Spiritual acquisitiveness, cultural misappropriation (and Tarot decks)

[Satori]

I am quite a melting pot of nationalities. My Dad is Polish, 100%. His Dad was Polish and went back to Poland to find an old world woman. They married, had my Dad, lived in Poland for six years and moved back here where they raised a pack of kids.

My Mom, she is French Canadian, Finnish, English. I lived in Finland for a year and studied music and it was nice meeting my Finnish relatives, and yes I carry the genes that prove I'm part Finnish, but I don't identify with the culture as mine. I'm American. I feel the same way about my Polish identity, and perhaps people think that is sad. That I'm Polish and yet I know almost nothing about what that means....to feel the Polish heritage as it is practiced in Poland. I do know what it means to be made fun of and called a Polack, stupid, slow...oh wow I might be African since someone commented they are called by the same lovely names.

If I were to suddenly find out, as we suspect, that part of my French Canadian heritage had Native American bloodlines would that mean I was Native American and could adopt that culture? I suppose I could try, but I wouldn't ever really have the cultural immersion that would really make it mine. But I might have the genes, so maybe they'd find room for me. I'm proud of my international heritage, but I'm American. Wait....is my country my culture? Is my country my entire heritage? I'm English too, that means I can adopt the entire mythology of England, God Save the Queen!

So now what about adoption? Didn't Native Americans adopt whites into their tribes? Didn't they intermarry between tribes and didn't they adopt people who they loved into their tribes-regardless of skin color, people who were able to share their culture and their ways, people who were able to learn their traditions and practiced them?

So let's see. I'm white. No one will know I'm French Canadian and might have Native blood, I better get a sign or a button to let people know that my Native Tarot decks are my way of trying to learn about what I think I can claim, and yes my Celtic decks are ok, we might have some Irish in there too, one of my great great grandmas was Irish but my Grandma didn't like the Irish part so she never claimed it.....but I can, goody! OK, so the Arthurian decks are ok for me, the Native decks still a grey area, the Marseille well FRENCH canadian right? Ok Marseille is ok for me....are there Polish decks??? I have the Kalevala Tarot so that is ok for me to use seeing as I am Finnish...I think I'm good. I can use all the major systems safely without upsetting anyone I think. But how will they know I'm ok? That I'm ONE of the people with the right genes to use those decks and to practice that spirituality because after all I'm just trying to reconnect with my roots....

 

[Carla]

Oh dear - I only just saw this, and I am sorry. You have clearly done this with - shall I say - genuine thought and taken on what you have for good and thoughtful reasons!

Thanks for that Gregory! That means a lot to me.

 

[ncefafn]

I think I'm good. I can use all the major systems safely without upsetting anyone I think. But how will they know I'm ok? That I'm ONE of the people with the right genes to use those decks and to practice that spirituality because after all I'm just trying to reconnect with my roots....

Oh, dear, I'm in trouble. I use the Bohemian Gothic deck, and I'm neither Bohemian nor a Goth (of either variety).

 

[ncefafn]

Er, can I take that last post back? I just got done chatting with my cousin, and we've found out that both sides of my family are from the Balkans. So maybe I am Bohemian or a Goth after all.

 

[nisaba]

Australia was only colonised by non-Aboriginal people a coupel of centuries ago, which is hardly time to put down roots, but to add to that transience, one of my parents migrated here from Europe in the late 1950s.

I am German, Russian, French, Welsh, Scottish, and I have bits of my DNA that I can just *feel* are elsewhere, origins unknown. In addition, my family has, by and large, fallen apart.

None of this bothered me until I was over forty-five: prior to that, I faced the world on my own merits. But I'm getting weaker with age: I miss having a real country, a country where my ancestors have been forever and where I have been forever. I miss having a family history (obviously I do have a family history, but with a pathologically hostile family, stories don't get handed down, and what memories you keep are largely undesirable and unacknowledged).

My lack of nation and lack of family which is an expression of a lack of nation, has become more and more of a painful wound recently.

Any culture at all that I have, I feel as if I have appropriated. Thus, cultural appropriation in Tarot decks really isn't an issue for me, if it is done well. Conversely, I'm probably more offended than most if it is done poorly, with skin-deep knowledge or disrespect.

 

[Satori]

I think that my tongue in cheek post did not express that I do feel we need to be respectful of culture. And in no way do I support genocide. I do support respectful use of spiritual cultural tradition as a way of personal expression.

Think of a child emulating an older brother or sister, or a father or mother. Are they trying to BE that person? Well perhaps, but really they are copying the elder as a way of learning to become who they are. Do we berate the child and say "NO, don't copy your big brother.....don't try to be like your father". Of course not. It sounds ridiculous.

