#willow's asks

[salixsociety]

but energy work is part of many folk traditions. Tbh manifestation is too. They’re just not called those words.

It is! In fact! Not! To take those very varied cultural concepts and lump them together under energy or manifestation is to water them down and try to make them fit a homogenous narrative that goes directly against my ethics. We should take great care to learn about the actual cosmological systems of the faiths we choose to engage ourselves with, because they will always form a more complete picture than attempting to make them fit the energy work / manifestation narrative - especially given both of those things entered the European spiritual zeitgeist through third wave Western Esotericism appropriating concepts from eastern traditions.

I would and will forever be offended if someone calls megin 'energy', and I am deeply opposed to the way these intentionally ambiguous and pseudoscientific words are taking root in cultural spiritualities to such an extent that people mistakenly believe they were there the whole time. Homogenization is a direct contributor to white supremacy. We should all take pride in our diversity rather than try to find false unity under words that came about in the 18th and 19th century from appropriators like Blavatsky

[voidmin]

Hey Void/Willow!! How are you doing these days?

(I haven't really seen you on Discord, and I thought it'd be nice to check up on you!)

the fog came.

[g0th-nightguard]

Kenma appears infront of Willow because godly mod powers.

(@kaeyas--bf)

She takes a step back, clearly surprised.

Whatthehell- umm...hi?

[salixsociety]

Where I Live April

Where I live, April sounds like the gentle chiming of water running under sheets of ice, warning the walker of its treacherous nature. It sounds like the first sandhill cranes bugling their announcements overhead, and the shrill ring of varied thrush returning to the alpine woodlands. It sounds like the whisper of wet snow turning into a chatty rain, like new streams carving their charmingly destructive way through the landscape with no regard for human infrastructure.

It tastes like breaking the fast after Pascha, stuffing your face with meats and dairy, finally, finally. It tastes like eggs filled with anticipation, like the promise of future chicks and ducklings, not too long from now. It starts to take on a sort of spiritual blandness, a mouthful of reminder that these are the final meals before finally green will erupt from the earth, and we can eat ferns and berries and fireweed again.

It feels like softness underfoot, like rotten snow and the first show of mud giving way to your boots. Like the wind is not so toothy anymore, like the sun could heat the wood of the outlook, like you want to take a nap and let the sun just barely manage to heat you out of your coat. It feels like holding your breath, waiting to see when the moose will chase off last year's babies.

It smells like briny southern winds, carrying the promise of salmon and halibut. It smells like wet soil, like rain, like water, when you haven't seen wild water in months. It smells like you could convince yourself there's pine sap in the air, fresh, but not yet ready to fully awaken and loudly announce their return from dormancy.

It looks like bark chewed off of alder trees by moose, like sunsets that last forever at 10pm, the atmosphere distorting its red light enough to see mountains otherwise hidden by the horizon. It looks like thousands of kittiwakes roosting on the harbor structures, like otters clinging to their new babies. It looks like bird food offerings left behind in favor of bugs and grubs revealed by the softening soil, like crows picking through the seaweed for mussels.

For outsiders, April is the worst time to be in Alaska. It's wet, cloudy, slippery - foul snow tries to eat your boots and runoff from the thaw destroys roads as it carves channels, freezes and breaks up again. Life has not yet come back, businesses are not yet open in these rural quarters, and the weather is only hospitable to those who sweat at 40F. But among locals, an air of buzzing anticipation hangs. Pascha is past, and this is the brief, silent interim between the dead of winter and the arrival of the first tourists. We can almost fish, we can almost hunt, we can almost forage, we can almost set up our stalls and open our doors, we can almost almost almost put our big coats in storage. Somewhere in the distance, a stampede of life is barreling toward us, and we are feeling its thunder in the shaking of the earth.

We laugh at eagles struggling to carry driftwood to their nests and beefing with ravens. We marvel at congregations of moose chewing back the last of the willow shoots. We await, in silent eagerness, the first dandelion through the snow.

O all ye gods of the earth, bless the stronghold of the sun.

