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odinsblog · 1 month

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“I sometimes hear people say that Russia was forced to attack Ukraine because Ukrainians wanted to join NATO. Those people also often say that NATO promised it would not expand to the East, but later broke this promise. And this, allegedly, is the reason why Russia keeps attacking its neighbors.

If you have ever heard people say something like that, please know that this is not true. And it will take me less than five minutes to prove with facts that both statements are false.

First, let's have a look at the timeline of events.

Russia first invaded Ukraine in February 2014 by occupying the Crimea peninsula. At that moment, Ukraine was a neutral country by law and expressed no intention of joining NATO whatsoever. For instance, during the Revolution of Dignity, the protesters insisted on Ukraine joining the EU, not NATO. It was only in autumn 2014, after many months of war, that Ukraine abandoned neutrality.

So what came first? Russia attacking Ukraine, or Ukraine wanting to join NATO?

The answer is clear.

Had Russia not threatened Ukraine's existence, there would be no reason for our country to seek collective security. So please do not repeat the lie that, I quote, “Russia attacked because Ukraine wanted to join NATO,” end of quote. This does not correspond with the facts.

Now let's have a look at the story of NATO allegedly promising not to expand to the East.

If you ask people who say this, when exactly, such a promise was made and who made it, most of them will not be able to provide a clear answer. Spoiler, because no such promise has ever been made and the whole story is a Russian fairy tale.

Those more sophisticated will tell you that the promise was made to the President of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev. They may even refer to the 1990 U.S.-Soviet negotiations on the reunification of Germany. Again, let’s consider the timeline.

In summer 1990, when these talks were held, the Soviet analog of NATO, the Warsaw Pact, still existed. Its dissolution, let alone the Soviet Union's dissolution, was not on the cart. No one even talked about it or imagined it. It was only next year, in 1991 that the Warsaw Pact, and later the USSR, quite unexpectedly ceased to exist.

Now explain to me just how the very issue could be even discussed in the summer of 1990. It is not surprising that Mikhail Gorbachev later himself refuted this falsehood. When asked by a journalist whether any such promise had been made, he said this was a myth.

Now let's look at it from another perspective. How could NATO even promise anything like that?

Initially, it is not NATO that decides which country joins it. Countries themselves need to want it. And actually, the membership criteria are very difficult. It requires a lot of political will and reform. All the NATO members that joined it after 1991, really wanted to be part of it.

Their people wanted this.

And here comes the most uncomfortable question for Russia: Why were all of the nations that had been part of the Soviet Union or the Socialist bloc so eager and desperate to join NATO?

Well, maybe because in three decades, Russia has invaded or incited war in at least three of its neighbors, Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine. At the same time, Russia has not dared to invade any of its NATO neighbors.

Do you see the pattern?

The only reason for countries in the vicinity of Russia to seek NATO membership has always been and remains the need to protect their people from Russia.

Therefore, Moscow has only itself to blame for the fact that all of the central European and Baltic nations ran away from it and hid under the NATO umbrella as quickly as they could.

Do not let Russian officials or their supporters in the West fool you. Russia attacked Ukraine not because NATO expanded to the East, or because Ukraine wanted to join NATO. Russia attacked because it denies Ukraine's right to exist and wants to conquer our land and kill our people. It is through our shared strength that we can and must stop Russia and put an end to its aggressive plans for the rest of Europe.

For this to happen, keep supporting Ukraine and don't buy Russian lies.”

👉🏿 https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2014/11/06/did-nato-promise-not-to-enlarge-gorbachev-says-no/

👉🏿 https://www.tumblr.com/odinsblog/686191406300184576/appeasement-does-not-work-appeasement-didnt

👉🏿 https://www.tumblr.com/odinsblog/684530801484922880/believing-putins-reasons-for-invading-ukraine

👉🏿 https://www.tumblr.com/odinsblog/742088177664344064/violated-agreements-1991-russia-cosigns

#politics #ukraine #russia #dmytro kuleba #russian propaganda #nato #russian colonialism #nato expansion #russian imperialism #mikhail gorbachev #russia is a terrorist state #warsaw pact #russian expansion #russian fascism ☭#soviet union #tankies #vladimir putin is a war criminal #baltic states #🇺🇦

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checkoutmybookshelf · 2 years

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I got wildly sick of white European farm boy fantasy a while back. Thank goodnes I didn't have to look hard to find other things, and plenty of them (literally this is not my whole collection, I just couldn't ffit everything in the picture)!

Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko follows Tar as she finds her family in an African-inspired fantasy world. The haunting "made of me, and me is mine" still echoes in my head. That and Dayo literally being the adoptive uncle who gets his nibling an elephant.

These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong explores Chinese and Russian rival crime families in fantasy 1920s Shanghai. For my Shakespeareans in the audience, yes, it's also a retelling of Romeo and Juliet. For those of you with bug phobias, beware.

Tha Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri is often described as having morally gray lesbians, and that's true. But while Priya and Malini are compelling and fascinating to follow, I am HERE for the Hirana. Semi-sentient, possibly evil temple who is soft for its favorite trainee priestess in hiding? YES.

Jade City by Fonda Lee follows the Green Bones in fantasy Asia, as two warring gangs find their places in a rapidly modernizing world. Shae and Hilo's relationship in particular is fascinating.

Full Disclosure: I haven't finished Axie Oh's The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea, but the first couple of chapters are a WOW and I can't wait to finish this Korean-inspired fairy tale retelling.

The Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan was sheer joy from start to finish, and I have not yet stopped asking "What the Actual HELL, Wenzhi???" Inspired by the myth of Chang'e, this book is a must-read. (The sequel is out November 2022 and I am so excited!!!)

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao took me by the throat and literally did not let me go until the book ended--and even then, it less let me go and more threw me against the boards until round 2. The triangle is the strongest shape, and this has phenomenal poly and disability representation.

Another full disclosure: I haven't started Judy Lin's A Magic Steeped in Poison, but I am so excited for it. There is literal and figurative tea promised, and I am here for it.

The Stardust Thief by Chelsea Abdullah scratched a reading itch I didn't even know I had, and I love this book so much. It has cinnaprinces, a Loulie, jinn, forty thieves, and stories within stories.

Last full disclosure of the post: I also haven't read the doorstopper that is RR Virdi's The First Binding, but it is a heckin' chonk of a book that I am super excited to dive into.

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adarkrainbow · 1 year

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The Yaga journal: Witches and demons of Eastern Europe

The next article I’ll translate from the issue (I won’t translate all of them since some are not very relevant for this blog) is “Baba Yaga, witches, and the ambiguous demons of oriental Europe” by Stamatis Zochios.

The article opens by praising the 1863′s “Reasoned dictionary of the living russian language”. by scholar, lexicograph and folklorist Vladimir Dahl, which is one of the first “systematic essays” that collects the linguistic treasures of Russia. By collecting more than thirty thousand proverbs and sayings, insisting on the popular and oral language, the Dictionary notably talked about various terms of Russian folklore; domovoi, rusalka, leshii... And when it reaches Baba Yaga, the Dictionary calls her : сказочное страшилищ (skazochnoe strashilishh) , that is to say “monster of fairytales”.But the article wonders about this denomination... Indeed, for many people (such as Bogatyrev) Baba Yaga, like other characters of Russian fairytales (Kochtcheï or Zmey Gorynych) do not exist in popular demonology, and is thus exclusively a character of fairy tales, in which she fulfills very specific functions (aggressor, donator if we take back Propp’s system). But the author of this article wonder if Baba Yaga can’t actually be found in “other folkloric genres” - maybe she is present in legends, in popular beliefs, in superstitions and incantations.

Baba Yaga, as depicted in the roleplaying game “Vampire: The Masquerade”

For example, in a 19th century book by Piotr Efimenko called “Material for ethnography of the Russian population of the Arkhangelsk province”, there is an incantation recorded about a man who wante to seduce/make a woman fall in love with him. During this incantation the man invokes the “demons that served Herod”, Sava, Koldun and Asaul and then - the incantation continues by talking about “three times nine girls” under an oak tree”, to which Baba Yaga brings light. The ritual is about burning wood with the light brought by Baba Yaga, so that the girl may “burn with love” in return. Efimenko also mentions another “old spell for love” that goes like this: “In the middle of the field there are 77 pans of red copper, and on each of them there are 77 Egi-Babas. Each 77 Egi-Babas have 77 daughters with each 77 staffs and 77 brooms. Me, servant of God (insert the man’s name here) beg the daughters of the Egi-Babas. I salute you, daughters of Egi-Babas, and make the servant of God (insert name of the girl here) fall inlove, and bring her to the servant of God (insert name of the man here).” The fact Baba Yaga appears in magical incantations proves that she doesn’t exist merely in fairytales, but was also part of the folk-religion alongside the leshii, rusalka, kikimora and domovoi. However two details have to be insisted upon.

One: the variation of the name Baba Yaga, as the plural “Egi-Babas”. The name Baba Yaga appears in numerous different languages. In Russian and Ukrainian we find Баба-Язя, Язя, Язі-баба, Гадра ; in Polish jędza, babojędza ; in Czech jezinka, Ježibaba meaning “witch, woman of the forest”, in Serbian баба jега ; in Slovanian jaga baba, ježi baba ... Baba is not a problem in itself. Baba, comes from the old Slavic баба and is a diminutive of бабушка (babyshka), “grand-mother” - which means all at the same time a “peasant woman”, “a midwife”, a (school mistress? the article is a bit unclear here), a “stone statue of a pagan deity”, and in general a woman, young or old. Of course, while the alternate meanings cannot be ignored, the main meaning for Baba Yaga’s name is “old woman”. Then comes “Yaga” and its variations, “Egi”, “Jedzi”, “Jedza”, which is more problematic. In Fasmer’s etymology dictionary, he thinks it comes from the proto-Slagic (j)ega, meaning “wrath” or “horror”. Most dictionaries take back this etymology, and consider it a mix of the term baba, старуха (staruha), “old woman”, and of яга, злая (zlaia), “evil, pain, torment, problem”. So it would mean злая женщина (zlaja zhenshhina), “the woman of evil”, “the tormenting woman”. However this interpretation of Yaga as “pain” is deemed restrictive by the author of this article.

