theslaviccraft

[theslaviccraft]

I'm Back from Retirement!

Hello everyone! This blog been dead for a bit...sorry about that. See my columanating assigments and fnals last semester run trough November-Jan. This is why I got out of habit off writing because I was far too concerned with school and thats why there was no Christmas/Koleda post for the year of 2023. Sorry! ;( Then life just happend I went on a another small tour dancing, going on a trip to europe with my class. (That I'm on right now.) So, I got out of the grove of writing. I know how to que posts now so I'm going to try and do that for all major holidays this year. I planned to come back sooner but a very strange situation happened. See a person on tumblr actually messaged me wanting me to help teach pepole slavic witchcraft on their discord. This person was in my dms practically begging me to help them out so because I left them waiting for a long time because of my schooling I felt like I owed them a favour and decided I'd wait to come back until I got the job then promote their discord and my course on it. (They to be clear did not ask or make this a requirement, the discord channel was pretty small so I wanted to help them out by promoting them since I was teaching on it.) I worked on a circular and a post ready to go now I was only waiting to certified by the moderators of the discord. Since I'm talking about this in a post not promoting a discord you might ask, what went wrong? Well… me and another member had a spat about if Hatsune Miku (Yes really) was a real god. The moderators saw it and sided with the other user telling me that Hatsune Miku was a god in “modern practices” (aka psychosis, sorry it’s true.) they decided to revoke my teaching position. I had to scrap a lot of posts after this mostly retain to slavic witchcraft cause I didn’t want these people to do damage control and steal my content. So yeah…Ive been a bit busy behind this blog. 😪 After some discussion people IRL were really concerned thinking that this discord was trying to pull some kind of elaborate scam on me. While I don’t think it was anything to melodious I’d warn everyone that witchcraft discords are often full of people who are terminally online and extremely toxic don’t be like me thinking you’ll break the known stereotype about how toxic witch discord server are by finding a good one. Trust me you won’t. Please don’t make this into a drama since I personally find this really hilarious and only decided to share since it was some funny behind the scenes content. A easter post will come soon and then we’re back to regular schedule! Have a good night everyone! <3

#slavs #theslaviccraft #blog update #girlblogging #blog maintenance

[theslaviccraft]

Autumn. Photo by Boris Daskovsky (1960s).

[theslaviccraft]

🏵️Remembrance Day Post🏵️

Notes Translations Steam

Hello everyone good day! Whole this post is a little overdue I didn't want to neglect making a remembrance day post. I feel like it's a very important to uphold and honor our ancestors and veteran's who fought for our many freedoms, but to also applauded the multiple man and woman who bravely fight for our freedoms and countries today. This is why I've chosen to focus this years Remembrance Day Post on the solider fighting the war in Ukraine.

Since February of 2014 Russia has been increasing it aggression towards Ukraine escalating into a full on invasion in the recent past of February 2022. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and established two puppet states (or a Russia likes to call them: republics). Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) The two republics were originally wanting too split of Ukraine due to pro-russian sentiments in the region and were quickly funded by Russia to go to war with the rest of the Ukrainian nation with Russia sending its own armed forces into regions but adamantly denying it. This conflict escalated into the violent Donbas war. In February 2015, Russia and Ukraine signed the Minsk II in agreements to end the conflict. The two nations never fully implemented in the years that followed. It was clear that both countries were still in a extremally tense state. Rightfully so on Ukraine's part as they were unable to gain back the now occupied russian territory. The Donbas war settled into a static conflict between Ukraine and Russia and separatist forces, with many brief ceasefires but no resolvent in the conflict and few territorial control changes.

In the beginning of 2021, Russia built up a large military presence near it's border with Ukraine within the neighboring Belarus. Russian officials repeatedly denied plans to attack Ukraine. Of course this was a lie and Russia invaded Ukraine in the February of 2022. Since then the two countries have been at a brutal war. There is hope that the war will end soon! Oleg Zhdanov is a former Ukrainian military officer has suspected that the war will end as soon as the spring of next year. Experts from the Atlantic and CNBC predict that the war will end in 2024 or at least prolong one year afterwards in the worst case scenario.

