Barbelith Underground > Temple > Idiot's guide to Cabbalism

Fear not, Chris23, I'm not harassing you in particular. My Jewish-ness is pretty nominal--more of an instilled-culture-from-childhood thing (thanks Grandma, but now can you explain why you married a skeezy Rom truck driver and faked being a Gypsy fortune-teller?) than a profound belief (my family is magnificently diverse and ideologically flexible. Thanks Grandpa.), so the question is not as affect-loaded as it initially appears.My interest is complicated, relating to my own academic study of ethnic violence and the postcolonial models of the appropriation of culture knowledge. I guess what is interesting is perceiving the form of justification cited for the forced democritization of knowledge...which is particularly interesting in the realm of the occult/mystical/religious, where there are so many indigenous culture/groups/communities with a strong sense of secrecy and selective distribution of knowledge, yet a Western consuming audience that seemingly contradictorally (claims to) respect indigenous traditions, yet transgresses the rudimentary codes of "tapu" and secrecy that govern so many of the latter's esoteric traditions.

What fascinates me is how extra-indigenous students of regionalized or ethno-specific occult practices justify the violation of the central tenets of the practices they are appropriating. It is, in a way, akin to both the alluring and repugnant aspects manifest in the old model of "Orientalism": the interloping postulant both gets their cake and eats it, too. There is an imperialism to this assertion of unilateral "democratic" distribution of information thrust upon indigenous systems that do not agree. Yet Freedom is Right, and therefore nonconsensual appropriation of information is justified. It seems to me that something akin to the Rosenthal or Hawthorne effects is occuring within this interchange: the non-indigenous individual is attaining knowledge by conduits deemed unacceptable by the originators of that knowledge for purposes deemed questionable...so what is our perpetrator obtaining beyond ego-actualization, nominally ritualized? By opting out of the emic [in-culture] responsibility-, worthiness- and obligation- aspects of esoteric knowledge, the postulant is missing ninety percent of the point *as perceived by the emic/originating culture*.

Note that last bit, because it's important: what I'm saying is that input equals output: the non-indigenous postulant pursues knowledge to fulfill a set of internal need-wants that have little to do with the in-culture function and use of esotery. Most people import their basal values into a appealing ritual framework...*yet* maintain an internal sense of authenticity to the original. Indeed, the sense of continuity with the indigenous is an actualization need of itself, a consumption item that has become more valued as people are further displaced from a sense of cultural or local rootedness. They are fabricating a temporal and cultural sense of continuity, yet the ends of the project necessitate conscious denial of the project itself. The most obvious manifestation of this is the focusal shift from interdependency and community values/norms to the locus of the self and the sustenance of the former.

In the current postmodern state of America and Europe there is an intellectual consumption demand for esoteric "truths" that is fulfilled by a variety of products and services. Part of this activity is the routine dredging of materials from cultures that are "other" relative to the context of the modern consumer...thus raising the issue of what is being "purchased" (either in the sense of cash transaction or time devoted to study). Most indigenous cultures have been exoticized to create a consumable (and materially purchasable) idea-product. In a lot of cases the natives themselves have much to gain from the process (often while maintaining a bemused and amused seperation between their actual lives and their "performances" for audiences). Various cultures - Rom, US Natives, Celts, etc., etc. - have become shorthand for pseudo-Rousseauian archetypes of wish-fulfilment and self-actualization desires manifested by industrialized, Christian-enculturated Western man. The interesting part is the maintainance of the fine balance of exoticism and reinforcing familiarity: the truly different aspects of other cultures (and their thought systems) are underplayed, while ideals from the consuming (Western) culture are falsely presented as concretized/manifest in the cultural "other." It is both the myth and the shuck-and-jive of the Tasaday controversy, played out on the field of consumption culture.