Closed practices, white sage, and minding our own business

Hello y'all. This is Gem and I have some thoughts I'd like to share today. I'm going to talk about closed or initiated practices, sharing across culture and tradition, appropriation vs appreciation, human nature, and the perils of being too online.

Yesterday a question was raised about honey jars being part of Hoodoo, and whether they are part of that closed practice. It was planned on Monday for us to talk in today's email about why we don't sell white sage at Déjà Vu, so this thread was already spinning in my mind.

The conclusion I came to after a few minutes of reading other people's thoughts about Honey Jars and Hoodoo: Yes they are a part of Hoodoo, but sweetening magick is part of nearly every folk magick tradition. Some variation on that theme is a part of all cultures at this point. The cat has long been out of the bag on this sort of spell. Answers popping up nearly unanimously across all forum threads I read on the topic had longtime practitioners of Hoodoo saying that no one owns herbs and honey. Two different decades-long practitioners had negative things to express about the concept of an entire category of popular folk spells being closed to everyone all of a sudden because of recent internet discourse on TikTok.

The obvious conclusion I came to was that a spell, practice, or method doesn't belong to one group, even if it's a closed group. Perhaps my feeling about it comes from my thoughts on selling white sage? I don't sell white sage because native folks have asked for us white people not to use it. The plant has become over harvested and is becoming endangered. It is literally the easiest thing in the world not to sell it, as there are so many other kinds of plants that we can use for smoke cleansing and making herb bundles. It would be ludicrous, though, to say that nobody else can use smoke to spiritually cleanse a space or person. Smoke cleansing is done by every culture on earth. Smudging is a native ceremony, and a closed practice, therefore I don't use the word in the context of what I'm doing, but what I am doing is smoke cleansing. Working with animal spirits is part of my practice but I am not part of the Native American tribe that has Spirit Animals as part of their closed practice.

Gatekeeping can be good! We can protect our own cultural traditions! We can also choose to be respectful of others cultures and wishes, especially those who society takes so much from, yet returns so little. When those folks decided to share their own traditions, though, it gets a little more complicated. When Black Americans fought to free themselves from chattel slavery in the south and fled into the Appalachian Mountains, it was their choice to share their knowledge with the folks who were living there. The blending of cultures is the American story. The distillation of African spiritualities, Irish & Scottish mysticism, and Native American beliefs was the birth of Appalachian conjure.

To continue giving context, we are the American melting pot. Cultures blended and assimilated, people from all over did it to fit in and survive, and that was the way it was. The concept of cultural appropriation as we understand it is fairly recent in the mainstream consciousness. The story of American folk magick is a cauldron of ideas, practices, and traditions melting together. Honestly, the same can be said for mythology, art, music, fashion, cuisine, language, and the rest of the human experience. We like to imitate, we borrow from one another, and we definitely steal from other cultures when we see something we like.

Cultural appropriation as we understand it is pretty unique to us though, and I think the best example I can think of is the Kimono Wednesdays controversy that unfolded about a decade ago. The Boston MFA canceled an interactive event centered around trying on a replica of the kimono from Monet's famous painting Japonisme when there were protests and accusations of racism tied to the event. If historians were correct, Monet was poking fun of the trend of Japanese aesthetics during his own time, and the woman in the painting is his own wife. The most striking pieces of information at play in this story were that this event was offered in three different Japanese museums, and they were all a smashing success, which is why they tried it in Boston. The reactions from actual Japanese folks were mostly confused and disappointed, as could be seen in the comments of this NY Times article, that noted "Reproductions of the kimono were commissioned by NHK, the Japanese broadcaster, as part of “Looking East,” a traveling exhibition including the Monet work that was seen at museums in Tokyo, Kyoto and Nagoya." Americans rejecting a Japanese made exhibit as racist against Japanese because of ignorance of history and context is so uniquely American.

That kind of perspective definitely picked up steam via internet discourse in the past 15 years. Sometimes there are some really silly ideas that run around the internet, and most of the silly ideas I see pertaining to witchcraft get bandied about on TikTok. These are the kinds of ideas that can't withstand common sense. They are softer than the finest kimono silk and do not stand up to logic or scrutiny. It's the siren song of boredom, and a sure sign that you're in need of connection. If you find yourself being sucked down the rabbit hole of ridiculous discourse of the chronically online you should get out of the house and talk to some other humans.

Not using or buying white sage is as easy as it can be. Purchasing supplies, getting readings, and taking classes from folks who are sharing their cultural traditions is an easy way to make sure you're being a cultural appreciator instead of appropriating. In the case of long shared folk magick, though, I see that like sharing a recipe. If I share my beloved recipe for banana bread with someone, I can't take it back. Now my recipe becomes part of the fabric of society. It is very important to remember, however, that odds are that the secret family recipe is not available for you or me to get my hands on, because that is the nature of secret family recipes.

In the end, respecting other people's wishes is paramount. When it comes to people safeguarding their own traditions, we should always respect those wishes. However, we have to tamp down on this reactionary impulse that stifles our ability to think critically and understand historical context. We must avoid thought terminating and self limiting phrases and ideologies whenever we can. Things are not always black & white. We must (especially fellow white women) stop policing other people's behavior and speaking for others, and we've got to learn to understand nuance if we are to survive.