September 12, 2024 • 18 mins
George Noory and author Kris Spisak explore the history of the mythical shapeshifter known as the Baba Yaga, how tales of the witch were used to scare Eastern European children, and the inspirational message behind the Baba Yaga story.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with
you our special guest Chris Pzech with us, an editor
and author dedicated to helping other writers, fully believes that
well rid words in Walt stories have always changed the
world and that they will continue to do so. The
latest book is called Becoming Baba Yaga. Chris, welcome to
(00:25):
the program.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Thanks so much for having me. George.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
What is the Baba Yaga?
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Oh, that's such a fabulous question. So Baba Yaga is
a folk tale story book which who has stories has
been a giant telephone game over centuries and perhaps millennia
of this evil crone who lives deep in the woods,
who lives in a house that stands upon chicken legs,
(00:55):
So of course her house can stand up and turn around,
so you can never find her front door, or else
can stand up and run away if she really doesn't
want you to find her. But it's the word evil
I want to explore, because so often she is put
into this Disney caricature box of what an evil witch
must look like. But she is so complex and she
(01:17):
has some there we say life coaching amid her folk
tales that are definitely worth exploring.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Does this come primarily from Slavic and the Ukrainian folklore
Slavic falklor.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Yes, I'm Ukrainian myself, so I've known Bobby Yaga for
a very long time. Sometimes when people speak of her,
they speak of her as a Russian witch. But really,
if you look anywhere in Eastern Europe, there are little
breadcrumbs of who this character is, what her legacy is,
what her belief system is, all across that region. So
you can really pinpoint her in about ten different countries
(01:54):
in that region. But no, quite, there are no borders
that exist for bob Yaga.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Is there supposed to be an alter? You go to
Baba Yaga a good one.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
That's the wonderful thing about her, because she is a
force of darkness, but she always has this identity to
her where if you come to her and you show
her for specific character traits, which I love because this
is kind of where the evolution and transformation come with her.
If you come to her deep in the woods according
(02:25):
to oli her stories, and you're showing her respect, and
you're showing her that you have a kind heart, and
you're showing her that you're a hard worker, and you're
showing her that you can be brave. She can actually
become almost a donor type fairy cod mother like character
who can transform someone's life from miserable to so much better.
And it's one of those aspects that I think is
(02:47):
so fascinating, especially in this moment in modern history, where
sometimes we have shadows that's around us. Sometimes we have darkness.
Sometimes when you look around the world, it's terrifying, it's horrific.
It's the darkness feels like every once in a while
it is creeping in. But when you look at old
(03:07):
world stories that have stuck around not only for generations,
but for hundreds thousands of years, those stories exist for
a reason, and Baba Yaga specifically reminds us that when
there's darkness in the world, don't be afraid of it,
because sometimes through that darkness and finding our way to
endure through that darkness is where our greatest transformations exist.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Of course, how did you become so knowledgeable about Baba Yaga?
Speaker 3 (03:36):
So she's a character I have known from just family
bedtime stories since I was a young child, But because
she is so ambiguous. Sometimes she is evil, sometimes she
is good. Sometimes she falls into this trickster category. And
she is so complex that her physicality changes between different stories,
and just how she interacts with people changes. There's always
(03:59):
a threat of she will eat you up for supper,
which I mean as the best of storybook witches sometimes
can have that threat, But there are so many different
derivations of her. So I started studying her a long
time ago. I think growing up in a household that
was a mix of kind of contemporary American pop culture
(04:20):
but also long held Ukrainian traditions. I'm first generation American
on that side of my family. Hearing the dichotomy of
belief systems and understandings and just cultures intrigued me. And
I remember when I was a little kid. I was
probably nine years old, and there was this conversation around
(04:41):
the dinner table, and it was probably three different generations
around the dinner table, family friends as well as family,
and all of a sudden, this conversation sparked about witches
and darkness. And this is coming from a generation, my
grandparents generation who survived World War two and World War
two in Ukraine. The story that is not often told
(05:01):
I could actually tell you about that too. My most
recent book, before Becoming Bobby Yaga, is actually a novel
that is called The Bobby Yaga Mask that actually goes
into World War two Ukrainian history. But anyway, I was
as a child, I was sitting around the dinner table
and the stories shifted to witches and Bobby Yaga, and
(05:23):
I remember, as a nine year old child, standing up
excusing myself as politely as I could, because at my grandparents'
Ukrainian dinner table, one must always have the best of manners,
as we all know from our grandparents. But I excuse myself,
ran to my bedroom where I had one of those
this is going to date me a little bit. I
had a tape recorder with those many cassette tapes, and
I ran and I got it, and I kind of
(05:44):
kept it under my dinner napkin, and I sat back
at the table very quietly, and I put my napkin
on top of it, and I just recorded this conversation
of all of my grandparents' friends discussing witches and folklore
and beliefs. And I was just hooked from that moment.
