.jpg)
That Pennsylvania Witch
Join Katelyn Dawn for a conversational podcast exploring modern Paganism, life, the Universe, and everything.
That Pennsylvania Witch
S2 Ep 10: Rooted in Spirit: Serbian Heritage and Ancestral Connection with Anna Urošević Applegate
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode of That Pennsylvania Witch, I sit down with Anna Urošević Applegate to explore the threads of heritage, spirituality, and ancestral memory. We talk about her Serbian roots, growing up in Chicago, navigating a dual faith tradition, and her new book, Slava!, which celebrates tradition and ancestral connection. Together, we reflect on the importance of honoring where we come from, the parallels between animistic practices across cultures, and how working with our ancestors can ground and guide us in the present.
Chicago native Anna Urošević Applegate is a first-generation Serbian American and ordained legal Pagan clergy. She holds an M.A. in English from Loyola University Chicago. Anna is the founder of an inclusive Rodnovery fellowship known as the Circle of Rodu. You can learn more at www.circleofrodu.com.
Buy Slava!
https://www.llewellyn.com/product.php?ean=9780738780672
What does it mean to come home to a culture you once felt disconnected from? Today I'm joined by author priestess and Vratra Anna Oroshevic Applegate, whose work explores Slavic spirituality through both lived experience and deep cultural tradition. In her book Slava, she brings that story into conversation with Slavic native faith, folk magic, and a unique dual faith tradition. We're talking about heritage, ancestors, spirituality, and what it means to reclaim something. Welcome, Anna. I'm really excited for this conversation.
SpeakerThank you for having me, Katelyn Dawn. It's it's an honor and a pleasure. Thank you for having me today. Thank you.
Speaker 1I'd love to start, if you don't mind, with your early experiences. Growing up in Chicago, especially the tension you described around language and identity.
SpeakerYeah, so I'm a Chicago native born and raised to Serbian immigrant parents, who decided in 1967 and 1968, my father came first, about six months prior to my mom arriving, that Chicago was going to be where they wanted to escape communist Yugoslavia and escape to go there. Now, my father didn't randomly have Chicago in mind. His father, who was a World War II prisoner of war, actually held in a Nazi camp, but liberated by the Soviets. And he was asked when the British eventually showed up hey, we can grant you safe passage to London or New York. You know, where would you like to go? And my grandfather, according to my dad, had a dream of opening a Serbian restaurant on the south side of Chicago. Now, sadly, he died before that ever could become a reality, but my father made mental notes. And so he made a beeline in 1967 for Chicago. And what most people may or may not know, Chicago, as I talk about in the opening chapters of Slava, really is a Slavic super city. Like post-World War II, there was this dynamic infrastructure of immigrant groups from what was then Yugoslavia, from Poland, especially, from uh East Slavic lands of Ukraine and Russia. So even though people may not have been of the same ethnic background, they helped each other out. So there was, especially in the blue-collar industries of the people who literally built the city and kept it running and put down the railroad lines and worked in the steel mills, all these hard jobs. You know, my dad was a diesel engine mechanic, and he found work through that Slavic network, thanks to Croats, thanks to other Serbs, thanks to Bosnians. He found work at Mac Trucks and he didn't speak any English, and he had literally $600 in his pocket, but that was the American dream he believed in to come to Chicago because it was cemented in its reputation as a Slavic super city. And so he paved the way. My mom came six months later. Unlike him, she was a highly educated scientist, a civil engineer. And so she was kind of less enthralled by the American dream than I think my dad was. But I was born in 1973, my brother 1970. And there was number one, we were in a wonderful, very immigrant-rich neighborhood on the north side of the city called West Rogers Park. So the apartment building where I grew up, it was us speaking Serbian. I had Croatian friends at the end of the block. I had Colombian friends, I had Korean friends. So we were all first-generation kids whose parents were from elsewhere. And I joked that we were like a mini United Nations. But for some reason, my ethnic heritage, like it chafed me. You know, I wanted to be fully American. I wanted to be not pointed out as being other because of my unpronounceable last name of Urozevich. Um, and then when we were sent in Catholic schools, which my parents decided was the best educational option for my brother Marco and I, there was like an even further dissonance of, okay, you're from something called the Eastern Orthodox Church, and it has a very different calendrical system than what Western Christians have. They are totally different calendars. And so when I wanted to take time off for Serbian Christmas, which was Christmas Eve, is January 6th, Christmas Day is January 7th, fingers of otherness were pointed against me. And the children are like, you know, that's so dumb. Why does your culture have Christmas on totally different days? That's that's not when Jesus was born. And I just wanted to just shrivel and die. I didn't want to have to try to defend myself or explain my weird culture. So I really just wanted to be fully immersed in the American melting pot. I wanted us to have a wasp-sounding last name. So when we would go on spring break vacation to places like Orlando, Florida, and we're at an IHOP, and the waitress asks us, Oh, what's your last name? Party of four, I would butt ahead of my parents and I would say, our last name is Johnson. It's Johnson. And then the waitress would look at us like, sure, sure, that's what it is. Sure. Um, my father was uh very dark toned in skin. So these layers of otherness, the finger pointing done at me, it just made me have this self-loathing. And I wanted to speak English, I wanted to do American things. But my parents, and I'm grateful now as an adult, you know, they were very gentle but firm with the boundary setting of no, when you're in the house, this is our microcosm of Serbian culture. You're speaking Serbian, you're eating Serbian foods. I didn't try fast food until I was 10, and I had a birthday party at McDonald's because I wanted that American experience so badly. My mother was in intensely distrustful of what passes for food in this country, especially fast food. So I ate Serbian food with my brother Mark. We went to Catholic school during the week, and that was, you know, our best Chicago education, and I'm grateful for it. But then on Sundays, it was being sent to Serbian school to further immerse yourself in your otherness. And so this sense of walking a liminal line throughout my childhood and adolescence, where I was too Serbian for my American classmates and peers, and I thought, you know, American society as a whole. But then when we went to the former Yugoslavia and we traveled around Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, I was definitely, and so was my brother, we were definitely too American. Our clothing, you know, I wore guest jeans, fashionable clothes. My brother would skateboard with his vans, you know, skateboard shoes. And these kids are looking at us like, wow, look at those affluent American kids. So we were othered in that regard. So I never felt at home in either culture. And my mother would um lament that I had to be told to be grateful that I have roots, that I have my language that preserves my identity, that I have a spiritual tradition, that my ancestors sacrificed, they sacrificed themselves to uphold it, you know, first during 500 years of Ottoman occupation, and then during communist rule, et cetera, et cetera. So everything was so hard fought, Anna. Don't lose sight of who you are, and don't be like those Americans who don't have a language, who don't have ancestral connections, who don't have a motherland elsewhere to root them in their sense of identity. So it was a hard-fought lesson. But in hindsight, the characteristic of a witch, that liminal figure at the edge of the village, who people kind of come to apprehensively, but they need that person's help in order to get something done in their life. That sense of liminality is honestly a core strength that I've definitely leveraged in my own practice over the years. But as a child, it was absolutely um heart-wrenching for me to walk that road.
