It’s filled with fox spirits, Tibetan Red-Hat black magic, and other flavours of shamanism, as well as stories of preternaturally intelligent or empowered animals and weird metamorphoses. In this story, just one survives: Zoya, an eternally beautiful witch who relies upon men to keep her kept in luxury, until it becomes necessary to kill them. She has a popular YouTube Channel for teaching witchcraft, she hosts two podcasts: "Baba Yaga's Magic" and "Magic and the Law of Attraction" and she is the author of Baba Yaga’s Book of Witchcraft, The Book of Candle Magic, and Madame Pamita's Magical Tarot.

To earn her place, Masha must pass a series of tests, outfox a territorial bear, and make dinner for her host. Save yourself the time and instead of reading this, read literally anything else about Baba Yaga that's not written by a man. It’s a collection of twenty nine Baba Yaga tales, accompanied by information about the different tales and their history, and illustrations from artists spanning 200 years. She is also the proprietress of the online spiritual apothecary, the Parlour of Wonders and lives in Santa Monica, California.

There were paragraphs of observation, self reflection and philosophy that were very good, very gripping.

Ježibaba [ cs], a figure closely related to Baba Yaga, occurs in the folklore of the West Slavic peoples. It guides you as if Baba Yaga is really talking to you, and it is so truthful, engaging, and snarky.But when he follows a lead from a grisly murder to the abode of an ugly old woman, he finds himself turned into a flea. This book offers fresh insights and detailed discussions of the imagery, symbolism, meanings, and motifs of each of the seventy-eight cards. Gaiman also used Baba Yaga in The Books of Magic comic series, and the way he has deployed the character highlights her moral ambiguity: where she was helpful in Sandman, she is more of a baddie in Books of Magic. Step-by-step instructions show you how to stitch Ukrainian folk embroidery motifs into protective charms, weave wreaths from herbs, make enchanted poppets, and work with the spirits of the forest, the hearth, and the sauna.

Vidot himself realizes toward the end “how absolutely large and great one very small thing can be, and how, with sweet, tender vigilance, one can take these small, fleeting moments and build them into something eternal. From folk remedies to avoiding certain words/ phrases, there are some things that just are done a certain way.

Zoya, it turns out, has been a beautiful young woman for hundreds of years; she and her far more traditionally witchy-looking companion, Elga, have been thriving unnoticed in the bloody froth of Europe’s wars. I admire her carelessness and her independence, even her cruelty, and in a world where women are so often reduced to hazy blurs of inconsequence, she is a figure that reminds us that we are ferocious and untameable, and that such freedoms often come at a cost. Smart, sophisticated teens who gobble up Joe Hill or Neil Gaiman novels will enjoy Toby Barlow’s writing just as much. You could say then that Baba Yaga crosses the wicked witch trope with the fairy godmother trope to create an ultimately far more unpredictable and powerful role than either of those.