The Travnitsi of the Slavlands

There are these women in the Slavlands who are called Травници (Travnitsi) or, alternatively, such a woman can be referred to as a Ведунья (Veduniya). In the West, they would probably be referred to as witches. Obviously, the term “witches” has a negative connotation, so I often swap it out for “herb-wife”.

This is a perennial tradition that keeps popping up everywhere in the world - women-healers who seem to have an intuitive knowledge of healing herbs, who communicate with spirits and claim to have magical abilities. I’ve known and used the services of several Travnitsi over the years. Their quality, abilities and beliefs vary.

By the time I revisited Ukraine, I had developed a case of chronic diarrhea verging on dysentery after spending a year in South-East Asia. As a rule, I despise doctors, who I believe ought to be stoned to death in a yearly festival where the peasants gather together and the winner of the potato-sack race gets to cast the first stone. Remember: don’t aim for the head, it will dull the pain or knock them out and we can’t have that. Anyways, after visiting a private clinic and them taking my blood, sticking a tube in me and then being told that I need still more tests, I threw a fit and stormed out of the doctors without paying. Before I could gather a stone mob, my grandparents interfered and referred me to a travnitsa.

The old lady gave me some herb mix that I boiled and drank and the diarrhea stopped soon after. I kept visiting for further treatments and got to know a bit more about her and her work. Her office was covered in Orthodox iconography, but it was quite clear that her beliefs were what any priest would condemn as being heretical. She looked like a typical witch - black hair, sharp features and a way of speaking that could only be described as mesmeric. My grandfather, an ardent Communist and an Orthodox devotee decided to add another inconsistency to his worldview by committing a mortal sin when he regularly consulted her about the future. I was always asked to leave when she did this, so I don’t know what she told him or what method of divining that she used - and he never shared her prophecies with me.

All in all, this one was more or less a business-travnitsa. But there are other kinds.

My girlfriend shared a story about a travnitsa from her village in the south of Russia with me once. This one did the usual thing - using herbs to make people feel better and forecasting people’s futures. However, as she aged she became more and more unhinged and eventually, the villagers began to fear her. My girlfriend recounted how she had come to her house one time and tried to enter while her mother was away. It was a village custom to always let her in and give her an offering in the form of food. Upset that the door was locked, the old lady scrabbled some runes in the earth at the gate leading to the house, and a powerful storm came down on the old hut, knocking out the windows.

Eventually, her own hut, which was situated at the edge of the wood burned down. The other villagers almost certainly did it, or, alternatively, it was her strange son, who she kept sulking by her side at all times. As soon as she died in the fire, he disappeared from the village, finally freed from her maternal yoke.

Witches being able to conjure freak storms are a constant peasant superstition by the way. It’s referenced often in the Hammer of the Witches (Malleus Maleficarum). People are surprised to hear this, but the book itself was condemned as heretical at the time of its publication. Churchianity’s official position at the time (and now) was somewhat similar to the position of the atheists - a denial of the existence of supernatural forces as a rule. Because the writers of the book reported on observed supernatural phenomenon seriously, they committed a grave theological error for which they were punished. Only later was it pulled out of the list of forbidden books and a re-examination of “witchcraft” (local peasant traditions) was undertaken seriously.

Basically, the witches in question were mostly condemned for being able to astrally project (travel at nighttime while leaving their bodies behind) and create localized weather patterns. Seeing as that we know all about astral projection now and it is a technique that anyone can learn if they have access to the internet, perhaps we ought to give the superstitious peasants their fair due. They seem to have been right about more than they were wrong.

Finally, a friend of mine shared a story about another travnitsa that she had met near her country house in Russia. This one went into great detail describing her work and metaphysical view of the world. For example, when it came to herbcraft, she would only go out at night, on full moons, and gather medicinal herbs using only wooden knives. She claimed that metal shouldn’t be allowed to touch the herbs, because it would ionize the plant in some way. I read somewhere a long time ago that metal is considered masculine and plant-life is considered feminine. And, obviously, the moon is female too. That’s all related, no doubt.

This herb-wife used to be a big-time doctor in Moscow, but then, out of boredom and arrogance, got involved with some gangsters. One day, she met a gangster who gave her the shivers, but trying to appear tough and unfazed, she decided to spend the day with him. Eventually, as light turned to night, they sat at a table together where he poured out a drink for her, and, under the power of his suggestive influence, he convinced her to drink it. This drink almost killed her and gave her an out of body NDE. She recounts that it was only through force of will and memories of her two children who she didn’t want to leave behind that she was able to re-enter her body. Soon after her unexpected astral projection, she got cancer and a host of other maladies, which led her to reject modern medicine and to turn to natural healing, which eventually cured her and set her on her new life trajectory.

She is convinced that the man with the poison drink was Satan in a mortal guise sent to punish her for her arrogance.