Aleksandr Afanassiev, in his “Poetic concepts of the Slavs on nature”, proposed a different etymology coming from the anskrit “ahi”, meaning “snake”. Thus, Baba Yaga would be originally a snake-woman similar to the lamia and drangua of the Neo-hellenistic fairytales and Albanian beliefs. Slavic folklore seems to push towards this direction since sometimes Baba Yaga is the mother of three demon-like daughters (who sometimes can be princesses, with one marrying the hero), and of a son-snake that will be killed by the hero. Slovakian fairytales tale back the link with snakes, as they call the sons of Jezi-Baba “demon snakes”. On top of that, an incantation from the 18th century to banish snakes talks about Yaga Zmeia Bura (Yaga the brown snake): “I will send Yaga the brown snake after you. Yaga the brown snake will cover your wound with wool.” According to Polivka, “jaza” is a countryside term to talk about a mythical snake that humans never see, and that turns every seven years into a winged seven-headed serpent. With all that being said, it becomes clear (at least to the author of this article) that one of the versions of Yaga is the drakaina, the female dragon with human characteristics. These entities are usually depicted with the head and torso of women, but the lower body of a snake. They are a big feature of the mythologies of the Eurasian lands - in France the most famous example is Mélusine, the half-snake half-woman queen, whose story was recorded between the end of the 14th century and the beginning of the 15th by Jean d’Arras (in his prose novel La Noble Histoire de Lusignan) and by Couldrette (in the poetic work Roman de Mélusine). For some scholars, these hybrid womans are derived from the Mother Goddess figure, and by their physical duality manifest their double nature of benevolence-malevolence, aggressor-donator.

If we come back to the incantation of Efimenko, we notice that the 77 daughters of Baba Yaga each have a “metly”, a “broom”. This object isn’t just the broom Baba Yaga uses alongside her mortar and pestle to travel around - it is also the main attribute of the witches, and the witch with her broom is a motif prevalent in numerous textes of Western Europe between the 15th and 16th centuries. Already in medieval literature examples of this topic could be found: in the French works “Perceforest” and “Champion des dames”, the old witches are described flyng on staffs or brooms, turning into birds, to either eat little children or go to witches’ sabbaths. Baba Yaga travels similarly: Afanassiev noted that she goes to gathering of witches while riding a mortar, with a pestle in one hand and a broom in the other. Federowsky noted that Baba Yaga was supposed to be either the “aunt” or the “mistress” of all witches. Baba Yaga herself in often called an old witch, numerous dictionaries explaining her name as meaning старуха-колдунья (staruha-koldun’ja), which literaly means old witch. Even more precisely, she is an old witch who kidnaps children in order to devour their flesh and drink their blood. We find back in other countries of Europe this myth of the “bogeywoman cannibal-witch”, especially dangerous towards newborns and mothers, as the “strix” or “strige”. According to Polivka, in his 1922 article about the supernatural in Slovakian fairytales, the ježibaba is the same being as the striga/strige. And he also ties these two beings to the bosorka, a creature found in Slovakia, in eastern Moravia, and in Wallachia, and which means originally a witch or a sorceress, but that in folklore took a role similar to the striga or ježibaba.

Vinogradova, in a study of the figure of the bosorka, described this Carpathian-Ukrainian witch as a being that attacked people in different ways. For example she stole the milk from the cows - a recurring theme of witches tales in Western Europe (mentionned by Luther in his texts as to one of the reasons witches had to be put to death), but that also corresponds to a tale of the Baba Yaga where she is depicted as sucking the milk out of the breast of a young woman (an AT 519 tale, “The Strong Woman as Bride”). In conclusion, the striga-bosorka is clearly related to the Slovakian version of Baba Yaga, the Ježibaba. The Ježibaba, a figure of Western Slavic folklore, also appears as numerous local variations. She is Jenzibaba, Jendzibaba, Endzibaba, Jazibaba, and in Poland she is either “jedza-baba” (the very wicked woman) or “jedzona, jedza-baba, jagababa” (witch). However this Slovakian witch isn’t always evil: in three fairytales, Ježibaba is a helper bringing gifts, appearing as a trio of sisters (with a clear nod to the three fatae, the three moirae or the three fairies of traditional fairytales) who help the hero escape an ogre who hunts him. They help him by gifting him with food, and then lending him their magical dogs. And in other farytale, the three sisters help a lazy girl spin threads.

In this last case, Ježibaba is tied to the action of spinning. It isn’t a surprise as Baba Yaga herself is often depicted spinning wool or owning a loom ; and several times she asks the young girls who arrive at her home to spin for her (AT 480, The Spinning-Woman by the Spring) - AND in some variations, her isba doesn’t stand on chicken legs, but rather on a spindle. This relationship between the female supernatural figure (fairy or witch) and the action of spinning is very typical of European folkore. In several Eastern Slavic traditions, the figure of Paraskeva-Piatnitsa (or Pyatnitsa-Prascovia, who is often related to Baba Yaga), is an important saint, personification of Friday and protectress of crops - and she punishes women who dare spin on the fifth day of the week. Sometimes it is a strong punishment: she will deform the fingers of the woman who dares spin the friday, which relates her to the naroua (or naroue, narova, narove) a nocturnal fairy of Isère and Savoie in France, who manifests during the Twelve Days of Christmas and enters home to punish those that work at midnight or during holidays - especially spinners and lacemakers. In a Savoie folktales she is said to beat up lacemakers until almost killing them, hits them on the fingers with her wand, beats them up with a beef’s leg or a beef’s nerves, and attacks children with both a cow’s leg in one hand and a beef’s leg in another. These bans are also found in the Greek version of Piatnitsa: Agia Paraskevi, Saint Paraskevi, who punishes the spinners that work on Thursday’s nights, during Friday, or during the feast-day of the Saint (26 of July). But her punishment is to force them to eat the flesh of a corpse. Finally, we find the link between spinning and the demonic woman/witch/fairy through the Romanian cousin of Baba Yaga - Baba Cloanta, who says that she is ugly because she spinned too much during her life. And it all ties back to the “Perceforest” tale mentionned above - in the text, the witches, described as old matrons disheveled and bearded, not only fly around on staffs and little wooden chairs, but also by riding on spindles and reels/spools.

Another typical example of “demonic woman” often compared and related to Baba Yaga is the character known as “Perchta” in her Alpine-Germanic form, Baba Pehtra in Slovenia, or Pechtrababajaga according to a Russian neologism. The name Perchta, Berchta, Percht, Bercht comes from the old high German “beraht”, of the Old German “behrt” and of the root “berhto-”, which is tied to the French “brillant” and the English “brilliant”. So Berchta, or Perchta, would mean “the brilliant one”, “the bringer of light”. Why such a positive name for a malevolent character?

In 1468, the Thesaurus pauperum, written by John XXI, compares two fairies with a cult in medieval France, “Satia” and “dame Abonde”, with another mythological woman: Perchta. The Thesaurus pauperum describes “another type of superstition and idolatry” which consists in leaving at night recipients with food and drinks, destined to ladies that are supposed to visit the house - dame Abonde or Satia, that is also known as “dame Percht” or “Perchtum”, who comes with her whole “troop”. In exchange of finding these open recipients, the ladies will thenfill them regularly, bringing with them riches and abundance. “Many believed that it is during the holy nights, between the birth of Jesus and the night of the Epiphany, that these ladies, led by Perchta, visit homes”, and thus during these nights, people leave on the table bread, chesse, milk, meat, eggs, wine and water, alongside spoons, plates, cups, knives, so that when lady Perchta and her group visit the house, they find everything prepared for them, and bless the house in return with prosperity. So the text cannot be more explict: peasants prepared meals at night for the visit of lady Perchta, it is the custom of the “mensas ornare”, to prepare the table in honor of a lady visiting houses at night. If she finds offerings - cuttlery, drinks, food, especially sugary food - she rewards the house with riches. Else, she punishes the inhabitants of the home.

But Perchta doesn’t just punish for this missing meal. Several stories also describe Perchta looking everywhere in the house she visits, checking every corner to spot any “irregularity”. The most serious of those sins is tied to spinning: the woman of the house is forced to stop her work before midnight, or to not work on a holiday - especially an important holiday of the Twelve Days, such as Christmas or the Epiphany. If the woman is spotted working ; or if Perchta doesn’t found the house cleaned up and tidied up ; or if the flax is not spinned, the goddess (Perchta) will punish the woman. This is why she was called “Spinnstubenfrau”, “the woman of the spinning room”. It is also a nickname of a German spirit known as Berchta - as Spinnstubenfrau, she takes the shape of an old witch who appears in people’s houses during the winter months. She is the guardian spirit of barns and of the spinning-room, who always check work is properly and correctly done. And her punishment was quite brutal: she split open the belly of her victim, and replaces the entrails with garbage. Thomas Hill in his article “Perchta the Belly Slitther” sees in this punishment the remnants of old chamanic-initiation rite ; which would tie to it an analysis done by Andrey Toporkov concerning the “cooking of the child” by Baba Yaga in the storyes of the type AT 327 C or F. In these tales a boy (it might be Ivashka, Zhikharko, Filyushka...) arrives at Baba Yag’s isba, and the witch asks her daughter to cook the boy. The boy makes sure he can’t be pushed in the oven by taking a wrong body posture, and convinces the girl to show him how he should enter the oven. Baba Yaga shows him to do so, enters the oven, and the boy finds the door behind her, trapping Baba Yaga in the fire. According to Toporkov, we can find behind this story an old ritual according to which a baby was placed three times in an oven to give it strength. (The article reminds that Vladimir Propp did highlight the function of Baba Yaga as an “initiation rite” in fairytales - and how Propp considered that Baba Yaga is a caricature of the leader of the rite of passage in primitive societies). And finally, in a tale of Yakutia, the Ega-Baba is described as a chaman, invoked to resurrect a killed person. The author of the article concludes that the first link between Yaga and Perchta is that they are witches/goddesses that can be protectress, but have a demonic/punishment-aspect that can be balanced by a benevolent/initiation-aspect. But it doesn’t stop here.

The Twelve Days are celebrations in honor of Perchta, practiced in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Still today, “Percht” is a term used to call masked person who haunt at night the villages of High-Styria or the land of Salzbourg: they visit houses while wearing masks, clothed in tatters and holding brooms. During these celebrations, young people either dress up as beautiful girls in traditional costumes (the schöne Perchten), either as ugly old woman (die schiache Perchten). These last ones are inspired by the numerous depictions of Perchta as an old woman, or sometimes a human-animal hybrid, with revolting trait - most prominent of them being the feet of a goose. This could explain in Serbia the existence of a Baba Jaga/Baba Jega with a chicken feet, or even the chicken feet carrying the isba of Baba Yaga. This deformation also recalls a figure of the French region of Franche-Comté, Tante Arie (Aunt Arie), another supernatural woman of the Twelve Days tied to spinning. The second most prominent trait of the “old Perchta” is an iron nose - already in the 14th century, Martin of Amberg wrote about “Percht mit der eisnen nasen”, “Percht with an iron nose”. Yaga also sometimes hag an iron nose, and this is why she was associated with other figures of Carpathian or Western Ukraine folklores - such as Zalizna baba or Zaliznonosa baba, the “old woman of iron”, who lives in a palace standing on duck legs ; there is also Vasorru Baba, the iron-nosed woman of Hungaria. Or Huld - another Spinsstubenfrau, often related to Perchta, but who has more sinister connotations. Huld has an enormous nose according to Luther, and Grimm notes that sometimes she appears as a witch with one very long tooth. This last characteristic if also recurring in Eastern Europe’s mythologies: in Serbia Gvozdenzuba (Iron Teeth) is said to burn the bad spinners ; and Baba Yaga is sometimes described with one or several long teeth, often in iron. But it is another aspect of the myths of Huld, also known as Holda or Frau Holle, that led the scholar Potebnja to relate her to Perchta and Baba Yaga.

