The Quest for Baba Yaga:
When Folktales Meet Goddesses and the Ancients

This study investigates the origins of the folktale character, Baba Yaga, as related to ancient goddesses of Slavic culture and as seen through the lens of the historian on a hero’s journey, questing for truths. While oral traditions are difficult to trace, comparative analysis between deities of Eastern Europe gives clues to a strong female presence that has evolved and shifted over thousands of years. Baba Yaga’s first known textual record was in 1755; however, the character presented at that time is unambiguously not a new invention. By examining traditions of ancient Cucuteni–Trypillia, as well as past folklore studies and known Slavic deities, including Mati-Syra-Zemlya, Mokosh, and Morana, connections arise exhibiting not only a folklore witch who feels so strongly about right and wrong that she may eat you for supper, but also a character who still displays remnants of a history as an earth goddess, goddess of life and death, patron to women, and goddess of transformation. Baba Yaga’s stories continue in the modern day, but her historical weight cannot be ignored or forgotten.

Keywords: Baba Yaga, Folktales, Cucuteni–Trypillia, Storytelling, Slavic Goddesses

Questing after the roots of ancient stories is a hero’s journey like any other kind, though this time, the protagonist is not named Ivan or Vasilisa, two names common in Slavic folktales. Rather, in this specific pursuit, the protagonist is the researcher, the folklorist, or the curiosity-driven story sleuth. Branch by spiderweb-laden branch is prodded aside, thorned rose bushes and tangled brambles circumvented, until the truth of the fiction becomes clear. Thousands of years of storytelling have their secrets laid bare.

Countless questions arise about the inspirations of long-told stories. For example, when considering the stars and recognizing that a constellation known as “the Seven Sisters,” or “the Pleiades,” has only six stars visible to the eye, academics and researchers begin their investigations. In this instance, they have discovered that ​the Pleiades was indeed visible as seven stars 100,000 years ago, when humans began to migrate out of Africa (Norris & Norris, 202, pp. 223–235). Furthermore, because nearly identical stories of these seven sisters are found within both the ancient Aboriginal oral traditions of Australia and Greek mythology, two fully disconnected people, evidence suggests this ancient story migrated along with the people in an era where the stars matched the tale. The nearly identical narratives both tell of seven sisters who escaped their pursuer by hiding in the same location of the heavens. Ergo, stories can indeed be dated by their written records but also by anthropological, migratory, and even celestial measures.

My own recent story quest focused on the origins of a Slavic folklore “witch” known as Baba Yaga, a magical old woman out of the storybooks who lives deep within the woods inside a chicken-legged hut known to stand and dash away if discovered. Baba Yaga may indeed seek you as her supper if you disturb her or show her impertinence. However, she also may act as a macabre fairy godmother, granting your deepest wish or most profound desire, if you prove yourself brave, good-hearted, respectful, and hard-working. What a daily test for each of us, folktale witches or no folktale witches—for if we don’t strive for these traits, the contemporary world may threaten to eat us up too.

Following the breadcrumbs of folklore, my journey as a literary historian took me back to a moment once upon a time, or more specifically multiple centuries ago. The first known appearance of Baba Yaga in the written record was in a 1755 publication by Mikhail W. Lomonosov titled The Russian Grammar. In this academic tome, she appears in a table comparing and contrasting gods and goddesses from across world belief systems. The Slavic god Perun, for example, sat beside the Roman god Jupiter. Yet within this table, Baba Yaga not only exists; she exists with the presence of a deity who has no parallels the world over (Johns, 2010). That Baba Yaga stood alone, without an equivalent, is its own fascination, but my curiosity ignited at her reference not as a fictional character but rather as a goddess.

Baba Yaga’s first appearance amid a folktale collection as storybook “witch,” came not much later in 1780. Vasilii Levshin is thought to have published her first written stories (Johns, 2010). However, the difference between “goddess” and folktale villain is worth noting. As one begins seeking out clues of Baba Yaga as a deity, a quest worthy of any storybook hero, captivation heightens when recognizing that the French priest and writer André Thevet’s 1575 work, Cosmographie Universelle, includes a woodcut illustration entitled “Faithful worshiping the goddess Stata Baba in the Muscovy region” (Ciepielak, 2018; Thevet and Golitsyn, 1858). Was this 1575 “Stata Baba” deity connected to “Baba Yaga”? Whether “Baba Yaga” or “Stata Baba,” a known grandmother (baba) goddess had clearly marked her fingerprint on Slavic consciousness.