And the studies haven't really stopped.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Would your family actually give you bedtime stories of this
evil thing?
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Oh? Yeah, So I grew up in a household where
I think so many horrors had happened during World War two,
tales of survival, because the Ukrainian World War II story, again,
it's a story that's not often told, where you had
forces from Russia coming from one direction, claiming trying to
(06:32):
wipe away Ukrainian identity. You had Nazi Germany who was
coming in on the other side, and you have Ukraine
in the middle, who desperately just wants to be its
own country, to have its own identity, to claim its
own culture, and just say let us exist. Not getting
into contemporary events on this conversation, but it's a familiar
(06:52):
story and the horrors of freedom fighters and just survive
will amid horrific things. These were stories that we heard
around the dinner table, stories of survival and how to
find food and witnessing terrible events. And maybe it was
(07:13):
an old belief that it was one of those things
that you told your family stories better understand not only
each other and your blood and your strength of what
you can get through, but also just to be prepared
for absolutely anything. So Yes, there was no shortage or
limitations of darkness or scary tales when I was a child.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Wow, not that digress too much, but I have to
ask you this. They say one of Putin's reasons for
going into Ukraine was to try to rid it of
Nazis that were still infiltrating Is there any truth to that.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
I'm going to stay away from contemporary events in this conversation,
but I can just say that I have known a
sense of Ukrainian pride, Ukrainian identity, and the beauty of
arts and music and storytelling as a part of what
it means to be Ukrainian for as long as I
(08:09):
can remember. And there's such a strength of people and
bravery of people that I think it's a very complex
story that people should take some time to actually learn
some history. And then when you start digging into the history,
the answers to questions like what you just asked will
become a little bit more clear.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yeah, it's pretty complicated, isn't it. Definitely back to Bob Yaga.
Has it hurt anybody that you know of?
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Has Bobby Aga?
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (08:43):
No, I cannot say definitely not. Bobbioga is definitely a
force that you could say her stories are out to terrify.
Her stories are out to put a different lens on
the world that you think you know right where you
think that you might be comfortable, or again the terrors
(09:04):
that you see around you. And when you look at
old fairy tales, when you look at old folk tales,
when you look at the origin of Bobby Yaga herself,
her first written record was in seventeen fifty five, and
that's her first known written record, and that was in
a Russian and in that book there was a list
(09:26):
of deities across the world, and so you had Jupiter
was next to the relevant Slavic god, who is next
to the relevant Norse god, and you had all of
these different people who exist together. And then in this
chart of gods and goddesses around the world, you had
Bobby Yaga. And so in this first written record of her,
(09:50):
she was not a storybook, which she was understood as
a deity in that time. And so that's the first
part of her intrigue is, Okay, we know her through storybooks,
but she has this legacy of a deity. But then
the more intriguing fact of it is there was this
table of who were comparables the world over, and yet
Baba Yaga stood alone. There was nobody across the world
(10:17):
in this book that was the same as she was.
This force of strength for women, this force of strength
of preservation of the earth, this force of nature, understanding
the cycles of life and death and transformation. And I
think it is this idea of transformation for her that
people really lean into today.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Is she strictly folklore Chris? Or is she possibly real?
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Hm? So I like the idea of where do you
stories come from? They come from somewhere deep within the
emotions of humanity, the fears of humanity. When we look
at Baba Yaga as a character again, we see this
trail of deities, of who she may have once been,
(11:05):
who she may still be. And you're finding all of
these breadcrumbs of deities across about a thousand years of Europe,
where we have deities of the earth, where there are
traditions where it was forbidden to spit on the earth,
because the spit on the earth was to spit on
your mother. There was an idea of digging a hole
(11:27):
in the earth and whispering into it. So this goddess
of the worst Earth could hear your deepest secrets or
greatest confessions and listen and respond to you. The idea
of an old, terrifying woman on the edges of society.
