Baba Yaga Pine Soap
Im very grateful and excited to share with you all, a soap I have created that embodies my love & fascination with the elusive Baba Yaga.
Who is Baba Yaga? Baba Yaga is a distinctive figure in eastern European folklore, well known for her ambiguous nature. She both takes and gives life, creates and consumes. She dwells in the depths of the forest in a hut that walks on chicken feet. In the center of her hut is a large oven, the great life-giver of the home. Baba Yaga is the consuming fire; she cooks and eats and gathers all into her oven maw in order to create anew. She is often depicted as riding or flying in a mortal and pestle. To me, Baba Yaga IS the mortar and pestle - representing the interconnectedness of fertility (mortar - the vessel, the bowl, the womb) and destruction (pestle). She is both the prize and the perils of the journey, the alembic through which death is transformed into life.
It’s been a very fun process trying to formulate the recipe for this soap. Winter is understood to be as fierce as Baba Yaga, so I wanted to create something from plants in the area here to embody that. I am using locally foraged black walnut for natural colorant and exfoliant (ground/powdered) and am learning to make my own charcoal, to give the soap the rich dark color - ground up with my mortar and pestle. Instead of using just water in the recipe, I use pine hydsosol I distilled.
This soap smells like the depths of the forest where the mighty Baba Yaga lives - a bit of pine, a bit of smoke, with just a hint of sweet.
List of Ingredients:
Pine Hydrosol (locally foraged and distilled), Charcoal (locally foraged/made by Sasha), Black Walnut Powder (locally foraged), Pine Tar (source: Sweden), Pine Essential Oil, Sweet Almond & Olive Oil, Coconut Oil, Shea Butter, Castor Oil, Sodium Hydroxide
Im very grateful and excited to share with you all, a soap I have created that embodies my love & fascination with the elusive Baba Yaga.
Who is Baba Yaga? Baba Yaga is a distinctive figure in eastern European folklore, well known for her ambiguous nature. She both takes and gives life, creates and consumes. She dwells in the depths of the forest in a hut that walks on chicken feet. In the center of her hut is a large oven, the great life-giver of the home. Baba Yaga is the consuming fire; she cooks and eats and gathers all into her oven maw in order to create anew. She is often depicted as riding or flying in a mortal and pestle. To me, Baba Yaga IS the mortar and pestle - representing the interconnectedness of fertility (mortar - the vessel, the bowl, the womb) and destruction (pestle). She is both the prize and the perils of the journey, the alembic through which death is transformed into life.
It’s been a very fun process trying to formulate the recipe for this soap. Winter is understood to be as fierce as Baba Yaga, so I wanted to create something from plants in the area here to embody that. I am using locally foraged black walnut for natural colorant and exfoliant (ground/powdered) and am learning to make my own charcoal, to give the soap the rich dark color - ground up with my mortar and pestle. Instead of using just water in the recipe, I use pine hydsosol I distilled.
This soap smells like the depths of the forest where the mighty Baba Yaga lives - a bit of pine, a bit of smoke, with just a hint of sweet.
List of Ingredients:
Pine Hydrosol (locally foraged and distilled), Charcoal (locally foraged/made by Sasha), Black Walnut Powder (locally foraged), Pine Tar (source: Sweden), Pine Essential Oil, Sweet Almond & Olive Oil, Coconut Oil, Shea Butter, Castor Oil, Sodium Hydroxide