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Appropriation 2
19 December 2021 14:30One thing that's often missed in conversations about appropriation is:
pagans and new age types are people who are uncommonly interested in religion.
The general read on appropriative dynamics is something like, dominant cultures making up for the shallowness of their hollowed-out lives seeking for substitutes in marginalised cultures (and ruining them in the process); and, to be clear, this is absolutely true to an extent; certain absences under neoliberal living: community, sensation, permanence, tradition; all of them reasonable things to want, but we need to be mindful of our own racial power in how we go about trying to find or rediscover them.
(And there's something here too about the kinds of alienated outsiders drawn to neo-paganism; people who, indeed, are not beneficiaries under contemporary capitalism, do not feel safe and at home in dominant Christian value systems and spiritual practices, and so on. People intermittently sneer at the idea that pagans are a "marginalised group"; but they are, in my experience, overwhelmingly those who *are* marginalised in other ways - albeit, quite rarely for their religious expression)
The early neo-pagan greats were doing their process of cultural borrowing co-temporaneously with colonialism; Gardener being really into eastern ceremonial knives, Crowley's interest in yoga, or the Golden Dawn's Egyptian aesthetic marrying up with the late Victorian fascination with archeological finds in Egypt; and these choices are indivisible with dynamics of exotic fascination with the Mystical Orient, and certain appealing stereotypes which nevertheless contribute to a particular kind of racist expression (cultures/people/practices that are more ancient, more sinister, more mystic...plus abroad as a place that is "outside of society", a trope often found in early gay writing and around early "feminist" figures - who found that going to India or Egypt gave them certain freedoms they could not find in society at home)
But there's another way of looking at all this: pagans and new age types are just uncommonly interested in other religions. People who are quite fired up by reading an academic text on ancient Egyptian religion, or thinking about how Christian monotheism differs from the God in Islam or Judaism, or trying out pathways to the divine created in yoga or ritual possession; being the sorts of people who know and learn a lot about different mythic systems, and find expressions of religiosity interesting and beautiful.
These thoughts were brought on by my anxiety at having mentioned vodou in a conversation about the spiritual cosmology of Middle Earth.
Someone on twitter was asking: are the Valar gods or angels? I view them as saints, specifically because of my reading around vodou (which I must stress, is passionate but limited due to the difficulty of finding high quality sources). Vodou is monotheistic, with a single Bondye - "good God" - who is *somewhat* analogous to God within Catholicism, or at least syncretised to him. But the key feature of Bondye that I find so compelling, and that I find parallels with Illuvitar, is that he is somewhat absent - worthy of respect and reverence, but he isn't going to step in and be present. For that, there are the lwa, who are something like ancestral spirits syncretised onto Christian saints, taking on a similar role to a pantheon, but are in no sense gods. I find that framework the best living faith to understand the Valar through; I don't actually think the Valar have much in common with the lwa besides that, but the combination of an "absent great god" + "a pantheon of non-god intermidiaries" is really striking.
Anyway, having written that I spent 48 hours paralysed in terror that someone was going to yell at me, because social justice dynamics have warped the soul.
I don't really know how to square these things together, and perhaps that's ok - not all problems are solveable, and especially those as knotty as centuries of global colonialism. Perhaps observation of dynamics is enough; at least, enough for a throwaway Dreamwidth post.
There is a middle pathway here; because ignorance of other cultures spiritual practices and norms is *also* a form of cultural domination. My fear is that much-needed conversations about cultural appropriation have swung too far, to a point that people are now discouraged from learning or looking at all. And I think that's a shame; exposure to ideas like "when I say 'God' I do not mean the same as when you say 'God'" can be both powerful and essential, sparking our curiosity and openness. People should be reading about other faiths and traditions as often as possible - and learning from them - and this doesn't have to lead to domination. We need to be thoughtful about publishing, leadership, influencers, social events: those are the sorts of 'powerful' and 'influential' positions within paganism that legitimise appropriation which, in turn, can have real effects; but it's good to have a diverse and multi-faith bookshelf, good to follow people doing things you do not, good to borrow here and there, and good to keep learning.
To try and reimagine the magpie tendency of the New Age as a source of strength: a call to become deeply informed about the other cultures around us, in the hope we can transform that learning into support and liberation.
pagans and new age types are people who are uncommonly interested in religion.