Speaker 1Yes, your introduction really spoke to me. Earlier we were chatting, and I mentioned that I was adopted into a Catholic family, and my father's family was Croatian, my adoptive father's family is Croatian. I remember the Latin masses and the Croatian masses, and it's so powerful to hear them in their own languages. But I think because I was two generations later, it wasn't as embarrassing for me. It was fascinating for me, but I think it's so normal. It's so normal for teens to want that separation from their parents. And do you feel like reconnecting with your language and heritage changed the way you relate to your spiritual path today?
SpeakerIt was always there. It was always there. If you think of, and here's the perfect Slavic food is the onion. You know, we love it. It's a staple in all of our dishes, morning, noon, and night. That dual faith tradition, I would call it that I was raised in because I had an ancestor altar. That concept was something my parents introduced me to, with the fundamental difference from, let's say, what we did in my Catholic school, we would pray for the dead, but at home, no, I'm talking to the dead. We're praying to them because there's an implicit understanding that they can pull strings on your behalf, even though they're not on this earthly plan anymore. So I remember being profoundly affected when I was eight years old. And my brother and I were kind of hovering in the background in the dining room. And my parents had, it's a beautiful, I've inherited it, this beautiful antique credenza. And my mother would adorn the tabletop of it with handmade altar cloth, uh tablecloth made by one of her sisters. She was the middle of three sisters, and she had a younger brother as well. So let's say it was a holiday like Palm Sunday, which is absolutely past for me, this past Sunday, or someone else in the family had made something and their death anniversary is coming up. She would then take out the linen associated with that person, use that as the tabletop. Of course, we always had framed photos of the dead, including animals. I insisted that they be included too. And my parents said yes, of course. And then on the death anniversary, say, of one of my mother's sisters, her oldest sister, my aunt Emma, who was a hard smoker, a you know, a chain smoker her whole life. My mom did not smoke. Very rare that my parents were Yugoslavs who didn't smoke and they rarely drank. But my mother would take, you know, whatever lucky strikes, it was from Yugoslavia, the pack of cigarettes, and then we would pray and she would talk to Emma, ask Emma to watch over us, you know, to lend protective grace over us as a family, give us clarity of mind so that we can make the right decisions going forward. And then my mother would say, you know, Emma, the cigarette's not for me, it's for you. And then she's like puffing on her framed photo. And I'm standing behind, you know, with Mark behind the table, behind them. And then my mother would motion us forward, like, you know, doji, doji, like there's nothing to be afraid of. We're just talking to Aunt Emma because today would have been her birthday. But she's very much present. And so this concept that the dead have not ceased to be, they are just elsewhere. Your relationship is still very much intact, it's still very dynamic. The nature of how you communicate has changed. So that concept was implanted early on. Like, okay, even though their graves were far away in Serbia, that family altar was like a touch point, almost like a phone line that I could pick up. And it was a very comforting sense of yes, they're not physically here, but they're very much still in the ether, as it were. And I can tap into their energies and I know they're listening to me. So I would routinely pray to all of my dad relatives for success in school. You know, help me with this math test, help me with my soccer tryouts, help me with mundane activities that a kid was going through. And I knew that this was something that probably the American over culture was not familiar with. But you know who was? The Korean kids in my apartment building, because they had a very similar practice. And I've been in their home and I've seen a very similar-looking ancestor altar with the white cloth, the solitary candle, the framed photos, and I instantly recognized it. I'm like, we do the same thing. We do exactly the same thing. You're offering them the food that they liked in their lifetime. So that grounding in the fundamental pan-Slavic, pan-pagan practice of having a dynamic ancestor cult because they are your most immediate line of spiritual aid. That was something I took within me from a very early age, and it's been a mainstay throughout my practices. So had I not had that in my upbringing, would it have made transitioning to paganism more complicated or different? I don't think so, but I'm glad that I had that as part of my family upbringing.
Speaker 1That is such a wonderful way to connect to that heritage. And and I do that as well. The foreword was written by, I forget me, I forget me.
SpeakerYes. Yogate Parma.
Speaker 1So I first of all, I I Christopher Penzek's quote was beautiful. So I was sitting outside when I first sat down to read your book, looking into the woods, edge of the forest, and that quote was perfect. Then the foreword as I read it, just wonderful because I absolutely agree after having read this book now that even though I thought maybe my own practice was so different, even though I do have those Croatian roots, we did not do any of that. I was not taught to do any of that. Catholic only, regrettably, there were some things, but mostly Catholicism, that these traditions they span cultures. This, the ancestor veneration, ancestor work, spirit work. You write about cultivating a relationship with your home's dumble boy. Yeah, yes, yes. I do that. Like I everything on that, I was losing my mind because it's just so fantastic. And part of the uh the bracharae or the the Pennsylvania Dutch Germanic practice that I have is putting out buttered bread, a glass with water in it, you know, before we do our healing work, and we always have a bell. And my ancestors always like well, they like whiskey, so I put whiskey out and coffee out for them. Yeah, and all of the things you you mentioned, all of these things in there as well, and working with um ancestors or working with spirits or land spirits.
SpeakerYes, land spirits, your ancestors, huge, huge, huge.
Speaker 1Yes, it just transcends all of the labels and all of the classifications. It's that was beautiful and made me feel very, very connected to this. This is a wonderful practice. And thank you.
SpeakerI was gonna say one of my goals in writing the book was to hopefully help people, so multiple facets of it. So if you are of Slavic heritage, I really do hope and pray that this book aids you in your way for yourself of reclaiming, you know, ancestral connections. Number one, from a pan-Slavic perspective, that was one big goal. And then another one was if you don't have Slavic heritage, but if you do identify as some kind of a witch or pagan or earth spirit tradition person, that you can look at this and say, oh, there is commonality, there are many overlapping practices with things I've currently done or have always done, and that it's not so alien, or that maybe it's almost like, okay, I see these practices, but you know what? I like this idea of the house spirit thing. So I am going to adapt it, let's say, to my own cultural tradition. And maybe it's not a Domovoy, maybe I call it a cobalt or something else, you know, per your culture's um folklore or mythology, but to make it seem less alien to people if they're not of that heritage. And then just a work of cultural ambassadorship. Like let's say somebody is reading this from the perspective of just being like an anthropology person or somebody academically, because I put 17 years of academic level research into this book. I've translated things from Serbian that the English language audience would not have had access to, these really um rare pieces of anthropology from the late 19th century to about World War II. So there's that level of translation and academic presentation, but hopefully it doesn't come across as an academic book because this is something I want to be engaging for the reader, and for them to just even say at a level, if they're not of the spirituality at all, go that was a fascinating look into the lens of another culture's perception of the world, perception of how human beings relate to everything that is in the cosmos. I mean, fundamentally, when you look at the religion, and it is a reconstructionist religion of Rodnoveria, the belief of the people, the beliefs of the clan, the folk, it's not limited to this genetic sense of, well, you know, I don't have Slavic heritage, so that rules me out. The wider cosmic implications of what the concept of rod means yokes everything holistically, past, present, future, the living and the dead, humans and animals, um, and all living things that we share the levels of reality with when we use that cosmic, that cosmic axis of the Drvo Svieta, the world tree, as our mythic cosmography. You know, we get to look at the layers of reality and see everything and everybody is interconnected for all time. And I think that premise is something that many world cultures have some equivalent of that in their mythic consciousness. And number two, it's a rallying call for action for those of us who have the blessing of being alive in this world at this time. Because if we really are connected, if we inflict harm in a corner of the world that we think is remote and divested from our daily lives and spheres of influence, we're absolutely boomeranging it back upon us because we're damaging ourselves. So it's a call to ecological action, it's a call to living peacefully with every other human being, with every other animal, with the environment itself. That's that's the core premise behind this polytheism is being in right relationship with everything. It unites us all in this. That's what my website is called the circle of Rodu, because Rodu does this. It's like with the web of weird for people who have like a more heathen framework for interpreting reality. All of these threads form such a rich, varied diverse tapestry. But if you unravel some threads here, it's gonna mess up the whole web of weird. Or if you do something baneful, it's gonna have repercussions on you later on. So think carefully, walk on this earth gently, and your actions have to be done from a place of absolute mindfulness.
