Talking about the Elephant
An Anthology of Neopagan Perspectives on Cultural Appropriation
Edited by Lupa
Stafford, England
Talkings About the Elephant: An Anthology of Neopagan Perspectives on Cultural Appropriation
Edited By Lupa
© Lupa and Contributors 2007 First edition
Smashwords edition 2009
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Introduction
Lupa
Cultural appropriation can be described as: “the taking—from a culture that is not one’s own—of intellectual property, cultural expressions or artifacts, history and ways of knowledge”. (The Writers’ Union of Canada, as recorded in Ziff and Rao 1997, p. 1) The effects of cultural appropriation can range from misinterpretation and incorrect attribution of cultural materials and effects, to deliberate attempts to deceive the general populace about a given spiritual practitioner’s cultural background for financial or social gain. The concept of cultural appropriation is most often applied to the dominant culture in an area taking from other, often disadvantaged, cultures that may have a history of being victimized by the dominant culture.
In the Neopagan community, as well as by extension the New Age and occult communities, cultural appropriation is a fairly common practice for both spiritual and magical purposes, often with the enactors being consciously unaware of their potential impact. A brief tour around many Neopagan festivals will quickly reveal everything from African drums and drumming to books and other articles surrounding “Native American totemism”, as well as Celtic knotwork slapped onto everything from jewelry to clothing and various knickknacks. Neopagans draw (as individuals, not necessarily as a cohesive group) on ancient cultures in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere, and to a lesser extent indigenous cultures extant today. Modern shamans in urban and suburban areas seek to learn the mysteries and magic of tribal cultures they may have read about in a magazine or website. Chaos magicians practicing paradigmal piracy (a la Joshua Wetzel and others) dabble in Voodoo and other Afro-Caribbean religions, South American chemognostic (sacred drug) rituals, and evoke Hindu deities in unusual settings for unorthodox requests.
Are these practices universally bad? Not necessarily. Human cultures have been trading notes and practices at least as long as we’ve been recording history, and likely before then as well. The problem that is often not talked about—and which becomes the proverbial elephant—is that Neopagans and their ilk are not always aware of the impact their borrowings may have on the peoples borrowed from (or stolen, depending on who you ask). There are no best known practices for borrowing from other cultures for one’s spiritual or magical practices, and ultimately each person ends up having to make his or her own decisions as to what’s most correct and ethical.
This subjectivity is to be expected. The Neopagan community is composed of a wide variety of religions and spiritual practices drawn from numerous cultures; it is not a monolithic single religion. This variety is just one reason to encourage dialogue within the community. While it should not be expected that all Neopagans (and New Agers, and occultists) should come to a consensus about what to do about cultural appropriation, the opportunity to share ideas and gain stronger understanding of the issues at hand is valuable indeed. Even if we do not agree with others on what should be done, we can at least reconsider our stances and adjust them as we see fit as we learn more about the debates and controversies.
The contributors to this anthology have provided a remarkable diversity of perspectives, covering appropriation from numerous angles and involving a variety of cultures. While the concept of cultural appropriation often brings to mind Native American/First Nations cultures and the onslaught of “plastic shamans”, when I gathered up the submissions I found that particular manifestation to be in the minority. Instead, I ended up with Hinduism and druidry, Southern hemisphere Wiccans turning a British Wheel of the Year, and a treatise on the elements of the Catholic Eucharist in modern pagan and occult ritual practice, all on my plate at once! Additionally, the voices of the authors varied from academic to casual, analyst to storyteller.
Not that I’m complaining, no, not by far. On the contrary, I was exceptionally pleased to see that the contributors had given me such a wealth of ideas. So what can you expect?
The anthology has been divided into two sections. The first, “Specific Cultural Concerns”, includes essays that deal with individual cultures in detail. It opens with Lelendra’s “Devouring Kitsch: Image Collecting and Cultural Appropriation”, based on her analysis of “Native American” tarot decks. Erynn Rowan Laurie addresses reconstructionist Pagans, particularly Celtic Reconstructionists, in her “Dead Religions, Living Cultures: The Reconstructionist Research and Visionary Blues”. The problem of borrowing land-specific practices from a culture whose geography is quite different from your own is covered in Thea Faye’s “Reinventing the Wheel”, while Rev. Dr. Phillip Bernhardt-House discusses the need for better scholarship when adopting what are assumed to be “Celtic” practices in “None May Enter Without Art or Deeds of Heroism: Going Hungry or Whole Hog with Celtic Cultures”. “Cultural Appropriation in the Neopagan Community: An Ásatrú Perspective” by Larisa Pole addresses issues in modern Norse Paganism, particularly dealing with unverified personal gnosis (UPG). Frater Barrabbas may surprise more than a few people when he explores the integration of Catholic ritual practices into modern Pagan and occult ones in “Magic and the Eucharistic Mass”. Jenne Micale comments on the inclusion of Vedic practices under the Indo-European umbrella in “Druids and Brahmins: Of Cultural Appropriation and the Vedas”, and Aliyah Benjamin devotes her essay, “The Veiled Goddess”, to discussing Near Eastern Pagan practices and some of the potential misunderstandings that may occur when other Neopagans encounter them. Finally, Bernhardt-House finishes off the section with “Scéla Ióbhi 7 Mairt 7 Ápaill 7 Óis”, a combination of his own modern retelling of a relatively obscure myth from the Ulster Cycle of Irish Celtic lore, as well as his explanation of its relevance to modern polytheistic practices.
