Sense of Soul - Divine Wisdom of Baba Yaga The Feminist Witch of the Woods

Episode Date: February 22, 2025

Today on Sense of Soul we have Author Kris Spisak, she is an active speaker, workshop leader, and literary historian. She is a graduate of the College of William and Mary (B.A.) and the University of Richmond (M.L.A.), fully believes that well-written words and well-told stories have the ability to change the world.  She wrote her first three books—Get a Grip on Your Grammar, The Novel Editing Workbook, and The Family Story Workbook—to help writers of all kinds sharpen their storytelling and empower their communications. Her award-winning debut novel, The Baba Yaga Mask, was inspired by her family’s experience in the post-WWII Ukrainian diaspora and has been called “A complex, poetic tale” by Kirkus Reviews and “edu-tainment at its best” by the Historical Novel Society.  Her fifth book, Becoming Baba Yaga: Trickster, Feminist, and Witch of the Woods, described as “A delicious read” by Atlas Obscura, is a nonfiction exploration of the complex origins of this Slavic folktale character and her lingering lessons for empowering us all. https://kris-spisak.com/becoming-baba-yaga/ https://www.senseofsoulpodcast.com

Hey Soulseekers, it's Shanna. Journey with me to discover how people around the world awaken to their true sense of soul. Now go grab your coffee and open your mind, heart and soul. Today on Sense of Soul we have Kris Spisak. It's time to awaken. Today on Sense of Soul, we have Kris Spisak. She is a active speaker, workshop leader, and literary historian. And she's joining us today to tell us about her book, Becoming Baba Yaga, The Trickster Feminist's Witch of the Woods,

a nonfiction exploration of the complex origins of this Slavic folktale character and her lingering lessons for empowering us all. Thank you so much for being with me. I'm super excited to talk to you about your newest book, Becoming Baba Yaga. I love that name. It reminds me of Baby Yoda. The funny thing is, autocorrect is hilarious. And I think it's one of those things that learns as it goes. But when I was really just diving into the beginning of this project, how many times did autocorrect correct it to Baby Yoda that I was clearly talking about? I'm like, no, this is not a book about Baby Yoda. I love that you said that. I can't wait to read your other book, the Baba Yaga Mask.

I really felt like that one would be a lot of the history of what you end up creating, this beautiful fiction story. Thank you. And we have books that kind of appear and then we go and chase and see where things go. And the Baba Yaga Mask, my debut novel, that one originally was going to be kind of a standalone on its own, and in many respects it still is. But that tells the story. It's a dual timeline going between contemporary Eastern Europe, pre-Ukrainian

Russian War, but loosely contemporary Eastern Europe, and going back and forth between the grandmother of that era who's disappeared and the granddaughters have a wild goose chase across Eastern Europe and then 1941 World War II Ukraine and that grandmother's experience when she was a teenager. But through the course of that not only did I dive into genealogy and family history which led to one of my books, the Family Story Workbook, it also led to becoming Baba Yaga because I do a lot of work with book clubs. I do so much where I'm doing virtual book clubs and in-person book clubs chatting about feminism and strong women through the generations of our family and all of these conversations,

and it kept coming up again and again. Who's Baba Yaga again? And it just is so funny because she's such a character I've known since I was a child. And I thought she was loosely familiar, if not very familiar. But I thought people loosely were aware of who she was. But once I realized people weren't, well, I just needed to write another book, didn't I? Yeah. Well, tell me about that. You know, I love the stories that are passed down. And my dad used to always have like these little rhymes that he would tell that his grandfather told. And I kept, I held onto those things. I'm a very sentimental person.

I'm a Taurus. Well, I definitely grew up in kind of, I don't know, a dual faith world, you could say, where my grandparents who had survived the horrors of World War II in Ukraine, a little known history story, the world doesn't hear about how you have Russia coming in on one side and Nazi Germany coming in from the other side and Ukraine fiercely wanting to be its own independent culture with its own independent borders with its own independent language and fighting for identity

and that freedom fight of World War II is not really well known. And that's where my fiction debut came from. And so as I was working through all of those stories, I grew up in this household where my grandparents were incredibly Catholic, very religious. Ukrainian Catholicism is a different slant of a Catholicism where many, many difference of theology, obviously, religious. Ukrainian Catholicism is a different slant of a Catholicism where

many many difference of theology obviously but one difference for the sake of this story is that Ukrainian Catholic priests could marry. My grandfather was actually in seminary and was deeply religious his entire life but then you would have moments when we would be leaving church as when I was a young child and my grandmother would be whispering to tell me to be in my very best manners because the neighbor down the street is a witch and we need to watch out for her