According to German folk-belief, Huld (or often Perchta) shakes her pillowcases filled with feathers, which causes the snow or the frost ; and thunder rumbles when she moves her linen spool. It is also said that the Milky Way was spinned with her spinning wheel - and thus she controls the weather. In a very similar function, the Baba Jaudocha of Western Ukraine (also called Baba Dochia, Odochia, Eudochia, Dochita, Baba Odotia, a name coming from the Greek Eudokia) is often associated with Baba Yaga, and she also creates snow by moving either her twelve pillows, or her fur coat. According to Afanassiev, the Bielorussians believed that behind the thunderclouds, you could find Baba Yaga with her broom, her mortar, her magic carpet, her flying horses or her seven-league boots. For the Slovakians, Yaga could create bad or beautiful weather. In Russia, she is sometimes called ярою, бурою, дикою , “jaroju, buroju, dikoju”, a name connected to thunderstorms. Sometimes Yaga and her daughters appear as flying snakes - and the полет змея, the “polet smeja”, the “flight of the snake” was believed to cause storms, thunder and earthquakes. In a popular folk-song, Yaga is called the witch of winter: “Sun, you saw the old Yaga, Baba Yaga, the winter witch, this ferocious woman, she escaped spring, she fled away from the just, she brought cold in a bag, she shook cold on earth, she tripped and rolled down the hill.” Finally, for Potebnia, the duality and ambiguity of Baba Yaga, who steals away and yet gives, can be related to the duality of the cloud, who fertilizes the land in summer, and brings rain in winter. Baba Yaga is a solar goddess as much as a chthonian goddess - she conjointly protects births, and yet is a psychopomp causing death.

It seems, through these examples, that Baba Yaga is a goddess - or to be precise, a spirit of nature. Sometimes she is a leshachikha, the wife of the “leshii”, the spirit of the forest, and she herself is a spirit of the woods, living alone in an isolated isba deep in the thick forests. She is thus often paralleled with Muma Padurii, the Mother of the Forest of Romanian folklore, who lives in a hut above rooster’s legs, surrounded by a fence covered in skulls, and who steals children away (in tales of the type AT 327 A, Hansel and Gretel). This aspect of Baba Yaga as a spirit of the forest, and more generally as a “genius loci” (spirit of the place) also makes her similar to another very important figure of Slavic folklore: Полудница (Poludnica), the “woman of noon”. She is an old woman with long thick hair, wearing rags, and who lives in reeds and nettles ; or she can rather be a very beautiful maiden dressed in white, who punishes those that work at noon. She especially appears in rye fields, and protects the harvest. In other tales, she rather sucks away the life-force of the fields - which would relate her to some stories where Baba Yaga runs through rye fields (either with a scarf of her head, or with her hair flowing behind her). Poludnica can also look like Baya Yaga: Roger Caillois, in his article “Spectres de midi dans la démonologie slave” (Noon wraiths in the Slavic demonology), mentionned that Poludnica was a liminal deity of fields, to which one chanted полудница во ржи, покажи рубежи, куда хошь побѣжи !, “Poludnicaa in the rye - show the limits - and go where you want.” This liminal aspects reminds of an aspect of Baba Yaga as a genius loci, tied to a specific place that she defends. It is an aspect found as Baba Yaga, Baba Gorbata, Polydnitsa and Pozhinalka: Baba Yaga is either a benevolent spirit that protects the place and the harvest ; either she is a malevolent sprit that absorbs the life-force of the harvest and destroys it. This is why she must be chased away, and thus it explains a Slovanian song that people sing during the holiday of Jurij (the feast day of Saint George), the 23rd of April, an agrarian holiday for the resurrection of nature: Zelenga Jurja (Green George), we guide, butter and eggs we ask, the Baba Yaga we banish, the Spring we spread!”. This chant was tied with a ritual sacrifice: the mannequin of an old woman had to be burned. As such, Baba Yaga and her avatars, was a spirt that had to be hunted down or banned - which is a custom found all over Europe, but especially in Slavic Europe. At the end of the harvest, several magical formulas were used to push away or cut into pieces the “old woman” ; and we can think back of Frazer’s work on the figure of the “Hag” (which in the English languages means as much an old woman as a malevolent spirit), who is herself a dual figure. In a village of Styria, the Mother of wheat, is said to be dressed in white and to be born from the last wheat bundle. She can be seen at midnight in wheat fields, that she crosses to fertilize ; but if she is angry against a farmer, she will dry up all of his wheat. But then the old woman must be sacrificed - just like in the feast of Jurij.

The author concludes that the “folkloric” aspect of Baba Yaga stays relatively unknown in the Western world and the non-russophone lands. The most detailed and complete work the author could find about it is Andreas Johns’ book “Baba Yaga: The Ambiguous Mother and Witch of the Russian Folktale”. The author of the article tried to prove that, as Johns said, the Baba Yaga is fundamentaly ambiguous - at the same time a kidnaping witch, a psychopomp, a cannibal, a protectress of birth, a guardian of places, a spirit of nature and harvests... And that she is part of an entire web and system of demon-feminine figures that create a mythology ensemble with common characteristic - very present in Eastern Europe, but still existing on the continent as a whole.

#the yaga journal #baba yaga #slavic folklore #eastern europe folklore #european folklore #perchta #fairies #fairy folklore #demonology #demons #witches

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wickedsrest-rp · 5 months

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Name: Zofia Kowalska Species: Vampire Occupation: Former Antiques Dealer Age: 315 Years Old (Looks about 26) Played By: Grace Face Claim: Matilda De Angelis

"I’ll build myself and my world anew from burnt and broken pieces, and I'll fashion them into something shining and glorious."

Zofia Kowalska had always wanted more from life. She dreamed of parties and jewels, castles and crowns. She loved the night because it hid what was true. She could stay in bed in the forgiving shadows, convincing herself that she would wake the next day living in splendor. She would curl up with that dream and try to will it into existence, until her enemy the sun started to creep its way over the horizon to remind herself her life was no fairy tale.

Zofia grew up in Gdansk, youngest child of Milos, a cobbler, and his wife Izolda. The couple didn’t have enough money to pay another dowry, and all of her siblings had earned their share. Zofia would simply have to set aside her childish fantasies and grow up. Still determined to enjoy some worldly comforts, Zofia decided if she couldn’t be the one wearing the pretty dresses, at least she could be near them. At the age of 16 she set out to attempt to work her way up in the households of the local nobility. After years of working as a maid, she finally became a lady’s maid to Karlonia Branicka. The lady was famous for her parties, and even more famously well connected. Dignitaries from all over found themselves in Karolina’s parlor. Zofia had long been considered a spinster, but it couldn’t possibly hurt to look at the beautiful strangers the noblewoman had collected over the years. At one party in particular, a new addition to Karolina’s menagerie of friends captivated Zofia. She’d been instructed by her mistress to see to the Du Pont’s every need, and Zofia was all too eager to please. Though she was surprised to find Madame Seraphine Du Pont seemed to be just as fascinated with her as Zofia was with the woman and her companions. “A pretty thing like you should not be a mere servant, ma colombe.” The woman had said, petting Zofia on the cheek. “Wouldn’t you like to be so much more?” Hearing her dream spelled out for her, Zofia nodded. “Yes,” She had said. “More than anything I’d like to be like you.”

The next day, Zofia Kowalska was reported dead. And yet she’d never felt more alive.

Zofia Du Pont never wanted for anything. When she had arrived at the Du Pont clan’s chateau in the Loire Valley in France, she felt as if she’d stepped into one of her dreams. It was easy to forget that she no longer needed normal food when her new form of sustenance was poured out for her in crystal goblets and fine china tea cups. Seraphine and Adrien, Seraphine’s consort, as well as their ‘son’ Henri, taught her everything she needed to know. To unsuspecting humans, she was always presented as Sofie Du Pont, Adrien’s distant cousin. Zofia learned that being a Du Pont meant experiencing life as it was meant to be lived. Operas, ballets, and art galleries- the most exquisite fashions and perfumes- nothing was too good for the Du Ponts. The revelries went on for centuries. Sofie saw the world, and played with it. From spectacles such as seeing the Eiffel tower light up for the first time, to pretending to be the long lost duchess of a notable Russian family on a dare from Henri, Sofie Du Pont did it all. So when her new family wanted to join some of the Du Pont clan that had made their way to America, why would she have said no?

The United States at the dawn of a new century was a whirlwind for Sofie. She barely noticed the Depression or the onset of another World War- it was hard to when she was still thriving off the high that was the twenties and still enjoying the luxuries of being on the Du Pont bank roll. She didn’t notice, as the decades passed, that more was going wrong. Every day they received news that more of their clan had gone missing, or turned up dead. She didn’t start to pay attention until Seraphine and Adrien were killed by a slayer and Henri went missing. And by then it was too late.

Alone for the first time in her existence, she had made her way by selling antiques, and had started to settle into life in Wicked’s Rest. She’d started to find a home for herself, to make a new family. Things were finally looking up again. A shame that’s when she stepped into a trap.

Being one of the last survivors left those hunting her clan to eradication with the brilliant thought that she might be in contact with the others. Holding her hostage for months, they tried to extract the information they thought she had from her by any means necessary. Then one day, they made a mistake. They left only one person on guard. In a moment of clarity from the fogginess of her mind, Zofia managed to escape. Now, she’s more determined than ever to finish the hunters off, and to create a new clan for herself.

Character Facts:

Personality: Charming, focused, loyal, captivating, driven, obsessive, vain, forgetful, impulsive, detached

She once pretended to be the long lost Grand Duchess Anastasia as a dare from Henri

Her birthday is June 3rd 1709, making her a Gemini Sun, Aries Moon.

She worked for a while as an independent art broker and antiquities dealer. It’s very easy to sell old works of art when you’ve been collecting them for centuries. She rented a small space as her office in Nightfall Grove, and called the business Dorian Gray and Associates (she thinks it's hilarious, even if she was the only ‘associate’ the business had)

She’s gone by many last names over the centuries, but her first name has always been Zofia, Sofie, or some variation upon that.

Before it was driven to near extinction, she was a member of the Fleur De Sang clan, a vampire clan in France. The Du Pont line of the clan was a particularly prominent one, and their deaths/disappearances sent many scattering into hiding.

She has always been a patron of the arts, whether it’s performance art, sculpture, paintings- you name it, she supports it. One thing that she’s held on to over the years that she probably shouldn’t have because it’s INCREDIBLY conspicuous is a portrait of her done by Madame Le Brun. The painting is over two centuries old and belongs in a museum and not in Sofie’s apartment. But there it is. Hanging in her living room.