The second section is described by its title, “General Approaches and Other Perspectives”. While culture-specific examples may be cited in these essays, overall they’re applicable to a broader audience. Diotima questions the links between genetic material and historical and cultural heritage in “It’s In the Blood... Or Is It?”. Elizabeth offers some practical advice on honestly and considerately working with material from other cultures in “Braiding Pagans: Cultural Etiquette in a Multicultural World”. “Those Whom the Gods Call” by Veronica Cummer brings forth the conundrum of what to do when the deities and spirits of another culture come knocking. Sean Green offers a potential solution to the problem of who can rightfully call themselves shamans in his “Appropriation and Service: A Shamanist’s Perspective”. Taylor Ellwood talks about how Neopagans and Occultists may themselves be on the receiving end of appropriation in “Academic Cultural Appropriation of Neopaganism and Occultism”. “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing, Baby… : Cultural Appropriation and the Myth of Authenticity” by Kenaz Filan questions just what truly is “authentic”. Cultural appropriation is measured up against interfaith dialogue and practice in “Cultural Appropriation and Interfaith Inclusion: Contrast and Comparison” by Rhiannon Louve. My own “Animal Totems for Everyone!” promotes the concept of Neopagan totemism as its own system, separate and distinct from various indigenous totemisms. Vince Stevens offers the reader a wealth of practical advice in “Exploring Your New Self: Cultural Appropriation in Theory and Practice”. And Laurie closes out the collection with her important reminder that we should not let the cultural appropriation debate stunt and intimidate healthy practice in “Work and Fear”.
While I have done some standardization of formatting and other details, I have allowed authors to retain their own interpretations on the spelling/capitalization/etc. of certain words, to include variations of (Neo)Pagan, Wiccan, and so forth, as well as respective preferences for American or British English spellings.
It’s my hope that you’ll learn a great deal about the issues surrounding cultural appropriation in the pagan community. Furthermore, if you find yourself pondering your own opinions on the matter, whether they change substantially through reading this book or not, I hope that you will have found the time spent to be of value to you.
Lupa
Portland, OR
10 July, 2008
Bibliography
Ziff, Bruce and Pratima V. Rao, editors (1997). Borrowed power: Essays on cultural appropriation. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
Section One: Specific Cultural Concerns
Devouring Kitsch: Image Collecting and Cultural Appropriation
Lelandra
Five years ago, I got the wild hare to beef up the tarot portion of my website by adding pages that compared a group of decks that seemed to share a theme. By the time a year had passed, I had gotten around to noticing that there were enough Native American-themed decks that a page seemed justified. Since I am extremely interested in both the contexts from which decks arise and the contexts they represent, I went looking to find context, and ran right smack into the viewpoint that Native American tarot cards are one of the signs of a plastic shaman.
While the magnitude of anger about Native American tarot or the Medicine Cards oracle deck by Sams and Carson seems far less than that over the desecration of vision quests, sweat lodge ceremonies and the Sun Dance, these divinatory cards repeatedly earned mentions from shaman-busting websites. For instance, in a website subtitled Death Among Us: Encountering Internet Exploiters Of American Indian Spirituality medicine cards were mentioned second only to interest in totems as characteristics of new age exploiters. (Our Red Earth 2000) Meanwhile, the site Don’t Pay to Pray includes the following in their list of frauds that should be boycotted: “All Sites selling Native American Astrology, Native American Tarot and sites which charge you to find out what you [sic] totem animal is - too numerous to list with our limited bandwidth.” (Three Fires Cyber Warriors 2002) Perhaps I was living on a desert island, but I had not, up until that point, given much thought to the issue of cultural appropriation. Although I lived in a college town with a famous pseudo-Indian mascot, Chief Illiniwek, I was mostly oblivious to the problem. But this focus on fraud and exploitation in my own realm of tarot and oracle decks took me by surprise. I was expecting criticism of particular images or terminology, not a global issue with the genre itself. If it was a surprise to me, this was surely a context that was relevant to relate to those who would go to my webpage. So I summarized the arguments I had found to the best of my ability.
