CZM Rewind: Baba Yaga: Everyone's Favorite Witch From Folklore, Part Two

In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her talk with Jamie Loftus about Baba Yaga, the Slavic legend who eats children and occasionally helps people.

Original Air Date: 11.9.2022

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
It's cool people who did cool stuff. That's right, it
is cool people who did cool stuff. You are weekly
podcast that comes out twice a week. And why do
we call it weekly? Because I've somehow got it in
my head that that's the way to introduce the show.
This is a rewind episode where we are talking about
Baba fucking Yaga. Let's go hello and welcome to Cool

(00:27):
People Who Did Cool Stuff. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy.
And this week is Spooky Week. Actually last week was
Spooky Week, but I kind of fucked up the timing
of a three part episode. So this week is Spooky Week.
And instead of what I usually do, tell you about
some cool actual person from history, this week I'm telling
you about a cool person from folklore. My guest today
is Jamie Loftus, who herself is a creature out of folklore.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
What are you?

Speaker 2 (00:50):
The personification of a gun? I can't remember, Jamie?

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Oh what was that?

Speaker 4 (00:55):
I Actually it's been heavily it's been hotly debated over
over time.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
You know, I don't.

Speaker 4 (01:03):
I let people interpret it for themselves. It's not for
me to say, as as someone who's not a real person,
more of an idea than a person.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
It's not for me to say, Okay, that's fair. It's
up for the listener to decide.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
What have you been the what have you been? Popularly
interpreted to be the personification of Margaret?

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Oh lord? Well, what's fun about that is I think
people actually do do that to me. But then they, like,
you know, they pick like one aspect of your personality
and run with it. And it used to be the
like the like vagabond figure, right, like it's the like
perpetual traveler. And then it was like the girl who
lives in a black house that she built in the forest,
and like, both of those are like true things about me.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
But yeah, I see where they're coming from.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
To be fair, you did write a chapter in your
latest book about a girl turned witch that lives in
a house in the forest.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
That's true, that's true.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
So you did kind to write your own folklore.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Yeah, that seems like something I would do, fair enough.

Speaker 4 (02:06):
I've cultivated people often think that I am extremely chaotic
and don't have any semblance of control over my life.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
But that's not true.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
That is completely that is factually inaccurate.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
You're far too productive for that to be true.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
I have my shit together just enough, thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
But here we are.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
Here, we are two or three women who represent ideas
and are projected upon constantly.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Sophie ly even my folklore. I think I think you
wrote my folklore. He told me I was the pope
of podcasting. No, it's probably just like the weird parasocial
folklore that all I do is say no, which is

(02:58):
not true personification of sometimes absolutely not.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Yeah, so the queen of reined in.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Yeah, Well, Jamie, when you pointed out that, like, also professionally,
we are like that is the odd thing about doing
this kind of work is that you're like, yeah, oh yeah,
romanticize my life. You'll buy my.

Speaker 4 (03:22):
Books, right, You're like, it's not it's not net negative
and it doesn't always even bother me.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
But sometimes you're just like, well, I know what I'm like.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yeah, And for me, nobody even knows what my job
is and that's fun and I'm not telling any of you.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
Yeah. Well, one person whose job we do know. The
audio engineering is done by Ian Yeah, and the theme
music was written by unwoman.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
And where we last left off, we talked about who
Bobby Yagau was, about her chicken hut and her bony legs,
and how she ate chill and who misbehaved. Today we're
going to talk about what she means and where she
comes from. But first another story.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
I'm excited. I literally I have my blanket here too,
and I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Excellent, Okay. This story is called by Command of Prince Daniel. Yes, yes,
a great name for a story.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
Okay, okay, as.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
Translated yeah by Leonard Arthur Magnus, also about a hundred
years ago. I didn't forgot to write them the date
I picked the public domain translations. This is what happened.

Speaker 4 (04:35):
I'm inherently mistrustful of someone who actively goes by three names,
so this will be interesting, that's fair.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yeah, I'm trying to come up with the counter example,
but I don't have one off the top of my head.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
Three namers generally fall into the buckets of serial killers.

Speaker 4 (04:51):
Or child stars, and you know, and so you're just like,
this is going to be a mixed bag.

Speaker 3 (04:58):
We'll see.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
Yeah. Once upon a time there was an aged queen
who had a son and a daughter who were fine,
sturdy children. But there was also an yeah coming in hard.
But there was also an evil witch who could not
bear them, and she began to lay plots how she

(05:19):
might contrive their overthrow. I think this is not even
bubb whatever. I'm not spoling anything. So she went to
the old queen and said, dear Gossip, that must be
the queen's name. I don't know. I am giving you
a ring. Put it on your son's hand, and then
he will be rich and generous. Only he must marry
the maiden whom this ring fits. The mother believed her

(05:42):
and was extremely glad, and at her death bade her
son marry only the woman whom the ring fitted. Time
went by and the boy grew up. He became a man,
and he looked at all the maidens, very many of
them he liked, only as soon as he put the
ring on their finger. It was either too broad or
too narrow. So he traveled from village to village, from

(06:02):
town to town, and searched out all the fair damsels.
But he could not find his chosen one, and he
returned home in a reflective mood. What is the mother?
What is the matter? Brother? His sister asked him. So
he told her of his trouble, explained his sorrow. What
a wonderful ring you have said the sister, let me
try it on.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
No, hey, bro, that wedding ring, Why don't you slap
it on this finger? No problems here? Yeah, meanwhile, the
water system is poisoned. There's all these policy issues. While
this guy's been fucking off putting rings on the random people.
People are dying. Yeah, meanwhile, we have some incest in progress.

(06:46):
This is disgusting.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, this is clearly an HBO show.

Speaker 3 (06:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
She tried it on her finger, and the ring was
as firmly fixed as if it had been soldered on,
as though it had been made for her. Oh, sister,
you are my chosen bride and you must be my wife.
What a horrible idea brother, That would be a sin.
But the brother would not listen to a word she said.
He danced for joy and told her to make ready

(07:13):
for the wedding. She wept bitter tears, went in front
of the house and sat on the threshold and let
her tears flow. Two old beggars came up, and she
gave them to eat and drink. They asked what her
trouble was, and she needs must tell the two. Now
weep no more, but do what we say. Make up
four dolls and put them in four corners of your room.

(07:37):
After your brother calls you in for the betrothal, go
and if he calls you into the bridle chamber, ask
for time, trust in God, and follow our advice, and
the beggars departed.

Speaker 3 (07:48):
We need less doll based solutions in this world. Ill
doll into girl. I mean, look, as the owner of
many dolls, they have not solved a damn problem, and
in fact, they've been an active deterrent. They maybe caused
more problems than they've solved for me, thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
You mean, because when people come into your house, it's
just dolls staring at you from the wall.

Speaker 3 (08:12):
Yeah, people don't like that, it turns out, Margaret, But
you people come into your house, they see nine thousand
dollars and they're like, interesting, I just got so busy
and sick.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Okay, So what we should try is we should trade
and you can become a sword girl for a while
and I'll become a doll girl for a while.

