Baba Yaga - The Slavic Wild Woman

In Russian and Slavic folklore Baba Yaga appears as a fearsome witch with iron teeth who lives deep in the forest in a hut that moves about on large chicken legs.  Despite having a ferocious appetite, Baba Yaga is described as "thin as a skeleton".

She travels about in a large mortar where her knees almost touch her chin, and pushes herself across the sky with a pestle.  Whenever Baba Yaga appears on the scene, a wild wind begins to blow, the trees around creak and groan and leaves whirl through the air.  Shrieking and wailing, a host of spirits often accompany her on her way. 

Baba Yaga rules over the elements and her faithful servants are the White Horseman, the Red Horseman and the Black Horseman who she describes to Vasilissa as "My Bright Dawn, my Red Sun and my Dark Midnight."  She also has her "soul friends" which are three bodiless and somewhat menacing pairs of hands that then appear out of thin air to do her bidding.

Baba Yaga has been described as being an arch-Crone, the Goddess of Wisdom and Death, the Bone Mother.  Wild and untamable, she is a nature spirit bringing wisdom and death of ego, and through death, rebirth.

The story about Baba Yaga and Vasilissa, as found in Folk Tales from the Russian by Verra Xenophontovna Kalamatiano de Blumenthal, [1903], be found here.

The following is from Amy Sophia Marashinsky:

Wild Woman

I walk in the forest

and speak intimately with the animals

I dance barefoot in the rain

without any clothes

I travel on pathways

that I make myself

and in ways that suit me

my instincts are alive and razor sharp

my intuition and sense of smell are keen

I freely express my vitality

my sheer exuberant joyfulness

to please myself

because it is natural

it is what needs to be

I am the wild joyous life force

Come and meet me.