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Baba Yaga: The Mysterious Wise Woman in Slavic Folklore
Article · August 2023
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International Journal of Education and Science Research Review
E-ISSN 2348-6457
Volume-10, Issue-4 July-August-2023 P-ISSN 2349-1817
www.ijesrr.org Email-
[email protected] Baba Yaga: The Mysterious Wise Woman in Slavic Folklore
Dr. U. Fathima Farzana1
1
Assistant Professor of English
Sri S. Ramasamy Naidu Memorial College, Sattur
[email protected] ORCiD: 0000-0002-2744-6200
ABSTRACT
The Wise Woman is a mysterious archetype that appears in folklore and fairy tales. Often labelled as witches,
these Wise Women become targets of political and religious idealists. But folklore embodies them with multiple
personalities as they appear in versatile forms and names in similar narratives. Baba Yaga is one such Wise
Woman archetype who appears in different roles in Slavic folklore narratives. She is Witch, Wise Woman,
Healer, Heroine, Villain and was even venerated as a Goddess in certain communities. She is not just a sorceress
who lives in a magic cottage; she becomes an artefact of historical data and a representative of folk tradition.
This paper analyses the significance of Baba Yaga in her multiple roles in folklore examining her Shadow side
and tropes in narratives.
Keywords: Slavic folklore, Baba Yaga, Witch, Wise Woman, Archetype
Folklore abounds with the Wise Woman archetype varying in personality from the simple Cinderella’s fairy
godmother to the complex enchantress Morgan Le Fay from Arthurian legends. They appear under many names
and professions as healers, witches, fairy godmothers, sorceresses and guides. These archetypes either assist the
hero/heroine in their quest or destroy them, playing the part of the villain. Their assistance/destruction depends
on the personalities of the heroes/heroines. They are complex with multiple traits and talents. They are often
misunderstood and avoided by society. They are nonconformists, rebels, warriors, prophets and sages. The other
archetypes in a folk tale - like the King, the Hero, the Child, the Warrior - need the help of the Wise Woman.
This Wise Woman serves as the backbone of the folk narrative structure, yet they are often neglected and labelled
simply as witches.
The Slavs, referred to as “Schlaveni” [1] by Byzantine writers, thrived around 1500 BC in the region of modern
day Russia, Ukraine and Poland. They belonged to the category of people termed barbarians by the Romans.
They were nomadic and travelled far and wide reaching the Czech Republic and Germanic borders. Writing and
recording among the Slavs were introduced only after Christianization. A warring tribe, the Slavs wrote stories
about hardship, the fickle nature of rulers, the stability of nature and the omnipresence of magic. “Steeped in
dark myth and wild legends, Slavic folk tales paint a world of witchcraft and sorcery, a land of superstition. They
International Journal of Education and Science Research Review
Volume-10, Issue-4 July-August-2023 E-ISSN 2348-6457 P-ISSN 2349-1817
www.ijesrr.org Email-
[email protected]were more than fairy stories; they were a way of life.” [2] This paper researches into the features and
representations of the mysterious Baba Yaga, the dark Wise Woman of Slavic folklore.
Among the vast mythical list of Slavic characters, the “vampir” ‘vampire’ [3] is the only popular one today. The
modern vampire is totally different from the Slavic counterpart though - only those who were entirely evil or
committed suicide morphed into vampirs after death. They are not seductive and beautiful like the postmodern
Twilight vampires, nor do they get into wars with werewolves. They wear their ripped and worm-eaten grave
clothes and tear off heads in their hunger for fresh blood. And they transform into butterflies and moths! Some
of the other lesser known characters are “Vukodlak” ‘werewolf’, “Alkonost” ‘the goddess of weather’, “Rusalka”
‘nymphs’, “Domovoy” ‘domestic gnomes’, “Lesnik” ‘the god of the forest’, “Usud” ‘fate’, “Zmaj” ‘the benign
dragon’ and “Todorats” ‘centaurs’ [4].
