Baba Yaga - Mythillogical Podcast

This podcast is now also available on Spotify, iTunes and Stitcher! You can find it at the links below: Spotify - open.spotify.com/episode/5hZVNVw6z63qT7A0tmpvXn iTunes - podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/baba-yaga/id15146566… Stitcher - www.stitcher.com/podcast/mythillogical-podcast

These Mythillogical episodes are great for sending me right to sleep, they're so cozy... but then in the morning I just want to watch it again and hear everything I missed!

Discussion of Baba Yaga begins at 13:05

I never noticed this before, but listening to theses Baba Yaga stories made me realize she has quite a lot in common with the "Goddess of the Underwold" archetype. In particular, Hel, Ereshkigal, and Izanami have many parallels with her, such as the rotting/unsightly appearance, or setting up very specific conditions for fulfilling tasks, which can either reunite loved ones, or permanently separate them. It's quite fascinating that all of these myths, separated by distance and time, all seem to draw on some kind of ancient proto-religion's iconography. It's like the "Slaying of the Serpent" motif, but less obvious.

15:47 - The oven is also a character sometimes... or a vehicle :) The Russian oven - "petch", is what you may call a "mass heater". It is very traditional across the Slavic culture. At colder regions the oven was constructed with a flat top, to serve as a bed for the cold winter nights, called a "lezhanka"

I am a native Russian, and you guys just NAILED it. Thank you so much!

This makes me so happy to see. My grandmother is an immigrant from Poland and i grew up with stories of Baba Yaga. My first tattoo was actually a big arm piece of her and her house.

In south Slavic mythology there is a similar character called Baba Roga - Horned grandma. She is described as having a large horn on her forehead and is commonly used to scare the mischievous kids "If you don't behave Baba Roga will come and take you". There is no folk stories or myths with her in them other than that.

Slavic mythology has some really cool stuff. Would you guys be interested in doing Icelandic/Norse stuff in the future as well? Trolls and all that really fun stuff.

In John Wick they do not refer to him as the Baba Yaga - they refer to him as the one you get to kill the Baba Yaga - an even more terrifying prospect.

In Poland, there's also a children game "Raz, dwa, trzy, Baba Jaga patrzy!" (means: "One, two, three, Baba Yaga is looking"). It's similar to english Statues/Grandmother's Footsteps. I loved to play it with my grandparents. It was fun but otherwise Baba Jaga was definetely the scariest creature from their bedtime stories. Old, ugly, skinny witch who lives in forests and eats children. Adults in Poland also liked to tell their naughty children things like: "if you won't be nice behaving/silent, Baba Jaga will come and take you". Worked pretty well on me, lol.

Being Russian, having grown with the tales about Baba Yaga, it’s quite unexpected to listen to the podcast about our “national character” in English. By the way, the stress is on the second syllable: YagA.

If you look at older depictions of medieval witches you will see female witches riding broomsticks and male witches or warlocks riding pitchforks. This is because broomsticks and pitchforks are common household objects associated with women and men respectively.

Referring to the “daughters” around 25 minutes; I believe these are the daughters of other people’s daughters, along the lines of “Your farm will have a bountiful harvest, in exchange for your daughter.” And they are usually similar to slaves in the tales I’ve heard & read.

Scrolled through a whole comment section (although without checking a replies) to check if maybe someone already mentioned this, but haven't notice anything, so here's some more info on the probable mythological-anthropological origin for the Baba Yaga. First of all - there is some evidence that large part of it originated in Finno-Ugric cultures and was later spread through cultural exchange and in more modern times combined with Slavic stuff and common-european concepts. I think best part to start would be Baba Yaga's Hut on a bird legs - it's most probably originated from burial tradition from cultures that lived in the forested and swampy areas there elevated hut-like structures would be constructed either using trees, like a child's treehouse or on the stilts-pillars, there bodies would be placed. It was situated on some distance from the settlement and entrance would be placed opposite side - facing the forest, in believe that if some corpse would be reanimated as a bad spirit (which is universal concept for humans across the world I believe) it would wonder towards the forest and wouldn't find a way into the settlement. Older women are believed to be commonly responsible for a preparation of the body, so first role of the Baba Yaga may be just a caretaker lady, which later transformed into a psychopomp deity. This older women usually were responsible for traditional herbal medicine and stuff - so there is mortar and pestle comes from and later associated with witch concept. Part with the cannibalism might have come from a instance there some bad or mean old woman was buried and as it's common with vurdalak-vampire lore - was believed to be reanimated as a bad flesh eating, child abducting monster or bad spirit. And of course later fairytales are just mashup of tales from other cultures. Sorry for my not perfect English, not my native language, hope it would be helpful or interesting for someone.

In Romanian folklore and fairy tales we have our own rendition of Baba Yaga, she is called Baba Cloanța (ugly old woman, teethless old woman) or Muma Pădurii ( the evil woman of the forest). Great work, really interesting !

Being ethnically Russian myself, I was very surprised to find this podcast. It strokes my Russian ego 😂 When i read the story about the girl and the evil step mother and the lousy dad to my children, i also always feel strange at the line where he shoots the wife 😳🤷🏻‍♀️ So I actually change it and pretend to read that he banished her instead. Thank you for your wonderful work. Also, it was interesting what you said about Кощей... him being the deathless as opposed to “immortal”, because in Russian there’s just one word. There’s no different word for immortal. Very fascinating to listen to Britisch analysis of “my childhood” folklore :) thank you

Would it be possible for you guys to make a google document or something where you list all your academic sources? I'd love to read all this stuff, not just the stories.

I thought this was going to be about Keanu Reeves.

In moden Polish "baba" means an old woman, not necessarily an evil one. It is also a pejorative term for any woman that is either ugly or unpleasant, however it can also be used as a endearment in some cases (context dependant). Yaga (or Jaga in PL spelling) is a augmentative form of a given name Jadwiga. Of course Baba Jaga herself is present in our folk tales, usually mirroring the ones you told in this podcast, albeit with a local twist on them. Sometimes in Polish version of Grimm's "Hensel and Gretel" (PL "Jaś i Małgosia"), Baba Jaga takes place of the evil witch living in the house of gingerbread which in turn, in some versions, is placed on the hen legs (but doesn't turn around) which is an interesting example of how different folk traditions of east and west have been mixed together in here.