#they appropriated a bunch of stuff so now pagans have to be careful with personal practices

[whiskeysorrows]

Another important note: a lot of the Nazi symbols are appropriated from Norse and Celtic runes and symbols, the way they took the swastika from Buddhism and Hinduism. The most common are: sowilo, othila, algiz, triskelion and Thor’s hammer.

There’s minor differences between the Nazi signs and the authentic ones, so do research! Some pagans might find a rune personal and want to get that tattooed without knowing the white supremacists twisted it.

Remember kids, Nazis don't deserve their kneecaps.

Also if any of these are incorrect pls lemme know

[rotationalsymmetry]

A brief history of Unitarian Universalism (casual, with swears, have not fact checked as such but I think it’s correct): In New England back before US independence, there was Calvinism -- you know, that predestination thing, you’re already going to go to heaven or hell, but you should be good anyways so people will think you’re going to heaven, or something like that. Then there wasn’t. Then there was Congregationalism. Which was a lot more chill, but still very “fuck Catholicism”. And around this time, deism was on the rise: the idea that maybe God created the universe, then fucked off, and hasn’t been actively involved with anything since. Then, some people who were actually reading the Bible, because you can’t look down on Catholicism unless you actually read the Bible, were like... wait, maybe Jesus isn’t all that. You know -- the Savior, the Son of God, one third of the Trinity, all that. Maybe he was just, like... a prophet, or some guy who said some interesting things. A teacher. And other congregationalists were like: uh, what, no, Jesus has to be all that. If you don’t think Jesus is all that, how can you even call yourself a Christian? And they decided they couldn’t really be around each other any more. So the first group, which was mostly in Boston, started calling themselves Unitarians (because they rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and instead believed in a one part God), and incidentally at some point also stopped calling themselves Christians because the other guys had a point, and the others called themselves the United Church of Christ (UCC.) Emerson and Thorough -- sorry, Thoreau -- were both Unitarians, as were John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and pretty much everyone else from Boston in early US history. (We like to claim Jefferson, because his beliefs were kindasorta similar to Unitarian beliefs at the time, but as I understand it he was never actually part of a Unitarian congregation.) (Btw: if you’re lgbtq+ and Christian, they’re a pretty friendly denomination. If you’re lgbtq+ and Christian and you think the UCC is too liberal (in the religious sense) or you want a majority-lgbtq+ congregation, consider MCC, which is otherwise unconnected to all this. If you’re not Christian and are lgbtq+ -- atheist/agnostic, or maybe something else if you’re down with worshipping with people that aren’t specifically your thing -- Unitarian Universalism tends to be pretty good. As in: we have a bunch of gay/lesbian ministers and other religious leaders, and a few transgender ones. (Knowledge of less mainstream lgbtq+ identities can vary a lot between congregations and generations -- the younger generations tend to be more aware than the gen x’ers.) I’ve been involved with Church of the Larger Fellowship for most of the past year, which did zoom worship before it got cool and serves people around the world, and people like me who live a mile from a UU brick and mortar congregation but still can’t get their disabled ass over there anyways. Anyways, CLF has more POC on the worship team than most UU congregations (the denomination does tend to run pretty white), is very social justice oriented even by UU standards, and is somewhat more cool about general weirdness than most congregations, which again for UU congregations is saying something.) Then, at some point (sadly, I’m significantly more familiar with the history of the first U than the second) there was this other protestant denomination in the South (as in, the US South) where people decided that God was too nice to send people to hell for all eternity, so they started calling themselves the Universalists, as in Universal Salvation. All dogs go to heaven. Well, time passed, each denomination evolved in its own way. (In particular, Unitarianism caught humanism pretty hard -- the joke was the Unitarians believe in one God at most.) In the -- ok, I’ll look this one up -- in 1961, there was a big old merger, creating Unitarian Universalism, and in the process, everyone got together and was all...wait, so what are our official beliefs about God and stuff? Should we even have official beliefs about God? Maybe we can unify around some ideas around how people should treat each other instead. So they did: they drafted a set of Principles (broad-strokes guidelines on how people should act -- peace is good, truth is good, people have value, stuff like that) and a set of Sources (where UU’s get their ideas about God and morality and so on from, starting with direct experience) and left everything else up to the individual. And then a little while later, the tree-huggers got a seventh Principle and a sixth Source added in -- respect for the environment and Earth-centered religions, respectively -- so now the joke is that UU’s believe in one God, more or less. Currently there’s a movement on to add an 8th Principal that explicitly names racial equality and fighting oppression as something we value, since while the current Principles mention justice and equality, they don’t specifically name race, and the people of color who have stuck with the predominantly white denomination figure Unitarian Universalism can and should be doing better on that front. Unitarian Universalism runs religiously liberal (ie, decentralized, individualistic, non-authoritarian, non-dogmatic, inclined to believe science over the Bible) and politically progressive. Unitarian Universalist congregations tend to be very politically active and concerned with social justice, mostly in a well-educated middle class kind of way: committees, Robert’s Rules of Order, donating to non-profits, Get Out the Vote, inviting in speakers and asking “questions” that aren’t really questions, forming partnerships with other congregations and community organizations, etc. Many UU congregations have put a Black Lives Matter sign out (and when necessary keep putting it out when it gets torn down or vandalized), shown up for the protests, opposed the weird immigration BS that’s been going on in the US recently, etc. In addition to more charity style work, like food pantries and homeless shelters.

