So someone linked my old post on cultural appropriation in Kemeticism and their conclusions are insulting. It’s obvious the person quoting me did not understand anything I was saying in my post. Honestly, I could rip their entire post to shreds (here it is, if you want to see the travesty).
They linked my post like this:
I read an article produced by a black pagan woman in which she was unhappy with the perception of a whitewashed Pagan culture and was seeking to express her views on the topic as she was a part of the real Pagan community not that of the aesthetic and fake Tumblr witch community.
This was NOT the point of my post. Not even close. The Earth is closer to the Andromeda galaxy than this person’s conclusion was to the actual point of my post. I would reach the edge of the visible universe before this person’s interpretation of my post came close to the actual point of my post. The point is, don’t erase the Pagans of Color from Kemeticism, and cultural appropriation is not really a thing in Kemeticism (though RACISM and whitewashing absolutely are things and should be criticized and rooted out, Egyptians were still not White, even if they weren’t necessarily African).
I’m part of the Tumblr pagan and witch community. That is literally my community, I don’t interact with other communities. Even my pagan friends on Facebook are part of my Tumblr community. I was making zero comments about Tumblr being “fake” and “aesthetic”, or that I was somehow part of the “real” pagan community.
Tumblr has it’s problems, but all communities do. To reduce my post to that, to petty elitism and snobbish refusal to acknowledge Tumblr’s validity as a community, is infuriating. Nevermind that it totally erases what I was saying.
Furthermore, the pagan community is not uniform. Neither is witchcraft. It is not one culture, or one religion. From the very first sentence Tasmin is outright, completely and blatantly Wrong. They don’t know what they’re talking about, at all, especially not about how or why pagans of color and non Christians (because not every non-Christian religion identifies as pagan) talk about cultural appropriation. Their post is full of shallow, poorly thought out statements and conclusions, based on hearsay and myths.
I’m gonna pull it apart, because I’m that mad that they tried to use me as a backdrop to their fallacious reasoning.
It is a common perception that the pagan and witch community is just a trend or is predominantly a white community. This is not the case, the two people I know personally that are pagan are not practicing that religion as a means to be accepted by society, they’re practicing that religion because just like Christians and Muslims, it is their religion – something they believe in.
Paganism has been a thing for decades. For longer than I’ve been alive, for longer than my parents have been alive. It is predominantly white depending on how you categorize things. See, every community has the right to self-definition. White people like to categorize Hinduism as “pagan”, along with Voudou, and the thousands of indigenous and tribal religions and spiritual systems of non white cultures around the world. Some folks even call Judaism pagan. If you asked the actual people those religions belong to, they wouldn’t categorize themselves as Pagan, because it’s an insult. White Christians used it, still do, as an insult. White pagans reclaim it, but like, paganism is “so white” because, at least in part, a lot of non-Christian religions do not want to be under that umbrella. So, it covers mostly European non-Christian religions.
Witchcraft is not a practice that is strictly pagan. There are Christian witches, atheist witches, and again, paganism is not a single religion or culture. You don’t have to be a witch to be a pagan and you don’t have to be a pagan to be a witch. It is an umbrella term that covers multiple religions (and those religions have denominations and sects, just like Christianity)!
In terms of Discrimination Pagans have never really had an easy time. with the fact that even when we go back as far as the 16th century, just being believed to having been a witch would have had a woman burnt at the stake. While the modern day is by all means nothing like that of the 16th Century, pagans and witches are still discriminated against and believed to be members of cults. Despite them not having hurt anyone. Yet those practicing other faiths take their beliefs to the extremes and there have been multiple cases of these extremists hurting others. In Pagan culture one of the main teachings is that of “An it harm none, do what ye will” which simply means, do what you will, as long as you harm no one in the process.
Witchcraft fears didn’t have anything to do with paganism. It had to do with the devil, with Satan. Witch fears were firmly in a Christian context. Tasmin also has zero concrete backup to these claims. Further, there are extremists in paganism too, and they have hurt people. As an example, neonazi sects of Asatru and Hellenism have and do attack minorities, be it racial, orientation, disability, or misogyny based, etc. Lobbying against equal rights is also doing harm, not only hate crimes and harassment.
