We continue with Yaga’s powers! You could certainly say she is ‘all-powerful’, but for the purposes of this blog I’ve summarised her powers in three categories - Power over Death, Power over Nature, and the Power of Change/Trickery.
Without delay, let’s dive in!
Power over Death
We’ve already touched on this lightly in the previous blog; Baba Yaga may loosely be compared to Persephone from Greek Myth - wife of Hades, Queen of the Underworld, daughter of Zeus & Demeter.
This connection with Persephone is tied with Yaga’s third aspect - death/underworld - perhaps as a gatekeeper just like Cerberus, or a guide of souls, maybe guardian even; we’re not really certain and what’s worse is we’ll likely never be.
The symbology of the ‘Three’ is deeply rooted in our society, faith and culture as examined and noted by Jung (Carl Gustav) - the Holy Trinity, World Tree cosmologies divisible by 3 - like the 9 Norse realms or the Three main Slavic realms, Three-Headed Cerberus, Three Witches, Tridents, and so on; you should read his book about it really.
This archetypal symbolism also echoes in her, elevating Yaga to a certain “holy” or godlike status. Such status is powerful and gives her precedence over death.
As a side note, “archetypes” are Jung’s invention (including the word itself), through his analysis of symbolism in human society and the human psyche (in ‘Man and his Symbols’ - ‘man’ being ‘humanity’ here, but I suppose being Freud’s student would’ve rubbed off in some way…sry).
These archetypes would later inspire Joseph Campbell to come up with the Hero’s Journey, but for now back to baba Yaga.
Some linguists and scholars claim she predates most Slavic gods (not all) and can certainly be their granny. By “predates” they mean her story does. As mentioned, our earliest written record of her is 1755 but linguists have observed her name and meaning in ancient and more recent languages alike.
This is a long process with many various and rigours examinations and collations of researches done by linguists, anthropologists, historians (among others), to put it rather reductively and name a few.
To give you a rough number on it (and it certainly is “rough” since nobody knowns), scholars think her story started about 3000 - 4000 years ago. It is likely Yaga’s tale has carried on for hundreds and thousands of years, shaping and morphing with societied and cultures into what we know about her today.
It's probably also safe to assume Monotheism, and specifically Christianity, had a large part to play in portraying Yaga as a more ghastly, hag-ish character.
Anyway, this deathly aspect will keep cropping up in her backstory, so keep an eye out and don’t worry about it.
Power over Nature
Her undisputed and truly awesome power over nature is not to be taken lightly, and it certainly wasn’t by our ancestors. Baba Yaga could control the Sun, Moon and Stars as well as the Laws of Nature.
She can exercise power over the weather, an aspect she shares with other Slavic witches; she can cause crops to grow or wither; and can (weirdly) regulate the flow of milk from cows in the same way she does rainfall. Those are just a fraction of her unfathomable knowledge and powers, and we can recognise she shares important traits with fertility, nature, and death deities.
In some tales, a child without a godmother (or grandmother) would have Yaga as one, but those tales are for another time (also, she wouldn’t have been known as “godmother” per se but that's linguistically the closest you can imagine her as; a fairy godmother if you like, though gorier and scarier).
What this aludes to is she’s closely tied to human life and dramatic deaths. As a side note, she’s also connected to the Leshii or Lesi, Lesnik, Les, Leshen; are or is the spirit and shepherd of the woods.
The Leshii were brought back into existence and pop-culture mainly due to the Witcher 3 game by CD Project Red - based on the Witcher books by Andrzej Sapkowski. The leshy exercises control over the forests and animals dwelling in its domain - something Baba Yaga and nature deities do.
Power of Trickery & Change
Even though she is seen as a cannibal known for kidnapping and eating children, Baba Yaga is also taken to represent change.
In some tales, she is the agent bringing about transformation (akin to the interpretation of the tarot card ‘death,’ meaning change, not literal goodnight-forever death; and the personification of death deities is where this interpretation of ‘change’ and ‘transformation’ has its origin).
Yaga also pertains to the qualities of a Shapeshifter and Trickster gods - most notoriously Norse Loki, but also the titan Prometheus as well as the Greek Hermes, his equivalent being the Roman Mercury/Mercurius.
The qualities of these characters are archetypical of change, but more importantly, they are associated and archetypical of the unknown, of what one is afraid of—as H.P. Lovecraft notes.
Baba Yaga does not conform to social norms, especially as a cannibal, and she’s free to act as she wishes, living outside regular social conduct and natural law. Yaga materialises superhuman and subhuman qualities.
Superhuman would refer to godly powers or Rick Sanchez/Gandalf-type resources; subhuman would be the wild animal or remourceless predator, beneath morality and concience.
She has monster-like qualities when hunting children for her supper (subhuman) but also celestial or supernatural ones due to her ability to fly, shapeshift, and hurdle curses and powerful spells (superhuman).
As the bringer of change, she helps heroes or heroines toward completing their quest—a pattern we recognize in the circle of the Hero's Journey where the main character is defeated, tricked, or overpowered, so some supernatural power or wise person aids the hero in their journey to becoming epic af; like the wizard Merlin for King Arthur, or Gandalf for the hobbits.
However, at times (most of the time) Yaga is also the villain in these stories, so…yep, she helps you but she also takes your children.
Moving swiftly on to part III HERE, where we’ll go through where Baba Yaga lives (just in case anyone wanted to visit..?!)
In the meantime Stay tuned for more exciting stuff, and as always you can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for more updates!