It is true that my page is one-sided in that it does not express arguments against the notion of cultural appropriation, nor does it express arguments justifying the positive values of such decks. Nor did I attempt to determine what proportion of the Indian population shaman busters represented. As I state on the site:
Of course, it would be yet another racist fallacy to say that there is a single ‘Indian viewpoint’. The level of passion against ‘pay to pray’ and ‘plastic shamanism’ is apparent given that Lakota elders in 1993 issued a Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality. Some don’t care. Some are merely amused. (Cole 2003)
Early in my tarot collecting days, I used to entertain the notion that I could learn something useful about a culture or a myth by studying a tarot card deck designed with that culture or myth in mind. I now feel that such an endeavor is almost inevitably doomed: either the theme of such a deck will be warped beyond recognition by attempting to map it to tarot, or the fidelity to tarot itself will be warped by the need to express something with an incompatible structure of ideas to it. If all that is being mapped to the theme deck is a particular costume or illustrative style, with no underlying ideational content from the host theme, the tarot itself may still be recognizably tarot, but it will be a very inauthentic representation of the host theme. Unfortunately, this is the usual solution for creating theme decks. As those with great knowledge and understanding of the host theme would probably be unwilling to strip out its core content for such an enterprise, even if they had the in-depth knowledge of the tarot form necessary to make a good tarot, the task usually falls to those with only a superficial understanding, those enchanted by the trappings, but untouched by any deeper substance. Such a designer will present a fantasy of the theme, rather than an authentic account of it. But the fantasy seems to be enough for tarot consumers. Nightwing described the problem very well in a thread on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum:
Tarot is at least in part about fantasy. There is no escaping that. Occult tarot has been that since the beginning. Tarotists respond to certain decks and certain card images for a number of reasons, amongst them is the fantasy of connecting to another time and another age and culture, no matter how ersatz that connection actually is. (Nightwing 2005 - LS “Native American” Tarot thread)
This is the prejudice I freely admit I bring to the table when I look at a theme deck; such decks are quite likely to be kitsch, with all the connotations of vapid sentimentality, clumsiness, cheesiness, commercial execution, and pretentious poor taste that go along with such a designation. Such an assumption colors the expression on my page of how such decks are inauthentic:
--There is no such thing as a single “Native American Spirituality”. There are hundreds of tribes, each with their own spirituality.
--Generally, spirituality is community-based and traditional. These decks do not come out of the community, do not benefit the community and are not traditional.
--Community-based also means that ceremony tends to be done to benefit the community rather than the individual. Common western religions, whether Christianity or New Age, are more concerned with the spiritual development of an individual.
--The context in which cultural symbols and practices are expressed is extremely meaningful.
Beyond the problem of authenticity, kitschy images of Native Americans come across as disrespectful when they perpetuate the “noble savage” stereotype, or when they reinforce the notion of the “vanishing Indian”. The “noble savage” is a European construct, related to the nature/culture dilemma. Noble savages are virtuous because they are uncivilized. As historian William Vance observes of that Euro-American viewpoint, “Indians and fauns and Arcadian shepherds were all essentially of the same breed, sharing the animal life of nature”. (Vance 1989, p. 9-20, 302-16)They remind us of what we lose by joining the “great march forward” of “progress”. It’s nostalgia for “primitive virtues”. Nostalgia implies loss. By showing 19th century lifeways, tarot card designers imply that Native Americans don’t exist anymore in the 21st century, reinforcing the vanishing Indian stereotype, the idea that Indians are disappearing and almost nonexistent, and it is too late to save their cultures. Both stereotypes are very well addressed in Philip Deloria’s book Playing Indian.
The pain of being on the receiving end of these stereotypes was described by RedMaple:
The romanticized images are offensive to us because they are lies, they allow people to feel good about something that was and is horrifying. It is as if Germans were allowed to feel good about all those Jews, they had such a quaint and colorful culture, too bad they’re all gone now. Would you not be horrified by that?… The Native American images seem allright [sic] because America is used to these images, the ‘taming of the wild west’ and the ‘thanksgiving Indian story’ are very potent American myths. (RedMaple 2004 - LS “Native American” Tarot thread)
Had my criticism stayed confined to an accusation of kitschiness some would have agreed, some would have disagreed, but the page would not have been particularly controversial. But I waded into the waters of cultural appropriation, which has implications beyond kitsch, implications of digestion by an all-devouring dominating culture, the competing rights, responsibilities and desires both of those who wish to resist assimilation and those who wish to be nourished.
In order to digest, there must first be mastication. To be a functional part of a living culture, elements are supported by their original context. They do not stand alone. But in the production of new works of art, particular elements are selected and bitten away from their supporting context. These elements, once isolated and removed from their original cultural contexts, may take on meanings that are less nuanced than or significantly divergent from those originally held, or they may be stripped of meaning altogether.