Again, there is no grand unifying Pagan culture, and “An it harm none, do what ye will” is an extremely misunderstood and misquoted tenet of Wicca. Wicca is a specific religious tradition that falls under the umbrella of Paganism, but it is not all of paganism and it’s tenets are not taught or adhered to by every pagan everywhere.
Upon doing research for this topic I found an interesting case study. That of the West Memphis Three In which three children were reported missing and three teenagers were persecuted for allegedly murdering the children. The bodies were found mutilated, naked and tied up by their shoelaces near a ditch. The three teenagers were jailed for “committing a Satanic murder” due to some police working the case believing there were “cult-like and satanic overtones to the murders” and one of the teenagers was believed to have had an interest in occultism. The boys all received different sentences and after 18 years in jail they were released when new evidence eventually came to be found.
This bit gives zero support to what Tasmin is trying to convey. Which, I’ll be honest, it’s difficult to decide what they’re trying to say anyway, but this case had little to do with paganism. It was about Satanic panic in the 80s. Which, again, has little to do with paganism and was about Christianity.
My view is if the referenced cultures practice is marketed by a major company, many people will practice it if it becomes enough of a societal normality. Such as box braids or cornrows being something of black culture. Understandably there is a difference between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation.
Cultural appreciation being that of someone who takes time to look into another persons culture because they appreciate and are interested in it then embracing the culture respectfully. For example; enjoying Chinese food but knowing and appreciating it is from that culture.
Cultural appropriation being when elements of one culture are incorporated into another and then not giving credit to the culture it originally derived from. For example; Selfridges shopin London receiving backlash for their Braid Bar ad, as it only contained white girls with cornrows. This was an issue due to cornrows being a part of black culture and the shop “whitewashing” and making a trend of what they should not have.
Another example of cultural appropriation would be that of an Ad by Tory Burch in which 3 white models are in a car with a monkey in the passengers seat and they’re singing along to “Juju on That Beat’ a song by two black singers that celebrates cultural diversity. A monkey was typically used as slander towards black people and many considered the inclusion of the monkey in the ad to be there on purpose.
And finally my last example of cultural appropriation would be that of a photoshoot for Vogue featuring white model Karlie Kloss dressed as a Geisha despite her not having any Japanese ancestry.
The conversation makes a 180 degree turn. There is no lead in to this. One second we’re talking about paganism being misconstrued and discriminated against and satanic panic and the next a poorly phrased start of talking about cultural appropriation. Tasmin doesn’t seem to know much about it or cultural appreciation for that matter. Their understanding and definition of both lacks nuance, awareness of oppression and racism, of classism. The complaint of cultural appropriation goes beyond failure to credit the originating culture. Cultural appreciation is more than just “research” and what it means to respectfully embrace another culture needs to be defined, the failure of Tasmin to research the difference between Americanized Chinese food and actual Chinese cuisine is a perfect example that they don’t know what they’re talking about and should be deferring to others.
The issue with black hairstyles and white folks is, again, more than whitewashing or making trends. Tasmin fails to go into any depth whatsoever about what whitewashing is, or why it’s bad, or why black folks would be against their hairstyles becoming “trends”. Even with the monkey, a total failure to address nuance or any deeper explanation. The same goes for her example with Vogue. Nothing to explain why it’s a bad thing to utilize the image of a geisha, or the problems that white people have caused by commodifying and deliberately misunderstanding what a geisha is.
An example of cultural appropriation in terms of the Pagan community would be that of Sephora in America trying to produce a “Starter witch Kit” and it receiving a lot of well earned backlash from the witch community. Due to it being perceived as the company stating that anyone can be a witch if they have the stereotyped tools. Also the fact that the kit included a species of white sage that was endangered and no longer used within the community due to it being of such low quantities. The culture was then incriminated against for being upset with Sephora when in the eyes of other people in other religions, it was not oppression, due to the irrational belief that witches and pagans are predominantly white.
