Baba Yaga's Garden

Baba Yaga 

Visit Baba Yaga's Hut

Walk through the gate of bleached white bones, set with grinning skulls whose eyes glow with fire. Here is the home of Baba Yaga; on the border between the world of mortals and the world of spirits. Ever watchful, restless, creaking, groaning, it spins on its chickenlegs, dancing on the edge of reason.

Demon or Goddess

Growing up in Kiev, Ukraine, I loved reading and listening to fairy tales. These stories, filled with Slavic flavor, were opening up a new world for me, a world where one is to learn lessons and always to succeed, a world in which no matter how many hardships and terror a good character goes through, he or she always succeeds, a world in which a goodness always defeats an evil. Being my hide-away from the harshness of reality, that world was very much sought by me at all the times. Yet, this world absolutely needed to have a few definite characteristics to serve its purpose: the fairy tales I loved to read and re-read had to have Baba Yaga as one of its evil characters. The more evil this character was, the scarier her description, the more vicious her behavior, the better I liked the fairy tale. So who was this Baba Yaga character and what was it in this evil creature that drew me to read and re-read multiple fairy tales, in which I was seeking a camouflage from reality?

The Black Goddess and other Mythic Earth Images

The religion and worldview of the Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, and Slavic people, who inhabited Europe prior to the Christian era, as well as that of the Greeks and other Mediterranean peoples, was animistic: gods and goddesses, the living intelligences of nature, were perceived and worshipped in forest groves and sacred springs, on mountain tops and in great stone circles. In addition to gods and goddesses there were other classes of beings associated with nature, who were not human, but certainly equal, if not superior, to humans and deserving of respect, -- such as giants and dwarves, elves and trolls, fairies, leprechauns, gnomes, satyrs, nymphs and mermaids.These deities and beings could be communed with by anyone who was willing to practice the methods taught by the shamans and their successors the witches, the wise women of the woods -- using magical plants and stones, chants and incantations, dances and rituals.