interesting.....now that you say it..........looks like you are about to solve the biggest mystery in the witcher world..........what is under the skirt of the Baba Yaga sisters? :huh:
There is Child legs escaping from theire skirts... That's Awful :-[
Only one of them definitely has legs appearing from out of the skirts, and they appear too big for an aborted baby, it is like she tried to have a child, but it failed to be born and yet continued to grow. One - the ear fetishist - has an arm inside her bag, seems severed, the last has long skirt.
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Their voices - unlike their models & tapestry image - do appear to have different levels of maturity, which links with most "Triple Goddess" motifs. The ear when Gran places it on her hand produces a Triskelion.
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Geralt says they don't look like they "were" in the Tapestry, rather than they "are", minor point raised by the choice of language, but interesting distinction for him to make, nonetheless. They can see the future, they say:
I found the whole conversation - complementing Geralts looks etc - very reminiscent of Perseus' encounter with The Graiae.
View attachment 5621
Their voices - unlike their models & tapestry image - do appear to have different levels of maturity, which links with most "Triple Goddess" motifs. The ear when Gran places it on her hand produces a Triskelion.
View attachment 5622
Geralt says they don't look like they "were" in the Tapestry, rather than they "are", minor point raised by the choice of language, but interesting distinction for him to make, nonetheless. They can see the future, they say:
I found the whole conversation - complementing Geralts looks etc - very reminiscent of Perseus' encounter with The Graiae.
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I don't know if this has been discussed elsewhere but here is an artwork that might shed some more light on the question of Baba Yaga and her hut:
http://scratcherpen.deviantart.com/art/The-Witcher-3-Wild-Hunt-Gingerbread-house-475269730
The tree looks like a chicken leg to me. :>
On a side note: It seems there are a lot of people here with great knowledge of myths and such. Does someone know anything about the origin of this monster from Pan's Labyrinth? This has been bugging me for a while now.
http://scratcherpen.deviantart.com/art/The-Witcher-3-Wild-Hunt-Gingerbread-house-475269730
The tree looks like a chicken leg to me. :>
On a side note: It seems there are a lot of people here with great knowledge of myths and such. Does someone know anything about the origin of this monster from Pan's Labyrinth? This has been bugging me for a while now.
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That gingerbread house appears to be a part of the whole thing, but we don't know how since it doesn't feature in the video. I agree on the chicken leg though
Stole this post from another thread, but its a gem & belongs here.
About the Pale Man :
“I wanted to represent political power within the creatures,” Guillermo Del Toro explains to an interviewer, “And that particular character somehow came to represent the church and the devouring of children. The original design was just an old man who seemed to have lost a lot of weight and was covered in loose skin. Then I removed the face, so it became part of the personality of the institution. But then, what to do about the eyes? So I decided to place stigmata on the hands and shove the eyes into the stigmata. Having done that, I thought it would be great to make the fingers like peacock feathers that fluff and open. That’s how that figure evolved.” ( source : http://angelsintheunderworld.com/2013/12/14/the-pale-man-guillermo-del-toros-monster-of-legend/ )
Somewhere on Yahoo answers there is a post describing a story about an old man who was murdered and then came back to life and grew eyes out of his hands. It says that because he couldn't see his killer's face, he would kill anyone he could get. But as I said, that's a thing from Yahoo answers, so take it as you will.
“I wanted to represent political power within the creatures,” Guillermo Del Toro explains to an interviewer, “And that particular character somehow came to represent the church and the devouring of children. The original design was just an old man who seemed to have lost a lot of weight and was covered in loose skin. Then I removed the face, so it became part of the personality of the institution. But then, what to do about the eyes? So I decided to place stigmata on the hands and shove the eyes into the stigmata. Having done that, I thought it would be great to make the fingers like peacock feathers that fluff and open. That’s how that figure evolved.” ( source : http://angelsintheunderworld.com/2013/12/14/the-pale-man-guillermo-del-toros-monster-of-legend/ )
Somewhere on Yahoo answers there is a post describing a story about an old man who was murdered and then came back to life and grew eyes out of his hands. It says that because he couldn't see his killer's face, he would kill anyone he could get. But as I said, that's a thing from Yahoo answers, so take it as you will.
The 3 Fates aren't usually accompanied by as many young'uns references as these Ladies are, preferring to dramatically meet loose threads when they're already spinning towards the cut, but they can be involved in peoples fates from cradle to the grave. Description of the Latvian Laima paints a suitable picture:
Whether the Ladies are a triple goddess thingy or not, it'd still be handy to have names for each, so if the maiden (Laima) / mother (Dēkla) / hag (Kārta), is clear to you point it out:
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This purports to be a old folksong about Laima, stick around for the vocals:
Whether the Ladies are a triple goddess thingy or not, it'd still be handy to have names for each, so if the maiden (Laima) / mother (Dēkla) / hag (Kārta), is clear to you point it out:
View attachment 5805
I'm going for left_to _right: maiden (thats why the Ear Bling), mother (has toys, muscles), and hag (completely legless).
