We are all storytellers. Stories allow us to examine what it means to be human.
Back when reading and writing were skills only a few possessed, stories were shared by word of mouth. With each oral retelling, narratives would mutate, until they became the product of a collective mind, the heritage of a particular corner of the world. Stories tell us where we come from, who we are, and how to choose the path to success. They teach us that sacrifice and sorrow, challenges and obstacles are inherent and genuine parts of the human experience. They root inside our spirit and cultures and become myths and archetypes.
In Eastern European “wonder tales” (skazka), there is an ineffable relationship between nature, the beings who populate it and the magic that infuses it – including magical transformations and magical animals. It’s something we are very familiar with, because we’ve been reading books by Ilona Andrews.
The world of Kate Daniels is a place where magic allows myth to take over and belief literally materializes the archetypal roles as guides for certain patterns in the life of the community.
It is up to individuals in the community to become syncretic with these stock characters and intercede between the gods and the people whose faith sustains them. Someone needs to be the Black Volhv or the Nightingale Bandit, Evdokia fulfils her Baba Yaga duties in style, and a woman takes the mantle of Vasylisa as soon as the previous one dies.
I will paste here the usual disclaimer House Andrews provides:
“We are taking liberties with Slavic mythology in the name of artistic license, so our stories are not academic papers and shouldn’t be used as such. Unfortunately, due to the absence of written records, most of what we know about Slavic mythology comes to us via oral traditions.”
Caveat turba, or whatever the Latin for “Horde, beware” is.
What is a stock character?
A stock character is a type of character audiences recognize across many narratives as part of a storytelling convention. When I say “Prince Charming”, you immediately understand what I mean, even though I haven’t specified whether it’s Snow White’s Prince Charming or the Charming in Shrek. He’s not the same person, clearly, yet they symbolically refer to the same role and features, which are often so stereotyped they can have caricatural proportions.
It’s used as a shorthand in fairy tales to get the audience (often kids) to recognize immediately who just appeared on the scene, without much work behind characterization. Because ain’t nobody got time for that, we’re trying to put the little dushegubs to sleep. “It’s the wicked witch who lives in the forest, we know her, danger ahead! Now close your eyes.”
Baba Yaga
She is often depicted as a frightening, ugly old woman who wants to eat people, flying around in a mortar with a pestle. (Evdokia was not available for comment on this particular interpretation).
She has celestial knowledge of the three horsemen – Day, Sun, and Night – indicating that she has magic and power over night and day. Her servants are skeletal or even disembodied hands that take the sorted corn from Vasilisa the Beautiful, her house on chicken legs is surrounded by pillars with skulls on them, and as the hero approaches, the one pillar without a skull cries “HEAD HEAD HEAD” in a ominous voice, letting us know what awaits those who don’t pass Yaga’s trials.
As her son, Roman has picked up on a few of these accessories, although Chernobog, God of Bones probably made the acquisition easier. (Every Friday is Black Friday in Nav! Everything must go! Free giant scorpion with each purchase of bone hands! *The gods of Nav claim no responsibility for digestive issues of giant scorpion once taken off the premises.)
Baba Yaga doesn’t have the same evil-witch characteristics in all depictions. Sometimes, she’s simply powerful or shows up as a figure who helps the heroine out of compassion. In Romanian stories, she is the Mother of the Forest, and the task of the maiden is to take care of all her “children”- suddenly, the yard is filled with creatures, one more slithery and creepy than another. Say, like a certain Black Volhv’s nechist pets. When Vasylisa shows no fear, washes and lovingly tends to every single monster, she proves her kind spirit.
The one common feature of Baba Yaga points to her connections with pre-Christian goddesses and rites of passage: even when she interacts with Vasylisa the Beautiful, this crone archetype never cares about her beauty. She cares about the initiation, the task being performed and the virtue that comes out of it. Which is a very interesting nod to society’s gaze and where it places the value of women.
Ultimately, Baba Yaga stands for the balance between life and death, as she is portrayed in Kate’s world, an aspect of the Triple Goddess.
Bilibin’s work shows the aspect of Baba Yaga as a donor who provides the girl with a magical object. Vladimir Propp (if you like Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces, definitely look into Propp’s functions of folk tales analysis!) draws attention to the fact that Baba Yaga is associated not only with death, but also with ancient social life, including rites of initiation taking place in the forest in the strictest privacy. Baba Yaga’s function is to protect and defend Vasylisa against the destructive forces coming from the world of Nav. That is why her hut looks like a warmly lit home holding the maiden’s sleeve, preventing her from getting lost in the wilderness of thin and uncertain borders.