Speaker 1Your tapestry explanation, I agree with that completely. I often think of it as an ecosystem. You know, you learn about when one part of the ecosystem fails, then eventually it starts to falter, and eventually it will recalibrate in good time, but the faltering is very painful.
SpeakerDo what good you can in your little corner. You want to in um my chapter on identifying the tenets of Rodnoveria, um, Rodnovery, Slavic native faith. You know, that call to ecological action is very real, and it's something that I think translates across any kind of paganism, no matter where you stand in the big pagan tent or heathen tent or similar earth-based spirituality tent. Do what you can with what you have where you are. So I'm passionate about native plant gardening. You know, I want to work with species that the Pottawatomi people who preceded me where I live tended those plants. I see some plants, but then I see, of course, there's lots of invasives. And how can I gently uproot those and restore the missing indigenous plants back to where they historically grew? Um, and I'm attracting pollinators like crazy. Now, I do have a couple of surly neighbors who don't like how tall my Joe Pieweed uh plant can get over six feet tall, but it attracts so many bumblebees and honeybees and other pollinators. You know, I've gone to my village board and I've defended my right to grow that. And I show that my home has been ecologically certified by a Chicago nonprofit called Open Lands. You know, and I have a big stake in the ground with a plaque that says, you know, this is a deliberate uh pollinator garden. This Isn't intentional like unsightly weeds or grass growing out of control because you have to educate people, but it it starts with working with where you are and being in harmony. The bio again, the biodiversity is very important because it informs my practice, right? It's how I seasonally attune to the shifting of the wheel of the year. If the astronomical event, we just, you know, had spring equinox recently, but if the conditions on the ground where I live still had snow and my river hadn't thawed yet, there's a river in the backyard. Um, am I really doing myself justice by honoring spring equinox when the land is still screaming winter, winter? No. So start with where you are, look at the patterns, look at the seasonal patterns, look at the migrating birds, the flora and fauna, and then your spirituality can organically evolve and envelop everything, and you push back out into the land in that way in a harmonious way with the energies of what you're doing. It feeds everybody, right? It feeds literally the animals, it feeds the plants, you have thriving um ecosystems, you're feeding the spirits in the land. And I do think of the Pottawatomi dead, wherever they may be buried, or I feel their presences in the trees around my land. I honor them. I don't know them by name, but I set aside offerings for them. The spirits of the land in general, in Slavic folklore, we have, as you read about, the spirits called Vila, the fairy women. They're kind of capricious in their dealings with mortals. Um, but I have a relationship with them, and the plant magic that I do ties into their lore as well. So it's all interconnected. But I really encourage anybody, wherever you are, wherever you may be watching this podcast, start with where you are, learn about the conditions where you are, the native plants, again, the migrations of birds, the flora and fauna, the animals native to your land, the native peoples who lived there before Europeans settled that land. Cultivate relationships with all of these beings. And I promise you, your spirituality will become richer for it.
Speaker 1Yes. I'm so glad that collectively we're learning more about the biodiversity in the regions that we inhabit and trying to lean more into the native plants, and that's wonderful.
SpeakerNow I will say when it quickly, when it comes to invasives, I pull out the garlic mustard wherever I see it growing, but guess what? I eat it. I eat it. I I I found a solution for that at least is I'll eat it. Yeah, there's spirits in everything, so befriend them.
Speaker 1How would you define Slavic native faith or yeah?
SpeakerSo again, it comes from the Pan-Slavic or the Common Slavic two words. So Rod means family, clan, ancestry, kin, and vera means faith or belief. So literally the beliefs of your kinfolk. Now, when applied to the peoples of the Slavic diaspora worldwide, you see the motherland. So I'm not in Serbia, but that's my motherland, you know, ancestrally. So when I see the beliefs, the traditions coming through that land, it's spiritually understood that the land is the mediator of all of these timeless mysteries. So I can look at practices being done now, despite the veneer of Christianization. It's a very thin veneer. So when you peel it away, when I peel away the disguise of the Christian saint on whose feast day something much older and pagan was supposed to be displaced, but not really. Then I see, aha, there's a god assigned to this day. Perfect example, the god Perun. Many people with like their comparative mythology thinking hats go, okay, got it. Perun, storm god, just like Thor. You know, Thor has the Mjolnir, the hammer, Perun devotees in Slavic native faith wear his axe. And it's the same principle. He hurls it at manifestations in Serbian, we would say manifestations of Nechistaya Sila, uncleanliness, unclean spirits, the unclean force is what Sila means. So he's hurling his axe at it, destroying those things, again, establishing right relationship in the cosmos. So he is a figure of cosmic justice, of righteousness, of personal integrity. So far, far beyond a mere storm god, you know, for someone looking through that mythological framework. So when I can say, okay, Perun was grafted onto the cult of Saint Elijah, Sveti Ilia. And I know in the Orthodox calendar, his feast day is August 2nd. In the Catholic or Gregorian calendar, it's July 20th. So I now have two days in the calendar that I can reclaim for the worship of Perun that has been grafted onto the cult of Saint Elijah. So what Slavic native faith does, it's a reconstructionist polytheist religion arising from people who owe ancestry, who derived their ancestry from a Slavic motherland. And wherever they are in the global diaspora now, they're adapting to their current conditions, the reconstructed worship of those gods, of their ancestors, and of the various other spirit beings that we share this middle world, this world of Yav with. It is also rooted, as I said earlier, in this fundamental concept that other pagans will obviously agree with this, the profound call to ecological stewardship. It's also rooted, and this is something that I think appeals more to people who come from like a heathen background, it's very much rooted in being accountable for your personal actions. Your integrity matters a great deal in Slavic native faith, not just upholding your word, working hard, you know, implementing these virtues that our Slavic forebears taught us. You're a hard worker, you believe in the virtue of hospitality. That's a huge deal throughout the former Yugoslavia. If you travel now, if you go to Croatia now, and people are excited that you have, you know, Croatian ancestry, they will feast you. They will be so happy to have you. Same thing in Serbia. I could be among total strangers, but then people go again, there's like superstitious thinking about welcoming strangers and lavishly treating them, even though you yourself might be the poorest person in the village, because the spiritual premise is that I might be a divine being in disguise. So I will be courted, I will be literally offered slotko, which is sweetness. There's a ritual when you go to a Serbian home as a stranger, you have to sit because this magically anchors you into the host's space. You can't be standing, you have to sit. And they come out with their canned fruit preserves because they've worked so hard to can and preserve their fruit and then a glass of water. And it's it's the lady of the house who does this, typically the Baba, typically the eldest, the granny. She comes with her finest tray of silver and offers this to you and spoons the slotko into the water. So you are symbolically being offered sweetness. And because you're grateful for this experience, you're blessing the host in return. So there's the other Slavic virtue that goes with hospitality of reciprocity. It's a symbiotic relationship of give and exchange. And just as at the human level, microcosmically, we engage in this way for right relationship, that's also reflected in the macrocosmic, microcosmic dynamic between human and deity. There's symbiosis, there's reciprocity. You know, we lovingly give to the gods because it's right and just to do so. And they bestow so many blessings on our human lives in return. So that's another huge aspect of Slavic native faith.