This purports to be a old folksong about Laima, stick around for the vocals:
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So I don't know if anyone has mentioned this yet (no time to look through 15 pages right now), but is anyone here familiar with the "Fables" comics? As in, the comic series that originated the game "The Wolf Among Us"?
The Wolf Among Us is currently one of my favorite games. After playing through it, I decided to read the comics, and they were just as good, much like my experience with Geralt's story (played the Witcher games first, then read the books and enjoyed them just as much).
The point of me bringing Fables up is,
Minor Spoiler below (I'm about to mention two characters that appear in the series - shouldn't be a big deal even if you intend to read it, though)
The Wolf Among Us is currently one of my favorite games. After playing through it, I decided to read the comics, and they were just as good, much like my experience with Geralt's story (played the Witcher games first, then read the books and enjoyed them just as much).
The point of me bringing Fables up is,
Minor Spoiler below (I'm about to mention two characters that appear in the series - shouldn't be a big deal even if you intend to read it, though)
the comics show both Baba Yaga (although, in this case, as a single, quite powerful witch) AND the "Lady of the Lake", although she doesn't really look anything like the Ciri we know (which is understandable, of course).
I find the fact that the Witcher universe and the Fables universe have that much in common really interesting. More specifically, the fact that they have two very unusual characters in common, and that they both have great text stories that originated excellent games.
I find the fact that the Witcher universe and the Fables universe have that much in common really interesting. More specifically, the fact that they have two very unusual characters in common, and that they both have great text stories that originated excellent games.
I always had my eye on Bill Willinghams Fables back in the early Vertigo days, as a substitute series if I needed one... but I never did get around to reading more than a few issues. Obviously superior storytelling making good use of the fertile ground of folklore & its recent tendency to be manifested saccharin sweet with a happy ending (Disney) instead of the more traditional ambiguous frightener (Grimm), and thus similar to Witcher; take peoples preconceived folktale archetypes, mess with them a little, and leverage peoples own expectations against them.
Fables... I'm happy to see its still running, thats a long time of success for a non-superhero comic, and I'll get around to the game one day, I'd also recommend anything by Neil Gaiman for lovers of this kind of stuff, American Gods is an excellent novel, and The Sandman comic is a Masterpiece of modern mythmaking.
@mrbinho; Lady of the Lake as Ciri? I don't know an awful lot about Ciri but what I do know doesn't make me think of the Arthurian Lady of the Lake at all.
Fables... I'm happy to see its still running, thats a long time of success for a non-superhero comic, and I'll get around to the game one day, I'd also recommend anything by Neil Gaiman for lovers of this kind of stuff, American Gods is an excellent novel, and The Sandman comic is a Masterpiece of modern mythmaking.
@mrbinho; Lady of the Lake as Ciri? I don't know an awful lot about Ciri but what I do know doesn't make me think of the Arthurian Lady of the Lake at all.
Slight digression, I took this from the Balkan thread.
View attachment 6007
Much feared by people, they are a fusion of man and horse, similar to centaurs, except that the horse is whole and human torso comes out of the horses's back as you can see. They are specter-like beings who come at the end of February on Todor's saturday,from the underworld, and kill or trample everyone who stands in their way.
Apparently there's is something that resembles the Wild Hunt in south-eastern Slavic folklore, possibly derived from Thracian myth about horsemen who travel between worlds. They are called "Todorci" or Todors (Theodores?), translated, after their leader Great Todor or Theodore who would christianity later deem St. Todor or St. Theodore who rides at the back of the cavalry:
View attachment 6007
Much feared by people, they are a fusion of man and horse, similar to centaurs, except that the horse is whole and human torso comes out of the horses's back as you can see. They are specter-like beings who come at the end of February on Todor's saturday,from the underworld, and kill or trample everyone who stands in their way.
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Nice one ! Fits with my working-theory that the Wild Hunt as we know it today is essentially a Christian myth propagated throughout Europe, the result of preachers demonising indigenous legends & cultural heroes, and perhaps unconsciously adding an inherited Roman nightmare originally caused by the Germanic tribes (e.g. Harii).
Can't remember if its this thread or the other, but I remember a Leaders of the Wild Hunt list that shows the leaders for nearly every country to be one of that countries greatest heroes, and someone whose return would eclipse that of Elvis for joyfulness. A Warrior-Saint martyr fits right in with the rest
Can't remember if its this thread or the other, but I remember a Leaders of the Wild Hunt list that shows the leaders for nearly every country to be one of that countries greatest heroes, and someone whose return would eclipse that of Elvis for joyfulness. A Warrior-Saint martyr fits right in with the rest
Aes Seide ref LoL, There are references supporting both.
"Arthurian" Nimue Lady of the Lake (which I at least *think* is in the Arthurian world ~ but might be anywhere really, except Geralt's), and a reference to Ciri as the Lady of the Lakes ~ as these appear to be strongly tied to her ability to move between worlds ~ this is the reason that the end of the book arc is titled The Lady of The Lake.