Today I would like to introduce you to a man, Vladimir "Fresh" Yezhov. A brave man that like many many in his nation has died fighting for the freedom of Ukraine. Vladmir was one of the developers of the hit and most anticipated games "S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2". He wasn't the first STALKER developer to fight actually, multiple of the game dev team are fighting in the war while also working on the game. (Incredible I know!)

The game studio The GSC Game World released the dev diary above on Jun 14, 2022 showing their life before the war and how everything changed in Kyiv when Russia attacked. While most of the team was able to safely evacuate to Czech Republic some of it's members weren't able to leave and stayed to fight. The video shows at 2:30 just shy of the end of the video Vladimir "Fresh" Yezhov colleagues who too decided to join the army. Dmytro Iassenev the studios lead AI developer. Who tragically comments "I would have never expected to witness a war in Europe in the 21st centaury." (It is quite tragic how the ghost of our pasts have come to haunt us, yes. I agree with Dmytro fully.) Oleksii Ivanov the Community Manger and Maksym Hnatkov Narrative Designer are shown in the video supporting their country. Slava Ukraine! <3 The STALKER team has been hacked and constantly harassed from Russians on all sides, but none of these aggravations are able to stop them. The game is still on a steady way of being released. I hope you will all go and support them on their release trailer and steam page. (Go wishlist S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 and save up for this damm game the people that are making it deserve your money!)

Vladimir "Fresh" Yezhov became a commander of an air reconnaissance unit in the 23rd Special Purpose Battalion. He was one of the first ever recorded from the defense team in the initial invasion of Ukraine. Vladimir died bravely defending Bakhmut, a city in Eastern Ukraine that has been under assault since May. He left behind two wonderfull angel boys who I'm sure will be extremally proud of their father. a leader of a Freedom faction detachment In his memorial One of the game's characters, Loki, featured in STALKER: Call of Pripyat was based on Yezhov's likeliness.

To the remaining developers of The GSC Game World I would like to close off this post with a message to you, You are all incredibly brave and are all heroes to the people fighting or not. I give you my greatest condolence's to your loved ones who might have fallen in service. Their heroism and ultimate sacrifice will never be forgotten. I can relate to you in many ways, my home country of Croatia was only 30 years ago bombed and attacked as well but Croats have thrived since then immensely. Ukraine will thrive again your beautifully home of Kyiv will be restored to its former glory one day, as well as the rest of the glorious Ukraine. May the Gods protect you as you fight the good fight. Let's no forget all the other solider who just like Yezhov's have died in service to protect the country their scrafise is just as celebrated as the living who go on fighting.

Least we not forget Slava to Ukraine!

#s.t.a.l.k.e.r. #s.t.a.l.k.e.r shadow of chernobyl #slavs #ukraine #russia #ukraine war #stand with ukraine #Vladimir “Fresh” Yezhov #The GSC Game World #Youtube

[theslaviccraft]

A walk in the park. Photo by Igor Stomakhin (Moscow, late 1980s).

[theslaviccraft]

🍬Slavic Halloween🍬

Hello everyone! Here is my sweet treat for you today I've decided for Halloween I'd post a special Halloween posts to celebrate enjoy! <3

You might be shrugging reading the title slavs celebrate Halloween? Yes we do!, Many slavic nations celebrate Halloween from western Croatia all the way to all the way to the east in Russia slavs have many rituals and traditions for Halloween. Let's dive into slavic Halloween!

🍬Bulgaria🍬

Halloween in Bulgaria is very popular. Children and younger people in the cities do celebrate Halloween and go trick or treating. «почерпка или пакост» (pocherpka ili pakost). Unlike in the rest of slavic countries candies and decorations for Halloween are sold at popular retailers Lidl and Kaufland. (For my western audience those two stores are like Costco and Walmart for the balkans). Clubs in cities will have special events for Halloween for older people who aren’t out trick or treating just like in western nations.

