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!
Gods I love fairy tales! 🙂
Am i the only one chorthled, when i see “ His Sexiness the Black Volhv ” , Mod R you are a gem 🙂
I always wait until the post appears in my email, where I can easily read it, but the last two posts have only given me a couple of sentences then I have to click and go to the website. This is a problem because my email can almost always load, but the site needs more bandwidth, which I often don’t have. I would really appreciate returning to getting the whole post in the email. Thanks!
Hi Nancy,
Thank you for the feedback, we will look into it 🙂 . Things are a bit on pause at the moment, whilst Ilona recovers.
Love this!!! Thank you so much for your effort and time. New material especially valued while winding 500 yard skeins of my own sheep flock’s wool before Maryland Sheep and wool festival. Maybe I can find role of sheep and wool in Slavic tales too?
Ohhh…learning about Mokosh already. Moderator R and House IA —you have enriched the world in so many wonderful ways!
Oh, you definitely can! Makosh is a Slavic goddess that watches over sheep, wool and spinners. She is also the goddess of fate, especially female fate, and women’s wellbeing and health in pregnancy. She shows up in various Mother Goddess aspects in the fairytales too. Here’s a picture of her in this blog post about Hugh and Roman https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/dont-fight-with-fate/
Poor Dina probably needed more than tea after that Tea and Chat. I remember it well because it was so hilarious.
Thank you Mod R. Great blog. I’ll be thinking about and coming back to various rabbit holes for ages now. 😉
this last para talking about Vasyliss reminds me of the Russian book ‘The little humpbacked horse’ I was given back when I was a tadpole (English translation of course). Apart from the fabulous colour plates, I was always impressed that the entire story was written in rhyme….and the stories included the Firebird and bathing in cauldrons of either death or rejuvenation.
So thanks for the memories HA!
PS I still have the – rather battered now – book.
Thanks for sharing this! We often dismiss folk tales as fanciful stories, made to amuse people, tell cautionary tales or both. As mod R said, they are a way of saying who the people are who created them, what they believed she how they saw the world. I am amazed at the depth of these tales, how characters can be very deep.
When you mention Baba Yaga I always think of Mussorsgy’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’, which has a section called Baba Yaga. As background, the piece was a tribute to an artist friend who had died, each section was based on the composers impression of each painting the artist had in an exhibition of his work that happened just before the artist died. Not surprisingly, Mussorgsky and his friend, Hartmann, were strongly supportive of the burgeoning of Russian arts of the late 19th century in music and visual arts and literature, that promoted Russian culture as a whole. That Baba Yaga was one of the paintings ( and one of the more dark, driving movements in the piece) is not surprising then. His ‘night on bald mountain’ was also heavily tinged with Russian folklore.
I’m not super musical, but the “Night On Bald Mountain” section from Disney’s original Fantasia made quite an impression. Thanks for reminding me!
I collect versions of Pictures at an Exhibition. I think I have about twenty now, including the Emerson Lake and Palmer version that started the collection and I forget which famous pianist playing the actual original version. I think it might be impossible to find a bad rendition, though some are better than others.
Absolutely fascinating, especially for someone like me who 1) grew up on Western European stories, and 2) grew up during the Cold War, when stories from behind the Iron Curtain were mostly unavailable — and treated as suspect when they showed up. I love House Andrews writing and characterizations and creativity, and one of the most fascinating aspects of that has been their featuring of tales from unknown (to me) lands.
Thank you for this. I love hearing the back story of the various mythological beings that inspire some of your characters. Since most of the Horde (not all) were raised in the USA, we were told VERY vanilla stories when we were young. It was shocking when I read the real versions of Grimm’s Fairy Tails when I was in college, since they were a “little” more gruesome than what I grew up with.
I like these posts almost as much as your original stories. ALMOST!!.
Hope you are feeling better and finding more to eat.
Thank you thank you for all of this lovely background information. It really enriches the stories Ilona and Gordon write. Baba Yaga is always one of my favorites.
Seconded!
I started reading Kate’s stories for the vampires (no pretty people with fangs–YES) and stayed for the Slavic folklore I seldom found anywhere else.
This was wonderful, what every folklore-myth nerd needs to start the day.
I think we need some “Caveat turba” merch!
and really enjoyed learning more about Slavic mythology! Thank you!