Hmmm... I guess they could be working the metaphor that lakes / still water can be entrances to other worlds. Thats fair enough, just the Arthurian Lady of the Lake doesn't instantly evoke parallel worlds for me just mighty swords from the well of memory, but I can see how it could work.
Wow, this keeps getting better and better.
There is a lot of common ground between traditions and folklore, even among totally different areas and ages. A good example as mentioned were the Nornes/ Fates. One could say that Balder equals Hermes, and vice versa, or that Zeus = Odin and Thor = Hercules ( with some additions and subtractions of certain powers here and there )
Same thing goes for the horrors that crawl in the night. Each age and country for example has it's own version of vampires, since ancient times. Possibly, each age and country reflected its own fears, understanding and knowledge, and bloody history into its creepies.
On the other hand, conversions of myths and legends to fit "new" beliefs were a very common thing. With no intention of bashing any religion, the concept of, say, sacrifice for the greater good ( Jesus Christ for example ) is as old as mankind. Nothing new. Same thing with killing dragons ( St. George ). The concept of the hero who saves the simple man from a vicious predator, is...well, you get the idea
Exactly the same thing stands for the Wild Hunt. Whether the leader is The Horned God, Odin, Arthur, or Cain himself ( yes, that Cain ), it depicts the same(ish) concept, as seen by different eyes, morals, beliefs, etc etc.
There is a lot of common ground between traditions and folklore, even among totally different areas and ages. A good example as mentioned were the Nornes/ Fates. One could say that Balder equals Hermes, and vice versa, or that Zeus = Odin and Thor = Hercules ( with some additions and subtractions of certain powers here and there )
Same thing goes for the horrors that crawl in the night. Each age and country for example has it's own version of vampires, since ancient times. Possibly, each age and country reflected its own fears, understanding and knowledge, and bloody history into its creepies.
On the other hand, conversions of myths and legends to fit "new" beliefs were a very common thing. With no intention of bashing any religion, the concept of, say, sacrifice for the greater good ( Jesus Christ for example ) is as old as mankind. Nothing new. Same thing with killing dragons ( St. George ). The concept of the hero who saves the simple man from a vicious predator, is...well, you get the idea
Exactly the same thing stands for the Wild Hunt. Whether the leader is The Horned God, Odin, Arthur, or Cain himself ( yes, that Cain ), it depicts the same(ish) concept, as seen by different eyes, morals, beliefs, etc etc.
Andrzej Sapkowski is an atheist, but on the other hand he is fascinated with celtic myths and feminine themes (like in Mysts of Avalon). He has even published a lexicon explaining who is who in arturian legends, and the roots of things like the Holy Grail. The Wild Hunt, Lady of the Lake in the Witcher books are born of this fascinations. But mr. Sapkowski, as usual, merges these elements with contemporary themes and tries to add rational layer and explanation for these elements. And we are doing the same.
So it's more about love for the very fundaments of the western culture, not scientific explanation of the origins. It's a tribute to forgotten myths that founded the world we live in.
So it's more about love for the very fundaments of the western culture, not scientific explanation of the origins. It's a tribute to forgotten myths that founded the world we live in.
BABA-YAGA (-JAGA, -IAGA)
Russia
Possibly the best known of all Slavic legendary
characters, this witch is known
as Ienzababa or Jezda in Poland, and
Jazi Baba to the Czechs (baba meaning
“old woman” and yaga being
Russian for “hag”). Baba-Yaga is
usually portrayed as malevolent, but
she is occasionally a benefactress.
Like most Russian witches, Baba-
Yaga is an immortal shape-changer, a
true sorceress with a deep knowledge of
everything in the world (the Russian word
for witch, ved'ma, comes from the root ved',
meaning “to know”). Baba-Yaga is the personification
of death; she is the Devil’s handmaiden.
She is never portrayed as a goddess,
for she is far too earthly to be considered a
true deity.Yet in her earliest form, she displayed
an aspect of the Great Goddess, the
patron goddess of women, benevolent to all.
Not until the Christian era was she downgraded
to a fearsome witch, and even then
she retained a wide following among
women.
Post-Christian legends provide evidence
of the importance of Baba-Yaga to women.
One story says that an old couple had a
daughter but could find no godmother for
her.After much searching, they found an old
woman who said she would act as the child’s
godmother. This old woman then revealed
herself as Baba-Yaga and spirited the girl
away to live with her.The girl later committed
some unrecorded crime against Baba-
Yaga, who, rather than eating the child as she
would have done in pre-Christian stories,
simply exiled her into the dark forest.There
the girl was found by a prince who was out
hunting. He took her back to his kingdom,
where she subsequently bore him three sons,
each with the moon and stars upon his forehead.