One of my informants was very upset with the name of a tarot deck, “Vision Quest”, because it was depicting Indians, yet not pertaining to a young male Lakotan’s rite of passage. It was as ridiculous and out of context as a “Bar Mitzvah” tarot would be. It’s the same offense the writer feels when a quote is ripped out of context of a large body of text and put in a new context in such a way that it now means something completely different than the original author intended.
Lands, peoples, places, treasures, and resources that have been looted during the different phases of colonization suggest the need for a certain wariness when confronted by a demand for intellectual freedom and for the availability of indigenous peoples’ knowledge to be served up as the latest course in the global colonial banquet. (Shand 2002)
Borglike, the host assimilates the new element, transforming it in the process so that it now expresses a new message, one that sometimes supplants the original meaning. When it also sanitizes the element or the process of any conflict, you have a classic case of Disneyfication.
Prior to European interference and modern tourism, the Hula dance was strictly a religious tradition to the native Hawaiians. Today, the word Hula conjures up images of provocative women dancing in grass skirts. … Due to the influx of foreigners to Hawaii via tourism, Hula has gone from being a sacred religious rite to being the icon for tropical kitsch. (Sha 2007)
Whether a creator of art or a collector (as in my case), there is “an intense interest in and appetite for the new, the obscure and the exotic”(Heldke 2003, p.7) It puts us at the locus of a struggle between those who see their cultures being plundered as resources for raw materials that serve others’ interests, and those who reject any limitations of access to that experience. One side cries “cultural appropriation”, the other “political correctness”.
Those who feel a responsibility to their culture, and who perceive that it is being looted, see control over how representations are made as “an important site of resistance to colonial, imperial or, in recent years, global capitalist assaults.” (Shand 2002)But are they the rightful owners? Do they have the right to restrict access?
Can culture be owned? When I first wrote my page, I tried to understand how it might feel for someone inside a culture whose heritage had been represented in an alien context to claim the right to resist that use. As a Euro-American, it seemed similar to an infringement of intellectual property. Our notions of intellectual property are a metaphorical extension of real property (land), so in this sense, it is like trespassing on land.
But I realize now that the comparison is flawed. We see property as something that has an owner and can be used for the purpose of extracting economic benefit. On the other hand, cultural heritage is ultimately not about economic benefit at all. As Daes points out below, it is something that carries community and individual responsibility – responsibility to show respect to and maintain reciprocal relationships with those beings, animals, plants or places with which the item is connected.
For indigenous peoples, heritage is a bundle of relationships, rather than a bundle of economic rights. The “object” has no meaning outside of the relationship, whether it is a physical object such as a sacred site or ceremonial tool, or an intangible such as a song or story. (Daes 1997, p. 26)
In a sense, it is almost the opposite of the case of copyright. In our systems of intellectual property, you can copyright only the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. Yet looked at through the lens of heritage, it is the idea itself that carries the responsibility to the web of relationships, not any particular representation of the idea.
Those who rail against political correctness reject attempts to stifle the isolated element’s “ability to communicate and participate in contemporary culture. This may be described as a postmodern position, not least because of its denial of truths or fixed meanings and its embracing of shifting and multiple interpretations of all aspects of contemporary culture. … appropriation is argued to carry its own validity irrespective of the meanings of the original.” (Shand 2002)
Hal Duncan persuasively argues against the notion of art having an owner of any sort. Punctuated by repeated statements that “Dionysus knows no nations”, he makes the case for art itself needing the nourishment of ideas and images found in other cultures. “Art doesn’t recognize the ownership rights of the artist, never mind the tribe that they’re a part of.” (Duncan 2006)
I can understand the idea of art needing nourishment, but the resulting creation does not need to label itself as an example of the original. It can honestly state that it is something new. Back in the 1980s, Ursula Le Guin wrote a book set in the Napa Valley called Always Coming Home. Although she studied indigenous Northern Californian myths, legends and songs (many of which had been collected by her anthropologist father), she didn’t just retell these stories. She created a new culture, set in the future, called the Kesh. She created rituals to describe, the embeddedness of which were partially inspired by Pueblo and Hopi cultures. The Kesh are a prosperous society that is living well in good balance. But although it fulfills the mirroring role we have imposed on Native American cultures, it is explicitly not Native American.
I would love to see creativity of this sort in the realm of tarot deck creation. There is much in other systems of myth and ritual that is deservedly inspirational. Just a little more effort to distinguish the result from being a kitschy copy and instead being a new birth, acknowledging the parentage, but standing on its own feet.