Speaker 1Did you practice that growing up? The ritual of hospitality, family.
SpeakerOh, yes. I saw my parents do it to strangers to the American kids who came to our home. Like if I wanted to have a Wednesday night homework session with one of my American classmates, they'd typically be scared, especially when my mother's mother lived with us, my Nana Milika. May she rest in peace. When she lived with us in the early 80s, I was pretty miserable because I had to sit and translate in real time when we watched comedy shows like Three's Company or the Benny Hill show on PBS. And I couldn't enjoy the jokes. My dad is laughing and slapping his knee, belly laughing so hard. And I want to enjoy it, but my nana's poking me, going, what did he say? What did he say? I want to hear the joke. So I'm having to translate to her in real time. So I didn't like when my mother's mother lived with us. I found it tedious. And when I tried bringing my American childhood friends over, I was profoundly embarrassed by my maternal grandmother and not just the slotka tradition of welcoming these kids, which they found weird. But then, heaven forbid, if my friend had a case of the sniffles, uh-oh, Nana Miliko ran ran to the rescue. She would mutter in Serbian she's doing her folk magic. She takes a big washcloth, a small hand towel, it had to be white, she'd mince garlic, pray, douse honey on it, and then spit on it, wrap it up, and then she had brewing on the stove rakia, which is the plum brandy that has had caramelized sugar added to it. And then she'd soak it and she'd pray. And without asking my friend if she had their consent, she'd immediately like wrap the towel tightly on their throat and then have me explain to my friend this is gonna drive away sickness and the evil eye. Urok. And I went to my Catholic school so many times with that towel wrapped around my own neck, and I'm protesting, saying, Nana, Yanne mogodide mushkolovaco, I can't go to school like this. I can't have this under my uniform shirt. I reeked of the Serbian brandy, but the Dominican nun, ooh, was she stern, the principal of my school, Sister Sally, may you rest in peace. I'd march by trying to like unobtrusively, you know, get to my homeroom, and she would grit her teeth angrily and go, Anna Elizabeth, my office. And I march to her office, and she's already calling my parents, going, Why does your daughter reek of hard booze at eight o'clock in the morning? And then I'd have to meticulously undo the folk magic and throw it on her desk and go, You're gonna want to have my mom translate my Nana Miloika on the phone, and she can tell you why she did this to me. So, yes, I grew up with all kinds of folk magic remedies that profoundly embarrassed me and at the time made me wish that we were like my Irish Catholic or Filipino Catholic classmates who didn't have these embarrassing um cultural traditions to offend anybody with.
Speaker 1We didn't have anything so interesting as that. But I do have to say I love the crossover because my grandparents used to often do the hot mustard wrap when someone would give ill the mustard on the chest and it would make you sweat. And but there's really some truth to all of these remedies. Like you said in your book, I mean, a lot of people know that garlic has um antibacterial properties and you know, not giving medical advice or anything, but so many people do the honeyed garlic and that sort of thing now. And the magic behind that is just as powerful as the properties, the actual science.
SpeakerThat's the dual faith. That's dual faith in action because while she's doing that, as I talk about in my chapters on witchcraft and and shameless plug, I'm gonna be teaching a two-hour class on Slavic witchcraft and sorcery on April 25th in Joliet, Illinois, at a store called Hoof and Horn, which is a queer-owned pagan store. I'm very proud to be there as a queer woman myself from 6:30 to 8:30. So go to hoofandhorn.com and get your tickets for that. Okay, plug over. The medicinal value of these plants is well known, but the magical value is concurrent with it. So again, we have these culinary staples of things like onion, like garlic. In my culture, we don't eat basil and rosemary. It's so sacred. It's like for church use now, you know. You'll see if you go to an Orthodox church, a Serbian church, on one of these Saints' feast days like Saint Elijah, the icon will be prominently displayed and basil, rosemary, and then the third herb is hyspap, the healing herb. They will adorn sprigs of it will adorn the icon. And if there is something like a blessing of a baby at baptism, those same herbs are used as a living aspergillum and doused and sprinkled on the baby or somebody undergoing an exorcism, blessing of a house, etc. So the church knew it couldn't eradicate these long-standing pagan beliefs of the magical properties of these plants. So it wisely incorporated it, it Christianized it. So that's where the dual faith comes of this wonderful intermingling of a Christian, a very thin Christian veneer over these fundamentally pagan practices and beliefs.
Speaker 1I love that too. And I absolutely love the smell of hyssop and it is so cleansing. It's one of my favorite, favorite herbs to work with. Um, and you've done so much work engaging uh with the South Slavic and Polish Rodnovier communities. What was the during your process of research and vetting, what did that look like for you?
