24:28 – Baba Yaga Burns Paris To The Ground – By Wren Awry – MP3 – Text – PDF – Archive – Torrent – YouTube

As the Paris Commune of 1871 fought desperately against its own suppression, much of the city was set ablaze.
Conservative journalists, desperate for a scapegoat, invented the pétroleuses—torch-wielding women desperate to burn everything. In this text, fairy-tale critic Wren Awry ties the pétroleuses into a long line of mythologized fire-wielding devil-women—women like Baba Yaga, the youngest sister in the Grimms’ “Fitcher’s Bird,” and the women burned during the great witch hunts of early Modern Europe—as a source of revolutionary inspiration.

“Furies glide through the rich quarters […] and fling their little vials of petrol, their devil’s matches, their burning rags.”