Barbelith Underground > Temple > Cultural appropriation in magical practices.

in that case, are you are opposing anything other than your own insecurities? thats not a personal attack. obviously, its not your personal insecurities that are at issue.

If it was a personal attack it is expressed ineptly enough for me to have no idea what it is you're driving at... How is it an expression of my "personal insecurities" to imply that someone has to, y'know, actually study Tai Chi, or Acupuncture, or Santeria, or Vodou in order to practice them effectively.

what exactly is the problem we are trying to avoid?

I thought we'd covered that over and over again in this thread...

Sloppiness in magical practice.

Stealing surface elements from other cultures and appending them to a western magic framework, without bothering to go out of your way to study the actual framework that these elements exist within and are taken from.

Not making a distinction between the two approaches.

Viewing the worlds magical traditions through the lens of western magic and chaos magic, as if these are somehow the dominant meta-paradigms that all other traditions must conform to.

The way in which this process could lead to some of the advanced methodologies of these traditions, which currently exist in predominantly third world countries, being drowned out by the loud engines of the western publishing machine producing wave after wave of dumbed down westernised versioning that, through sheer size of voice compared to that of the actual practitioners, produces a skewed perspective on these traditions even within their country of origin.

The threat that the international magical community could lose important and valuable theoretical and practical knowledge as a result of this process.

The fact that the only likely way of halting this process is for practitioners of other cultural traditions to start competing on the western market, selling the mysteries of their tradition to an audience eager for a taste of the exotic who would willingly pay £200 for a copy of the "Voudon Gnostic Workbook".

The way in which this imposed economic situation serves to cheapen and erode the power of teachings that have traditionally been passed on via oral or initiatory means for specific reasons.

The way in which western magicians, who are significantly driving this process - if they think about it at all - justify it with platitudes such as "information wants to be free, maaaan" and, perhaps, "its those who adapt and adopt the most shamelessly who will survive and rule".

The way in which parallels can be drawn between that sort of attitude to other cultures and the attitude that justified colonialism and the slave trade.

The fact that these are extremely emotive issues for many of the other cultures involved, yet are rarely even addressed or considered by western practitioners.

The way in which this prevalent attitude among western practitioners could well be considered fuckwitted, lazy and irresponsible - and that it is largely the responsibility of magicians in the west to look for more sustainable models of cultural interaction. Or else everyone involved stands to lose something to a greater or lesser extent.

The general issues around globalisation as it applies to the spread of information in the occult world, and how this should - at the very least - be approached carefully, intelligently and respectfully. Rather than with a top of the food chain, I can buy your secrets, give me more cool ethnic stuff to spice up my paradigm, attitude of cultural imperialism.

Have we been reading the same thread?

I am all for an internationalist approach to magic. I believe that the western magician can greatly benefit from cross-training in other disciplines, and can learn vast amounts about magic by studying with hir counterparts in other cultures and traditions from around the world. We are all members of the same species and all live on the same planet. To my mind, this is a natural process, just as the hypothetical village shaman, on encountering a shaman from a neighbouring village, would swap notes and a cultural exchange would take place. Because of today's communications technology and a global market, this is now happening on a massive scale in the occult world.

There's no stopping that process, and that could be a brilliant positive thing that could further everyone involved. But it could do with being managed better by the people at the other end, namely us. The cultural exchange does not appear to be happening on equal, balanced or even mutual terms. It has the potential to be a destructive, one-sided process, that propigates dumbed down incomplete material and diminishes the international occult communities collective body of knowledge. This imbalance could urgently benefit from being addressed, or at least discussed more, than it currently is. Hence this thread.

i think that the chaos magick dictum 'use whatever works' is also a bruce lee quote regarding martial arts. maybe it helps my muscle tone if i wave my arms in slow random arcs every morning, but trekking to china to study real tai chi for decades would interfere with higher priorities.

Yes. Whatever works. Tai Chi is not a series of random arm movements designed to improve muscle condition. It is primarily a martial art form designed for self-defence, and secondly a series of movements designed to promote the flow of "chi" along specific energy meridians in the human body based upon the principles of chinese medicine.

These movements have been developed and passed on by generations of practitioners, and you can learn them. You will likely find a competant teacher in your city. You don't have to go to China. But if someone thinks they can just make something up on the fly that is directly comparable to Tai Chi, or Kung Fu, or whatever, without ever having been to a lesson, or even after a handful of years training in the disciplines themselves, then they are a deluded idiot. Plain and simple. Similarly, you don't necessarily have to go to Cuba to learn about Santeria. If you live in or near a major city, there will likely be someone there who practices these things in one form or another. It will be much harder to get them to teach you, as an outsider, than it would be to find a Tai Chi teacher, but not impossible either. And if you claim to be serious about learning what another culture has to offer in terms of magic, yet are completely unwilling to actually engage with practitioners from that culture who operate in your immediate vicinity, then you have to question what you're doing