On âDeadâ Cultures and Closed Spiritual Practices: Why Colonialism Is Still A Problem.
Let me start this by saying that, as far as my knowledge of Paganism and Polytheism as a whole goes, Iâm what the internet witch community calls a âBaby Witchâ. Iâm stating this out of the gate because I know there will be lots of people, including witches who have more experience on the craft than me, who might decide to ignore what I have to say based on that fact alone, stating that Iâm not knowledgeable enough to give my opinion about this.
Hereâs the kicker: Iâm a âbaby witchâ, yes, but Iâm also a twenty-six year old Venezuelan woman. Iâm an adult. Iâm Latina. Iâm a Christian-raised Pagan,but Iâm also a Latinoamerican woman over all other things including that. I grew up on this culture, these are my roots. It is because of this background than Iâm writing this post today.
Looking through the âPaganismâ and âWitchcraftâ tags of this website, Iâve seen a few posts throwing indigenous deities and spiritsâ names around on lists alongside deties of open cultures. Yes, you can know better by doing your own research and not going by what just a random Tumblr user wrote on one post (as I hope its the case with everyone on this website), but the fact that pagan beginners are still getting fed misinformation is still worrisome to me.
Thereâs nothing like reading a so-called expert putting Ixchen (Maya), Xolotl (Nahuatl) and Papa Legba (Vodou) on the same damn list as Norse, Hellenic and Kemetic deities and tagging it on the tags aimed at beginners who might not know better to truly ruin your morning. Iâm not mentioning user names here: If you know then you know.
To quote @the-illuminated-witch on her very good post about Cultural Appropriation:Â
âCultural appropriation is a huge issue in modern witchcraft. When you have witches using white sage to âsmudgeâ their altars, doing meditations to balance their chakras, and calling on Santa Muerte in spells, all without making any effort to understand the cultural roots of those practices, you have a serious problem.
When trying to understand cultural appropriation in witchcraft, itâs important to understand the difference between open and closed magic systems. An open system is one that is open to exchange with outsiders â both sharing ideas/practices and taking in new ones. In terms of religion, spirituality, and witchcraft, a completely open system has no restrictions on who can practice its teachings. A closed system is one that is isolated from outside influences â usually, there is some kind of restriction on who can practice within these systems.â
A counter-argument Iâve seen towards this when someone wants to appropiate indigenous deities and spirits is to use the âdead cultureâ argument: Extinct cultures are more eligible for use by modern people of all stirpes. It is a dead culture and dead religion. It would be one thing if some part of the culture or religion was still alive, being used by modern descendants, but the culture died out in its entirety and was replaced, right? They were all killed by colonization, they are ancient history now, right?
Example: âIf white people are worshipping Egyptian deities now, then why canât I worship [Insert Aborigen Deity Here]?â
To which I have two things to say:
Ancient Egyptâs culture was open and imperialistic, meaning they wanted their religion to be spread. This is why Kemetism is not Cultural Appropriation, despite what some misinformed people might tell you. Similar arguments can also be made for the Hellenic and the Norse branches of Paganism, both practiced by people who arenât Greek/Norse.
Who are you to say which cultures are âdeadâ and which are not?
Religious practices such as Vodou and SanterĂa certainly arenât dead, not that it keeps some Tumblr users from adding Erzuli as a âgoddessâ on their Baby Witch post, something that actual Vodou practitioners have warned against.
Indigenous cultures such as the Maya and the Mapuche arenât dead, despite what the goverment of their countries might tell you. The Mapuche in particular have a rich culture and not one, but two witchcraft branches (The Machi and the Kalku/Calcu). Both are closed pagan practices that the local Catholic Church has continuously failed to assimilate and erase, though sadly not for lack of trying:
âThe missionaries who followed the Spanish conquistadors to America incorrectly interpreted the Mapuche beliefs regarding both wekufes and gualichos. They used the word wekufe as a synonym for ideas of the devil, demons, and other evil or diabolical forces. This has caused misunderstanding of the original symbolism and has changed the idea of wekufe right up to the present day, even amongst the Mapuche people.â
For context, the Wefuke are the Calcuâs equivalent of the Familiar, as well as reportedly having more in common with the Fae than with demons anyway.