Baba Yaga is a Wise Woman/Witch archetype who appears in almost every Slavic/Russian folktale. She lives in
a wooden house that constantly rotates on chicken legs. Her fence post is made of human bones with skulls that
shine through their eyes in the night. Often, the last post is bare to hold the skull of the hero or the heroine. The
keyhole of her gate is made of sharp teeth. Invisible servants obey her every command. Pairs of hands clean and
dust the house. She commands the Day, the Noon and the Night. When she is out, Baba Yaga flies in a mortar
pounding the path with a pestle and sweeping away her tracks with a broom. She has a flock of black geese
circling the skies watching for children who she could eat.
Morphing into evil queens and enchantresses, Baba Yaga also appears as the Queens of Copper, Silver and Gold
kingdoms in the folk stories of Alexandr Afanas’ev. The Encyclopedia Britannica calls her “an ogress who steals,
cooks and eats children” [5]. But that is hardly accurate. Her name “baba” refers to an old woman; a grandma,
an older married woman who belonged to the peasant hierarchy. Her name also means “midwife” in Old Russian.
“Jaga” or “Yaga” is from the Slavic “Jadwiga” which means a legendary witch, dryad or fury [6]. It also means
nightmare or disease in Polish. In short, she is a peasant woman who is wise beyond her years and capable of
either bringing destruction or averting it. She can heal or bring disease depending upon the seeker’s mind. No
other witch or wise woman is credited with such a distinction.
Baba Yaga makes her first appearance in Mikhail V. Lomonosov’s Russian Grammar (1755) with a list of Slavic
deities. When Alexandr Afanas’ev compiled the folk tales of Russia from various regional sources, he attributed
a number of peculiarities to her. Firstly, there is ‘a’ Baba Yaga in many stories distinct from ‘the’ Baba Yaga.
She is an archetype of a hideous witch in a forest or on the edge of the seashore. Once the hero or heroine,
henceforward called Seeker in this paper, enters the cabin, a Baba Yaga is immediately spotted lying inside
“corner to corner, lips on the railing, nose stuck in the ceiling.” Fourthly, she asks the Seeker the following
question: “Are you doing a deed or fleeing a deed?” [7] while she recognises the Russian smell. Lastly, she is
often called ‘bony leg’ or ‘iron teeth’ performing manly tasks that stood out amidst the patriarchal society. “She
International Journal of Education and Science Research Review
Volume-10, Issue-4 July-August-2023 E-ISSN 2348-6457 P-ISSN 2349-1817
www.ijesrr.org Email-
[email protected]is at once bestial in her hunt for prey and divine in her supernatural abilities of flight, shape-shifting, and magical
spells.” [6]
Understanding the Seeker of Slavic folklore leads to understanding the antagonist. Baba Yaga is actually the
Shadow of the Seeker in Slavic folklore. This Shadow is the lifelong suppression of desires, feelings and instincts
which lies hidden deep in the Seeker’s unconscious. The more the light, the more the darkness. If the Seeker is
powerful, intelligent and wise, his/her Shadow is worse than the average man/woman’s. Roman Jakobson
observes that all the heroes in Slavic folklore are named Ivan Tsarevich or Prince Ivan; after Ivan the Terrible:
“It illustrates how the Russian popular memory evaluated this tsar and his attitudes to the common people and
to gentlefolk.” [8] It is possible that Ivan the Terrible forced the “skomorokhi” ‘Russian minstrel entertainers’
[9] to sing to him and they made him the hero to escape execution. The Tsar in all these tales is either giver-of-
peace referring to Alexander III or vendor-of-wine referring to Nicholas II. Hence, these tales are actually
microhistories narrated orally for centuries. And Baba Yaga becomes the Shadow, the demon, the beast of all
these tyrants who are also powerful rulers.
Vladimir Propp has analysed the Russian folktale and presented various tropes for the structure of these
narratives. Based on these, Baba Yaga’s roles in Slavic folklore are as follows:
i) The Victim - Baba Yaga and her daughters/sisters end up being cooked in the stove prepared for the Seeker.