Learning of her goddaughter’s whereabouts,
Baba-Yaga appeared, demanding that
the three children be given her as expiation
for the girl’s misdeeds. She then made off not
only with the children but also with their
mother. The prince, predictably distraught,
set out to find them. After some time, he
came to a clearing in the forest. In the clearing
a bright fire was burning around which
all manner of animals were gathered, blocking
his passage. In the center, next to the fire,
sat Baba-Yaga with the prince’s wife and
three sons. The prince pleaded to be admitted,
but the animals let him pass only after
the prince’s wife asked Baba-Yaga’s permission.
The hag allowed the prince to carry off
his three sons but not his wife. As the story
developed, Baba-Yaga came to be equated
with Mary, Mother of God, and the forest
home of the witch became the kingdom of
heaven.
The oldest surviving stories of Baba-Yaga
suggest that she is an ancient deity with origins
perhaps as long ago as Paleolithic times,
when she was the patroness of herds and
herdsmen, the goddess of horses, and the
patron goddess of farmers and farming. Her
oldest personification, however, is as mistress
of all animals, a bird goddess as reflected by
the chicken legs on her house, with which
she is as one.
Although unnamed in the story of Ivan
the Pea, the old crone who lives in the forest
in a strange house that revolves in the wind
is none other than Baba-Yaga. In that story
she is far from the malevolent witch; but
maybe even Baba-Yaga realized that she
would have been no match for Ivan the Pea.
Almost every story about Baba-Yaga
describes her dwelling as a cottage in the
most remote and inaccessible part of a deep
forest, which makes her the khoziaika lesa
(“mistress of the forest”).This cottage sits on
four sets of hen’s legs, one at each corner, and
revolves either freely in the wind or when
some unheard word is spoken. Some versions
of the legend say that the cottage was not
fixed to the ground and could run around on
its hen’s legs. Others say that the hen’s legs
were simply supports for the four corners
and that the center of the house was fixed on
the spindle of a spinning-wheel, indicating
that Baba-Yaga also spins the thread of life
from the bones and entrails of the dead.Any
hero who looked inside the cottage would
be likely to find Baba-Yaga crammed into
every corner of the house, with her nose
pressed hard against the roof.
Descriptions of Baba-Yaga vary widely.
Some describe her only as an old crone and
leave the details to imagination. Others
describe her as an aged, ugly crone who is
so emaciated that she is little more than
skin and bone. Her teeth are long and very
sharp, occasionally made of iron, and sometimes
her canines are so long that they protrude
over her lips. Her teeth need to be
sharp, for Baba-Yaga is a cannibal, one gaze
from her eyes usually being enough to petrify
her victims—either turning them temporarily
to stone so that she could take
them home, unpetrify them, and eat them,
or simply immobilizing them with fear.
Her hair is a tangled mass of writhing
snakes. This aspect, like her petrifying eyes,
suggests a classical Greek influence, for
these are both essential attributes of the
Gorgon Medusa. Her nose and her breasts
are made of iron. The bones of her victims
form the gate and fence that surround her
home, each post being adorned with a
human skull, the eyes of which light up at
night.These bones are symbolic not only of
Baba-Yaga’s association with death but also
of her role as the source of new life, which
she brews from the bones of the dead. Her
soup often contains leftover body parts,
such as fingers, toes, and eyes. The house
itself is also said by some to be made of
human bones, with legs for doorposts,
hands for the bolts, and a mouth with
razor-sharp teeth for the lock. Others say
that these parts are associated only with the
bone fence and that Baba Yaga’s house
resembles any other peasant hut—apart
from its chicken leg supports.
In her benevolent guise, Baba-Yaga
appears as a normal, aged peasant woman
with luxuriant hair and a kindly face and disposition,
and as often as not, wears the tradi-
tional headdress of a married woman. Her
dualistic aspects are not as clearly defined as
might be expected. Baba-Yaga is an
immensely complex character who is perhaps
best described as triune rather than
dualistic, each of her three aspects perhaps
best equated to the three Fates of classical
Greece. In her first aspect, as a fertility goddess,
she is benevolent, bringing new life into
the world. In her second aspect she maps out
the course of human life and is both benevolent
and malevolent. In her third aspect she
determines the date of human death, the role
in which she is most commonly regarded. In
her triune state, Baba-Yaga hovers over the
birth of every new life, immediately threatening
to take it back again. She has the
power to send life into the earth and to recall
it. She is the most terrible of the regenerative
fertility deities, for she appears prone to fits
of passion and whim. She demands the sacrifice
of a child in return for wealth, for she,
like the classical Pluto, controls all the riches
of the earth. Baba-Yaga is thus a chthonic
earth deity who encompasses life from conception
through birth and life to death, and
beyond—although her role in the underworld
is merely that of guardian: According
to her pleasure, she may redistribute souls to
newborns or keep them in the underworld
for all eternity, never to be reborn.
