[podcast's transcript] The magic of słowo
Hello, everyone! Sława! Welcome in… I think 14th episode of Searching for the Slavic soul, a podcast produced by Witia and presented by – me.
I am Magda Lewandowska and today I will talk about the magic of słowo, which in pretty much every Slavic language means – word. Wilke in the spoken word. Just adding, in case my Polish accent causes me to be misunderstood in English.
Anyway, today’s episode is absolutely one of a kind, because what we are going to be talking about today has not been written or published anyway across any of Witia internet platforms. Because, you know, usually there is a blog post and an episode of the podcast follows, but today we are doing in the other way around, because, in this way, in talking about slowo first I want to honour the hundreds, thousands even old tradition of spoken Slavic tradition, so basically, the tradition of Slowo. And the magic of it. So, if any of this sounds interesting – keep listening.
So, Słowo. The magic of słowo. We are going to start in a very smart and sophisticated way, because we are going to start with a linguistic hypothesis. One that is called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or – the other name for it is the hypothesis of linguistic relativity.
This hypothesis eee, well, it hypothesizes that the language a person is speaking, so using to describe the world, the language is affecting the way the speaker of this language sees and perceives the world. So, in a way, the principle of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that we – the humans, each of us a speaker of a certain language, or certain languages, we are limited in a way in how we can describe and see the world, because we are – well, for the lack of better word – we are limited by the limits of the language we use to describe or analyze what we are seeing or hearing or experiencing. Basically, this hypothesis states that how we see and describe the world can be related to the particular language we are using – hence the other name of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is linguistic relativity.
The concept of linguistic relativity is not new. It came around in the XIX century and – as, you know, pretty much everything in XIX century, was used as a backbone to support nationalistic or even racist ideas. So, basically, what the creators and early followers of linguistic relativity were saying is that: if you speak a certain language, you cannot possibly comprehend things that your language does not have words for. Which, obviously, is not true, but, you know, back in the XIX century people came up with a lot of concepts that were not true or not well thought through, but they seemed plausible nevertheless, because most thinkers back then were rich, well off, educated and so completely out of touch with reality, that they actually did not need any proof to support their ideas. They just knew that they were right. They wrote books written in such a convoluted and obscure way, that nobody could understand them and that in itself was a proof that they are so smart. Which, funny enough, happens nowadays as well, but that’s a completely different topic, so I am not even going to go there, because once I start talking about smart asses completely enchanted by the sound of their voices and the “depth” of their thoughts, we are going to be here for a week, just talking about them. And today I want to talk about something else. I want to talk about Slavic language – or rather – languages. So, focus, Magda! Stop digressing!
Where was I?
Eee. Linguistic relativity. Right. Linguistic relativity. The concept is not new. It’s been around for nearly a couple of centuries. It got abandoned and forgotten – obviously - when the totalitarian, Nazi period in the history of the world ended, but it came back. It came back in the 90s in much more mellow form, that focuses not on how language limits the whole view on the world or the abilities to perceive it, but rather explores the influence of a language of a given culture, on social interactions within this culture, on philosophy, self-development or on emotions experienced by the speaker of a language.
The reason I am talking about linguistic relativity is that… while focusing on weeding out Judeo-Christian influences from Slavic tradition, here in Witia project, we kind of missed the pagan influences, which, in a different way, but nevertheless, still contaminate and distort the culture, tradition and beliefs of the Slavs, or, more specifically – Rodnovers.
Because, as it turns out, there is a lot of Rodnovers, a lot of followers of Slavic Native Faith, who do not speak a single Slavic language. What more, there is a lot of modern Rodnovers who have never experienced first-hand the culture of the Slavs – be it through modern culture created by Slavs or Slavic folk lore. And, you know, it’s brilliant that Slavic native Faith or Slavic culture in general transcends the cultural and linguistic borders. There is nothing wrong with that. What is… well – not is. What could be wrong about it, is when people who are only discovering Slavic culture, tradition or faith, but have no deep, first-hand understanding of Slavic culture, the problem could be when those people get in their heads that, while not having a lot of understanding of Slavic culture, they can actually teach people about it. So, basically, while here in Witia project, while we were focusing on Judeo-Christian contaminant, we completely missed the new, only now developing pagan source of new contaminants being introduced to the Slavic culture. To give you an example – there is it person called Patricia Robin Woodroof, who, to keep things simple, I will be calling Pat, so Pat lives in Northern America, never lived in a Slavic country, does not know – does not speak, read, write or understand in any other shape of form a single Slavic language, yet she got it in her head, that she is qualified to teach about Slavic religion. And she started teaching it. Also, by publishing books, which, apparently, you can get on Amazon. Those books are titled Roots of Slavic Magic, or Guide to Slavic deities and there are advertised as a textbook, like, really reference books for everyone interested in Slavic Deities.
