Baba Yaga's House of Dreams
of cold winters, Stalin's purges
a thousand tragedies
love stories of separation
women stand alone
on station platforms
the Siberian wind
frugal pragmatism
a focus on practicality
on coal
of modest consumption
a functionality of State
the heavy necessity of
long grey overcoats.
students dance, Tatu
in the underground caverns
their wild affluence
days of Berlin
the Moulin Rouge
sport Paris make-up
dream Italian cars
disneyland rides
dispel andronogy:
in the Tsar's palace
a paradise of starlets and
ice-queen ballerinas.
Baba Yaga was a fearsome witch with iron teeth and a ferocious appetite who, nonetheless, was as thin as a skeleton. Her nose was so long that it rattled against the ceiling of her hut. She traveled by pushing herself in a mortar, with her knees almost touching her chin, and she often accompanied by a host of spirits, including 3 bodiless pairs of hands and the White, Red, and Black Horseman (which she referred to as “My Bright Dawn, my Red Sun and my Dark Midnight”), but upon leaving she would sweep away all traces of herself with a broom made of silver birch. She lived in a hut which could move about on its own chicken legs and spun around as it moved through the forest, emitting blood-curdling screeches, but it would usually stand at rest with its back to a visitor, throwing open its door with a loud crash. Its windows served as eyes. When a visitor entered, Baba Yaga would ask them whether they came of their own free will or whether they were sent. The hut was sometimes surrounded by a fence made of bones and topped with skulls with blazing eye sockets to illuminate the darkness. However, she had no power over the pure of heart, those who were protected by the power of love, virtue, or a mother's blessing. She commanded the elements and was the guardian of the fountain of the Waters of Life and Death. She was all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-revealing to those who would dare to ask and sometimes gave advice and magical gifts to heroes and the pure of heart. Andreas Johns described her as "a many-faceted figure, capable of inspiring researchers to see her as a Cloud, Moon, Death, Winter, Snake, Bird, Pelican, Mermaid or Earth Goddess, totemic matriarchal ancestress, female initiator, phallic mother, or archetypal image." In some accounts there are 3 sisters who all bear the same name.
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