Halloween is associated in Bulgaria with a old traditional carnival called Surva. During the festival the “Kuker’s game” is preformed. Kukeri are elaborate costumes made by Bulgarian man who perform traditional rituals intended to scare away evil spirits. Their costumes are meant to signify the connection between man and nature and they wear their traditional Nošnja underneath. The Kukeri coustomes are large and imposing to scare away evil spirits who threaten the people of the Kukeris village.

This tradition is extremely old dating back to 6 AD to Thracian times. You can draw comparisons to this tradition and how Halloween was celebrated originally to ward of evil spirits when they crossed to our world during the solstice.

Kukeri could possibly come from the Proto-Slavic word kuka ("evil spirit") with the agentive suffix *-aîb, literally meaning a "chaser of evil spirits".

The custom is widespread in Southern and Central regions of the country. The festival also includes a hearty feast and many performances by the Kukeri and their female counterparts. The woman also wear very elaborate incredibly beautiful masks and Nošnja as well as traditional leather tsarvuli for shoes in the parade.

Both woman and man will participate in elaborate staged fights between the powers of good and evil during the festival and while parading in their village. There’s one more type of performer they are called Survakar who too have their own special costume. They look like the monsters from “Where the wild things are”, they come behind festival goers and cleanse them from evil by tapping them on the shoulder with a thin branch. These branches are decorated with assortments of all types of beautiful things like ribbons, silver/golden coins and flowers. All these things signify the sender giving you riches and blessings when they cleanse you. The festival night will end of with the feast of many traditional dishes like, kebapcheta and kyufteta (traditional grilled sausage and meatballs), the cheesey and buttery pastry banitsa, and extreme amounts of plum brandy. (You can tell their balkan lol.) The masked personal guiding the spirits away from the village in the night with lit torches.

🍬Bosnia i Herzegovina🍬

As you might know most of Bosnia's population is of muslim divinity. So, the celebrations of Halloween is not very popular in this country. The country does not consider Halloween a public holiday but a minority of people still celebrate it. In Bosnia the holiday is not called Halloween but "Noć vještica" (Night of witches') the same as in Croatian and Serbia. The celebration of Noć vještica is much more western in Bosnia than other balkan & slavic countries. With customs, face paint, many pumpkins and parades. You will notice in most slavic countries children especially young ones, don't necessarily have "graphic" or "scary" costumes'. They usually have sweet non scary customs like seen in the parade. I remember as a child too I was not allowed to dress as anything scary and my parents drew the line at a witch because that already was "too dark". (hahaha I bet some of my western audience is reading this thinking "but that's so vanilla!") In slavic countries the western tradition of "trick or treat" is not very common or used. Instead children will carry a sack and be given candy during the parades. It seems that in Bosnia Noć vještica is a holiday only popular with children and seen as more of a "joke holiday" for children to have fun and not taken seriously.

🍬Croatia/Hrvatska🍬

In Croatia Noć vještica is a much bigger deal than it is in Bosnia. But I feel it's quite controversial it seems to make many people uncomfortable. Croatia is by far one of the most religious' of the slavic country more so than Poland or Bosnia I'd argue. Most people aren't extremally happy involving themselves with things that are associated with demonic presence or black magic like Halloween is. Croatian Noć vještica usually incorporates a parade of the drowning of Marana. A ancient ritual in slavic tradition. Slavs believed that burning an effigy of the goddess of death (Morana) would remove any results of her presence (i.e., the winter) and thus bring about the coming of spring. On Noć vještica Maranas effigy is burned instead of being drowned like in other cultures. This practice had seemed to be forgotten I'm sure that if you even asked a older croat they wouldn't have known who Morana is. The ritual is often confused with a similar ritual of L'Hom Strom. This tradition I observed as a young girl in my grandmothers village of Kozarac, Croatia. Once when I was 6 I spent Halloween with my grandmother. I got my witch custom and we went into the town square to celebrate with the other children. The straw effigy was incredibly big maybe around 20ft tall it took multiple man to carry it on a stick. It was paraded trough ought our village as we marched and sang. Once the effigy had seen the entirety of the village we went to the giant parking lot behind the city hall and burned the strawed effigy of Morana. The image shown bellow is not of the same effigy or practice I witnessed as a child but I felt bad of not showing you a visual. ;)

The one I had witnessed in Kozarac was way less detailed than this one it looked far more like a simple straw doll.

