MEETING THE
BABA JAGA ORACLE
A TRANSFORMATIVE JOURNEY THROUGH STORY MEDICINE AND SLAVIC MYTH
100% HUMAN-MADE WITH LOVE AND INDEPENDENTLY PUBLISHED
Venture deep into the birch forest to stand before the Baba Jaga, and answer her question: Are you here by choice or by chance?
Stories and folktales are at the heart of what it means to be human, and maybe today we need their medicine more than ever. Based in Slavic folklore, the Baba Jaga-Oracle deck explores the topic of transformation, and serves as a tool
to guide you through the different stages of change.
ORACLE CARDS
The deck contains 40 cards (size: 89x127mm) and comes with a 70+ pages booklet. It can be used as a divination tool to receive guidance and to build relationships with the featured deities from European cultures.
HUMAN MADE
The Baba Jaga Oracle is 100% human made. All artworks, texts, and designs, as well as all marketing materials were dreamed up by human imagination and created by human hands. No generative AI was used in the making of this deck. I proudly run a female owned 100% human-made independent business.
GUIDEBOOK
The 192 pages art book contains carefully researched information about every goddess, ideas and inspiration on how to connect with her, as well as card spreads and more ideas on how to work with the cards.
THE BABA JAGA ORACLE IS AVAILABLE EXCLUSIVELY ON KICKSTARTER.
Baba Jaga is the great witch of Slavic folklore. Since the eighteenth century, she has appeared in hundreds of Russian and Eastern European tales. To this day, she is one of folklore’s most popular characters, yet she remains enigmatic and ambivalent, a mysterious figure whose source is unknown. She may be a single entity, a type of local spirit, an archetype, or everything all at once. Baba Jaga has a multitude of meanings unique to every individual storyteller and tale-listener.
In this deck, I use the term “Slavic” for better word flow. However, it is important to remember that there is no single unified “Slavic culture”. The word “Slavic” describes a large body of distinct ethnic groups and nationalities in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe who share ancestral roots, historical ties, and closely related languages.
Slavic mythology is a broad and complex subject. I am not a scholar, and I don’t claim to be an expert on Baba Jaga-folklore in any way. While I try to base all of my work in academic research, the goal of this oracle deck is not to create an over-intellectualised summary of scholarly writings, but an artistic interpretation of the character of Baba Jaga.
At its core, the Baba Jaga Oracle is a spirit deck developed through my personal work with her. Rooted in folktales and scholarly sources, it is ultimately inspired by how I experience Baba Jaga in my practice. I invite you to take what resonates, and leave what does not.
The Baba Jaga survived through centuries in folk tales - sometimes aiding the heroes, sometimes hindering them, but always facilitating change. She may be a single entity, a type of local spirit, an archetype, or everything at once. The Baba Jaga can not be defined.
The Baba Jaga-Oracle contains 40 cards with hand-drawn artworks and a guidebook with divination messages rooted in scholarly sources. The Baba Jaga Oracle is 100% human-made with lots of love and care. All artworks and texts are dreamed up by human imagination and created by human hands. No generative A.I. was used in the making (and in the marketing) of this deck.
THE DECK
Within this deck, you'll find 40 oracle cards plus an extensive guidebook containing divination messages, keywords and journal prompts.
The deck will be printed on 350gsm card stock. The cards measure 70×120mm (3.5"x5"), and they'll be housed in a tuck box with matte lamination on the outside. A magnetic closure-box is a possible update to the packaging that may be possible through a successful crowdfunding campaign.
The deck is suitable for beginners and advanced readers alike. There are multiple ideas and suggestions on how to work with the cards included in the guidebook.
To make the deck inclusive, its language is gender neutral. Mental health is an important topic for me. To ensure that the texts in the guidebook and the companion book are safe to use, all of them have been revised in cooperation with a mental health professional.
Here is an overview of all of the cards you will encounter in this deck:
THE GUIDEBOOK
The companion book is both a standalone publication and an extension to the cards that contains a plethora of information about the goddesses and spirits of the deck, as well as ideas and inspiration on how to build lasting relationships with them.