The general read on appropriative dynamics is something like, dominant cultures making up for the shallowness of their hollowed-out lives seeking for substitutes in marginalised cultures (and ruining them in the process); and, to be clear, this is absolutely true to an extent; certain absences under neoliberal living: community, sensation, permanence, tradition; all of them reasonable things to want, but we need to be mindful of our own racial power in how we go about trying to find or rediscover them.
(And there's something here too about the kinds of alienated outsiders drawn to neo-paganism; people who, indeed, are not beneficiaries under contemporary capitalism, do not feel safe and at home in dominant Christian value systems and spiritual practices, and so on. People intermittently sneer at the idea that pagans are a "marginalised group"; but they are, in my experience, overwhelmingly those who *are* marginalised in other ways - albeit, quite rarely for their religious expression)
The early neo-pagan greats were doing their process of cultural borrowing co-temporaneously with colonialism; Gardener being really into eastern ceremonial knives, Crowley's interest in yoga, or the Golden Dawn's Egyptian aesthetic marrying up with the late Victorian fascination with archeological finds in Egypt; and these choices are indivisible with dynamics of exotic fascination with the Mystical Orient, and certain appealing stereotypes which nevertheless contribute to a particular kind of racist expression (cultures/people/practices that are more ancient, more sinister, more mystic...plus abroad as a place that is "outside of society", a trope often found in early gay writing and around early "feminist" figures - who found that going to India or Egypt gave them certain freedoms they could not find in society at home)
But there's another way of looking at all this: pagans and new age types are just uncommonly interested in other religions. People who are quite fired up by reading an academic text on ancient Egyptian religion, or thinking about how Christian monotheism differs from the God in Islam or Judaism, or trying out pathways to the divine created in yoga or ritual possession; being the sorts of people who know and learn a lot about different mythic systems, and find expressions of religiosity interesting and beautiful.
These thoughts were brought on by my anxiety at having mentioned vodou in a conversation about the spiritual cosmology of Middle Earth.
Someone on twitter was asking: are the Valar gods or angels? I view them as saints, specifically because of my reading around vodou (which I must stress, is passionate but limited due to the difficulty of finding high quality sources). Vodou is monotheistic, with a single Bondye - "good God" - who is *somewhat* analogous to God within Catholicism, or at least syncretised to him. But the key feature of Bondye that I find so compelling, and that I find parallels with Illuvitar, is that he is somewhat absent - worthy of respect and reverence, but he isn't going to step in and be present. For that, there are the lwa, who are something like ancestral spirits syncretised onto Christian saints, taking on a similar role to a pantheon, but are in no sense gods. I find that framework the best living faith to understand the Valar through; I don't actually think the Valar have much in common with the lwa besides that, but the combination of an "absent great god" + "a pantheon of non-god intermidiaries" is really striking.
Anyway, having written that I spent 48 hours paralysed in terror that someone was going to yell at me, because social justice dynamics have warped the soul.
I don't really know how to square these things together, and perhaps that's ok - not all problems are solveable, and especially those as knotty as centuries of global colonialism. Perhaps observation of dynamics is enough; at least, enough for a throwaway Dreamwidth post.
There is a middle pathway here; because ignorance of other cultures spiritual practices and norms is *also* a form of cultural domination. My fear is that much-needed conversations about cultural appropriation have swung too far, to a point that people are now discouraged from learning or looking at all. And I think that's a shame; exposure to ideas like "when I say 'God' I do not mean the same as when you say 'God'" can be both powerful and essential, sparking our curiosity and openness. People should be reading about other faiths and traditions as often as possible - and learning from them - and this doesn't have to lead to domination. We need to be thoughtful about publishing, leadership, influencers, social events: those are the sorts of 'powerful' and 'influential' positions within paganism that legitimise appropriation which, in turn, can have real effects; but it's good to have a diverse and multi-faith bookshelf, good to follow people doing things you do not, good to borrow here and there, and good to keep learning.
To try and reimagine the magpie tendency of the New Age as a source of strength: a call to become deeply informed about the other cultures around us, in the hope we can transform that learning into support and liberation.