Perhaps the dialectic between nourishment and responsibility cannot fully be resolved. Each party is correct within the constraints of its own definitions. Just cultivating an awareness of the relationships will go far, even if your art demands that “Dionysus knows no nations”. For myself, if I cannot participate in the relationships, I don’t want to lay claim to the song or story. I don’t have the right to tell anyone else how to think. But my own perspective is that, as I say on my webpage, “There is a continuum between celebrating cultural diversity and cultural appropriation. There is a big difference between saying ‘How cool! There are bears in the neighborhood!’ and doing the Goldilocks thing of barging into the bears’ cabin without knocking or being invited in, and eating up Baby Bear’s porridge because ‘it’s just right’.” I believe that it is possible to be inspired by a culture without creating representations of it that might overwrite the original.
Bibliography
Cole, Joan (2003). Pseudo Native American tarot decks: A picture is worth 1000 words. Retrieved October 15, 2007 from http://www.lelandra.com/comptarot/tarotindian.htm.
Daes, Erica-Irene. 1997. Protection of the heritage of indigenous people. New York and Geneva: United Nations. (As cited and quoted in Shand, 2002, below).
Deloria, Philip J (1998). Playing Indian. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Duncan, Hal (2006). More on cultural appropriation. Retrieved October 15, 2007 from http://notesfromthegeekshow.blogspot.com/ 2006/09/more-on-cultural-appropriation.html.
Heldke, Lisa (2003). Exotic appetites: Ruminations of a food adventurer. New York: Routledge.
Le Guin, Ursula (1985). Always coming home. San Francisco:Harper and Row.
LS “Native American tarot” thread on Aeclectic tarot forum. (2004-2005). Retrieved October 15, 2007 from http://www.tarotforum.net/archive/index.php/t-31536.html.
Our Red Earth (2000). Our red earth: Observations on internet exploiters of American Indian spirituality. Retrieved November 24, 2007 from http://www.geocities.com/ourredearth/exploiters .html.
Sha (2007). Culture! 99 cents per pound!. Retrieved October 15, 2007, from http://www.islanesia.net/?cat=4.
Shand, Peter (2002). Scenes from the colonial catwalk: Cultural appropriation, intellectual property rights, and fashion. Cultural Analysis: Volume 3, 2002. Retrieved November 17, 2007. from http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~caforum/volume3/ pdf/shand.pdf.
Three Fires Cyber Warriors (2002). Don’t Pay to Pray. Retrieved November 24, 2007 from: http://ca.geocities.com/ dont_pay_to_pray/index.htm.
Vance, William (1989). “America’s Rome”. New Haven: Yale University Press. As cited in Deloria, Philip J. Playing Indian. New Haven: Yale University Press, p. 50.
Dead Religions, Living Cultures: The Reconstructionist Research and Visionary Blues
Erynn Rowan Laurie
What do you do with a “dead” religion? Aside from turning it into a sea shanty filk, of course.
Outside the so-called mainstream of Paganism -- Wicca and eclectic Wiccan-styled Neopaganism -- lies a vast and largely underrepresented territory of reconstructionist paths. You won’t usually find books about these spiritualities in the occult and New Age section of your local Barnes and Noble. There’s not much in most Pagan shops, either. The average Pagan reconstructionist is much more likely to be found haunting the history, anthropology, or mythology sections of the bookshop or library.
For some reconstructionist Pagans, issues of cultural appropriation never arise. It’s difficult to “appropriate” the culture of, for instance, the ancient Sumerians, whose living culture disappeared a few thousand years ago. Texts and archaeological remains exist to give guidance and hints but, by and large, no one is going to claim that Sumerian reconstructionists are appropriating anything beyond some musty textbooks.
The issue is more complex for reconstructionists working with religions derived from cultures that were converted to Christianity or Islam and which are still extant. Celtic, Norse, Hellenic and other reconstructionists sometimes find themselves the target of accusations of cultural appropriation even when they are descendants of the ethnic group in question and have some direct family connection to the cultural customs that have survived. But in the case of a living culture that abandoned its polytheistic religion hundreds or even a thousand or more years ago, how accurate can such an accusation really be?
We could start with issues of language. An Irish proverb has it, “ní tír gan teanga” -- no nation without a language. (Daltaí na Gaeilge (unknown))It could be argued that there is no religion without a language, either. Language is the carrier of cultural understanding and its nuances offer hints and reveal the depths of differences between modern Western approaches to life and spirituality, and the approaches of pre-Christian cultures.
In most reconstructionist communities and groups, learning the language of the people who originally practiced the religion being reconstructed is a priority, at least for liturgical purposes. In many cases, these languages have not been spoken since at least the late middle ages. Old Norse, Old Irish, Ancient Greek, Hieroglyphic Egyptian -- all of these and more are the subject of study by reconstructionists of one stripe or another. Some reconstructionists, in a very valid desire to make a reconstructed religion workable in the modern world, advocate the study of modern languages that are the descendants of these -- Irish, Scots Gaelic, Icelandic, Faeroese, and others. (NicDhàna, Laurie, Vermeers, ní Dhoireann 2007) Modern languages are usually much easier to learn, having living native speakers, and there are often textbooks and classes available in most urban areas.