They are cheated and betrayed by the Seeker. “Baba Yaga and the Runt” pictures Baba Yaga killing her own
daughters out of trickery.
ii) The Villain - this is based on the Law of Prohibition. Young children are usually warned by parents not to
venture out at night; they disobey and are snatched by Baba Yaga. The Seeker fails to perform certain difficult
tasks set by Baba Yaga and she eats him/her. If the Seeker is rude and or dishonest, Baba Yaga eats him/her.
Prince Ivan, in the tale “Mar’ia Morevna,” is asked by Baba Yaga to herd her bogatyr mares [guardian beasts of
immense strength] who run like the wind. When Ivan does the job assisted by birds and other beasts, he steals
her mangy foal and rides away to rescue his wife from Koschei the Deathless, an immortal necromancer. But
Baba Yaga pursues him and dies trying to cross a magic bridge.
iii) The Challenger - Baba Yaga identifies the persona of the Seeker and gives him/her a task to do. This is often
a superhuman task for which the Seeker receives assistance either from Baba Yaga’s familiars because he/she is
kind to them or from a magic doll supposedly made by another Wise Woman. Once the task is successfully
completed, Baba Yaga rewards the Seeker. The most popular Cinderella-like tale “Vasilisa the Beautiful”
presents Baba Yaga rewarding the Seeker with a magic skull that glows in the dark after she proves herself by
completing the impossible tasks. The magic skull burns Vasilisa’s cruel stepmother and stepsisters while the
Seeker is married to a tsar.
International Journal of Education and Science Research Review
Volume-10, Issue-4 July-August-2023 E-ISSN 2348-6457 P-ISSN 2349-1817
www.ijesrr.org Email-
[email protected]iv) The Guide - Baba Yaga guides the Seeker to another Baba Yaga or Wise Woman who can help him/her. The
perfect example for this is the tale “Finist the Bright Falcon.” Three Baba Yagas assist the Seeker in finding her
bewitched husband.
v) The Deceiver - this is the paradox of the Victim role. Baba Yaga tricks victims in the guise of a frail old lady
or a beautiful princess. It must be noted here that she does not trick innocent or honourable people. The Seeker’s
brothers/sisters who lack the Seeker’s honour are deceived and eaten.The tale “Ivanushka” shows little Ivan
being tricked by Baba Yaga who imitates his mother’s voice and later abducts him.
vi) The Supernatural Lover - the innocent but noble Seeker finds himself in love with a beautiful maiden who
turns into a bird or an animal. He steals her skin when she changes back and gets married to her. But he is too
curious and hurts her feelings forcing her to fly/run away to a place “way beyond thrice nine more lands”[7].
The Seeker goes out on a superhuman adventure and is reconciled to his lover only after proving himself. On the
way, he is even assisted by other Baba Yagas. The Supernatural Lover is much like the Norse god Loki, the
Trickster. She encourages transformation in the Seeker. This is found in tales like “The Three Kingdoms” and
“Go I Don’t Know Where, Bring I Don’t Know What.” Baba Yagas in these tales are quite different from the
regular ones. In “The Three Kingdoms” Baba Yagas are the beautiful queens of Copper, Silver and Gold
kingdoms. In “Go I Don’t Know Where, Bring I Don’t Know What,” the Baba Yaga is a young Wise Woman
much like Elena the Beautiful. She has a magic book, young demons to obey her command and she outwits the
regular Baba Yaga who also appears as a Villain type in this tale.