#bio #taken #vampire #taken vampire #undead #taken undead #matilda de angelis #lestat

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duckprintspress · 1 year

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Celebrate World Folktales and Fables Week with 10 of Our Favorite Folktale Collections

This week, March 19th to 25th, is World Folktales and Fables Week! Duck Prints Press is celebrating with two blog posts: today’s, which focuses on the folktales, fables, and myths that influenced us as creators, and tomorrow’s, about our favorite folktale-inspired fiction (queer and otherwise).

Love folktales and fables? Join us now and learn about the ones we love – some you may know, some you may not!

D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths by Ingri d’Aulaire & Edgar Parin d’Aulaire (an inspiration for Shadaras)

The first book that comes to mind is D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths (I had to look up the title, but the cover is burned into my memory). While there may be other collections of fairytales and folklore that struck me, this is one of the first ones I read, and it set the stage for my love of mythology in general.

The True Story of the Three Little Pigs! by Jon Scieszka & Lane Smith (an inspiration for Veronica Sanders)

I remember being really inspired by the genre of “a well-known story told from a different perspective” after reading the Jon Scieszka/Lane Smith books in 2nd grade, like The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. I always really liked thinking about folktales and fables from the POV of the “villain.”

Folktale-Inspired Disney Films (an inspiration for Adrian Harley)

I was a Disney-loving child of the 90s, so I am still unpacking the ways that shaped my view of folk stories, stories as a whole, and the world—and reconciling the positive ways these stories shaped me vs. the harms of the Disney corporation.

The Onion Girl (and other stories) by Charles de Lint (an inspiration for Anonymous)

He did an amazing job of blending American and European folklore with ordinary life in all its highs and lows. I don’t know if I could point to a specific story that’s retelling any one folktale, but I can absolutely point to the author as a whole for his folkloric style and tender exploration of magic, queerness, and being outcast. He helped invent the Mythic Fiction subgenre. The Onion Girl lives in my head rent-free.

Folktales of the Amur: Stories from the Russian Far East by Dmitri Nagishkin (an inspiration for Nina Waters)

A collection of eastern Russian folktales that really had a huge impact on me. 30+ years on from when I read them, I honestly couldn’t relate a single one of the stories, but they burrowed so deep into my psyche that when I imagine “folktales that really mattered to me” the first image that comes to mind is the cover. The art throughout the book is just absolutely gorgeous.

The Rose-Beauty – a Turkish Fairy Tale (an inspiration for Alessa Riel)

This is a Turkish fairytale that impressed me because it was cruel even for a fairytale. It‘s about a young woman who is blessed from birth to grow roses in her hair, cry pearls and grow grass wherever she walks and the cruel fate she is dealt because people are jealous of her gifts. It has a happy ending but only just.

A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz (an inspiration for Sebastian Marie)

It had a HUGE influence on me as a kid, for two main reasons. One, the events of a lot of European fairytales are told as happening to the same two kids and their parents, which creates a really interesting story structure. Two, it’s unabashedly mean and gory and cruel and well, dark and grim. It says that sometimes people are terrible and sometimes bad things happen to decent people. It’s one of the things that made me want to write fairy tales, or at least stories that are a bit gruesome and meant to be told to children.

The Swan-Maiden – a fairy tale (an inspiration for Alessa Riel)

This is a variant of the selkie tale as far as I can tell, only that the women don‘t turn into seals but beautiful swans. It was the version of the lore I first encountered and the unfairness of the women being forced to marry their captor and abuser and then also being cursed for abandoning the children these men forced onto them always resonated deeply with me.

The Blue Light by The Brothers Grimm (an inspiration for Alessa Riel)

In this fairytale a veteran soldier is unjustly treated by the king and then a witch sets him three challenges. The third one is getting her a blue light from a deep well. He refuses to give her the light and she drops him into the well along with the light. It turns out the light can fulfill wishes. Up to this part the veteran looks like a sympathetic person, but he uses those wishes to have the princess dragged to his room three nights in a row to do his bidding against her will. He is finally found out and sentenced to death for this transgression but manages to escape that fate by using the blue light and he gets the kingdom and the princess to boot. I always found this supremely unfair.

Egyptian Mythology (an inspiration for Dei Walker)

I think one of the first books of folktales, legends, or fairy tales I can remember reading repeatedly is a copy of Egyptian myths and legends I used to get out of my local public library when I was young. It was already an old edition in the 1980s and its pages were yellowed, but I would borrow it regularly and lose myself in the stories of life and (un)death along the Nile.

What are some folktales and fables that have inspired YOU? We’d love to hear about them, and maybe find some classical stories to add to our To Be Read piles!

Who we are: Duck Prints Press LLC is an independent publisher based in New York State. Our founding vision is to help fanfiction authors navigate the complex process of bringing their original works from first draft to print, culminating in publishing their work under our imprint. We are particularly dedicated to working with queer authors and publishing stories featuring characters from across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. Love what we do? Want to make sure you don’t miss the announcement for future giveaways? Sign up for our monthly newsletter and get previews, behind-the-scenes information, coupons, and more!

Want to support the Press, read about us behind-the-scenes, learn about what’s coming down the pipeline, get exclusive teasers, and claim free stories? Back us on Patreon or ko-fi monthly!

#duck prints press #rec list #folktales #fables #myths #mythology #world folktales and fables week

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fictionadventurer · 1 year

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A Ranking of all the Cinderella Retellings I’ve Read

(Completed via a very unscientific method where I try to balance between “I liked it” and “It was well-written.” Your mileage may vary and my ranking would probably vary if I made this list again.)

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine: The Gold Standard. The retelling that started it all for me. Manages to twist the fairy tale (even dislike some parts of it) while remaining true to the heart of it. A+ worldbuilding, A+++ ending.

A Cinder’s Tale by Stephanie Ricker (in the Five Glass Slippers collection): A sci-fi retelling where Cinderella works a highly-dangerous space mining job. Fantastic worldbuilding with a wonderful ensemble cast.

Bella at Midnight by Diane Stanley: Cinderella meets Joan of Arc. Has a fantastic multi-first-person-narrator structure. Some of the fairy tale plot points are an awkward fit, but I still enjoyed it.

Before Midnight by Cameron Dokey: A fairly basic retelling with a fantastic autumnal atmosphere that tempts me to reread it every year, even though the story’s rather basic and the ending’s too convenient.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer: The famous science-fantasy retelling. There are things I don’t like about the series, but this first book is a solid retelling with some good twists. I like it less than several others on this list, but it’s too solid to rank it much lower.

The Stepsister and the Slipper by Nina Clare: If Georgette Heyer wrote fantasy. Cinderella’s spunky stepsister and a roguish hero manipulate each other in competing schemes. The worldbuilding’s sketchy and the ending’s very rushed, but I had too much fun to care too much.

Soot and Slipper by Kate Stradling: Fantastic twist, adorable relationship between Cinderella and her prince, a sweet and melancholy atmosphere, and an underwhelming ending.

The Reluctant Godfather by Allison Tebo: Wodehouse meets Cinderella, starring a very grumpy fairy baker. Gets a bit too slapstick, but its snarky, silly vibe is a breath of fresh air in a YA-romance-dominated retelling world.

Traitor’s Masque by Kenley Davidson: I love the Ruritanian atmosphere and the political tension between the two brothers, even though it’s at least 33% too wordy and the plot makes less sense the more you think about it.

The Windy Side of Care by Rachel Heffington (from the Five Glass Slippers anthology): Cinderella meets Shakespeare. Has a strong voice, a heroine with a ton of spunk, and a fun “fairy godfather”.

Fated by Kaylin Lee: Great magical-1930s worldbuilding. The characters were also solid. The plot was a bit too long and too convenient at points. But the worldbuilding is the draw here.

The Earl of Highmott Hall by Nina Clare: Another Regency fairy tale by this author. Probably technically better-done than The Stepsister and the Slipper but I found it less fun.

Silver Woven in my Hair by Shirley Rousseau Murphy: Short and sweet little book with minimal magic and a lot of charm, but I don’t remember much about it anymore.

Midnight’s Curse by Tricia Mingerink: Set in a European-castle + American frontier setting that’s unique (even if I can’t quite decide if it’s cultural appropriation), with some interesting twists and themes.

The Spinner and the Slipper by Camryn Lockhart: Mashes up Cinderella and Rumpelstiltskin with just a touch of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. If I remember right, it did a decent job of it. The loving competition between Auberon and Titania was fun.

Letters by Cinderlight + Wishes by Starlight by Jacque Stevens: A Russian-ish retelling with some fantastic ideas (parts of it reminded me of Ella Enchanted) and unfortunately shaky execution. If it had been better written, it may have been one of my favorites.

Just Ella by Margaret Peterson Haddix: I was pleasantly surprised by parts of this (mostly Ella’s character arc of learning to accept help) and hated other parts (the villains were completely unbelievable strawman caricatures). In the balance, I’ll stick it here.

Mask of Scarlet by Sarah Pennington: Set in a very unique and very complicated 1920s Chicago + Iceland world. Of the series, this was the book where I was best able to understand the worldbuilding, and I think the fairy tale was decently done, but even though I read it earlier this year, I remember almost nothing specific.

Princess of Glass by Jessica Day George: This one’s hard to rank because I think it was decently written, but I remember so little about it. I’ll stick it here, for whatever that’s worth.

What Eyes Can See by Elisabeth Brown (from the Five Glass Slippers anthology): Sweet, magic-free Regency-ish retelling with a very shy Cinderella and a nice stepfamily. It’s a bit basic, but it’s grown on me over time.

The Moon-Master’s Ball by Clare Diane Thompson (from the Five Glass Slippers anthology): Very strong autumnal and slightly spooky atmosphere. I remember liking this one well enough, but can’t remember much else about it.

The Other Cinderella by Beka Gremikova: This treats Fairy Tales as an external worldbuilding thing (people are cast in fated roles, etc.), which I usually hate, but there’s a twist at the end that impressed me.

A Gown of Spider Silk by A.G. Marshall: Short story retelling with one twist that’s kind of fun, but not quite my thing.

Another Midnight by Amanda Marin: Short-story Cinderella involving a time-loop. I remember almost nothing about it, but I think it was decent enough.

Cinders and Blades by Amanda Kaye: Short story Russian-influenced retelling. I remember almost nothing except that it disappointed me.

Slipper in the Snow by Alice Ivinya: Another short story. I remember even less about this one.

Rook di Goo by Jenni Sauer: I was promised Cinderella meets Firefly. I got an ensemble cast I didn’t connect with, worldbuilding I didn’t understand (what do they even do with their spaceship?), and a fairy tale that felt shoehorned-in.

The Stepsister’s Tale by Tracy Barrett: I don’t remember much except that I found it disappointing.

Broken Glass by Emma Clifton (from the Five Glass Slippers anthology): Mildly steampunk retelling imagining that the slipper fits the wrong girl. The humor here just isn’t my cup of tea, and the ending doesn’t make sense.

