A Study of Baba Yaga EBOOK

Introduction
If you’re familiar with Baba Yaga, you’ll likely say she’s a cannibalistic witch. Many who have researched this infamous individual have called her “ambiguous,” but my thought is that she is more “complex” than ambiguous. The proverb “Good is good and bad is bad” may be true of most characters in Slavic fairy tales, and fairy tales in general, but Baba Yaga is an exception. She is almost never completely one or the other—at least not if you examine the story and culture more thoroughly.
She may be the hero’s enemy or friend depending on the situation. When she is “good,” she may do so reluctantly, or she may assist the hero or heroine while harboring nefarious thoughts. She is a trickster, after all.
When she is “bad,” the hero may have caught her on an off day, or he may be trespassing, or any other number of reasons, such as in the story of “Nikita the Footless and the Terrible Tsar,” where two brothers, one with no legs and the other blind, trespass in Baba Yaga’s house, eat her food, steal from her, and make a terrible mess.

Then when all was still the door was suddenly opened and the wicked Baba-Yaga entered her cottage. When she saw the two in one she screamed out with a loud voice: “You beggars and thieves! Up to this time not even a bird or a beast had come to my lonely dwelling, and now you have come to devour my food and loosen the very props of my little cottage. But very soon, and indeed sooner than that, I will settle with you.”

She’s had many labels besides that of witch: goddess, demon, nature spirit, healer, shaman, mother figure, cannibal, and even alien. Even within the fairy tales, she plays numerous roles: villain, helper, guide, gift-giver, mentor, sorceress, initiator, animal mistress, and more.
These titles are not all mutually exclusive. Baba Yaga doesn’t have to fit nicely into a single category. People’s personalities differ, being kind to one person and cruel to another. Why not so for Baba Yaga herself? Ancient deities possessed diverse functions; it indicated they held great power and authority.
Let’s look at the extremes: a goddess and a demon. What’s the difference between them? Does a goddess do “good” while a demon does “bad”? The line between good and bad is often indistinct, especially if knowledge of the intention behind the action is lacking.
Think about nature. It can be nurturing or destructive. The same applies to the immortals. On one hand, their actions can be beneficial, while on the other, they are construed as evil. As you’ll discover, Baba Yaga is fickle like nature: able to nurture and destroy all within a matter of moments. She is a character who “straddles the threshold between life and death, between the promise of change and the imminent thread of destruction, between learning to cook a meal or becoming the meal.”
It’s this complexity that makes Baba Yaga more real, rather than simply being a fairy-tale character, who is black-and-white, at least on the surface. Take the hero, for instance. Although often clueless, he’s on a noble quest (at least according to him). And let’s not forget about the princess. She’s always beautiful and in need of a hero (even if she doesn’t really want one). Not least of all of the one-dimensional characters is the villain, frequently the kidnapper of maidens. Whether he’s a dragon or other monstrous being, he’s always evil.
But Baba Yaga is so much more. What “real” person doesn’t have conflicting actions or desires depending on the circumstances? Does the fact that she doesn’t fit into the cut-and-dry fairy-tale character mold prove that she was, or even still is, something more than an imaginary being? Perhaps. Read on, so you can make up your own mind as to whom you think this Baba Yaga is or was.
Origins
Who was Baba Yaga before she became a legendary cannibalistic witch? Where did she come from? Just like there are a variety of opinions about the meaning of her name, numerous theories exist about Baba Yaga’s origins—from ones many scholars agree upon to those that will raise the eyebrows of the academic world and perhaps even the non-academic one. The following brief summaries will give you a clue as to what makes up this fascinating being. You’ll see her transform from goddess to wicked witch as time marches on.