The forest is a model of the Eastern European world, as opposed to signifying the uncivilized unknown inhabited by barbarians, as it often does in Western European myth. It is a liminal and dangerous space filled with supernatural forces, but at the same time, it is understood as native to the people who created these stories. It lives at the edge of their house and they travel inside it for sustenance and help.
Vasylisa
Vasylisa is the stock fairy-tale princess character. She also has several interpretations, with one thing in common: in all of her appearances, she is strong.
Less the princess who waits to be rescued, Vasylisa is part of the female archetypes in Slavic fairy tales that Get Shit Done: like Yaga, Koshechka-Havroshechka or Marya Morevna, who is basically a female bogatyr (a Queen Knight who goes to war and has previously defeated that most villainous of wizard stock characters – Koschei the Deathless, current residence: Morevna’s walk-in closet).
The stories she appears in can be found in Alexander Afanasyev’s collection of Russian Fariy Tales: Vasylisa the Beautiful; The Firebird and Princess Vasylisa; The Frog Tsarevna; The Sea Tsar and Vasylisa the Wise and Vasylisa the Priest’s Daughter.
Her two main aspects are Vasylisa Premudraya (Премудрая) and Prekrasnaya (Прекрасная): the Beautiful and the Wise. Technically, the prefix “pre” is there to a elevate whatever comes after it to a superior state (in our case krasiva– beautiful and mudraya– wise), so her titles are Overly Beautiful and Very Wise, in the sense of almost too much. Main character energy, Vasylisa has it.
We’ve seen how Vasylisa the Beautiful improves her lot in life by virtue of her good qualities alone, often starting off as a peasant girl and becoming rich or the wife of a prince by the end of her story. Vasylisa the Wise, by contrast, demonstrates great powers and magical knowledge- she fights, conjures and transmutes the elements and herself. She’s clearly part of the same witch and wizard group as Koschei, Yaga, and the Sea Tsar – and she’s adept at sorcery and tipping the scales of destiny.
When Prince Ivan (as the Fool he is) burns Vasylisa the Wise’s frog skin in the Frog Tsarevna, he delays the breaking of the curse that holds her captive. Baba Yaga is the one who puts him through trials, and only when he proves worthy can he get access to Vasylisa again. She is supremely not bothered and greets him with “Oh, you have been a long time coming, Prince Ivan! I almost married someone else.” A certain Horde I know (and ship alongside to) would say poor Ivan is really out of his league and His Sexiness the Black Volhv is much more Vasylisa the Wise’s speed.
In the Sea Tsar story, she plays the part of Ariadne, the help she provides being the only reason her betrothed is able to survive the tasks her father sets out for him. Like Ariadne, she is forgotten by the prince who moves on once they marry. Unlike her Greek mythology counterpart, Vasylisa doesn’t stick around to wait for gods or heroes; she goes and claims her man back. It was the fuck around times, it was the find out times.
Even when she’s initially Not-Too-Wise, like in The Firebird and Princess Vasylisa, where she gets tempted by greed enough to be kidnapped, she uses her power to get charge of her own destiny in ways fairy tale princesses rarely do. The hunter who has proven himself through all the trials is the husband Vasylisa desires, not the king who is only attempting to get credit for another’s success. The last task she sets for the two men is to bathe in the milk of her magical mares. One emerges transformed, healed and handsome. The other is boiled to death. Vasylisa the Powerful made her choice.
Do not mess with Vasylisa!
That’s a lot to digest. Many thanks, as always!
This is really interesting. Its always fun to see how architypes are portrayed in their original forms vs how they have been changed for modern stories. I love how you (Mod R and Ilona Andrews) gives us some of the background of where they get their cast from
Vasylisa is a much more interesting heroine than most female characters in European fairy tales. I need to (re)read the Afanasyev tales.
Caveat turba, indeed! I love that the Latin word for crowd or mob is related to “turbulent” (via turba and turbulentus). We are all that and a bag of “puleeze”!
A very chalant bag puleeze 😀
Oooo. Thanks for the primer. Always fun to learn new stuff. 🙂
Love the deep dives into lore!
Thanks for giving us something to follow down the rabbit hole – or into the dark forest.
