Your Friendly Neighborhood Swamp Hag

Master Post

Peasant girl in heather with sickle and basket. 1900 painting by Emil Zschimmer

Though this blog started as a place to showcase my devotional stitching to honor my ancestresses, over the last few years the babky (my Moravian grannies) have been pulling me in all sorts of directions. I’ve never really called myself a witch, though I think it is assumed by a lot of my readers because of the work I do, and I’ve gotten kind of lazy and use it as shorthand a lot (especially in tags) because it’s easy, but I tend to think of myself as a cunning woman and over the last couple of years a novice kořenářka (simplest definition would be root/herb woman, but so much more).

Antos Frolka (1877-1935)

My practice revolves around foraging and preserving wild plants, honoring the animals that I share the land with, honoring the calendar customs and folk Catholicism (that is often only a mask over older pagan customs) of my Moravian ancestresses, and YES—I still stitch! It all falls under the overarching umbrella of ancestor veneration.

Kroatische Stickerin, 1920, Othmar Růžička

Who were the Kořenářky?

My Herbal — Mostly print sources on plants I forage. Includes medicinal, magical, and culinary info. You can also find recipes from my bioregional apothecary, these are from my particular region and are meant to inspire as well as document my own research. Note: I’m beginning to add pages from my kořenářka journal.

My observation of Moravian Calendar Customs from 2022 to the present

2025 Stitching Projects

Moravian Embroidery Patterns

A repeat of the above patterns, but I recently found this somewhat different version:

Červenec/July Devotional Calendar

This was a pretty personal working for strength that I started working on last week with St. Margaret of Antioch.

Before that though, I received an acorn from the Council Oak at Midsummer and sewed together a little amulet bag to contain it and a pinch of each of my nine Midsummer herbs collected this year.

I brought it out to the Council Oak for blessing along with my hagstones, which are powerful amulets in Czech folklore as well, and sometimes conflated with thunderstones.

For an offering I left some of my precious hátová voda (St. Agatha water) which is some of the last of my precious water from the creek I used to work with and no longer have access to. I also made a mix of music devoted to St. Elijah/Perun/Oak as an offering that we listened to on the way there.

Afterwards in a bit of irreverence that really was absolutely reverent (just playful 😉)I got on a swing for the first time in years. I wanted to see if I could touch the sky like Elijah. Marcy didn’t know what to make of it as I pumped higher and higher. She darted back and forth barking. I don’t know if she was worried for me or herself.

When I did my I Ching practice later in the evening, I had a conversation based around strength, St. Elijah, and the approaching first quarter moon.

Children's Stories of the Bible from the Old and New Testaments, illustrated by Laszlo Matulay

Nathalie Parain (1897-1958)

"Baba Yaga," Paris: YMCA Press, 1932,

(Also appearing as a French translation in the Albums du Pere Castor series.)

Stone lithography

In a world of high infant mortality where baptism wasn’t always possible a rich and terrifying folklore grew.

This illustration depicts a Vukodlak (a Slavic werewolf or vampire entity) developing inside the womb of a deceased woman, by Serbian artist Ivica Stevanović. According to South Slavic legend, if a predatory animal passes over the grave of a pregnant woman, her unborn child risks turning into a monster.

I found this illustration on Facebook and was led research whether my West Slavic ancestors had any similar beliefs. The closest I could find was nekřtěňátko, the restless spirits of unbaptized or stillborn children, in Czech and Moravian folklore, this spirit of an unbaptized infant could become a wandering soul, sometimes appearing as lights, birds, or crying infants.

“This sad fate of so-called “unborn babies” was believed in especially in the Middle Ages. If a newborn died before it had gone through this ritual [baptism] its poor soul would have to wander for a long time in the ruin of its own damnation, because it could not rest in heaven or hell.”

“ . . . without having committed any crime, they were to be condemned to live in the underworld. Their souls were supposed to be trapped in purgatory which represented a kind of pre-hell. Purgatory was the place where these souls waited for Judgment Day. According to Christian tradition, the judgment of the living and the dead is supposed to take place on this day, and only at this time will the poor unchristened children have hope for the arms of God (note: some sources say that the souls of these children will not escape from purgatory even after the final judgment).”

“However, souls from this miserable existence can look out into the world on exceptional days. This is usually during important Christian holidays, such as Christmas or the Advent period in general. They appear on earth as nekřtěňátko, wandering in the darkness of the night.”

“One variation of the legend says that it is these wandering souls who lead pilgrims into swamps and marshes (quite literally bludičky). They deliberately lead them astray and lead them towards suffering and death.”