Speaker 4 (08:29):
And we'll just, yeah, like walking a mile in each
other's shoes would be useful, because the peaks and valleys
of being a doll girl are I feel like I've
really lived, okay, and I want to know what it
feels like to be a sword girl, also a horse girl.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
Yeah, I do want to be a horse girl. But
horses don't respect my authority and they go where they want.
And it's hard.

Speaker 3 (08:58):
I've been saying that for years. Horses are so fucking disrespectful.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
The brother and the sister were betrothed, and he went
into the room and cried out, sister mine, come in.
I will come in a moment, brother, I am only
taking off my earrings, and the dolls in the four
corners began to sing, Cucko, Prince Danillo, Cucko Gioverilio. Cucko
tis a brother, Cucko, wedd's his sister. Cucko. Earth must

(09:28):
be split asunder Cucko and the sister lie hid under.
Then the earth rose up and slowly started to swallow
the sister, and the brother cried out again, does she
do oh it? Yeah, you're here?

Speaker 3 (09:45):
Okay, Sorry, I'm Lucia.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
No, no, no, and the brother cried out again, sister mine,
come into the feather bed in a minute, Brother, I
am undoing my girdle, and the dolls began to sing, Cucko,
Prince Danilo Cucko Gioverio Coo cootis a brother. Cuckoo weds
his sister Cuckoo. Earth must be split asunder cuckoo, and
the sister lie hid under only she had vanished now

(10:09):
all but her head for good. And the brother cried
out again, come into the feather bed in a minute, brother,
I am taking off my shoes. And the dolls went
on cooing, and she vanished under the earth, and the
brother kept crying and crying and crying, And when she
never returned, he became angry and ran out to fetch her.
He could see nothing but the dolls, which kept singing,

(10:31):
so he knocked off their heads and threw them into
the stove.

Speaker 4 (10:35):
Okay, I actually think I've maybe done this. Had four
dolls in the corner. Well man slowly gets more and
more furious.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
And then just fucking bolt. It's like, where are you nothing? Yeah.
The sister went farther under the earth, and she saw
little Hut standing on cock's feet and turning round. Hut,
she cried out, stand as you should with your back

(11:07):
to the wood. Exactly how there's a forest under the
earth is not explained. Just to be clear, I like
the idea. I know, right, yeah, it's very goblining, and
I approve of all things goblining, especially my dog, who
is a goblin. So the hut stopped and the doors opened,
and a fair maiden looked out. She was knitting a

(11:27):
cloth with gold and silver thread. She greeted the guest
friendly and kindly, but sighed and said, oh, my darling,
my sister, I am so glad to see you. I
shall be glad to look after you and care for
you as long as my mother is not here, But
as soon as she flies in, woe to you and me,
for she is a witch. When she heard this, the
maiden was frightened, but could not fly anywhere. I think

(11:51):
means like runaway.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
Okay. I was like, well, yeah, she's a person.

Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yeah, exactly like I can't fly anywhere either, especially not
during COVID anyway, okay, So she sat down and began
helping the other maiden at her work. So they chattered
along and soon at the right time before the mother came,
the fair maiden turned her guest into a needle because
she's totally not a witch herself, turned her guest into

(12:15):
a needle, stuck her into the bassoom, and put it
on one side. But scarcely had this been done when
Babba Yaga came in now.

Speaker 3 (12:25):
And then everyone's cheering everyone at midnight screenings, like, yes,
there she is, This is why we come here. Oh
exactly what a rush she's back?

Speaker 2 (12:38):
Yeah. Now, my fair daughter, my little child, tell me
at once, why does the room smell so of Russian bones?

Speaker 3 (12:47):
Classic Bobba you go, I know, sniffing that blood.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
Mother, There have been strange men journey in past who
wanted a drink of water? Why did you not keep them?
They were too old, mother, much too tough a snack
for your teeth. Henceforth enticed them all into the house
and never let them go. I must now go get
about again and look out for other booty. As soon
as ever she had gone, the maidens set to work again, knitting,

(13:15):
talking and laughing. Then the witch came into the room
once more. She sniffed about the house and said, daughter,
my sweet daughter, my darling, tell me at once, why
does it smell so of Russian bones? Old men who
were just passing by, who wanted to warm their hands.
I did my best to keep them, but they would
not stay. So the witch was angry, scolded her daughter

(13:38):
and flew away. In the meantime, her unknown guest was
sitting in the bassooon. Someone is listening to.

Speaker 4 (13:46):
It's bassoom, but I keep thinking bassoon and yeah makes
me laugh.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
And someone who's listening knows this word and is like,
what the fuck is wrong with you? You had two
days to learn how to pronounce it. The maidens once
more set to work. Yeah, I do like the bassoon.
Okay anyway, And maidens once more set to work, so
laughed and thought how they might escape the evil witch.
This time they forgot how the hours were flying by,
and suddenly the witch stood in front of them, Darling,

(14:13):
tell me where have the Russian bones? Crept away? Here?
My mother, a fair maiden is waiting for you. Daughter,
mind darling, heat the oven quickly, make it very hot.

Speaker 3 (14:24):
If this were like a realistic story, Bobby AGA's daughter
would be like, Mom, stop by total, I'm talking about
Russian bones.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
Uh yeah, it's kind of weird.

Speaker 3 (14:36):
So embarrassing. I have a friend over.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
Uh yeah. So the maiden looked up and was frightened
to death. Where Bobby a Ga with the wooden legs
stood in front of her and to the ceiling rose
her nose. So the mother and daughter carried firewood in
logs of oak and maple, made the oven ready till
the flame shot up merrily. Then the witch took her

(14:59):
broad shovel and said, in a friendly voice, go and
sit on my shovel, fair child. So the maiden obeyed,
and the bobby Aga was going to shove her into
the oven, but the girl stuck her feet against the
wall of the hearth. Will you sit still, girl? But
it was not any good. Bobby Aga could not put
the maiden into the oven, so she became angry, thrust

(15:20):
her back and said, you are simply wasting time. Just
look at me and see how it is done. Down
she sat on the shovel with her legs nicely trussed together.
So the maiden instantly put her into the oven, shut
the oven door and slammed her in. Took their knitting
with them, and their comb and their brush. Ran away.

Speaker 4 (15:40):
God, I do love the confidence that it takes to
be like this is how you sit on a shovel.
Yeah when you're gonna get yeah, yeah, loving it.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Yeah. They ran hard away, but when they turned round
there was bobby Aga running after them. She had set
herself free some real axe mocking a shit in this Yeah, yeah,
hoo hoo, they're run the two. So the maidens, in
their need, threw the brush away and a thick, dense coppice,

(16:14):
which is like a bunch of trees a rose which
she could not break through. So she stretched out her claws,
scratched herself away through, and again ran after them. Whither
should the two poor girls flee? They flung their comb
behind them, and a dark, murky oak forest grew up
so thick no fly could have ever flown its way through.

(16:36):
Then the witch wetted her teeth and set to work.
She went on, tearing up one tree after the other
by the roots, and she made herself away and again
set out after them, and almost caught up with them.