So fascinating. I haven’t really looked into Russian fairy tales/archetypes before reading HA, although i have collected old/first edition when possible, fairy tale books for 40 years. I am now inspired to find these!
Thank you Mod R for these clear and engaging explanations. I was an avid reader of fairy tales and myths when I was young devouring the Western, Scandinavian and Greek ones. Never made it to the Russian ones so this was so, so helpful.
Take charge Princess! Yes, please!
Thanks Mod R for the post. It reminded me of the Greek plays I use to read for undergraduate school.
It’s always nice to learn another culture’s tales. Again, thanks! 😊
Thank you!!!
Thank you for the interesting and informative post – very cool to learn about other cultures.
Mod R is hitting things out of the park with awesome blog posts. 🙂
+1!!!
+1000
+1👍❤️
Definitely!
I am so impressed by and thankful for her! I frequently think wow she’s good. Sliding in all the book references and Horde inside jokes just makes me giggle when I see one.
Amen! It’s taken me awhile to find a quiet moment to read this yummy post. Thanks Mod R! I learn so much from you and HA.
Nice! Very interesting, and striking that it illustrates something I noticed a long time ago because I have always had an interest in myths and legends from different cultures.
Christianity seems to have made a constant and specific effort to remove or minimize everyone except strong men and particularly European men from history and legend. Strong central characters in the original stories become fictional, foolish, powerless, bad, or they disappear all together.
If you have not yet seen the movie “Damsel” I recommend it highly. The self rescuing princess is wonderful.
I see parallels with Visalia.
Watched it last week. Thought it was pretty well done. Liked how it turned tropes on their ears.
Thanks for the very informative post. Off to read more Slavic myths & tales.
Fascinating!
I had missed a lot of the European folklore, mainly because I didn’t realize it was so different. Thank you for the back ground.
I need to do some research…
My oldest cat’s name is Baba Yaga. She’s a tortie. When she was a kitten, we named her Colleen because she was a pretty little girl. My youngest son has ADD and tends to hyperfocus. She would get on his shoulder and want him to pet her. He was playing a video game. She’d lick him. He’d play the video game. She’d try again… still no pets… eventually she’d bite him, usually on the ear but also whatever she could reach, she was a tiny kitten. And of course he’d pay attention to her. So we started calling her Baba Yaga because she ate children.
(She’s an old cat now and she doesn’t bite people anymore. Now she’ll knock your book out of your hands or … in extreme cases… spill ice cold water on you.
I believe that naming cats after gods and powers is a bad idea, as cats will take on those qualities. So many mischievous cats named Loki right now!
Yours seems to be the opposite situation. Baba Yaga manifested in your kitten first.
Thank you, always love to read about connections between oral folk tales and their modern interpretations. This post is awesome.
Thank you for another interesting blog! I’ve always found mythology interesting, but so inconsistent and contradictory. It’s annoying at times. I’m too much the scientist, I suppose. I want constant and replicable results hehe! I am here to say that I so prefer HA interpretations! The worlds HA build are magical but consistent within their boundaries. I love that!
Thank you for the blog post. I took a term on folklore in university many years ago, and now I realize that I only scratched the surface, there’s so much that I could have explored.
Professor Mod R. Great information
now that ties up with how Evdokia knows who the next Vasylisa was going to be and gave her the tools to prepare for her role.
it is always fun learning about cultures and how they were always connected in some way with other cultures. Growing up, we don’t have tales to read but hear the stories told by grandparents. I really enjoyed it when we get the tikbalang in Iron & Magic. One of my grandmas favorite bad guy in her stories.
thanks Ilona & Mod R… googling terms & new mythical characters is always fun 🙂
Cool.
I definitely love heroines with FAFO energy! The “damsels in distress” irritate the tar out of me. Had the writers of that trope ever actually MET a grown a$$ woman? The majority of the women I know follow the “freak out, calm down, apply big girl panties, get sh!t done” order of operations lol. there may be “call mom/granma/auntie/big sis/big for support” somewhere in there, too lol
Absolutely, get that coven energy going! 😀
Yasss! #squad goals lol
So right. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Most guys have no freaking idea about all the sh!t the average woman of any age has to go through just to get sh!t done. There are cultural rheostats on our energy circuits.
Others of us freak out when the shit is done. I get really tired of being slapped down for losing it when the mess has been dealt with. Especially since most of the time that’s happened, it was me doing the dealing with it.
