Blessed Are the Ignorant (or, a funny thing happened in a coffeeshop)

My point is...

So what if it had been voodoo? Why would he need to know that? What business would it be of his?

If you saw someone in front of a cross, would it really be your business to ask if they were praying or not? Would it concern you enough that you needed to know?

And for another thing...

Just because "everything is voodoo" out here doesn't mean it's not allowed to make me angry! Just because it's culturally acceptable doesn't mean that it's the right attitude to have. Why is it that everything unexplainable or unfamiliar has to be "voodoo" or "cursed" or evil? Why can't it just be what it is?

I don't mind people asking questions, but once they've assumed that they are in a positional to label it before they even know what it is I'm doing, then I've assumed the right to label them ignorant.

If someone said or asked me something like this, I'd just tell them what's up. What's what. Yes, he obviously is ignorant of Tarot and Voodo, but I'd use that as an oppurtunity to teach someone and educate After all Tarot and Voodoo are out of the mainstream, you can't expect most everyone to know a lot or even a little about either.

Venus Moon said:

If someone said or asked me something like this, I'd just tell them what's up. What's what. Yes, he obviously is ignorant of Tarot and Voodo, but I'd use that as an oppurtunity to teach someone and educate After all Tarot and Voodoo are out of the mainstream, you can't expect most everyone to know a lot or even a little about either.

Click to expand...

I agree here. It is not the responsibility of every human being to know everything about Tarot. Some people just don't get into it. Now this person knows more than they did before. Did you offer to do a reading for them?

Folks, the VooDoo Tarot has the word VooDoo in it for a reason.

afrosaxon, I'm not saying the waiter was 100% right, however nor are you. Perhaps you weren't performing a VooDoo ritual, but the waiter was pretty intuitive to ask if you were doing VooDoo, especially considering you had a VooDoo Tarot in your hands. I think he deserves some credit here.

It's not just in Texas. A lot of people from the southern US refer to folk magic, especially African-American folk magic, as voodoo or hoodoo. This isn't ignorance, these are the traditional regional names for traditional regional folk practices. Zora Neale Hurston, who wrote about this a lot, said that voodoo is mostly the white folks' word, and hoodoo the black folks' word. If you look in the catalogs that sell to that market (powders and washes and oils and hands and such), you'll often see what folks here on ATF call Voodoo, Voudun, Vodou, specified as "Haitan Voodoo,"to distinguish it from the ordinary, Southern kind. My understanding is that these days, a lot of hoodoo specialists do use Tarot to do readings.

I'm not sure the question was much more than ordinary conversation. A waitress, seeing me cross myself before I eat in a diner might ask, "Are you a Catholic?" I'm not, I'm Episcopalian. But I wouldn't think the question odd at all. On the other hand, since living here in the North, I've found there are a lot of people who find being asked about their religion invasive and offensive. And it makes them angry, in a "what business is it of his" sort of way. But in the North Carolina of my youth, "What church do you go to?' was an ordinary first conversation kind of question. And "We're Jewish" or "I don't go to church" were ordinary, informative answers, as much as "First Baptist" or "Church of God."

Maybe one thing going on here is people from different subcultures with different vocabularies and different ideas of what constitutes proper topics of conversation at different levels of acquaintance.

No one knows everything, which makes us all ignorant about something.

It never bothers me for someone to ask me a question. Like the others said, he was obviously curious, and it's an opportunity to pass along a little of your knowledge.......

We do a lot of our learning by asking questions...

see the way i see it is that i would see that and i too would ask myself questions because i am not into the voodoo thing nor am educated on it.but sitting in a public area with tarot will draw attention whether it be neg or not. so for someone to ask about it means they know about tarot or would like to know more but is scared..

note as well,

he didn't ask her to leave or put them away.

I think he was curious too, and for me curiosity is the first and best cure to "ignorance"- the two are inimical

-saba
(whose sense of her own ignorance is often crushing)

Curiousity is good. Curiousity from an employee at a place where you're hoping to read regularly is very very good.

He asked after what you were doing and hooked it into personal experience he's had - made a connection between your actions and what he knows (rightly or wrongly).

The other response you could have gotten? "Put that evil stuff away!" He could have, instead of comparing it to something he'd seen before, compared it to his everyday life and labeled your activities foreign and scary and dealt with you from a place of fear of the unusual rather than curiousity about it.

These are the people that become your biggest allies... because after you explain what you're doing (and you can toss in some gentle info about what he's already expressed curiousity about - Voodoo - as well) and what the difference is between reading with a Voodoo themed deck and 'doing Voodoo'... then the NEXT person that comes in and sees you and mentions something to him about it (perhaps "what's that scary person doing over there? Voodoo??") you now have someone willing, interested and able to explain to others what you're doing and why you're welcome in that shop to do it.

Sure, you can choose to be offended by his clumsy curiousity... there's surely no shortage of that to be annoyed by... but in a place where you hope to read regularly? One clumsily curious employee is worth fifty politely disinterested customers who will never ever approach you for a reading.

I've got to say I think the waiter had an intuitive flash! I don't think he realized it but I think he had a psychic flash!