Tagged by @dvoeverie-stitches, who made the original post, thank you! I'll tag @prairiebeetle @vigilantlight @huldretjejen @slewfootwitch @dvudushnydiaries @ellam4r1a @skullergeist @haunted-faes @callipsx

[salixsociety]

Hi! I just found you through your amazing post about appropriation and ethnocide in the witchcraft community and I hoped you could offer me some advice (if you want to). I’m Scottish and we do have a history of witchcraft, so for a while now I’ve wanted to learn witchcraft as a way to connect with my ancestors as well as myself, I’ve just never gotten around to it because it’s all a little overwhelming. One could argue it’s a good thing that there’s so many resources out there but for me it’s a little intimidating. Not to mention the cultural appropriation in a lot of the communities, which also makes me hesitant, as knowing me, if I were to begin learning more and implementing it in my daily life only to find out I’d been participating in a type of appropriation I might stop altogether.

It looks like your series will answer the questions I have (how do I tell what’s genuine and what’s appropriation? Etc) so I’ll wait for them to come out instead of asking here, but as I’m an avid reader, aside from the reading already recommended on your post, do you have any more recommendations? As much as I’d love to jump right in to learning about Scottish witchcraft in particular, I think I should learn more about the appropriation of witchcraft first. Also, is there any advice you would personally recommend me to remember before/as I begin learning?

Thank you so much and I look forward to reading the rest of your series!

Moi!! I'd be happy to! My first advice would definitely be to not wait to start until you feel confident that you can't fuck it up, because that time will never come. Let yourself make mistakes, and be open to the fact - and aware of the fact - that you will make them no matter how hard you try to eliminate the risk. It can be really paralyzing to have a mindset that isn't oriented around compassion and forgiveness for yourself, even in the face of mistakes, because it stops you from being willing to just start shit knowing you may do something wrong. Polemic and critical as my writings are, my base ideology will always be oriented around compassion - for others and yourself. Compassion for others comes in the form of researching the impact of your actions and considering how you affect others, compassion for yourself comes as the willingness to take journeys knowing there may be parts you have to forgive yourself for, and being willing to do that.

If it helps to hear, also, it wouldn't actually help anybody to go completely hands-off in a hypothetical where you discover you've been participating in appropriation. For one, it's highly likely that you engage in a kind of appropriation or cultural diffusion very regularly in your daily life right now, be that in your language or the things you consume or anything equally innocuous. In the case of something as important as connecting with your own native culture, dropping it like a hot potato upon discovering a mistake you're making is avoidance of the problem, where the most radical thing you could be doing is confronting it, solving it, and moving along. Connecting with your own culture is a lifelong process, and especially in a world so heavily oriented around white supremacy, mistakes will be made. And that can be okay if you make it so, by letting those things pass you by, taking them as an opportunity to educate yourself (and potentially others in the future!), and continuing down your path of reconnection. That is the real antidote to appropriation and white supremacy!

Another piece of advice that I can offer is to be very intentional and mindful about what you call "witchcraft." The word 'witchcraft' certainly appears in Scottish literature relevant to your quest, but it will severely limit the kinds of information you'll be presented with. Using the word "witchcraft" in your search queries and research objectives will heavily bias what results you get in favor of Wiccan and pseudo-Wiccan material, folkloric material that depicts a nonexistent "other" and magic that wasn't actually practiced, as well as historic Anglo-centric sources that depict Scottish magic as Dark, Ethnic, Spooky magic (in much the same way as "voodoo" gets depicted in more recent pop culture). On top of that, the word "witchcraft" carries heavy baggage to do with antisemitism, misogyny, pseudohistory, Christian propaganda and general witchhunt craziness - and most Scottish magic that was actually practiced historically would not have been called 'witchcraft' by its practitioners. I know people heavily favor the term for self-identification purposes, which I shan't condemn, but when it comes to research here are some alternative key words to use and be on the lookout for:

folk magic, folk beliefs, folk religion, fairy faith, folk medicine, pre-Christian religion, superstition, folk life, folklore, folk tales, tall tales, fairy tales, folk legend, mythology, charms, etc

These won't all give you the same kinds of sources per se but they will all yield stuff that should be useful to understand the magic traditions and the context they exist(ed) in!

I do hope to cover a lot of advice for recognizing and avoiding appropriation and bad scholarship and such in the rest of my series, but I'll still throw some quick ones your way because I'm famously not the fastest writer:

It pains me to say (I wish it wasn't so, truly) but ALWAYS prioritize historic, scholarly and academic sources over ones written by practitioners or addressing (aspiring) practitioners.

