(no subject)
22 April 2020 16:39![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
haptalaonAlso, god I am so freaked out by this racism horseshoe:
Here is a thing that is racist:
"The Jewish Tree of Life is, in fact, this neutral religious technology: we can take it out of its original context and use it for Western Ceremonial magic, no issue. Meditation and yoga are also a neutral, and have nothing to do with Buddhism and Hinduism: we can use those too. Everyone has an animal spirit guide, just like the Native Indians did. My guide is actually a Cherokee shaman. Here's my Wiccan altar to the Vodou gods."
The flaw here is appropriation - taking something from a culture you are not a part of, in a way that threatens the survival of the original culture; and in a way that decontextualises it, so that people are no longer bothering to understand how that practice functioned and what it meant to its originators. This isn't just about making people of colour feel better: it's so easy to misunderstand folklore by seeing it through our cultural lens, instead of understanding what is actually happening. And usually, when you see folklore from the perspective of its practicioners (to the best of your ability), it's bizzare and intriguing and challenging in a way that the plastic shamanism of the New Age can't match.
To combat this, I've spent a bunch of time developing a non-Tree-of-Life correspondence system. And it is a little odd to be using the tree of life, both in terms of...I've seen more than one Jewish person say they are weirded out by it, it's nonsensical to impose an occult/pagan purpose onto something from a wholly different tradition. And similarly, it seems a little nonsensical to me that I'd understand the ancient landscape of Britain through a tool developed on the other side of the planet - it never really works, it's always awkward, in part because the underlying logic of Abrahamic religions (which we've learnt to see as neutral and universal), are nothing of the sort. And concepts like "King of the gods, like Odin and Jupiter" does a disservice to both Odin and Jupiter, who are very different entities.
Still...I'm trying to write about this for my blog and it is absolutely a horseshoe towards...
This is a thing which is also racist:
"The Jewish Tree of Life is not a great fit for English folklore and English heritage and culture, because it's foreign and exotic, and not part of our ancient English traditions - traditions which I imagine to be exclusively white, racially and culturally pure. Jewish folklore cannot be part of English folklore because Jewish people are not English or part of our history. In fact, the best practices for English people are our natural and traditional ones"
...and that's another steaming pile of horsecrap.
But it turns out it is very, very difficult to articulate "people outside a culture shouldn't appropriate", without beginning to imply "people should stay within their own cultures". And the underlying politics of "If you're a white person living in England, you can't be an Indian Shaman" makes sense to me and matches my values, but its shadow brother is "...therefore, you should do proper English magic for English people" That's racist bullshit.
Buuut....it is the logical endpoint of appropriation discourse. If the rule of etiquette is that one must stay with one's own spiritual culture, then it's an awkward situation which sort of...bars white people from having a spirituality? You can't go and invade someone else's spiritual tradition - but embracing spiritual traditions which are local to you, and talking about it in those terms, feels really fashy. There's a reason why folk, folk horror & Norse paganism are jam packed with white supremacists. This is what I mean about a horseshoe: for every anti-racist campaigner on tumblr arguing why white people should not, for example, participate in voodoo, there's a white supemacist pagan nodding in agreement that it's best if the races don't mix.
IDK. I've got:
Still, in terms of what I'm writing and how I'm writing about it...it's unsettling me, because I don't want uncomfortable things to be read into my work. There is a heck of a lot of difference between a person of colour saying "it's wrong for white people to cherrypick our spirituality, because it only makes authentic, logical sense in the context of our full tradition", and a white person saying "it's better to use our native, local, traditional spirituality, because it's a more authentic, logical fit for the context of our full tradition". Even though they're saying the same thing, and looking at the same outcome. The gulf of power and potential meanings there is so huge; and I don't want to be misunderstood, or unwelcoming.
Here is a thing that is racist:
"The Jewish Tree of Life is, in fact, this neutral religious technology: we can take it out of its original context and use it for Western Ceremonial magic, no issue. Meditation and yoga are also a neutral, and have nothing to do with Buddhism and Hinduism: we can use those too. Everyone has an animal spirit guide, just like the Native Indians did. My guide is actually a Cherokee shaman. Here's my Wiccan altar to the Vodou gods."