When seeking history with few lingering traces, keeping one’s eyes and ears open is essential. The heroine may follow her call to adventure by seeking guidance in the shifting stars or from the ancients. My own attention drew back to the early civilization of Cucuteni–Trypillia, which once existed in present day Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania, and whose people produced complex pottery in advanced kilns older than the Egyptian pyramids. Their existence lives in few history books, including those that examine major ancient civilizations, likely because a deliberate and potentially ritualistic burning tradition destroyed so much evidence of these towns and city centers that thrived roughly 7,000 years ago (Chapman et al., 2014; Chapman et al., 2019). Thus, without monuments, marble facades, and accessible ruins, for a long while, the evidence of Cucuteni–Trypillia all but disappeared. Enter the researchers on their journey, and a forgotten civilization is now being remembered and reconsidered anew. Moreover, clues potentially connected to Baba Yaga, the folklore witch who may have once been a goddess, are among the findings.

 

Among many other discoveries, Cucuteni–Trypillia has become known for its statuettes and painted pottery depicting female figures. The more archeologists examine what they uncover, arguments are solidified that female figures in this Eastern European society held positions of reverence if not the divine (Burdo, 2011, pp. 367–374). Symbols on some pieces of pottery have been connected with religious representations and script (Burdo, 2011, pp. 362). On others, depictions of cranes have additionally been linked with themes of the feminine, the changing seasons, fertility, happiness, and yet also the capacity of evil, (Țurcanu, 2018, pp. 313). Connections with these female statuettes in the posture of birds with their fowl’s legs underneath and others with stylized snakes hint of stories potentially thousands of years in the making. Where one only has breadcrumbs, one must follow the trail. As the tale goes, these breadcrumbs may lead to storybook witches who live in magical huts within the woods.

Somewhere between the female worshiping society of Cucuteni–Trypillia and the appearance of Baba Yaga as a goddess in Lomonosov’s Russian Grammar, Baba Yaga’s identity became clearly known. In her folktale stories by writers like Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Nekrasov, and Alexander Afanasyev, she has been known as a force of evil and terror within the woods, with a fence of bones surrounding her home. Yet she has also been a recognized patron of women and a guide between life and death—present like a midwife when babies enter the world and as a partner to the dying, easing them away from the living realm. She’s frequently called “Baba Yaga, the boney legged” (Johns, 2010). The epitaph could speak to her age and frailty or to the manifestation of a being who walks among the living and the dead. The fence of bones that surrounds her home could be an image meant to horrify or a complex shrine in memory of all those who have lived and died before, depending on the storyteller’s intent and perspective.

In her folktales, the old witch is known to travel in a massive mortar, paddled along with pestle. Thus, a long-standing tool of women’s work—for grinding the grain, blending flavors, and mixing medicinal ointments—mingles with the transformative and the magical, for whether discussed as a goddess or as a storybook witch of the woods, she is a catalyst for such changes. Inside her mortar, ingredients are pulverized for new possibilities. The protagonists who seek her, whether “Vasilisa the Beautiful” or one of countless young men named “Ivan,” are similarly stressed then transformed. Furthermore, one could call upon a concept noted by folklorists, including Andreas Johns (2010), who connect the ancient identity of Baba Yaga with the metaphor of a plow. This classic farming tool tears the earth apart to prepare for new growth. Similarly, in her centuries of folktales, Baba Yaga challenges protagonists with daunting tasks and pressures to embolden their potential for future thriving. Sometimes she indeed destroys the landscape, the mountains and the forests, the rivers and the rocks. She often makes the protagonists who visit her toil in the soil of her garden. She may threaten to eat visitors for supper, but if they endure her coarse treatment, they are empowered for the rest of their lives. Such a character elevates revolutionary potential and intrigue. Such gifts could be bestowed by a deity who blesses only the worthy.

