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7-11 Style Spirituality
Something Jordan Stratford said in that interview got me thinking. Actually, quite a few things did - and that’s why I’m doing them, to open up new doorways by letting people speak for themselves, and trying to bridge the gap between my understanding and their experience. Anyway, I have a few different questions I’d like to draw from Jordan’s interview. With that in mind, this isn’t a criticism or an attempt to put words into his mouth. It’s simply a jumping off point based on items brought up as a result of his interview.
Here’s the first one. Jordan at this point is talking about how he got interesed in witchcraft as a youth.
Now this of course was before the explosion in the late 80s of Wiccan paperbacks, which both popularized and muddied the waters of Witchcraft. In a way it was easier then, because the experience was home-grown and authentic and not mediated by something you could buy at 7-11.
This is the sort of spiritual aesthetic I’ve always held to myself: that if you could buy it, then it probably wasn’t legitimate. But I’ve been doing some reading lately about Afro-Carribean religio-magical traditions like Santeria, Voodoo, hoodoo, and similar. In Santeria especially, there is a tremendous consumerist component to the rituals. Back when I lived in a Brooklyn ghetto, I’d pass by several botanicas on my way to the subway or to get drunk. Unfortunately, I never stopped into any of these shops. If you’re unfamiliar with them, a botanica is a sort of spiritual shop which every Spanish neighborhood has at least one of. In these shops you’ll find religious statues, candles of all shapes, colors and sizes, roots, oils, powders, bags, feathers, inks. Basically a convenience store for the practice of soul-making. 7-11 for the spirit.
There is no stigma against pre-fabricated rituals or ritual items. In fact, the more accepted a ritual is, and the more people who have practiced it over the years, the more power it is seen to have been invested with. It’s really been sort of a wild thing for me to wrap my own preconceived notions around. But now that I’ve started to do so, I can kind of see the beauty of it. You don’t have to get hung up on theory and abstraction. You just go to the store, pick up items from your list, and then follow the steps in your recipe, and BAM! There you have it. Obviously there are many levels of practice and initiation in traditions such as these, but this seems to be fairly accurate picture when it comes to the majority of people and how they approach it.
Is what they are doing somehow inferior or less authentic than what somebody else is doing in a more Westernized intellectual magical tradition? I’m hard-pressed to prove that it is. In some ways, I can almost see the validity of arguments that simple and direct practices like this are superior, cause you don’t get hung up on all different kinds of stuff that can often turn into useless distractions. I guess where I’m going with this is almost a complete 360 degree turn-around from my once-upon-a-time belief that “Wicca for Idiots” type books and accessories are necessarily bad things. Maybe I’ve been too closed-minded about it. What do you think?
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August 24th, 2005 at 8:49 pm
its interesting, this is really boils down to whether or not truth is immutable or not. i reckon, if some ‘truth’ is so fragile that it will be mucked up by whether its sold at wal mart or not then it cant be all that immutable. on the other hand, immutable truth might be so valued and rare that the assumption that one would never find it at a 7-11 might be a fair one.
its funny, not getting hung up on theory and abstraction is why so many people just use windows instead of sitting down to write up their own linux browser. it basically works, and being connected to the populace as a whole is more valuable than having a few less crashes a year, at least in the meantime.
August 24th, 2005 at 9:03 pm
I like where you’re going with the bit about immutable truth. From what I gather though, such a question as that would never come up in Santeria. You’re looking for events and effects in the world, rather than some abstract idea of truth, immutable or no… I could be wrong though.
August 24th, 2005 at 10:59 pm
All communicators face this issue sooner or later: can you remain accessible and still stay true to certain artistic/intellectual/spiritual values? I think it can be done. It doesn’t mean that anything that is accessible is good - or bad. There is accessible junk, like McDonald’s hamburgers. And there is inaccessible fine food as in haute cuisine restaurants in Paris. Occasionally there are accessible pearls. Like Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. Or Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. If you know how to cook rice or bread or pasta to perfection you will know a simple culinary delight that is available to all. If you know how to build a sacred space from cheap items bought at a botanica, then good for you. If it works for you, that’s all that matters.
August 25th, 2005 at 12:21 pm
I think a lot of people think public domain-folklore type rituals and spells are more ‘authentic’, because someone didn’t just sit in their bedroom and make them up. they do have history, and a thread of understanding and antiquity.
Of course, I think that it’s just that some witch stood out in the wood and thought it up, and when it worked, wrote it down.
I don’t see anything wrong with the prefabricated stuff. It’s the authenticity that the practitioner brings to their work that makes the difference. An artist and a dilettante both may have good technique, but the artist will have the passion that makes it come alive.
August 25th, 2005 at 1:22 pm
It occurred to me that gnosticism, though probably less than Wicca, also has a tendency for a pop counter-culture fest that would be damaging to its message.
In the case of the Santeria botanica, I don’t see this as a spiritual dilution of their tradition but a strengthening of it. After all, you won’t see Paris Hilton, Ashton Kutcher, and Lindsay Lohan at a botanica or carrying around a little Virgin Mary votive candle. The botanica is an isolated little mini-tradition that stays under most people’s radar. It is not a pop culture crapfest like the Kabbalah Institute, with celebrities and trendy bookstores and fashion items.