Point is: yeah it’s got flaws (don’t even get me started on Unitarian Universalism’s flaws) but if you’re a social justice person and want to meet other social justice people who are doing things, Unitarian Universalism can be a good place to look for that. You get more done in groups.

You’re less likely to burn out, too. With marginalization, it’s complicated, right? Again, for LGBTQ+ people, it’s going to be better than most religious organizations. For people a little bit on the autism spectrum, you probably won’t be the only one. (If you’re unmistakeably autistic, people might be weird/ableist; it might depend on the congregation.) If you’re from a working class background or are currently kinda broke, you might run into some frustrations or feel like you don’t fit in; if you’re a poc or if you’re disabled (or your kid is) or you want a lot of personal support, you might struggle more -- this really might vary a lot, but at least the congregations I’m used to tend to assume congregants can mostly stand on their own feet, metaphorically speaking, and have some extra time/money/skills/whatever that can be directed out into the wider world. It can be a good place for pagans and Buddhists and other people who don’t want a church but are having trouble finding a church-like religious community where you can hang out with people on the same spiritual path. (Uh, for a while UU congregations were emphatically not churches and some officially still aren’t; others gave up and were all “eh, it looks like a church, whatever, we’re just a weird church.) Some congregations are more atheist-dominated than others -- many avoid Jesus language most of the time, some avoid God language most of the time (UU’s who believe in God tend to believe in God in a relatively abstract/metaphorical way), some I hear are pagan-heavy, others do use Christian language a lot more. In all honesty you don’t have to go to Sunday worship if you don’t want to, and really a lot of UU’s don’t; if you want to be heavily involved in the congregation but don’t want to go to Sunday worship and don’t want to deal with pressure to, one way out is to teach RE (religious education -- basically “Sunday school”) the RE curricula are amazing, just absolutely astounding, and if you’re teaching it you get a ton of leeway with adjusting anything you don’t like. (Which could happen -- a lot of this stuff was developed before the idea that cultural appropriation is a big problem became mainstream in social justice circles.) What adult worship is like has basically zero correlation (perhaps negative correlation) to what RE is like. (Which sucks for young adults coming of age in a UU congregation, like I said don’t get me started on UU’s flaws.) Finally: for people who care about sex positivity and sex ed, Unitarian Universalists (in partnership with UCC) developed Our Whole Lives, a sex ed curriculum that, well, it’s not abstinence based education. You wouldn’t expect sex ed coming from a religious org to be better than the sex ed in schools, would you? And yet. Comprehensive sex ed that acknowledges gay bi and trans people and that disabled people have sex too and teaches about birth control and masturbation and abuse and consent and boundaries and bullying and internet safety and abortion. It’s good stuff. The course aimed at teens is most popular of course, but there’s actually (age-appropriate) OWL curricula for all stages of life: young kids, adults, older adults, everyone. And it’s versatile enough to be taught in secular contexts (after school programs etc). Given the direction that unfortunately a lot of school districts in the US have been going in in terms of sex ed, it’s a really important program.

[mysecretforests]

Sephora “Witch Kits” Rant

TL;DR: It aches my heart to see a corporation selling this kit, but it’s also much more than that. They don’t see us as valid, and this “witch kit” proves it. Some of you all just don’t get it. I know I only recently started posting on this account again, but I just want to talk about the Sephora “starter witch kits.”