This is not a new idea. This is an idea
(11:50):
that has been twisted and molded and shaped so much
dependent on the teller of the tale. But when it
comes to Baba Yaga and who who she is and
who she has been, and the women who may have
inspired her just as much as any traditions of deities,
that's what is also intriguing in this conversation because who
(12:12):
is it who tells the stories to our youth. It's
not always the most active society who are sitting down
with the children and telling their stories. So often, especially historically,
it's the grandmothers who are telling the stories to the children.
Because the grandmothers sometimes are having more time than the
(12:32):
parents who are running this direction and that direction. And
that is not a modern phenomenon. Parents are always doing
their best to take care of the one hundred things
that are necessary in life. But if you have the
grandmothers who are the ones between generations telling the tales
of this fearsome which Baba Yaga, there's some ownership in
(12:55):
age and wisdom and strength and experience, and telling of
small children and also adults alike, that you know what.
The world can sometimes be scary. Sometimes it may feel
as if you might be eaten for supper. Sometimes it
feels that if you walk into the woods, someone might
(13:17):
get you. If you are not being your best self,
if you're not being respectful, if you're not being good hearted,
if you're not being brave, if you're not being hardworking.
It's a lesson from the grandmothers to the children that
has passed down in countless ways. And thus we have
Bobby Yaga today, and she's popping up in pop culture
(13:38):
all over the place. In movies, she's in Goodness, She's
in the John Wick series John Wick Keanu Reeves character,
her name is Bobby Yaga, and she's popping up there.
She's popping up in music, she's popping up in fiction.
In the past decade, Bobby Yaga has emerged from the
woods and popped up in the Western world, and so
(14:00):
often she's this force of horror. But every once in
a while there's a slightly deeper exploration where audiences sit
back and go, who is this woman who is this witch,
and there is where my explorations begin and I've so
much deeper.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Is she like the old hag syndrome in our culture?
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Absolutely, but she fights tooth and nail against every little
bit of it. Sometimes in modern culture, an old woman
is either terrifying or invisible, and Bobby Aga can lean
into both stereotypes. Where you want to see terrifying, I
can give you terrifying. This is actually something I played
(14:44):
with in my novel, my last book, The Bobby Aga Mask.
In that story I have, one of my characters is
a ninety something grandmother who survived World War two Ukraine,
and she said, before I die, I want to go
see the old country. So she hops a fly to
you Europe. She steps up the plane and she disappears.
And thus we have the story of a wild goose
(15:05):
chase across contemporary Eastern Europe. Of these two sisters, won
a new mother and one a free spirit, shall we
call her, on this wild goose chase finding their grandmother.
But in the midst of it, they're uncovering their grandmother's history,
their families, history, Ukrainian history and traditions. The part of
that grandmother's disappearance and this is not giving away any plot.
(15:29):
Is this concept of this woman who grew up knowing
and believing in Bobby Yaga, not just as a storybook character,
but as a force in the wood who was there
to empower the world. This grandmother ends the Baba Yaga
mask decides, you know what, the world is scary. The
world is horrific. Haven't we all had that moment where
(15:50):
we look around and say, the world is falling apart?
So this grandmother and that novel says, you know what
I'm going to do. I am going to scare the
world to being a better place. I am going to
take up the inspiration of Bobbiyaga and see what I
can do here. And so I love that inspiration for
a character in fiction. Of the world is horrific, maybe
(16:11):
we need to scare it into being a better place.
This is not the life strategy I'm discussing, but it's
an interesting way to look at how folk tales and
different belief systems have exist in human civilization for a
very long time.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
What did the tales do for you as a child
and then as you became an adult.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Tales are very much a system of the world. They
were written in so some of the Babbyaga tales, for example,
the most famous one that audiences probably have ever heard
of is called Vasilisa the Beautiful. So you have a story,
and this one is such a echo of Cinderella, but
you could argue it came earlier than Cinderella. But then
(16:56):
you could also argue that there are Cinderella stories the
world over, and it is Ragstrish's tales that exists in
the hearts of humans for forever. But there is a
story of a girl who she lived with her stepmother
and stepsisters, except for the last fire goes out in
their household. So this girl of Vasalisa is sent out
(17:19):
into the woods to get fire back for their household
because the only one who can access fire is the
witch of the woods, Babba Yaga. So she goes to
Bobby Yaga, and Bobby Yaga forces her to not just
have the fire, but she forces her to prove herself
worthy of eight guests. And again this is where there's
(17:41):
such a similar formula and all of the in all
of the tales that when especially when young women come
to seek her, if they are respectful to her, if
they prove themselves good hearted, if they prove themselves hard working,
and if they prove themselves brave, Those four traits will
enable an individual to conquer anything.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one am Eastern, and go to coast tocoastam dot com
for more
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
And welcome back to Coast to Coast George Nori with
you our special guest Chris Pzech with us, an editor
and author dedicated to helping other writers, fully believes that
well rid words in Walt stories have always changed the
world and that they will continue to do so. The
latest book is called Becoming Baba Yaga. Chris, welcome to
(00:25):
the program.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Thanks so much for having me. George.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
What is the Baba Yaga?