SpeakerSo I knew that when I wanted to reach out to people that I had been following or actual churches, the Polish National Rodnovery Church, I forget the name, but it celebrated its 31st anniversary last month. It's like the most nationally recognized uh Rodnovary association granted religious protection in Poland, which is astonishing considering that Poland is 87% identified practicing Catholics. So I knew that when it came to West Slavic traditions, I wanted to have, and it was a Catholic friend of mine from high school, my dear friend Renata. I thank her in the dedication. I came up with a list of questions and possible follow-up questions based on whatever responses I would get in Polish. So I'm proud to say zero digital translation, no AI of any kind was used when it came to having things translated to and from Polish. My friend Renata was so kind to do that for me. So it was with the case of the West Slavs, you know, having them vetted from afar. The people, and I think I'm a good judge of character. I I'm pretty sure I can tell from somebody's digital footprint if we're going to be politically aligned or not. You know, if anything or anyone had even like the remotest whiff of fascism or xenophobic speech, and, you know, on their on their landing page or something, like, okay, no, no, I want nothing to do with you. So my gut instinct on the people that I followed, like, okay, they did turn out to be really delightful people to have, like what you and I are doing, you know, like Zoom sessions of interviews and talks like that. But for the South Slavs, I'm so honored and delighted to have been welcomed into physical spaces, to have been welcomed into this real sense, again, of the younger generation healing generational trauma and the impact of war, the impact of the Balkanization of Yugoslavia. I had family members die from that. I've had my American taxpayer dollars here in 1999 killed my own family over there. And very few people understand what that's like. Like my Iraqi friends know what that was like. My Palestinian friends know what that's like. When you have the fury, uh, and I mean I'm not dissing the American military in any way, but when you have the fury of the world's most advanced and deadly military forces strike a country that's no bigger than the state of Wisconsin, you know, 78 straight days of cluster bombs, depleted uranium, like things that have been outlawed or should have been outlawed, but are intended to cause maximum civilian casualty. Like I've lived through that. And I know very few people who know that pain. So again, no disrespect to the American military. I married an American sailor. That's where I get my name of Applegate from. But this sense of healing from the sad legacy of what the wars meant, what the dismemberment of Yugoslavia meant, and seeing generations younger than mine, seeing millennials and Gen Z, and maybe even Gen Alpha kids take up this ancestral heritage reclamation through Slavic native faith and through cross-pollinating, cross-supporting each other's groups across ethnic lines, across geographical barriers is so profoundly uplifting. And I can't put into words how it's been such an integral part personally for me of my own healing journey. So I love knowing that this winter solstice, I couldn't go last winter because of my mother was in home hospice before she passed, and I was her caregiver. But this winter solstice, I aim to go to my friends who run one of the Croatian Rodnover groups. They're anchored in Zagreb, Croatia. I am gonna go to their winter solstice right this year. They know who I am, they know about the book. They were so happy to have been interviewed as part of it. I'm so sorry that I couldn't include my photos in the book. Llewellyn's like, no, we can do illustrations, but not your own personal photography. So that was my one disappointment about uh what's not in the book that I would have liked. Um, but I have so many great anecdotes from my time with people that are absolutely part of my family of choice. So I love them dearly. Moi braccia y sestre, mla, my brothers and sisters, I love them so much.
Speaker 1And that's so important to have that chosen family, the people that we align with and that align to us naturally because of our own our belief system, our gnosis, our our deep-seated values. That's that is beautiful.
SpeakerAnd let me just say that when you're in your family's motherland, when I'm standing in the land of where my mother and my father came from, I'm on a hilltop that I know has been a sacred site long before a nearby monastery was erected on its soil. When I can stand there and feel that sun, which does feel different than the Chicago sky, when I can stand there with my arms wide open, feeling that sun on my face, and then praying in my native tongue in that land, addressing the gods of that land in the language that their worshipers would have heard. I can't think of a more emotionally and spiritually fulfilling experience as a human being. And I've been to sacred places. I've I do honor gods outside of the Slavic pantheon. I'm a priestess in the fellowship of Isis, the gods of Kemet, Nephthys in particular, Sekhmet, Anubis. You know, they've walked with me a long time and I love them. And I know that that line of connection won't be broken in this lifetime. So I have many, many shrines besides the ones to Slavic deities that are very active in my home, but that can't compare. Even if I were to go to Egypt, that would not mean the same thing as addressing my ancestral gods and my language on their homeland. It's it's something that I know my Celtic reconstructionist friends who speak Irish feel when they go to Ireland and they can, you know, do a Raykon Kista for Bridget from her Catholic sites of worship in Kildare and reclaim it as polytheists speaking Gaelic and praying. I know that they're feeling what I'm feeling when I stand in Serbia and pray in Serbian to my ancestral Slavic gods. It's it's something you have to you have to really words won't do anything, words won't convince you of it. This is experiential gnosis, and you have to experience it. And then your heart is what responds.
Speaker 1You're bringing all of your ancestors with you that you have such a deep relationship with.
SpeakerYes, I feel them very much. It's amazing, even though I can go to the town of Ujitsa, where and I know I've complained about her when I was a child and these anecdotes about my mother's mother, Miloika, and I can go past the house that used to be hers and see the land that used to have the cherry orchard on her land, and that's you know greatly diminished by now, but there's still some of it left, and I know that it's dispossessed of them, but there's still that sense of, well, we had these memories made here, and there's something about their energetic imprint will always be there. I can tap into that and I do scoop up soil. It's like I know TSA must think I'm weird because I'm I'm bringing like rocks and uh little little soil samples back to the United States with me.
Speaker 1You know, when I went to when I went to Sweden um and I went to Denmark and Sweden. And we flew into Copenhagen. I got stopped by TSA because I forgot that I had a bunch of stones in my jacket when I walked through. Kind of funny. Still making my friends were still making fun of me about that. I was like, oh look, here's a fossil. And the lady was not, she was not interested. She was like, that's I don't care. But yeah, I hear that. I hear that. Talking about, thank you for putting for labeling, for describing how I feel when you say that the aspect, the most fascinating aspects of your work to me is the idea of dual faith. I know we touched on it a minute ago, and that you've been referencing it with all of your stories, which are incredible. But I'd love to spend some time there. Yep. How do you define that in a Slavic context? Or do any of these traditions ever come into tension with one another, or do any coexist more than the others?
