Like I said, “He’s doing a ritual wrong!”
Idk if I’d go that far. It sounds to me like he’s had a huge health scare and realizes he has to make big changes in how he’s lived his life for the last several decades. Quitting alcohol after a lifetime of getting hammered every night is a big deal. So he’s trying a pretty drastic spiritual experience in order to change his core behaviors. Certainly isn’t my thing, but it’s none of my concern. I hope he doesn’t go off the deep end…
I believe the word you’re looking for is bhajan.
I continue to be unable to get worked up about this. Among other reasons, as far as getting the goyim to properly understand the meaning of Kabbalah, that ship sailed when Madonna started tying red strings around her wrist. To the average American, it just means “vaguely Jewish woo” now.
Also, there are a lot of religious (and less religious) Jews who believe that Kabbalah is just straight up heresy, and shouldn’t be claimed as part of the culture at all. Of course, many Orthodox Jews would also argue that the Reconstructionist synagogue Smapti has been visiting are also practicing heresy most vile. The Reconstructionist might retort that, in fact, it’s the Orthodox who are practicing heresy by turning the ritual laws into false idols while neglecting the ethical laws.
Basically, there’s literally no possible way to be Jewish that some other Jews won’t strongly disapprove of.
OTOH, you said
(okay, among other things) But ISTM that emotional control and mental focus are valuable things in and of themselves. I struggle to imagine a context in which they could be legitimately characterized as “pointless.” Even if that context carries an inapt label.
Ooh, now you’ve done it…
I know it’s been said somewhat upthread (sorry for absence though no one has noticed I get a bit riled when I “argue” with you guys and I snapped at literally my 3rd fave doper a bit last time so I’ve walked away back to lurking mostly). But For the Good Doc Cathode. Hopefully this makes you feel better. It might make it worse though… I was obsessed as a child with finding the occult, any sort of supernatural entity or spell or religion. JUST ANYTHING that might indicate something about the supernatural being real. (I failed!) However in my modest (basically half a study) collection I have several books that talk about Abra Mellin the mage. Far as anyone can tell its a “lord Byron” esque type thing from back in the day by society aristrocrats playing pretend like usual. As is the more current “Hermetic order of the Golden Dawn” (aleister and them have a bit of a history along with Sir mac gregor mathers if you would like further reading). They’re basically a group of hoidy toidy bored aristocrats from turn of the century that needed a new plaything. So they mixed up Stonemasonry the roscicrucians (and many other things that the illumantus trilogy by Robert Anton wilson etc) covers. Such as the aforementioned ritual that Smapti is talking about. It’s about as “kaballah” as my “white witch spellbook” from the local bookstore is an actual spellbook from an RPG. It’s basically not at all… If you look into it. You’ll find almost nothing but some symbols and some vague references are even remotely jewish. It’s just a mash up of literally everything at the time (4000AD to about 0AD heh) mysticism and ceremony all mashed up into a “power presentation for edgelords” of the 19th century “bored rich guy” vein. I hope this makes you feel less “Hurt” I think is the wrong word. But annoyed at the aforementioned appropriation.
Also my apologies for format and spelling errors as this laptop is more uncomfortable than posting from my phone.
The whole ritual is basically about harnessing your “inner” demons. But yes both Crowley and Mathers fell for the southpark level of “mind powerS” episode (if anyone would be kind enough to link that would be lovely) and literally pretended to attack each other in public with their “awakened” powers. I picture that it was almost exactly like the southpark episode…
They really only use a few symbols and a few aspects of some original kaballah rituals. But they also use rosicrucian , babylonian zoroaster etc etc etc ad nauseum. It’s rich ppl playing pretend magic powers and they just made it all up. Stonemasonry was boring them. So they fluffed it up with some Abra Melin and the rest… Gotta love that pageantry!
I believe the word you’re looking for is Freemasonry. It’s named that specifically to not confuse it with stonemasonry.
Psylocybin?