and be on our best manners and very polite because of yada, yada, yada. And it was one of those moments as a child that I was hearing, how can you have deeply Christian faith yet also believe in kind of the ancient belief systems of kind of witches and magic of that at the same time. And so that's my research began, right? I was the one who was sitting around the table with my grandparents through dinner parties, and this dates me. Then I would sneak off to my bedroom, grab a cassette tape recorder, you know, the miniature

cassette tapes, and I would put it on my lap underneath my a cassette tape recorder, you know, the miniature cassette tapes, and I would put it on my lap underneath my napkin at the table, and then I would just start prompting questions from my grandparents and their friends about like, well, what do you mean, which? What do you mean? Okay, talk to me about Baba Yaga. Is she a story or is she real? Like, and I just kind of would ask all of these questions, and it was hilarious because my brother was the only one who ever knew I had a tape recorder and I was just pushing on pushing and pushing on this.

I wish I still had those cassette tapes from years and years ago, but my interest started there. How does kind of a dual faith system exist within one culture? For my grandmother, when she was a small child, she believed in Baba Yaga as a force. For me as a small child, I knew Baba Yaga as a story. And so it was interesting to see kind of how that changed over generations. And there was so much more to uncover. So that's just the research has been there for a

very long time. You know, things do evolve with the stories. Of course, it's like the big fish, right? When you go fishing and it gets bigger and bigger with each tale and each generation. But you know, I'm so envious of you that you got to hear the stories because I feel like in my journey with my ancestry, it was hidden. But what an interesting time for you to be doing all of this study. And I feel like mine kind of fell in an interesting time too, you know, Ukraine being at war and kind of going through the same thing. It's true. And it's interesting the timing, becoming Baba Yaga, my nonfiction exploration of a folktale character who may or may not have been born from goddesses, who is a self-empowerment figure allowing us to examine our own lives and

the shift and pull of different belief systems and cultures. I'm so proud of what that nonfiction new book has become that's intertwined with the folktales themselves. So you can read the folktales and then look at the examination of how this could actually impact world history, but also your history. I'm so proud of what this new book has become. But when The Baba Yaga Mask, my novel novel came out, it came out in 2022. It came out four weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine. Now every author wants the book to be timely. That's not what anybody wanted.

And I really had a conversation where I called my publisher and she of course had me talking with different people and kind of the whole media thing. And I'm like, I can't jazz hands buying my book. Let me tell you this Ukrainian story right now, because a war just broke out. People are dying. I can't jazz hands sell my book. So I had this moment. I'm just like, you know what? Give me a week. I will personally come to terms with my soul and my blood and my family roots and my community. I just need one week, which is not what you do right before a book launches, but it's okay. And I connected with a whole bunch of people in my Ukrainian community.

I went to the church that I went to when I was a child that I hadn't been to regularly for a long time. And there was this moment in this Ukrainian language service, on Ukrainian Catholic Church, and this whole community was dressed in Ukrainian cultural garb with the embroidered blouses and the little girls had ribbons in their hair. And this is not how people typically dress for church. It's much more Americanized. But in that moment, not how people typically dress for church. It's much more Americanized, but in that moment, everybody was just so proud of Roots. And at the very end of the church service, instead of a final hymn, the entire congregation broke out in Ukrainian national anthem.

And in this moment, I realized I have a story to tell. I have history to tell the world. I have a culture to expose the world to for a deeper understanding of world conflict. Yes, but just each other in general. And thus, when that book launched, ever since I've been doing Ukrainian humanitarian aid work, I've been doing just so many conversations from universities to libraries to bookstores of let's just talk about Ukrainian identity and history. I'm not getting political anywhere. I just let's tell a story. And that's where Baba Yaga came from also because she's another Ukrainian for she's not just Ukrainian. She is Russian. She is in Belarus. She is in Poland. She is all over Eastern Europe. Baba Yaga has no borders. But there are so

many lessons of identity and cultural strength and female strength specifically that hide inside of her. I'm so greatly enjoying kind of going on another journey with her right now. I'm so powerful. Divine timing, I would say. You know, sometimes we can't see the divinity right away, but yeah, I felt the same way because, you know, when the whole thing happened here with George Floyd, I was really wanting to use my voice

