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

I believe you out of context with this Demon Goddess, I don't see it as profiling at all. Nothing derrogitory was said and nothing negative or adverse took place- a question was asked based on someone knowledge of voodo in New Orleans and that person was called ignorant- even after he explained his line of thought and the connection.

Demon Goddess said:

Very true... sometimes they're really ignorant and stupid too.

And sometimes, they truly are curious and want to know... I find it really offensive when someone asks me if I'm German or something because my French isn't quite up to their sense of how a French person speaks.

My Daddy taught me a long time ago... Racism isn't what someone says, it is what someone hears.

Which is why I do not and will not allow my children to use the N word, which in the Bahamas amongst my hubby and his friends means "buddy"...

Imagine... my husband having walked into a major Canadian University, fresh off the boat, steps into the cafeteria with his lunch in hand, looks around for a friendly face and sees three black men sitting at a table in the corner having their lunch. Hubby seeing "familiar" faces, strolls over and say's "Hey, how y'all N's doing"... My hubby leads a charmed life, you see, because although he was quite bunny brown from having grown up in the tropics, he is still for all intents and purposes a white man. Two of these men just happened to be from Georgia. You can imagine... I'm sure the three of them paled considerably... The largest of the three chortled and said... "Where you from boy?" Lucky thing hubby was Bahamian. Anyone else would have been picking his teeth up off the ground.

My point is.. If you are used to being on the receiving end of racism... you tend to know it when you hear it.

I'm not often on the receiving end of racism, but I do get sexism and as different as it is, it's similar. Thing is, I can easily tell when someone is just ignorant, as in doesn't know any better, or when they're being sexist.

There is no doubt in my mind that AF was on the receiving end of a racist comment and any suggestion to the contrary is rather silly, because nobody but AF heard it.

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GenoviaJ said:

The point is this. In order for one to feel upset, it points back to something inside that individual that feels some contempt for voodoo. I don't understand how that can be possible with someone using cards based on the heritage. I am proud of my roots and would have felt honored that someone thought me capable of such energy. In cultures where voodoo is practiced these practitioner's are revered and respected- there is no sense of shame or offense. [snip] The ignorance lies in believing that we can borrow from, homogenize and separate the things we choose and become offended at those things we feel the culture contains which are beneath us. Its about respect- self-esteem and pride. I would not use voodoo cards if I felt ashamed that anyone would associate it with its roots. (creole-africa-hati..etc.)

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I think you're making a drastic assumption in suggesting someone has any contempt for Voodou, especially in the case of Afrosaxon in this instance... isn't it ultimately more respectful to Afrosaxon and to Voodou to state that using Tarot cards isn't "practicing Voodou" -- even when using a deck that uses the metaphor of Voodou spirits. (The RWS deck uses Christian metaphor, but reading with it sure isn't practicing Christianity!)

A somewhat related thing happened to me yesterday! I was at a an outdoor cafe and playing with my cards (Rohrig was the deck) and this guy passing by stops and looks and says " tarot cards? did you know some people actually believe in that junk?" What?! I responded "yea like me, since I am using them right now, nice manners jerk!" He gave me the most condescending glare and smirk, I wanted to punch him lol.

What a jackass.

It is practicing Voodoo...

Actually, it is technically, philosophically and maybe even legally considered practicing voodoo.

One is taking a honored and traditional system of knowledge, as a system of divination based on the wisdom- traditional values, strict discipline, social fabric and longed earned and revered way of understanding the spiritual world- relating to and communicating with the spirit world, as well as a deeply respected cultural religion, all its signs, symbols, language and signifier- and with that--
This individual is is drawing upon that system to viewing - discerning understand and guide others through the world today. We could call it a "voodoo canon" much like the "western canon"-- and if I were to be offended by the practice of voodoo, which has cultivated and made firm by this system of knowledge, I would simply step away from the cards...and find another set of cards which does not have its roots and the basis of its understanding of the world rooted in Voodoo. In my opionon it is practicing voodoo. She may not be doing spells or creating mojo or worshiping Gods of that religion but she is in fact practicing that system.