SpeakerIf there's tension, it's one way, top-down from the church. You know, the Eastern Orthodox Church, I can't speak to um Catholicism's dual faith imprint. I would recommend, especially for people of Polish heritage, to read Joanna Taranowska's Polish folk magic book, but she takes a huge, just amazingly detailed deep dive, regionally focused work on various aspects of Polish Catholicism and dual faith tradition. But from the Orthodox standpoint, there's a lot of very interesting features as to why, like my thesis is paganism retained its flavors more pungently and more sharply and more flavorfully through the Orthodox Church than through the Catholic Church. And the historical reasons why I say it did, as I outline in the book, so in the Balkans, the 500-plus-year occupying force of the Ottoman Empire did a couple of unique things. Certainly, it weakened the strength institutionally of the Orthodox Church, which was why, when we look at the phenomenon of witch persecutions, there was so much leniency in the Orthodox world compared to the Catholic world with its pogroms and inquisitions in Poland, even up to the 1780s, women were literally in the age of so-called enlightenment, women were being burned at the stake in Catholic Poland if they were accused of witchcraft. But just across the border in Ukraine, an accused witch might be brought to a magistrate, and he might have said, okay, pay a fine. Or, okay, if it's a more severe accusation, you're going to be exiled to a monastery for five weeks, and then you get to go home. Ideally, we'd like you to pronounce that you will be a good witch upon exiting a Bay Litsa, as would be known in Serbian culture, and you're going to use your herbal magic for good only and not to curse. You know, but who's to say if she promised yes, if that's really what her uh intent was going to be? So the Orthodox Church didn't have, um, at least in the Balkans with the Ottoman Empire as an occupying force, it didn't have the wherewithal, it didn't have the finances, it didn't have the infrastructure uh the way that Catholicism did to implement crusades or pogroms. It was it was weakened by Islam. And curiously, Islam kind of didn't know or didn't care that there's these folk magic practices ruminating under its nose. Because if it's weakening the Orthodox churches in places like Bulgaria, Serbia, et cetera, things that were pagan all along that maybe the Orthodox Church would have liked to have stamped out did not get stamped out. And so paradoxically, the influence of Islam let pagan traditions really flourish and thrive under now this nominal disguise of like what I talked about earlier, feast days being attributed to a saint like Elijah, Sveti Ilia on August 2nd, instead of the storm god Perun, who would have been worshipped on August 2nd. Strangely, there are places that, according to anthropologists that I cite in my book, well into the 20th century, in areas of remote North Macedonia, Macedonia, bull sacrifices were being conducted on those dates, because we know from the archaeological record, that was, you know, a family's chief possession was their head of cattle. That was the way they counted wealth, right? So the sacrifice to Perun would have included X amount of heads of cattle. And so these cattle slaughter events, not tied to the autumn harvest or preparing the meat for curing for the winter, were still being done as and sprinkled on oak trees. You know, the blood is put on oak trees. That's his cultic tree. That is the bodniak, the sacred Serbian oak tree that I get branches of when I go to church on Christmas Eve. So there's a perfect example of dual faith right there. It's Christmas Eve. And as a kid, this was where my curiosity came from, specifically about Christmas Eve traditions. Not just the date. Why are my Catholic friends telling me we're doing it wrong? So why if we're doing it wrong, why do we stubbornly stick to this calendar that says Christmas Eve is January 6th and Christmas Day January 7th? Why do we do that? And then number two, again, in my childhood uh Catholic church upbringing and education through the Archdiocese of Chicago, I'm reading the Bible. I'm, you know, in Bible study classes all the live-long day in my Catholic school education, and we're reading the accounts, all of the gospel accounts of the nativity. And I can't help but notice there's no mention of oak trees. So when we go to Serbian church on Christmas Eve, and I'm like, but mom, why do we do this? And then she elbows me and goes, Idi, who's me toy banyak, go up and get your bagnac. Like, and she would say, because that's what we do, because we're Serbs. So go get your blessed bagnac. And then we come home and hang it over the door as a symbol of protection. So the Uruk, the evil eye, can't enter the house in the in the new year to come. And I'm just like, okay. And then by the time I was 11, I'm reading books on witchcraft at this point already. Satanic panic is in full activation across the United States in the mid to late 80s. And I'm reading everything I can on witchcraft because ding ding-ding, alarm bells are going off. Of this feels wonderfully familiar to me. And at that young age of being 11 in the summer of 1984, to age myself, I'm actively reading books on witchcraft and mentally trying to connect dots with the ancestral stuff I'm doing at home and with things that I clearly recognize as folk magic, like getting a blessed branch of oak to take home with you on Christmas Eve service. So I'm actively trying to connect these dots. And maybe you can argue like that's when like the genesis of this book kind of started, because I knew I would want to be officially documenting things. I would officially start interviewing my parents on tape recorders. I recommend this to everyone. If you have children, if you don't have children, if you come from a specific uh cultural legacy, get things documented before people pass away. Get the folk songs, get the stories, record it on tape. Let those words just sink into your being. Live them, live those proverbs, sing those folk songs at the appropriate times, walk in rhythm with your culture more regularly. And I promise you, your spirituality will flower as a result. So that's when it started for me, like this act of wanting to connect the dots. And that's it's all because the dual faith tradition, absolutely.
Speaker 1As someone who originally did feel disconnected for your roots, or not necessarily disconnected from your roots, but willfully so when you were a little younger, I can imagine that that's all the more powerful.
SpeakerYes. I was gonna say, I'm sorry that my my mother did live to see my book, it was released February 8th. She died 10 days later. And before she lost the ability to speak from the type of dementia that she had, she did register, you know, that this book was was a huge deal for me. And I dedicated, you know, she was alive, so I I mentioned her in the dedication part of the book, and she was flipping through it, and she was so cute. And I just had the one author copy mailed to me by Llewellyn Publishing at the time, and my mom held it, and she said, and this was so childlike and sweet of her. She goes, Anna, this is your copy. Can you go get my purse? I want to buy another copy from you, and I want to be your first customer. And and you know, my heart just melted. So she did live to see it, obviously, in the revised editions going forward and the translations going forward. Um, I'm excited about the translations. I think they're gonna happen next year, starting with Serbian and Croatian. Of course, I'm gonna revise it so that she will be in my like memento mori uh section of the book, because I don't have family now in this country with her death. So it takes on a greater sense of legacy and knowing that my book is like the equivalent, because I've never had kids of my own. It's like the equivalent of a baby that's going out into the world, hopefully to inspire and alight minds and help people weave threads of connection to their own heritage, if they are Slavic, or if they're not, if they're some kind of a pagan practicing or witchcraft practicing person, that they can weave threads of commonality with what they're doing. Or again, if this is just a purely intellectual exercise, that my work will register as a work of cultural ambassadorship for somebody, and they can read it and go, you know what, I I appreciated reading that book. I learned a bit about Serbian and about Slavic cultures in general, and about the resiliency of human beings and the desire to have time-honored practices adapt in the face of spiritual colonization. That is so important.
Speaker 1Did you find that writing your book helped you connect more to your community work with the circle of Raju?