Some commentators insist that the
bones around Baba-Yaga’s house indicate
that she has a very strong connection with
the spirit world. Some even go so far as to
say that her house guards the point where
the two worlds—the world of the living
and that of the dead—meet. This may
explain why in some cases she is benevolent
to humans, her purpose being not to
send people into the afterlife but rather,
like the Greek Cerberus, to stop the dead
from escaping. Others say that she is a portrayal
of the gates of hell themselves, lying
in wait for her victims with her jaws agape,
swallowing any who are unfortunate
enough to seek shelter in her mouth with
its razor-sharp iron teeth.
Baba-Yaga possesses truly awesome
power, for time itself is in her hands: The
Sun, the Day and Night, obey her implicitly,
as do all the laws of nature. She controls the
weather, an aspect she shares with Russian
witches in general, and can devour the sun
and moon, cause crops to grow or perish, and
regulate the flow of milk from cows in the
same way as she regulates the rainfall. She
also has connections with the leshii, for she,
like the wood sprite, kidnaps small children
and wields power over the forest and the animals
that live in it. In another aspect she is
regarded as the guardian of the fountain that
supplies the Water of Life and Death. She
rides through the air in a mortar instead of
the customary broomstick of the pan-
European witch, propelling herself forward
with a pestle and brushing away all evidence
of her passage with a birch broom.The mortar
and pestle represent the destructive and
the protective aspects of Baba-Yaga, for
Slavic peoples traditionally used these implements
not only to grind grain (the destructive
aspect) but also to prepare flax for spinning
(the protective aspect). Perhaps
unsurprisingly, the mortar and pestle also
represent the human reproductive organs.
Thus, the two objects are symbols of all three
phases of human life—birth, life, and death—
and thus of all three aspects of the triune
deity. All evidence of Baba-Yaga’s passage
through human lives is swept away with a
birch broom—a broom that may be regarded
as further evidence of her all-pervading
influence, a symbol of the inverted Tree of
Life, reaching downward. Baba-Yaga rides
the skies generating and nurturing life before
sweeping it away again with the broom. As
would befit a powerful fertility deity, Baba-
Yaga has hordes of children, although their
names are never revealed. They are all as
strange as their mother—from the reptiles,
animals, and spirits that cohabit with her, to
her forty mare-daughters.
The mare-daughters appear in one story
where a young man is told that he must
travel to Baba-Yaga’s home to secure a horse
that will help him release his bride Maria
Morena, who has been taken prisoner by
some unnamed captor.When the young man
arrives at the home of the witch he is confronted
by the bone fence that surrounds it.
On closer inspection, however, the young
man sees that one spike on the fence has no
skull on top. As he is inspecting the fence he
is confronted by the witch, who informs him
that the last picket has been reserved for his
skull, although he can escape death and
obtain what he came for if he completes a
simple task—controlling the forty maredaughters
for twenty-four hours. Needless to
say, the hero of this story completes the task,
receives a supernaturally empowered steed
from the witch, and completes his quest to
free his bride.
Although Baba-Yaga may essentially be
regarded as a feminine deity, she is equally at
home in the world of men. She carries a
wand with which she can transform herself
and those at whom she directs its power, and
she rules over the male genitalia. She is also
more likely to appear in her benevolent guise
to men than to women. She owns a firebreathing,
flying horse, giving her an aspect
as the horse goddess, as well as a selfdirecting,
self-cutting sword, both items
being more readily lent to men than to
women. She also will lend other, feminine
articles to deserving youths, such as mirrors,
rings, and balls of yarn. Baba-Yaga is also the
patroness of wandering minstrels, for she
owns a self-playing gusli that some allude to
as the first instrument of the type ever made.
With links to the werewolf and vampire,
Baba-Yaga and her kind, the volkhvy (seers),
would perform their chief rites and cause
the most trouble at midsummer, the same
time that the female elders of villages would
go into the fields at night to look for medicinal
herbs and other plants. Baba-Yaga is
the wolf goddess who devours all who try to
enter her sphere. She induces nightmares
and hallucinations as well as deadly diseases,
all three relating to her role as the goddess of
death and the underworld. She also is associated
with the bear, who sometimes
replaces her in the role of master of the forest,
and the serpent—both animals to be
feared and respected. She demands human
sacrifice from her supplicants in return for
the sustenance of life.
In Russian legend, Baba-Yaga is closely
associated with serpents and dragons. Koshchei
the Deathless, whose name derives from
kost' (“bone”), is a dragon in human guise,
his destiny and all he does guided by the
dualistic aspects of Baba-Yaga. She confers
on him immortality but also gives him a
soul, thus making him mortal. Baba-Yaga is
also the controlling force behind the multiheaded,
fire-breathing dragon Chudo-Yudo,
who sits watch over the Water of Life and
Death, a role that has often led Chudo-Yudo
to be considered a bizarre offspring of the
witch and thus a brother to the forty maredaughters.
In Belorussia, Baba-Yaga and her associates
are held to drain the energy of the sun
with their magical fires, destroy plants, and
turn the power of the earth against mankind.
