apps photos on Flickr

- And she and her house, spinning on its chicken feet, appear in another Soviet classic, 'Morozko' from 1965, at the 44:15 min. pt.: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw2DN4335hU&t=1299s

- Here she appears in the 2019 offering from the HellBoy franchise at her most skeletal (but she doesn't have a nose, let alone one long enough to rattle the rafters in her house when she snores. See below.) youtu.be/6puQWLlqcio?si=6EerwbB9fxgmsvqk

- Here she is in 'Hellboy' with another character in Russian or Slavic folklore, 'Koeschei the deathless'.: youtu.be/ZNhTzDTVWtY?si=kGtRVjUBDFpnTX4x

- www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylyo-NrkCGc

- www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoQR5HqdKjA

- Baba Yaga could be the most famous witch in European folklore or in general, and comes closest to fitting the image of the standard Western Halloween witch, a feisty crone on a broomstick (although the pointed hat with the little belt at the base of the cone is a nod to the Puritans of Salem, Mass.) "Witches were almost always portrayed naked until the 1900s" apparently. www.atlasobscura.com/articles/sex-drugs-and-broomsticks-t... Robbie Burns' scantily clad 'Cutty Sark' is an example. (Cutty Sark's a nickname for the young witch Nannie Dee and is Scots for a short chemise or undergarment.) www.flickr.com/photos/97924400@N00/5501535710/in/datepost... www.flickr.com/photos/97924400@N00/2994282746/in/datepost... (Update: I'd forgotten the 'Three weird sisters' in MacBeth when I first wrote this comment. See below.) Baba Yaga would zip round the countryside in a mortar, using a pestle like an oar or as a rudder, sweeping the tracks of the mortar and pestle behind her with a broom as she went.

- The witches that feature in the 'fairy tales' of Hans Christian Anderson and the brothers Grimm are generally nameless ('Mother Hulda' or 'Frau Holle' is at least one exception), and I don't know of any that appear in more than one fairy tale or myth per witch with the exception again of Frau Holle or Perchta or 'the Spillaholle', variations of a mythical old crone in German folklore, whose role, and the supernatural aspects of the myths which feature her, typically involve spinning or weaving. Baba Yaga shows up again and again or in different versions of tales in which, for example, a wicked step-mother sends a young girl to her doom (so's the plan) by sending her to see Baba Yaga in her house on chicken feet (see the chicken feet in this shot) where she stands to become the meat in the stew in her cauldron if not that various animals and sentient objects help her to escape with magic spells and advice, in gratitude for her kindness. (For example, when the girl's on the run and throws a magic comb down behind her, a dense forest shoots right up to impede Baba Yaga in her hot pursuit, at least in one version in a book I read as a kid ['A Ghost, a Witch and a Goblin'; Everything comes to Youtube eventually. I just found this. Baba Yaga features from the 5:45 min. pt..: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HbqvuUzSkY ]).

- In Russian tales, Baba Yaga "lives in a log cabin with no windows that moves around on a pair of dancing chicken legs, and/or is surrounded by a palisade or fence made with human bones with skulls on top. The keyhole to her front door is a mouth filled with sharp teeth, or, in another legend, the house does not reveal the door until it is told the magical phrase: “Turn your back to the forest, your front to me”. Baba Yaga herself usually uses the chimney to fly in and out on her mortar, and inside the house she is served by invisible servants and 3 bodiless and somewhat menacing pairs of hands. She's usually portrayed as a fearsome old crone with iron teeth, as thin as a skeleton in spite of a ferocious appetite ... Her nose is so long that it rattles against the ceiling of her hut when she snores, sleeping stretched out in all directions upon her ancient brick oven. Whenever she appears, a wild wind begins to blow, the trees around creak and groan, and leaves whirl through the air. A host of spirits often accompany her on her way, shrieking and wailing.

- "She is the Arch-Crone, the Goddess of Wisdom and Death, the Bone Mother, a wild and untameable nature spirit bringing wisdom and the death of ego (and, through death, rebirth). However, she appears to have no power over the blessed and the pure of heart, who are protected by the power of love, virtue, or a mother's blessing, and she reveals her all-knowing, all-seeing and all-revealing side to those who dare to ask. There are, then, stories where Baba Yaga helps people with their quests, and stories in which she kidnaps children and threatens to eat them, so seeking out her aid is usually portrayed as a dangerous act, requiring proper preparation and purity of spirit, as well as basic politeness."

www.witchcraftandwitches.com/witches_babayaga.html

- Baba Yaga is thought to derive from an ancient Slavic goddess. I'll write more on that point in this description some time.

- www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw2BbBEOchk

- Update: Watching this (great) BBC doc on 'the real MacBeth', I'm reminded of Shakespeare's 3 old witches "the weird sisters", and their toil and trouble. ("... Her husband's to Aleppo gone, Master o' the Tiger. But in a sieve I'll thither sail, and like a rat without a tail, I'll do and I'll do and I'll do!") I don't know how far back the earliest appearance of Baba Yaga can be traced in Slavic folklore (although "the first clear reference to her ['Iaga baba'] dates from 1755; Mikhail V. Lomonosov's Rossiiskaia grammatika ['Russian grammar'] in which Baba Yaga is mentioned twice amongst other figures largely from Slavic tradition" [wikipedia]; but "the first documented evidence [appears to] emerge in wood-block prints from the late 17th/early 18th cent.s" [at the 2:50 min. pt.: www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS4VCxMeWQM ]), but could she have some competition after all? The narrator claims that "Shakespeare almost single-handedly created the popular image of the witch as an old hag huddled over her cauldron" at the 29:26 min. pt. www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq75Cl_osxk (In fact, we infer that the 3 witches were elderly; they're only described in the play as ugly and as having beards.) This might be an example of anglocentrism. The popular conceit of Baba Yaga as an 'arch-crone' could predate 1606 by centuries in light of the proliferation of "thousands of Baba Yaga stories" over so many generations. (Please comment if you have better information).

- "The witches' ability to help or harm [MacBeth] played on the fears of Shakespeare's audience. More witches were tried and burned in the 17th cent. than in any other age. 5 centuries earlier, in the age of the real MacBeth, witchcraft was far less of an issue." (I can't tell if the narrator's claiming or implying that the success of the play led in part to the increase in the persecution and execution of 'witches' in the 1600s. He might be, seeing as MacBeth was first performed in 1606. But James I of England/VI of Scotland was on the throne then and it was well known that he had an abiding interest in witches. He's said to have suffered from porphyria, a hereditary condition which brought on intermittent fits and for which he might have looked to possible causes, incl. black magic. He wrote Daemonologie in 1597 [one of a few tracts he authored], his expose of the the practice of witchcraft and black magic and which provided background material to Shakespeare for Macbeth.)

- Here's a pretty good recent article from online mag 'Grunge': 'The legend of Baba Yaga explained': www.grunge.com/216412/the-legend-of-baba-yaga-explained/

♥ #skyporn #beautiful #breathtaking #clouds #sky_brilliance #sky #skylovers #spirituallife #nature #jawdroppingearth #skypornpics #ig_countryside #skypornography #nationalgeographic #cloudporn #skylover #ig_captures #autumn #sunset #sunsets #photography by Ricardo José

34

Wine workshop and some illustration. by Mohit Tomar

2

#zapando #ritmo #Dimanche by Luis Tulloch