When it comes to language study, no one is going to accuse anyone of cultural appropriation. Learning a second or subsequent language is usually looked upon as an accomplishment and welcomed by native speakers, even if the student is a bit awkward and the grammar isn’t always right. Those who can sing in a language like Irish or Scots Gaelic are welcome at cultural events ranging from local ceilidhs to the Scottish Royal National Mòd. Student efforts are usually greatly appreciated by older folks who speak that language, and student participation is seen as helping to enliven and preserve both the language and the culture that goes with it.(Harper 2005 and Ross 2007)
Moving from language into folk customs and the reconstruction of religion, however, opens the question of appropriation. But the real question to ask is whether a modern Christian culture “owns” a discarded Pagan past. Certainly folk customs still in use are a sensitive area, but many of these customs were public property, enacted by entire villages. Many local festivals are commercialized to the extent that tourism is encouraged and locals hope that outsiders will come and participate respectfully.(Day 2000)
Unlike many Native American songs and practices (Goodman and Swan 2003) folk songs and customs in Ireland and Scotland are not “owned” by particular families or individuals. In places where folk practices and festivals are not commercialized, it seems that native Irish and Scots are often uninterested in their native beliefs and customs, seeing them as retrogressive, superstitious, and a mark of poverty and shame (MacInnes 2006) This said, certainly some people will feel that local customs are only appropriate for those who live there, regardless of whether the customs are dying away in the younger generations.
Even in cultures where some songs and rituals are the property of particular families or individuals, gifting these things to others is possible. And within the same tribal group or culture, you will often find disagreement among traditional elders and the younger generations about whether or not outsiders should be allowed to participate in cultural traditions. The tension between preserving a culture by opening it to outsiders and keeping a culture as a private property for only those of certain blood quanta is a bone of great contention in many Native American tribes today. (Harney 1995 and Tallman 1993)
Under such circumstances, people who learn the language, who come to live in the places where the customs are practiced, and who regard the culture with respect are generally much more likely to be welcomed as participants. They are also more likely to be granted permission by tradition-carriers to perpetuate the tradition themselves by teaching others, whether the tradition in question is a song, a dance, a ritual, or the customs of daily life.
In Ireland and Scotland, a few things of spiritual or magical nature were regarded as the property or responsibility of certain families. This seems to be particularly linked with keeping specific holy or healing wells, where the power of the well can only be awakened or passed to the person seeking healing through the agency of a hereditary keeper of the well’s ritual or its associated relic. (Brenneman and Brenneman 1995) I can think of no case where any Celtic Reconstructionist Pagan has attempted to usurp the role of such a person, even where the hereditary office has been abandoned. That said, the idea of a reconstructionist becoming the keeper of a local spring where they live and developing ritual surrounding that spring as inspired by such a practice is well within the both the goals and practices of reconstructionist religion. I do not believe that such an act can be seen as “cultural appropriation”.
In addition to language learning and research, more and more reconstructionist Pagans are making what are essentially pilgrimages to the lands where their paths originated. These journeys are taken out of respect for the people and the cultures, to learn more, and to participate as genuinely as possible in the living cultures that preserve customs from the Pagan religions of those lands. Some go to study at universities, living in the culture for several months or years. In some cases, when it becomes practical, some fortunate individuals go as far as permanently moving to the land where they feel their Gods most closely, just as some sincere students of Native American paths move to the reservations to work with and share in the struggles and daily lives of the tribal people whose spiritual path they wish to walk.
When pushing further into the past and reconstructing the worship of pre-Christian deities, I believe that any accusation of “cultural appropriation” becomes moot. There is no living culture to appropriate from. Certainly no one has been practicing the polytheistic Paganism of the pre-Christian Gaels for several hundred years, though some fragmentary customs survive. The only real objection that could be made is when people claim that reconstructing a Celtic religion makes them “Celtic.”
