(no subject)

[holzman_tweed]

This was originally intended as a comment to delux_vivens about a post in her LJ about White Pustule Woman[1], but I decided it was worth putting here.

WPW, for those who don't know, is a white woman who claims titles such as "medicine woman," "drumkeeper" and "shaman." She trades on prophecies she claims are Navaho and Hopi in origin, even though she is neither Navaho nor Hopi. Recently, the people whose traditions she has been pirating for her financial benefit have been calling her out on it, and she has been demonstrating that her dream that "all pathways to wholeness are respected by all cultures" does not extend to herrespecting those pathways to wholeness that she claims to walk when those who actually are the keepers of those ways tell her, "You're doing it wrong!"

It is nothing new for the people of the First Nations to speak against those who steal their ways. The Lakota outright declared war on them in the '90s. This is just the latest round in that war. The particular tactic WPW has adopted this time around is to state:

I believe the teachings of earth based spirituality are the right of every person to practice!

You know what? It's true: we all live on the earth, there she is right under your feet, go right ahead and worship her if you feel so moved. People have been doing that the world over for as long as there have been people!

You know what else? Having the right to earth based spirituality does not mean having the right to every earth based spirituality. I practise and teach what some call an "earth based spirituality." No one has a right to learn what I teach: whom I accept as a student is between the Great Ones and I, and if someone started going around claiming to be a Witch and citing me as their teacher they'd be lying. Worse, they'd be lying to the Great Ones. Worse still, they'd be stealing my name. If they were charging people for religious services on the basis of that fraudulent claim, it would only exacerbate matters.

Stealing someone's name is the sort of thing for which hexes are not overreactions.

I've got worse news for White Pustule Woman: The Great Ones are not mocked. They know their own. They know when a thief comes before them. They have a way of letting someone know they're not amused at their pompous bullshit, and it ain't pretty.

But as I'm writing this, I wonder if it's even accurate to call the traditions she's stealing from "earth based spirituality." That's not a term I've ever seen defined to my satisfaction, and I don't much like it. Some may call what I teach "Earth-based spirituality," but I don't -- I call it Witchcraft. And while I may recognize similarities between it and what I occasionally glimpse of various people's religious paths, I also see some differences.

From what I've seen, from what practitioners of the various paths of the First Nations, the ATRs, etc. tell me there is a heavy focus on community. If you're not a part of the people, you're not a part of the path. If you're not living, dying, celebrating, suffering, and struggling with the people on a day to day basis, you're not a part of the community. I'd call that a "community-based spirituality" rather than an "earth-based" one, the latter title seeming to depend on an assumption that being on the same rock circling the same sun provides people who have never and will never meet -- let alone people who only met because one colonized the other -- the same bond that families, neighbors, communities have for one another.

And that's bullshit.

So I join[3] the growing chorus of First Nation practitioners, of ATR practitioners, of those who heed the Great Ones regardless of the names by which they reveal themselves to us by saying: White Pustule Woman[4], knock off the bullshit. Find your own voice, find the Great Ones on your own path, find your own Name.

---

[1] No link, I will not support this woman.[2]
[2] Google likely won't help either, that's not actually what she calls herself.
One's right to choose one's name ends at the point where one undertakes to defraud.
[3] As I have for decades.
[4] And all her foul ilk, they know who they are.

Comments

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

No one has a right to learn what I teach

Now this, in a general sense, I'd disagree with (I believe knowledge should ultimately be free). But at the same time, I wouldn't recognize anything that you teach (or anyone else, for that matter) in this person's cavalcade of co-optation and white privilege.

I don't know this woman (to my knowledge), but I know many people like her, to include at least two different white men; one of them disrupted (however unintentionally) a Heathen ritual with talk about "Grandmother Buffalo". It took every bone in my body not to snap back at him there and tell him "motherfucker, you've never even seen a buffalo".

[holzman.livejournal.com]

Now this, in a general sense, I'd disagree with (I believe knowledge should ultimately be free).