Speaker 4 (16:48):
I like this one. It was Vasoline or whatever her
name is. Yeah, totally Vasiline, the sexy.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
What was that?

Speaker 2 (16:57):
What was it, Vasilie said, the beautiful Yeah, yeah, yeah, Vaseline, sexy. Yeah, basically. Now,
the two girls had no strength left to run, so
threw the cloth behind them, and a broad sea stretched out, deep,
wide and fiery. The old woman rose up, wanted to

(17:18):
fly over it, but fell into the fire and was
burned to.

Speaker 3 (17:20):
Death again with the burning, I know.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
The poor maiden's poor homeless doves did not know whither
to go. They sat down in ordered to rest, and
a man came and asked them who they were. He
told his master that the two little birds had fluttered
onto his estate, the two fairest damsels, similar in form
and shape, eye for eye and line for line. One
was his sister, but which was it?

Speaker 1 (17:46):
Wait?

Speaker 3 (17:46):
Is this?

Speaker 1 (17:47):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (17:47):
Yeah, okay, the master is the prince.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
One was his sister, but which was it? He could
not guess. So the master went to both of them.
One was a sister, which the servant had not lied.
He did not know them, and she was angry with
him and did not say. What shall I do, asked
the master. Master. I will pour blood into an ew skin,

(18:11):
put that under my armpit, and talk to the maiden.
In the meantime, I will go and I will stab
you in the side with my knife, and then blood
will flow, and your sister will betray herself as to
who she is.

Speaker 3 (18:26):
Nothing could go wrong with this plan. This plan is
air tight.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
No notes, very well.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
As soon as it was said, it was done. The
servant stabbed his master in the side, and the blood
poured forth and he fell down. And Margaret isn't the
one who wrote the story. So then his sister flung
herself over him and cried out, oh, my brother, my darling.
Then her brother jumped up again, healthy and well.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
Margaret, if the moral of this story is she should
have fucked her brother, I'm gonna I'm gonna break my eepad.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
Okay, he embraced his sister, gave her a proper husband,
and he married her friend.

Speaker 1 (19:17):
So it's not Ga Thrones, got it, got it for
the ring fitted her just as well, and they all
lived splendidly and happily.

Speaker 3 (19:27):
Okay, they did not stick the landing on that one.

Speaker 4 (19:29):
I'll be perfectly honest that that that one was going great,
and and then it really turned to dog ship at
the end.

Speaker 3 (19:37):
But like, oh, actually this ring also fits my friend,
so you can have sex with her. And my brother
was so come to the feather bed my ass. That's wow,
what a what a can And and also Bobby gone
without Bobby, Bobby Yaga.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
Everyone says Bobby Yaga. And then I just like watched
a Russian cartoon where she's like, I'm Babbyaga and I'm like, okay, cool, that's.

Speaker 4 (20:09):
What I'm gonna try and say, let's go with that one. Yeah,
but she once again disappeared in the middle of the story.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
Yeah, because she's no one asks how there's a joke here.
I don't know how to do it. Okay. I wanted
to read this one because sometimes babby a ga is
what's called in folklore stories a donor, like someone who
will give you the stuff you need, right, like a
skull with the fire to burn your slightly wicked steps

(20:39):
to stepmother, right. And sometimes she's just a cannibal on
a chicken hut. And I wanted to give you a
taste valid Yeah, exactly, give you a taste of the
cannibal version. So who the fuck is she? Where did
she come from? We'll talk about her name we mentioned
a little bit about it last time, and dig a
little bit more into it. The simplest but sort of

(21:02):
inaccurate translation is grandmother witch baba meaning grandmother short for babushka.
No one's really presented a compelling case about the etymology
of yaka, but people have done it, and baba truly
means grandmother in tons of Slavic languages. My own Irish
grandmother went by Baba, which is not Irish at all.

(21:22):
It might actually just be my family being weird, but
maybe it's spread elsewhere. I don't really know.

Speaker 3 (21:28):
It trips off that.

Speaker 4 (21:29):
I was as you were saying that, I realized that
I've written on a show where there's the main grandmother
characters called Baba, and I was like, wow, my memory
is bad.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
One of the things I found really interesting I found
at least one reference to that Baba as a meaning
grandmother is probably derived from the Old Russian baba meaning midwife,
sorceress or fortune teller. So it's actually like grandma means witch,
not the other way around or whatever.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
Okay, And I don't hate that. I don't hate that.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
So basically her names means Grannyaga the witch, as far
as I can tell. As a folkloric figure, there's actually
no known origin. There's a lot of guesses, and I
have some guesses as well that well, they're not my
own guesses. They're the guesses that I prefer aesthetically and
or I mean, seem more convincing out of the stuff

(22:25):
that I've read about it.

Speaker 4 (22:27):
My question is, like, in the chronology of Witches, do
you know, like, where where does she come Is she
like an early folkloric witch character, or somewhere in the middle,
or I guess there's just been so many witch figures
throughout history. I don't really know where she falls.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
I haven't done. I actually, at some point want to
do a more of a deep dive into the history
of witches. And I have like the stuff that I've
read about it and stuff, but that's constantly changing as
people present different ideas. So the answers I don't know,
I can say that I can because people don't know
when she comes from. It seems like she actually is

(23:09):
a very similar actual origin as witches, but as sort
of a mythic figure rather than like, oh, that lady
over there will like read the entrails of a chicken,
so we should kill her, you know.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
I like, I mean, I like the variations on like
I don't know. I like the flavor of witch that
she is where it's like she's very powerful. It doesn't
seem like the story has a vested interest in doing
away with her or like making a strong I don't know.
I don't think I've encountered this flavor of witch before.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
I'm excited well, speaking of flavors of witches, which flavored
potato chips that you could buy called witch chips. Our
sponsors today's they spawned. Here's some ads, and we are back.

Speaker 4 (24:08):
I'm hoping that witches would be into dill pickle chips,
only because I hope that I'm a witch and dill
pickle chips are delicious.

Speaker 3 (24:17):
Have you have either of you ever tried them.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
I've had dill pickles and I've had chips. I've had
dill pickle chips.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
They're great. They have no no right to be as
good as they are. It's just it's mostly just really
loud salt. Yeah, that's how I would describe.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
The like salt and vinegar chips.

Speaker 4 (24:38):
Yeah, sort of, but like, but but what if what
if vinegar minded her business and it was just salt
screaming at the top of its lungs. It's all capital letters.
Salt is what the dill pickle chip tastes like. And
that is like right as a sodium head, all right,
I love it.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
I love it, big sodium guy.

Speaker 3 (24:59):
Huge.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
Okay, So Bobby I got started showing up in written
sources in the eighteenth century in things that we're talking
about how she'd been around for a very long time,
like collections of Russian folklore as well as eighteenth century
Russian political cartoons. Okay, there are these single panel woodblock
prints called lub Key that were in the style of

(25:23):
the time, and she was a common figure in these
woodblock prints as sort of an archetype, and she was
used in a couple different ways, and people like to
argue about people feel very certain about what the interpretation
of her in these are, but they disagree with each other,
and I have no fucking way. Annoying. Some ways she
was used to represent like the old ways and the
old beliefs, but in other times she was probably used

(25:45):
as like this, like Finnish lady married the czar at
some point, and it was like, here's this fucking evil witch.
She's gonna come fuck up our good Christian tzar by
being Finnish and therefore like you know, a barbarian or whatever.

