The story of Baba Yaga is very very old and comes from Eastern Europe. She is the old crone of the forest, living in a hut made of human bones. Her enchanted house walks on chicken legs. Her servants are the three horseriders Dawn, Sunset, Night. She rides at night over the treetops in her mortar, rowing through the air with her pestle. If you chance upon her hut in the forest she will assign you impossible tasks, but if you can fulfill them you are rewarded beyond your dreams. She has a bad reputation on the surface but underneath she is not evil at all but Chaos personified. She represents the very power that creates as well as destroys. Her fierce independence and terrible power do not fit well into normal fairy tales, so she is sadly reduced to an evil baby-eating hag. I chose to represent Baba Yaga as a powerful crone, not as an evil hag. |