I have been reading a book (Fierce Feminine Divinities) that posits that Baba Yaga is an ancient earth goddess who has been telephone-gamed into the mercurial witch of the woods from folklore.

I have been working with Baba Yaga in my witchcraft as a representation of complexity. She does not choose between being feral or being domestic: she is both, and that is what I want to embody.

However, I don’t think that she is directly the result of a Slavic goddess getting morphed over time and demonized into a witch. I don’t think we have evidence for that, and it’s very far-fetched. We don’t have any evidence for the goddess that she supposedly was, nor etymological evidence that shows a change over time like that.

I DO think that the old paganism was strong in the Slavic collective unconscious at the time that this folklore was written down, and that there are connections that could be made that could be VERY pertinent to understanding Baba Yaga herself.

However, I have not studied in-depth a lot of the folklore scholars, like Vladimir Propp. Maybe he makes a lot of good points that I am missing out on.

Does anyone have any wisdom on this?