Hey, Mod R, you ever looked into using your blog posts to get a masters degree in literature? I think placating us should qualify for at least half the work if not more.
I can honestly say I have not 😀 . It’s all fun credits!
LOVED reading this. The combination of snark and analysis and explication was wonderful. Especially for me, as an American Mutt long removed from my immigrant forebears.
My great-grandfather and great-grandmother were Russian immigrants in 1898, making my grandmother (Father’s mother) and her siblings 1st generation Americans. Even though I’m not that far removed from that, I never heard Russian fairytales; Ma wasn’t very maternal and we spent more time at my maternal grandparents whose history dated back to the early 1700’s in America (British, Irish, Scottish, German). I did hear a lot of Russia and the Tsar (family history/legend says some kind of relation) and my grandmother considered herself above most people, even though she worked her entire life. This post today made interesting reading for me (HORDE FOREVER!) and makes me want to explore more of what should have been family tales handed down and was not.
I love the piece about how stories change through time.
One of my favorite movie scenes is in the movie Ring of Fire. (It’s a post apocalyptic movie, if you’re not familiar with it.) Two of the main characters are reenacting star wars as a form of entertainment for the younger children.
Excuse me, It’s Reign of Fire.
I love this! How is “Vasylisa” pronounced?
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, Mod R. Very interesting stuff!
I love the contrast between the Eastern European vs Western European meanings of the forest as a symbol. The Western idea seems very us/them (the forest has a boundary and it’s best to avoid going in there) while the Eastern idea strikes me as more wholistic (our normal way of living includes the forest, the boundary is more permeable).
Thank you! I love being part of a thoughtful and well-informed horde.
Thank you Mod R – that’s fascinating – off to explore…
Thank you very much!
Will this be a multi part installment discussing slavic tales and characters? I would love to read more of these discussions on major and minor characters, archetypes, and creatures. The Korgorushka is one that interests me, and seems to have some parallels to an Irish Puca/Pooka’s trickster aspect.
Hi ModR! I’ve had a question regarding the Three-Headed Goddess since reading Roman’s book. Specifically the “Crone, Mother, and Maiden” aspect in Kate Daniel’s world.
So we know the previous representation was The Oracle Witch who Kate and Andora both meet as children (Crone?), Maria (Mother?), and Edvokia (Maiden? No mention of children when baby!Kate visited)
Kate Daniel’s representation: Maria (Crone), Edvokia (Mother), Sienna (Maiden)
Current: Edvokia (?), Sienna (Maiden)
My two questions: do the members move up? For example, will Edvokia represent all 3 aspects- Maiden in Kate’s past, Mother in the main series, eventually Crone when Sienna gets older herself.
Second question: how do they find their 3rd member? Do they look in the existing acolytes or do they wait for a novice?
I was hoping you had some insight you could share. But also I understand if worldbuilding didn’t extend to my first question and if the second is Blood Heir spoilers. 😀
I’ll ask 🙂 , but I will say that Roman is same age if not a bit older than Kate and he had an older brother 7 years older than him, so Evdokia was probably the Mother when Kate and met her.
*If* she was in the Oracle at the time in the first place.
A reminder that the Oracle is the Witch Oracle- it represents the Witches faction in Atlanta- all witches, all denominations and ethnicities. Not specifically the Slavic pagan witches.
I know this wasn’t your intention but what an interesting tidbit that Edvokia may or may not have been part of the Witch Oracle during baby!Kate’s visits. 😉
I remembered that the Witch Oracle represents all of Atlanta but I thought it was more of a leadership position? That one person was indeed the Oracle but the other two members were very strong witches that helped provide the power/conduit. So Edvokia and Maria never received visions themselves but provided the power battery for the third member. But together all 3 were the head of the Atlanta Witch faction.
Did that make sense? Basically 1 Seer + 2 Batteries = the 3-headed dragon. Joking, joking. they = the three-aspected Witch Oracle.
I had a book of fairy tales suitably edited for a pre-teen audience. There were several stories of Baba Yaga which were my favorites. No only did her house stand up on chicken legs and turn around, it had a magic cupboard. If you were alowed to stay in her house while she was out and you opened her cupboard and you would find is loaf of coarse black bread and a piece of dry cheese. When Baba Yaga opened that cupboard it would be full of good things to eat.