to tell the story of the French Creoles. And my adult children were like, you cannot do that right now. You are a white woman. They're like, you're going to get canceled. You're going to be hated on. And I was like, the only reason why people fear that is because they actually don't know the truth about the history. And if they knew the truth, maybe they could see it through a different lens like I have. And so I felt it was divine timing as well, but there was this kind of fear like, maybe this isn't my place, but it just happened the way it did. And so like you, I wanted

to tell their story. And I think that I really shocked a lot of people from the history that I had learned. And it's all about education, is it not? I mean, when we're not educated, we're so ignorant. Absolutely. And it's one of those things that when it comes to world stories, both the little known secrets of history that people somehow have forgotten or that have been lost, to the stories that have just traveled down the generations, the oral storytelling traditions,

why is it that certain stories stick with humanity and are carried on year after year, generation after generation, century after century? The ones that stick have lessons for humanity hiding inside of them. And I think that is my favorite thing that while I've had books, we were talking about books that range from nonfiction language empowerment to writing family histories to examinations of folklore to fiction that has spoke the lore kind of as a basis of it. Everything that I do really comes down to this singular essence of the idea that well-written words and well-told stories can change the world. And I think no matter what I'm doing, I am just always pursuing the etymology of the English language has lessons for us. Folk tales that have been told down generations upon generations as a

massive telephone game that shifts with different tellers and different cultural vibes and movements, there are lessons for us there. Anything that sticks, sticks for a reason, just speaking to the core of humanity and who we are and the same basic emotions and hopes and dreams we have always had. Sometimes we think we're so modern and that we have these devices that stick in our purses and in our pockets and we can have the knowledge of the world in two seconds. But now humanity is the same as humanity ever was. We love our families and wanna take care of our children

the best we can. We wanna take care of our communities the best we can. We wanna be our best selves, and that's difficult. It has always been difficult. So when we can find lessons on living in places like this, whether it's the language of the word mediocre, I'm just going on a tangent here. The word mediocre, if you look at the word mediocre

and you actually break it up into the Greek, the word mediocre means halfway up the mountain. So mediocre is not terrible. That just means you up the mountain. So mediocre is not terrible. That just means you're halfway there. That's an entirely different mental shift. So again, language, stories, there's just so much for us to learn from. And that's why I love Baba Yaga right now. I always have. One that I got stuck on that I talk about often is heresy, meaning choice. And that's a huge part of my journey with the

Gnostic Gospels, you know, and I'm so deeply rooted Catholic. In my story, my ancestor, I had an ancestor who I found was the witness on the boats, the first five boats. Before you got on, you had to be baptized. Now that also became one of the first rules in the Black Code. So Catholicism was really forced on the people to come here to New France, which Louisiana was over 20 states at one time up and down the Mississippi. It explained why I was so deeply rooted Catholic. It wasn't a choice and anything outside of that was heresy. But you know, one thing I was just thinking when you were talking like how it is a wise woman, a wise old woman is a witch, right? The crone, if you literally look up the word crone in the dictionary, it says old hag, something scary

negative instead of seeing it as wisdom. Exactly. The figure of Baba Yaga, there's so many stereotypes that go into what an old witch is, into what an old crone is. So that's why when you actually peel back the layers of history of all of the pieces of who she is and who she has been, she's fighting against the stereotype of old woman equals scary. She's fighting against the stereotype of aging woman becomes invisible. She's fighting against all of these stereotypes of how to mother and how to empower and how to take women from whatever role they might be living in their society of the time and to challenge it and to make them think. And through her folk tales, and this is just her written record over the past couple centuries,

through all of her folktales, she has this consistency to her that she is often this fearful force deep into the woods. And there's always this threat that she's going to eat you and all of this stuff. One, in the stories, and I'm not talking about Hollywood stories now where they're taking Baba Yaga and turning her into this boogeyman character, but historically in the stories, and I'm not talking about Hollywood stories now where they're taking Baba Yaga and turning her into this boogeyman character, but historically in the stories, she never actually does eat anyone. It's always a threat, but it's a threat that kind of reminds us that the world can be scary sometimes, and we can run away from that scary, or we can see what's actually scaring me right now. What do I need to be paying attention to right now? Because maybe something that's scaring me or making me nervous or making me fearful,

that just means that's something I need to pay attention to right now. In all of the stories, there's a consistency with her that if the protagonist who comes to her, whether that protagonist is named Vasilisa the Beautiful, or whether that protagonist is named Prince Ivan, because I swear all of the protagonists are like one of those two names. Not completely, obviously. There are many other versions in my book as well, but those are the main two names that pop up again and again. Vasilisa if it is female, Prince Ivan if it is a boy.

