Witchcraft & Voodoo is back. The bi- weekly video series featuring myself, Lilith Dorsey, and Wiccan Priestess Sable Aradia can be found on youtube,with more detailed features here on our respective Patheos Pagan blogs. We began the ongoing video project discussing the similarities and differences between our respective traditions of Witchcraft & Voodoo in 2016. Since then we have discussed the important issues and questions such as : Deities, Money, Sex, Divination, and much more truth about these religions.
This week join us as we discuss one of the most pressing issues in Paganism today, namely Cultural Appropriation. Like it or not we live in a world with Rachel Dolezal, and all the troubling issues of identity and culture that go along with stories like hers. Especially disturbing, to me anyway, is the recent flood of fake conjure workers and hoodoo practitioners that want to claim intuition and ancestry as a substitute for training and knowledge. Don’t get me wrong every psychic needs intuition and heritage to be the most effective they can be, but these mean nothing without training and practical experience. Would you want to eat at a restaurant where the cook was just related to famous cooks, and make up all the recipes as they went along ? I wouldn’t, mostly likely it would be inedible, and I’d be luckily to make it out without illness and/or disgust.
Obviously, this issue is close to my heart. My family, on both sides, have been witches and spiritual people as long as I can trace. But I didn’t spend over a decade at University studying anthropology and culture because I think appropriation or heritage is enough.
This week on Witchcraft & Voodoo we look at some of the instances, offenders, and questionable practices. Listen as we talk about everything from Voodoo dolls sold at the airport, to colonizers and recorded history, to smudge sticks and sage. Please tune in, like and subscribe so you don’t miss an episode.
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