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Oh, that's such a fabulous question. So Baba Yaga is
a folk tale story book which who has stories has
been a giant telephone game over centuries and perhaps millennia
of this evil crone who lives deep in the woods,
who lives in a house that stands upon chicken legs,
(00:55):
So of course her house can stand up and turn around,
so you can never find her front door, or else
can stand up and run away if she really doesn't
want you to find her. But it's the word evil
I want to explore, because so often she is put
into this Disney caricature box of what an evil witch
must look like. But she is so complex and she
(01:17):
has some there we say life coaching amid her folk
tales that are definitely worth exploring.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Does this come primarily from Slavic and the Ukrainian folklore
Slavic falklor.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Yes, I'm Ukrainian myself, so I've known Bobby Yaga for
a very long time. Sometimes when people speak of her,
they speak of her as a Russian witch. But really,
if you look anywhere in Eastern Europe, there are little
breadcrumbs of who this character is, what her legacy is,
what her belief system is, all across that region. So
you can really pinpoint her in about ten different countries
(01:54):
in that region. But no, quite, there are no borders
that exist for bob Yaga.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Is there supposed to be an alter? You go to
Baba Yaga a good one.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
That's the wonderful thing about her, because she is a
force of darkness, but she always has this identity to
her where if you come to her and you show
her for specific character traits, which I love because this
is kind of where the evolution and transformation come with her.
If you come to her deep in the woods according
(02:25):
to oli her stories, and you're showing her respect, and
you're showing her that you have a kind heart, and
you're showing her that you're a hard worker, and you're
showing her that you can be brave. She can actually
become almost a donor type fairy cod mother like character
who can transform someone's life from miserable to so much better.
And it's one of those aspects that I think is
(02:47):
so fascinating, especially in this moment in modern history, where
sometimes we have shadows that's around us. Sometimes we have darkness.
Sometimes when you look around the world, it's terrifying, it's horrific.
It's the darkness feels like every once in a while
it is creeping in. But when you look at old
(03:07):
world stories that have stuck around not only for generations,
but for hundreds thousands of years, those stories exist for
a reason, and Baba Yaga specifically reminds us that when
there's darkness in the world, don't be afraid of it,
because sometimes through that darkness and finding our way to
endure through that darkness is where our greatest transformations exist.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Of course, how did you become so knowledgeable about Baba Yaga?
Speaker 3 (03:36):
So she's a character I have known from just family
bedtime stories since I was a young child, But because
she is so ambiguous. Sometimes she is evil, sometimes she
is good. Sometimes she falls into this trickster category. And
she is so complex that her physicality changes between different stories,
and just how she interacts with people changes. There's always
(03:59):
a threat of she will eat you up for supper,
which I mean as the best of storybook witches sometimes
can have that threat, But there are so many different
derivations of her. So I started studying her a long
time ago. I think growing up in a household that
was a mix of kind of contemporary American pop culture
(04:20):
but also long held Ukrainian traditions. I'm first generation American
on that side of my family. Hearing the dichotomy of
belief systems and understandings and just cultures intrigued me. And
I remember when I was a little kid. I was
probably nine years old, and there was this conversation around
(04:41):
the dinner table, and it was probably three different generations
around the dinner table, family friends as well as family,
and all of a sudden, this conversation sparked about witches
and darkness. And this is coming from a generation, my
grandparents generation who survived World War two and World War
two in Ukraine. The story that is not often told
(05:01):
I could actually tell you about that too. My most
recent book, before Becoming Bobby Yaga, is actually a novel
that is called The Bobby Yaga Mask that actually goes
into World War two Ukrainian history. But anyway, I was
as a child, I was sitting around the dinner table
and the stories shifted to witches and Bobby Yaga, and
(05:23):
I remember, as a nine year old child, standing up
excusing myself as politely as I could, because at my grandparents'
Ukrainian dinner table, one must always have the best of manners,
as we all know from our grandparents. But I excuse myself,
ran to my bedroom where I had one of those
this is going to date me a little bit. I
had a tape recorder with those many cassette tapes, and
I ran and I got it, and I kind of
(05:44):
kept it under my dinner napkin, and I sat back
at the table very quietly, and I put my napkin
on top of it, and I just recorded this conversation
of all of my grandparents' friends discussing witches and folklore
and beliefs. And I was just hooked from that moment.