Evidence shows that people in Slavic lands have revered a long line of goddesses between the potentially divine female statuettes of Cucuteni–Trypillia and the first written annotations of the goddess-turned-folklore-witch Baba Yaga. In fact, these goddesses’ presences muddle and blend not so different from any other ingredients in her mortar. A Slavic goddess of the earth named Mati-Syra-Zemlya, who is also known as Matka Ziemia and Matushka Zeml’ja, was among the most ancient of the known Slavic goddesses. To speak to her, one whispered into the earth. She would listen to prayers or confessions, deeds or last whispers of life, acting as a guide and a judge. Potentially a legacy of Mati-Syra-Zemlya, Mokosh—also spelled Mokoš—was a goddess of the Kiev pantheon (Ivanits, 1989; Ciepielak, 2018). She was a Proto-Slavic mother earth deity, connected with the life-giving force of the moist earth and associated with women’s work, such as weaving and the harvest (Ciepielak, 2018). Another recognized deity in the Slavic region, Morana, was a goddess of lush vegetation but also the harshness and death of winter. Morana’s ceremonies linger into the present day in some regions of Eastern Europe, wherein representations of her are destroyed every year to bring about the birth of spring (Ciepielak, 2018; Yovino-Young, 1993).

Baba Yaga holds parallels to each of these goddesses that cannot be ignored. She is known to hide and listen from within the earth, and her eyes are sometimes represented as deep, deep holes. She has a strong connection with life-giving forces as well as the natural world, often using tasks traditionally considered as “women’s work” within the demands she forces upon those she captures. She controls the shifts of time, seasons, and cycles of strength and frailty. Returning to the pottery of Cucuteni–Trypillia, she is known to have parallels with birds in both her physical features and in the legs that emerge underneath her forest hut. Furthermore, some narratives speak of her snake-like tail.

Traces of countless revered Eastern European goddesses seem to linger in the simplicity of her stories, so much so that Marija Gimbutas (1991), a noted archaeologist and anthropologist, referenced Baba Yaga herself as “the ancient Slavic goddess of death and regeneration.” Moreover, G. P. Fedotov, author of the monumental study The Russian Religious Mind, noted:

At every step in studying Russian popular religion, one meets the constant longing for a great divine female power, be it embodied in Mary or someone else. Is it too daring to hypothesize, on the basis of this religious propensity the scattered elements of the cult of a Great Goddess who once reigned upon the immense Russian plains? (Ivanits, 1989).

Countless traces linger, creating a connection between folktales, belief systems, and traces of the once divine.

We can only hypothesize how ancient migratory patterns transported not only goods but also faiths and oral folktale traditions across the lands that are now Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, Russia, Moldova, and Romania. Some tales remain distinct by region, yet certain core pillars of Baba Yaga’s identity remain across all the places where her stories have been told for centuries, if not millennia. She is a grandmother or a witch or a goddess or a stranger in strange lands, yet she is always an unstoppable force with a deep understanding of the world, its life, and its people.

We can only guess at the storytellers who wove the familiar tales, tweaking a thread here and a twist there, reshaping the narrative tradition forever more as spoken words between families and friends cemented historical customs and understandings between their lines. Perhaps I find a kindred spirit in Baba Yaga, not only because we share Slavic roots, my Ukrainian heritage so much of who I am, but also because we both share our first known publication on matters of grammar, though my own first book—Get a Grip on Your Grammar—examines the complexities and potential of the English language. My own fascination with language and world storytelling arose from the dual cultures I was familiar with as a child, one of American pride and pop culture pairing with a second deeply rooted in Ukrainian history and traditions. As a child, I knew of my family’s deep Christian faith, yet was fully cognizant of the presence of women who practiced in magic, or at least so my grandmother said.

All the while, Baba Yaga remains an old magical woman of the woods with unfathomable complexities as both a folktale character and as a historical goddess, and I will continue to sleuth them out. My fifth book, Becoming Baba Yaga: Trickster, Feminist, and Witch of the Woods (Red Wheel / Weiser, 2024; Tantor Audio, 2024), is neither the beginning nor the end of this quest, though my heroine’s journey likely will not involve combs that transform into dense forests or handkerchiefs that become rivers of fire.

Stars shift in the heavens. Populations move. Folktale witches and goddesses alike retain their legacies in the miracles they set aside for the worthy. When we cannot analyze the facts by written records, tree rings, or even celestial measures, the research indeed becomes more complicated. However, quests are where heroes are made—heroes and profound truths that reshape the known landscape. As for Baba Yaga, her ancient tales journey on, as do all of the story hunters that continue to seek her.