SpeakerSo it was the book came first. So the book was like the the seed of okay, I don't want to just have an inert book go out into the world and then it becomes like a consumable thing, and people put it down and go, okay, that's nice. No, because I know that I can't possibly be the only person for whom this evoked a strong yearning to connect more broadly. One of the tenets when you asked me about Slavic native faith that I forgot to mention that is really integral to what it is, it's communal. You know, there's areas of overlap with more familiar forms of paganism, but there's some really pronounced differences. It's very hard to be a solitary, like nobody from the former Yugoslavia, none of my friends, none of my interview subjects for the book was a so-called solitary. These are meant to be rituals that are expressed culturally through community, through groups, whether it's five or 50 or 500, you know, depending on the feast day and the level of cross-pollinating between the groups that I know of in Yugoslavia, the former Yugoslavia, what they've done. There's nobody like how so many people, and myself included in the United States are like, okay, I'm a teenager, I don't have like a formally dedicated altar space, but I can dedicate a little bit of my bookshelf, top of my dresser, to like a makeshift altar, but then I have to clear it away before my parents come home or something like that. And you tentatively light a candle, try to find a corresponding incense. Maybe if you know something about planetary hours and days of the week, you align things. It's not like that. At least I can say among the South Slavic groups I know, it's not like that at all. And it's not like that with the registered, the Polish uh Rodnover Church, the one that's 31 years old in Warsaw, Poland. These are communal expressions of joy at having these symbiotic relationships with our venerated, time-honored Slavic deities. You're not seeing people do solitary work. Now, for my ritual section in the book, as you know, I've adapted to solitary use because I'm coming from the mindset of, okay, the United States is different. Maybe somebody is geographically isolated. But the whole point for me with the circle of Rodu that became a seed while I'm working on completing the manuscript of the book is this can't just be a one-and-done thing. I know there's other people out there like me, whether or not, you know, they're a first-generation child of immigrants. Let's, if you're, of course, in the Chicago area, we have the luxury of meeting in person. We have so many forest preserves to meet at, or even in my backyard. But for the people that I've met, like at Paganicon, the conference I went to in Minneapolis, Spring Equinox Weekend last month, people came to me and said, I want to so much stay in contact with you and do things with you, ritually do things with you. But I live in North Dakota or I live in Florida. You know, what can we do? What can be like an online compromise for that? And so the circle of Rodu is something that I was like, yes, I'm implementing this now. I'm I'm having the seeds rise up and we're sort of bearing our little sprouts in feeling out, okay, we're in early days of this hybrid format, but that's why I'm so actively campaigning for the book because I'm trying to net as many people as I can in my immediate geographic area, people who want to do this communal worship with me, and then also online and keep people encouraged and help them feel less alone if they don't have anyone in their geographic area that they can have um this kind of spiritual fellowship with. And again, you don't have to be of Slavic heritage to be in my circle of Rodu. It's for anyone who you say, I've had people come to me in Chicago and say, you know what, I'm a Latina, I don't know anything about your culture. But again, our our first generation upbringings are very parallel, that sense of being othered, walking a liminal rope between two cultures. But Anna, I feel like your Slavic god Velis is knocking on my head. One woman told me, what is a culturally appropriate way for me to do that and be respectful of your heritage, but acknowledge I do want to form a relationship with this deity. Can you give me advice? And that was another thing that went into the why of why I wanted to write this book. And, you know, that woman and other people are absolutely part and parcel of my circle of Vrodu. Anyone will be welcome who genuinely sees these deities as being living, independent beities of their own agencies and personalities and wills that we can form symbiotic relationships with. And the core focus of our work, it's religious devotion. It's not, oh, I'm casting a spell and I kind of want this deity as like a archetypal, energetic resonance. No, the point is religious worship. That's where Slavic native faith is different from other kinds of paganism that are familiar in the US. It's about religion, number one.
Speaker 1Really, I love to hear about the inclusivity and talk about coming home to your culture and spirituality, which you have done full circle.
SpeakerAnd it's adapted for the here and now because I'm a queer woman. That was another layer of otherness that I had to keep silent about as a child because I knew there was no adult safe space that I could reveal in confidence that aspect of myself too, that I like girls, et cetera, et cetera. So being a queer daughter of immigrants, walking that liminal tightrope walk between American culture on this side and Serbian culture on this side. And then when you add in, you know, another layer of othering, when you proudly stand and affirm, hey, I'm I'm a queer person in this cis hat, white supremacist, patriarchal, monotheist culture, as othered as you can get. And I'm vegetarian. So there's an all these layers of otherness that you just find the freedom in that. And my personal philosophy, and I've been a part of many spiritual groups myself over, you know, more than half my life, your vibe attracts your tribe. So I know that just me being authentically me, with all of the nuances of everything that went into you know, my upbringing from what I've shared with you, from what I share in the book to who I am now as a priestess and spirit worker. I know I'm attracting the right people who are definitely of my vibe to join this tribe called the Circle of Rodu.
Speaker 1Yeah, you can't have true alignment without authenticity. Absolutely. So many people struggle with that and have such a hard time because of how our systemic issues create barriers for embracing your authenticity. I think it's really wonderful that you are shining that beacon of inclusion, being authentic to yourself. Thank you.
SpeakerThank you. And again, as you know from from reading my introduction, like it was a hard fought coming full circle for me because I did have such ethnic self-loathing, you know, and that kept me from reaching a state of authenticity until I leaned into it. Just like you learn to lean into your queerness, or you learn to lean into other facets of your selfhood, you know, that make you the dynamic person that you are.
Speaker 1For people who are listening who might still be discovering who they are or feel disconnected from their roots and want to reconnect or align to the things that they feel connected to, what would you say to them?
SpeakerGet out in nature, number one, no matter how brief your excursions in nature may be, and whatever form that looks like to you, again, rooted in the specificity of place, because that's gonna play such an important part in the work that you do. Get out every day in all weather conditions, you know, whatever your levels of ability are, absorb, absorb literally the energy. Slavic people were very solar-oriented. I cannot sleep long past sunrise. I just have to be up on my circadian rhythm, you know, jolts me up and I'm joyful. I love it. I can go on my back porch, I can face east, the breezes are blowing, uh, the sand hill cranes have returned on their migration. That's a huge sign for me in terms of my region, knowing that spring has truly come. And I can feel this sense of gratitude. But, you know, there are solar deities in my pantheon. So the first thing I do, whether the sun is obscured by clouds or not, I give thanks for living to see a new day. And I thank that deity. I thank Svarog, the creator. He's a blacksmith. I thank his son, Svarozic, the Lord of fire, who manifests as our earthly son. I thank our Matisira Zemlia, the Earth Mother. I try to be barefoot even in the winter. Even now I'm I'm barefoot. I don't like socks. I never have. I think there's something hobbit-like about me where um even in winter, like I don't wear socks inside my boots or or my fuzzy slippers. Um, but I'm standing on the earth. I want to feel how cold the earth is. I want to feel the melted ice. And there's this sense of really feeling that one meant with all that is. So I'm already standing within the circle of Rodu because I'm acknowledging my holistic kinship to everything that is. So do that every day. You know, maybe okay, you're not a morning person and you're not going to greet the sunrise like I do. But try it though. Try it even if if you're not a person, see what that does for you. Take at least a 10 minute walk, observe the natural world, observe phenomena around you, and then. I can't emphasize this enough. Get good with your ancestors. You know, as you read in my book, even if you are adopted, there's ways that you get in touch with your ancestors, your adopted family. And if you do discover your birth family roots, that there's ways of overcoming challenges from people who may have been problematic when they were alive in your families. But you've got to get good with them. So I would absolutely advocate whatever your living situation currently is, you've got to have, I would say, at least two altars, have two. Have an ancestral one, and then have one with however you find them manifesting in your sphere of influence. How do the Slavic gods and goddesses, or maybe it's the saints that are like the new faces of those same gods and goddesses? I have an icon of Svetapetka Paraskeva, the mysterious Saint Friday. She's the protectress of women in the Orthodox Church. I have her next to my wooden god pole of the goddess Mokosha. I don't have a perceived hostility because they're um like a newer and an older face of the same goddess energy. So for me that works, but maybe that won't work for some purists who will say, no, no, I don't want icons next to these literal kipa means statue in Serbian. So if I have a kipa of Mokosh, some people will say that's it. I don't want the Christian saint next to her. Okay, fine. Do do what your heart and its already um advanced state of knowingness, do what it dictates you to do. Do what is just the most natural for you, but have that ancestor altar and have some kind of a of a and it can be as simple as a glass of water, um, a little bit of honey added to it. Uh, again, in later chapters of my book, I believe it's chapter 15, where I talk about offerings to specific Slavic deities. I have my little outlined what has worked for me. And again, adapt it to what's working for you. You know, I'm I'm talking about Serbian foods, and I have them in my appendix, but maybe you're Czech and you have different family recipes. Do that, do what makes the most sense to you, but do it and do it daily and do it consistently. So even if it's just a little in the morning or before you go to bed, a prayer of gratitude, of you know, thank you, holy powers. You got me through this day. I'm grateful, and I ask you please ward me in my sleep, drive away urok the evil eye, and let me wake up refreshed and ready to start again. Maybe it's that simple, but maybe you have uh an established relationship with one or more of these deities already, and you're ready to incorporate seasonal celebrations of the kind that I write about in my book, or maybe you you've um got different ideas for offerings or more elaborate prayers or more elaborate rituals that you can do. Do it and do it consistently. Do something consistently every day. A glass of water, a simple prayer before you go to bed or when you get up in the morning, but do it every day. It's like any other muscle, right? Your spiritual muscles need to be flexed regularly. I believe they do need to be flexed daily because I know when I've talked to friends of mine, I have a lot of heathen friends, and when they admit life gets in the way, they've slipped, they've backslid, it does something psychologically. It causes such a sense of imbalance with the world. But then when they quickly resume maybe a prayer of you know forgiveness to their holy power or powers, and then they resume the daily interacting. Prayer is talking and meditating is listening. You know, do both, ideally, I would say 20 minutes of your day. You can do 10 minutes of prayer and offerings and 10 minutes in meditation. And meditation can take different forms. I walk when I meditate. You know, um, one of my heathen friends uh spent a lot of time studying uh for his anthropology degree, Zen Buddhist monks in Chicago, and he was used to Za Zen sitting practice. I don't know if it's my menopausal ADHD brain. I can't do that. I have to be engaging with the world. So I'm consciously walking. I'm in nature. I may or may not be walking my dogs, but I'm consciously aware, okay, there's energy in the land. Jivot, the life force is in the land, and I'm a part of it. I'm not apart from it. Even just having that mindfulness when you're walking, it does such good things for us holistically as human beings. And honestly, those are the kinds of simple practices I suggest people start with.