Folklore abounds with women who are gifted healers and often, these healers receive the same dignity and
respect reserved for the chieftain of the tribe. Their eccentricity and intelligence got them into danger and
victimised them. Witchcraft became a suitable crime to punish these sorceresses. Karimov et al. is of the opinion:
“They have much in common with sorcerers: in the same way they die hard, suffering from terrible
convulsions, sticking their tongue out of their mouths, unusually long and horse-like”[10]. Traditional female
folk-healers were called witches by men of the same profession to pull them back into the privacy of the home
and prevent them from occupying public space
“They transformed folk healers from individuals attempting to serve their community into witches - agents of
Satan — who used their knowledge and abilities to harm. Female folk healers were targeted as witches because
their practice pulled them into a public setting, which challenged the expectation that they stay in the private
realm of the home.” [11]
Therefore, Baba Yagas are all loners, devil-worshippers, shunned by the society because of their prudence and
intelligence. Secondly, all Baba Yagas have either two or three beautiful daughters or sisters. All of the
sisters/daughters are considered Baba Yagas - sharing the Wise Woman archetype. Psychological anthropology
makes Baba Yaga a “Ethno-psychiatrist”[12]; a woman who uses cultural artefacts to treat mental illnesses,
thereby deviating from Western methods. This is why Baba Yaga is always depicted with brooms, mortars and
International Journal of Education and Science Research Review
Volume-10, Issue-4 July-August-2023 E-ISSN 2348-6457 P-ISSN 2349-1817
www.ijesrr.org Email-
[email protected]pestles - household implements of traditional folk healers. She is a shaman, a witch-doctor, a hoodoo priestess
or a universal cultural icon that forms an integral part of folk tradition.
Yamauba is a Japanese mountain witch archetype much similar to Baba Yaga. Also called “onibaba” ‘mountain
witch’ [13], yamauba is a yokai, an oni-woman who craves human flesh, especially that of children. When young
women accused of crimes become exiles, they live in forests and morph into these “mountain witches” [14].
Though Yamauba is cannibalistic in nature, she too helps Seekers who are honourable and brave. In the popular
take ‘Hanayo no hime’ (“The Blossom Princess”), a yamauba resecues the Seeker from her yokai husband and
gives her a map that leads to treasures. Noriko Reider is of the opinion that rising Confucianism from China
introduced patriarchy and feudalism writing off traditional healers as yokai; “One of the major reasons for the
mixture of yamauba, oni, and oni-women lies in the yamauba’s oni-roots, but the influence of patriarchy, in
particular, the Confucian-style patriarchy imported from China, is certainly perceivable” [15].
Sibelan Forrester is of the opinion that Baba Yaga may have been “a pagan goddess.” Unlike the beautiful and
seductive witches demonized by Western myths, Baba Yaga has ghastly features and masculine traits. Forrester
describes her thus
A Baba Yaga is inscrutable and so powerful that she does not owe allegiance to the Devil or God or even to her
storytellers. In fact, she opposes all Judeo-Christian and Muslim deities and beliefs. She is her own woman, a
parthenogenetic mother, and she decides on a case-by-case basis whether she will help or kill the people who
come to her hut that rotates on chicken legs. [7]
Joshua J. Mark claims that Baba Yaga is the Slavic version of the goddess Persephone. Her chthonic skills
relate her to gnomes and beings of the Earth. She also achieves similarities with Hecate, the Greek goddess of
the Crossroads, also called the Crone. Her broom made of silver birch equates her to the Celtic goddess Brigid.
Silver birch symbolises new beginnings and Brigid is the goddess of the hearth. She appears as Queen of the
Earth along with Koschei the Deathless of the Element Air, the Sea King of the Element Water and the Firebird
of the Element Fire. As an elemental deity, Baba Yaga always has her home in the forest or on the seashore,
representing the borders of the Earth. This is similar to the legendary witch Circe living in the Far West in
Homer’s Odyssey.
The Welsh anthology Mabinogion shows enchantress Rhiannon also accompanied by birds just like Baba Yaga.