Make sure not to forget that context is important! On top of reading things that directly discuss religion and magic, also be sure to contextualize that information with other information about the time period that will help you understand why things are / were the way they are.

Speaking of context: the format that you find information in matters. Some sources may offer somewhat straightforward insight into how things were done (like actual contemporary accounts), but things like folklore and witch trial proceedings are often unreliable accounts of how magic was actually practiced, and instead are more valuable for understanding the social structures and belief systems around magic.

Read actively and intentionally! Experiment with note-taking and annotation, and treat reading as a conversation you're having with someone. I can't recommend it enough to use your annotations or notes as a way to learn how to argue with an author, it helps you learn how to recognize good information. Question everything, preferably in a way you can refer back to.

Balance theory with practice! Tons of reading will just make you forget things, humans process through action and movement. Try stuff out, or even just go outside and look for the subjects of folklore and folk beliefs. If you don't know where to start with putting things you read into practice, get a local field guide and look for plants mentioned in folklore!

And don't forget your culture is still alive and extant. In reading about the past, don't forget about the present, and make an active effort not only to keep yourself grounded in it, but also to adapt the things you learn about to fit the modern era, without diminishing the past, twisting it, or insulting it.

I don't have any sources on the appropriation in the witchcraft community, sadly. It's not something that has been written about much to date, especially not in a scholarly context. Peers certainly have great commentaries, and I'm always on the lookout for other people writing about these topics, which I recommend you to do too if you're interested! But decolonizing your practice, at the moment, can only be done by reading broader material about colonialism and white supremacy. I recommend looking for books about these topics, especially those that are more relevant to your geographical area and cultural experience - which I only specify because a lot of material on the subject can be highly Americentric, since that's where the movement largely started, though those are still very worthwhile to read.

I'll leave you a handful of sources that I have found interesting, mostly unproblematic, and helpful, and wish you the very best of luck on your search!! (Re)connection is a noble undertaking and I really hope you find much fulfilment in it.

County Folk-lore - FOLKLORE SOCIETY GB : Eliza Gutch, Edwin Sidney Hartland, Mabel Peacock, et al. 

Myths and symbols in pagan Europe : early Scandinavian and Celtic religions - H.R. Ellis-Davidson

Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland - John Gregorson Campbell

Scottish Folk-lore and Folk Life: Studies in Race, Culture and Tradition - Donald MacKenzie 

Collected words of Eleanor Hull, downloadable.

Denham Tracts - Michael Aislabie Denham

Survivals in Beliefs among the Celts - Henderson

An Encyclopedia of Faeries - Katharine Briggs

The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies - Kirk

The Certainty of the World of Spirits, to which is added the Wonders of the Invisible World by Cotton Mather - Baxter

New Flora of the British Isles - Clive A. Stace

Compendium of Ritual and Symbolic Plants in Europe - M. Cleene (can be found online with some searching)

The Carmina Gadelica

The Oxford Book of Scottish Short Stories

[salixsociety]

what are some "faery features" mentioned in folklore?

to be fair, I just made that term up because I like alliteration, but in Germanic folklore there are quite a lot of different traits people can have that either indicate their inherent 'faery/trollish/otherworldly' nature, or are ones that in the process of getting them they adopted or gained faery/troll/otherworldliness. they're often not stated outright and rather implied, as well as being highly variable, contextual, etc. it's a spectrum, and an impossibly complex one a that. I should note that contrary to popular belief, 'faery' is not just a class of beings in the same way that 'troll' isn't. both of those words were originally more like adjectives than nouns, they refer to states of being and lived experiences rather than hard categories or specific individuals. generally speaking these words, and many many like them in Celtic and Germanic folklore - are extremely complex ways to indicate some kind of 'otherness'. 'Otherness' was a sort of socially agreed upon unnamed but highly powerful feature of the world that one found in such things as death, the unknown, the grotesque and malefic, the incomprehensible, the unnavigable, the misunderstood, the arcane, the creepy and uncanny, et cetera. so 'faery' or 'troll' is not an easily grasped class of beings so much as an umbrella term for a whole range of groups and kinds of beings/things/creatures/states that primarily exist outside of our sensory and instrumental perception.

