Baba Yaga Will Answer Your Questions About Life, Love, and Belonging

I wrote this second volume of advice from Baba Yaga because I needed the crone more than ever, and I felt others might need her, too.

Who is Baba Yaga? We can begin with the facts. Baba Yaga is a prominent figure in Slavic folklore, an old witch haunting the fairy tales and woods of Eastern Europe for centuries, if not longer (like her ambiguous character, Baba’s origins are difficult to pin down). She lives in a magic hut, which has big, thick chicken legs and a mind of its own. A fence of bones and skulls guards the house. When she’s not hanging out in her hut, Baba Yaga goes on mysterious adventures in the forest, using a large mortar and pestle to get around. If her mortar drags on the forest floor, she’s quick to cover her tracks with a birch broom.

From time to time, humans come to Baba Yaga’s hut—seeking shelter, a special object or person, advice. They find her when they’ve been cast out and abandoned, when all is lost. At this juncture, Baba Yaga can be villainous and hungry, even trying to push the person into her oven for a snack. Or she can be tricksy and demanding, putting the poor soul to work. Or she can be a guardian, giving over all the answers and an enchanted object to boot.

Often, she’s all of these things in one tale, which is part of what I love about her: no one knows what she’ll do next. Born in eastern Russia, I spent the first five years of my life in the woods of Lake Baikal, and Baba Yaga lived there, too. I felt her among the mushrooms and berries and animals; I imagined her sitting in the dark of her hut, knitting something wily and strange. Around her head, she wore a kerchief, like any Russian grandmother, and she did feel like a grandmother to me—formidable and unpredictable, sure, but ultimately nurturing and wise. I trusted her to know all that there was to know. I admired her wild life in the woods. I wanted her near me always, setting an example, looking out.

During 2013–2015, I wrote an advice column in Baba Yaga’s voice for a site called The Hairpin, later collecting the pieces in my book Ask Baba Yaga: Otherworldly Advice for Everyday Troubles. The pieces featured real questions from real strangers on love, belonging, and purpose, along with Baba Yaga’s answers, written in a poetic style all her own. When the book came out in 2017, the world felt more disorienting than ever, and I knew I wasn’t done talking to Baba Yaga. Now I was the one who needed Baba to make sense of things. What would she say about climate change, global disasters, the failure of our leaders and neighbors, identity, and oppressive systems? When I put out a call for more questions for Baba Yaga, worries about what will happen to us in these troubled times surfaced alongside the everyday worries.

While Baba Yaga can’t replace a therapist or a friend, she offers a different kind of perspective—an ancient outsider to our human affairs, a forest witch who speaks in the language of trees and ponds and fairy tales, an immortal witness to our folly and suffering. I was raised to give my unsolvable problems over to something larger than myself, and for me, that larger presence is Baba Yaga. I hope that you, too, can find some refuge in Baba’s words.

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IS ETERNAL SINGLEHOOD THE FUTURE FOR WOMEN?

Dear Baba Yaga,

I’m a thirty-eight-year-old woman who wants to date men, but I’ve always been terrified of them and have never been in a relationship. My fear has only grown with #MeToo, and sometimes I feel it’s truly impossible to find a good-hearted male feminist—someone who would see me as an equal, pure and simple. I’ve already kind of given up and have found happiness in my work and social life. Is this single-for-life existence the future for women?

BABA YAGA: All my living I have been an old woman, in the woods ;alone. I do what I like : I muddy & sweep my hut, carry myself into the sky & listen to what it says, I gather mushrooms, terrorize foxes & men with my fiendly claws & gait, laugh a long time into a bucket until it laughs back with a spit, breathe as a stone at the bottom of a creek—& many other things I do not say. But none of it is done from fearing. Poke at the fear as into the dying fire in yr hearth: which way do the sparks go, how does the fire hiss? If you, choose my life—know you are choosing it, not hiding in the woods.

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HOW CAN I CONNECT WITH OTHERS?

Dear Baba Yaga,

How do I connect with people on a daily basis in this ever-changing world? How do I know when it’s safe to engage with people I don’t know? I’m well adapted to city life, where ignoring others is an ingrained behavior.

BABA YAGA: All you mammals want, seals or bears or humans, is to squish yr bodies together, rub snouts in fur, be close to another’s warmth. . No mortal is different from you, very few want to hurt you. (How to tame a wild bear? Put out crumbs, lump of meat, rip of bread, with yr own living hand, until the bear comes closer. Every day, call out the beasts with little morsels : bring them the same things you like, nuts & jokes. Many cakes later, you may be less feral yrself.

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HOW CAN I KEEP MY PLANTS ALIVE?

Dear Baba Yaga,

How can I keep my plants alive? Nothing seems to work.