Croats have many traditional carnivals all over the country. That are very similar to modern Halloween! The carnival in Rijeka is Croatias most famous carnival it’s held in many different cities trough January 17- February (date varies) Rijekas festival also includes a child parade where children dress and ask for candy.

One that you might have seen pictures of before are the sheep headed masks that are worn at this festival, their quite distinctive! In Opatija people will dress in sheepskin and hides for their parades the costumes are named Zvončari ("bellmen"). Just like the traditional celebration of Halloween the belief long ago was that dressing up as a demonic creature would deter and hide you from evil spirits crossing into our world. The people that chose to participate will often decorate themselves with bells small or big and with ribbons. Parading in a long complicated and jovial dances immolating a flock of sheep. This tradition was included in 2009, on the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Croats traditionally celebrate Sve Svete (“All Saints Day”) on the day of Halloween.

🍬Serbia🍬

Serbs love Halloween! Out of all the slavic country I would say that they’re the most receptive to it. Serbs fully embrace the western tradition with creepy costumes, trick or treating Смицалица или посластица (Smicalica ili poslastica) and tons of partying! Both children and adults alike celebrate Halloween in Serbia. Both in major cities and in villages. Belograd seems to love to celebrate Halloween with most clubs throwing o parties and events for people too old to trick or treat. The holiday has been celebrated in Serbia for a while now, the oldest post I could find about a bloggers experince of Halloween in Serbia was 2011 and even in the distant past the blogger was very casual about their celebration of the holiday in the country.

Serbia also seems to have a traditional festival like Croatia and Bulgaria similar to Halloween. But for the love of Lady Athena I could not find much information online besides some pictures!

Here is my brief proof that the festival even exists:

This concludes this year’s Halloween post! Hopefully you’ve learned something new and interesting about slavic traditions regarding Halloween. I hope you will join me next year too when we dive into more ways that the slavic nations enjoy themselves for the spooky holiday. Have fun trick or treating tonight everyone! <3

#slavic culture #slavic folklore #slavs #croatia #serbia #bulgaria #bosna i hercegovina #balkan #balkans #halloween #slavic halloween

[theslaviccraft]

-Blog Introductions!-

🍃Introduction🍃

Hello! My name is Ivana I'm a Croat currently living in Canada. I'm 16 years old, I'm a writer trying to kickstart my career on my main blog that's currently inactive @lesiocara, I've been a folklore dancer for 2 years now and I dance with my group across the USA and Canada.

🍃Purpose of Blog🍃

I started this blog because I noticed a lot of cognitive disconnect between immigrant Croats and main land culture. I felt like there wasn't enough resources for younger immigrants to truly understand or experience their cultures in a authentic way. And I noticed much deference between myself and my peers who always have lived in Canada. As they didn't have much ties to their own cultures. This is slowly becoming a growing concern to me back home too as many other southern/central Slavic countries embrace western ideals more and more many of us are starting to lose our ties to our cultural heritage as Slavs. This is why I started this blog to help immigrants and even mainlanders who wish to connect more to folklore and heritage of their countries find resources and paths to reconnect to their heritage. This blog primary shows off Balkan Slavic tradition but I strive to showcase all Slavic countries and cultures on this blog.