And they always come to her and if they come to her and show her respect, they show her their good nature, that they are good people and they're trying to be kind. If they are showing her that they are hardworking and they're showing that they are brave, it's always these four traits. If you can confront the darkness with those four traits, she almost turns into a fairy godmother like creature where she can help people transform

into who they want to be. She can bestow gifts of what they need. This is a Slavic tale, so there's probably going to be some darkness mixed into that. But it's fascinating, and it's such an interesting life exploration for all of us that if whatever it is that we see in life, we all have our hard times, we all have our scary moments, not just looking at the external world and the news media, but looking around us, sometimes there are things that are scary. But if we always try to be good hearted and to be as kind as possible, to have respect for those around us, to be brave as brave

can be, and to actually put in the work to be hard workers. If you use those four things, the shadow can't eat you for dinner. And I think that's interesting. You know what? That's one thing about the Gnostic Gospels that I loved is you could tell these were allegorical stories that had deeper meaning. I found that to be true with, you know, some people would say, oh my God, there's no way that that's not true. You know, this is, this is crazy. And Jesus taught this and he said this, they wrote on this.

And it's like, you have to look at the deeper meaning behind that. And you know, I think that's what we love about fairy tales, right? We love about folklore. And you know, many of the stories, you know, I think that people really do believe that they're true stories. But a lot of times it's just like I even came across one story in my own tree about the Lugaroo. It was like this scary werewolf that lived in the bayou. And it was based off of the story of that a Catholic priest had hurt a child. And the parents got together and killed him and they were cursed for it or something.

And this scary werewolf would come at night. And they would tell the children this and they would tell them like, you have to sleep. If you don't sleep, then it'll come. It was like they told these stories that maybe half true, half exaggerated to work in their benefit to get you to be a better person or sleep better at night.

Right. And Baba Yaga was used in the same way that sometimes it was kind of this pattern of rules that she had. And sometimes she was, she was a morality tale where, you know what, be a good kid. And this is where my grandmother learned her and understood her in this way, that as a young child and as an imperfect girl, as many of us have been, if she went, took a shortcut through the woods in Ukraine where she lived, and she maybe didn't make some great choices that day,

she was really nervous that the witch of the woods was going to catch her and gobble her up because she knew she wasn't her best person. And it's an interesting concept to have that as just a belief that was in her. Obviously she grew and those beliefs changed as she aged. But it's just kind of an interesting concept. Another version of the same idea that Baba Yaga and so many of her different folktales over the years, she often asks protagonists a very simple question

that's repeated again and again. She always asks when people come to see her, and if, for those who are watching or listening, do not know Baba Yaga that well, besides the fact that she's this Slavic witch of the woods. One defining detail that most people know about her, or if you don't, this is the one thing you absolutely must know, is that Baba Yaga not only is a witch deep in the woods, but she lives in a hut

and her hut stands upon chicken legs. So just think on that for a second. If someone comes to your door. Yes, thank you very much. If someone comes to your door and you don't wanna answer it, her house can stand up and turn around so someone can't find the front door. If someone comes and is just really determined,

her house can stand up and just walk away deep into the woods where it can't be found. I mean, I mean- I wish I had those legs sometimes. Yeah, exactly, no one has ever wanted that once or twice, maybe not the chicken legs part. But in so many of the stories when people come to her, young protagonists, whoever they happen to be, she always says, are you here to do deeds or are you here to run from them? And it's a rephrase

you hear over and over with her. And I'm just like, oh, again, Baba Yaga is the most unlikely life coach. But at the same time, and every day, what if you woke up and said, okay, today, and today am I going to do deeds? Or today am I gonna run from them? And then it gives you a moment of introspection of what is it I'm really out to do? Not only on my day-to-day checklist, but why am I here?

And then the other side of that, no, of course I'm not running from things, but okay, well maybe what is it that I'm avoiding? What is it that I'm not fully facing or paying attention to? And yes, this is a folktale character with millennia upon millennia of background to her, which was meticulously researched

in my book because gosh, I just adore diving into things with white gloves on. But she has such lessons for humanity inside of her, inside of this folklore witch who has these roots of a goddess to her and she's fascinating and just so empowering. Right. If you can get past the stereotypes, right? And even just what a witch is. You know, I could do ancestry. I had done ancestry for my best friend, Mandy Hughes, to co-host with me. And she had a Salem witch in her tree. And we went really deep in researching the court papers that were available online, you know, from back then and reading them. I mean, this woman was hung. She

was the last to be hung and she was the oldest. She was a six-year-old woman who lost two husbands, which that made her witchy. She had a mole. They shaved down her body. I mean, just she made soap. Literally it said soap making materials. I mean, these things were witchy. Or was it that she probably owned a lot of land, being a widow, and maybe it was that she was powerful because of that, and maybe that was what it was. Exactly, and asking those questions can be so empowering about just all, I think about all of the women who probably go into the making of the Baba Yaga stories that we know today.