There was also a story in which Baba Yaga became ill and in danger of dying. The prince in this story saved her by making a perilous journey and brought back a magic potion that made her well.
OMG! I am squeeing like a fan girl because that book was my first introduction to Russian fairy tales. I remember being very young and having read all of Bernard Evslin’s Monsters of Mythology series and the library had displayed Afansyev’s collection next to them. It had marked me enough that it was a book I hunted down when my kids began to read English.
I knew there was a lot of research going on about all the magical and religious constructs used in your stories. I just knew there was a doctoral dissertation’s worth of info you had to avail yourself of if you use these names and characters. I also knew that I wouldn’t have the nerve to ask you about it. Thank you for trying to educate me about all this. Thank you for all your hard work.
thank you..especially for the reinterpretation of Dickens’ novel intro
I loved this post. I really like to read comparisons of the different characters archetypes.
This is fascinating.
Oh… wait. In KD 10 the Crone dies in the battle. Does this means that Eudokia has taken the role of the Crone, the Maiden has taken Eudokia’s role as the Mother and Finn’s sister is the new Maiden? Roman calls her Vasylisia… Is that how the Witch Oracle evolves naturally? Why the asked Kate to get Bran’s blood to heal the Maiden? They said if she died and the Crone also passed, the Oracle would be reduced to 1 witch until the replacements were born and grew up…
It’s Slavs-day!
No, Vasylisa isn’t part of the Witch Oracle, she is a separate role altogether 🙂
Thank you, Mod R! You are awesome as always!
I love the Russian tales woven into your world building.
Agreed! Very interesting.
Since Julie Katesdottir (mixing cultures; forgive me) is clearly Vasylisa the Overly Powerful and Beautiful, does that mean Derek is a prince as well as a hunter?
Long time lurker, don’t comment much (ever?) …
Can I make one teeny weeny correction to the blog text? It’s not all of Western Europe that sees the forest as a wilderness inhabited by barbarians. It’s pretty specifically just Greece (and also Christianity, which demonizes everything that comes from Elsewhere). To Romans, the wilderness/forest was for ancestors, oddities, and beings who could help with mediating between them and the gods. To the Gauls, the wilderness/forest was a holy place – ref. the Gunderstrop Cauldron and some other La Tene sculpture and their visual connection to the Munis of the early Vedas and the Pashupati seal… oh, dear, I’m moving into college-prof mode. Yikes. Anyway, my point is that in the folklore that survives all over northern and western Europe, there is an equally close relationship between the people and the landscape. It looks different because the climate is different– but it’s still there.
I don’t know nearly as much about the Russian folklore as I’d like, and I love seeing how folklore of all kinds gets updated and played with and turned inside out and sideways… so thanks for that, and for all the fun stories!
I need “it was the Fuck Around times, it was the Find Out times” on a t-shirt STAT
Fascinating! Now the question is, “do I go down the rabbit hole of more knowledge?” or do I just absorb your post. Hmmm
This is very interesting. I have enjoyed the Roman series very much. I am a big fan of the Inkeeper series. Looking forward to reading what comes next. do sivdanyia??
not sure how I missed this when it posted but – THIS MADE ME SO HAPPY!!
Slavic folklore is intriguing to me and especially any Baba Yaga stories. I don’t know why, but sometimes I find myself absolutely entranced by anything Baba Yaga. I love the analysis here of Baba Yaga and her archetype(s) as well as Vasylisa (who I had only come across in pretty pretty future-princess flavors).
When I was younger I had books that had fairy tales from multiple cultures (not Lang). In one of them there was a Slavic/Russian story about a youngest daughter “Little Stupid” who had a silver apple she spun in a golden dish and she could see present and future in the apple. The tsar found out and invited her to be the tsarina. The elder sisters were jealous.
I don’t remember much more but I’d love to find and read that story again. Does anyone know what it’s called or what I could use to search for it?
The story you remember is called The Silver Saucer and the Transparent Apple 🙂 https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Russian_Folk-Tales/The_Tale_of_the_Silver_Saucer_and_the_Crystal_Apple
I have always thought that as a Slav I have one foot in Western logic and the other in Eastern mysticism. It keeps me grounded as not to dismiss anything out of hand for either side. Tech is wonderful but so is the mystery of the soul.