There is no way I could pick up Osho Zen and be so far removed from Zen or those practices that I could say I am not practicing it. I am in fact practicing Zen when I use these cardsin both philosophy and wisdom. The same goes when I take out Animal Wise, when I take out Fairies or any other deck based on any belief system.

I do not believe that because this is a non-traditional religion, with roots in African or darker skin tones that it should be bastardized or shameful in anyway. It has sustained many people. It deserves respect-
I am not offended by the practice of this religion or life style, therefore my point is...if I connect with the cards, I connect with the wisdom its ancestors I would not take offense to some one asking me about the religion.

berrieh said:

I think you're making a drastic assumption in suggesting someone has any contempt for Voodou, especially in the case of Afrosaxon in this instance... isn't it ultimately more respectful to Afrosaxon and to Voodou to state that using Tarot cards isn't "practicing Voodou" -- even when using a deck that uses the metaphor of Voodou spirits. (The RWS deck uses Christian metaphor, but reading with it sure isn't practicing Christianity!)

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berrieh said:

Hoodoo isn't Voodoo mind you. So, pretty please, as a personal favor, no one here use the two interchangeably. They aren’t the same at all.

Voodoo (spelled Voodou?) is a religion that uses specific spirits; hoodoo is rootwork, essentially Southern folk magic. I actually practice some hoodoo, but I'd never work with the vodum/Loa, being uninitiated (and, you know, not practicing that religion and not happening to really believe in them or worship them or want to develop personal relationships with them). That's a recipe for disaster.

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Some folks do take this position about what to call what. But I think real life is more complicated than this.

An argument can be made that nothing is Voodoo. When I first started reading about these things, that was the usual spelling of the Haitan religion worshiping the loa (which was how that was spelled back then.) Then the scholars of religion or the anthropologists or I don't know who figured out that that was the Anglophone's name for that religion, not the name the Haitians themselves used. So we switched to Voudun or something like it. And the gods were still the Loa. Only then, those guys figured out that those were French words, and the vast majority of the worshipers of the loa weren't rich, educated, French speaking Haitians, they were poor folks who weren't educated and who spoke Hatian creole. But Hatian creole doesn't have standardized spellings of lots of words, including that religion. So now scholars try to use something that reproduces the sounds of spoken Hatian creole, and those who are trying to keep up with all this, and lots of other folks too, are currently using Vodou and Lwa.

So if we don't use Voodoo for that religion, and we don't use it for hoodoo, there's not much use for the word at all, except for the people using it dismissively to mean ignorant superstition, as illustrated in sharpchick's post. All of which, I suppose adds up to a good demonstration that as berrieh observes, people are weird, and as I say, life is complicated.

I'm pretty sure that the request not to use Voodoo and Hoodoo interchangeably wasn't really aimed at afrosaxon. But there's a catch. Her location line, which has changed in the course of this thread, is a reference to a Cassandra Wilson song. As you'll see, "voodoo" in this song is a metaphor for the singer's magical mastery of music, traveling, and loving. But I don't see how to arrive at the conclusion that Ms. Wilson (not a white woman) doesn't use voodoo and hoodoo interchangeably here. "Conjure woman" and High John the Conquerer Root aren't part of the Haitian package. They belong to the magical tradition developed mostly by black folks in the southern US. That is, they're hoodoo, and the song is calling that world "voodoo." This is the sort of situation that makes me think of life and proper vocabulary as complicated things.

In case the admins are starting to wonder, here's where Tarot fits into that world. Say you're having trouble at work, and you go to old Miss Jackson, who knows about these things (a conjure woman, as Ms. Wilson says). You tell her you've always been a good employee, and have always had a good relationship with the boss. But lately he's been critical of you and generally nasty when you're around, like he's just looking for a reason to fire you. And you want to know what to do about this. Before Miss Jackson can be sure of the best way to deal with the situation, she needs to know why the boss has started acting this way. That is, before deciding on a treatment, she needs a diagnosis. And a lot of the Miss Jacksons of America, and of New Orleans, will use Tarot for that. It sounds to me like that's what the coffee guy thought afrosaxon was doing.

GenoviaJ said:

Actually, it is technically, philosophically and maybe even legally considered practicing voodoo.