I'm not sure what it means that knowledge should be free, or that knowledge should ultimately be free. If "free" here means "without cost," than I can't agree: every bit of knowledge I've ever seen anyone get they got by paying for, whether the coin they used was blood, sweat, tears, cash, or barter.

If "free" here means "available," then I still don't agree. I can readily think of secret knowledge I possess -- mundane knowledge such as my salary or the contents of my hard drive -- that are not properly anyone's business but my own without strong cause.

If "ultimately free" means that people should be able to discover it on their own, then we agree! Anyone is free to learn how to interact with the Great Ones, but that doesn't mean they're free to learn the particular ways I teach.


What does "knowledge should ultimately be free" mean to you?

[delux-vivens.livejournal.com]

If "free" here means "available," then I still don't agree. I can readily think of secret knowledge I possess -- mundane knowledge such as my salary or the contents of my hard drive -- that are not properly anyone's business but my own without strong cause.

mmhmm. and one of the things that gets me, and you might have seen some of hte native women on my flist talking about it, is that even within native communities everyone doesnt have free reign of whatever 'knowledge' is deemed worthwhile. People have to be deemed responsible and ready for whatever knowledge by community elders. Ya know?

[holzman.livejournal.com]

Yes, indeedy. It's not exactly foreign to neopaganism, either: When I made First Degree, there were things I swore not to divulge to anyone who was not Initiated. When I made Second Degree, there were things I swore not to divulge to anyone who was not Second Degree or training to be Second Degree. What I made Third Degree, there were things I swore not to divulge to anyone who was not Third Degree or training to be Third Degree. Every time I've joined a Coven, there have been things I swore not to discuss or divulge to anyone who was not a member of that Coven. Even as a solitary, there are things I am Oathbound to the Great Ones not to reveal, because it's between Them and I.

When I Initiate someone, I bind them to the same Oaths.

[delux-vivens.livejournal.com]

Hmph. There's always bondage with some folks.

*tiptoes away, looking over shoulder for lightning*

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

Why is that acceptable? I mean, really; how is that different from being a Scientologist other than that one requires more money?

[holzman.livejournal.com]

Acceptable to whom? Anyone who doesn't want to accept it is perfectly free not to: they simply don't get to learn from me, or they get a whole extra set of lessons from the universe about why oathbreaking is a really bad idea. It is acceptable to me because I recognize that secrecy has value in many instances. In Magic, secrecy has value for the same reason that a glass has value for containing water -- or acid: when either spreads without control or containment, messes great and small result.

As to how it's different from being a Scientologist, it would be shorter to explain how they are alike than how they are different. Don't discount the role of money, there's alot hidden in that term. Here's just a few differences:

1. Because Scientology was conceived as a revenue generating scheme, much time and energy is spent trying to convince the world that we must absolutely have those secrets in order to live fulfilling lives, or even to be healthy.
   
2. Scientology's secrets turn out to be rehashed Crowley and really bad science fiction.
   
3. Scientology's secrecy is a tool for blackmail and extortion.
   
4. If someone divulges the secrets they promise me they won't divulge, I don't send goons out to defame them, terrorize them, and otherwise fuck up their shit.
   

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

But you still haven't explained how secrecy is effectively different from, or more acceptable than, any other form of exploitation. People are "free" to dissociate themselves from wage-slavery, and I don't think anyone is going to assault them for it, but they're still cut off from the system and suffer on account of it.

I have secrets, but I've also worked for a wage, and even if that makes me somewhat complicit in the system by accepting its existence, that doesn't mean I necessarily approve of it, or should.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

Secrecy is not a form of exploitation. Secrecy can be used exploitatively.

Scientology is not bad because it has secrets, it is bad because of how it uses those secrets.

No one is exploited because I won't tell them my particular method for Drawing Down The Moon, or because I will only tell them if they agree to follow the rules about who they tell in turn.

Similarly, working for a wage is not itself exploitative, it is the fact that a capitalist can use economic force to require you to work for a small wage compared to the value you create that is exploitative.