So, I learned about Pat’s books a few months ago and, obviously, I became very interested. Like, you know – new info, new sources, like, awesome. So, I looked more into it and this is when I went like, what the actual fuck?!
Basically, what’s happened in the curious case of Pat’s “research” into Slavic, as Pat calls it, deities, is everything got mixed up, because, to start with, Pat has zero clue about anything Slavic. She is not able to read any sources in any Slavic language, and – clearly – she is not willing to spend hundreds of pounds or dollars on academic books, so the only “knowledge” she could get about Slavic culture was from English internet sites. Which, as some or all of you might now, is just full of all sorts of weird stuff.
Because Pat does not speak a Slavic language and has zero understanding of Slavic. well of Slavic soul, really. She does not know and does not understand how it is to be a Slav, what does it mean to be a Slav, what are the core values, ideas or concepts acquired while growing up or living among Slavs, within a Slavic culture, she assumed that Slavic native Faith is kind of like, I don’t know, Wicca or some other pagan systems of believes with just, you know, with Slavic Gods added. And it is just so, so, so very wrong.
Because – and this is where the language comes into focus – because there are ways of looking at the world, of perceiving the world and describing it, ways which one cannot experience through English language. There are things that are like a second nature for a speaker of a Slavic language, but that are not easily noticed and understood by an English speaker. One of these things is… well… one of this things is explained by a… by something that is very obvious for any speaker of a Slavic language, and very foreign for an English speaker – and this is the concept of grammatical gender.
Grammatical gender is a feature of – as far as I know – all Slavic languages. Obviously, grammatical gender is not excusive for Slavic languages, but nevertheless is something completely inexistent in English language – the only language that is known to our Pat. The presence of grammatical gender in Slavic languages means that everything – I mean – absolutely everything that can be described in Slavic language, has a gender and is spoken about like it has a gender. In – again, as far as I know – in all Slavic languages, there are 3 grammatical genders. There is the masculine gender, the feminine gender and the third one – which is translated in English as neutral – is kind of none of the above. So, the 3rd grammatical gender, the one that in English is called neutral, is actually, as we call it in Polish – nijaki. Nijaki literally translates into “not this and not that”. So, the 3rd grammatical gender is not described by what it is – like, you know the masculine gender is masculine and the feminize gender is feminine, but the nijaki gender is describes by what it is not – it is neither masculine, nor feminine. So, the nijaki, the neutral gender, is not really neutral, but is more like – in between. Which is also expressed in its Russian name. In Russia the neutral gender is called srednij rod, which can be translated as “the average one” or the one in the middle. So, as I said – not this, not that, but something in the middle.
And what does it mean, you ask, my English-speaking listener? Well, it means that a Slav looks at the world as a place full of masculine, feminine an, you know, the in between elements. A Slavic speaker does not have to make up an opposite of something to balance out the as Pat calls it, the basic elements. Because one thing that Pat does in her “research” is actually not finding stuff up but making stuff up. So, in Pat’s “version” of Slavic religion every single male or female supernatural being gets its own female or male counterpart. Because, in Pat’s extremely expert opinion, this is exactly how you balance things out. And, you know, maybe it works for other types of paganisms, I don’t know, but in Slavic paganism it not only does not work but is it also completely redundant. Because Slavs, through their language, already have a balances mixture of male, female and, you know, the mysterious 3 gender element. So, when you a Slav, let’s say from Poland and speaking Polish, and you sit down to have a cuppa, you brew herbata – which is tea and grammatically is female, you put your female herbata at stół – which is grammatically male, and then you sit at your male table, on krzesło – which is grammatically neutral gender. So, if you are Polish, the single act of having a cup of tea automatically puts you in a balanced state where all the male, female and neutral elements work together. And it works for anything you can possibly do or see or experience when you are a Slav. Everything that surrounds you, everything that can be described by a noun or an adjective or a verb, everything is a mixture of female, male and neutral and it balances itself out. You don’t need to make stuff up to make it work. I mean – you don’t need, if you speak a Slavic language. And Pat doesn’t, so she does not have a clue and thinks that something is missing. Where there’s clearly not.