🍃Rules of the Blog/DNI🍃

Please, do not interact with this blog if you'll express bigited or hateful views on my platform or comments. This blog is not a safe space to be prejudice, xenophobic, nor racist towards any group. I do not tolerate seeing Croatophobia, Anti-Serb sentiments, Russophobia or any other sort of Anti-Slavic sentiments towards any other Slavs or claims of superiority over any other nationality's /groups on this blog. You will be warned to tone it down if I find your comments offensive or downright blocked.

Rules

No homophobia, xenophobia, religionism (antisemitism, islamophobia),racism, transphobia ect ect.

No use of any slurs especially of racial slurs like gy*sy or esk*mo. Both Romani and Inuit/Yupik cultures consider the two words up above as slurs against them and are not allowed to be used outside of historical context on this blog. This rule applies to the two terms of Ustaše and Chetniks as the two are often used as slurs towards Croats and Serbs.

This blog is a safe space for all slavs and is here to uplift all cultures, we will be discussing both past and current wars but I encourage you to use your critical thinking skills and realize that not everyone of a certain nationality can be blamed for that groups actions in wars. I do not tolerate seeing Croatophobia, Anti-Serb sentiments, Russophobia or any other sort of Anti-Slavic sentiments towards any other Slavs or claims of superiority over any other nationality's/groups on this blog.

If you would like to submit a post please link the sources. Such as texts and copyright holders you got the information from. Its so easy for people to fake things and claim they are backed up by tradition especially when discussing Magick. It's perfectly fine to link yourself as a source on information just be extremally clear about that.

No bible thumping! Please respect everyone's right to their own religion. Don't go under posts that discuss Magick or Rodnovery and comment things like "jesus loves you." or bible verses about how pegan's are going to hell or smth. Please don't attack other religions ether. Slavs are very diverse we come in all shapes and sizes some of us are catholic, jewish, orthodox, muslim or even pegan so please understand and respect the fact that not everyone follows your religion.

I do not support any extremist groups left or right leaning. Uses of covert phrases or dog whistles are not allowed on this blog. I will not platform or put a positive light on extremist groups like Ustaše, Chetniks, UPA, Neo-Nazis (Slavic Union,S14) or any other similar groups.

This blog is at least 16+. We discuss multiple facets of Slavic history on this blog. As you are probably aware Slavs have a very tremulous history. There will be graphic content on this blog appropriately censored to comply with tumblrs guidelines that people still might find disturbing. The history posts will have trigger warnings listed above the article viewer discretion is advised.

Post submsions can be in ether serbian, bosnian, croatian ,czech, english or interslavic as those are the only languages I understand. This is so I can fact check you. If you want to submit but do not know these languages just DM me so we can work on a translation together.

Post submissions must be tagged with a post group on this blog (see bellow) and if your writing about a historic event you too must include trigger warnings at the top of you're post.

🍃List of Resources🍃

T/BA

🍃Asks/Dm's/Post Submits🍃

This blog is only made possible by the hard work of various people in our community researching and compiling knowledge about Slavs in multiple languages and media. I'm no expert on all things Slavic I'm nether historian or culturalist I simply do my own research and present it on this blog. Please if you are willing link articles, textbooks and other research in other languages if you can. I will need help with translating resources while I might not be able to pay you much I am glad to work out payment for help in translating various media. You can DM at any time about anything you'd like tho, unless you're reaching out for something personal or a translating job I'd prefer you use the asks feature. Post submissions must be in one of the categories on this blog and must be related in someway to slavs. They also must be in serbian, bosnian, croatian ,czech, english or interslavic and you must link/credit you're sources.

🍃Post Groups/Posting schedule🍃

Slavic Witchcraft & Magick

Slavic Culture

Slavic Traditions

Slavic Folklore

Slavic History

Resource Find

Blog Spotlight

Note: This blog isn't updated daily it would be impossible for me to upload accurate well researched posts to you on a daily basis. Instead this is a guide as to what subject I will be posting on what day of the week.

Thank you for reading I hope you'll enjoy the blog :)

#slavs #slavic witch #witchcraft #slavic paganism #introductory post #croatia #serbia #slavic culture #slavic folklore #introduction #blog intro