In some regional legends, they could transform into mischievous or dangerous spirits, similar to the "poroniec" in Polish (our West Slavic cousins) folklore:

“It was believed that an unborn or prematurely deceased child was driven by envy for not having had the chance to enjoy life. This envy was compared to the envy that drove spells, for example. Unbaptized children were buried haphazardly, meaning there was no room for them in cemeteries. Secluded places were particularly favored for their burial, so that no one could find their remains. It was in these places that the souls of these little ones were said to appear, so they were usually seen in bushes, forests, on riverbanks, or among marshes.”

“They were seen in the form of little lights (fireflies), but they were also said to appear to their mothers in dreams in the form of a black-skinned child.”

“To save the repentant soul of a child, it was recommended that wherever they cried, someone would hear them, take holy water, and baptize them. A cross would be made and the child would be said: "If you're a boy, call me Józek; if you're a girl, call me Anna," in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and the child would stop crying because it demanded it .”

Nekrstenci (Unbaptised Children) by Ivica Stevanovic.

“Beliefs in the uncanny souls of deceased children constitute a rather extensive chapter of Slavic demonology. This particularly concerns fetuses aborted involuntarily or deliberately "poisoned." With the development of the Christian faith, especially among Western Slavs and the western part of the Balkans, the belief in unbaptized children developed rapidly. Kazimierz Moszyński's research indicates that the immense popularity of beliefs in the demonism of such souls even led to secondary folk explanations for the origins of certain demons, or semi-demonic beings, originally having little or nothing in common with these souls. Thus, among the Bulgarians, the soul of an unbaptized child becomes a mura , our nightmare . In certain areas of Little Russia, a stillborn child takes the form of a domowik or ubożenie , a friendly elf , after seven years . Meanwhile, in some areas of Great Russia, it was believed that the souls of stillborn children eventually transform into kikimores . All these transformations of the souls of unborn children testify to the fact that the belief in their afterlife activity was extremely alive and well-known throughout the Slavic lands.”

Original Czech and Polish language articles and intro art:

https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bludička

July 20

The Feast Day of Svaty Elias was not a huge observance in the Czech lands as it was with some other saints. In Christian times Elias became the heavenly rider who governed storms. His observances were often during those storms.

In Moravian folk imagination storms formed over the mountains. Thunderclouds gathering over the highlands were a living force.

Older Slavic ideas about Perun (the primary Slavic thunder god) were never explicitly preserved in Christian village prayers, but ethnographers have long noted that many of Perun’s characteristics—thunder, lightning, fiery wheels, protection of the community—were gradually transferred to Elijah, and churches dedicated to the Saint were located on hills associated with oaks. This wasn’t a conscious blending by villagers so much as a centuries-long evolution of popular belief.

Rather than elaborate celebrations, people remembered him during thunder and lightning, and when hail threatened the crops. The people’s response was both practical and devotional as they would make the sign of the cross and stop field work, praying to Elias that the storm would not damage the crops. They would close the shutters during storms and place the blessed Palm Sunday branches near the window and light the hromnička while praying to Svaty Elias.

Czech sayings for the feast day:

"Saint Elias, cuts off the first comb." —Czech saying

In the times of forest beekeeping and beekeeping in logs, that is, in prepared hollowed-out sections of trunks, the collection of "bee work" was carried out at this time.

Pray to St. Elijah to turn away hail.

"Until Elias, hay in the meadows is good, after Elias, spoiled."

This tells us that overgrown grass significantly loses its feeding value.

On St. Elias, summer in the morning, autumn in the afternoon. [Oh, how I wish Czech saying applied here on the bayou]

About St. Elias, storms often scare.

St. Elias comes with rain or a storm.

It is abundant in honey, like the honeycomb of Saint Elias.

Though there aren’t any explicit rituals associated with this day, I plan on returning to the Council Oak on the other side of the river to bless the amulet bag I made for an acorn the tree gifted me and my Čarodějné kameny (witch stones), which in Czech folklore are a protective amulets and sometimes considered a type of thunderstone.

Sources:

picking the flowers and leaves from the stems of plants, in order to store them properly for later use.

This is how I spend a couple of nights a week at high summer! 😂

Garble is a word with a spicy history, and we're not just saying that to curry favor with gastronomes. It is presumed that this word was passed from Arabic to Mediterranean Europe through trade in Eastern spices, and was first introduced into English from the Anglo-French verb garbeler, used for the action of sifting out impurities—such as dust, dirt, husks, etc.—from spices. In the 15th century, the English garble carried this same meaning as well as "to cull," i.e., to sort or pick out the best parts of something. If these origins seem curious given garble’s now more common meanings of "to so alter or distort as to create a wrong impression" and "to cause to be unclear or confusing; to introduce error into," consider that one way of garbling someone’s story is to take bits and pieces out of context.

Two days of work accidentally deleted.

Tumblr I hate your editing (in)capabilities so much.