In addition to the blatant appropriation of culture in this kit, (that’s a whole essay in itself, and I’ll briefly touch on it later), I’m just really upset that I know these kits are likely being sold by people who don’t actually believe in witchcraft or paganism at all.

Like, I just know these CEO’s would look at a witch and/or a pagan and laugh in their face. They would call our religions fantasy and our gods false, just like Christianity did when they were wiping out and appropriating our practices (I say plural because they wiped out and appropriated many different cultures and religious practices) in favor of their god.

I just have this ache in my heart seeing this kit being sold. On one hand, I like that witchcraft may becoming more accepted and more mainstream, but on the other hand I feel like it’s not true. I feel like it’s coming back as an aesthetic, something to place on a shelf so you can show your friends how “cool and witchy” you are.

This is what this kit feels like to me. A “gimmick for the youth” to profit off of “witchy vibes.” You can’t just throw a bunch of stuff in a box that originates from several different cultures and expect me to believe you actually care about baby witches. The only thing you’ll get me to believe is that you think all these practices are a gimmick and something you can sell for your amusement or aesthetics.

“Oh but this happens all the time! It’s been happening for years!”

Yeah, well, that doesn’t make it right. I’ve also seen a lot of “It’s your practice, don’t let anyone shame you!” and I feel like most of the people who say this are the ones who don’t understand what it’s like to know that the religion and practices of your ancestors were mocked and their gods cast out. That your ancestors were burned, hanged, tortured, exiled, etc. That their practices and traditions were either wiped out completely or stolen and turned into “Christian traditions” to help more people convert to Christianity. Yeah, I hate gatekeeping, I’m all for people practicing and people reclaiming traditions they were either robbed of when their families came to America or when their ancestors converted (Newsflash, it wasn’t always voluntary), but some of you all just don’t get it. 

Also, before someone misunderstands, when I say “reclaim traditions you were robbed of” I’m not talking about appropriating another cultures’ traditions so that you can have some.  I’m talking about those of us who knew where we came from (or those who have a slight idea, I know a lot of Americans don’t know exactly where they came from as a lot of traditions tended to get beaten out if they weren’t culturally American or Christian [*cough* or white] enough) and are trying to reclaim the traditions of their ancestors the best they can. This doesn’t mean that you should be taking that 1/32nd of Cherokee your family claims to have and take the parts of those Native traditions you like and run with them. I’ll use myself as an example. Yes, my father’s family claims to have Native American blood too, but I wasn’t raised in it. I know no one of Native decent. I wasn’t raised in their traditions, I did not come from that life. It wouldn’t be right for me to just go and cherry pick what I thought looked cool and say I believed in it while I ignore major parts of the traditions and practices and history. Would it be different if I sought out possible relatives and requested to learn more about the culture and traditions? Perhaps, but I can’t just take from that of which I don’t understand.

Where I do pull my practices from, however, comes from my European ancestry. My practice is made up of mainly Celtic and Norse mythology (yes, they are different) because I was raised with more of an understanding of those traditions, even though my family was soft-practicing Christian.

Now, growing up I knew I had never believed what my family believed, but it wasn’t until I got older that I realized that my beliefs had always aligned more with Pagan beliefs and practices. It also wasn’t until I started to study more about these practices and beliefs that I started to get angry. As I studied I found that the traditions of my ancestors were either appropriated and transformed into Christian traditions or cast out completely, and their gods were literally demonized. They were forced to convert and give up their beliefs, or they died. Literally almost everything my family had practiced as “Christian” was a bastardized form of various traditions from the religions I was now practicing and becoming closer to, stolen and warped to fit a Christian god. Much of their imagery and practices are now synonymous with fantasy and regarded as nothing more than fairy tale or superstition.

I live in an area where Paganism is seen as a joke or evil. Often both. If you claim to be Pagan, you will either be laughed at straight in your face, seen as crazy, or treated horribly out of fear. Usually a combination of the three. So obviously I’m closeted. I know that when I have children, I will want to teach them my beliefs and practice traditions, to give them a culture. But I also fear what will happen to them if I do, as society is going to tell them they are wrong, and that their “Pagan Mother” is going to hell. And honestly it breaks my heart knowing I might have to choose between not teaching them to keep them safe, or teaching them and knowing that it might result in their harm if the wrong person catches wind. (You might say “Just move!” but I fear it won’t be an option.) I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you take anything away from this, let it be this: If I, a white person who has grown up with my white-privilege stapled to my forehead, can be angry about their ancestor’s traditions and beliefs being cast out and feel robbed of their culture, and can be afraid of the repercussions of being open about being Pagan, imagine what it’s like for a POC. Imagine what it’s like for a Native American, who’s ancestors were murdered in mass genocide when European settlers came, having to watch as symbols of their traditions are sold for aesthetics or “witchy vibes.”