Thus, in this region at least, Baba-Yaga and
her sisterhood are seen as being in control of
the elements of the earth. If humanity does
not please or placate them, then Baba-Yaga
and her kind will use their awesome powers
to turn the earth itself against those it is
meant to support.
One particular story, that of Vasilissa the
Beautiful, clearly demonstrates both the
malevolent and benevolent sides of Baba-
Yaga and her powers. In this story the witch
assigns the poor girl impossible tasks, telling
her that she will be eaten if she fails; but
when Vasilissa has completed all of the tasks,
Baba-Yaga gives her a magical skull that rids
her of her cruel stepmother and stepsisters.
Another story about a Vasilissa—Vasilissa the
Wise—demonstrates the compassionate
nature of Baba-Yaga: In this story the witch
tells Ivan the Young how he might regain his
wife,Vasilissa the Wise, and keep her forever.
from Encyclopedia of Russian & Slavic Myth and Legend
Russia
Possibly the best known of all Slavic legendary
characters, this witch is known
as Ienzababa or Jezda in Poland, and
Jazi Baba to the Czechs (baba meaning
“old woman” and yaga being
Russian for “hag”). Baba-Yaga is
usually portrayed as malevolent, but
she is occasionally a benefactress.
Like most Russian witches, Baba-
Yaga is an immortal shape-changer, a
true sorceress with a deep knowledge of
everything in the world (the Russian word
for witch, ved'ma, comes from the root ved',
meaning “to know”). Baba-Yaga is the personification
of death; she is the Devil’s handmaiden.
She is never portrayed as a goddess,
for she is far too earthly to be considered a
true deity.Yet in her earliest form, she displayed
an aspect of the Great Goddess, the
patron goddess of women, benevolent to all.
Not until the Christian era was she downgraded
to a fearsome witch, and even then
she retained a wide following among
women.
Post-Christian legends provide evidence
of the importance of Baba-Yaga to women.
One story says that an old couple had a
daughter but could find no godmother for
her.After much searching, they found an old
woman who said she would act as the child’s
godmother. This old woman then revealed
herself as Baba-Yaga and spirited the girl
away to live with her.The girl later committed
some unrecorded crime against Baba-
Yaga, who, rather than eating the child as she
would have done in pre-Christian stories,
simply exiled her into the dark forest.There
the girl was found by a prince who was out
hunting. He took her back to his kingdom,
where she subsequently bore him three sons,
each with the moon and stars upon his forehead.
Learning of her goddaughter’s whereabouts,
Baba-Yaga appeared, demanding that
the three children be given her as expiation
for the girl’s misdeeds. She then made off not
only with the children but also with their
mother. The prince, predictably distraught,
set out to find them. After some time, he
came to a clearing in the forest. In the clearing
a bright fire was burning around which
all manner of animals were gathered, blocking
his passage. In the center, next to the fire,
sat Baba-Yaga with the prince’s wife and
three sons. The prince pleaded to be admitted,
but the animals let him pass only after
the prince’s wife asked Baba-Yaga’s permission.
The hag allowed the prince to carry off
his three sons but not his wife. As the story
developed, Baba-Yaga came to be equated
with Mary, Mother of God, and the forest
home of the witch became the kingdom of
heaven.
The oldest surviving stories of Baba-Yaga
suggest that she is an ancient deity with origins
perhaps as long ago as Paleolithic times,
when she was the patroness of herds and
herdsmen, the goddess of horses, and the
patron goddess of farmers and farming. Her
oldest personification, however, is as mistress
of all animals, a bird goddess as reflected by
the chicken legs on her house, with which
she is as one.
Although unnamed in the story of Ivan
the Pea, the old crone who lives in the forest
in a strange house that revolves in the wind
is none other than Baba-Yaga. In that story
she is far from the malevolent witch; but
maybe even Baba-Yaga realized that she
would have been no match for Ivan the Pea.
Almost every story about Baba-Yaga
describes her dwelling as a cottage in the
most remote and inaccessible part of a deep
forest, which makes her the khoziaika lesa
(“mistress of the forest”).This cottage sits on
four sets of hen’s legs, one at each corner, and
revolves either freely in the wind or when
some unheard word is spoken. Some versions
of the legend say that the cottage was not
fixed to the ground and could run around on
its hen’s legs. Others say that the hen’s legs
were simply supports for the four corners
and that the center of the house was fixed on
the spindle of a spinning-wheel, indicating
that Baba-Yaga also spins the thread of life
from the bones and entrails of the dead.Any
hero who looked inside the cottage would
be likely to find Baba-Yaga crammed into
every corner of the house, with her nose
pressed hard against the roof.
Descriptions of Baba-Yaga vary widely.
Some describe her only as an old crone and
leave the details to imagination. Others
describe her as an aged, ugly crone who is
so emaciated that she is little more than
skin and bone. Her teeth are long and very
sharp, occasionally made of iron, and sometimes
her canines are so long that they protrude
over her lips. Her teeth need to be
sharp, for Baba-Yaga is a cannibal, one gaze
from her eyes usually being enough to petrify
her victims—either turning them temporarily
to stone so that she could take
them home, unpetrify them, and eat them,
or simply immobilizing them with fear.