This and other indigenous religions are Closed because it is wrong for foreigners to just come and take elements from marginalized groups whom are still fighting to survive and that they werenât born into. To just approppiate those things would be like spitting in their faces, treating them and their culture like a commodity, a shiny thing, a unique thing to be used like paint to spruce up your life or be special.
I know some of you are allergic to the word âPrivilegeâ, but on this situation there really ainât a better word to explain it. You werenât born here, you donât know what it is like, you are only able to see the struggle from an outsiderâs point of view.
If a belief or practice is part of a closed system, outsiders should not take part in it. And with how many practices there are out there which are open for people of all races, there is really no excuse for you to do it.
Why Colonization Is Not âAncient Historyâ
If you have kept reading all this so far, you are probably wondering âOk, but what does Colonization has to do with any of this?â
With the general context of culture appropriation out of the way, let me tell you about why the whole âdead cultureâ argument rubs me the wrong way: Here in Venezuela, we have a goddess called Santa Maria de la Onza, or Maria Lionza for short, whomâs idol statue I have been using to illustrate this little rant. If you happen to know any Spanish, you might recognize the name as a derivative of Santa Maria, aka the Virgin Mary, and you are mostly correct: Her true indigenous name is theorized to have been Yara.
And I say âtheorizedâ because it is a subject of hot debate whether she was really ever called that or not: Her original name, the name by which she was adored and worshipped by our ancestors, might have been forever lost to history.
Thatâs the legacy of colonization for you: Our cultures were stolen from us, and what they couldnât erase they instead tried to assimilate. Our ancestors were enslaved, their lands and homes stolen, their artwork and literary works destroyed: The Maya and the Aztec Empire were rich in written works of all kinds, ranging from poetry to history records to medicine, and the Spaniards burned 99% of it, on what is probably one of the most tragic examples of book burning in history and one that people rarely ever talk about.Â
People couldnât even worship their own gods or pass their knowledge of them to their children. Thatâs why Maria Lionza has such a Spanish Catholic-sounding name, and thatâs why we canât even be sure if Yara was her name or not: The Conquistadors couldnât steal our goddess from us, so they stole her name instead. Catholics really have a thing with trying to assimilate indigenous goddesses with the Virgin Mary, as they tried to do the same with the Pachamama.
On witchy terms, Iâd define Maria Lionza as both a deity and a land spirit: Most internet pages explaining her mention the Sorte mountain as her holy place, but it is more along the lines that she is the mountain.Â
Youâd think that, with Venezuela and other Latinoamerican countries no longer being colonies, weâd be able to worship our own deities including her, right?
As far as a lot of Catholics seem to think and act, apparently we are not.
The Catholics here like to go out of their way to shame us, to call us âcultistsâ, to ostracize us, with a general call to ârefrain from those pagan beliefsâ because they go against the Catholic principles. Yes, the goddess with the Catholic-sounding name, a name she happens to share with a Catholic deity, apparently goes âagainst Catholic principlesâ. You really canât make this shit up. (Linked article is in Spanish)
This is just an act of colonization out of many, of not wanting to stop until the culture they want to destroy is gone. Donât believe for a second that this is really their Godâs will or anything like that, they are just trying to finish what years of enslavement and murder couldnât. They might not be actively killing us anymore, but they still want us dead.
So no, colonization is not some thing that has long passed and now only exist on history textbooks: It is still happening to this day. It is by treating it as old history that they can keep doing it, and it is by pushing the narrative that our indigenous cultures are âdead culturesâ that they try to erase our heritage.
Because we are not dead. We are still here, we are alive, we have survived and weâll keep on surviving, and our gods and goddesses are not yours to take.
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