Another thing that Pat – and many English-speaking pagans – don’t have a clue about, is Slavic phonemes and – obviously – can’t tell them apart and see any difference between then. Which is no wonder, really, because Slavic languages are legendary in tongue twisters and weird sounds that are incomprehensible and indistinguishable for not Slavic speakers. Which is not a big problem, if you follow the Slavic native Faith and learn from Slavic sources or Slavic people who can explain it to you. But when you our Pat, have not a foggiest clue about Slavic phonology, but still want to teach others about Slavic Faith – this is when we have a big, big problem.
And the problem is in putting Siwa, Sieba, Siba, Żywia, Żywa, Dziwa, Ziva, Deva and another similarly sounding phonemes in one category of a goddess – a made up by Patricia goddess of, from what I understood, life, healing and, I think, water?
The reason I am not sure what the Siwa, Sieba, Siba, Żywia, Żywa, Dziwa, Ziva and other goddess is, is because Patricia’s book – the one I had the misfortune of reading, is a badly written book. It’s not logical, its layout is bonkers, chapters make no sense, it a really, really bad book. It’s badly written, badly researched, badly structured. It’s even badly priced, because whatever this book costs, the price is not low enough. I mean, I, thankfully, did not have to pay for this book, bloody heck, you will have to pay people to read it. And it still could not be enough to make them read it, really, it wouldn’t. I only read it because I am fully committed to the Slavic cause and to making sure the Slavic tradition stays as uncontaminated as it is only possible. So, you know, I read it, so you don’t have to, but my… did I have to suffer to get through this book… It was bad. Really bad
Anyway, Siwa, Sieba, Siba, Żywia, Żywa, Dziwa, Ziva, Deva and others – there is a whole list of phonemes like that there – so according to our Pat, those are all the names of one Goddess, which, allegedly, exists and is responsible for…e…. I don’t know, something. Water or life or something. And it’s just so wrong. So wrong
Because, for a speaker of a Slavic language those phonemes, which Pat put together in one bag, those phonemes don’t belong in one bag. They don’t mean the same. They sound the same – obviously, because they are phonemes, but they have completely different meaning. So, let’s take Siwa, for example. Siwa is an adjective, female, singular and it means grey. So Siwa is one female with grey hair. It can be one female horse or one female human, that’s not specified in the form of this adjective.
Żywa or Żiwa are also adjectives, also female, singular, but they mean alive. So Żywa or Ziva mean one alive female – again species of this female, whether is a horse, a human or, I don’t know, a river – because rivers tend to be females in Slavic languages – is also not specified here.
Dziwa is not so easy to explain, because it’s an old form. It is definitely female, definitely singular, but it could be either an adjective or a noun. It comes from proto-Slavic *diviti – which is a verb and means to surprise or from *divo or *div, which are nouns and mean a miracle or wild. So Dziwa could be one wild female, or one surprising, astonishing, wondrous or miraculous female. The dziwa phoneme we can find in the names of Slavic demons – like dziwożona or samodziwa. So, when a Slavic person hears the phoneme “dziwa” he or she things: something female, wild and, you know, supernatural, no usual, so a female demon for example.
On the other hand, Deva is a singular noun and means a girl, a maiden. One girl or one maiden, to be specific.
Sieba and Siba are not so obvious. They sound made up. I don’t have a foggiest clue where Pat took those phonemes from. For an average Slavic speaker, they sound like totally made up stuff. To be honest, given the level of Pat’s writing and the “sources” she uses and “research” she does, I would not be surprised if those were failed transliteration of Slavic phonemes into a not-Slavic languages, which Pat took as other versions of the same – well – other version of what sounds like the same to Pat.
Anyway, what Pat, in her infinite lack of understanding of Slavic languages, took for one thing, is actually many, different things. We have grey hair, we have a girl, an alive female and something wild and likely demonic. So, basically, grey, wild, maiden demon that is alive. Like, c’mon, people, really?