The Coronation Ball by Melanie Cellier: Short, shmaltzy and basic. There’s nothing that terrible about it, but for some reason there’s a lingering distaste that makes me recoil from it.

Cinderella (As If You Didn’t Already Know the Story) by Barbara Ensor: Written for lower middle-grade. One of those fairy tale retellings that thinks making anachronistic references is clever. It’s not.

Happily by Chauncey Rogers: Ugh. There’s one really dumb twist to the fairy tale that’s so dumb that it makes me angry just thinking about it, regardless of what else may be in the story (I don’t remember much else).

Mechanica by Betsy Cornwall: Double ugh. It had such a promising premise, but I hated so many things about this worldview that it gets the bottom ranking forever.

#fairy tale retellings #cinderella #fairy tales #i've wanted to make this list for a long while #my memories of most are too vague to be useful #but this longing has now been satisfied

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theodoradove · 6 months

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SF Silent Film Festival winter program!

Saturday, December 2, Castro Theatre

More information, tickets and passes at silentfilm.org

10:00 AM

OF MICE AND MEN (AND CATS AND CLOWNS)

A collection of animated shorts, 1908–1928

Some of the most creative films from the silent era came out of an inkwell! Our collection includes animated shorts from 1908–1928, films that outshine much of what followed. For sheer audacity and pure joy, these films by cartoon masters Including the Fleischer brothers, Pat Sullivan, and Walt Disney, can’t be beat!

Fantasmagorie (1908, d. Émile Cohl)

How a Mosquito Operates (1912, d. Winsor McKay)

Adam Raises Cain (1922, d. Tony Sarg)

Amateur Night on the Ark (1923, d. Paul Terry)

Bed Time (1923, d. Dave and Max Fleischer)

Felix Grabs His Grub (1923, d. Pat Sullivan)

A Trip to Mars (1924, d. Dave and Max Fleischer)

Vacation (1924, d. Dave and Max Fleisher)

Alice’s Balloon Race (1926, d. Walt Disney)

Felix the Cat in Sure Locked Homes (1928, d. Pat Sullivan)

Live music by WAYNE BARKER and NICHOLAS WHITE

12:00 NOON

THE WILDCAT (Die Bergkatze)

1921, d. Ernst Lubitsch

Pola Negri, Victor Janson, Paul Heidemann

Before director Ernst Lubitsch left Germany to ply his famous ‘Touch’ in Hollywood, he made a series of comedies that gave hints at what was to come. The Wildcat is his last German comedy and his most riotously zany. Subtitled ‘A Grotesque in Four Acts,’ Wildcat makes use of extravagant set design and eccentric frame shapes that lend a surrealistic edge to its antic energy. Pola Negri’s Rischka leads a gang of mountain bandits who ambush Lieutenant Alexis (Paul Heidemann) on his way to the local fortress, leaving him pant-less (and smitten) on the ice. Film writer John Gillett called the film “both an anti-militarist satire and a wonderful fairy tale.”

Live music by MONT ALTO MOTION PICTURE ORCHESTRA

2:15 PM

THE EAGLE

1925, d. Clarence Brown

Rudolph Valentino, Vilma Banky, Louise Dresser

Clarence Brown's rousing film displays a perfect blend of elements—romance, swashbuckling, a modicum of humor, and the great Rudolph Valentino! Not to mention the splendid production design by William Cameron Menzies and gorgeous camerawork by George Barnes. After Valentino's Russian lieutenant rejects the amorous attentions of Catherine the Great (Louise Dresser), she orders him arrested. Instead, he flees and becomes a masked avenger intent on righting the wrongs visited upon his father and his countrymen by loutish nobleman Kryilla Trouekouroff (James A. Marcus). But the nobleman has a beautiful daughter (Vilma Banky)...

Live music by WAYNE BARKER

4:15 PM

PAVEMENT BUTTERFLY (Großstadtshmetterling)

Germany/Great Britain, 1928/1929, d. Richard Eichberg

Gaston Jacquet, Anna May Wong

Luminous Anna May Wong goes from a fan-dancing carnival act to an artist garret and finally to the French Riviera where she accompanies a wealthy art patron around Monte Carlo, draped in haute couture. Wong left Hollywood in search of roles more fitting her talents than the racially-circumscribed ones at home. This Weimar title showcases her magnetism—when Wong is onscreen, you can't look away.

Live music by the SASCHA JACOBSEN ENSEMBLE

7:00 PM

SAFETY LAST!

1923, d. Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor

Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis

Harold Lloyd's bumpkin salesclerk comes up with a publicity stunt that will bring attention to his department store and earn him the money to marry his sweetheart—scale the 12-story building like a human fly! Shot in downtown Los Angeles, the stunt has given us one of the most iconic images of the silent era—Lloyd precariously hanging over the city street, dangling from a broken clock. James Agee wrote: "Each new floor is like a new stanza in a poem; and the higher and more horrifying it gets, the funnier it gets."

Live music by MONT ALTO MOTION PICTURE ORCHESTRA

9:00 PM

FORGOTTEN FACES

1928, d. Victor Schwertzinger

Clive Brook, William Powell, Olga Baclanova

Heliotrope Harry (Clive Brook) and Froggy (William Powell) are partners in crime—genteel armed robbery—at least until the cuckolded Harry commits an even bigger offense. Before Harry goes to prison, he leaves his baby girl on the doorstep of a wealthy couple to keep her out of the clutches of his no-good wife Lilly (Olga Baclanova) and tasks Froggy with keeping close tabs. But Froggy is no match for Lilly...

Live music by the SASCHA JACOBSEN ENSEMBLE

#silent film #san francisco silent film festival #sfsff #castro theatre #i've seen three of the five features but they're all ones i'm happy to see again #(especially safety last!!!!)#(with mont alto doing the accompaniment!!!)

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ceekbee · 8 months

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Vasilisa Romanenko (Russian/American, born 1987)

Yellow Oyster Mushrooms, 2022

Acrylic on canvas

16 × 12 in (40.6 × 30.5 cm)

Private collection

Vasilisa Romanenko is a New England-based illustrator, designer, and fine artist. Her artwork depicts the mystery, beauty, and fragility of nature through the use of botanical elements, intricate patterns, and animals. She sees her paintings as windows into a magical world, much like the one she enjoyed getting lost in as a child while reading fairy tales. The lush blooming gardens, birds, and insects in her work are all used to explore the human spirit and its connection to nature. Vasilisa's primary medium is acrylic on canvas, although she works with watercolor, ink, and digital mediums as well.

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themousefromfantasyland · 1 year

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The Creatures of Yuletide: Grandfather Frost, the Soviet Santa Claus

Grandfather Frost, or Ded Moroz, is a very peculiar character. Even with Soviet Union authorities looking down on Christmas traditions as pure bourgeois and religious propaganda, and initially looking down on him too for the same reasons, he rose in prominence as a symbol of the New Year festivities meant to replace Christmas and is to this day a symbol of Slavic holidays.

Grandfather Frost started his life as a snow demon in Slavic folklore, however, it's worth pointing out that before Christianity arrived the term had no negative connotations.

He was also called Morozko or Ded, and in this form, he appears in Russian Fairy Tales, a collection of tales collected by Alexander Afanasyev. In the story Morozko, or Father Frost, a little girl is abandoned by her wicked stepmother to die in the woods during the winter. Father Frost finds her there, and because the girl is polite and kind to him, he gives her a chest full of beautiful jewels and fine garments. When the greedy stepmother tries to do the same with her daughter in hopes the girl can get the same reward as her stepsister, Father Frost freezes her to death at the foot of the tree and carries her body back to her grief-stricken mother.

Some tales suggest he would kidnap children, and only return them when their parents provided him with gifts.

The character is from pre-Christian times, but under the Russian Orthodox Church, he was transformed.

By the end of the 19th century, Father Frost was a very popular character, appearing in operas and plays, but after the Soviet Revolution, by 1928, Soviet authorities declared Ded Moroz was "an ally of the priest and kulak",

On December 28, 1935, Pavel Postyshev, a Communist Party publicist and member of Joseph Stalin's inner circle, published a letter in Pravda, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in which he proposed to give Soviet children a return to “the atmosphere of fairytale and magic.” While the winter festival was rehabilitated, all religious references were removed. New Year's instead of Christmas became the main holiday, and Grandfather Frost became its symbol.

In 1998, the town of Veliky Ustyug in Vologda Oblast, Russia was declared the home of the Russian Ded Moroz by Yury Luzhkov, then Mayor of Moscow.

Now we need to talk about Snegurochka, the Snow Maiden, his granddaughter, and helper. She's inspired by a tragic character in Slavic fairy tales from the 19th century, where a snow doll comes to life and wants to experience the human world, only to end up melting as consequence.

In the play The Snow Maiden by Alexander Ostrovsky, she is the daughter of Ded Moroz and Весна-Красна, Spring Beauty. She wants to leave her parents behind and live in the human world, and her parents allow her to live as a peasant, arranging an adoption by two peasant parents. There she grows to like a shepherd named Lel, but her heart is unable to know love. Her mother takes pity and gives her this ability, but as soon as she falls in love, her heart warms and she melts.

Later this tale was adapted into an opera by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

And here's a Russian stop-motion adaptation of the story I found online.

youtube

In the late Russian Empire, Snegurochka was part of the Christmas celebrations, in the form of figurines to decorate the fir trees and as a character in children's pieces. When the New Year's celebration was allowed in 1935, she was included.

Usually, former members of the URSS had their variations of Grandfather Frost and the Snow Maiden. After the Soviet Union Collapsed in the early 1990s, people returned to their old customs. Today, Ded Moroz is mostly celebrated in Russia, having gone out of fashion in other countries. Ukraine seems to have shifted from Ded Moroz back to St. Nicholas. There were rumors that Ded Moroz imagery was discouraged by the authorities due to conflict with Russia, but the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture refuted this

@natache @ariel-seagull-wings @thealmightyemprex

#christmas #holiday season #The Creatures of Yuletide #ded moroz #Youtube

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ariel-seagull-wings · 2 years

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TOP 10 LIVE-ACTION FAIRY TALE MOVIES

@princesssarisa @faintingheroine @the-blue-fairie @amalthea9 @angelixgutz @sabugabr @superkingofpriderock @chansondefortunio @notyouraveragejulie @giuliettaluce @solevenus

Note: this is just a list of personal favourite live-action fairy tale movies, not a list of "what are the objective best fairy tale movies".

To make the list slightly organized and consistent, i setted up some basic rules:

1° They must have been theatrically released. Direct- to-Video or Made-for-TV releases, like the Hallmark Hall of Fame series, the Muppets Fairy Tale TV specials or Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, will not be counted here.

2° They must be adaptations of pre existing fairy tales, be they directly collected from oral tradition like the Brothers Grimm tales, or literary tales slightly inspired by elements of oral tradition, like the works of Andersen. Movie script original stories like Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal or adaptations of fantasy novels like Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan and Pinocchio will not be on the list.