IMHO the Native peoples who have lost lands and sacred areas actually have the last laugh as they watch white people who are so bereft of spirituality that they have go searching for it everywhere. And where have so many people, so many white people ended up? On the doorsteps of the very people our ancestors sought to destroy.

In some ways I feel this myself, a sort of echo of what Nisaba has stated in her post. That perhaps America has lost touch with the homeland cultures and the diverse traditions that made her. Rather than celebrate those cultures and ensure that immigrants kept their traditions alive, as America grew she absorbed the people into her borders until now a rainbow of people live on her ground and wander around searching for spiritual sustenance. So lost are many of us that we refuse to acknowledge that our Earth Mother is failing, that we have turned against the very ground that shelters us, seek to poison the very air that sustains us.

No I don't worry about insulting anyone with my diverse decks, because I have learned that what other people think about me is really none of my business! What people do with Tarot in the privacy of their own homes is really none of mine.

Do I think that publishers who churn out decks are evil or driven for profit or have no respect? I have enough resources available to me to see before I buy what kind of thought and respect went into a deck. Personally I love the buffet table that LoScarabeo, Llewellyn, US Games, AG Mueller and the private presses have laid before me. I celebrate diversity in people, in communities and in the Tarot world.

Conversations like this are important, yet I have to say that when people start crying about other people stealing their culture and usurping their spirituality I have to wonder about their heart, about their soul. If they are elders then where is the wisdom in that? Are we supposed to get more inclusive or exclusive with maturation and age and with wisdom? Are the Tribes or whoever it is that is flouting the argument of acquisitiveness so paranoid that they think by a white woman smudging her home and honoring the Nations by calling on the Spirits and the Ancestors to protect her, is this somehow theft? Even if she does it wrong, but her heart is in the right place is she to be ridiculed?

I think we have to support each other and the quest for spirituality as a human quest. Will we ever learn to celebrate each other and the beauty of our shared origins as human beings? Can we learn to celebrate all of the beautiful cultures of the world? If we can't do it here, on this forum, then how can we ever do it on a larger scale, in the world out there.

 

[RiccardoLS]

My main concern is where to draw the line.
It can't be something clear, and it can't be something we all agree upon.
There can't be an answer, yet... sometimes you have to give an answer.

I believe that when two cultures interact, there is a mutual influence.
History sometimes likes to portray winners and losers, but there are more ebbs and flows than we can think of. As you conquer, you are conquered. As you seduce, you are seduced.

Historically, the Crousades have been one of the most violent and culturally brutal events of the middle ages. Still the European "barbarian" that went into the Arab lands returned changed... and brought with them, technology, literature, mathematics. At the same time, the consequences of the Golden Horde invasion brougth the arab lands to a Dark Age.

In the end, maybe, I think that cultural misappropration is the way cultures evolves and "mate". This does not make it always good, or respectful.

And, sometimes, I feel I need to draw the line.
And I'm not sure where.
The trhead that started this one went on his own direction, but still the question opened there hasn't been answered. Maybe it can't.

 

[gregory]

I think cultural MISappropriation is disrespectful. But where someone approaches another culture with proper respect, and values it even if they misunderstand it - that I think is worth doing - in the interests of cultural "mating" as Ric rather eloquently puts it.

I don't much appreciate cultures that are determinedly excluding of others who really want to learn or "take on" other things...... And the more understanding of one another that can be promoted - the better.

 

[Satori]

Well I wonder if we create and recreate the Tarot and apply to it so many different kinds of systems, that perhaps it is like a litmus test.

We are testing it, experimenting with it, asking well Does THIS work? And when it keeps working we perhaps become a little less afraid of the thing that makes it work, the Divine?

Also don't we humans love to create beautiful things? And the Tarot allows us so many ways to express ourselves. Maybe the Divine learns about us each time the Tarot gets recreated and maybe that is the more important part of the process! We don't ever stop to think that as we read Tarot perhaps Tarot is reading us, but for different reasons?

What do we show Tarot with each new incarnation of it?


That might be worth a reading to see what comes up.

 

[Satori]

So one more point.

We create spirituality out of our need to define God. Each culture has grappled with this equation and so we have all of these different aspects of what humans believe about God.

Does God care that we are trying to figure out this puzzle? Does God care about these religions, and if so how does She/He show Her/His favor?

In many ways by Tarot showing no favor over one culture's belief system Tarot does what no one has ever been able to do. Tarot shows that spirituality regardless of the culture, works.

Tarot shows that magic works regardless of whether it is in a symbol set that is Etruscan, Bohemian, Cat, Kitty or Egyptian, Celtic, Native. Tarot doesn't care about the clothes you put on it. It just IS.