How many grandmothers were there? How many women on the outskirts of society who had outlived their husbands or plural husbands, whoever they may be. How many women knew the workings of herbs and medicines and helped for the healing. And people came to her for her wisdom of medicine or wisdom about relationships or wisdom about life and death. But she was scary because she was way over there and she looked kind of old. But there's some wisdom there that can be respected. I know, isn't it? And you know, I also found that midwives were always kind of under the umbrella too, which is insane. You know, these are nurses and I feel so fortunate to live in this day where we could speak on this. And I mean, I dare to be very, I call it being defiantly defiant because, you know, I just, it doesn't sit right

with me, right? But I love that the stories of like the goddesses and like, especially what you've done with one that's not as popular and I feel like Marie Laveau. I mean, absolutely in the same in the same boat, you know, I mean, I mean, like I said, I remember being told you don't go, you know, past Bourbon Street, if you hit House of Voodoo, you turn around, you know, you don't even go near it. Of course, I was defiant and I couldn't wait to go near it, you know, as I got older to just be curious, which I think is so important. And you talk a lot about that.

Absolutely. There's one chapter of Becoming Baba Yaga where I explore kind of the classic concept of maiden mother crone in relation to Baba Yaga, but the chapter is not called maiden mother crone, it's called feminist mother crone because it's really looking at the strength of young women and the self-discovery of finding that strength within themselves, as well as of course the strength of motherhood, as well as the strength of age. And I feel like so often people want to define what is a strong woman and maybe they're imagining like a woman in a power suit.

There are so many ways a woman can be strong. And Baba Yaga is an exploration of all of that. And again, this is where I love talking with book clubs. And this is where I love connecting with people on this because there's no limitation to what strength means in a woman, in anyone really, but I feel like women especially are often put into a pretty little box, and they are either a mother or they are this young little girl or whatever it is, but Baba Yaga fights tooth and claw literally against every stereotype put upon her and challenges them.

And one of the fun things about this, because sometimes you have the historical analysis, and I dove into so many peer-reviewed journals and academic tomes of for decades and decades and decades of work and centuries of work exploring her. But also the folktales themselves, and there were not very many books, actually I couldn't find a singular book, that had the academic historical analysis mixed with the folktales themselves actually side by side. I'm like, okay, let's read it. Let's analyze it and just back and forth like that. But of course, if I was going to include folktales, I wasn't just going to copy and paste the classics. I got to kind of play. I love writing fiction too. So I got to kind of take the classics, and I have

the citations, my bibliography, you can see everything I'm doing in here, of the originals. But let's twist this for a modern spin. One of the earliest stories in my book, I put it early in my book, although it's not in Baba Yaga's earliest timeline, but again this goes back to the telephone game of history and who is book, I put it early in my book, although it's not in Baba Yaga's earliest timeline. But again, this goes back to the telephone game of history and who is telling the tale. There's a tale of how was Baba Yaga, this evil witch created. And so the tale goes that once upon a time, the devil wanted pure evil to walk across the earth. And so what he did is he gathered up the 12 most evil, terrible creatures he could find, and they were all women. And so he gathered these 12 nasty women, and this is an exact quote from the translation, these 12 nasty women that he found and he

put them into his bag and he threw them all into a pot and he boiled them and then he breathed in the steam of the 12 nasty women, spit them out and his spit emerged as the creature Baba Yaga, the most fearsome creature of evil on earth. So I knew this tale and there's so many levels of this tale because you have the devil in the story and the devil does not exist in Baba Yaga stories. This is two different belief systems. If the devil exists in the story, you know, this is kind of a Christian pushing on a classic folk system. That's kind of clue number one that there's something really wrong here. There's so much to explore about the women in this story, the purest essences of evil, but I got to spin this in my own modern telling of it,

and about all of these women, and you get to actually see who they are and why someone might perceive them as really terrible but these women are forces and who's at the end of my version I'm just like and who's gonna contradict the devil because who would believe them anyway so it's just very fun to you know what sure you think we're evil but actually we're just this force to be reckoned with. And that's the birth of Baba Yaga. It's a late version in her timeline. And again, that tells you about her timeline itself, that if this is such a late story, people hear origin and you think that came first. This origin story came 200 years ago, which

is so new in her history. Amazing. A Gnostic scholar that I talk to often is Dan Morse. He writes also on Sophia. And he just keeps saying, we need to give her a new myth, her story, you know, being the fallen angel, the mother of the Demiurge and all this. And I refuse to read or listen to anybody else during that journey. I really isolated myself. I had a completely raw and very innocent and I was ignorant in many ways to anything that had been said about her outside of just what I was reading. And my journey with her was totally different because it was like not tainted.