Her hair is a tangled mass of writhing
snakes. This aspect, like her petrifying eyes,
suggests a classical Greek influence, for
these are both essential attributes of the
Gorgon Medusa. Her nose and her breasts
are made of iron. The bones of her victims
form the gate and fence that surround her
home, each post being adorned with a
human skull, the eyes of which light up at
night.These bones are symbolic not only of
Baba-Yaga’s association with death but also
of her role as the source of new life, which
she brews from the bones of the dead. Her
soup often contains leftover body parts,
such as fingers, toes, and eyes. The house
itself is also said by some to be made of
human bones, with legs for doorposts,
hands for the bolts, and a mouth with
razor-sharp teeth for the lock. Others say
that these parts are associated only with the
bone fence and that Baba Yaga’s house
resembles any other peasant hut—apart
from its chicken leg supports.
In her benevolent guise, Baba-Yaga
appears as a normal, aged peasant woman
with luxuriant hair and a kindly face and disposition,
and as often as not, wears the tradi-
tional headdress of a married woman. Her
dualistic aspects are not as clearly defined as
might be expected. Baba-Yaga is an
immensely complex character who is perhaps
best described as triune rather than
dualistic, each of her three aspects perhaps
best equated to the three Fates of classical
Greece. In her first aspect, as a fertility goddess,
she is benevolent, bringing new life into
the world. In her second aspect she maps out
the course of human life and is both benevolent
and malevolent. In her third aspect she
determines the date of human death, the role
in which she is most commonly regarded. In
her triune state, Baba-Yaga hovers over the
birth of every new life, immediately threatening
to take it back again. She has the
power to send life into the earth and to recall
it. She is the most terrible of the regenerative
fertility deities, for she appears prone to fits
of passion and whim. She demands the sacrifice
of a child in return for wealth, for she,
like the classical Pluto, controls all the riches
of the earth. Baba-Yaga is thus a chthonic
earth deity who encompasses life from conception
through birth and life to death, and
beyond—although her role in the underworld
is merely that of guardian: According
to her pleasure, she may redistribute souls to
newborns or keep them in the underworld
for all eternity, never to be reborn.
Some commentators insist that the
bones around Baba-Yaga’s house indicate
that she has a very strong connection with
the spirit world. Some even go so far as to
say that her house guards the point where
the two worlds—the world of the living
and that of the dead—meet. This may
explain why in some cases she is benevolent
to humans, her purpose being not to
send people into the afterlife but rather,
like the Greek Cerberus, to stop the dead
from escaping. Others say that she is a portrayal
of the gates of hell themselves, lying
in wait for her victims with her jaws agape,
swallowing any who are unfortunate
enough to seek shelter in her mouth with
its razor-sharp iron teeth.
Baba-Yaga possesses truly awesome
power, for time itself is in her hands: The
Sun, the Day and Night, obey her implicitly,
as do all the laws of nature. She controls the
weather, an aspect she shares with Russian
witches in general, and can devour the sun
and moon, cause crops to grow or perish, and
regulate the flow of milk from cows in the
same way as she regulates the rainfall. She
also has connections with the leshii, for she,
like the wood sprite, kidnaps small children
and wields power over the forest and the animals
that live in it. In another aspect she is
regarded as the guardian of the fountain that
supplies the Water of Life and Death. She
rides through the air in a mortar instead of
the customary broomstick of the pan-
European witch, propelling herself forward
with a pestle and brushing away all evidence
of her passage with a birch broom.The mortar
and pestle represent the destructive and
the protective aspects of Baba-Yaga, for
Slavic peoples traditionally used these implements
not only to grind grain (the destructive
aspect) but also to prepare flax for spinning
(the protective aspect). Perhaps
unsurprisingly, the mortar and pestle also
represent the human reproductive organs.
Thus, the two objects are symbols of all three
phases of human life—birth, life, and death—
and thus of all three aspects of the triune
deity. All evidence of Baba-Yaga’s passage
through human lives is swept away with a
birch broom—a broom that may be regarded
as further evidence of her all-pervading
influence, a symbol of the inverted Tree of
Life, reaching downward. Baba-Yaga rides
the skies generating and nurturing life before
sweeping it away again with the broom. As
would befit a powerful fertility deity, Baba-
Yaga has hordes of children, although their
names are never revealed. They are all as
strange as their mother—from the reptiles,
animals, and spirits that cohabit with her, to
her forty mare-daughters.
The mare-daughters appear in one story
where a young man is told that he must
travel to Baba-Yaga’s home to secure a horse
that will help him release his bride Maria
Morena, who has been taken prisoner by
some unnamed captor.When the young man
arrives at the home of the witch he is confronted
by the bone fence that surrounds it.
