Just for the Record

brehaaorgana:

janothar:

lilithascending95:

janothar:

Western civilization is built on antisemitism, and western magic is built on stealing from Judaism.

Alternatively, western civilization is reliant on antisemitism, and western magic is ensorcelled with misconstruing its fantasy of Judaism.

Why are you weakening my statement? I said what I mean and can back it up.  Western civilization isn’t only reliant on antisemitism, but antisemitism is a tool that was used for wealth building by the gentile elites – both creating a scapegoat for the masses to hate instead of them and also a population that they could victimize when they needed a pressure valve or to loot something that can’t resist strongly in order to pay their debts.

As for Western magic, it really has two threads.  There’s the recent (mostly 19th century to current) theft from the far East.  But the foundations? They’re built on theft of Jewish magical forms, like Gematria.  There is virtually no piece of commonplace Western magic that doesn’t originate in Judaism and was warped and ruined by Christians.

All western neo-paganism is a tool of white Christian colonialism, if not the outright expression of it.

This is not something you can move around or escape. I would push janothar’s statement and say that there’s a third theft going on here, but that’s about it. There’s never been ANY surprises about what gets popular in “western magic circles” and neo-paganism. For centuries most of it was built on stealing from Judaism (and to a much lesser extent Islam).

The parallels are impossible to avoid: the rise of orientalism from the 18th century to 19th parallels the addition of more Egyptian/Jewish/Arabic concepts being stolen as “magic” from the “orient.” The tides of Chinoiserie brought obsessions with the “Far East,” and the colonization of India repackaged Hinduism and Buddhism for greedy white folks. So occultism is entirely stealing from Judaism and to lesser extents ancient Egyptian beliefs and Muslims; the rest of the “exotic east” is also taken at will from other religions/faiths/philosophies as spoils of colonialism. I would also fold in the appropriation/fantasy of Rroma practices in this broader orientalism.

The one thing I would add is that the remainder of “western magic” steals and leeches from indigenous practices (again, colonialism) and what remains of “revivals” of like European folk and pagan practices are pretty much nothing more than reactions to colonialist anxieties, or weird strains of supremacism.