And the studies haven't really stopped.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
Would your family actually give you bedtime stories of this
evil thing?
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Oh? Yeah, So I grew up in a household where
I think so many horrors had happened during World War two,
tales of survival, because the Ukrainian World War II story, again,
it's a story that's not often told, where you had
forces from Russia coming from one direction, claiming trying to
(06:32):
wipe away Ukrainian identity. You had Nazi Germany who was
coming in on the other side, and you have Ukraine
in the middle, who desperately just wants to be its
own country, to have its own identity, to claim its
own culture, and just say let us exist. Not getting
into contemporary events on this conversation, but it's a familiar
(06:52):
story and the horrors of freedom fighters and just survive
will amid horrific things. These were stories that we heard
around the dinner table, stories of survival and how to
find food and witnessing terrible events. And maybe it was
(07:13):
an old belief that it was one of those things
that you told your family stories better understand not only
each other and your blood and your strength of what
you can get through, but also just to be prepared
for absolutely anything. So Yes, there was no shortage or
limitations of darkness or scary tales when I was a child.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Wow, not that digress too much, but I have to
ask you this. They say one of Putin's reasons for
going into Ukraine was to try to rid it of
Nazis that were still infiltrating Is there any truth to that.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
I'm going to stay away from contemporary events in this conversation,
but I can just say that I have known a
sense of Ukrainian pride, Ukrainian identity, and the beauty of
arts and music and storytelling as a part of what
it means to be Ukrainian for as long as I
(08:09):
can remember. And there's such a strength of people and
bravery of people that I think it's a very complex
story that people should take some time to actually learn
some history. And then when you start digging into the history,
the answers to questions like what you just asked will
become a little bit more clear.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yeah, it's pretty complicated, isn't it. Definitely back to Bob Yaga.
Has it hurt anybody that you know of?
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Has Bobby Aga?
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (08:43):
No, I cannot say definitely not. Bobbioga is definitely a
force that you could say her stories are out to terrify.
Her stories are out to put a different lens on
the world that you think you know right where you
think that you might be comfortable, or again the terrors
(09:04):
that you see around you. And when you look at
old fairy tales, when you look at old folk tales,
when you look at the origin of Bobby Yaga herself,
her first written record was in seventeen fifty five, and
that's her first known written record, and that was in
a Russian and in that book there was a list
(09:26):
of deities across the world, and so you had Jupiter
was next to the relevant Slavic god, who is next
to the relevant Norse god, and you had all of
these different people who exist together. And then in this
chart of gods and goddesses around the world, you had
Bobby Yaga. And so in this first written record of her,
(09:50):
she was not a storybook, which she was understood as
a deity in that time. And so that's the first
part of her intrigue is, Okay, we know her through storybooks,
but she has this legacy of a deity. But then
the more intriguing fact of it is there was this
table of who were comparables the world over, and yet
Baba Yaga stood alone. There was nobody across the world
(10:17):
in this book that was the same as she was.
This force of strength for women, this force of strength
of preservation of the earth, this force of nature, understanding
the cycles of life and death and transformation. And I
think it is this idea of transformation for her that
people really lean into today.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Is she strictly folklore Chris? Or is she possibly real?
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Hm? So I like the idea of where do you
stories come from? They come from somewhere deep within the
emotions of humanity, the fears of humanity. When we look
at Baba Yaga as a character again, we see this
trail of deities, of who she may have once been,
(11:05):
who she may still be. And you're finding all of
these breadcrumbs of deities across about a thousand years of Europe,
where we have deities of the earth, where there are
traditions where it was forbidden to spit on the earth,
because the spit on the earth was to spit on
your mother. There was an idea of digging a hole
(11:27):
in the earth and whispering into it. So this goddess
of the worst Earth could hear your deepest secrets or
greatest confessions and listen and respond to you. The idea
of an old, terrifying woman on the edges of society.
This is not a new idea. This is an idea
(11:50):
that has been twisted and molded and shaped so much
dependent on the teller of the tale. But when it
comes to Baba Yaga and who who she is and
who she has been, and the women who may have
inspired her just as much as any traditions of deities,
that's what is also intriguing in this conversation because who
(12:12):
is it who tells the stories to our youth. It's
not always the most active society who are sitting down
with the children and telling their stories. So often, especially historically,
it's the grandmothers who are telling the stories to the children.
