Baba Yaga is a character familiar to us from childhood. Did you know that "that fairy-tale old woman is not at all a figment of folk fantasy, but a historical person?" Once she was a deity, the keeper of the hearth, who was worshiped by many peoples, and the Vikings and Cossacks of Yermak Timofeevich hunted for her treasures. How did the bearer of the hearth transformed into an evil cannibal witch?
Sanctuary of the Golden Woman
One of the ancestors of Baba Yaga is considered the ancient coast - the Golden Woman. Even in the Icelandic sagas, it is told about gangs of Vikings who dreamed of seizing the treasures of this woman. They were kept, according to legend, in the Yumala temple, in a dense forest, at the mouth of the Dvina.
“From above, the temple was overlaid with gold and diamonds, which illuminated the entire neighborhood with their rays. A necklace of several pounds of gold glittered on the sculpture of the goddess. The crown on the head was strewn with precious stones. On the knees of the statue was a golden bowl with offerings. And it was so large that four heroes could quench their thirst from it,”the chronicle says.
Some scholars believe that Baba Yaga herself comes from … Ancient Egypt or India! Translated from Sanskrit, Baba Yaga (Yoga) means "the wisest, possessing deep knowledge." Allegedly, she was the goddess of death and the keeper of the gates to the kingdom of the dead.
By the way, "stupa" is a constant means of transportation of the fabulous Yaga, translated from Sanskrit it means "grave". And the hut on chicken legs is very reminiscent of ancient urns for burying the ashes of the dead. Such "huts" on pillars dug into the soil were usually used by residents of marshy and lake areas
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Stretch the accordion, sister
Naturally, with such talents, our dear granny cannot be alone in this world. She has a lot of eminent relatives all over the Earth. The first sister of the Russian grandmother Ezhka, scientists call the Greek Demeter - the goddess of fertility and agriculture. Demeter ruled over the forces of nature.
She was kind to hardworking people, helped them. Why not Yaga's assistant in the fairy tales "Marya Morevna" or "Koschey the Immortal"?
The second closest relative of Yaga is another Greek goddess - Artemis, the patroness of the animal world and hunting. Here, family ties do not raise any doubts, since our Baba Yaga constantly lives in the forest and, of course, is in charge of all kinds of forest evil spirits in the person of goblin and kikimor.
The third sister does not look so cute as the first two - after all, she connects the world of the living with the other world. Her name is Hecate - the lunar deity of the kingdom of shadows, graves and ghosts. If we recall the "cute" fence around the hut, consisting of bones and skulls, as well as special gastronomic addictions in the form of human flesh, then there should be no doubts about the relationship.
Illegally repressed
Digging into history, we did not come close to discovering any of the terrible qualities that Baba Yaga was endowed in fairy tales. How did this deity suddenly become a symbol of evil? Not otherwise, at the time of the struggle against paganism, the ministers of the church attributed to her ugly features and the character of an evil demon …
All contradictions will disappear if we see in the grandmother an ancient forgotten goddess - a wooden or bone idol that stood in time immemorial in some forest "storage" (this is how tiny houses are still called in Siberia, placed on a post in a secluded corner of the forest). Well, Baba Yaga from our fairy tales will forever remain a funny and not so scary character.
M. Kornienko