Speaker 3 (26:03):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
In seventeen fifty five she appeared in writing for maybe
the first time, and it was a list of Slavic
gods and their Greek counterparts, and so she was listed
as a god and in it she was the only
god or one of the only gods in that list
with no counterpart. There was no counterpart to a Greek god.

Speaker 3 (26:21):
Wow, that's cool.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
I know there's like later people who kind of compare
it to persephone, but it wasn't I think being done
at the time.

Speaker 3 (26:30):
I mean, I like that as sort of being canonical
to who she is of like, she doesn't she has
so much like power and intent that she doesn't need
a sidekick or a counterpart. Like that's amazing.

Speaker 2 (26:43):
Yeah, yeah, And it makes her basically like unique and
like indigenous to that area, and that is going to
tie into some of the kind of shit that I
find really interesting about it.

Speaker 3 (26:53):
Ooh ooh, Okay.

Speaker 2 (26:55):
But there's one other attestation attestation people talking about her
from back in the day that's super interesting to me.
There was this guy, his name was a Cholkov Michal,
and he wrote a book in seventeen eighty two called
Dictionary of Russian Superstitions, and I cannot find an English
translation of it. I'm very sad, and I almost bought
a Russian copy of it because it's.

Speaker 3 (27:14):
The title though I know that rock and.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
It's all about all the weird pagany shit that people
were doing unlike the weird, good normal stuff like being
part of a blood drinking call, like Christianity. It's all
about the like superstitions.

Speaker 3 (27:28):
Being normal, drink blood.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
Yeah, I actually don't remember whether Orthodox. I don't know
whether Orthodox believes it literally turns into blood in your
body the way that Catholics did, but I know that
there was Catholics there too anyway, So it's all about.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
Like, well, yeah, Catholics famously chill.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
It's about blood sacrifices and shamanic marriages and all this stuff.
And he doesn't like superstitions, and as far as anyone
can tell, as as far as historians can tell, he
didn't make up anything in the book. But he also
wasn't very great about vetting us sources. So he didn't
like be like, oh, you know, be funny as I
like if we did this, But instead he's just like, oh,

(28:05):
I met a guy in the road who told me this,
and that's totally what people do, you know. So he's
not the strongest source in the world. And this is
one of the main sources we have about well. He
he wrote down a lot of folk tales and folk songs,
and he systematized Russian legislation, not in this book, in
a different book. He's just like, I feel like being

(28:26):
like a guy who knows how to write books was
like kind of just like a job at the time.

Speaker 4 (28:32):
I feel like that's what podcasting is right now, where
you're like, if you know how to do this, you
can kind of talk about fucking whatever. I'm banking on that,
And in this guy's corner, I'm like, oh, yeah, you can.

Speaker 3 (28:43):
Just totally switch areas of expertise because you knew how
to write something down.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
I mean that is that is my job?

Speaker 4 (28:50):
Yes, yeahs technically what we're both doing.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
Yeah. He also wrote a book speaking of calendars that
the Devil could make and such or different sapphic things.
He wrote a book called Comely Cook, or Adventures of
lude Woman.

Speaker 4 (29:08):
I love him, Yeah, like yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
In his seventeen eighty two Superstitions book, he talks about
an Eastern Slavic goddess named Yaghi yah Baba. And so
this is a pre Baba Yaga character who sits in
an iron mortar with an iron pestle in her hand
and is a death god. And I think the mortar
and pestle for like grinding up the dead right, like

(29:34):
being returned to the earth kind of stuff. And there's
sure very little information about a yaghiah baba in English
basically just like the sentence or two from this guy's book.
But people made blood sacrifices to her, which she used
to feed her two granddaughters. And in some Baba Yagas
stories she has two granddaughters and sometimes she has two sisters.

Speaker 3 (29:58):
So and then the story you just told she had
a daughter, is that correct?

Speaker 4 (30:03):
Do we know who? Like, how does baba yaga who reproduce?

Speaker 2 (30:10):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (30:11):
Who she?

Speaker 3 (30:11):
Who? She fucking?

Speaker 2 (30:12):
Who's we will get? We will get He's nice?

Speaker 3 (30:17):
Okay, good, because it seems like, I mean, at least
in the story you just told, it seemed like the
daughter was very maybe the I can't imagine baba ya
god jeans are recessive, but like she seemed like she
didn't have the baba ya got intensity about her.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah yeah, but she was magic and like turned her
and turned her friend into a needle and also looked
exactly like the friend. I mean, that is some like
doppelbanger ship right, Like that is like, oh, cute girl's
coming to the window. Let me just like oh I
am I am you.

Speaker 3 (30:51):
No, I'm a cute girl.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:53):
So yeah, that story was wild.

Speaker 4 (30:56):
I I got, I got, I got sidetracked by the
incest fake out.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
But there is a lot going on in there.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
Yeah yeah, I no, it's it's weird.

Speaker 3 (31:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
So, as far as I can tell, this seems like
this is the main argument that Baby AGA's based on
Iyaghia Babba is based on an Eastern Slavic goddess, that
there's not that much information about that people perform blood
sacrifices too. Vladimir prop writing in the nineteen forties, talks
about how baby Aga represents the guardian between the land
of the living and the forest of the dead, and

(31:30):
so this is where she starts getting compared to Persephony
in Greek mythology, the goddess of the harvest who ruled
the underworld. And there's actually some stuff about her being
like an agricultural god to not Persephone, but Baby Aga
being like kind of an agricultural god, and there's like
some stuff about I actually literally don't remember if I
put this in the script later or not, so maybe

(31:50):
I'll end up repeating this or skimming past it, but
like plowing the earth with her teeth and that's like
why she has like the wild fucked up teeth, which
is fucking cool. Her hut faces the forest, which is
the land of the dead, and the people have to
turn the hut around because they can't walk to the
other side because that's the land of the dead in

(32:11):
this reading of like the forest representing the land of
the dead and death.

Speaker 3 (32:16):
So they have to turn her house around.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
Yeah, because okay, when you show up, Bobby A. Gus's
house is facing the wrong way and you have to say, like, hut, hut,
turn around and face me. Okay, yes, And because you're
kind of like, well, why don't you just fucking walk
around the house. Like when I think to myself, I
would like to be by the back door of a house,
I don't think to myself, how can I entice the
house to turn around? I tend to think to myself,
turn to me, I will walk around the house.

Speaker 4 (32:39):
Yeah, Margaret, you're being too accommodating. You need to ask
for what you need if you need the house to
turn to you. And that's self care, and that's practice.