Then talking with scholars and making the connections like, wow, okay, that's what I was feeling. This is what you think, but this is how I see it and showing things from a different perspective and changing the story. I mean, I just, I mean, I'm late to mythology in many ways, but just hearing recently a different story on Medusa. Like I didn't know her background. I only remember the scary movie when I was little. Terrifying. I didn't know there was this story behind her of rape

and I felt all of this compassion for her. And so it's interesting how you're right. There's been a narrative that really hasn't benefited women in any way. So I feel like right now is the time to rise and give women a voice and change those stories. Absolutely. And you're right, there's this moment of people exploring. And how great is that for the soul of ourselves and the soul of humanity to explore

whose perspectives have always told a story and whose perspectives have not been there. And let's not just talk, but let's listen. perspectives have always told the story and whose perspectives have not been there. And let's not just talk, but let's listen. I love that you, before you went in depth to all of your studies and listen to everybody else's voices, you're like, no, let me spend some time with us. Let me have my own reactions and my own gut feelings and my own thoughts and explorations. And then we go in because when we explore, that's how, that's how the magic happens. That's how we find so much growth and so much to teach others rather than just

regurgitating the same old thing that has been told, cause not all of those same things are full of wisdom. I remember the first time I told Dan Morse, my vision of the story, he was like, wow, I love this idea. I'm sure that your story with the 12 goddesses, well, I'm thinking I just was imagining goddesses and I'm sure that's another thing I wanted to ask you. I know with myself and doing my ancestry

and kind of putting myself into a different space, I felt like I was leaving this dimension, going back into history and looking at the world so differently. I mean, people look different, you know, and I think that especially if it's not been one of the popular stories that have been told, but I could really visualize it, right?

And so my imagination was like filling in, you know, so it does become like this whole story in my mind, you know, that I carry with me. Absolutely. And there is such a legacy of Slavic goddesses that goes back thousands of years. And I'm saying across Eastern Europe, I'm not defining this in one country, because none of these belief systems had contemporary border systems. Merchants traveled, stories traveled, and with them profound truths traveled. And there is such a history of the divine feminine in this area of women as not only a belief in a goddess who is much like a midwife who would be present as a soul entered

the world, but also as a soul left the world, a partner through these transitions and transformations in life. Well, if you think about the partner in those transformations, you can tell that story in one way where you're talking about a partner with death and all of a sudden this is a very morbid, scary thing. Or you could tell this as this female force who is there assuring people to their next plane, whichever into life or out of it. There are so many stories about goddesses that lived deep in the earth and to speak to one in a troubled time, you would dig a hole in the earth and whisper your confessions or secrets and you

would wait for a judgment or a thought or epiphany to strike you that would be the goddess speaking to you about how to resolve whatever the situation is. It's this maternal force. It's a force of judgment, a force of help and assistance, a connection. And there's just this line of goddess after goddess after goddess throughout that region that really the oldest one I could find was about 7,000 years old. And it's fascinating. Was it like Yamenia people? Because isn't that where the culture of the Yamenia culture was? So this was a Tripolia. It's a culture called the Tripolia. And this is a culture that lived in the same time as the ancient Egyptians. So we're talking 5,000 years BC.

They existed around the Black Sea. So roughly present day, Ukrainian-ish. Their culture had city centers that were five, six, 7,000 people at their height. So this is a very complex civilization. And they had pottery and kilns that were more advanced than anything in Egypt, anything in so many other regions of their day that they were very advanced scientifically for what they were producing of their time.