BABA YAGA: Did you know yr plants are wise gnomes, scheming of climbing over castle walls to overthrow monarchies? :Their minds have spires & chambers ,they speak in many tongues, receiving love notes from the sun & sending nasty ones to certain detested rabbits. They are sometimes Lusty, brooding, always philosophical. They are Earth, animate. How can you please them if you ignore their true beings? Listen close, may-be they do not wish to live in yr house at all.

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HOW CAN I STOP WORRYING?

Dear Baba Yaga,

I worry all the time. Sometimes I think I must be made of worry. These past few years, the focus of my worry has been my health. I’m constantly thinking about all that could be wrong with me, and I often experience psychosomatic symptoms. How do I become more at home in my body and more secure in my health?

BABA YAGA: Worry is: a caterpillar you can watch twisting, climbing, devouring leaves. What efforts, what polka dots! And how sorry in her never-ending want. But you are not the caterpillar—you are the Watcher, & you can wave to her from the window as she chews, & go back to yr business.

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WHY ARE MY FANTASIES SO DARK?

Dear Baba Yaga,

I am a woman with very dark sexual thoughts. The violations I fantasize about would be unthinkable to witness or experience in real life, and I judge myself for being aroused by such imagery. Can you help me sort it all out?

BABA YAGA: If you have been hurt , that is another matter. But with Lust everything goes topsy-turvy, raggly & rumply.) Under mortal feets grows a shadowworld, shifting with monsters, beasts & wonders—made by gods, maybe, and the dark tricklings of human doings, & Mystery . Let it be!: There is nothing: wrong with you.

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AM I A WITCH?

Dear Baba Yaga, 

How can I discern which type of witch I am? Or whether I am indeed a witch at all?

BABA YAGA: Yr witch-parts are found in bits of raw linen on trees, scrapings in the hedges. Cows speak when you are alone. Eating porridge morningly, you crave to make a thing with sucking roots. Approaching anthills, you invite the ants to tea. You are simply buried from the waist-down in Earth as yr arms surge to pull down strings of cosmos. But do not mistake witch-parts with a Witch Calling: take care not to open portals you cannot close:

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HOW DO I TELL MY PARENTS THAT I’M A WITCH?

Dear Baba Yaga,

I am a practicing witch who grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home. For years I have agonized over whether to share my beliefs with my parents. It feels my secrets are creating a rift between us, but I fear their disappointment, disillusionment, and possibly even disownment. What would you do?

BABA YAGA: Each secret is a handful of ashes you throw into a sack. )The sack is bulging now,an odd thing to keep in yr house, like a dead animal that chides you from the corner. It seems you want to throw this sack into the river! ,but you are afraid of the cost. See: You decide what to do with yr own ashes. The filth that others bring to you—is their doing, not yrs.

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HOW DO I STAY ROOTED IN A TRANSIENT LIFE?

Dear Baba Yaga,

My profession requires me to move often, and while I enjoy the rich variety of experiences and the relationships I’ve developed in each place, I often feel dislocated, fragmented. How can I preserve the best elements of my transient life while establishing and nurturing deep roots?

BABA YAGA: Trees cannot travel & Beasts cannot root, so you must become something in between: a Traveling Gardener of Many Trees. , After rooting a tree in each place; come back oftenly to water the tree, sing yr best songs to its sap, bury sweetmeats in the soil—and if you must be away for long, send messages & delicacies on a crow. Over years, you will be the Keeper of a secret, far-flung forest, though you look like a rover in the desert.

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HOW DO I FIND MY ROLE IN THE REVOLUTION?

Dear Baba Yaga,

How do I find my role in the revolution?

BABA YAGA: Pull yr Intellect from yr body like the spine from a fish ; Plunge her into the inky pond of Desire & Mystery—fish her out, dark & dripping, strangely nourished, wiser than you, scarier, richer in direction—send this stickly daemon out into the streets ahead, follow behind like a moon, cheering.

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HOW CAN I SURVIVE THE APOCALYPSE?

Dear Baba Yaga,

We are living in an actual global disaster, and the world feels doomed. What will happen to us? What can I do when I am afraid for the safety and well-being of myself, my loved ones, and everyone else on the planet?

BABA YAGA: What happens now , has always been: all teeming things in survival , new forms arising, some deadly to others. And Humans, as always, falling through holes they made or never mended. But Earth is not failing. Earth is pushing out flower-heads & cells. There is enough rock to absorb yr fear & release it like heat. Do what I do: Each morning I wash my feets, make tea , crack eggs, visit my bee-friends, forage leeks & spicy radishes. I read Plants & listen for wolves. Gather yrself into a big bundle, even as yr legs kick out the sides like a bloody foal’s & fear slithers from the cloth. Let the bundle be the baby you sing to & feed. Then gather the others, mend the gaps.)

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Excerpted from Poetic Remedies for Troubled Times: From Ask Baba Yaga by Taisia Kitaiskaia. Excerpted with the permission of Andrews McMeel Publishing. Copyright © 2020 by Taisia Kitaiskaia.