Her house in the countryside is completely filled with herbs hanging from rafters and jars of roots and so on. She says it took her years to figure it all out, but she did eventually, and had 5 more children. These children, raised in the countryside, are nothing short of exceptional. They play chess on the level of the pros, make their own music and never so much as suffer from the sniffles. But, this herb-wife who wears all-white handmade linen clothes which she binds with ropes and which are lined with dozens of hidden pockets is convinced that the modern world exerts such a corrupting influence on people that she worries about what will happen to her children as they get older. To combat the influence of modernity, she has taken extreme measures, going so far as to ground one of her sons for two weeks for playing Depeche Mode on his keyboard. Modern music, she says, is an attempt by Satan to whisper in people’s ears. I can’t help but agree with her. Music is a spiritual tool - it evokes feelings and emotions in people that they often don’t recognize and have no defense against. There’s a reason that depressing hipster garbage and inane negro hooting and grunting is forced on the youth by the Jews, who spend fortunes producing this brainwashing crap. Depeche Mode has some good songs though, in my humble opinion.

Our heroine has only a tenuous grasp of Christian metaphysics.

For example, she claims that machine-like creatures without souls roam among us and that, they are in fact, the majority of the population. I doubt that this woman has ever been exposed to Gnostic writings or to 4chan, but she came to the same conclusions independently. This is such a consistent theme that comes up independently among the heretics of the various ages that I have no doubt it is the truth. NPCs/Sarkics/Hylics/Pre-Adamics and so on are almost certainly real. Be on your guard.

Now, this is a grave deviation from Nicene Christian doctrine, which alleges (without proof and against all observable spiritual/material reality) that all people have souls and all people enjoy soul equality. However, this woman considers herself an ardent Orthodox believer. The fact that she believes in Gnostic heresy (a very grave sin) doesn’t seem to phase her. When she gathers her herbs at midnight with her wooden knife, she repeats a mantra - the Prayer of the Heart. It goes like this: “Lord Christ, have mercy on me a sinner.” This is what the Hesychasts repeat many times during their ‘Christian Yoga’ practice. Like the monks, she maintains a strict diet where she avoids carbs (based) and meat (cringe) and seems to subsist entirely on herbs, roots and vegetables. City food and water, she says, is tainted, which is very true. Finally, she believes that all people ought to follow her ascetic diet to avoid contamination and sin, which will condemn them to Hell.

But that ain’t never happening, lady. Meat and fat is what our Hyperborean ancestors ate and I refuse to believe in this “meat is murder” propaganda no matter who spouts it.

Still, despite our disagreements, I think we’d get along.

By the way, did you know that the Russian Orthodox Church ordered the murder of monks on Mt. Afos in the early 20th century? Oh yes, they won’t tell you about that, but the Church became concerned about the growth in a mystical movement among the monks that they claimed was based on the teachings of the Heresiarchs (original heretics). Now, these monks almost certainly were heretics, interested as they were in Paul - the father of all heresies as Tertullian referred to him - and the teachings of Early Christians and the practice of the Stoics. But that just means that they were closer to the truth than any priest as far as I’m concerned. Eventually, the Church sent an expedition of drunk sailors to storm their monastery where they murdered 4 and wounded 46. They then took the survivors prisoner, shaved their heads and beards, stole their belongings, imprisoned them, and barred them from all religious life. In other words, the Church, which believes that being barred from Church services condemns one’s soul to Hell, went ahead and damned these monks to hell. Classy.

The Russian philosopher Berdayev spoke out about it and was condemned by the Church and charged with heresy, which meant a lifetime of exile in Siberia. Luckily for Berdayev, the Church decided to make an ill-advised power play when they betrayed the Tsar and supported the February Revolution, which led to the Bolsheviks coming to power and his trial being postponed indefinitely.

The way I see it, if there is one truth in that big book of bullshit that the priests thump it is that you reap what you sow, eh?

The travnitsi and their herbs are a part of Slavic culture that neither the Bolshevik Jews, the Enlightenment Freemasons or the Dogmatic Orthodox were ever able to fully stamp out. Like tough weeds that come back every spring and summer, the medicine women, the travnitsi, the herb-wives are perennial. There is no school, no theological academy for them - they are students of a kind of an experienced spirituality that is as old as Creation itself.

Furthermore, primordial truth and the pursuit of it is what forms cultures. Culture is a people’s attempt to express primordial truths in one art form or another. You see it in the clothes of the peasants, the handicrafts, the lullabies and fairy-tales that mothers sing to their children. Even if an old culture is wiped out, a people who begin seeking out primordial truth again will always be able to fashion a new culture possessed with life and vitality that is similar to the one that preceded it.

The travnitsi are proof of that and it is a comforting thought indeed.