Month: December 2013

heelancoo:

echtrai:

lokean-nomad:

sulphurblue:

christowitch:

echtrai:

This message brought to you by Cultural Appropriation Kitteh on Facebook.

And while we’re at it,  

Obviously saining is the only one of these I have actual experience with, so feel free to add expanded resources for the other two or for something else entirely!

So the cleansing of a space with smoke is called smoke cleansing. It is done in many cultures and religions and is not a bad thing. The appropriation comes when you call it smudging. Smudging is a large ceremony withing a tribe that is more than just burning herbs.
Smoke cleansing is fine.
Calling it smudging is not.
The act of cleansing with smoke is not appropriation.
Calling it smudging is appropriation.

Heads up for my Luciferian followers. If you’re going to use smoke to cleanse a space, I highly recommend Frankincense and Myrrh. It is very powerful, works wonderfully, is easy to find in sticks and wont make your house smell suspicious. :3

Saw a similar post and changed my terminology since my method was never a ceremony. I’m not going to waste my sage, but thanks for the education. Is the sage burning itself appropriative?

As far as I’m aware, just the terminology is. But this should extend beyond what you personally call your cleansing. Buying bundles labeled as “smudge sticks” is endorsing appropriation all the same. You might have better luck finding things to burn that don’t have that label attached if you don’t use sage.

It’s also worth noting that several people have mentioned that white sage is being over-harvested because of people using it for this. I haven’t found any ~official~ sources on that but it wouldn’t surprise me. So you may want to look at alternative things to use in the future.

The use of sage itself can be considered to be appropriative, since it’s a sacred plant to a number Native American tribes. Not all tribes use it, but those who do have particular ways of gathering it, and ceremonies associated with burning it, etc. That means that when sage is used outside of those contexts – but still because of the fact that it’s used in some Native ceremonies – then you’re in appropriation territory. 

Listen to this – http://scrollofthoth.com/sot-ep9-native-american-spirituality/. Find out what actual practitioners of Native American spirituality think about it and quit your bitching.

BTW here’s the fucking rule. Did you do it disrespectfully? I.E. Make a person of a different culture your mascot. Then it’s appropriation. Did you do it respectfully to honor another person’s ways? Then it’s not.

The word myth has been debased and cheapened in modern usage; it’s often used to refer to something false, a lie. But this use misses the deepest function of myth, which is to lend narrative order to apparently disconnected bits of information, the way constellations group impossibly distance stars into tight, easily recognizable patterns that are simultaneously imaginary and real. Psychologists David Feinstein and Stanley Krippner explain, “Mythology is the loom on which [we] weave the raw materials of daily experience into a coherent story.’ “

Sex at Dawn – Christopher Ryan & Cacilda Jetha (via palimpsestpanther)