Our distant ancestors honored the Forest Priestess, the Lady of Elements and Animals, who is known to us from fairy tales as Baba Yaga.
She is a witch (that is, a knowledgeable woman) who lives alone in the forest, in her wooden hut "on chicken legs." She lives and dresses very simply, she spins and weaves, heats the stove and the bath, eats vegetable food; in all fairy tales she is very many years old. On the farm she has a cat and other pets that serve her not out of fear, but out of conscience.
Yaga's hut most often stands in the very middle of a reserved (special) forest, on the border with the “thirtieth kingdom”. That is, on the border of our world, Reveal with other worlds (kingdoms), of which there are a great many ("thirty"). Baba Yaga is the guardian of this border. She guards the entrance to a distant fairy-tale world: these are the neighboring worlds of Revelation, and the Heavenly worlds of light deities, and the lower worlds of Navi … All who are looking for a way there and get to her, she tests (before showing the way), allowing only worthy and pure in soul and body.
Baba Yaga! What is she like?
Baba Yaga is a giver and advisor: she shows a good traveler the way, gives a magic horse or an eagle, which can take you to the thirtieth kingdom, and gives advice in trouble. She understands the language of the forest, the language of animals and birds, speaks with the wind and water. She is served by forest spirits, animals, birds, fish and other creatures. Friends with Leshim and Vodyany. Baba Yaga owns magic, heals with herbs, knows how to move through the air on her mortar and can seem invisible. She has a magic ball, a self-assembled tablecloth, boots-soon moves, gusli-samoguds, a flying carpet, a sword-self-saw and many other mysterious things. She is the keeper (if necessary - then the warlike) of her forest space and surroundings with all their inhabitants. Previously, each large forest (which could not be bypassed in a day's walk) had its own Baba Yaga, and then such a forest became "special". They say that when the first large forests appeared on our land (they write in smart books that this was after the retreat of the glacial mountains), their guardians were young. As time went on, forests grew, generations of people changed, and they began to call the forest priestesses first long-lived, and then old Baba Yagas. This is how our great-grandfathers and grandfathers knew and remembered them, who still had a chance to meet with them, such an image came to us along with the tales of our ancestors.such an image came to us along with the tales of our ancestors.such an image came to us along with the tales of our ancestors.
Forest wizards have always helped and still help the people with whom they live nearby - they give advice to those in need, treat those who turn to them for help, protect the villagers from strangers, take care of the fertility of forests and fields. Sometimes they even light up a family union, at the request of people, giving a new family a magical gift.
In modern fairy tales, Baba Yaga sometimes has an "evil image". Now people have forgotten that before Baba Yaga was their assistant and guardian. They forgot that she taught lazy children various crafts and housework. People themselves brought such children to her for training, or they were brought on their wings by geese-swans. She also taught especially gifted, capable children to understand the forest, to understand the language of plants, birds and animals, the rituals of reverence for the Elements of nature, all kinds of signs, herbal medicine and much, much more. Such children became herbalists, witch doctors, healers, foresters, fortune tellers, priests, magicians. When people forgot how to understand the forest and nature, they stopped living in harmony with them - they began to treat Baba Yaga differently. But in the old tales, the kind and wise image of Grandmother Yaga remained - an adviser and donor, a warrior and a healer,protecting the forest and the boundaries between the worlds, protecting the peace of rural civilians and all forest inhabitants.