However, they were not building monuments, they were not building structures of marble that would stand the test of time. The word nomadic is not accurate for them because they were very complex with their civilizations, but they also had a ritualistic burning of after a number of years, they did burn down their entire kind of structures and then move on to something new. So thus the historical evidence of this culture was lost for millennia and now scholars are starting to dig in and find all of this all of these remnants of this incredibly complex civilization Eastern Europe that the world has never really discussed and all of these statuettes

that are very clearly towards some sort of divine female presence. Always. There was. There was always. That's been my study too. It's just new to not have, you know, a goddess as well as a god, right? And even when you think of Father, Son, Holy Ghost, like what? You know? No. A holy family would have a mother. Right. Like how would it not? You know? I mean, that, a holy family would have a mother. Like how would it not? You know, I mean, that's a shame, you know, and in the Gnostic gospels, the Trinity has talked much more, you know, the Trinity is only mentioned, I think one time in the New Testament where in the Gnostic gospels, it's often, you know, another thing I just mentioned

the Yamenia people around that same area, but supposedly that is where both Greek mythology and Roman mythology originated from. So it's amazing. Those people must have been talking a lot about different stories and I see them all now that I've done research. Gosh, this story about this goddess is, this is like wisdom for today. And actually I had an amazing guy on who wrote an entire deck on all about like, how it can affect your world today, the stories, right? Like, how can you work with their their myths, and their legends? It's beautiful. I think it's probably always been, you know, for that reason. And, you know, it's been lost. Exactly. And I think how great is it that we live in this moment of history that

people are falling down the rabbit holes of curiosity and chasing what fascinates them. And then not only chasing it personally, but then having an opportunity to share and connect. And you're speaking your truths and your discoveries and I'm working on mine and now we're connecting and we're learning and this is how humanity grows. This is how we grow personally, but also on a global scale. Oh my gosh, I almost feel like I'm at Girl Scouts or something like you tell me about yours.

And I'm telling you about- Now we'll hold hands and sing. But I do think it's amazing. But I do think it's amazing. And I do find it's also cool that people usually fall into their roots with stories that they've been told or at least from where they're from. You obviously have a deep love for the land of your ancestors as I do mine.

And I almost feel like sometimes, I don't know if you feel the same, but like they rise up in me, like my DNA like fires up like an engine and it's like they want their stories told. Exactly, and I feel like the entire writing of both the Baba Yaga mask, my novel and Becoming Baba Yaga, which is primarily non-fiction

with the exception of those folk tales that are intertwined in there, both of them, I just feel like I could feel what was simmering in my bloodline. And I felt like there was such depth of understanding the generations and strength of who came before me by the historical analysis and the culture analysis and the listening to the stories that people were told and hearing my modern reactions to them and because Baba Yaga is such a force that yes, she can be put into a box like she's some early Disney evil witch end of story. But her beautiful complexity is that she is such a split between the hope and the horror of the world. Captured in one character that she can be about

all of the terrifying things around us. But amid that which scares us in our modern life and century ago life, there's always hope. And I feel like that's the beautiful essence of perhaps why Baba Yaga is having a moment in pop culture right now. She's passed Scooby Doo and she's in the John Wick series and she's in a DreamWorks Puss in Boots.

She's just having a good girl moment. Yes, her energy is rising to this occasion right now when we need her the most. Exactly. And she's speaking not just of the terrifying, but amid the terrifying, there is hope. And that is fascinating to me. Okay, I have a good question for you. What would Baba Yaga say to Putin and Zelensky if she was sitting down with him?

Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. I see her as a mother, right? Yeah. And I think of, you know, this is her children. Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny because Baba Yaga traditionally deals with male protagonists differently than female protagonists when they approach her and the lessons because the male protagonists are often trying to prove themselves and like grow up and be stronger and seem with every single time. So I'll answer your question this way every single time she kind of shakes her head at this male figure who thinks he's all that and reminds them that you don't know everything you think you know.

And I think reminds them to maybe get an older wiser woman's advice on the situation. So I'll leave it with that. Perfect. I love it. I know a lot of babas in Ukraine who are brilliant and bold and protecting their families and those babas are underrated. And baba, by the way, sometimes you see a translation of Baba as old decrepit crone. Baba, whether it's Ukrainian, whether it's Polish, whether it's Russian, it translates to grandmother. And it's kind of like the word granny. Granny can be an endearing term or granny can be like old granny, you know? Granny can go either way. And I think Baba can go either way. There's a lot of curiosity about where Baba Yaga got her name.

Is Baba, so grandmother, Yaga, is Yaga the name of some woman long, long, long ago that where all of these stories originated? Is Yaga a word? And we're looking at all of the etymologies of the language and the word roots of all of these things. And there are a lot of words that are close, but not exactly, and they're words like snake and horror and nightmare and thunder. But again, this could be people really reaching for a word that may or may not match, or maybe one of them is the right connection.