this means that something can be a faery when it's any kind of creature that lives in the otherworld (including, at times, just the ancestors!), but somebody can also be faery to any extent, from somebody who is a full-blown changeling to somebody who just has features that puts them in connection with this concept of faery. things can be faery, places and situations can be faery, and all of this can be to completely varying degrees. just wanna get that out there before people start being like "OMG DOES THIS MEAN I'M HALF FAIRY" because no please settle down

folkloric 'faery features' can be anything like:

amputated limbs or physical deformities

notable and unusual dental differences

blue eyes, red hair, pale skin, tight curls, heterochromia

bodily fluid related notable differences

dwarfism

anything that makes you half of something: half deaf, half blind, limping heavily, being one-legged or one-armed, etc, all gives you "one [x] in the grave/otherworld/etc"

dying and coming back to life

being extremely beautiful, but like, in a Spooky Way

mental disabilities and noticeable or severe mental illnesses

speaking coherently early in life or being extremely far ahead of your peers as a child

just being freaking weird as hell

being very good at divination, very wise, or accurate in predicting the future

etc etc etc etc etc

these are not all completely neutral or free of a history of oppression but I tried to choose ones that weren't traditionally associated strictly with kinds of 'otherness' that were regarded as inherently bad (like witches and witchcraft). nevertheless at the time 'otherness' was very much something that people feared, to varying degrees, with all the effects thereof

[salixsociety]

hi, i hope this comes across the way i intend (sincere curiosity with an appreciation for your perspective rather than combative or argumentative or something) lol. i am wondering if you could share your thoughts on what ways we can interact with the divine in a healthy way (especially externally)? as in, what does this look like in practice. i think part of my failure to imagine this is just because im still a beginner in many ways but also what you seem to be getting at in the maladaptive daydreaming post is just kind of perplexing to me, probably because you are presenting a contrary opinion to much of what pagan spaces are talking about.

i hope that is coherent!! i’m sorry if it is not. my mind works strangely sometimes. i appreciate your blog very much, you are always giving me more things to think deeply about

please know all those disclaimers are not necessary!! I will always do my best to assume questions are in good faith and answer them accordingly, and I think you phrased your question very well. this is not a blog where every question and counterpoint is taken as a personal attack!

I've been meaning to write about this topic, actually, both about how relationships with divinity have radically changed in the last few decades (and not necessarily for the better) and about historic and functional relationships with the divine. I definitely acknowledge - and appreciate your noticing - that my point there (re: a lot of neopagan deity interactions being repackaged maladaptive daydreaming) is in direct opposition with the common neopagan narrative. It's one of quite a handful of things that I think are extremely widespread symptoms of a very dysfunctional socio-religious paradigm, which I guess is what my whole blog is about lmao, so be on the lookout for more detailed opinions on it. At any rate:

for starters, I think you hit the nail on the head when you said "especially externally," because I think that's problem number one. I think a lot of people find their spirituality internally, which isn't a problem per se, but it does become one in a social system like the one we live in, where hyperindividualism and being constantly caught up in your own mind are very pervasive features. I feel confident in stating that most people nowadays exist almost completely in their own mind, and they experience a very harsh boundary between the self and the not-self. my advice to almost any person coming to me for healing would be to come out of yourself rather than draw further inward, and have faith that somewhere along the way you will find experiences as if not more valuable than the ones you had or constructed in your own mind. and I suppose I should add that experiences constructed in your mind can be perceived as being outside of yourself, which is an important mechanism in how those beliefs regarding deities function. one book I highly recommend that really helped me understand how to dissolve this idea that the border of my being lies in my skin was Ecopsychology (ed. Theodore Roszak), especially Roszak's first essay in it called 'Where Psyche Meets Gaia'. I've written down to write a little about how to actually leave your body and enter the world, it's been on my mind recently anyway and I'm currently lacking in terminology a little bit. Moving on:

