BABA YAGA -
She guards the Waters of Life. In Slavic
oral traditions, Baba Yaga was the old crone of autumn, who lived
in the last sheaf of harvested grain. Fittingly, the woman who
bound that sheaf would bear a child the next spring, for the old
Baba was also the guardian of the fountain of the waters of life.
She was believed to row her cauldron through the air with a broom,
steering with its pestal. She is a preserver of herbal knowledge
and medical healing. Legend of the middle-ages transformed her
to the traditional hag or witch who would steal and devour children.