The included activities are designed as diverse as possible to allow people of different ability and health-backgrounds to interact with the deck in positive and reaffirming ways.
It is a 192 pages full color-art book with 40+ illustrations printed on 135gsm high quality paper bound in a 300gsm soft cover with soft touch lamination finish.
The companion book contains one chapter for each goddess and spirit of the deck. Every chapter includes a biography text based on scholarly sources, the divination messages for each card, and three practical ideas on how to connect with deity through ritual or other practice.
Online resources and a full bibliography are also exclusive to the companion book. Furthermore, I contains six card spreads I designed for different ways to work with the oracle cards on their own, or in combination with a tarot deck of your choice.
FAQs
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The deck will be available through a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. The campaign starts on May 1, 2024 and will run for 30 days. During this time period you can pre-order the deck.
If the Kickstarter doesn’t get funded, the deck will not go into print.
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The recommended option to get the full experience as intended by the author is to buy the combined set of deck plus companion book. However, it is of course not necessary to buy the companion book in addition to the deck to have a usable product. The deck comes with its own guidebook (“little white booklet”) that contains divination messages and journal prompts for all cards.
Even though I would have preferred to publish the oracle deck and the companion book as a single merged product (a big box for the cards and a big guidebook containing all of the information) this option is financially impossible when trying to keep the end product(s) reasonably priced for the customer.
When asking my audience for feedback about the product concept, I learned that a lot of my customers don’t prefer big sized deck boxes for utility and storage reasons. A great number of people still wanted to buy a large guidebook though, so the decision to offer both a small packaged card deck and an optional big art book was made. One possible scenario to use both products is to take the deck with the small-sized guidebook on the road for quick readings, and to use the companion book for deeper workings in the home environment. -
Making art of deities is a deeply spiritual practice for me that I experience not only as a technical drawing process but as ritualistic work.
There are countless interesting deities in cultures all around the world. However, as a woman of European descent, I feel like I can not connect to all of them on a deep enough level to represent them in a way that would do them justice. For this reason, I decided to limit this deck to European goddesses.
Even though the deck is composed solely of European deities, this does by no means imply that one has to be of European descent to use it. Diversity is one of paganism's strong suits, and it is my sincere belief that everyone who feels called to a certain deity has the right to connect with them in their own way – regardless of gender, ethnicity, or social background. The gifts of the goddesses are for everyone. -
It is an impossible task to create a deck that includes every pagan goddess and satisfies every person's taste. The selection of goddesses in this deck was curated carefully with regards to available source material, the archetype system of the deck, and diversity in the context of this oracle.
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No AI (“Artificial Intelligence”) was used in the creation of this deck. All illustrations, texts, layouts, and designs are created by me (Johanna Polle). The artwork was drawn by hand using an Apple-pencil and an iPad Pro. The layouting of the packaging, the cards, the book, and the booklet was done in Adobe Photoshop and Scribus. All photos used in the marketing material are taken by me, the author photo was taken by @kvitbjorn on Instagram.
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The content of the deck, especially the companion book, is based on a healthy mix of sources. The companion book contains a dedicated chapter for every goddess of the deck. Each chapter includes a short introduction about the deity, which is based on primary sources, scholarly works, and historical records.
The personal messages (also included in the guidebook), as well as the selected correspondences and connection ideas, are anchored in source material (if possible), but are mostly based on the author’s, or other contemporary practitioner's, personal interpretations and experiences. All of the sources are listed in the bibliography in the companion book.
BEHIND THE SCENES-VIDEOS
PROTOTYPES
In this video I talk about the press release of my deck, the first reviews, and the Kickstarter. I also do a detailed show and tell of the prototypes of both the deck and the companion book.
BOOK TEST PRINTS
The companion book-test prints are here! In this video I order the first batch of books, show you more of the book’s content, and we take a look at the first print test pages together.
NEWS & STRUGGLES
January 2024 video-update in which I talk about the current state of the oracle deck, my kickstarter plans, struggles, and product concepts.