In the act of coming into the world I think there are a lot of confronting realizations about divinity. One of the most pivotal experiences in my personal religious journey, that I am very grateful for having had so early on, was realizing the fucking scale that the world really exists on. how fucking huge not just this world but the universe at large is, and the actual incomprehensible nature of some of the forces anthropomorphized or metaphorized in traditional pagan literature. with that realization, and many others thereafter, I think the only logical conclusion from an intersectional, historical, and social perspective, is that the gods aren't meant for the function they're forced into by that neopagan narrative. because we are so removed from the world, and so removed from spirituality (cf.: Mundane vs Magic), we are missing a lot of crucial intermediary features of religion in conventional neopaganism. for example: spirits! I think the place the gods are forced into by neopaganism is where spirits should be. there's this attitude in the community towards spirits that paints them as small, fairly insignificant and mostly noncommunicative features of the natural world that have no real bearing on human lives, and it is the gods that are tasked with fulfilling people's desires and doing their bidding, to put it bluntly. in reality, historically, it would have been these close bonds with natural features, powerful local spirits like faery kings and communities of deceased wise women and even just your own house spirit who you would be making quid-pro-quo agreements with and asking for help with your daily life. hell, even the spirits contained within plants you make tea out of, you know?

which I bring up primarily because otherwise my answer to your question would sound like me encouraging more distance between people and their spirituality, which in actuality is something I want to achieve the opposite of. It's just that these maladaptive, generally imagined, close and casual personal bonds that people tout on social media have no replacement. they shouldn't exist. they are nothing but a byproduct of a post-rationalist, post-evangelist pseudoreligion taking a strong cultural foothold in a time period where people are not just viciously lonely, but also deeply removed from their physical environment. people use deities as replacements for more immediate social bonds because they have nobody else, and it is fucking harrowing to witness when you're aware of how these things came to be. so I bring these things up because a healthy relationship with the divine is built on a foundation of a healthy relationship with the world, because the divine resides in the world. people need to have community with other people, they need to feel a connection with the world around them, or it is only natural that they start commodifying deities and reducing them to nothing but a familiar spirit sipping tea in the background while they type on Discord, to resolve their own loneliness. quarantine, when I catch you quarantine.

SO NOW THAT I'VE HAD ALL OF THIS PREAMBLE, here are some of my big tips for healthy relationships with the divine.

For one: think about what the divine is, to you and in general. what constitutes divinity, and what makes godhood? if you practice a particular religion there is likely already an established understanding of these things, which is very beneficial to delve into. for example, something that helped me to understand and engage with divinity in heathenry is that divinity is something that is possessed by almost all creatures to some extent, in a sort of neverending increasing scale. it was also extremely helpful for me (both in understanding and in unpacking some of my personal trauma around divinity) that "godhood" is actually not all that relevant of a concept to heathenry, and the "gods" are more a particular group of very great spirits that have a particular social relationship with humanity. "godhood" is an ongoing conversation with a demographic willing to worship. these kinds of learnings helped me unpack my biases and preconceived notions, and helped me to shape my practice in a religion that can be extremely confusing to navigate for how little literature there is on practicing it.

Learn to find the divine in nature. in my opinion, divinity is not a status, it's a verb, a state of being, a perpetual act - conscious or not, stoppable or not. Divinity can be found in a lot of the natural processes of the universe, it can be found in the way everything ties into itself and each other, in the greater forces of the world, in actions and reactions. Question whether a vulture feasting on death and distributing the nutrients back into the earth isn't some kind of god themself, and any answer you take away from that question is a good one, yes or no. I think you can't have a fulfilling relationship with the divine if you feel like you are constantly needing to pursue it, because it really should be constantly palpable that it is running through you, because you are part of nature.

Don't tie your self-worth to perceived responses from the divine. I haven't perfected this myself, I sometimes get into fits of trauma-based fear that my gods have turned on me or forsaken me, and those feelings are okay to have! But it is definitely pivotal to unlearn these things as best as possible and have sincere conversations with yourself about why that's not a functional way to engage with the divine.

Don't take without giving, and don't expect to be given anything without reciprocity and mutuality. this will of course vary from culture to culture and religion to religion, but generally speaking your approach to the divine should not be from a place of commodity or consumption. your relationship with divinity should not hinge on or orient itself around what you expect that relationship can do for you, or how it can be a tool for personal satisfaction. it should be wilful engagement in a social relationship with the world around you.

consider what is actually realistic to ask the divine to do for you, and put effort into filling the gaps they can't or shouldn't yourself. Be an active participant in your own life!