Speaker 3 (32:50):
And that's pottery class all in one. It's turned to me.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
Yeah for once. Yeah, And so this makes the stories
into the hero's journey if it's about like the land
of the dead and shit, right, and I kind of
like low key hate the hero's journey as like a
plot structure that is like used for everything. Sure, but
this concept throughout folklore, especially Western folklore, where you're like
going into the land of the dead to return to

(33:15):
the land of the living. And sometimes it's like a
death and rebirth. Sometimes that means sometimes that was symbolized
by being swallowed by an animal, and so the chicken
legs as part of the hut like could be like
the house is the animal that you're getting swallowed by
when you're being reborn. And so there's this this theory.
And I also think that sometimes the walls are made

(33:37):
of bone, right, and that certainly the gate walls are
made of bone. I feel like that ties into that too.
There's this theory that Babby Agad and the journey to
her was like this coming of age ritual in the
pre Christianized version of all this, okay, and so going
on this hero's journey is how these characters become adults.
And there's no actual like the people who've done a

(33:59):
lot of research about Baby Aga, like theorized this, but
it's like mostly based on like, well pretty much every
other culture we've looked at has this, so they probably
did too, we don't.

Speaker 3 (34:08):
Know, and so it's like bizarre, Yeah, Okay, to.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
Quote Andreas Johns, who wrote kind of the main English
language academic study of Babiega, and he's discussing a different author,
Vladimir Prop's ideas quote. As the initiation ritual died out,
only Babiyaga's association with death was remembered. With the appearance
of agriculture, a new religion replaced older hunting beliefs, and

(34:33):
the old divinities were reinterpreted as evil spirits. Yaga, the
mother and mistress of the beasts, became a witch. And
I actually a little bit there's a lot of like
modern anthropological stuff about how like this idea that like
everyone was hunters and then suddenly was like what if
we throw the seeds in the ground. Now everyone's agriculture,
And like there's been a lot of like anthropological shit

(34:55):
about how like shit was like way blurrier than that, Okay,
And so I'm like less excited, I'm less quick to
believe that it has to do with like the coming
of agriculture disrupting that traditional form, and probably more the
coming of Christianity that made her a demon. And like
all the old gods become like myths or demons instead

(35:16):
of gods.

Speaker 3 (35:16):
You know that scans more for me as well.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
Yeah, yeah, And so she becomes a boogeyman with coming
to Christianity, and if your obedient and listen to your mother,
you survive your encounter with her. She's the bad mother
to be contrasted with the good mother, like we were
talking about. And then one of the reasons I find
that really interesting is that as I was doing all
this reading about rural Slavic and rural Russian kind of

(35:42):
like medieval early medieval and stuff families, not everyone lived
in a nuclear family. A lot of rural people lived
in extended family units in one household under one patriarch.
And then even that under one patriarch might be an
assumption from patriarchal anthropologist, but I don't know. So a
kid grows up with a bunch of mothers, because you

(36:03):
grow up with like a bunch of family units that
are one family unit, because you live worly and it
takes a village to race a child, right, all right,
and the wackiest thing that people like to talk about Bobby,
a god that I have a unique interest in. She's
also perceived as a phallic mother to some folklore scholars. Okay,

(36:27):
she's unpacked that. Yeah. So she's presented as wielding a
pestle and a broom. She has a bony leg and
a large nose. I'm making air quotes here. And sometimes
she has a giant iron tooth or an iron hook,
and she attacks with snakes sometimes and sometimes she has
an entire army. These are all like masculine traits, and
some of them are like penis traits, according to people

(36:48):
who are under the like psychosexual shit that I don't
really believe in personally. Yeah, So to quote Andreas John's
about this again. Some psychologists have interpreted fantasies about phallic
women as an expression of male castration anxiety. As frightening
as the fantasies of phallic women may be themselves, they
serve to deny women's genital difference and the more frightening

(37:11):
possibility that a man might lose his penis. Freud states
that the snakes which for Medusa's hair are quote are
derived from the castration complex. It is a remarkable fact that,
however frightening they may be in themselves, they nevertheless serve
actually as a mitigation of the horror of Medusa, because
they replace the penis, the absence of which causes the horror.

Speaker 3 (37:34):
Huh. I think this is a bullshit because I hear
Freudian theory and I'm just like, sounds like it might
have been more of a hymn thing.

Speaker 2 (37:42):
Yeah, and this is not our this is maybe not
the collective issue.

Speaker 3 (37:47):
That we're making it out to be.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
Yeah, the whole like a well you would say that
as having penis of it, the penis envy shit, the
phallic women thing. It's like and like, okay, so there's
this a concept of the phallic woman and witches. Writing
broomsticks is another example of this. And then there's like
people who've written all this shit about Buffy the Vampire
Slayer as a phallic woman because like she like runs

(38:10):
around staking people, right, And I'm.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
Just like, weapons are pointy and sharp, like what I know?

Speaker 2 (38:19):
I know these like I did. It's like the tree
is a vaginal weapon. I don't like a net I
guess true? Yeah, no, like no, it's it's I mean,
it's interesting to me because I'm interested in trying to
explore like the concepts of transness throughout history and shit,

(38:40):
and so less is the like phallic mother. But there's
like this, like it's this like male, I don't put this, okay.
So it's like Schrodinger's genitals. In the unobserved state, a
man or a woman could have any set of genitals,
and so witches in Bobby Yaga could have anything. And
this it's like presented as like that's part of the

(39:01):
fear of witches and these like masculinized women is that
they like could have dicks. And I think it's I
think it's horseshit. But the part of it I like
is like, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I I
know some women with dicks.

Speaker 4 (39:16):
And uh, I just the phrase shred aingers genitals. Uh,
stop me in my tracks and I'll never move again.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
It's so good. Thanks proud of that one.

Speaker 3 (39:28):
It's an unbelievable turn of phrase. Thank you for that.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
Yeah, no, I yeah, thanks, uh And so okay, So
this makes her like a potentially transfigure and and in
the ways in which she was a fertility goddess actually
tie into that in that like like because she's she's
the one plowing the fields. There's like fertility shit about
the like masculine act rather than the receptive whatever fucking

(39:53):
nonsense that people are into about that shit. Yeah, and
she also seems similar to stop talking about drunk for
a moment. She seems similar to me to another another goddess,
another Slavic goddess named Mokosh is a death god and
a mother goddess. And Mokash is the ruler of death
and fertility, life and rebirth. And she's like more famous

(40:17):
because she was one of the gods who was sort
of like canonized essentially, like not by the Christians, but
by like a formal codification of some of the pagan
shit that was happening. And she was the only girl
that got I just like the weird Guy's book. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
This is like there's like more like statues and shit
to Mokash around and like and like I wish i'd
remember wrote down more exactly, but like a guy who

(40:40):
like formalized a lot of the pagan shit only picked
one girl and picked Mokash got it. And she's the
ruler of death and fertility, life, and rebirth. Her name
probably means moisture, which rules. And she's related to another
Slavic goddess. Go ahead, not sorry, just folklore.

