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

Kroj (folk dress) from my great-grandparents’ village?

2025 Stitching Projects

Moravian Embroidery Patterns

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

Červenec/July Devotional Calendar

Srpen/August Devotional Calendar

It was a strangely cool Lammas evening out on the bayou. It was in the mid 80°sF for most of the day (you know you live in a summer hellscape when you are excited about the 80°s F), and when we got out to the trail around 6:30PM it had dipped into the 70°s F, and all day there was little to no humidity and a solid breeze. August is usually our hottest, most humid month, and in July so far we’d had lots of heat advisories, with heat indexes up to 119°F. So yesterday felt like a gift. We hadn’t gone on a walk of any length in a couple of weeks. Just drives with pit stops at scenic points. Even the cicadas took most of the day off and mostly there was just a quiet cricket hum.

I foraged some more elderflower ( yes I found some blooms among the ripening berries!), passionflower, mallow, and shiso. I’ve been using the mallow in a hair rinse and I’ve been very excited about the results.

Everyone on the trail was in a good mood. Marcy can be reactive and loud around other dogs and sometimes people scurry past with their dogs and shoot us dirty looks, even as we are telling them she’s not aggressive, just excited. But last night several people stopped and chatted and petted her and let her interact with their dogs. So it was an awesome walk for all three of us.

It was a strangely cool Lammas evening out on the bayou. It was in the mid 80°sF for most of the day (you know you live in a summer hellscape when you are excited about the 80°s F), and when we got out to the trail around 6:30PM it had dipped into the 70°s F, and all day there was little to no humidity and a solid breeze. August is usually our hottest, most humid month, and in July so far we’d had lots of heat advisories, with heat indexes up to 119°F. So yesterday felt like a gift. We hadn’t gone on a walk of any length in a couple of weeks. Just drives with pit stops at scenic points. Even the cicadas took most of the day off and mostly there was just a quiet cricket hum.

Link to Czech language source below.

Two wild garlic charms and some garlic paste in preparation for a house protection ritual last year on St. Catherine’s Day, the first day of the Witches Nights.

The pungent king of Czech cuisine, which expels diseases from the body and evil forces from the house. - It has accompanied humanity for more than five thousand years and its traces can be found in the kitchens and medicine of almost all world cultures. Garlic (Allium sativum in Latin) is an inconspicuous onion vegetable, but with its intense taste and pungent aroma it rules world gastronomy. The ancient Egyptians were already aware of its extraordinary power - the builders of the pyramids received it as a mandatory daily dose to maintain their strength and resistance to epidemics, and the famous physician Hippocrates himself prescribed it for a whole range of ailments. Garlic is a perfect example of when food becomes a real medicine. Folk names for garlic: divine help, garlic onion, dryýk onion, chive onion, garlic, dryák, lenek, luček, luk. The Celts called it “cream”.

Behind the specific aroma of garlic lies a chemical miracle called allicin, which works as an uncompromising natural antibiotic and antioxidant. Modern science today clearly confirms what folk medicine has known for centuries: garlic reliably purifies the blood, reduces high blood pressure, fights viruses and strengthens the heart.

For centuries, garlic was considered not only a panacea, but also a protection against the plague, evil spirits and vampires. It was also believed that garlic hung in the house also drove away thieves and envious people. - Farmers liked to weave it into spring wreaths for livestock, and mothers put cloves of garlic directly into the cradles of newborns so that it would watch over their defenseless sleep like an invisible shield and prevent dark powers from harming them in any way. - Whoever ate garlic was healthy, strong and safe, and it was not just a superstition. Roman legionaries carried it on expeditions as a boost of courage. And our great-grandfathers would not sit down to slaughter without taking a clove of raw garlic with their first bite "for good health".

In folk magic, it was believed that the power of a hawthorn or steel blade could be multiplied with a mysterious mixture. If garlic was rubbed with honey and applied to the blade of a knife, scythe or sickle, the weapon consecrated in this way could penetrate deep into the body of a demon or vampire and definitively break its dark power. - Garlic flower was also used against vampires and is brought to a new home as a blessing. - In Bohemia, the advice was: "Drink beer with a scoundrel, eat oucrop with garlic, you will live a long time." - On Christmas Eve, the farmer gave garlic to the rooster, the hen and the dog so that they would be very evil and not afraid of the devil. Sometimes, however, garlic was given to these animals so that they would be vigorous and bite and sting a lot. Simply so that they would reproduce well. – The householder was given garlic soup in the morning so that she would be fit for work.

In Slovakia, on St. Martin's Day (11. 11.), St. Catherine's Day (25. 11.) and St. Lucy's Day (13. 12.) they made a circle on the locks, bolts and doors of stables and houses and a cross in it so that witches would not have access to the cattle, would not take the horses out of the stable and ride them and would not take the milk from the cows. On these days, everyone in the house ate a clove of garlic and they also gave it to the cattle. - It was even believed that there was a natural animosity between garlic and "magnetism" and that once a magnet was rubbed with garlic, it would immediately lose its power. This myth was taken so seriously that ship helmsmen were forbidden to eat garlic and onions. Sailors were sincerely afraid that their breath could magnetize and invalidate the ship's compass, which would lead to wandering on the high seas.

Ancient history of garlic:

Garlic is also mentioned in the Bible (in the book of Numbers), as well as in the Talmud, because ancient Jews believed that it quenches hunger, gives skin color, improves blood circulation, kills parasites, maintains body temperature and encourages love. Garlic was supposed to be consumed on Friday, that is, before making love on the Sabbath.

Happy Anniversary @ofleafstructure

I spent Lammas Eve making balm and floor wash, prepping fermented blackberry leaves to dry and garbling more dried herbs. And I was nowhere near finished catching up on my herb harvest when I went to bed!

I'm obsessed with calendar customs and for me some years Lammas is a celebration of the last sheaf, or in my case tastefully woven floral grade wheat. I’m not feeling it this year, but boy was I in 2022.

Mell Doll

"You will not be surprised to read that the design of harvest tokens called a Mell varied around the county. It could be a simple sheat, the last one cut in the field, or the last sheaf could be decorated with flowers and wrapped in the reapers' clothes. In Cumbria the mell doll was very different. Made from the last cut straw it was plaited to enclose a large apple. When complete it was hung in the farmhouse kitchen until Christmas Day when the straw was presented to the best cow and the apple to the oldest servant on the farm."

In addition to being attracted to the lovely design, my nickname is Mel, so I kinda had to ...

l also made a simpler corn dolly to be ploughed back into the land on plough Monday:

"Planting" last 2021’s corn dolly at Plough Monday

earlier in 2022:

In 2022’s annual Lammas Procession around our property I presented both dollies to the four corners:

I think maybe I’m not feeling it this year because I don’t have a patch to do a land blessing on. We could drive to one of my favorite foraging locations, but that would involve a walk in a heat advisory, not just popping out the front door as in the previous decade . . .

Also, I think last year a lot of the feels I have, that used to belong to this date, have moved to the Assumption of Mary and Mezi Matičkama.