Gnosticism on the other hand has a potential to get very stupid very quick. In the case of a popularization of gnosticism, certain gnostic ideas would almost certainly get blown way out of proportion: the idea that “everyone is an emanation of God” is often taken to New-Age extremes that are spiritually bankrupt, for instance.
And seriously, as much as I love his comics to death, God help gnosticism if Grant Morrison or somebody like him decides to be the one to bring it into the mainstream awareness. I don’t know if it can recover from that sort of unintentional slander, sort of how Kabbalah struggles to distance itself from “Madonnaism.” Instead of “hey arent you those DaVinci code guys?” its going to be “Hey, aren’t you some kind of magickal time-travelling hedonism cult?”
August 25th, 2005 at 1:31 pm
I see what you’re saying, but I’d ask you this in return: what impact will it have on your life if gnosticism becomes distorted in the mainstream? How do we know we’re not already distorting it horribly (because we more than likely are)?
There’s a great Alan Moore interview, where the interviewer asks him if he’s worried that movies of his comics will ruin his comics. And Moore says, if people want my comics, they can still go read them. They remain intact no matter how many shitty movies are layered on top of them.
August 25th, 2005 at 1:37 pm
Thats a good point, Tim. I would say that though I personally won’t be too affected, and will read my Nag Hammadi library like I always have, it will be a gigantic pain in the ass to have to explain that no, I am not a New-Age antinomian cultist. It’s already annying enough having to tell people that no, I’m not getting this from the DaVinci code, and no, I’m not AGnostic, I’m GNostic.
Remember that “Gnostic death cult” out west? You’d be surprised how often people bring that up to me when they hear I’m a gnostic. This sort of bad publicity I think is unlikely to “ruin” gnosticism per se as much as it is only going to make life more annoying for us at Borders.
August 25th, 2005 at 1:52 pm
Here’s an easy solution: don’t tell people you’re a gnostic then. I know it may sound kind of counter-intuitive. But think about it like this. When I was calling my site “occult investigator” and people would say I wasn’t occult enough, or the occult was evil. I’d have to spend time trying to convince them, no I wasn’t like that. That was a misconception. And it’s fine to try to communicate what you believe, etc. But you can’t ask somebody not to react to what you’re telling them. If I’m saying I’m into the occult, and you say you don’t like the occult. Then I can’t tell you you’re wrong and expect to get anywhere. Know what I’m trying to say? Part of why you or I get upset in cases like this is that we are trying to build our identity partly out of ideas. When people don’t like the ideas, our identities feel threatened.
August 25th, 2005 at 1:56 pm
i think scott’s right on with this statement. i also generally think that it doesn’t matter so much where people get their information, provided that they aren’t being exploited or harmed in the process (i.e. newage scam cults, etc.). if somebody wants to get into wicca through ‘teen witchcraft for dummies,’ it’s no skin off of my back. as silly and cheesy as we might find that stuff, we should also remember that most of us (readers of this site) are already exceptionally familiar with most of the material. to someone breaking into alternative spirituality for the very first time, maybe ‘teen witchcraft for dummies’ is new & refreshing & exactly what they need!
as far as the dangers of gnosticism falling victim to some kind of pop cultural quagmire, i’m not concerned whatsoever. whatever way the logos chooses to manifest itself is okay with me. that moore quote says it all. if someone wants to know what i think about the subject, they can read what i write or ask me directly, and vice-versa. and, every time i have to tell someone ‘no, not AGnostic, no not the davinci code,” i’m introducting somebody new to gnosticism and maybe they’ll look further into it. i don’t mind answering those questions one bit ’cause they might be someone’s doorway into gnosis, y’know?
August 25th, 2005 at 2:16 pm
Which reminds me of a sweet phenomenon that I observed while working at Borders. I was upset that the populatiry of the pop-culture crapfest “DaVinci Code” because I was worried that people would walk around having all these shitty ideas about gnosticism and the RCC that I’d be having to fix people’s misconceptions as soon as the subject came up, wherever the hell I was. I cultivated a “fuck it” attitude toward the whole thing, and often, just avoid the subject at all costs.
An interesting thing started to happen though - because Borders has contracts with Amazon to keep track of “who buys what books,” the corporation was linking DaVinci code with all this quality non-fiction literature. What seems to have happened is that people who read the DaVinci code would order nonfiction, like Pagels, on related subjects, and Borders began to link the two. So when you went into the religion section, there were little tags on the Nag Hammadi Library, and Pagels, and Hoeller, labeled “DID YOU LIKE THE DAVINCI CODE? YOULL LIKE THIS!”
I remember thinking, HALLELUIA! A silver lining!
August 25th, 2005 at 2:31 pm
Yeah, they call that phenomenon in business right now “the Long Tail”. There’s an exceptional Wired article by the same name which is worth reading.
I’ve been worried about this a lot in the past, having to fix people’s misconceptions for them. But isn’t it pretty close to just telling people what to think? I’m getting to a point where I think their misconceptions are actually really interesting. I like hearing about them. And my goal now is simply to cultivate conversation. Not so I can fix anything for them, but so that we can all bring our experience and interpretation to the table. Like a pot luck sort of. Everybody can try out dishes brought by other people, see if they like it, and maybe even ask for the recipe so they can make it themselves.