Speaker 3 (41:01):
Sometimes you're like, I guess, so, yeah, sure, great.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
Yeah, she's related to another Slavic goddess, matt Zemlie, who
is called the moist Mother Earth. And in the nineteenth century,
the two goddesses Mocash and matt Zamiela sort of became
one in a lot of like people's minds and stuff,
and the relationship is like super fuzzy, like sometimes they're
related and sometimes they're not. Like and Mokosh, there are

(41:27):
claims that she has been portrayed with male genitals throughout time. Okay,
and so you know, I trans goddesses for the wind
for my book, and Mokosh probably came from the fins
like Bobby Aga might have, which we'll get to in
a bit or Okay, I guess we get to it now. Okay,
I want to talk about her chicken get it now? Yeah? Yeah, yes, okay,

(41:52):
this is the part that I feel most confident about.
I know where the chicken legged hut comes from.

Speaker 3 (41:58):
I can't believe you've we've we've been here for two hours.

Speaker 2 (42:01):
Tell me, all right, does the chicken well, it probably
comes from the vendors of No. I'm gonna to give
you the actual answer, but first we have to do
an ad pivot. Advertisers support the economy that we all participated,
and gladly we're all so excited about the way the
economy works. Sophie's shaking her head and disbelief of how

(42:24):
well I'm doing my job.

Speaker 4 (42:26):
Listen to the ads so I can hear where this
damn chicken leg hunt comes from.

Speaker 2 (42:30):
Already, all right, ads, ads over, Okay, I want you
to google what you are. You're actually at a ipadt
you might not be able to do this.

Speaker 3 (42:43):
I gotta I got a phone. I got a telephone.
What's up?

Speaker 2 (42:45):
Okay? I want you to google Sammy s a m
I storehouse and an image searches Sammy storehouse.

Speaker 3 (42:56):
Oh god, my tabs are so embarrassing. I I just
had to open the Minion's menu at eye hoop so
I can type this in Sammy storehouse. Yeah, okay, and
we're hitting images. Ooh, this building has gams.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
Yeah, that is a chicken legged hut Okay, okay, so
that so.

Speaker 3 (43:24):
It's I'm looking at the first result is kind of
a log cabin, but it's got it's got sexy little legs. Yeah,
it's got four four sexy legs, which is chickens don't.

Speaker 2 (43:38):
Have well, but sometimes has four legs, sometimes has two,
and sometimes has four. This I can I'll tell you
about it. Yeah, are these still?

Speaker 3 (43:50):
Are these still feasible?

Speaker 2 (43:51):
Can we still do this?

Speaker 1 (43:53):
So?

Speaker 2 (43:54):
I don't know, I mean, yeah, you can certainly build that,
and and the some Sammi folks still do. So this
comes this chicken legged hut. As far as I can tell,
and as far as a lot of other people can tell,
I didn't come up with this idea. It comes from
the Sami people who are indigenous to what is usually
has historically been called Lapland but is better known as Assami,

(44:15):
which is northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and like the northwestern
bits of Russia, and for centuries the Sami actually had
little contact with the Germanic Scandinavians who lived in southern Scandinavia,
which is like the Vikings and the Norse and Germanic
gods and all that shit. The Sami had their own
fucking thing going on, and still do they lived in
places that were too baren to cultivate, so they were

(44:36):
left alone for a long time. Coastal Sami traditionally sustained
themselves as fishers, while those in the interior traditionally heard reindeer.
The nineteenth century caused force assimilation, a project of quote
civilizing them as part Sad and True, banning their languages,
giving incentives to settlers to move into their territory. Their

(44:57):
children were taken to residential schools to have their culture
destroy all the usual colonizer shit. These days, Sami lands
are being exploited for mineral and oil and gas resources,
disturbing the reindeer, and I don't.

Speaker 3 (45:11):
Know, just destroying an entire indigenous culture.

Speaker 2 (45:15):
Yeah, because I think that's something that people don't recognize enough,
is that colonization happens everywhere in the world, and indigenous
people getting shoved into states and then oppressed happens fucking everywhere.

Speaker 3 (45:30):
Interestingly, this is a theme that is explored in the
movie Frozen two.

Speaker 2 (45:35):
Oh that's cool.

Speaker 3 (45:38):
Yeah, that's just a fact.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:41):
I mean I have not heard about the about Sami
culture before.

Speaker 2 (45:46):
This is all new to me, okay, and so many
of them the Sami were traditionally migratory. The folks whould
follow the reindeer and heard reindeer, and so they built
storehouses on stilts for all the stuff that they weren't
taking with them on migration. And I've read this both
as storehouses of dried food, like, you know, all the
stuff that they prepare and they're like, why can't we
can't take all this with us? I've also read it

(46:08):
as storehouses of just like stuff, like all the stuff
that when we come back here we're gonna want. And
so wild animals can't get in because the stilts and
sometimes they didn't have windows, and the stilts were sometimes
for tree trunks with their roots looking like chicken feet,
And yeah, I cannot imagine after seeing this sort of image,

(46:30):
I cannot imagine another origin of this, because the yeah,
you know, the Slavs were, if at their like wildest,
venturing into the far birch forests, you know, and traditionally
Babiyagaha lives in birch forest. That's when you would be
encountering something like this.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
I mean visually, it is so fucking cool looking, Like
I get why the image stuck, because it looks amazing.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
Yeah, totally, and so the sami aren't. There's a lot
of different groups of people that share that little sort
of vague it's not part of the Scandinavian peninsula, the
Finland part, but there are several Finnish ogresses, one of
whom is good and one of whom is bad, who
are seen as potential origins of bobby Aga as well

(47:16):
or like influences on it. That like Bobbiyaga's like both
of those ogresses at once, and one more weird thing
that ties into the bobby a Ga myth. You know,
she's like shoving shoving our protagonist into the oven on
the like shovel or whatever into the huge oven. Boy
do I okay? Well, there was this Eastern Slavic traditional

(47:40):
healing method called baking children, where if the kid is sick,
especially like a child who's born too early or like
some other issues, you put them in the oven for
a while not too hot.

Speaker 3 (47:57):
Yeah, obviously, instead a timer is easy to get distracted,
and you know, like I get it. Yeah, we've all
been there.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
So that was the thing that people did, and it's
like almost certainly the origin of the the the person
who knows the traditional methods is like the evil witch
who bakes children.

Speaker 3 (48:16):
Right, I feel, okay, this did it work at all?

Speaker 2 (48:23):
I don't know the answer to that. I think there
are probably some things that would have helped with but
I do not know. And I think that they did
it in a way that.

Speaker 3 (48:34):
Yeah, it just made made it afraid of enclosed spaces
for the rest of our lives.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
What yeah, wow, okay, Freud would have had a fucking
field day with us back into the womb shit too.