The flaw here is appropriation - taking something from a culture you are not a part of, in a way that threatens the survival of the original culture; and in a way that decontextualises it, so that people are no longer bothering to understand how that practice functioned and what it meant to its originators. This isn't just about making people of colour feel better: it's so easy to misunderstand folklore by seeing it through our cultural lens, instead of understanding what is actually happening. And usually, when you see folklore from the perspective of its practicioners (to the best of your ability), it's bizzare and intriguing and challenging in a way that the plastic shamanism of the New Age can't match.
To combat this, I've spent a bunch of time developing a non-Tree-of-Life correspondence system. And it is a little odd to be using the tree of life, both in terms of...I've seen more than one Jewish person say they are weirded out by it, it's nonsensical to impose an occult/pagan purpose onto something from a wholly different tradition. And similarly, it seems a little nonsensical to me that I'd understand the ancient landscape of Britain through a tool developed on the other side of the planet - it never really works, it's always awkward, in part because the underlying logic of Abrahamic religions (which we've learnt to see as neutral and universal), are nothing of the sort. And concepts like "King of the gods, like Odin and Jupiter" does a disservice to both Odin and Jupiter, who are very different entities.
Still...I'm trying to write about this for my blog and it is absolutely a horseshoe towards...
This is a thing which is also racist:
"The Jewish Tree of Life is not a great fit for English folklore and English heritage and culture, because it's foreign and exotic, and not part of our ancient English traditions - traditions which I imagine to be exclusively white, racially and culturally pure. Jewish folklore cannot be part of English folklore because Jewish people are not English or part of our history. In fact, the best practices for English people are our natural and traditional ones"
...and that's another steaming pile of horsecrap.
But it turns out it is very, very difficult to articulate "people outside a culture shouldn't appropriate", without beginning to imply "people should stay within their own cultures". And the underlying politics of "If you're a white person living in England, you can't be an Indian Shaman" makes sense to me and matches my values, but its shadow brother is "...therefore, you should do proper English magic for English people" That's racist bullshit.
Buuut....it is the logical endpoint of appropriation discourse. If the rule of etiquette is that one must stay with one's own spiritual culture, then it's an awkward situation which sort of...bars white people from having a spirituality? You can't go and invade someone else's spiritual tradition - but embracing spiritual traditions which are local to you, and talking about it in those terms, feels really fashy. There's a reason why folk, folk horror & Norse paganism are jam packed with white supremacists. This is what I mean about a horseshoe: for every anti-racist campaigner on tumblr arguing why white people should not, for example, participate in voodoo, there's a white supemacist pagan nodding in agreement that it's best if the races don't mix.
IDK. I've got:
- a page explicitly affirming the diversity of both British history/culture/heritage, and people who are welcome to participate
- A page explicitly telling white supremacists they are not welcome.
- I'm going out of my way to find pagan-themed photos featuring people of colour (really difficult, by the way. I'm using a lot of stock images from nappy.co, which makes my book like a damned Jehovah's Witness advertisment)
- I've got a (very small) list of recommended reading, by/featuring marginalised groups, including people of colour
- I've made a commitment to periodically prune any of my path's online spaces to block white supremacists, something I've discovered is necessary in the folk horror fandom. As the "folk horror religion", I'm imagining we will also have this problem.
Still, in terms of what I'm writing and how I'm writing about it...it's unsettling me, because I don't want uncomfortable things to be read into my work. There is a heck of a lot of difference between a person of colour saying "it's wrong for white people to cherrypick our spirituality, because it only makes authentic, logical sense in the context of our full tradition", and a white person saying "it's better to use our native, local, traditional spirituality, because it's a more authentic, logical fit for the context of our full tradition". Even though they're saying the same thing, and looking at the same outcome. The gulf of power and potential meanings there is so huge; and I don't want to be misunderstood, or unwelcoming.