Understand that by the nature of what divinity is, a relationship with it likely is not going to be as simple, straightforward, or easy to interpret as a conversation and relationship with another person would be. there's not going to be easy answers, there's not going to be direct conversation or often very much direct communication at all. we are not what they are, and that's okay! interpreting how they communicate/it communicates is a learning curve and something that people in the past have dedicated their entire lives to understanding, so don't beat yourself up and make peace with it! it makes the gifts, the acknowledgments, the approvals, and the lessons so much more meaningful.

part of dissolving the boundary of self and not-self is also understanding that divinity lives in you, too, and your gods do as well - especially the indweller kinds and the primordial types. being human, or really existing at all, is to take part in the act of divinity and to taste it in highly condensed doses. fury, insanity, poetry and breathing are all ways of embodying Allfather, as one very specific example. when you learn how to balance introspection and looking outward, you'll find that in reality, out will always loop back to in - but in this day and age we HAVE to learn to look out properly first, and not always as far as immediately possible, but also every inch in between.

I also could not emphasize proper sit-down learning enough. as much as I go on about learning through practice, experience and in-the-moment-exploration, I think you cannot use those skills to their fullest potential if you have no theoretical basis to work off of, and no one could be expected to form that basis all on their own. there is a reason tradition exists, and leaning on traditional and historical notions and belief structures, even if you later deviate from them, is pivotal. close and personal relationships with the divine are so unspeakably much more difficult if you don't even understand how they are theorized to exist or function. Cosmology is the backbone of religion!!!!

I think that's all I've got for now, sorry about the genuinely ungodly long response, I really hope it's helpful for you. more questions always welcome, thank you so much for asking anon!!

[salixsociety]

do you have any advice on how to learn more about and appreciate the land youre on without being culturally inappropriate?

Truthfully, I think that people might be too worried about being culturally inappropriate when it comes to engaging with their land, and it is withholding us from progress at scale. It's pretty hard to be culturally inappropriate when it comes to engagements with the land if you're doing it from a place of genuine care! I think 'white leftism' (to be a bit crude) has swung the pendulum too hard in the other direction when it comes to the fear of accidentally appropriating. People seem a little over-afraid of somehow being culturally insensitive just engaging with colonized land. You can and should build a relationship with the land you're on, whether you're native to it or not, without guilt. In fact, unpacking that guilt and the sense of un-belonging is a very important aspect of being sufficiently self-aware in your ethics. The same goes - because by your phrasing I kind of assume you live somewhere you're not native to - for just acknowledging the way indigenous people have lived on that land. Honoring their presence, customs, and relationships with the land isn't appropriation. It's appreciation! And some of those customs may not be for you to engage in, but some absolutely are. The foraging that Native Americans have done for millennia is not actually all that different from the foraging that, for example, Europeans in Europe have done for that same amount of time, in essence.

By virtue of being on the land you're on it has become your duty to understand it just as well as anyone who is indigenous to it, to build a relationship with it that goes as deep as you can possibly make it. I'm not saying that you should go harvest endangered plants and do a smudging ceremony, I hope that much is obvious, but rather that you can and should learn about how indigenous people have engaged with the land you're on, and take inspiration from that to understand what the land means and needs. And, genuinely, it's okay to make mistakes. It's better to start by just doing your best and be open to being corrected than it is to wait until you're positive that you have somehow eliminated all risk of harm. So I guess that's my first tip: just start! Land everywhere needs us and we need it, and building a relationship with the land we are on, no matter where or what it looks like, is a pivotal aspect of liberation and progress in my opinion.

Please don't take this as me trying to denigrate you, because I absolutely am not and I really respect you asking, but what your question boils down to is essentially "how do I do the objectively right thing without doing something wrong?" You cannot be culturally inappropriate just in the act of learning about and appreciating land. Appreciation is inherently the antithesis to appropriation, and learning is NEVER inappropriate except in the extremely rare instance that you are learning something a particular group doesn't want you to know about. And the odds of that happening, let me tell you, are low. You have to really put some elbow grease into getting information people don't want you to have.

And of course, there is a risk of harm, there always is, but that risk of harm arises when you go to act upon the land. Which everyone does, I would never deny that! So it's important to educate yourself about endangered species, limited resources, legal and economical land relations, so on and so forth, to prevent you going forth to take action on the land in a way that harms, and to learn about which actions in your daily life might be doing harm (products you're buying, things you're consuming, places you're visiting, misinformation you're perpetuating, etc). But when it's just about learning and appreciating, you are just doing the correct thing. You should be learning and appreciating, and you should not be waiting to do it.