Speaker 3 (48:48):
Freud was a fucking weirdo. I just like, you know,
uh that is okay, so so bad witches put like,
uh bake children? Yeah, yeah, question mark, Okay, okay, So
that ogresses.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
In this case, yeah, well yes, sometimes you know, sometimes
she's an ogress and so, as far as I can tell, Basically,
baby Aga in post Christian folklore, represents the fear of
the pagan other, especially the sort of like indigenous pagan other,
the knowledgeable, strange people in the woods. In Siberia, it
seems like babi Aga represents the fear of the indigenous

(49:29):
people out there, and then in western Russia it was
like the indigenous people who live there are like the
the people who are being othered by this, I see,
and I think that this ties into how she can
always smell the Russian blood because she's not Russian. She's
a foreigner. She's not from a different place, but she's
from a foreign culture, Okay, because Russia, clearly, you know,

(49:49):
it is a very large place.

Speaker 3 (49:51):
And so it's that colonial storytelling tradition of implying that
all of the evil comes from the indigenous character that's
being okay.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
Yeah, that's why I realize this trope.

Speaker 3 (50:06):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
And then it might be more of like just purely
about paganism. It might be more a bunch of other stuff,
but that is my rate of it, okay. But she's
also got the like entrancing power of the other two, right,
because she's not just a villain. She's the villain in
about two thirds of the stories she's in, And she's
almost unique in folklore because overall she's like this bad

(50:29):
bit who eats kids. But she's the representation of the
catalyst of change that is necessary in any person's life.
People have described her as like the god of tough love.

Speaker 3 (50:39):
That's a cool that's a cool title.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
Yeah, I could use that, And I like how a
lot of the kind of pre Christian beliefs are morals
like survive in monsters. I really have this whole thing
where I really like monsters. And to quote Madame Pemita
writing for Bust, if we look back even further, we
see her in her trurer guys as the forest mother,

(51:03):
the guardian of the woods. This is where her dicey
nature comes in. For our ancestors, the wild was truly ambiguous.
Nature provided food, materials and beauty, but it could also
be devil you, devour you, and destroy you. Babi y
a Ga is just like that, cruel one moment and
achingly sweet and generous the next. In ancient Slavic paganism,
you have three planes of existence. There's the middle world

(51:24):
where we all live. You've got the upper world where
the gods hangout, and then you have the lower world,
which isn't hell. It's like where the plant spirits and
the animals and like the mythical things hang out. And
Bobby a Gas like the lower world all the way.

Speaker 3 (51:37):
Okay, I like that that kind of not I don't
even know if that's a hierarchy, but I like that
concept of the lower world.

Speaker 2 (51:48):
Yeah, yeah, me too. I want to learn more about
a lot of this stuff, like because a lot of
this is like mentioned in passing and stuff about Bobby
A gah, And then I start digging into it because
I get excited, and then I remember that I have
to eventually finished projects.

Speaker 4 (52:02):
But even like the concept of the forest beneath the
ground and like stuff like that, it just I don't know.
All that imagery is so cool.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
Yeah, totally, and so so Christian. Russians don't actually have
to go very far to find a pagan other. There's
been an unbroken tradition of paganism right to the present
day within Russia. About five hundred miles east of Moscow.
They're the Mari people who are ethnically finn ugric I believe,
and they claim that their religion is about seven five

(52:32):
hundred and thirty years old. And when I say about,
I mean they claim that their religion is seven thousand,
five hundred and thirty years old. I was like, that's
a very precise about, yeah, which which implies that they
have a specific start date.

Speaker 3 (52:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:44):
And in so many ways they're just like the archetypical
pagans that people when they think about like European paganism,
they're polytheists. They meet in sacred groves instead of churches,
and they've run across some problems over the years. You'd
think that the history of history is the history of
people accepting religious differences.

Speaker 4 (53:06):
That's I mean, that's the way I've understood it, and
I've only read books from the winners.

Speaker 3 (53:12):
Yeah, so I think that that's probably chill yeaheah.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
They're like, oh, we totally accepted them, and then they
just stopped believing what they believed peacefully.

Speaker 4 (53:20):
Yeah, there's a holiday about that coming up. God fucking garbage. Sorry, continue,
So the problems.

Speaker 2 (53:29):
That they've run into first, they ran into the problems
of Christians. Russia started christianizing more intensely around the year
a thousand, and a lot of Pagans had to resettle
or do what Christianized people have done all over the world,
especially Catholics, they syncretize. There's this like dual faith thing
that people have going on where people manage successfully for
hundreds of years, if not thousands of years, where they're like, oh, yeah,

(53:51):
I'm like Catholic or Orthodox or whatever, and then they
like go out to the glade and keep up their
actual religion. And so a lot of them. Mari religious
believers were practicing that, and then they had a bigger
problem the Bolsheviks. When the Bolsheviks took over Russia created
the USSR. They didn't like religion. It's sort of a
classic thing. Mosques and churches were raised all over, and

(54:15):
so were the sacred groves. They would run through and
be like, that's also a thing you're not allowed to do.
One MARI practitioner describes life under the Soviet Union about
how they creep into the forest to practice. Quote, the police,
fervent atheists, communists would come. They kicked over our cauldrons
and chased us away. And that was mostly the seventies
and eighties. I think a lot of the more intense

(54:37):
anti religious stuff that was happening. But I again, this
is like a thing I like to have touched on peripherally,
but not dive deep into.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
Yeah, I'm interested. I mean every sort of like alley
this story leads down, is cool, that's wild.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
After the fall of the USSR, the practice started back
up again more openly until the other classic monster on
the world stage, Putin.

Speaker 3 (55:03):
Yeah. Oh, Putin is not a huge supporter of religious freedom.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
No.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
Weirdly persecution, and the article I'm reading is about who
that's talking about. This is from about twenty ten, when
it was like starting to kick back in. I have
not been able to find the follow up about Putin
changing his mind and sudenly being very tolerant and he
actually specifically used an anti extremist law that persecutes a
ton of religions like Muslims and Jehovah's Witnesses and the

(55:33):
Mari Pagans, where it's like if your book is like, hey,
our practices are cool, we don't like churches, they're like,
that's extremism because you said this other thing, okay, And
so I don't know. I don't know Putin bait and switch, yeah, yeah,
And I don't know a ton about them. But they're

(55:54):
still around, They're still doing their thing. They consciously stand
in solidarity with indigenous and pagan religions the world round,
especially as it relates to climate change. One practitioner said,
they say, we need to increase consumption to get out
of the economic crisis, but if we all start to
consume on the level of England or America, we'll destroy
the earth within a decade. So at least on this level.

Speaker 3 (56:15):
I like them, you know, I was like, yeah that,
I'm on board with that.

Speaker 2 (56:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:20):
Oh, I'm so I want to learn more about this.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
Yeah. So back to Babbia Ga. The thing is, she's
never centered in the story. She's never the protagonist. She's
a force of nature that people can tend with. No
One ever asks how is bobbiy aaka? They only ask
you know about about the arch chrone, the bone mother.
These are other names I found for.

Speaker 3 (56:43):
The way you're describing this. It cracks me up. It
just like sounds like you're like teeing up to pitch
a really shitty Disney Plus series about like people always
ask like no one ever asked, how is Bobby aka?
And miss reboot starring insert woman here. This is a

(57:07):
this is a terrible Catherine Han mini series waiting to happen.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
I think we can do it. Well, I've been. This
has all been my long pitch to get you as
co writer.

