Baba Yaga's Spindle. Dominance over Witches, Christmas Divination, Ritual Beatings, and Female Initiation in Russian Fairy Tales

The wicked old woman from the forest thicket who is always trying to lure heroes into her hut and destroy them... This is the image of Baba Yaga we remember from childhood, but is everything that simple?
Familiar fairy tale characters... and plots appear to us in a completely different light when viewed through the lens of ancient initiation rituals.
Why does Baba Yaga live in the dense forest, while the Frog Princess resides in the swamp? Why does the main character of the tale "Morozko" refuse to say that she is cold, and why does Little Havoroshka bury the bones of her beloved cow?
From this book, you will learn about perhaps the most ambiguous fairy tale heroines.


Baba Yaga knows how to surprise. In fairy tales, she appears as a generous sorceress, who always has wonderful gifts for true heroes, as the mistress of a herd of magical mares, as a midwife, and as an Amazon who defeats heroes. But in this book, we will focus only on one of her aspects — the priestess. After all, Baba Yaga helped girls become adults and shared her esoteric knowledge with them.
You might have noticed that I write the name of the main character as two words, although dictionaries accept the variant "Baba-Yaga." In this decision, I relied on the analogy with the Great Mother, for Yaga serves a feminine deity, helping girls learn the rules of behavior, the system of prohibitions, and — importantly — to become adults who will be respected in society.
The topic of female initiation is not well studied. Addressing wedding folklore, and the research of historians and linguists allows expanding knowledge on this issue, and many fairy tales take on a completely different resonance. They cease to be stories exclusively for little ones, gaining interesting and sometimes chilling details.