But for a few cues on where you could start learning, here's some ideas!

Questions to ask Consider in what ways you could in theory even do harm, culturally or ecologically. If it's cultural appropriation and harm that you're worried about, I think it would be good to examine the relationships that cultures have with their land. What does land mean to a culture? What does land mean to the culture(s) in your area? What is the significance of the land you're currently on? Understanding those questions will help you understand how people do harm to cultures by affecting the land they're on. I think that is very important, because it will unfortunately never truly work to try to do these things according to a shallow set of rules - they will never be able to cover everything. Truly taking the time to research and think about these things will help you form a system of personal ethics that can cover everything. And that's a long process, so don't expect yourself to figure all of that out before you start trying to form a relationship with the land! Like I said, just start, forgive yourself for making mistakes, listen to other people's input, and you are going to be just fine. Accept that relationships are ongoing and fluid!

'Land relations' is the umbrella term for all studies and inquiries into the social, legal, spiritual, and economic connections between people and land. This is a great keyword to use for your first cursory searches! It will give you an idea of what the right questions to ask would be for your particular area, and then you can branch out and start asking more specific questions from there. Learning about your local history is also a great way to understand how land was utilized, changed, and shaped by the various peoples that have occupied it, which will give a good understanding of what kind of harm you yourself need to avoid, mitigate, or be aware of! I think it's also important, aside from learning about other people's historic and current relationships with any given plot of land, to examine your own. What it is, and what it could be. What is land to you? What does land do for you? How does land affect you, how could your personal relationship with it be improved? I'll provide a few books that I thought were very compelling and good introductory reads at the bottom, because I acknowledge that these prompts can be difficult to tackle on your own! I should probably try to write about it in more detail in a different post sometime soon.

Learning about the land Try combining various systems of knowledge when learning about the land you're on. Thrifting field guides is an amazing way to start learning about your local ecosystem, and I HIGHLY recommend it, but they are centered around Western science and ecology. Try finding resources (often online) from indigenous people in your broader region and learn about their uses, folklore, knowledge and relationships with local species. And to truly go above and beyond in decolonizing your understandings and gain a deep understanding of plants, you could also try finding resources about how your ancestors, in your current region or the one they came from, use(d) and understand similar species, and the beliefs they had about those species. Another great option, if you have it, is to visit local bookstores and look for books on nature written by local authors, indigenous or not, but especially indigenous ones if you can find them. It's extremely illuminative and enriching.

An underrated option also is going out of your way to eat local food. Seasonal crops, locally grown foods, local delicacies, local food traditions, etc, can be a fantastic option for learning about how local resources are used in daily life.

Creating an observation habit can be great. Having a small notebook on you to record observations and experiences about the natural world around you is super fulfilling and can reveal connections you hadn't seen before. It's also something you can really tailor to your interests, so you can closely observe things like bird migration, local populations, herb distribution, or whatever fascinates you.

Of course urban and man-made structures are not to be neglected. Some places are lacking in "nature" by the traditional definition, but they are still land and they are still important. Often there are still wildlife species in cities, be that ornamental ones or weeds, pests or pets, and they can be interesting to learn about in their own right, if often not "usable" in any conventional sense. But local landmarks, urban traditions and myths, important places, and history are all still great things to learn about away from the nearest tree. Also, bugs are underrated!! Many bugs in cities!

Appropriation and cultural insensitivity Before I send this off I would like to re-emphasize that if it's doing cultural harm you're worried about, there's a super simple solution to that. Appropriation is something that, once you properly understand what it is, you do not have to ever be in the dark about. I cannot recommend putting some serious research and thought into 'appropriation' as a concept enough. When you understand what appropriation is, why it's harmful, and how that harm is done, you will ALWAYS recognize appropriation when you see it. That kind of confidence is invaluable for the rest of your journey towards liberation. It helps you create a system of personal ethics and conduct wherein you never have to spend time waffling on if you're maybe doing something you shouldn't be, and can instead focus on doing the very best you can. You can start lovin' and livin', if you know what I mean ahaha (sorry awkward)

This inspired me to take one of my older writings and refine it a little so I can make it into a post about building local relationships. I'll probably have that up either tonight or tomorrow. Thank you for the ask again and I hope this was helpful, if not be on the lookout for the next one! Love x