Because the grandmothers sometimes are having more time than the
(12:32):
parents who are running this direction and that direction. And
that is not a modern phenomenon. Parents are always doing
their best to take care of the one hundred things
that are necessary in life. But if you have the
grandmothers who are the ones between generations telling the tales
of this fearsome which Baba Yaga, there's some ownership in
(12:55):
age and wisdom and strength and experience, and telling of
small children and also adults alike, that you know what.
The world can sometimes be scary. Sometimes it may feel
as if you might be eaten for supper. Sometimes it
feels that if you walk into the woods, someone might
(13:17):
get you. If you are not being your best self,
if you're not being respectful, if you're not being good hearted,
if you're not being brave, if you're not being hardworking.
It's a lesson from the grandmothers to the children that
has passed down in countless ways. And thus we have
Bobby Yaga today, and she's popping up in pop culture
(13:38):
all over the place. In movies, she's in Goodness, She's
in the John Wick series John Wick Keanu Reeves character,
her name is Bobby Yaga, and she's popping up there.
She's popping up in music, she's popping up in fiction.
In the past decade, Bobby Yaga has emerged from the
woods and popped up in the Western world, and so
(14:00):
often she's this force of horror. But every once in
a while there's a slightly deeper exploration where audiences sit
back and go, who is this woman who is this witch,
and there is where my explorations begin and I've so
much deeper.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Is she like the old hag syndrome in our culture?
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Absolutely, but she fights tooth and nail against every little
bit of it. Sometimes in modern culture, an old woman
is either terrifying or invisible, and Bobby Aga can lean
into both stereotypes. Where you want to see terrifying, I
can give you terrifying. This is actually something I played
(14:44):
with in my novel, my last book, The Bobby Aga Mask.
In that story I have, one of my characters is
a ninety something grandmother who survived World War two Ukraine,
and she said, before I die, I want to go
see the old country. So she hops a fly to
you Europe. She steps up the plane and she disappears.
And thus we have the story of a wild goose
(15:05):
chase across contemporary Eastern Europe. Of these two sisters, won
a new mother and one a free spirit, shall we
call her, on this wild goose chase finding their grandmother.
But in the midst of it, they're uncovering their grandmother's history,
their families, history, Ukrainian history and traditions. The part of
that grandmother's disappearance and this is not giving away any plot.
(15:29):
Is this concept of this woman who grew up knowing
and believing in Bobby Yaga, not just as a storybook character,
but as a force in the wood who was there
to empower the world. This grandmother ends the Baba Yaga
mask decides, you know what, the world is scary. The
world is horrific. Haven't we all had that moment where
(15:50):
we look around and say, the world is falling apart?
So this grandmother and that novel says, you know what
I'm going to do. I am going to scare the
world to being a better place. I am going to
take up the inspiration of Bobbiyaga and see what I
can do here. And so I love that inspiration for
a character in fiction. Of the world is horrific, maybe
(16:11):
we need to scare it into being a better place.
This is not the life strategy I'm discussing, but it's
an interesting way to look at how folk tales and
different belief systems have exist in human civilization for a
very long time.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
What did the tales do for you as a child
and then as you became an adult.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Tales are very much a system of the world. They
were written in so some of the Babbyaga tales, for example,
the most famous one that audiences probably have ever heard
of is called Vasilisa the Beautiful. So you have a story,
and this one is such a echo of Cinderella, but
you could argue it came earlier than Cinderella. But then
(16:56):
you could also argue that there are Cinderella stories the
world over, and it is Ragstrish's tales that exists in
the hearts of humans for forever. But there is a
story of a girl who she lived with her stepmother
and stepsisters, except for the last fire goes out in
their household. So this girl of Vasalisa is sent out
(17:19):
into the woods to get fire back for their household
because the only one who can access fire is the
witch of the woods, Babba Yaga. So she goes to
Bobby Yaga, and Bobby Yaga forces her to not just
have the fire, but she forces her to prove herself
worthy of eight guests. And again this is where there's
(17:41):
such a similar formula and all of the in all
of the tales that when especially when young women come
to seek her, if they are respectful to her, if
they prove themselves good hearted, if they prove themselves hard working,
and if they prove themselves brave, Those four traits will
enable an individual to conquer anything.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
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George Noory
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