In East Slavic tales of particular importance is the image of Baba Yaga. He goes back to the era of matriarchy and much remains mysterious (for example, there are several assumptions, but there is no convincing explanation of the name "witch"). To the witch at her call runs every animal that creeps every creeping thing, every bird flies. She is not only a lady living beings, but also the Keeper of the fire hearth (not accidentally tale connects with her utensils - the stupa, pomelo, poker).
The ancient roots of Baba Yaga says the ambivalence of its properties: it can be a helper and opponent. Yaga shows the way in Kasaeva Kingdom, from her hero gets a wonderful items and a magic horse. However, the witch acts as a warrior, avenger, the thief of children. In a patrimonial society Yaga personified mother ancestor, and the tale emphasized uterum her feminine characteristics, while doing this, because of the fall of the cult, already with a sneer: "Sitting witch of Aginine, Avdotya of Krzyminski, nose up at the ceiling, Tits across the threshold, snot through a flower bed, the language of soot raking".
The motive of the meeting of the hero with Baba Yaga known by many stories of fairy tales. Its origin Century. I. Propp explained in connection with the initiation rituals of tribal society, which have reached maturity, the young men were initiated into the hunter (warriors), and the girls were taken into the circle of mothers . In the basis of the rites was the fictional death, when a man allegedly visited the realm of the dead and got there wonderful properties, and then was reborn in a new capacity. In two books ("the Morphology of the fairy tale" and "the Historical roots of fairy tales") Propp showed that the uniformity of the narrative structure of different works in this genre corresponds to such rites of antiquity. Summing up his investigations, he wrote: "We found that the compositional unity of the tale lies not in any peculiarities of the human psyche, not in the specifics of artistic creativity, it lies in the historical reality of the past. What now tell you once did, portrayed, and what did not, imagine" .
Inside the fairy story clearly allocated two spaces: the world of people and wonderful far far away Kingdom, trilisate the state is nothing like the mythical realm of the dead. In ancient times it was associated with the sun, so the tale portrays his gold. In different stories of the miraculous Kingdom situated under ground, under water, in the distant woods or on high mountains, in the sky. Therefore, it is very far removed from the people and moves, like the daily movement of the sun. There goes the hero of a fairy tale for the wonderful Golden wonders and for the bride, and then returns with prey in their home. From the real world far far away Kingdom always separated by some border: heavy stone pillar with an inscription of three roads, a high steep mountain, a river of fire, guelder rose bridge, but most often by Baba Yaga. C. J. Propp concluded that the witch is dead, the mother dead, the guide to the afterlife.
In the rites of the ancient people of the hut was zoomorphic image. Fabulous cottage retains the characteristics of a living creature: she hears addressed to her words ("Hut, hut, turn to the forest, in front of me"), turns around, and finally she had the chicken legs. Zoomorphic image of the hut associated with chicken, and chicken in the entire system of Ethnography and folklore of the Eastern Slavs symbolized female fertility. Fairytale motif meeting with house Yaga told echoes the feminine initiation.