My favorite though is the idea of Yaga being a replacement word. If there was a deity that was so holy that only the highest priestesses or the highest holy people could say the name of this deity, but no one else was allowed to actually say the name, that Yaga was actually a replacement word for that deity's name that was okay to say. And thus Baba Yaga became known ever more because you couldn't say her name. Interestingly, in Russian, the word bear has the same connection. The word bear in Russian translates to honey knower is technically bear because bear in so many different Russian traditions and so much mythology, a bear is this creature of almost divine stature and strength. So the original Russian word for bear has been lost to time because nobody was allowed to say it except for this very small select group. And the Russian word for bear is this honey-Knower word that's in common use, but the original word was lost because it was too divine and not enough people wrote it down or not enough people remembered it. I don't speak Russian, but I've talked to many in that area about this and it's just one of those fascinations.

And as you know, there are many world religions who have a name to a way to speak. Right. Yodhe V. Right. Right. Exactly. And just like one has to sometimes just kind of use their imagination and common sense to fill in. And I feel like it wasn't in our benefit. And now someone like you and reclaiming that. So thank you. Absolutely. I like to give credit to all of the grandmothers of history really because who was it for centuries who told the stories to children? Parents were working and maintaining the household and trying to do all of the things. Women typically lived longer than men. The grandmothers were there to be able to help tend to the children and tend to so many things. So just imagine all of the Slavic grandmothers

of history passing down the tales, not only be a good kid or else Baba Yaga will get you, but this little hint of strength in women and wisdom in women was passed down because it was the Babas telling the tale. I really wish my dad was alive so I could call him and say, Dad, did you know any folklorists about the Baba Yaga? He was only like third generation here from Czechoslovakia. So I'm thinking he might have. But big storytellers in that family, my dad,

that's all he did was tell stories. But you made me think of one that's so funny. I just learned throughout my journey. So my grandma only had one eye, my great grandma, and I knew her and she died when I was like 19. And she used to say that it was because she was running with a stick. And so anytime we were running with sticks, she'd be like, you know, yelling and everyone would yell at us, you're gonna poke her eye out, you know, and that's what we thought. But then when I tracked down one of her nieces who was in a nursing home, and she was in her 90s, we had a conversation. I said, Did you know my great

grandma? And she was like, Yeah, I'll never forget. She only had one eye, right. And I said, Yeah. And she goes, Oh, did you know the story? And I said, Yeah, she ran with a stick. She said, oh, no, she was looking through a fence and a big bull, a cow with horns got her eye. Never heard that story. In fact, I tried to tell my mom, I tried to tell my aunt, they're like, we never heard that before. Like this 90 year old woman is the only thing she remembered about her. Oh, my goodness. That's fascinating. before. Like this 90 year old woman was the only thing she remembered about her.

Oh, my goodness. That's fascinating. That's again, why we need to collect the stories because the more versions of tales that we hear, that's how we get our full versions. Yeah, they were just trying to get us not to run with sticks, which I get, right? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, I was lucky for that little bit of history that I didn't know. Yeah, but thank you so much.

I absolutely love what you're doing. I appreciate your work so much. I'm a total down the rabbit hole researcher. And sometimes I have to pull myself from such a far place just to come back. I feel like- Well, likewise, keep going with your amazing work because you're doing tremendous things.

Thank you so much for having me. Oh, I appreciate it. I truly honor this hour that I've spent with you and I love your books. Tell everybody where they can find your books. Absolutely. You can go to becomingbhavayagabook.com and that'll bring you to the new book. That'll bring you to my website where you can find all of my work, all of my play with empowering your communications, empowering your storytelling, empowering your family history writing, as well as my fiction and nonfiction explorations. Thank you so much.

Thank you. And you also have a wonderful presence on Instagram as well. I saw. Yeah. Thank you for saying that. Yes. I love playing on Instagram and really my ongoing research lives on Instagram. So when I'm really playing with the history of words that I stumble upon, the history of stories. And did you know that Lewis Carroll loved writing in purple ink and like all of this little trivia and tidbits that are kind of side notes and my

actual research, but just fascinating. Please, yes, follow me on Instagram. I love connecting with folks on Instagram. And that's just my name, chris.spisak, K-R-I-S-S-P-I-S-A-K. And yes, follow along. I'd love to connect with you. All right, awesome.

Thanks so much for your time. And I hope we keep in touch. Definitely, definitely. Thank you so much. Sense of Soul. Thanks for listening to Sense of Soul podcast and thanks to our special guest. If you want more of Sense of Soul, check out my website at senseofSoulPodcast.com It's time to awaken.