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There's no 'legally considered' practicing Voodou that I know of, is there?
It's a religion. It has nothing to do with the law. Though I suppose praying to the loa in school would be admonished by the system. (In America.)

Using cards for divination, even NOVT, is not technically or philosophically practicing voodoo unless one believes in and is using the cards to work with and get closer to the spirits or gods contained within that religion.

If we were going to bastardize the word and interchange it with hoodoo (which I stress we shouldn't do, but let's assume full ignorance since we were talking about ignorance in the first place), we'd get even farther. You can, perhaps, use Tarot with hoodoo (hoodoo is pretty flexible, as traditions go), but laying a few cards down at a table in a coffee shop has nothing to do with rootwork. And I've never seen anyone do a hoodoo spell randomly in a public coffeeshop...that'd be a site. Makes me want to do it just to cause a stir. But I'd have to do it in another town, and it still sounds risky.

Divination can be used as a starting point for rootwork, or for any type of Voodou spell (or any spellwork in any tradition, I suppose), as shaveling points out, but that doesn't make them interchangeable.

I do not believe that because this is a non-traditional religion, with roots in African or darker skin tones that it should be bastardized or shameful in anyway. It has sustained many people. It deserves respect-
I am not offended by the practice of this religion or life style, therefore my point is...if I connect with the cards, I connect with the wisdom its ancestors I would not take offense to some one asking me about the religion.

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I agree that the religion deserves respect, which is why we shouldn't say its something it isn't Voodou and Tarot have very little to do with each other. In the NOVT, it's the case of Voodou being used as a metaphor and foundation for a Tarot deck, and using that deck for divination or study or any normal Tarot purposes would not be practicing Voodou.

I've nothing against Voodou, nor did I get the impression that Afrosaxon does...simply that laying out the cards in any manner is a strange thing to be seen as 'practicing Voodou' since Tarot, in general, is not traditional to the religion. (Now, surely there are Voodou practitioners who use Tarot---though, of course, there are so-called Voodou practitioners who also don't know the first thing about Voodou nowadays---but there are much more traditional forms of divination linked with Voodou, besides Tarot.)

shaveling said:

I'm pretty sure that the request not to use Voodoo and Hoodoo interchangeably wasn't really aimed at afrosaxon. But there's a catch. Her location line, which has changed in the course of this thread, is a reference to a Cassandra Wilson song. As you'll see, "voodoo" in this song is a metaphor for the singer's magical mastery of music, traveling, and loving.

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I will note that Ms. Wilson doesn't use the word "hoodoo" at all, and that you can practice rootwork/hoodoo and just about anything else. Many genuine American Voodou practitioners actually do practice hoodoo, but so do many other people in the American South (and, nowadays, many all over the world). I'm not saying there aren't any ties between Voodou and hoodoo...just that they aren't the same, identical thing.

It's kind of like how you can be psychic and read Tarot, and many people are (supposedly--I'm a bit of a skeptic about psychics), but that doesn't make a psychic reading and a Tarot reading the same thing.

GenoviaJ said:

I believe you out of context with this Demon Goddess, I don't see it as profiling at all. Nothing derrogitory was said and nothing negative or adverse took place- a question was asked based on someone knowledge of voodo in New Orleans and that person was called ignorant- even after he explained his line of thought and the connection.

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As I said, GenoviaJ, you weren't there, how can you possibly suggest that what AS felt as negative and derogatory was anything else?

I've heard my kids backpedal on their "I didn't mean anything by it" when I call them on racist or anti-human jokes they repeat having learned them at school.

Either way, it's a moot point. If the person hearing the comment felt dehumanized by it, it was a racist comment.

Venus Moon said:

A somewhat related thing happened to me yesterday! I was at a an outdoor cafe and playing with my cards (Rohrig was the deck) and this guy passing by stops and looks and says " tarot cards? did you know some people actually believe in that junk?" What?! I responded "yea like me, since I am using them right now, nice manners jerk!" He gave me the most condescending glare and smirk, I wanted to punch him lol.

What a jackass.

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The older I get, the more I wonder where these creeps come from. ugh!

I think it comes from being absolutely convinced that one's outlook is the One True Correct Viewpoint <tm> and so certain of it that one can't even consider that others may not agree with it and still be intelligent or sane.