Baba Yaga is a tree hag nature spirit of Russia and the Slavic regions. She may be alone or with one or two others, called Baba Yaga collectively. Baba Yaga can be benevolent or malevolent in character, sometimes both the same day.
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In some depictions she's a demonic dark monster who fries and eats children. Similar anti-mother myths appear in the German Roggenmuhme or Rye Aunt, most terrible of the harvest spirits.
Joining the anti-mother genre trilogy is the demon Lamashtu of Mesopotamian myth. She attacks pregnant or nursing mothers, throws curses and the evil eye.
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Lamashtu steals infants to eat them or suck their bone marrow, or infests mother and child with disease. She's among the most dreaded of the Mesopotamian demons.
In her evil child-eating aspect, Baba Yaga is in good company. However neither Lamashtu nor Roggenmuhme has a benevolent side.
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When Baba Yaga goes out she rides in a mortar and swings a pestle like a weapon. Perhaps she goes to the Brocken on Hexennacht (Witches' Night). She often carries a mop or broom and uses it from her traveling mortar to hide her passage.
In some tales, she's kind to the hero and gives help. She's a woman of the wild, living deep in the forest in a hut on chicken legs. She's associated with herbal medicine and can use her forest magic to benefit a person.
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The hut regularly turns around. She and her sisters are easy to find in the woods. They're the only known entities to inhabit revolving chicken-legged huts.
She first appears in a 1775 Russian grammar book. Baba Yaga may be called by the epithet Baba Yaga kostyanaya noga ('bony leg') or Baba Yaga s zheleznymi zubami ('with iron teeth').
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She can stretch out over her stove one from corner of her hut to another. Baba Yaga might sense and remark about the russkiy dukh ('Russian scent') of visitors.
Her nose may stick into the ceiling. In representations, special emphasis may be placed on the repulsiveness of her nose or other distinctive body parts.
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In a list of the Greek/Roman gods with Slavic equivalents, Baba Yaga is one of the few entities who has no specific equivalent, unless numbered among the Erinyes, or Furies.
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