The problem with how cultural appropriation is addressed in terms of paganism is A) the assumption that we are all one unified whole (we aren’t), B) that pagans are incapable of committing cultural appropriation (white pagans are actually huge propagators of cultural appropriation), and C) the assumption that we are all one unified whole. Yes, I know I said that twice, but Tasmin is trying to argue we’re not all white, pseudo Christians while failing to acknowledge that we’re not all white pseudo Christians. Then, by failing to acknowledge that paganism is a litany of religions and cultures, they erase the cultures and their struggles, including the struggle against white pagans appropriating nonwhite religion and culture! You cannot fight oppression if you’re not specific, and the vague, nonspecific, poorly defined, shallow pass at discourse just damages credibility and gives people excuses.
The reason the witch kit at Sephora was reviled had nothing to do with culturally appropriating witches. Witchcraft is not a culture. It is not oppressed as an ethnicity and witches do not have a unified set of practices or rituals that are being commodified, trivialized and degraded while the actual practitioners are mocked, assaulted, and oppressed for practicing. It is annoying, yes, to have a capitalist company trying to buy into a niche market under suspicious pretenses, but the problem was their sale of sage. Sage is an endangered plant that is used in several Native American traditions for religious purposes. THAT’S what people were talking about in regards to cultural appropriation. That Sephora was selling white sage for “smudging” and witchcraft was the problem, since witches culturally appropriated from native american cultures with sage and “smudging” in the first place. Not appropriating “witch culture”, which doesn’t exist, but for appropriating native cultures. “Witch culture” wasn’t reviled for pushing back against Sephora (which, btw, was also being protested for promoting sexist ideals to sell their products and co-opting and bastardizing body positivity), social justice fighters were, and that’s not a “culture” either, just a social movement.
It’s disappointing that someone erases several cultures and their actual struggles with oppression and appropriation to claim appropriation is happening to a culture that doesn’t exist. Again, it is very obvious that Tasmin doesn’t actually know anything about cultural erasure and oppression, forced assimilation or the struggles of minority cultures and religions to be recognized as legitimate and valuable.
Wicca has become a normality on some social media platforms. But it is not that of the actual faith, it is perceived as a new trend. When researching for this topic I found that on social media, Mainly Tumblr I have seen posts about Wicca and paganism that are stylizing the culture. Where those online are fairly ignorant in their belief that Wicca and paganism is a trend and as such can be used for aesthetic purposes. Also the belief that Pagans must be white. This is of course not the case as Pagan culture is diverse in gender and ethnicity. I read an article produced by a black pagan woman in which she was unhappy with the perception of a whitewashed Pagan culture and was seeking to express her views on the topic as she was a part of the real Pagan community not that of the aesthetic and fake Tumblr witch community.
Now we come to the part where I got linked. Wicca is its own religious entity. It has well defined boundaries and is an initiatory religion created in the 50s. It is extremely misunderstood and most of the information available to the public is only of the Outer Court and is therefore misconstrued. Paganism and witchcraft are frequently conflated with it, as Tasmin does repeatedly here. They are correct in that what is usually seen on social media and the internet is misinformation and trendy crap, but that doesn’t mean everything on the internet about it is false. Perhaps if Tasmin had spent less time learning about Wicca on the internet they might stop equating it with witchcraft and paganism.
Further, they have no business gate-keeping who is or isn’t serious about their craft or their religion, especially since they clearly have no understanding of paganism outside of a trendy, racist idea of what paganism is. Ironic they are trying to argue against cultural appropriation while perpetuating the erasure and misunderstanding of minority cultures and religions and their struggles. Erasure and conglomeration is racist. One cannot claim that witches and pagans on the internet are “stylized” and “aesthetic” and “fake” without a clear idea of what is real, and the idea of a single, unified culture and religion called “witchcraft and paganism” is fundamentally not real. It isn’t real. It cannot possibly be real. There isn’t even a grand, unified religion called Christianity or Judaism. The various sects and denominations share scripture (mostly) and basic tenets (mostly), but honestly, in many ways, could each be categorized as their own faiths that share a base.
If you can’t even learn that paganism isn’t a single celled organism then what business do you have telling other people if they’re serious enough or not? Who are you to decide what’s cultural appropriation and who is being oppressed when you don’t even really understand appropriation or that Chinese food isn’t even actually Chinese cuisine!
