I’m in the process of moving. Now that my doctorate is finally complete, there’s a lot less tying me to the physical environs of New Jersey. My lease is up at the end of this month, and while I haven’t yet secured a job and a permanent place to live, it’s time for me to move on from where I’ve been—so I’m packing up my stuff and moving in with a friend until I have somewhere to settle long-term. New Jersey has never felt like home to me, and to say I’m glad to be leaving it would be offensively understated.

But because I’m moving, I have to pack my things. I’ve been living in the same house for about five years now, and over the course of that time, my life has expanded to fill the space I inhabit. I’ve acquired stuff (mostly books—ye gods, so many books) and settled into my home, and now I’m having to pare things down as I pick up and prepare to leave. Boy oh boy, do I hate packing.* My living room is brimming with boxes, my knick-knacks and clothes are strewn all over the house, and somehow no matter how much crap I throw out, there is always too much left over. I’m making progress, but slowly, and it really is a deeply unpleasant process.

In the midst of all that packing, a question has arisen: What do I do with my statues of the Slavic gods, and the items I used in ritual devotion to them? Even more specifically, what do I do with my things devoted to Baba Yaga?

For anyone who’s unfamiliar, I used to have an ongoing devotional relationship with the Slavic pantheon, as well as with Baba Yaga (whom I don’t really consider a deity, but who is nonetheless a significant figure in East Slavic folklore). It was a major part of my religious practice, until one day… It wasn’t. For a couple of reasons, that part of my practice started to wane.

Part of it was simply abut the gods themselves. Historical evidence about the Slavic gods is scant, and a lot of what I initially thought was known about them turned out to be fakelore; I found it exhausting to try to worship gods about whom I knew practically nothing. Moreover, while I certainly don’t believe that the worship of these gods is tied to ethnicity in any way, I do think that language, culture, and geography play a role in worshipping them. That role is complicated and I don’t pretend to fully understand it, but I have a sense that the gods (all gods, not just the Slavic ones) are intimately tied up with a sense of place. They are connected to a particular history in a particular part of the world, along with the language and customs that developed over the course of that history.

Things like language and customs are potentially accessible to anyone, but as someone who lives on the North American continent, doesn’t speak a Slavic language beyond a smattering of Serbian words, and has only the loosest familiarity with Serbian customs passed on by great-grandparents who were intent on integrating into American society, I always felt like a bit of a stranger trying to worship Slavic gods. I was (and am) fascinated by these gods, but I had a sense that without deeper linguistic, cultural, and historical familiarity, it wasn’t really my place to worship them.**

Another part of it was about not finding a sense of community with other devotees. I didn’t know anyone IRL who was doing something similar, and I never connected well with the people I found online. (That’s not a reflection on the quality of those people, nor, I hope, of myself; I just didn’t really make any friends in Slavic polytheist spaces, as opposed to other corners of the internet where I’ve made many.) Moreover, some corners of the Slavic polytheist community are rampant with nationalism, white supremacists, racism, homophobia, and general right-wing populist politicking that sets off all my alarm bells. While that doesn’t define the whole of the community, it’s always something I was on guard against, and that was wearying.

And then, finally, there was the Wicca. I was more and more coming to a point where I felt like my commitment to Gardnerian Wicca wasn’t leaving me much energy for the worship of other gods. That’s not something universal about Wicca; lots of Wiccans can and do have relationships with other deities outside of a Wiccan context. But I found that for myself, I was increasingly only interested in Wicca. I wanted to explore Wicca in greater depth and didn’t want to be maintaining parallel religious practices alongside it. So my Slavic practice got put on the back burner, and eventually it was taken off the stove altogether.

Setting down the Slavic practice was weird and kind of hard for me. I wasn’t getting out of it what I initially had (and I doubt the gods were getting much out of it either, or else I’d have received some indication), but it’s hard to say “This was meaningful to me for a time, but that time is over.” If I’m being perfectly honest, doing that makes me feel like a dilettante. Even though there are other things I’m deeply committed to, I feel silly for having been invested in something for a while and then moved in another direction.***

As these things were coming to a close, I really didn’t want to be done with that aspect of my religious life. I received communication from Baba Yaga, in that weird way Pagans do that is impossible to explain to anyone outside of our community without sounding absolutely disconnected from reality, and this is (part of) what she said to me:

I came to you because your father was fated to die. I will return to you when it is time for you to know death again. But I live across thrice-nine lands in the thrice-tenth kingdom, far from the lives of men. I am not suited for everyday worship. I will be back, but it is time to say goodbye for now.

And that was the end of it. That was permission for me to stop my devotional practice, with a promise that the practice might be rekindled at some point in the future. Except, well, I think it was a lie.

This is where we come back to my current moving situation and packing up all my stuff. In the process of packing, as I discard or rehome the things I don’t want to take with me, I’ve had to ask myself: Am I really going to use all of this again? Am I really going to pick this practice back up? Is it worth it to pack up all this ritual paraphernalia with me to my next home, on the vague promise that I might come back to it at some point in the future? As I was mulling over these questions, I decided to do a Tarot reading.

I don’t want to get too much into the weeds with interpreting this spread, but the long and short of it is that the answer to all of those questions is no. Baba Yaga is the Queen of Swords in the past, looking off to the left and away from everything else. Up in the future, I have the Moon (i.e. Wicca) underlying strong community bonds and new actions that move me forward. In short, wherever I’m going, Baba Yaga isn’t coming with me, and it’s unlikely that I’ll rekindle my connection to her (or the rest of the Slavic polytheist practice that was once so important to me) any time in the foreseeable future.

And honestly, I’m not surprised. I haven’t touched those practices in over a year at this point, and I don’t miss them. They were really valuable to me for a period of time, and I don’t in any way regret the time and energy I invested in them, but I don’t feel like my life now is any worse for having left them behind. As I continue to plumb the depths that Wicca has to offer me, I feel satisfied and fulfilled; I don’t have religious needs that are going unmet, and I don’t particularly want to spend time on a non-Wiccan religious practice. There’s something bittersweet about moving on—as there always is—but I know deep down that it’s right.

So why did Baba Yaga say she’d be back?

Honestly, I think it was just to get rid of me. She is not famous for being a particularly honest figure, and is known to lie frequently if people are inconveniencing her. At the time, I had already received a couple of pretty strong indications that it was time for that relationship to end, and I’d chosen to ignore them, doubling down on my devotional practice. I don’t put it past Baba Yaga to say “Get out of here and come back later” knowing full well that I wouldn’t be back later, just so that I would get out of her hair and stop bothering her. (Honestly, it’s much kinder than what she usually does when people annoy her, which is to eat them.)

And who knows? Maybe she really will be back. Never say never. But if so, I think it will be a long, long time before I see her again, and it’s not worth me holding onto her things in the hopes she’ll be back. So as I continue my packing adventure, I won’t be taking any of her stuff with me.

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*The list of things I hate most in the world is roughly: 1. Genocide; 2. Packing; 3. Unpunctuality; 4. New Jersey.

**This was further complicated by the general political question of pan-Slavicism that immediately arises upon entering into Slavic polytheist spaces. Although there is overlap between, say, Russian and Serbian history and culture, the two are by no means the same, and there’s a weird act of erasure that comes with just lumping everything together as “Slavic”.

***And look, the unwillingness to try things and allow them to have value without being permanent probably says something not terribly flattering about me, but there it is.