Tag: Baba Yaga

Prayers for Pagans

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I have been experimenting with prayer in my witchcraft.

I got the idea after downloading a short ebook about death witchcraft from Etsy. It had an all-purpose prayer for those who had passed on to be able to find their destination smoothly. It was not directed at a particular deity, and was more like a well-meaning wish. This really struck me as a great idea, and changed my approach to prayer to realize that it doesn’t have to be for one’s own benefit only.

Obviously, if you have a deity in mind, it follows naturally that you could write one for them. Or several, for the same deity or different ones. I am a poet and lean naturally into devotional poetry, but you can do whatever you want! It could be a request or merely a devotional that describes them and invokes them.

If you don’t have a deity in mind, you could do a general prayer. I find the word “May…” to be very helpful, as in “May people get the help they need today.” It does not invoke a particular entity to help, it merely sends the wish gently out into the world.

If you have the ability, I recommend memorizing your prayer so you can say it/think it at any time. You don’t necessarily need to work hard to commit it to memory; just read it as you say it until you don’t need to read it anymore. In my experience this takes about 15 days of daily repetition.

So far, I have one general prayer that is based on my deities and what I am working on in my witchcraft, but does not speak to them directly, and one specifically for Baba Yaga.

Baba Yaga: Ancient Goddess?

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I have been reading a book (Fierce Feminine Divinities) that posits that Baba Yaga is an ancient earth goddess who has been telephone-gamed into the mercurial witch of the woods from folklore.

I have been working with Baba Yaga in my witchcraft as a representation of complexity. She does not choose between being feral or being domestic: she is both, and that is what I want to embody.

However, I don’t think that she is directly the result of a Slavic goddess getting morphed over time and demonized into a witch. I don’t think we have evidence for that, and it’s very far-fetched. We don’t have any evidence for the goddess that she supposedly was, nor etymological evidence that shows a change over time like that.

I DO think that the old paganism was strong in the Slavic collective unconscious at the time that this folklore was written down, and that there are connections that could be made that could be VERY pertinent to understanding Baba Yaga herself.

However, I have not studied in-depth a lot of the folklore scholars, like Vladimir Propp. Maybe he makes a lot of good points that I am missing out on.

Does anyone have any wisdom on this?

My Current Witchcraft Practice

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This blog is about my thoughts, and I’ve been thinking a lot about witchcraft lately so I want to introduce you to my witchcraft practice.

I have been a witch on and off since I was about 12. Knowing my interest in Harry Potter, some family member or another bought me a (pink) book about witchcraft, geared for pre-teens. I had the thought “OH MY GOD, THEY LIED TO ME! WITCHCRAFT IS REAL!” I was hooked, and spent the next few years diving into the supernatural, especially astrology.

Around age 14, I dated an awful boy who was a Pastafarian/atheist. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but the particular way he went about it was very self-important. In an effort to mold myself to his wishes, I became the same, and eschewed anything that even hinted at the supernatural. While it was absolutely horrible at the time, this thread actually influenced my later practice a lot, and infused a healthy skepticism into everything I do. I now consider witchcraft– at least the way I practice it– to be at the crossroads of the mythical and the psychological. My approach is very Jungian (though I am not as well-read on him as I should be!) and uses ritual as a psychological tool like in Satanism. (LaVey and most of his followers are absolutely awful people, but I have definitely yoinked this idea.)

In my early twenties, I was inspired to get back into witchcraft. By that time, my life had been ravaged by depression for a decade, and all my spells were desperate pleas for the mental illness to end– I figured I could take care of everything else in my life as long as my depression ended. (Newsflash: they didn’t work.) I had a brief stint as a professional tarot reader (for a couple of venues)and decided I hated it because people wanted “facts” about the future when I wanted to explore together what the cards were telling me.

Now, I have a witchcraft practice where I don’t do spells. Leaning into the microphone: a witchcraft practice where I don’t do spells! The way I see it, my willpower has already been bruised by overuse, since I spent so many years trying to bite the bullet and take action when my body and mind were screaming at me to be kind to myself. Anyway, I’m not really sure that I believe that spells are effective (at least for me).

Mainly, I work with deities/archetypes. Does this make me a pagan instead of a witch? Maybe, but I like the word “witch” better. The main figures I work with are Baba Yaga (I am of Slavic heritage), Prometheus, and Robin Hood. I don’t believe them to be deities as in, external existing spirits– rather, to me, they are representations of larger themes that are important in my life. Baba Yaga represents to me the complexity of being a human animal that lives in a domesticated society. Prometheus represents to me the search for knowledge at all costs. Robin Hood, a figure that has been a source of obsession since I could understand narrative, represents to me the drive to help others. I also work with bees in my practice (but not literally like a beekeeper would).

Recently, I got bored of tarot and have been branching out into oracle cards. Posts upcoming include a discussion of how I work with oracle cards and the best methods to get to know them.

In the day-to-day, I do a lot of journaling work, research, and note-taking. I consider this to be a part of my practice, rather than armchair witching.

I have also been writing devotional poetry and baking bread as offerings.

Stay tuned for more witchcraft content!