Quite frankly, I’d like to know where Tasmin found all this “evidence” that currently practicing pagans and witches are treating it as a costume and believe all pagans must be white. Again, nevermind that not all minority religions identify as pagan (and there are major religions that don’t identify as pagan and aren’t Abrahamic) and that can easily explain some of paganism’s perceived whiteness, who are they to judge that most pagans are fake?
That Tasmin put words in my mouth and drew such conclusions from my words is just infuriating icing on enraging cake. I do not believe I’m part of “real” paganism while Tumblr is “fake” and aesthetic. That is an insult to my community and all of my friends. Tasmin doesn’t know me, or them, and I am flabbergasted that they somehow drew such a conclusion about my personality and beliefs from the post that I wrote.
Also, I absolutely said, in my post, that I was speaking specifically about Kemeticism, not “paganism” at large. I wasn’t making commentary on cultural appropriation in paganism, but in Kemeticism, a branch of paganism. I wasn’t a generic pagan then or now or ever, I have never been more than fleetingly interested in Wicca and my witchcraft is freaking pop culture pagan based. Literally it is sigils, knot magic, a little bit of heka (kemetic magic) and based in video game magic mechanics because I am wholly obsessed with Okami. Am I fake and aesthetic and trendy?
This of course is not the case and when diving into it more, it turns out Paganism has been a recognized culture for longer than that of Christianity. In some cases, Pagans that have been practicing the culture for generations within families, may even believe that Christianity, along with other religions borrowed, stole and manipulated aspects of the Pagan culture as a means to claim these aspects of the culture as their own. Such as that of stories of Dionysus and Persephone in Pagan culture closely resembling that of stories of Jesus in Christianity. Or that Christians ethics may have originally stemmed from writings produced by Greek Pagan philosophers.
Paganism has never been a recognized culture. Ever. It is not a culture. It has never been a culture. It’s a term to refer to non Abrahamic religions that identify as pagan. It is a word that derived from an insult created by Christians. It was used to erase the enormous variety and diversity of religious beliefs, traditions and practices and dictate them as less than, as wrong, as foolish, compared to Christianity. It was used to dehumanize and delegitimize and enable genocide in the past.
The word was reclaimed. However, it was NOT reclaimed to then go ahead and erase the variety and diversity of current traditions or revived, reconstructed and near dead cultures and religions! Paganism is an umbrella. It is an easy way to refer to the huge, wide swath of people and practices that fall under it. Pagan, witch and Wiccan are NOT synonymous or interchangeable, they never have been, nor are they one big monoculture.
Also, what Christianity did manipulate or appropriate from pagan traditions, it wasn’t to “claim as their own”. It was to make conversion easier, and also because converts didn’t necessarily abandon all their beliefs and traditions when they converted, and not everyone in a family converted, so they got absorbed because the converts didn’t let them go. Also, nothing about Dionysus or Persephone has any resemblance whatsoever to anything about Jesus? How did that conclusion even come about? Dionysus and Persephone don’t even share any myths? None of their myths bear any resemblance to any of Jesus’ mythology?
Also, plagiarism is a widespread problem as far as philosophical crap goes, so that’s not even relevant, but even if it was, Jesus’ teachings come from Judaism, and he was born during the Roman Empire, so like, stop.
Tasmin’s entire post is disingenuous, clumsily written, unskillfully argued, inconsistent, shoddily researched, and rests on easily disproven assumptions and blatant erasure. They use bizarre and incompetently analyzed examples to try and support their argument. It totally misrepresents paganism and the problems of cultural appropriation and who suffers from it, fails to present any compelling evidence that it exists or should be fought against and essentially makes a mockery of thousands of peoples’ beliefs and the arguments against cultural appropriation. No matter how unintentionally, it trivializes the problem and actually feeds into the racism and appropriation that minority groups suffer from by equating us all as one mass, and failing to actually research and acknowledge how such things harm us, or that such things go deeper than mere appearances. I am insulted to have been linked as a supporting document in this travesty, especially without being consulted on what I was actually trying to say.
Resting in Her Wild Hands 