Maybe, maybe, we could make something out of all of this, but the only name , out of the long list given by Pat, the only name out of this list that is confirmed by historical sources as a Slavic Goddess is Siwa, which was mentioned once, not even in one sentence, but in, literally 3 words, in the chronicle of the Slavs, written by Helmond sometime in the middle or towards the end of XII century. In his chronicle, which is a proper chronicle, is a thick book, he literally writes that: Siwa dea Polaborum. That’s it. There is nothing else written about Siva. And, from what I understand, there are either different copies of the Chronicle of the Slavs, or maybe the handwriting is not that clear, because the historians give 3 possible version of “Siva dea Polaborum”: so one version is Siva dea Polaborum, the other is Siwe dea polaborum and another one is Synna dea Polaborum. So, the historians who saw Helmond’s chronicle of the Slavs with their very eyes, who saw the original handwriting of the monk who write the book down – they are not sure what’s written there. So, it could be Siva, could be Siwe or Synna. That’s it. Three possible versions. None of it looks or sounds even remotely as Diva or Żywia or Sieba that Pat is pushing it her book. I have no clue how did she come up with this stuff. I really don’t.
In the chapter full of Żywia – phonemes Patricia just puts absolutely everything that she found – I guess on the internet – and that looks similar to an unskilled eye of a non-Slavic speaker. So we find there a Polish town Zywiec, which name – and we know it for sure– comes from an old Polish noun żywiec, which means farm animals. She also took the polish word dzwon – which means bell, and she put it there too. She gave an example of bells in churches of Kraków and wrote that – quote “ it is a remnant of petitioning this goddess of life and death to take care of the person’s spirit.”. And now, how Pat came to this conclusion is beyond me. Because, as it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain, pre-Christian, pagan Slavs did not know and did not use church bells – because they did not have churches! They also did not ring bells for the spirits, and most certainly not with intention of taking care of these spirits. Pre-Christian pagan Slavs did use various noises on spirits – on malevolent spirits, to chase them away. So the making noises wasn’t in order to take care of them, but to scare them away! In order to take care of the spirits of the people they cared about – for example – of the spirits of their ancestors, the pagan Slavs did not ring bells. They held feasts. They held feasts as a part of rituals of veneration of the ancestors. They invited the ancestors to this feasts, they ate with them and drink with them, they celebrated with them. And, who knows, maybe as a part of live music during those events some sort of bells were used, but bells were most certainly not a sine qua non condition of caring for the spirits of the ancestors of our pagan ancestors. And petitioning of any goddess was not part of those feasts either. Pre-Christian pagan Slavs did not need any gods or god to take care of the souls of their ancestors. They take care of those souls themselves. They venerated their ancestors, they gave them offering, food, mead, singing, you know, live music. It was a Slav responsibility to take care of his or her dead. No goddess – grey, blond, wild or domesticated – no goddess of any kind was needed there.
Well, as to goddesses or gods of any kind, Pat seem to also be completely loosing the Slavic meaning of the word describing god or gods. In the title of one of the chapters of her book she claims that in Slavic tradition Gods are called Bogu and also that the word god means a giver, that is interpreted as “share” and the god-related word bóstwo translates into noble and is of Iranian origin. Which, you know, when a Slavic speaker reads it, it’s just makes no sense at all. I mean I was reading it and I was wiping my screen double and triple checking it, because at first I thought that there mumbo jumbo was due to a problem with my computer or maybe my internet, because I could not believe that anyone would come up with stuff as ridiculous as Pat has. But, after checking my computer and my internet and, you know, reading word by word what Pat wrote, I realised, that she really has come up with this stuff. And that she is selling it as Slavic lore.
And, what I think, it is all due to Pat not speaking any of many Slavic languages and not having a slightest clue about how Slavic languages work. Because another thing that is typical for Slavic languages is something that is called declension.
Declension is the changing of the form of a word to express this word function in a sentence. English language has no declension at all. If order to express in English what function a given word has in a sentence a preposition or postposition is used, as well as placing the word in the right place in the sentence. For example, in English if you gave a present to your sister, the only way you can tell someone about it, is by saying: I gave a present to my sister. If you change the order of the words : so, for example say: My sister gave a present to I. or if you use a different preposition, like: I gave a present with my sister – this changes totally change the meaning of this sentence.