Now that the rules are set, let's go onto the countdown.

10° Snow White and The Three Stooges (1961)

Got the tenth place on this list because of how much i love the found family dinamic developed between Snow White, the Prince and the Three Stooges (who got the role of the Seven Dwarfs)

09° Jak se budi princezny (1977)

Princess Ruzhenka is a very outspoken and charismatic encarnation of the princess Sleeping Beauty, and because of that her and the movie she stars in has winned my hearth.

08° The Glass Slipper (1955)

This is one of the early cinematic adaptations of the Cinderella tale that experimented with turning the supernatural elements more subtle, exploring a more grounded love story between the heroine and the Prince, wich would be a very influential aproach over later adaptations. The highlight are the performances of Leslie Caron as the strong tempered but vulnerable Ella and Estelle Winwood as the unconventionally wise Mrs. Toquet.

07° La Belle et la Bete (1946)

Probably the most historically influential fairy tale movie of all time, in his masterpiece Jean Cocteau tooked what was considered a simple morality tale about a woman preparing to marriage, and turned it into a study about the minds of two complex characters in search of deep connection and their place in the world

06° Three Wishes for Cinderella (1973)

The late Libuse Safrankova brought with her performance one of the most funny, adventurous energetic and sassy encarnations of Cinderella. This is her movie, where she gets to be a scrappy maid, a confident warrior, and am elegant damsel, all at once, and i forever will be glad of finding her.

05° The Scarlet Flower (1977)

This live action film adaptation of Sergey Aksakov's take on the 'Beast and Beauty' type of story is very unique in its exploration of the russian countryside and its folklore, the plant inspired design of the Beast, and in its slow paced storytelling that invests more in the characters facial expressions and body language than in dialogue, all factors that have captivated me.

04° Zolushka (1947)

My number one favorite Cinderella live action movie. When i watch this movie and see the costume and set designs, the theatrical acting styles, the coloring work, the music, the small nods to other Perrault tales, i feel transported to my childhood, touched by how those artists joined together to bring one of my favourite storybooks to life with all emotional sincerity and no hint of irony.

03° Panna a Netvor (1978)

While Jean Cocteau set the stage for using the 'Beast and Beauty' type of tale as the basis for a cinematic psychological character study, 1978's Panna a Netvor went even deeper with the idea, choosing not to use any villain or external antagonistic force and instead completely centering the heroine and the Beast's characters as they interact in the closed space of the old castle and talk about the fears they have of their own feelings. Both get equally developed in this beautifull coming of age gothic fairy tale.

02° Donkeyskin (1970)

A loving homage to the storytelling legacy of both Charles Perrault and Jean Cocteau, this movie is the combination of a Medieval Book of Hours with the 1970s Psychodelia, wich when mixed resulted in something uniquely beautifull and colorfull.

01° The Company of Wolves (1984)

Based on Little Red Riding Hood, wich is my favorite fairy tale, i love the fact that this movie explores the fairy story at its root: the people, most of wich were working class women, who reunited their loved ones to tell them a story they learned in their dreams, and from those stories people would take different lessons about topics such as nature, spirituality, love, family, sexuality, life. Following Rosaleen's dream, where she and her Grandmother shares tales about humans turned wolves, we are invited to reflect about the roles of man and women in society and their arbitrareness, and how those roles can be subverted once we take consciousness that we all share a dark, wolf like side. All this, and more, are what makes The Company of Wolves my number favorite live action fairy-tale film adaptation.

Honorable Mentions:

Beauty and the Beast (1960)

This movie presented an interesting combination of fairy tale romance with political drama in an italian renaissance setting and a Beast who would turn human during day light, all very creative ideas that deserve to be complemented.

The Slipper and The Rose (1976)

This adaptation of the tale of Cinderella has great performances, beautifull costumes and magnificent songs by the Sherman Brothers. It was just that The Glass Slipper, wich shares the same 18th Century Setting, has personally touched me more.

#tumblr mutuals #fairy tales #fantasy #classic cinema #cult cinema

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ecoamerica · 20 days

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Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

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manuscripts-dontburn · 6 months

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The Palace: From the Tudors to the Windsors, 500 Years of Royal History at Hampton Court

Author: Gareth Russel

First published: 2023

Rating: ★★★★☆

Gareth Russel is an extremely readable writer and I particularly love his biography of Katherine Howard. However, The Palace did not meet all of my expectations. I had hoped this would indeed be a story of the building, with its workings, its growth, its daily life, and its impact. Instead what I got was a swift (even if enjoyable) fast course on English royalty from the Tudors onwards. The Hampton Court in itself did not seem to be especially important to anything that happened. If I already did not have considerable knowledge about English history, I would also probably get swamped by the names and events that span over 500 years but need to be crammed into roughly 350 pages. Well written, not uninteresting, I did like it a lot but ultimately... I guess not many books can be like Pavlovsk : The Life of a Russian Palace

The Girl Who Couldn't Read

Author: John Harding

First published: 2012

Rating: ★★★★☆

Even though this is officially a sequel, it can easily be read as a standalone. In both cases, I found it engaging and OH SO satisfying.

Prize for the Fire

Author: Rilla Askew

First published: 2022

Rating: ★★★★★

A portrait of a complicated woman who fights for her own identity and strength and eventually finds it, along with inner peace, in her faith. Anne Askew was, by a definition, a religious fanatic in a time when religion was being redressed and differences of opinion on it punishable by death, and Rilla Askew (a curious accident of a name) does not make her exactly likable - which is good, because instead of a legendary martyr washed of off all sins, we get a believable and complex human character, a woman trapped by her era and her circumstance. The whole book is what I would absolutely call a quality historical fiction and the nearer the end, the more powerful it becomes.

Russian Fairy Tales

Author: Alexander Afanasyev

First published: 1855

Rating: ★★★★☆

It took me several months to go through all of the stories. Some I enjoyed more than others, naturally, but I suppose the main great thing about this collection is the possibilities it gives to future authors who can search for inspiration in it.

Magic Lessons

Author: Alice Hoffman

First published: 2020

Rating: ★★★★★

Practical Magic was an OK book but I loved The Rules of Magic and this one is also *Chef´s kiss*. I was ready to scream at a certain point near the end and audibly breathed my relief afterward. Alice Hoffman is a beautiful storyteller.

The Company

Author: J.M. Varese

First published: 2023

Rating: ★★★☆☆

This had a gorgeous cover, some seriously creepy vibes, and not bad writing. Unfortunately, most of the book felt like an endless repetition of previous scenes, and in the end, there is really no resolution, just a feeling of being confused. At some points, I thought this book needed much more editing since some dialogues felt unnecessary. I also felt very frustrated that whenever the two main characters interacted and you would hope they would actually have a conversation, it ended after a bunch of sentences with "Ya know?" "I know", but my sweet dude, WE don´t know. Not a terrible book by any means, but it truly could have been so much more.

Maximilian Kolbe: the Saint of Auschwitz

Author: Jean-François Vivier

First published: 2021

Rating: ★★★★☆

The life of Maximilian Kolbe was remarkable, not only for his martyrdom he chose to save another person but for his tenacity, unwavering energy, and belief in God and that everybody can become holy. The richness of it, however, makes it difficult for a volume as slim as this one to really make you feel connected to his story. I felt that it either needed to be a bit longer, or should have focused more on at least some of the episodes. That said, this makes his legacy accessible to any reader, and the art style, though simple, conveys everything it needs to. I am also happy to note there are actual photographs of the saint included at the end of the book.

The Mill on the Floss

Author: George Eliot

First published: 1860

Rating: ★★★★☆

I am a little torn. Some of the scenes were written so beautifully and played out in a manner so powerful one could not but be swept away. At other times I felt that while still written well, the pacing was off and the mundane was losing my interest. I understand that the first part was needed to establish the characters and let us truly know them, but I was also seriously considering DNF-ing the book while plowing through. My rating would be in between 3 and 4 stars, but since Goodreads does not allow that, I will be generous.

Mere Christianity

Author: C.S. Lewis

First published: 1942

Rating: ★★★★★

C.S. Lewis explains Christianity in a very sensible and natural manner, with no shoving of it down your throat. I loved all of the parables and examples he used, bar one, which obviously stemmed from his inexperience with that one issue: actual women. (Or at least he had little experience of them at the time he wrote this book). "Who would you rather talk to if this happened? Man or a woman?" "The one with the brain, Clive Staples, the one with the brain." Other than that small part of one chapter, this is a book any Christian can easily and reliably draw on for inspiration when speaking about their faith to others.

Hell Bent

Author: Leigh Bardugo

First published: 2023

Rating: ★★★★☆

I was reading this slowly, a few pages at a time, to keep my sanity and focus, while the genocide of Palestinians was raging (still is) in the world for all of us to witness. Who would have thought that a book about demons and Hell would be absolutely nothing compared to our reality? But yes, it was absorbing, it led me someplace else for a moment. It was good.

Small Spaces

Author: Katherine Arden

First published: 2018

Rating: ★★★☆☆

I wish this had been an adult horror because I guarantee you I would have shat myself.

#booklr #wrap up #October 2023

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breakfast-at-timothys · 9 months

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“Outside in the forest there was deep snow. The white snow had crusted the branches of the pine trees, and piled itself up them till they bent under its weight. Now and then a snow-laden branch would bend too far, and huge lumps of snow fell crashing to the ground under the trees. Then the branch would swing up, and the snow covered it again with a cold white burden. Sitting in the hut you could hear the crashing again and again out in the forest, as the tired branches flung down their loads of snow. Yes, and now and then there was the howling of wolves far away.” (Old Peter's Russian Tales; Arthur Ransome)

Born in Leeds, on January 18, 1884, Arthur Michell Ransome CBE, was an English author and journalist, best remembered perhaps for writing and illustrating the Swallows and Amazons series of books about the school-holiday adventures of children, mostly in the English Lake District and the Norfolk Broads.

Arthur was educated in Windermere, then at Rugby School, (where he lived in the same room that had been used by Lewis Carroll); completing his education by studying chemistry at Yorkshire College (now the University of Leeds), where his late father, Cyril Ransome, had been professor of History.

Arthur's broader journalistic topics included writings about the London literary scene of the day; also Russia before, during, and after the revolution of 1917. His connection with the leaders of the Revolution, leading him to provide information to the British Secret Intelligence Service; though MI5 actually suspected him of being a Soviet spy.

Arthur's other writings included books of biography and literary criticism on authors such as Edgar Allen Poe (published in 1910), and Oscar Wilde (1912); the latter embroiling him in a libel suit with Lord Alfred (Bosie) Douglas. Ransome won the suit, supported by Robbie Ross, bankrupting Douglas; though he removed the offending passages from the second edition of his book, and refused all interviews, despite the obvious publicity value.