Or someone of Mexican decent who constantly get’s told they don’t belong here (i.e: “Build the wall!”, “Go back to Mexico!”) even though it was actually USA’s border that crossed them, and not the other way around. Every Halloween they have to see white witches (and who are we kidding, it’s not just the witches) setting up sugar skulls on their altars and painting their face for Day of the Dead without any knowledge of what an ofrenda is or that the holiday is actually on Nov 1 & 2. But hey, it looks cool, right?

Or a black person who’s ancestors were literally ripped from their home and cultures and forced into slavery. Now several generations down the line they don’t know where their ancestors actually came from other than “Africa” and that many if not all of their traditions were beaten out generations ago, only to now see that African voodoo and hoodoo practices are now suddenly “cool” and being sold as home decor or practiced by white witches who think it’s neat. It’s more than just the fact that a corporation will be profiting off our cultures, it’s the fact that they’re doing it because they don’t see us as valid. We’re nothing more than a fairytale, people living out a fantasy even though our gods came before, and these kits prove they see our practices as nothing more than a cheap trick or a gimmick, something to be massed produced and profited from.

It’s insulting.

[keshetchai]

Question, do you have any thoughts on demonolatry? It is a path I am seriously considering and slowly researching. I'm still working my way through the book The Devil and the Jews, but what I've read so far plus what I've been coming across in my demonolatry research (Hebrew is a source language for many texts) plus still being very ignorant of Jewish traditions over all has me cautious. I feel comfortable in demonolatry but don't want to trespass/appropriate something I have no right to.

Oh goodness, I have….different takes on my gut reaction/answers. I’ll divide them into mini-answers!

Answer #1: [The most generalist answer about cultural appropriation]

If the source language for a variety of texts in something is in a language you don’t understand, and isn’t a heritage language for you, then chances are high it would be appropriative for you to adopt this kind of practice. This might not always be a hard and fast rule, but like…it’s a pretty sure bet in this case that a bunch of Gentiles who made a practice using misinterpreted and perverted Hebrew texts for their own needs and then continued on for several decades or centuries is just going to get you an end result of cultural appropriation/cultural perversion.

Answer #2: [The issue of Jewish appropriation & western Orientalism]

I honestly don’t know much about demonolatry, but from what I can tell it’s another spin on western occultism which was and is, at its core, appropriative of Judaism as an “exotic” flavor to be added as Gentiles saw fit. The whole “seal of Solomon” thing being appropriation by occultists is part and parcel with this kind of stuff, and it’s really really weirdly orientalist. The use of a holy language in Judaism (Hebrew) for this stuff is just….really trying to make it more “magic” seeming.

I mean some of these occult texts are what, 1500-1600’s? When you realize Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, and the inquisition continued to try and make sure that converso Jews didn’t revert to their heritage faith – I mean it’s just more of the same obsession with perceived connection between non-Christian (read: Jewish and Muslim) ties to demons and devil worship/working.

But then there’s later stuff, from what I can tell it’s like a chunk of stuff 1500-1600 and then again after the 1700’s a period 1800 - Today (at least the bulk of this stuff is before or after the Enlightenment period in Western Europe) and…. Surprise surprise, a bunch of white guys being obsessed with the magical secret demon rituals of the “exotic orient” is undeniably connected to gross European colonial/imperialist attitudes. Another generalization: stuff written by dead white guys about the “orient” or “near eastern” practices in the occult arts are full of shit.

Thing is – fear of cultural appropriation aside – is any of this NOT fully enmeshed in orientalist imperialist western attitudes? And is any of it going to hold up to any kind of academic-historical-archaeological scrutiny?

Answer #3: [The issue of “All religions have stuff we can’t prove, but some religions have more complete mishmash based on conflated facts and made up stuff that ignores academic study on the originating culture(s) than others.” AKA the Academics of Appropriation]

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh. If the PDF I found on my google search of the term is a real source on the demonolatry issue, then it just lumps a gazillion different devils/Angels/spirits/goddesses/gods/whatever that are all occurring over the span of what is in reality probably 2-3,000 years. They have nothing to do with each other in many cases! Like a “devil” that has an Arabic name naturally occurs much later in time than a really early babylonian type language spirit because of the timeline of when those languages began and developed. I’m also probably the wrong person to ask - the very mention of “Lucifer’ makes my eyes want to roll out of my head because anyone who ascribes that to a demonic-figure misunderstood that it was a criticism of a Babylonian King, and had zero to do with any kind of supernatural figure.