In Slavic languages declension – so changing the case, the form of the word, serves the same purpose that prepositions and order of the words serve in English. So, for example, if you gave a present to your sister and want to tell someone about it in, for example, Polish all you have to do is to apply appropriate declension to the words, so use appropriate forms – which are called cases, grammatical cases.
So in Polish you can say: dałam prezent siostrze. or you can say siostrze dałam prezent, or prezent dałam sisotrze – all of this means the same, regardless of the order of the words. And no preposition needed. Because the order or the words and the preposition are replaces by the system of declension – the system of grammatical cases.
By the way: dałam present siostrze also means that I am a female. Because, as nouns and adjectives, verbs in Slavic languages also require a grammatical gender to be used. Which is absolutely beautiful – at least for me. It’s just such an efficient system. It’s all designed to express as much information as possible with as little words as possible. Because, in order to say in English that you gave a present to your sister, you have to use 7 words and you still not able to express all the information that 3 words in a Slavic language can express. So, you know, it’s just awesome. Slavic languages are just a super efficient, super meaningful and precise way of expressing yourself and communicate information. When I talk bout efficiency of Polish for example, I always give an example of something that is called in polish imiesłów przysłówkowy uprzedni, which I believe, in English is called a perfective anterior adverbial participle, but don’t cite me on that. Because I studied Slavic grammar in Polish and the English names are still a bit of a mystery for me. Anyway, the perfective anterior adverbial participle is a form of a verb that is designed to express that you have just done something and finished it and you’re just about to do something else. So it’s kind of like saying in English: having done something, I did something else. And in Polish, and I think in Russian too, it can be expressed in one word. So it you want to say that you are a male and you did something after, for example having walked in somewhere – literally, walked in on foot, because Slavic languages are that specific. So in order to say, that you are a male and you did something after having walked in somewhere, in Polish you only have to say: przyszedłwszy, zrobiłem And that’s it. And everyone understands. If this is not genius, I don’t know what is.
Anyway…
… Where was I… Bogu! Yes, so I was talking about Pat’s mumbo-jumbo about Slavic gods. So, first thing she got wrong is the word itself. Because Bogu does not mean Gods in Slavic languages. Bogu is a dative case, singular, so it means: to god. If you want to say gods in Slavic languages you have got to use nominative case plural, which, in the case of gods, in Russian will be Bogi and, for example in Polish either Bogi or Bogowie. So, as you can see, Pat can’t get the case and the plural form right. But that’s not all.
She talks about the meaning of the Slavic word “Bogu”. So, obviously, she got it wrong. Because “bogu” means to a single god. But with regards to the word – the singular word Bóg or Bog, with it’s plural nominative case being Bogi or Bogowie – it does not mean a giver, or sharer or anything like that. In pretty much any Slavic language the word for Bóg or Bog means god. It doesn’t mean anything else. And any Slavic speak would know that. The word Bóstwo that, if you remember, Pat claims it means noble, it doesn’t mean noble. It means deity. The word Bóstwo – which happens to be Polish, and in Russian for example is Bożestwo, this is derived from the word Bóg. And that’s is it. The only Iranian stuff that has anything do to with Slavic words for gods or deities is a hypothesis that the pra-Slavic word bog – which also means god, nothing else – so this pra-Slavic word for god could be a borrowing from Iranian, but we don’t know that. We only hypothesise that it could be the case.
And, you know this stuff is obvious to any Slavic speaker. Like, there is no doubts about. Nobody searches for other meaning of Bóg or Bogi or Bogowie, because there isn’t any. Which, Pat, being a non-Slavic speaker, has no idea about so she does the mambo-jumbo to, I don’t know, impress equally uninformed reader? Because she would not impress any Slavic speaker with this blabber. For a Slavic speaker it’s just stupid. That’s it.
So, moving on… Slavic languages, grammar! The awesome stuff!
One thing that Slavic languages have in buckets and that is foreign to English speakers is a something that is called reflexive verbs. Reflexive verbs are verbs that, kind of, apply to itself. Those verbs in Slavic languages are usually created by adding się or sia – adding it directly to the word or putting it just after the word.
Reflexive words are another absolutely awesome feature of Slavic languages, because they are used to express a variety of things that seem obvious to a Slavic speaker but are not so obvious to an English speaker.