These birds can supposedly bring the dead back to life. Hence the comparison with Persephone. Rhiannon is
another Wise-Woman and a Healer framed for her alleged sins and cut down to size. As to the question ‘Who is
she?’ She is a powerful being who brings transformations - the tales take a sudden turn towards the climax, the
Seeker is changed forever and the village is enlightened. She also brings transformation to the reader and the
listener. Her story inspires a passion for freedom, the beauty of nature and the undying will power of man. Taisia
Kitaiskaia has used Baba Yaga in the archetype of the Seeress in her Ask Baba Yaga: Otherworldly Advice for
Everyday Troubles. These lines are from her preface titled ‘Baba & Me’
International Journal of Education and Science Research Review
Volume-10, Issue-4 July-August-2023 E-ISSN 2348-6457 P-ISSN 2349-1817
www.ijesrr.org Email-
[email protected]Indifferent and immortal, Baba offers no comforting pats on the back. But she can extend - with her gnarled,
clawed hand - a glowing skull lantern. If you keep your nerve, that eerie light might guide you through. Be well,
and beware. [16]
Baba Yaga is not for the soft-hearted angel-and-unicorn-loving kawaii people. She checks the hearts of the
readers for resilience. She sets upon superhuman tasks on the readers’ psyche. Should they pass, she offers paths
of guidance. She is a symbol of otherworldly fear and horror. In the popular 2014 film John Wick, actor Keanu
Reeves is called ‘Baba Yaga’ because he strikes fear into the hearts of the very best assassins. Baba Yaga answers
only to the toughest, strongest iron-willed souls that have dragged their lives across the quagmire of suffering
and misery. And she changes people for good, forever.
Works Cited
[1] Violatti, Cristian. “Slavs,” World History Encyclopedia, 10 September 2014,
https://www.worldhistory.org/Slavs/
[2] “Slavic Fairy Tales, Folk Tales and Fables,” https://fairytalez.com/region/slavic/
[3] Cooper, Brian. “The Word ‘Vampire’: Its Slavonic Form and Origin.” Journal of Slavic
Linguistics, vol. 13, no. 2, 2005, pp. 251–70.
[4] “List of Slavic Creatures.” Myths and Folklore Wiki,
(https://mythus.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Slavic_creatures)
[5] Zelazko, Alicja.“Baba Yaga.” Russian Folklore, https://www.britannica.com/topic/ogre
[6] Mark, J. Joshua. “Baba Yaga,” World History Encyclopedia, 07 October 2021,
https://www.worldhistory.org/Baba_Yaga/
[7] Forrester, Sibelan, translator. Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales,
University Press of Mississippi, 2013.
[8] Afanas’ev, Alexandr. Russian Fairy Tales, Pantheon Books, 1973.
[9] Zguta, Russell. “Skomorokhi: The Russian Minstrel-Entertainers.” Slavic Review, vol. 31, no. 2, 1972, pp.
297–313.
[10] Karimov, B., et al. “The Folklore Image of Baba Yaga and the Mythological Image of a Witch in the Works
of Oral Folk Art.” Central Asian Journal of Literature, Philosophy and Culture, vol. 03, no. 4, April 2022,
pp. 15-18.
[11] Campbell, Angela. “Witches and Fairies: Folk Healing in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century
Scotland.” Prandium - The Journal of Historical Studies, vol. 11, no. 1, Fall 2022, pp.
1-9.
[12] Davies, Owen. “Finding the Folklore in the Annals of Psychiatry.” Folklore, vol. 133, no. 1,
March 2022, pp. 1-24.
International Journal of Education and Science Research Review
Volume-10, Issue-4 July-August-2023 E-ISSN 2348-6457 P-ISSN 2349-1817
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[email protected][13] Meyer, Matthew. “Yamauba.” Yokai.com, 2023, https://yokai.com/yamauba/
[14] Foster, Michael Dylan. “Mountain Witches: Yamauba.” Western Folklore, vol. 81, no. 1, Winter 2022, pp.
83-86.
[15] Reider, Noriko. “Yamauba and Oni-Women: Devouring and Helping Yamauba Are Two Sides of the Same
Coin.” Asian Ethnology, vol. 78, no. 2, 2019, pp. 403–28.
[16] Kitaiskaia, Taisia. Ask Baba Yaga: Otherworldly Advice for Everyday Troubles, Andrews
McMeel Publishing, 2017.
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