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

Mostly the third definition - and to be frank I'm not sure what you mean by "free to learn but unfree to learn the particular ways [you] teach".

Though it's also a bit of the second; I don't tend to actually think anything I do is private, or will be in the end, and I ultimately try to place more value on transparency than secrecy. In general, secrecy is something that's actually deeply unsettling to me.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

Mostly the third definition - and to be frank I'm not sure what you mean by "free to learn but unfree to learn the particular ways [you] teach".

Only those I deem worthy of teaching are free to learn how I call to the Great Ones. Anyone is free to learn their own ways to call to the Great Ones on their own.

Though it's also a bit of the second; I don't tend to actually think anything I do is private, or will be in the end, and I ultimately try to place more value on transparency than secrecy. In general, secrecy is something that's actually deeply unsettling to me.

And yet, I bet you keep a number of secrets: Social Security number, bank account and credit card numbers and balances, and sexual fantasies are three that come immediately to mind. If you work in IT, sooner or later you'll sign an agreement not to divulge your employer's proprietary information. If I'm right, why do you keep those secrets? If I'm wrong, where are they published?

[dmlaenker.livejournal.com]

I "keep" most of those financial "secrets" because that's how most people have to survive under capitalism. When the state and capital are both dismantled, we as a society will finally be free of them.

As for sexual fantasies - frankly, they're embarrassing. And it's social conditioning that creates the shame and other power relationships in those secrets, not anything intrinsic to the secret itself. Maybe one day there will be enough freedom and transparency in the culture that I can discuss these things frankly, but that hasn't happened yet.

The important thing is, tho, that I don't like keeping any of these things secret. I would happily divest myself of the former and divulge the latter if we had the kind of society that allowed that. But I know that I, at least, have to keep working towards that in order to create a world where people can just be open with one another.

[docstrange.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's a lot of post and high-grade mental effort over someone who is playing a series of short cons. ;)

There's been that kind around for ... well, forever.

I think calling her a thief actually is giving her and her ilk too much credit. She's a con-artist, a sham, grifter, faker, fraud. Thief implies she actually GOT something, took it, it's in her hands now, she's got the access, when really it's her claiming she has something she doesn't have, and she doesn't even have it right. Talking about her as a thief lends her legitimacy - she's knowing, she's in possession of ancient traditions, she's powerful, she's only wrong in her method of acquisition - whereas she's really a faker, a shortcut taker, an inventor of whatever makes her sound good, in possession of nothing more than someone else's pharmacy labels on her cheap snake oil.

Like many of those taken in by a con, her supporters are bolstered in their belief by such charges against her as "thief" - such charges engage her narrative of universal access. They don't have access to teh kewl tradition, so brave author goes in and gets some for them! It's like she got a new video game pre-release! She's a regular sp1ritu4l hax0r!

That appeals to a lot of people... and if it were true, would at least be interesting to discuss. But the right claim is, IMO, "fraud."

As an anthropologist, I can name a few other total frauds who - alas - a lot of people take to be truly in the know, and who also are unfortunately confronted on such irrelevancies as their use of others' words, rather than their utter fraudulent self-invention. Even the press hates to print total refutations; they go for softer hits, and have in the past refused to print a complete detailed takedown review of one fraud's first book, which fraud went on to write close to a dozen more. Shame shame. Call them frauds, not thieves.

[salsuginous.livejournal.com]

I don't know about other parts of the country, but here in the Northwest--I've seen enough people (white) co-opting just about everything from the NW Native American's spirtiuality that I want to puke. And the hippies around here. The hippies around here love to call themselves shamans.

Ain't nothing wrong with being deeply interested in another culture. Ain't nothing wrong with having something speak volumes to you and wanting to incoporate that somehow into your own spirituality. But it just feels so blechy and, quite frankly, rude and dishonoring to appropriate another's culture like that. Especially people who just drop acid and then call themselves shamans. That is so offensive.

[delux-vivens.livejournal.com]

lol pustule! great post. and thank you for emphasizing the *community* aspects of this.