who is she? The team was drawn to the equivocal nature of the character. In their adaptation, Baba Yaga is part antagonist, part maternal figure — even saviour.

She feels more organic than a pointy nose, pointy hat witch. In a world away from the crones and hags of folklore, the witch has been reclaimed and reframed by some — including writer Lindy West in the New York Times and on the TV show Broad City — as a formidable, powerful, even admirable woman; one unconcerned with patriarchal and social rules. And a mentor.