I don’t particularly know much about Mesopotamian/Fertile Crescent/Near Eastern/Levantine paganism but I do know an archaeological/art history scholar who does study the prehistoric/ancient near east and I just deeply truly feel like the emphasis on near eastern paganism is mostly about 19th century Orientalism. I’m going to guess that a majority of the stuff discussed by demonolatry is riddled with factual errors, misunderstandings, and conflations that come out of ignorance of the region, time periods, and religious practices that took place.

I try to be respectful of the fact that different people find solace in different kinds of religions, but I won’t lie - I found myself deeply dissatisfied with the whiteness, appropriation, and bad scholarship I found across pretty much all modern pagan variants some time ago. Like it’s not just not cohesive/disorganized, it also just…doesn’t have any grounding in the actual historical reality of these beings/spirits in the faith origins any of them come from? I find most people in paganism/neo paganism are really interested in only very specific texts. Like they’ll read someone’s (European) grimoire from the 1600’s but won’t pour over Sumerian archaeological digs and academic papers on Hittite worship - because the point is not really these ancient/prehistoric paganisms but the *idea* of them - the orientalist *concept* of the ancient near east. like why does everyone talk about the meaning of the color of the candle you use for an ancient (whoever) entity when candles….hadn’t even been invented yet? I’m pretty sure that spirit doesn’t care because wax/dipped (dyed & COLORED) candles weren’t a Thing Then. You know? the rituals mentioning pillar candles for something that was worshipped in like 3000 BCE just isn’t based in any actual practice of the time because they didn’t have that then. It’s a tiny detail, but you could expand that to almost anything you wanted.

Maybe that’s harsh of me? But like personally I deeply dislike this kind of stuff because I find it just as intellectually dishonest as many organized faiths can be, except these people tend to publicly emphasize their ancient spirituality/faith predates “xyz”. But if you can avoid Hebrew entirely, avoid Jewish-Hebraic entities AND Islamic AND Zoroastrian entities and are just focusing on like….worship of things from ancient religions which just don’t exist anymore? I mean, I guess? Like just don’t….use anything that at all uses or borrows from Hebrew/Judaism/Tanach (or the Christian Bible). That might help avoid Jewish appropriation but won’t get rid of the orientalist lens issue.

Anyways….

Last Answer: [The: “I have a Mom of Color” aka “the comedic kinda” answer]

NOPE NOPE NO NAH NU UH sure appropriation is bad but do you know what is ALSO BAD????? Inviting spirits into your life that have their own motives and powers and minds!!!!! NOPE.

Why would any spirit deign to work with your ass for free? THEY WOULDN’T! What makes u think they’re gonna let you set the price for their services? THEY WON’T! You also can’t work with someone else’s spirits, you have to work with your own!

Idk man I was forbidden from playing at seances as a child, my momma literally told me to never summon anything because you don’t know how powerful it is and whether or not it wants to hurt you I compulsively throw spilled salt over my shoulder to blind any devils behind me, I have a hand of hamsa amulet by my door, I grow sage at my windowsill, I have literally been trained my whole lil Mexican life to avoid the devil even though my mom explicitly does not believe in hell or an actual literal devil.

Honest we don’t believe in the devil but JUST IN CASE…..

So uh tl;dr:

1.) yes. It’s got appropriative elements 2.) and Orientalism/racism 3.) also I don’t even know if any of the sources I found actually are true of the origins of these entities in any historical or academic sense which is a large part of why I think it’s rooted in Orientalism/fetishizing of the near east 4.). I’m like ethically (ethnically?) obligated to tell you demons are Bad News and My Momma Says I Have to Go if Someone Uses so much as a Oujia Board, Right Now, Immediately, She is Calling Me for Dinner Probably. (I mean I can’t stop you and have met satanists/lucifer worshippers and wasn’t scared of them personally, and I don’t even believe in “The Devil,” but also I ain’t white.)

Thanks for asking though! Sorry if I seem….idk unfair? I think these criticisms I’ve made can be applied to a LOT of things, which is why I apply them also to any modern paganism strain.