Wytchraven. And if you are in, or from, Poland you need look no further than the Black Madonna of Częstochowa through which the immanence of the divine is experienced, and everything that She means to those who pray to her; and you need not take the political cult of Rome's imperialist state religion as morally or spiritually binding. Catholicism has never been monolithic anyway. In fact, the whole distinction between mainstream catholic and folk catholic is a political fantasy invented by the Curia (the administrative branch of the church) and the theologians, because academia always follows the party-line. Truly, it is straight-up polemics and not living faith. So, I am going to say this as a witch that happens to have been born Catholic, and you can take it from there.
"Folk Catholic" is as much about the language you speak as it is anything else. It is about "god" everywhere; about your own identity as a person reflected back to you in stories passed down around kitchen tables for countless generations. It is about honoring folk traditions and customs, and spirits; about the rosary and the saints. It is about roadside shrines and old forests and graveyards and the struggle for survival as a people and a nation. It is all about songs and about all of the things in your heart that that you could never explain to someone that was not rooted in the ground where your ancestors lie buried. And that is how you show up for God, with a spell in your pocket that could pass for a rosary, or perhaps not. That is up to you. So, follow what holds meaning to you, what is beautiful, what is relational and embodied and true. That is all any god could ask and then some.
