Red Horseman Russian Fairy Tale Print

"Vasilisa the Beautiful" is a story from a book called "The Book of Enchantments and Curses" by Ruth Manning-Sanders. Baba Yaga is a witch that reigns over the birch forests of Russia. Her faithful servants are the White Horseman, the Red Horseman and the Black Horseman. When Vasilissa the Beautiful (sometimes called Vasilisa the Wise) asks her who these mysterious horsemen are she replies: "My Bright Dawn, my Red Sun and my Dark Midnight." Among her other servants whom she calls "my soul friends" and whom she is reluctant to discuss with visitors are the three bodiless pairs of hands, which appear out of thin air to do her bidding. Baba Yaga is the arch-crone, the goddess of wisdom and death, the bone mother. She brings wisdom and death (just like wild nature does) and through death, rebirth. Behind her story is the figure of the ancient Slavic goddess of death and rebirth, whose autumn harvest holds the promise of winter survival and new growth in Spring. The "old woman" of autumn was called Baba by the Slavic inhabitants of eastern Europe. This is a picture of Redsun, one of her servants. Baba passed into Slavic folk legend as Baba Yaga.