Interestingly, although MI5 declared themselves satisfied with Ransome's loyalty to Britain by 1937, KGB files that were opened following the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, suggest that Evgenia Ransome (Ransome's second wife), at least, was involved in smuggling diamonds from the USSR to Paris to help fund the Comintern; a proposition examined in the 2009 book The Last Englishman; the Double Life of Arthur Ransome, by Roland Chambers

Arthur died in Cheadle Royal Hospital, on June 3, 1967. He and Evgenia rest in the churchyard of St Paul's Church, Rusland, in Cumbria, in the southern Lake District.

Old Peter's Russian Tales: a collection of Russian and Ukrainian folk-tales, retold by Arthur Ransome (published in Britain in 1916); the book said to owe its existence to Ransome's visit to the Russian Empire in 1913, partly to learn the language, partly to escape from his first marriage.

In Ransome's words: “The stories in this book are those that Russian peasants tell their children and each other. In Russia hardly anybody is too old for fairy stories, and I have even heard soldiers on their way to the war talking of very wise and very beautiful princesses as they drank their tea by the side of the road. I think there must be more fairy stories told in Russia than anywhere else in the world. In this book are a few of those I like best. I have taken my own way with them more or less, writing them mostly from memory. They, or versions like them, are to be found in the coloured chap-books, in Afanasiev's great collection, or in solemn, serious volumes of folklorists writing for the learned. My book is not for the learned, or indeed for grown-up people at all. No people who really like fairy stories ever grow up altogether. This is a book written far away in Russia, for English children who play in deep lanes with wild roses above them in the high hedges, or by the small singing becks that dance down the gray fells at home. Russian fairyland is quite different. Under my windows the wavelets of the Volkhov (which has its part in one of the stories) are beating quietly in the dusk. A gold light burns on a timber raft floating down the river. Beyond the river in the blue midsummer twilight are the broad Russian plain and the distant forest. Somewhere in that forest of great trees—a forest so big that the forests of England are little woods beside it—is the hut where old Peter sits at night and tells these stories to his grandchildren.”

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checkoutmybookshelf · 11 months

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When the Russian Mafia Learned Not to Mess With Artemis Fowl II

I've been an Artemis Fowl girl (not the movie) for a long time, and while I think the first book in the series is literally a perfect first book, it's not my favorite in the series. That honor goes to book two, Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident. And I think that the key points that really make this my favorite book are the shift from brilliantly executed archetypes to genuine characters, the fact that a 12-year-old absolutely OWNS the mafia, and the expansion of the worldbuilding in Haven and the Lower Elements generally. Oh also, this is where we get Opal Koboi for the first time. *Screes in best villainess ever* Let's Talk Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident.

There will be light spoilers below the break, as is pretty standard for all books second and later on this blog, so be warned.

First of all, in the first Artemis Fowl book, the characters are--with the exception of Artemis and Holly--largely archetypal. That falls apart here, because the story isn't trying to be a fairy tale or a heist so much as it is Opal Koboi and Briar Cudegon trying to start a war that Artemis has to stop in order to get fairy help to rescue his father from captivity by the Russian Mafia. Book 1 Butler is your standard bodyguard with a heart of gold, Commander Root is a standard grouchy police chief, and Trouble Kelp is basically ye olde marine. Briar Cudgeon is power hungry, and that's about it.

By book 2, Bulter is getting more personality and a low-key understanding with Holly and Root because they're all "old soldiers" in his book. Root gets to actually have some personality and is a damn good field commander--can we just take a sec to appreciate how much he cares (gruffness notwithstanding) about Holly and the fact that he super did not care that the sealed acorn was blasphemy because it worked!? He becomes more than just a hardass vaguely sexist archetype, and I have SUCH a soft spot for Julius Root. We also get some more of Trouble and Grub Kelp. Briar Cudgeon stays pretty simple, but that's fine because we have Opal goddamn Koboi for a more complex and also very classical villainess--she is LOVING being evil and frankly she is never not a joy to watch. Opal knows how to lean in to sheer joyous villainy.

I'm also just a fan of Artemis actually running into the real world with his planning. Our boy can absolutely sketch out an on-paper plan that is brilliant, but then you get things like gaps in train tracks, fairy politics, dwarf reflexology, and humans reacting in weirdass ways and suddenly Artemis has to get his hands a bit dirty and he has to improvise. Our boy grows and STILL hands the Russian Mafia its collective ass on a radioactive submarine hatch. Artemis Fowl's character growth in this book is great.

Book 1 was very limited to Fowl Manor and its grounds. We got a bit of Haven and the Lower Elements in book 1, but book 2 is mostly in the Lower Elements and Russia, and the expansion of what Haven is like, what shuttleports are like, what Koboi Labs is like, what Howler's Peak is like, is incredible. We get more fairy lore, fairy life, and more LEP. This keeps expanding in later books, but this is our first really close look at the world beyond what was strictly necessary for the kidnapping and rescue plot of the first book, and that's very fun.

I know I've already mentioned Opal Koboi and her gleefully unhinged joy at her seemingly imminent rise to Empress, but honestly I love her to little tiny peices. She is too samrt for her own good, she girlbossed her own father into literally insanity, and her college-era feud with Foaly is just peak "the smartest kids in class have extremely different skillsets and they hate each other for it". Opal starts off very evil kitten, but kitty has claws and she's just waiting for a chance to unsheath them.

The Artemis Fowl series is improbably good, and I cannot recommend it enough. Especially this fozen, slightly radioactive entry in the series that is very much my favorite book.

#eoin colfer #artemis fowl #artemis fowl the arctic incident #holly short #ya fiction #ya sci fi #book recommendations #books and novels #books and reading #books & libraries #opal koboi #the arctic incident #julius root #domovoi butler

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adarkrainbow · 1 year

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The Yaga journal: The road to the otherworld

Baba Yaga as depicted in Mike Mignolia’s “Hellboy”

The first article of this journal was written by Natacha Rimasson-Fertin, and its full title is (when hastily translated by me): “The Baba Yaga on the road to the other world: a crucial meeting for the hero of the fairytale”. As I said previously, I will merely summarize the article and recap some of its important points.

Every reader of Russian fairytales is familiar with the famous chicken-legged isba, the home of the Baba Yaga. But where exactly this home is located is however quite unclear - its position seemingly changing from tale to tale. This article relies on the fairytales collected by Afanassiev to study the places typical of the fairy tales, the travel the hero must undergo to reach the hag, all to try to locate the mysterious but iconic lair of Baba Yaga - which, in hope, will help clarify her “true function and identity”.

It should be mentioned that, while the article focuses on tales about “travelling heroes”, it does mention the existence of another handful of tales where it is the Baba Yaga that invades the world of the humans - it is tales such as “Ivachka” (NRS 108-111) or “The wild geese” (NRS 113). [Note: NRS is the name used to refer to Afanassiev’s classification of Russian fairytales, the same way there is the ATU Index]. And in these tales, the house of the Baba Yaga is not actually located in the “otherworld”, but rather right next to where humans live: by a river side, or in the forest where the heroes regularly go fetch mushrooms. In fact, in these tales, the house of the Baba Yaga misses its chicken legs, and seems to be just a regular isba.

While the reasons for the quests of the heroes in Russian fairytales are varied and multiple, there is a general tendency: heroines usually seek to be set free from something, while the heroes either seek this same “deliverance” or actually seek a wife. In fairytales, space is organized by two oppositions: known and unknown, familiar and foreign/alien. In this context, as Propp highlighted, “the farytale is built around the hero moving in space” - so travel means the breaking of the order of things, and thus a journey is already something extraordinary. In russian fairytales, according to Tatiana Ščepanskaja (in her “The culture of the road in Northern Russia), the road is actually “outside of the divine order” and even opposes this divine order. Traditionally “the road is the world of the non-being, where the custom doesn’t work. By taking the road, the individual is out of the community, he escapes the world of social workings - there is punishment, no public pressure, but also no encouragment and no glory. On the road, one is alone and free, outside of community and its norms.” So the man who travels lose all status - he doesn’t belong to the human society, but to the “other world”. On the road, one leaves the protection of their ancestors behind, and open themselves to numerous dangers - this is why many heroes of Russian fairytales always ask the blessing of their parent before going on the road.

The road itself, as an “open space” is the world of all possibilities. In the last verson given by Afanassiev of the fairytale “Go I don’t know where, bring back I don’t know what” (NRS 212-215), the hero, after hearing that the Baba Yaga wants to eat him, mentions his status as a traveller “Why, you old devil! How could you eat a traveller? A traveller is bony and black, first heat up the tub and bathe me - then you’ll eat me!”. The bathing ritual itself is also a rite of passage.

The frontier of the otherworld is of various natures, depending on the tale. Usually it is a clearing in the woods, which forms a typical liminal space. The Baba Yaga is closely tied to forest, her house often being at the heart of the woods, which isolates her from the world of the men. On top of living in a deep wood, fear also forms a “circle” around the Baba Yaga, as she kills anyone that comes near her house and people avoid it - sometimes the forest even has additional obstacles, such as a deep pit, or a mountain.

In “Ilia of Mourom and the dragon” (NRS 310), we actually do not have a forest, but a mountain, forming a vast plateau. The hero needs to climb a very tall and very steep mountain made of sand - in order to go to the palace of the tsar whose daughter is harassed by a dragon. At the top of said mountain, the hero encounters not one but two Baba Yagas, who tell them how to reach their elder sister, and then the “Nightingale Robber”, whose whistling is so deafening it kills who hears it. The rest of the story seems to happen on the same plateau, since the hero is never said to go back down. The demultiplication of the Baba Yaga, turned into a trio of sisters, each older and more powerful than the next, and the presence of the Nightingale-Robber, embodiment of absolute evil and enemy of the Russian land, expands the “frontier of the otherworld” into a true no man’s land.

A similar phenomenon of “expansion of the liminal area” can also be found in the second version of “The feather of Finist, the fair falcon” (NRS 235), where the heroine has to walk into a deep and dark forest until iron slippers and an iron bonet are “worn out” - only then does she found a “small house made of lead, constantly turning around on chicken legs”. Sometimes the house is said to be found “beyond the three times nine countries, in the three-times-tenth kingdom, on the other side of the fire river” (Maria Morevna, NRS 159). As in the previous tale, the river of fire plays the role of a “last limit” between the world of the humans and the other world - and when Ivan returns, as the Baba Yaga finds herself deprived of her magical scarf, she burns in the flames.