On closer inspection, however, the young
man sees that one spike on the fence has no
skull on top. As he is inspecting the fence he
is confronted by the witch, who informs him
that the last picket has been reserved for his
skull, although he can escape death and
obtain what he came for if he completes a
simple task—controlling the forty maredaughters
for twenty-four hours. Needless to
say, the hero of this story completes the task,
receives a supernaturally empowered steed
from the witch, and completes his quest to
free his bride.
Although Baba-Yaga may essentially be
regarded as a feminine deity, she is equally at
home in the world of men. She carries a
wand with which she can transform herself
and those at whom she directs its power, and
she rules over the male genitalia. She is also
more likely to appear in her benevolent guise
to men than to women. She owns a firebreathing,
flying horse, giving her an aspect
as the horse goddess, as well as a selfdirecting,
self-cutting sword, both items
being more readily lent to men than to
women. She also will lend other, feminine
articles to deserving youths, such as mirrors,
rings, and balls of yarn. Baba-Yaga is also the
patroness of wandering minstrels, for she
owns a self-playing gusli that some allude to
as the first instrument of the type ever made.
With links to the werewolf and vampire,
Baba-Yaga and her kind, the volkhvy (seers),
would perform their chief rites and cause
the most trouble at midsummer, the same
time that the female elders of villages would
go into the fields at night to look for medicinal
herbs and other plants. Baba-Yaga is
the wolf goddess who devours all who try to
enter her sphere. She induces nightmares
and hallucinations as well as deadly diseases,
all three relating to her role as the goddess of
death and the underworld. She also is associated
with the bear, who sometimes
replaces her in the role of master of the forest,
and the serpent—both animals to be
feared and respected. She demands human
sacrifice from her supplicants in return for
the sustenance of life.
In Russian legend, Baba-Yaga is closely
associated with serpents and dragons. Koshchei
the Deathless, whose name derives from
kost' (“bone”), is a dragon in human guise,
his destiny and all he does guided by the
dualistic aspects of Baba-Yaga. She confers
on him immortality but also gives him a
soul, thus making him mortal. Baba-Yaga is
also the controlling force behind the multiheaded,
fire-breathing dragon Chudo-Yudo,
who sits watch over the Water of Life and
Death, a role that has often led Chudo-Yudo
to be considered a bizarre offspring of the
witch and thus a brother to the forty maredaughters.
In Belorussia, Baba-Yaga and her associates
are held to drain the energy of the sun
with their magical fires, destroy plants, and
turn the power of the earth against mankind.
Thus, in this region at least, Baba-Yaga and
her sisterhood are seen as being in control of
the elements of the earth. If humanity does
not please or placate them, then Baba-Yaga
and her kind will use their awesome powers
to turn the earth itself against those it is
meant to support.
One particular story, that of Vasilissa the
Beautiful, clearly demonstrates both the
malevolent and benevolent sides of Baba-
Yaga and her powers. In this story the witch
assigns the poor girl impossible tasks, telling
her that she will be eaten if she fails; but
when Vasilissa has completed all of the tasks,
Baba-Yaga gives her a magical skull that rids
her of her cruel stepmother and stepsisters.
Another story about a Vasilissa—Vasilissa the
Wise—demonstrates the compassionate
nature of Baba-Yaga: In this story the witch
tells Ivan the Young how he might regain his
wife,Vasilissa the Wise, and keep her forever.
from Encyclopedia of Russian & Slavic Myth and Legend
Sapkowski's 7th and last book in the "official" Witcher saga (although that's kind of arguable) is called "The Lady of the Lake".
Oh I knew that, I didn't know the Ciri connection. I recall meeting the LotL in TW1 and she was all swords & water as you'd expect so just assumed that entity was what the book title referred to. It's an interesting linkup, tenuous enough to be mysterious rather than obvious.
On the one hand you've got (predominantly) Literal understanding, unimaginative, unquestioning, and authoritarian, on the other Figurative thinking, metaphorical, ambiguous, and empowering... myths & religion share building blocks but I think they ultimately play in different sandboxes, appeal to people differently, and relate to those people differently. Religions tend to be edifices, myths can be mates, and they're there for us to play with. When you think about it, for the vast majority of the myths the larger portion of their existence would be through spoken word, carried along by anyone, evolving with our #1 skill: language, in the company of more people, that grassroots accessibility alone trumps a book.
@theta77; All you say about Sapkowski rings true, its a great recipe and you guys are top chefs, but whether its intentional or not another quality from the old myths that is carried through to the games is the ambiguity remaining from the legendary days before a more black & white paradigm took over. Many of the folktales still contain hints, and the older legends are rife with instances where the entertained are encouraged to think rather than just accept or react. So in that sense I see CDPR carrying on a tradition, and I'll be sorry if you don't keep developing a myth based IP in future.
Not forgotten yet, they keep getting revived in the nick of time, by a few people refreshing them for a new generation. It's an ancient tradition, perhaps as old as language itself