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I know there are "cousin" threads for this topic, but none dealing specifically with this topic:
Can or should someone embrace a magickal system which has its roots in another culture as a path to enlightenment?
Personally I think that yes we can or should, but there are others who think not: As I’ve mentioned in another post, there are the racist leanings of “classical” occultists like Dion Fortune who think that westerners can only become adept in a western system. I’m reminded of a girl I knew who embraced Shintoism even though she admitted that she would remain “second-class”, because as a westerner, no Japanese Shintoist would ever accept her as an equal. I think of those of darker skin who become Mormons, who, according to Mormon scripture, if they are good enough, will have a great time in heaven serving whites…
Let me say that there is no such thing as reverse-racism. There is only racism. Period. For a white person to claim that non-whites cannot be racist is a slap in the face to those non-whites. For people like Spike Lee to claim that blacks cannot be racist is bullshit. Racism is exclusionism mixed with the fear of the unknown, pure and simple.
Sometimes, historically, people believe their racism is valid, but it becomes a chicken/egg paradox. A brief look at Jewish/Christian/Moslem conflicts and you can almost see why many hate each other. Look at the conflicts between the Hutu’s and Tutsi’s, the Chinese and Japanese, the French and English… It’s all been rationalized, boiling down to racial perspective, of us vs. them, of “righting” perceived historical “wrongs”… And, of course, FEAR.
Like it or not, we see the world through our own eyes, and those eyes are clouded by our upbringing and our environment. Only exposure to different things can de-mist-ify our cloudy vision.
For my own experience, I was born and raised in Quebec, which is, in my opinion a pretty closed, pretty racist society. As an Anglo in a Francophone environment, I have been subject to an amount of prejudice. Not nearly as much as a Black, or Native Quebecker, because if I kept my mouth shut, nobody would know I was a tête-carré. (Square head, or “bloke”, as anglos are called in Quebec.)
That’s not to say that I wasn’t bullied because of racial-linguistics. Many French Quebeckers who hail from France call themselves pur laine, or “Pure Wool”, seeing themselves above all others and having more natural rights than “les maudites”.
As a minority, I was excluded, and due to my upbringing, I excluded others: I remember being 16 and seducing a girl on the phone, and her dying to meet me. I was so excited, I told my parents that I was planning on going on a date with a Haitian girl…
Mom: “Uh… You know she’s black, right?”
Me: “No…”
Mom: “Haitian’s are black…”
Me: “So. I don’t care… She’s very nice.”
Mom: “I think that it could cause a lot of problems…”
I allowed myself to miss out on what may have been a beautiful romance. I came up with excuses as to why we couldn’t hook up. My parents’ upbringing held me back, and I wasn’t rebellious enough in my teens to break away from that. My parents were those “nice” racists, the ones who had black friends (who they would do anything for) but did not believe they should mix. My Dad’s good friend, Uncle Bobby, regularly got the shit kicked out of him because he had the audacity to date then marry a white woman. No one would dare touch Uncle Bobby if my Dad was around, but if he wasn’t…
So needless to say, I’ve inherited racist tendencies from my upbringing and environment.
It is now a part of my magickal training to undo and rewrite these memes, which is why I think it important to embrace “foreign” magickal systems: to open our eye’s (all three) to new experience.
As a person whose ancestors were primarily English, Scottish, Welsh and French, my leanings towards Celtic lore was natural. Unfortunately, I find that the current idea of what a Celtic magickal system is, quite honestly, sucks. At the risk of offending many, many people, I think that Gardener’s Wicca is merely GD Crowley-lite with some goddess worship thrown in... Well, it sucks for me… Different magickal strokes for different magickal folks.
I find that Voodoo (Both Hatian and New Orleans) offers me a system I can deal with: A different perspective that I can both relate to and “shock” myself with due to its “foreign-ness”. While there are some people who believe that the Lwa would laugh at a silly white boy, I believe that the spirits and gods are above that, especially since it’s my belief that they are reflections of our own souls – I’d like to believe I’m above that.
Maybe I’ve embraced it in penance for my stupidity and a nice girl I may have hurt… Maybe the fact that because it’s a French system, it’s a way for me to fit in with that which I’ve been excluded from… I don’t know if the psychology has any impact on the outcome, all I know is that the Lwa are all facets of my personality and dealing with them each separately has shown beneficial.
To wrap up, and hopefully start a conversation, I believe that embracing a “foreign” magickal system can be incredibly potent and a good way of wiping out old, perhaps harmful memes. If you’re going to cross the abyss, you may soon learn that there are many different paths, even many different abysses’s (Abisi?). A fear faced is a fear overcome, and if racism is fear, then embracing that fear is the most certain way to abolish it. |
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