The issue of Celticity is in large part one of identity politics. Laying claim to the label means different things to different people. The problems are compounded by the variety of ways in which “Celtic” is defined. Some people see it as a genetic heritage, but this is not a definition that is accepted by any legitimate Celtic scholar. It is most often defined as a linguistic and cultural marker -- if one speaks a Celtic language and lives in a Celtic culture, one is Celtic, regardless of heredity. (Hale and Payton 2000)
In much of modern Paganism, “Celtic” is a label that means alleged Celtic deity and holy day names are used, but most of these groups have little or no connection with genuine Celtic languages or cultures, living or dead. Without an understanding of what “Celtic” means in the first place, it is impossible to situate a religion within any of those cultures and so the label is by definition incorrect. Thus, making claims of Celticity without a linguistic or cultural connection, such as in “Celtic” Wicca or “Celtic” shamanism, would much more accurately be seen as appropriation (Bowman 2000)
Another difficult aspect of reconstructionist religion is that, by its nature, it requires a certain amount of both modernization and syncretism in order to be a fully functional spiritual path. Most reconstructionists don’t have the full texts of rituals to fall back upon and they certainly do not have access to much of the original spiritual and theological underpinnings of dead religions. In order to be functional, a reconstructed religion also requires the sensitive exploration of philosophies and techniques from other neighbouring cultures and religions. Practices must be constructed from hints, fragments, and speculations. Yet, by and large, reconstructionist Pagans acknowledge this process and take great pains to source the material they use for their beliefs and practices.(NicDhàna, et al. 2007) The process of incorporation is often one of extended debate and experimentation within the community before anything is accepted as part of the emerging canon. Sources external to the culture are carefully examined to determine whether they will fit into the known and understood matrix, whether that source is a nearby culture or the dream and vision work of an individual reconstructionist. Great emphasis is placed upon credit where it is due.
Because the reconstruction process is intended to produce a viable, living spiritual practice with links to the culture of origin,(NicDhàna, et al. 2007) it will inevitably go through phases of change. Understandings will shift as new scholarship opens previously unavailable texts through translation. Folk practices from the living source cultures may be reinterpreted through new understandings gained by scholarship, pilgrimage or residence within the culture, or mystical means. Increasing linguistic facility might shift how a particular phrase is understood within the community and its practice. Living cultures, even conservative ones, undergo these processes constantly. It would be unreasonable to expect reconstructionist paths to fossilize, fixated on one temporal period without deviation.
These processes of syncretism and modernization might also leave reconstructionist religions open to accusations of cultural appropriation. It would be instructive, though, to consider that both Native American and indigenous Siberian cultures are going through the same processes in rebuilding their own cultural practices after the devastations of Christianity, Soviet and capitalist political repressions, the forced relocation of indigenous peoples and the push to destroy Native languages as a method of removing people from their traditional cultures. These cultural and spiritual reconstructions are not happening in a vacuum.
In North America, intertribal powwows and dances are a powerful matrix for the spread of ritual and practice to individuals of many different tribes and regions. (Beck, Walters, Francisco 1990) Desert Southwest peyote practices were combined with Christian ideology and symbolism to form the Native American Church, which then spread throughout North America.(Anderson 1996) In Siberia and Mongolia, Michael Harner and other neoshamanic practitioners teach workshops on “core shamanism” to indigenous practitioners who are attempting to reconstruct their own cultural practices. In addition to the stories of living elders, modern Siberian shamans are turning to Russian ethnographic texts and New Age paradigms to recreate and reconstruct lost practices. (Znamenski 2007) Many of their methodologies are very similar to what is happening within western reconstructionist Paganisms. Yet very few people would argue that these indigenous groups are indulging in cultural appropriation, at least in terms of the usual negative connotations of the phrase.
I suspect that controversy will exist around the issue of reconstructionist religions and cultural appropriation until these paths have been functional for several generations. By then, they’ll be distinct cultures of their own.
Bibliography
Anderson, Edward F., (1996). Peyote: The Divine Cactus. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Beck, Peggy V., Walters, Anna Lee, and Francisco, Nia, (1990). The Sacred: Ways of Knowledge, Sources of Life. Flagstaff: Navajo Community College Press/Northland Publishing Co.
Bowman, Marion, (2000). Contemporary Celtic Spirituality. In Hale, A. and Payton, P. (Ed.), New Directions in Celtic Studies (pp. 69-91). Exeter, University of Exeter Press.
Brenneman, Walter L. and Mary G., (1995). Crossing the Circle at the Holy Wells of Ireland. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
Daltaí na Gaeilge, (unknown). Seanfhocail archive. Retrieved 18 October 2007 from http://www.daltai.com/proverbs/ cat03.htm.
Day, Brian, (2000). Chronicle of Celtic Folk Customs: A Day-to-Day Guide to Folk Traditions. London: Hamlyn.
Goodman, Linda J., and Swan, Helma, (2003). Singing the Songs of My Ancestors: The Life and Music of Helma Swan, Makah Elder. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Hale, Amy, and Payton, Philip, (2000). Introduction. In Hale, A. and Payton, P. (Ed.), New Directions in Celtic Studies (p. 8). Exeter, University of Exeter Press.
Harney, Corbin, (1995). The Way It Is. Nevada City: Blue Dolphin Publishing.
Harper, Christina (2005). Bringing Gaelic to Seattle’s Cultural Curious, Retrieved 18 October 2007 from http://heritage. scotsman.com/traditions.cfm?id=2276822005.
MacInnes, John, and Newton, Michael (Ed.), (2006) Dùthchas Nan Gàidheal: Selected Essays of John MacInnes. Edinburgh: Birlinn.