Speaker 1They're really great practices. And of course, if anybody's interested in learning more from you specifically, they could go to circleofrodu.com. I agree about the meditation too. When I was little, my sister was an anthropology major, and I looked up to her very much. And I was watching these, you know, VHS tapes about studies and different methods of trance and that sort of thing. And I would always try to meditate, and I didn't get there for so long until finally one day I was on a swing set, and the movement was what allowed me to silence my thinking mind to get to that space that I needed to be in.
SpeakerThere is something about it, and I always suggest to people, again, based on your um ability levels physically, when people, and I have people come to me like in the capacity. Obviously, I'm not a psychologist or a trained social worker, but I am a priestess and I do do pastoral counseling. So when people come to me and they say, you know, I'm afraid that it's actually kind of like what you talk about, Uruk, the evil eye, that like there's something afflicting me. It feels like an external force kind of imposed upon me. And it's something beyond like the mantle of just, you know, feeling depressed or in the blues or whatever. And I tell people my number one antidote, and this is a Slavic thing, go out in the sun. Go immerse yourself in the sun and do gentle movements. Um, on the south side of Chicago, if you come to Chinatown in Chicago, you will see, and I saw this every morning at a job that I had on the far south side of the city as a marketing uh copywriter at this at this technical company. I would pass certain parks, and you know, in order to beat traffic, I'm like, I'm almost at my office as the sun is coming up. And it's it's so beautiful. Seeing the sun come up over the Chicago River, just majestic. And I'm driving by this park in the Bridgeport neighborhood near Chinatown, and there's all these sweet little old Asian women. They're and the park has undulating hills, it's really graceful, and the north branch of the Chicago River flows through it. And all these sweet little elderly Asian, especially women, they're there and I'm watching them. They're kind of gently slapping side to side, and they're swiveling, you know, their hips are pivoting, and they just kind of like free-flow, slap, slap, slap. Now, there is a lot of ancient wisdom. They're activating, and again, I don't want to say this wrong, something about um releasing things from the kidneys, and I forget like what meridian that that's tied to, but it sloths off those feelings of I feel stuck in life, I feel something is energetically oppressing me. That gentle side-side movement of slapping, the gentle slap sloughs that off. So I recommend to people, Slavic thing, get out in the sun. Maybe you're not doing a Tai Chi movement like that, but do something where you are activating the upper part of your body in a rhythmic way, and you can just focus on your breath. I talk about doing the serpent breath in my book. To me, that's like the equivalent of doing the LBRP to like set my space and like project ease away and really raise your vibration through your crown chakra, down your central nervous system, and out through your fingertips. It just feels really good. Do it. Movement, simple movement, but vitamin D, especially if you're in the northern climbs like I am, and and winter kind of annoyingly tends to linger. When you have a day like today, it's 36 degrees, but it's fully sunny for April 7th. I was out in that sun. I'm like, okay, this is the equivalent of like my Nana putting that uh washcloth around my neck to get the ickys away. Yeah, you know, I'm just simply doing a simple prayer of thanks while I'm standing in the sun, and then I'm gonna go for a gentle walk around my neighborhood, mentally reach out with my feelers to the land spirits, say hello, and then promise that I'll give them an offering. And if you promise something, you better do it. You know, I've got I bought sweets today and um these little suet cakes. So when the blue jays come and eat it, that will be for me a sign that the land spirits have accepted it and they're happy. So whatever you promise to the spirits, you better fulfill it. But just get out, get outdoors and move. Absolutely. Simple things your grandparents could have told you are vital and important to your well-being. They're right, and their wisdom is something to be preserved because it makes sense and it's applicable to everyone at every time. And you don't need a gym membership or or anything outlandish to do it, just go do it.
Speaker 1This was such a meaningful conversation for me. I am really grateful for you sharing your authentic practices and your stories.
SpeakerI I feel honored and delighted that I get to associate, you know, the sound of your voice and and you as a person, you know, beyond social media. It's the next best thing to seeing you personally in sacred space. But I hope that that can be accomplished sometime because I do want to spread my wings more and travel about the country more. And I hope to do more of that this year, God's willing, because I've been I've been needing healing for myself after my caregiving journey and my mother's death and my grief journey. So for me, I can't do it in isolation. I need I need my tribe to rally with I'm broadening my vision of of what a tribe looks like. So I hope to meet you in person. I hope so.
Speaker 1I would love to meet you in person. We're gonna have to make that happen.
SpeakerYes, I'll bring you, I'll bring you my best bottles of Schlivovica, and we can make rakia out of it, but we're not gonna wrap it around our necks. We're just gonna pound shots of it. That's that's fine.
Speaker 1That sounds great. That that sounds better. I feel like that would be better for for our purposes anyway. Thank you. Thank you, Anna. Thanks for coming.
SpeakerOh. Postdrav, Puno Postrav with my source. So much love, so many blessings to you from my heart. Your ancestors are always there, your gods are there. Reach out to them, and that connection will be established more readily than you think. They're waiting.