For example – if you fell in love with someone, in English you will say I fell in love with you. But, in Polish, for example, you would say, if you are a female: Zakochałam się w tobie, and if you are a male, you’d say: Zakochałem się w tobie. Because, you remember, everything in Slavic languages has to have an appropriate gender.
What this zakochałam się w tobie means? Zakochać się is a reflexive word. So, it applies to itself. So, if you are Polish and you fell in love with someone, you will tell this someone – I love myself in you. Reflexive word. And it is just so awesome. Because, when we fall in love, we don’t really know the person we fall in love with, right? We only know how we feel around this person. Therefore, we don’t love this person – not yet. We love how we feel around this person, we love how this person reflects us, how this person interacts with us, we feel amazing when we fall in love. We feel beautiful, smart, full of energy – therefore we love ourselves in the person we’re in love with. And, you know, to express this concept in English I had to use, like, eeee I don’t know, 4 or 5 sentences. In Polish, thanks to the amazing reflexive words, I am able to express it all in 4 words, in one short sentence. It’s just genius. Absolutely genius.
But the reason I talk about reflective case, it’s because I suspect that Pat, not understanding Slavic languages, stumbled upon something written in a Slavic language, something that was a reflexive word and, not understanding what it is all about, came to conclusion that it was a name of a god.
Because, as it happens Pat claims that Slavs worshipped a god that was called siebog. And there wasn’t a god like that. I have nearly 500 pages book with all the historical sources on pre-Christian Slavic religion, I know a lot about Slavic demons, Slavic folklore, I have a lot of friends and acquaintances that are as into Slavic tradition as I am and neither I, nor any of my friends have ever come across siebog.
By the way – if any of you have any legit sources about siebog – please do let us know. I will be more than happy to learn something new. Always. I mean, always. And if you have a good one, like good legit source – I’ll be more than happy to feature you in Searching for the Slavic soul, or on Witia’s social media or blog, or wherever you want to be features. Just let me know.
Anyway, as of today I haven’t got a foggiest clue where this siebog came from, so I have to hypothesise here.
So, one option is that Pat found an old publication on Slavic religion, a publication written in a Slavic language. And you know there’s plenty of such publications on the internet. Rodnovers, but also, you now, some librarians or even academics, are very active in digitising the old polish, Russian or other Slavic archives. You can easily find pdfs of books from XIX century, with prayers or recoded folklore songs and such. So, what I think has happened, I think that Pat saw one of those PDF, and read there, for example “kaje się bogu” which means I bow to God – in Polish and I think in Russian too. And in Belarusian most probably as well. So she saw this “kaje się bogu” and, not knowing that to bow (so the kaje się bit), she did not know that in the language of the original publication “kaje się” is a reflexive word and therefore she assumed that the się bit goes with the bogu, not with the “kaje” word. So, that’s one option I could think of.
The other explanation of the siebog mystery is that Pat was trying to make up a female equivalent of the Siva goddess she made up before. So, maybe she took the si from Siva and added it to the god from God and came up with siebog. But if she did that, that’s just completely wrong, because this is not a way of making a female word into a male one. I mean, you know, Slavic languages are super flexible, and you can absolutely make a word change its grammatical gender, so you can easily make a male word into female on, or the other way around, but There are rules for it. There is a whole range of suffixes. You know a whole assortment of suffixes that you can use – add or remove – to change the gender of a word, but neither si, nor bog are one of those suffixes. And any Slavic language speaker knows that.
Another, very, very important thing that every Slavic speaker, who is interested in Slavic magic – not even religion, just magic – is that Slavic magic is grounded in words. The words – how you pronounce them, what grammatical gender or case you apply to them, whether you use a reflexive word or not – that makes up the roots of Slavic magic. Słowo or – plural Słowa – are the building blocks of Slavic spellcasting and any other form of magical or religious rituals. The oldest Slavic magical tradition is talking. Just talking – in a Slavic language. Knowing a Slavic language gives one the ability to perceive and describe the word, the interactions within the word and even the very nature of the elements of the word – in a way pre-Christian Slavs perceived and talked about it.