NicDhàna, Laurie, Vermeers, ní Dhoireann, (2007) The CR FAQ: An Introduction to Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism. Leverett: River House Publishing .
Ross, John (2007). Call for international Celtic festival to replace ‘boring, outdated Mod. Retrieved 18 October 2007 from http://heritage.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid= 64&id=1335612007.
Tallman, Valerie (1993) Article on the “Lakota Declaration of War”. Retrieved 18 October 2007 from http://www.thepeoplespaths.net/articles/warlakot.htm.
Znamenski, Andrei A., (2007) The Beauty of the Primitive: Shamanism and the Western Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Reinventing the Wheel
Thea Faye
Wicca has yet to mark one hundred years in existence, but it is one of the fastest growing spiritual traditions in the world, especially if you include those who are not initiated but self-identify as wiccan. (Please note that for the purposes of this article, in order to draw a distinction between initiatory practises and those of a more eclectic bent, a capital W denotes Gardnerian and/or Alexandrian Wicca and a lower case w the so-called solitary or eclectic wicca.) Its effects on those who practise it can be profound and it can inextricably tie you into your local environment in a manner that few are privileged to experience. However, there are huge variations as to what being Wiccan actually means. Even among lineaged covens, practises vary wildly as emphases differ, groups incorporate other magical lines and techniques and individual personalities impact on the flavour of the rituals. Then there is also the external influence – the culture a particular group finds itself in has an impact on the nature of the coven, as does the land itself. An herb, for example, which is so abundant in one place that it may even be considered a weed may be scarce or completely absent elsewhere and so practises need to be adjusted accordingly.
Whether you believe that only initiates who can trace their lineage back to Gardner have the right to call themselves Wiccan or whether you are the most laid back of eclectic wiccans, piecing together your personal practises from any source that looks promising, the one thing that you are most likely to have in common is that you follow the Wheel of the Year in one form or another. The Wheel is comprised of eight festivals roughly evenly spaced throughout the year, combining four Greater Sabbats (Imbolc, Beltane, Lammas and Samhain) and four Lesser Sabbats (the solstices and equinoxes).
Doreen Valiente, writing in Witchcraft for Tomorrow, tells us that “These are the natural divisions of the year, and all of them were celebrated by our pagan Celtic ancestors in Druidic times.” (Valiente 1978, p. 14) However, if we look at the historical evidence, it is only true of the Greater Sabbats, and then only in certain parts of Celtic Europe. Samhain was the most widely acknowledged of all the festivals, there being evidence that it was marked on the continent as well as in the U.K., although there is nothing to indicate that it was a Welsh festival. The others were confined mostly to Ireland and parts of Scotland. (Hutton 1991, p. 178) The Lesser Sabbats have even more spurious links to the Celts, there being no evidence of the celebration of the equinoxes amongst them. Bede tells us that the Anglo Saxon spring month Eostre is derived from the Anglo Saxon goddess Eostre (known as Ostara on the continent), but Anglo Saxons are not to be conflated with Celts and this tells us little about what religious rites, if any, were associated with this time (and it is also worth noting that, prior to Bede, there are no mentions of Eostre). Likewise, the solstices can be found in literature pertaining to the Anglo Saxons, as well as Germanic and Norse religions, but Celtic evidence is rather silent on the issue, with there being a suggestion of some festivities around Midsummer, but again, confined to specific areas. (Moonhunter 2003)
Legend has it that when Gardner pieced together the Wheel in conjunction with his friend Ross Nichols, they decided that it would be great to have an excuse for a party every six weeks or so, so having used the Greater Sabbats as a framework, they added in the Lessers to plug the gaps, so to speak. This would certainly explain why it is that on the surface, the Wheel appears to be coherent, but if you examine it in greater depth, it is far from being a consistent system.
There are a number of myths associated with the Wheel, many of which either make no sense or contradict each other. For example, if we look at A Witch’s Bible, we hear tell of the Oak and Holly King, fighting it out for dominance at the solstices, an idea which is lovely in theory, but in practise, makes no real sense if we consider that a King at the height of his power is supposed to be overthrown by one at his weakest point. (Farrar 1996, p. 94) It would make more sense if this myth was connected with the equinoxes – but the autumnal equinox has been highjacked by a link to the Mabinogian, by dubbing it “Mabon,” ostensibly after Mabon ap Modron, meaning the divine son of the divine mother. Although there are variations from coven to coven and line to line as to what is being celebrated at any given time, the Wheel is generally used to follow a pattern of death and rebirth of the God in conjunction with the fertility and life cycle of the Goddess. As such, it makes it difficult to slot in the story of a divine child stolen from his mother and brought up in the Otherworld directly before Samhain, when usually those who have died are remembered and honoured.