Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

I would draw your attention to one detail: Beba, representing mature female sexuality, carries an unusual amulet or charm around her neck – a flat stone with a hole in the middle.

BIRDS

Birds appear in all mythopoetic systems and traditions as demiurges, deities and demons; a means of transport for the gods, demigods and heroes; celestial messengers, wizards, immortals, prophets and totemic symbols. Although the symbolism associated with birds is rich and multilayered, birds are above all symbolic postmen, intermediaries between heaven and earth.

The bird plays a key part in all cosmogonic myths, including Slavic myths. The creator sends a bird (a grebe, a dove or suchlike) to bring clay, sand or sea-foam from the bed of the primordial ocean. The creator makes the earth out of this sand or sea-foam, and in the centre of this earth he plants the tree of the world. It has its roots in the earth, its crown in the heavens and its trunk connects heaven and hearth. The crown, or upper world, is an abode for birds (two birds for every side of the treetop, symbols of the sun and moon, day and night).

There is a hierarchy of birds. The eagle usually has the highest, most powerful position. In Bulgarian folklore, the eagle has access to the end of the world, where heaven and earth meet. Fairies, dragons and other mythical beings live at the end of the world. A magpie drops in. The fairies call the magpie every year to harvest the immortelle, which is why they let her bathe in the fairy lake. There she changes her feathers and returns to earth. This is why the magpie is believed to possess healing powers. When a Bulgarian child loses a milk tooth, it throws the tooth onto the roof of the house and says: ‘A bony tooth for you, magpie, so you can bring me an iron one instead!’ The Czechs and Slovaks have an identical custom, except that the children appeal to Baba Yaga instead of a magpie (Ježibaba, stara baba, ty maš zub kosteny, daj mi zub železny!).

In Bulgarian folklore, God came down to earth before the great Flood. Seeing a poor widow-woman with many children and a single hen with chicks, he decided to save her. He told the woman to gather up her children, hen and chicks, and flee from the house, but – he warned her – she should not look back. The inquisitive woman, even so, turned around and she and her children were turned to stone. God succeeded in saving the hen and chicks, and turned them into a con stellation that people call Kvochka (the brooding hen) – meaning the Pleiades.

Bulgarian – and other – cosmogonic beliefs include the notion that the earth is a flat board supported on a cockerel. Earthquakes happen if the cockerel moves or flaps its wings.

Avian typology in myths encompasses not only actual birds, but also feathered mythical creatures such as Anzuda (Mesopotamia), Garuda (India), Simurg, Varagani (Persia), Tanifi (Maori), Ruha (Arab), Straha-Raha, the Stratim Bird, the Nogot Bird, Voron Voronvich, Siren and the Firebird (Russia). There are also hybrid beings with birds’ wings that are able to fly (sphinxes, chimeras, gryphons, sirens, gorgons, etc.). Many gods and divinities turn into birds (e.g. Zeus into a swan), they have bird-like features or birds are included in their attributes (Apollo with a swan and crow, Aphrodite with swans and sparrows, Athena with an owl, Juno with a goose, Brahma with a goose, Saraswati with a swan or peacock, Krishna with a peacock’s feather headgear and so on).

A bird is a symbol of the spirit and the soul. Birds recur most often as the souls of the departed, but according to the beliefs of some Siberian tribes a bird can also be the symbol of someone’s other ‘sleepy soul’, the one that only appears in dreams. The ‘dream-bird’ takes the form of a female grouse, and its likeness can be seen carved on Siberian cradles as a talisman.

The Australian tribe of the Kurnai cherishes gender totemism linked to birds, hence one kind of bird embodies the male sex organ and another, the female. A bird is a metaphor for the sex organ among many peoples. Here are two examples from Croatian folk poetry:

Oh precious soul, my maiden true
Your nightgown is so precious too;
Beneath that gown the quail sits,
It wants no wheaten bread to eat
Nor wine to drink from purple vines
Its one desire – meat, no bones!

The quail in this instance is a substitute for the vagina, while in the next example the rooster is a substitute for the penis:

The Turk rolls the old woman
Across the flat field
Pushing her as far as the fence
Then he puts in his rooster