Thank you Mod R! I miss the Kate Daniels world so much that it’s just a daily ache! I want to know how Kate, Curran, Conlan, Erra, Derek, and Julie are doing all the time. I would gladly live in Penderton under Kate’s guardianship any day.
Thank you!
An awesome awesome post!! Mythology is a side passion of mine and i love Joseph Campbell. I found out recently that my paternal grandmother (adopted) was actually Hungarian (we thought she was Irish)and so I’m so completely fascinated the ways we are or can be drawn to mythologies of our ancestors known or unknown! Thank you Mod R for such a detailed post!
This should be your favorite youtube channel then @HungarianFolkTales.
I remember watching it as a kid, Hungarians are weird, even if Slavs standards apply.
One of the things I love best about your writing is the “twists” you put on classic figures. I find it fascinating and I have gone down many a magical rabbit hole when I come across a figure in your writing that I have never heard of before. For example the Lamassu in “Magic Rises”
Love these princessas who kick ass. Much like all the main gals in our authorlords’ worlds.
I absolutely love my birthday present. Thank you!
Happy birthday! 🎂
Thanks! It was great, actually.
Many happy returns!
Thank you!
I’m aiming for the Tricentennial. 123 is at least as likely as dropping dead tomorrow, so I’m going for it.
Happy birthday to you!
Thank you!
I know it’s ‘fairy tales’ or oral tales & history, but how I love it. Finding out more about Russian tales is fascinating. Thank you.
I cannot wait to find out more about ‘our’ Vasylisa. Can we please get a vocalisation so that I pronounce this name correctly: is is like ‘Vasi- Leesa”
The clearest I can find, without voice effects or soundtrack behind it is here https://youtu.be/sKR_H5fSuVI?si=diH_h3pgoUobgB2M&t=1744 – minute 29:04 if it doesn’t automatically start there.
Thanks ModR for both the pronunciation and the chance to laugh. SO far from our Vasylisa!
OMG the guy’s wig!
It was attractive 100 years ago! 😀
I have no idea what’s happening in the movie yet found myself compelled to watch it for 20 minutes without understanding a single word. Just fascinating. And the pronunciation was helpful, of course!
Something to cogitate!!❤️
Thanks for sharing. Loved learning new things plus love your storytelling skills, Mod R!
That was some delightful background! Thank you!
Thanks a lot It was a fun post to read. Also I read this and imediatly remember how I always wanted a scene of someone talking about the Atlanta neo pagan comunity reacting to Kate and curran marriage date and the fact they had a black volv oficiating It lol. Did become part of the local folclore or created some drama or better both. We get Roman reaction but it wasnt enought for me.
This!!! I grew up with many moons ago … still love them in film and book. Thanks Mod R for the trip down memory lane
“Head, head, head!” Lol!
Thanks for this post, Mod R.
I remember reading some of those stories and being utterly captivated. The heroines’ use of wits, kindness, and cunning to determine fate is still a delight today.
Love this!
This is all new to me and I’m interested in learning more, so I’m going to click on the links you provided when I have time.
Also, Mod R, you have a way with words. This post started like a very interesting academic paper, but then I saw, “Because ain’t nobody got time for that, we’re trying to put the little dushegubs to sleep.”
And later on, I saw, “It was the fuck around times, it was the find out times.” Hahahahahahahaha, I had to bust out laughing, thank you!
+1 standout moments in a standout post!
I have really enjoyed the bits and pieces of Slavic mythology in the Kate books!
I had a beautiful book of Russian fairytales when I was a child – it had 5 stories, including the Frog Tsarevna and the Firebird. The stories featured Baba Yaya and Kotschei the Deathless. Vasilisa was in 4 out of the 5 stories, if I remember correctly. (The one that was different was Emeliya and the Pike).
The illustrations in that book were fabulous, painted in rich jewel-like colourds. Stylised but very recognizable. I wish I still had it… it went missing many years ago…
*Emilya? can’t remember the spelling.
one of my favourite stories had a magic horse that granted wishes – you climbed in one ear and out the other… it all seemed perfectly reasonable at the time! I can’t remember the name of the horse, I think it started with a D but I’m not sure…
Emelya the Fool (or at the Pike’s behest) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_the_Pike%27s_Behest – absolutely loved that one! I used to have a vinyl with a dramatized recording a la Graphic Audio, and the main actor portrayed lazy Emelya so perfectly it always made laugh and laugh.