The isba of the Baba Yaga has so many different descriptions that Vladimir Propp used it as the perfect illustration for his “Transformations of the fairytale”. Only two elements stay the same: the house is located near a forest, and has chicken legs. And even then, sometimes the chicken legs are replaced by other animal parts, such as “goat horns” in “Ivan the small bull”. In the second version of “The feather of Finist, the fair falcon” (NRS 235), the heroine finds a “little house of lead, on chicken legs, that was constantly spinning”. Propp explained that actually, the descriptions of the house constantly spinning on itself are oral deformations of what the house could originally do - turn on itself whenever it was commanded to. From “turning back”, the house simply started “turning”, until came the image of a house constantly spinning. In one of the seven versions of “The sea-tsar and Vassilissa the very wise” (NRS 224), the house is not described (”a small lonely isba”) and only two elements allow to identify it as the house of the “Baba Yaga with the bone-leg”. One is the dark, empty forest surrounding the house, and the second is the fact that when Ivan-son-of-merchant tells it “Small house, small house, turn your back to the forest, and turn you door towards me!” the house obeys and moves. And inside waits the Baba Yaga, her body going from one corner of the house to another, and her chest sagging to yet another part of the house.There is one particular case, the one of the NRS 141-142, “The brave Bear, Mustache, Hill and Oak”, in which the Baba Yaga and her daughters live in an underground world, with no mention of the isba.

But what happens inside this house, with this house? Propp did wonder, upon looking at the fairytales - why does the house needs to turn around for one to enter? It is true that Ivan finds himself in front of a wall “without windows or doors”, but why doesn’t he just go around the house, instead of telling it to turn? It seems to be forbidden to go around the house... The house seems to be on a frontier that Ivan cannot cross - one has to go through the house to pass, as it is impossible to cross otherwise. The open side of the house is usually turned towards the “three-times-tenth kingdom” that Ivan must reach, while the closed side is turned towards the realms Ivan comes from - Propp linked this with the Scandinavian custom of never having a door facing the north, because the house of Hel, goddess of the afterlife (Nastrand, the “beach of corpses”), had its door located towards the north. With this element, Propp concludes that the house of the Baba Yaga is actually the limit of the world of the dead - and crossing the house allows to “select” who passes and who doesn’t pass into the afterlife. Thus the meeting of the Baba Yaga is a trial in itself.

Propp sees in the chicken legs a remnant of the pillars on which stood the initiation-cabin, which seems to feed into this idea of the Baba Yaga’s isba being a rite of passage towards death. In his book about ancient Slavic paganism, Boris Rybakov mentions a type of malevolent undeads called the nav’i (nav’ in singular), who are the dead without baptism and that we must appease through offerings. He says that they appear like enormous birds, or feartherless roosters the size of eagles - they leave the footprints of a chicken, and attack pregnant women and children to drink their blood. These elements clearly evoke the myth of the Baba Yaga: is she one of those “wrongly-dead”, turned hostile towards humanity?

If we read the dialogue between the Baba Yaga and the hero of the tale, we understand better the trial that the Yaga is. In the tale “Ivan Bykovic” (NRS 137), Ivan-small-bull enters the “chicken-legged, goat-horned house”, and sees the Baba Yaga with her bone leg, laying on her stove, stretching from one corner of the house to another, her nose reaching the ceiling. She exclaims that up to this day she never smelled or saw a Russian man, but today she has one “rolling on my spoon, rolling in my maw”. Ivan answers “Hey, old woman, don’t get angry, come down from your stove and sit on the bench. Ask us where we are going, and I’ll answer you kindly.” The Baba Yaga has a similar dialogue to the heroine of the second version of “The feather of Finist, fair falcon” (NRS 234-235), but there she is less aggressive, probably because the maiden calls her tenderly “babusja”, “small grandmother”, to which the Yaga answers with affection “maljutka”, “little one”. These examples prove us that the heroes and heroines have to find the rights word to either intimidate or appease the Baba Yaga, to make her an auxiliary. For a male hero, it is courage that is put to the test, when it a female hero, it is politeness that needs to be used. But always, it transforms the Baba Yaga, from a guardian and an adversary, to a guide and auxliary.

In some tales, the Baba Yaga is much less aggressive, and is immediately a guide to the hero, and even shows some tenderness - like in the first version of the tale “The sea-tsar and Vassilissa the very-wise” (NRS 219-226) where she tells everything the hero needs to know for his quest, and calls him “ditjatko”, “my child”. This role of auxliary and guide is especially present in the tales where the hag is depicted as the mistress of the animals, or of the winds. For example in “The enchanted princess” (NRS 271-272), the hero, a soldier, uses a flying carpet to find where his fiancée is located. He visits successively three Baba Yagas, all sisters. The last one lives “at the end of the world”, in a small house beyond which there is only pitch-black darkness. Beyond the end of the world, there is nothing, the void. This last Baba Yaga is the ruler of all winds, and helps the soldier by summoning them - the south wind ends up revealed to the hero where he will find his bride.

However these are the tales where the stay at the Yaga’s house is brief. Other times, the hero has to stay for a long time at the house, and then the nature of the trial changes: the hero has to fight to keep their life. In “Maria Morevna” (NRS 159), the hero goes to Baba Yaga to obtain a magical horse able to rival the one of Kochtcheï-the-Immortal. The Baba Yaga agrees, but only if he serves her for three days - if he succeeds, he’ll have the horse, if he fails, she will place his head at the top of a pole. The hero manages to overcome the various imposed chores thanks to the help of animals he spared previously in the tale.

Another very interesting example is in the very famous fairytale, Vassilissa-the-very-beautiful (NRS 104), which is also the one where the house of the Baba Yaga is described in the more details - including the spikes covered in human skulls that Ivan Bilibine famously illustrated. After letting purposefully the fire go out in her house, Vassilissa’s wicked stepmother sends her fetch some fire at Baba Yaga’s house. Instead of being devoured, the heroine returns safely, and on top of that, this travel to the otherworld acts as a “reparation” - since justice is re-established through the deserved punishment of the wicked stepmother. The fire Vassilissa brings back destroys the wicked woman, reducing her to ashes. We should also note that, unlike in other tales, there is no need to ask for the house to turn, Vassilissa simply waits for the return of the Baba Yaga by the entrace gate. And on top of overcoming her fear, the girl is faced with much more complex tasks. The first is to do the house chores, but which are impossible by their enormous scope - however Vassilissa manages thanks to a magical doll and her mother’s blessing (the first being the manifestation of the second). The second trial is when the Baba Yaga has a discussion with the girl: she encourages Vassilissa to ask question, while warning her not to ask too much, because “not all questions are good to ask”. This is because the implicit taboo is to not ask the old woman about what is going on INSIDE her house. Vassilissa is victorious, because she knows when she should just observe - she doesn’t ask about the mysterious disembodied pair of hands working inside the house, but about the horsemen riding around the house, in the woods, and the Baba Yaga is very glad she asked about “only what was in the courtyard” - but, as some commentators noted, this is also perhaps the last trial because it is the only one that Vassilissa manages to overcome without the help of her magical doll. Once she saw what she had to saw, and overcame her fear, Vassilisa was initiated to typically feminine tasks of the patriarchal society - cleaning the house, preparing the meal, weaving... But this serves to actually fulfll her destiny - as in the second part of the tale, she arrives at an old woman who creates shirts, and the shirts she makes for the old woman are so good the tsar itself will summon Vassilissa and marry her, thus fulfilling the prophecy of her name (Vassilissa coming from the Greek “basileus”, “king”). The hero becomes a hero because they manage to perform the imposed task - these are “elective trials”.

Russian fairytales contain numerous other characters merely called “old women”, “hags” or “crones”, but that some elements associate with the Baba Yaga and the role of the “initiation-master”. Their old age, the fact they live in a house near the woods, and especially their way of speaking to the hero. We even meet a genderbent Baba Yaga in “ivan-of-the-bitch and the White Faun/Sylvan” (NRS 139) - an old man in a mortar, who pushed himself around with a pestle. Though this character’s behavior does not evoke the Baba Yaga at all.

With all of that being said, again the Baba Yaga is provent to be a deeply ambivalent character. Many different searchers provided many different explanations, but always ended up confronted by the contradictions that made her. According to the author of the article, the most pertinent theory would be the one of Anna-Natalya Malakhovskaya, who sees in Baba Yaga not just “an archaic mother-goddess in a world of good and evil dichotomy”, but rather a “goddess whose many roles fulfill the three functions of Dumezl”. That is to say, 1) wisdom and the link to the sacred, the magical divinities 2) the warrior function and 3) the fertility/fecundity function that is interwoven with death.

So... What sense should one give to these tales about a travel to the other world, to the afterlife, to the world of the dead? Beyond the entertaining nature of fairytales, is there an initiation in these tales? We can remember that Vassilissa the very beautiful, in her tale (NRS 104) is banished by Baba Yaga once she reveals to her the nature of her magical helper - when she speaks of the blessing of her mother, Baba Yaga tells her to leave the house, since she doesn’t want anyone blessed in her house. There seems to be something dadactic at work here - especially when we consider the virtues embodied by Vassilissa: piety (in the traditional sense, religious piety) and filial piety (as she stays faithful to the words of her mother), as well as docility, serviability, and bravery or rather trust. Trust in her mother’s blessing that even the all-powerful Baba Yaga cannot contradict. This last motif, of which the Vassilissa tale is the most emblematic example, highlights how the Baba Yaga is tied to archaid, pre-Christian concepts. We see here the tie to the protecting ancestor-spirits, through the mean of the mother’s blessing, which saves the heroine. This tale maybe illustrates the “double faith” so typical of the folk-Christianity of Russia.

Now, if we return to the tales evoked briefly at the top of the article - the ones where the hero doesn’t visit Baba Yaga’s home, but rather those where Baba Yaga invades our world to kidnap a child. How to explain the appearance of the witch in the world of the humans, either directly, or through intermediaries (the wild geese). If we look at “The wild geese” (NRS 113), we notice that the little brother is actually quite safe in the Baba Yaga’s house - he plays there with golden apples. What causes fear and trouble is the fact that he was kidnapped, more than where he stays. The disturbance in the order comes from the ravishing - and the girl is worried that she will be punished for to not having watched over her brother well enough. It seems here that the appearance of the sinster Baba Yaga, or of her winged servants the wild geese, is here bringing an answer to the phenomenon that reason refused to explain - in this case infant mortality. These “wild geese” that “ravish little childrens” might be agents of death.

In conclusion, the Baba Yaga is at the same time the guardian of the frontier to the other world, but also the ferryman (or ferrywoman) leading to it, the guide to this other place - for she is a liminal being between the world, half-living, half-dead, half-animal, half-human. It seems that layers and layers of cultural meanings, symbolism and interpretations have accumulated themselves onto the Baba Yaga more than on any fairytale character, resulting in a complex and tangled knot creating a divinity as spiritual as chtonic, ruling over the fate of mortals.

As for the geography of the fairytales, we can clearly have a three-part map with the Baba Yaga tales: our world, the other world, and the in-between-world. In the in-between world, passage can go either way. Under the aspect of simple, entertaining stories, these tales are initiation rites, describing through images and pictures the changes happening when one “passes” into the adult age, as much on an individual level as on a social one.

#baba yaga #the yaga journal #russian fairytales #russian folklore #afanassiev fairytales #analysis

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