I guess this is more of a GQ question, but is “cultural appropriation” even a bad thing? (And also, just in reply to, but not targeting @Johanna )
I mean, I am of British origin, I grew up in Zimbabwe. I had to learn chiShona at school. Is that cultural appropriation? Was learning French, a country I have zero connection to, also “cultural appropriation”? My brother had to study Latin. That culture is only relevant to history.
Is wearing a sarong, originally Javanese, “cultural appropriation?” I have two. I wear them in Balinese style. (I bought them in Flores, though)
Without “cultural appropriation” we would not have had the renaissance, agrueably democracy, nor most of our modern technology.
Probably the wrong thread (certainly the wrong thread!) but I am done.
I’ve traveled around the world. I’ve literally circumnavigated the globe. I’ve been a guest in all kinds of places, people’s houses of every description. Everywhere I went, I adapted to the culture and interacted with the locals according to how they’re used to doing things, learned the language of each country I traveled to. In other words, I avoided acting like a stereotypical American clod with no sensitivity for other cultures. Everywhere I went, folks liked me better that way. How to travel the world and be a good guest.
No; “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”, as they say. And attempts at “cultural purity” never work out well for anyone.
Really, the behavior that people who complain about “cultural appropriation” demand is identical to treating other cultures as evil contamination. I think it’s only a matter of time before the first slides into the second, regardless of the intentions. Train people to treat other cultures like they are evil, and that’s what they will start doing.
I was walking across a campus where I was on faculty, wearing earrings that looked like this:
I was accosted by a female undergraduate who shouted at me that my earrings were culturally appropriated from Latino culture and I should take them off immediately. (N.B.: Assumption that I wasn’t Latina, though she and I had the same skin color and build.)
I pulled up a photo of this sort on my phone:
I commented that it was possible her people had appropriated the hoop earring from my people in the Mediterranean, and that she should give the earrings and Jesus back. She huffed off.
That’s one for the books! One of the great comebacks of all time.
Boy, hoop earrings are pretty obvious. I rather suspect they’ve been independently invented by lots of cultures.
Anyway, good for you for sitting her up. How obnoxious.
Thanks. I assume they were invented by many cultures. I could describe a nice cultural trajectory, though: Ur->Persia->Arabic cultures->Al-Andalus->Iberia->Central America. Normally I was very kind to students, but hey. Don’t fuck with academics–we’ll make up citations if we have to.
No.
No
No.
This doesn’t mean cultral appropriation doesn’t exist. Just that those aren’t it.
I am someone who knows very little about Kabbalah. I know it’s Jewish in origin, and mystical. That’s about it.
And I never once thought from Smapti’s thread that he was practicing what is traditionally called Kaballah. It was clearly this weird offshoot that had been altered, and that he further altered.
I would argue that, if the uninformed reader would not think what he was doing was true Kabbalah, that it fails the first step in being cultural appropriation.
There was a brouhaha some years back. I’m probably going to get some details wrong; please forgive me, it’s illustrative of a point.
Anyway, a couple of white women opened a tortilleria in Oregon or somewhere, and they posted about how they’d gone to Mexico and peeked through the windows of houses to watch old ladies make tortillas so they could do it authentically.
It didn’t go over well.
That image–of spying on people in another culture to learn their ways, and then monetizing those ways–is to me the essence of one of the worst kinds of cultural appropriation. They could instead have posted about paying those old ladies for classes, and that wouldn’t have come across as appropriative to me at all, but instead would’ve been excellent cultural cross-pollination, an exchange that would have enriched both parties.
Eh, the problem was the spying, not the imitation; I can’t imagine a reason they could have given for doing that that would have gone over well.
I mean, if anything that’s one of the less repellent reasons to be peeping on them. “We were monitoring them for sinful behavior” or “we get off on peeping on older ladies” would go over substantially worse, to use two of the most plausible alternative reasons I can think of.
What if it wasn’t an ethnic restaurant - would people have been enraged if the women watched someone make a smashburger?