Tag: practices

How Nigeria’s Millennial Priestess Is Revitalizing Spirituality

odofemi:

A young Yemoja priestess in Nigeria is engaging millennial Yoruba to return to their ancestral religion through social media.

Concerned that the Orisha culture and its practices were being scorned and forgotten, Ifawemimo took to social media six years ago in an effort to educate a broader audience about indigenous Yoruba spirituality. Her inspiration? Nollywood, or Nigeria’s film industry, which she blames for depicting Yoruba spirituality as a practice based on sorcery, love potions and get-rich-quick charms, distorting its history and contributing to negative stereotypes. “Though our people have been brainwashed already, [Nollywood] has made our people lack knowledge and enlightenment about their roots,” she says.

Wood believes Ifawemimo’s work is crucial for countering the “stigma, hypocrisy, misunderstanding and demonization of the traditional culture,” with most viewing it as evil, and traditional worshippers forced into practicing in secret. And she is helped in these efforts by her age: “The fact that she is so young — she is a millennial, basically; she is meeting a lot of these people at their level.” What’s more, through social media she has found acceptance for being approachable and willing to demystify and interpret the tenets of traditional Yoruba religion. By using everyday language to explain the culture and encourage people to embrace it, Wood adds, Ifawemimo is trying to show that it’s a living tradition. “It’s not ossified. It’s not some ancient unapproachable thing.”

And also of note:

For diasporans who make pilgrimages back to African countries in a bid to connect with their religious and cultural roots, Ifawemimo warns that they may be vulnerable to unethical peddlers of spiritual practice. She has known many who come as students, eager to learn about their spiritual heritage from a priest or priestess who takes their money and leaves them with very little in return. “They will not teach them anything about how to feed your Orisha or connect with your higher self. They will just initiate them, collect their money and go. They are extorting them,” she says.

How Nigeria’s Millennial Priestess Is Revitalizing Spirituality

I can’t use Chakras?

upthewitchypunx:

asksecularwitch:

zitwitch:

Can someone enlighten me on what I’m supposed to use if chakras are cultural appropriation?  And how do I change my entire practice that’s been built around them?  If you say that we shouldn’t use chakras that’s fine but I need you to give me some other logical options because every blog/book/shop that I’ve come into contact with thus far uses/promotes the chakras in western meditation, crystal healing, and ritual work and it’s what I and everyone I know has always used.  I never would have guessed that it was only allowed to some people.

SO I read through some of the replies which correctly explain to you why using Chakras is a problem. But they obviously do not provide you with any assistance with how to break down or otherwise give you something else to work with in terms of terminology.

So let’s start by saying this. It’s part of practice building. For me, it’s clear to see that you’ve at least built a practice around something that you have associated with the term “Chakra” and whether or not it’s an exact equivalent (because like I said it’s specific to a section of religions as other replies have explained to you). You have been potentially working with something.

So start breaking it down from there. Go to the base of the situation. Why was it important for you to have whatever it is you’re working with in ritual? What did it feel like to you? How did you work with them? What feelings or emotions or thoughts do you have on the topic itself? Maybe start with a long descriptive name such as “Centers of X” or something like that where it’s an explanation of the duties or functions or feelings or emotions of what you’re working with.

You can take what you’ve been working with and abstract it away from whatever cultural appropriative or religious appropritive (depending) terminology or thought process that you had originally. You can start by breaking it down into what you’ve actually been doing and discover exactly your own thing there. Your own terminology, your own understanding.

A lot of what got dropped in occultism from the past was originated out of a racist amature anthropologists in the occult community who wanted to exoticify their practices and make them look a certain way without actually having to deal with the other aspects of that practice. It doesn’t mean that, that has to continue with you. And it also doesn’t dismiss the real activities that you have produced for yourself either.

It just may be something that is unique to you in which you have discovered for yourself. There’s where you change the concept. Flip it out.

Because sometimes you’ll find when you look into those religions, right? Or those cultural practices? Right? That they aren’t the same. That the practice you’ve been doing and what the actual practices are, aren’t actually the same at all. Because like I said, amature anthropologists in the occult community would short hand or otherwise generalize exactly what those topics are. And in some cases, “westernize it” to make it easier for Western audiences to tolerate or “understand.” You see that across the board.

Don’t be scared to lose a term. Be excited that you’ve discovered something else for yourself and have built up a practice into your own field by your own hands. You may have just been calling it something else, or have been trapped in a specific box that you now can explore out more than what you have been templated into.

Make sense?

This is such a great exploration of practice building. There’s so much value is breaking something down to its component parts and seeing how it works in one system and seeing how it can work in your own system.