The Slavic spellcasting, which in Polish is called zamawianie in Russian zagowory, but it is all just talking. Zamawianie comes from the verb mówić – which means to talk. Zagowory comes from a Russian word – gawarit – which means to talk. This is why In order to make the Slavic magic happen the person performing the magic – so a wiedźma, szeptucha or znachor, znachorka or even wołchw– this person has to use the right words, pronounce them correctly – so make sure that ż is pronounced like ż and dź like dź, this person has to use the right accent, the right inflection, the right tone of voice. This verbal magical practices of pre-Christian Slavs are documented in dozens of historical sources. Multiple independent chroniclers, historians or just religions writers from medieval times wrote about pagan Slavs using language to do magic. It could be naming a disease to chase it away, using specific words to casts spells, teaching these words to other pagans. The tradition of Slavic spellcasting – the tradition of zamawianie or zagowory - it’s so embedded into Slavic way of life that it actually survived to modern times. And language – a Slavic language that is used properly – is absolute necessity in Slavic magic. I am not even talking religion here, just magic. Because słowo – the spoken Slavic language it is the very root, the foundation of the world of Slavs.
So, knowing all of that, can somebody, please, explain to me how a person who can’t even get a single Slavic word right, let alone understand a short sentence or a paragraph in a Slavic language. How a person who is not capable of pronouncing a single Slavic word right – how the heck can this person teach others about the roots of Slavic magic or about Slavic mythology, or gods?! How? What was Patricia thinking when she decided to “research”, write and teach and, you know, preach about Slavic believes or magic? What are people, who listen to her thinking? That one can talk in English to casts Slavic spells? Like, really?
how on earth can one understand a culture without understanding of the language of this culture? And it’s not even culture. Patricia Woodroof claims to be able to understand Slavic magic – magic based on language – without having the slightest idea about this language. Like, c’mon, people! Think! Use common sense. Do not attempt to learn anything on anything Slavic from Pat’s books. Or from anyone who does not understand Slavic language.
Just to make myself clear – I am absolutely not saying that you need to know Slavic language in order to believe and worship Slavic gods. Absolutely not. Because, as this episode shows, particulars of Slavic language can be explained. So, if you want to learn about Slavic traditions and you come across a Slavic word that you don’t understand – get in touch with someone who understands it and ask what it means. And I promise - you will not only get an answer, but most of the time you will also get a few links to papers or dictionaries or other sources that will explain this word more details. Because being able to speak a Slavic language is a superpower, that any Slavic speaker is happy to share with others. I do not know a single Slavic language speaking person that would not be happy to help out a nonSlavic speaker, in order for this nonSlavic speaker to understand Slavic culture better.
However, if you don’t speak a Slavic language, you have to be really careful when performing rituals or magic or teaching about those topics. Because you get it wrong. Particularly if you are an English speaker – you will get is so wrong, it’s not even funny. From my personal experience, the difference of how you talk and think about everything in English and in Polish it can’t even be described. It’s like living in two different worlds, that overlap, but at the same time have completely different optics, and angles and way of making things happen. And now, when I started to learn Russian, after nearly a year of learning Russian – I am starting to see a completely new, third word of Russian. A world that overlaps a little bit with the English and Polish words I already know, but at the same time is different.. Because Polish and Russian are similar, but they are far, far from identical. The way in which Russian language describes the world – the choice of words, the ways of expressing interaction between words, the idioms, the grammar – is significantly different from what I know from Polish. For me is a very humbling experience, but also one I can grow from.
As to Pat others like her – just don’t waste your time. And money. You want to learn about Slavic culture – go to people who know Slavic culture. Go to people who speak at least one Slavic language, who live or at least had an experience of living among Slavic people in a Slavic country. Read, talk, discuss and learn from them. There is not a single not-Slavic speaking person out there that can explain Slavic culture to you better, that them.
Or, of course, alternatively, you could always learn a Slavic language yourself. Get the experience and the in-depth understanding of Slavic culture first hand. It’s worth it.
So that was all for today. I hope it wasn’t too bad. However, you found this episode – do let us know. As always you can contact us through Witia’s website blog, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and I will link the contact details in the notes of the podcasts.
Another thing I will like is an invite to Rodnovery discord server that is full of people happy to explain everything Slavic. And what you will also find there is lots of links to various sources on Slavic culture and tradition, and religion and magic too – and those sources are mostly in English. One this we recently started doing on Radegast, so on this Rodnovery discord server – we started compiling a list of what is called fake-lore, that’s all the BS written by people who don’t have a clue about Slavic culture yet write about it anyway.
But for now – take care, stay away from fake lore and I until next time
Sława!
Art by Goria