There are several magical horses, one comes to mind as the central figure that grants wishes: Konek-Gorbunok, or the Little Hump-Backed Horse. My version had beautiful illustrations by Raschektaev http://book-graphics.blogspot.com/2015/05/konek-gorbunok-ill-n-raschektaev.html?m=1
thanks Mod R!
I googled the horse story and I think the one I read is a variant of Sivko-Burko! I remember him helping a youngest son and also the thing about jumping to the window to kiss the princess.
… but now reading the Little Humpbacked Horse story, that is very familiar too!
I’m going to have to go looking for that book now…
Such beautiful illustrations. Took me straight back to my childhood. Thank you.
Gorgeous illustrations!
I’ve heard horses inclined to buck described as hump backed. Probably a different thing.
A big thank you Modr! I love reading fairy tales from different countries. I’m presently reading, “Uraschimataro and the Turtle”
It’s interesting to see how culture influences who the hero is and the resolution of the moral dilemma.
as a parent to two girls. there aren’t a lot of Disney content I approve of. but for Frozen. a couple of years ago they were of age to really understand feature film plots and of course I watched frozen along w them and finally a movie about girls helping each other. not needing a man to save you but yourself. and ironically the sister w no magic actually saves and helps the sister w magic . and thank you for pointing out how traumatizing it could be to suppress the truth instead of teaching our kids to openly communicate about feelings and otherness.
that’s what draws me to HA work. great characters, strong women, actually supportive family and friends and of course embracing magic. and how redemptive the characters could be. thanks!
I used to have to stop myself from being drawn into terrible diversional research holes about fairytales, mythology and the collective unconscious.
Sometimes when you look at a character, or idea or tenet, hard enough and go back far back enough you suddenly realise that the world is actually a really small place and human history is so smooshed up with geography and people just being people that it’s actually shocking that we’ve had so many wars and conflicts when we’re all just so much the same. (Though then again, maybe that’s the problem.)
Life, death and nature anthropomorphisation and/or deification, makes sense to me; Baba Yaga is sensible but Cinderella always surprised me. What’s with the shoe significance going so far back through history? Being good and sweet will net you a rich husband – ok, moral is clear. But why with a shoe? Even in Ancient Greece?!
When I was little (I’m now almost 82) we got a children’s magazine called Jack and Jill. Periodically there would be a Baba Yaga story in it, which was always a favorite for me. That’s probably why I still remember it more than 70 years later! I have always remembered the house on chicken legs; she made it squat down to go in when she came home from flying around in the mortar and steering with the pestle. Anybody else remember that magazine? (They left out the skulls and “Head, head, head” chants, though.)
I’m 64 and loved Jack and Jill, especially the Baba Yaga stories. There were also stories about animals that had the most wonderful illustrations. I remember one where a mouse made valentines out of violet leaves. They were a bit Richard Scarry/Garth Williams, but I think neither of those was the actual illustrator.
I read those in the dentist’s office. I found Baba Yaga when I was eight and fell in love. I used to have quite a collection; but there are limits to my shelf space and I find quite a few of the heroes irritating, so I only kept a couple of them.
Baba Yaga made me think of John Wick 🤷🏻♀️
Ok, so this is also giving me flashbacks to The Magic Pony after you mentioned Ivan the fool.
I have not found anyone that ever watched it. it was given to my family as a hand me down vhs as a kid and I watched it many times as a child. it was different from the all the other Disney/western media I was otherwise exposed to as an American.
Has anyone else ever seen The Magic Pony???
I was about to comment on “The Magic Pony”!
I loved that cartoon as a child and have it on VHS somewhere. I remember it looked so beautiful compared to the other cartoons I had watched. I believe a local channel had it on as one of their family films.
Ivan and the King jumping into the vats was very memorable to me.
This is the dub I remember for the movie
https://youtu.be/f0m-0bvap5A?si=CPjl6YAhxfXKKAvM
“It was the fuck around times, it was the find out times” I need this on a mug!
Mod R thanks so much for this insightful primer. HA has piqued my interest in Eastern European ancient religions/myths. Eager to learn more.
Caveat turba
…might look really good on another cushion, next to my two existing ‘There will be Ripper Cushions’ cushions.
Maybe in a Black Volvelicious font?
Tasty.
Thanks Mod R.
*horde appropriate hugs*
It was the fuck around times, it was the find out times.
Mwahahaha! This, so, SO much this!