Speaker 3 (57:17):
I'm in.

Speaker 2 (57:18):
I'm in, baby all right. She's almost never married in
any of the stories, which good for her, right sometimes
she has children or grandchildren. She's clearly doing what she
wants even when she has children and is unmarried. So
fuck yeah, there's one guy she sometimes represented as hooking
up with another pagan fear of the other guy. And

(57:38):
his name is Koshe the Deathless, and he's kind of
cool because his name's I mean, it's a cool name.

Speaker 3 (57:45):
I mean I was like, I'm into the name.

Speaker 2 (57:48):
Yeah, what's his deal? Well, Jamie, I'm glad you asked.
He's a weird immortal wizard warrior guy who can't die
because he hides his souleen objects like in a needle,
in an egg and a dock and a hair and
a chest buried on a far island.

Speaker 3 (58:02):
All right, well, none of this is disqualifying to me,
so continuous.

Speaker 2 (58:05):
Yeah, he's got a ton of magical items, and he
has a super fast magical horse. In one story, he
gets this horse from Bobby Jagah. And sometimes the horse's
three legs, sometimes a seven legs, sometimes has the normal
boring amount of legs. And this guy is probably, or
at least has been conjectured in a way that I
find convincing enough to make this connection because it's entertaining.

(58:27):
He might have been an actual guy. Oh, there was
a twelfth century pagan khan of the of the Kuman
people named Khan Konchek, who maybe led a I had
a hard as time finding this part out. I'm like,
maybe he let a slave uprising. I'm not sure. I
don't feel confident about that. But he also is conjectured
to have like lived to over one hundred years old,

(58:49):
unless maybe his kid was using his name too. But
basically he was the immortal because he lived over he
like saw six generations of people, and so everyone's like,
that guy is never going to fucking die. He keeps
fucking right conquering everything.

Speaker 3 (59:02):
Because everyone lived six years back.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
Yeah, exactly. And he wore an omulet of protection that
was an arrowhead inside of an egg shape, and so
that's probably where you get the needle in the egg
and the doctor and the goose and the hole in
the bottom of the sea. There's a hole. There's a hole.
There's a hole in the bottom of the sea.

Speaker 3 (59:20):
I was like, keep going, keep going.

Speaker 2 (59:23):
And since he was a successful battle guy and he
was a pagan, he became a batty, right. I mean,
most battle guys are batties to be to be real
that what they do is run around hit people with swords,
which is like not usually a polite thing to do.

Speaker 3 (59:35):
It's not usually smiled upon in polite society.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
Yeah, but because him and Bobby a guy were both batties,
people like to ship them together, and sometimes they got
together in stories and this.

Speaker 3 (59:48):
That's so oh God. I love when you're like, yeah,
folk like folk tales and fan fiction. Are they live
in the same neighborhood. A times we were just like, oh,
they're both pretty bad if they fucked totally totally people
have been horny for so long. Yeah, you know that's
my controversial statement.

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
Since he hid his soul in other objects, we could
call this book which for lych.

Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
Swish.

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:18):
Thanks, Yes, And that's what I've got about Bobby a
gum cool.

Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:00:25):
I love Bobby I the as I was. I was.
I googled, I hit Google images bravely to see like
what different interpretations of her look like, and it is
like wow, I mean, I think we talked about this
in the last episode, but all of the.

Speaker 4 (01:00:41):
Kind of cartoon like anti anti any woman who isn't
like aggressively Western beauty standards. You've got the cartoon anti semitism,
and you also have Bobby Agau was an antagonist in
a Miyazaki movie which I did realize.

Speaker 3 (01:01:01):
I haven't seen it. Have you seen it?

Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
Which movie is it in?

Speaker 3 (01:01:07):
It's one I haven't seen. Sorry, it's the main antagonist
in Mister Doe and the Egg Princess I haven't She
brings the Egg Princess to life. Her home is the
Castle of the Dark Forest. Seems like a loose interpretation,
but I think this is a short film, but I
want to I want to go back and watch it

(01:01:27):
now to see how Miyazaki interpreted. But she was still
a cannibal okay okay.

Speaker 4 (01:01:35):
And and also, if you're familiar with the Miyazaki character
you Baba from Spirited Away, which I have seen, I
guess that Bobby Aga has you Baba energy as well.

Speaker 3 (01:01:46):
I was like, I want to see more Bobbyaga. Seems
like there should be more modern interpretations of She's cool.

Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
I know there's a I watched a Lost Girl episode
of Bobby Aga in preparation for this. I've never actually
seen Lost Girl, and my friend was like, what the
fuck means? And then was uh and then described it
as in the genre of entertainment that is people who
fight demons and quip, oh, see that's what I like

(01:02:15):
that that.

Speaker 3 (01:02:16):
Can be you get to be in the right mood.
But that can be a good genre.

Speaker 4 (01:02:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:20):
I have written two novellas that are people who fight
demons and quip, so I like, I'm into it. You're
damn good at it, thank you, thank you. Yeah. No,
And there is the the Japanese analog. I didn't get
into it more. There's like comparisons that made and to
cultures especially nearby like Japan and Siberia, and I want

(01:02:44):
to know more about how all of that trace is around.
But that is also the stuff that people get doctorates.
And I'm a lowly the equivalence of the guy who
writes the like I'll write down your legal structure and
to write erotic fanfic about a maid.

Speaker 3 (01:03:04):
I think that that is a beautiful place to be.
That is a culturally significant and impactful place to be.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
Thanks.

Speaker 3 (01:03:15):
This has been so fascinating.

Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
Yeah, if people want to hear you occupy that cultural space,
how can they do so?

Speaker 3 (01:03:24):
Yes, you can do all sorts of stuff. I was
because we were talking about Baba. I would recommend watching
a show called Teenage Euthanasia, in which there is a
character named Baba written on the show for a couple
of years it's streaming on HBO Max. It's a really
fun show and Baba is also kind of a mystical,

(01:03:46):
mysterious figure. You can also pre order my book Raw Dog,
which is about hot dogs, which Baba Yaga famously loves.
And you can listen to any of my podcasts about
extremely specific pop on cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (01:04:02):
I ever heard of it, Sophie. Anything you want to plug,
just follow.

Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
At clo Zone Media on Instagram and Twitter for all
the all the things. And then and then, and then Margaret,
Robert Evans and myself will be doing a special live stream,
I believe, on December eighth. More details to come, yay,
but it's going to be a good time.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
Yay.

Speaker 3 (01:04:27):
Hell yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:28):
And if you want to read my Fight Demons and
Quip book, uh, the first one is called The Lamb
Will Slaughter the Lion and the second one is called
The Barrel, we'll send what it may. And yes, I
realize I named my books things that no one remembers.
But the Lamb will Slaughter the Lion or just like
Margaret Killjoy books, we'll probably do that for you as

(01:04:52):
a blue cover.

Speaker 3 (01:04:53):
But you're Joy book now.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
Yeah, it's a cool cover and you can hear us
next week when we you talk about more things. Bye
Bye bye.

Speaker 1 (01:05:11):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us
out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.