The author offers own version of the origin of one of the most widespread mythological archetypes, namely the image of an island (rock, cliff) surrounded by water (sometimes located in the fi eld), which features in the Eastern Slavic culture fi rst and foremost in various fairy tales and spells. She argues that the investigation of this archetype (which is related to notions of the sacred center of the world, life, death, and rebirth) from the standpoint of anthropomorphic code, that is in the context of earliest ideas about the earth or the world as a live deity, enables us to postulate that the shaping of its rich semantics might have to do with associative notions about the reproductive organ of such a deity. Some of the characteristic features of the island image are further explored from this standpoint