so smudging is cultural appropriation but is just burning a sage bundle appropriation? i've been told its a good way to clear negative energy but i don't want to do it if it is
Smoke Cleansing; the actual act of burning herbs, incenses, resins, plants or the like for their clearing properties is not affiliated with any specific peoples.
However, “smudging” is descriptive of a ritualistic practice by some Native American peoples that goes beyond smoke cleansing and most commonly incorporates white sage. (Yes, those dried grey-white bundles you can buy in new age stores and the like.) Smudging is a closed, ritualistic practice that is not simply burning shit, and certainly not for uninvited groups to practice. When you “smudge” with white sage there are several of things happening. 1) You are participating in cultural theft, which is bad 2) You are participating in cultural theft incorrectly, of all things 3) You are contributing to the endangerment of white sage.
There are plenty of other herbs you can burn that aren’t white sage, and plenty of other things you can call smoke cleansing that isn’t appropriative.
Smoke cleanse with normal (broad leaf) sage! Smoke clear with rosemary! Space cleanse with cedar! It’s so easy to not appropropriate. Woohooo!
The judge who sentenced this sexual predator is Rosemarie Aquilina. Larry Nassar abused over 150 women, including Gabby Douglas, Simone Biles, and Aly Raisman. Judge Rosemarie made sure this predator pays the price for each and every one of them. Hella props to this badass judge. Judges around the world need to take notes.
This is a gif of Judge Rosemarie tossing a bullshit letter the larry nassar wrote about how “hard” it is for him to hear his victims testify. The level of badassary within this woman is untouchable.
speaking as a Jew, i’m extra-super dubious of all that stuff that talks about cartoon witches being an antisemitic stereotype. I can get where the thing with the nose is coming from, but the claims about the hats are based on flimsy claims that require a lot of mental reaching. The hats that Jews were forced to wear were not a universal thing, and I’ve yet to see any evidence that they were part of the cultural consciousness by the time the image of the pointy-hatted witch became common.
Wrong time period: witch hats as we know them seem to have only started appearing in art around the 17th-18th century; in the period when the Judenhut was well-established, witches in art just wore whatever was common for women of the region.
Wrong region: the pointed witch hat originated in English art, as far as i’ve seen. Antisemitic laws in England mandated badges, not headwear.
Wrong gender: Jewish hats were mandated for men, not women—illustrations of witches with pointed hats very rarely included male witches, until fairly recently.
Wrong shape: there are many styles of mandated Jewish hat throughout history, but few of them are even a near match for the very specific look of the Witch hat.
You know what kind of hat does closely fit?
The hat in this painting (“Portrait of Mrs Salesbury with her Grandchildren Edward and Elizabeth Bagot” by J.M. Wright; circa 1675) was “a type worn by affluent women throughout Britain at this date”. Look at that hat. Any modern viewer looking at this painting might think it was supposed to be a character created by J.K. Rowling.
It’s a match in design, gender, region, and most importantly, time period: by the time that pointed witch hats started to appear in artwork in England and English colonies, this style of hat would have been associated in the cultural consciousness with elderly women, especially those who were clinging to decades-old fashions.
The easy, simple answer to where the witch hat came from: it’s exactly what a woman with all the stereotypical qualities of a witch would have worn in the first place, in the time and place the trope originated.
Old-fashioned but not by several centuries, severe and somber, and popular with a class of women that people would have spread nasty rumors about in the first place (somany accusations of witchcraft were directed specifically at women who were independently well-off, whether out of simple envy or else scheming).
Another very obvious and often explicitly stated basis for the CLOTHING of the cartoon witch is Puritan costume from the 18th century… seeing as Puritans were famous for their witch trials.
The green skin, curly hair, big nose, warts etc are all definitely at least racialized things. Though big nose and warts are associated with age the combined picture is pretty much just a racial caricature.
Important input on the witchy costume debate, from a Jewish person who’s clearly done a bit of homework on the origins of pointy hats and green makeup. (And who also seems to be a pretty cool person into the bargain.)
I’ve reblogged this before, but it’s got new info, which is great
bai-xue
I’d also argue that, though certain aspects of the stereotypical witch align with antisemitic tropes, it’s far more likely that witches’ stereotypical looks actually emerged by being the polar opposite of what the beautiful, and therefore ideal, 17th century woman looked like. This was to emphasize that a witch was the OPPOSITE of an ideal woman, and she could thus be placed in opposition to the beautiful, ideal heroine.
Where beauty (according to 17th century standards) was young, witches were old. Where beauty had fine, delicate features, witches had exaggerated, rough features. Where beauty was relatively unmarred (a rarity in pre-vaccination days), witches had moles and other marks. Where beauty had silky blonde hair (a treasured prize in Renaissance times, to the point that women falsely lightened their hair or wore wigs), witches had rough black hair.
As I said, some of these line up with antisemitic tropes. However, I’d argue that associating Jews with these tropes was a result of already-established patriarchal beauty tropes that had been ingrained in northern Europe for centuries. The fact that the stereotypical Jewish woman happened to defy the beauty ideals of northern Europe was used as an excuse to further oppress Jewish people, not the other way around.
In other words, I’d guess that it went like this:
“Ugliness/evil looks like this” -> “Some Jewish women (who we hate) look like this” -> “here’s proof that Jewish women are ugly and evil”
Rather than:
“Jewish women look like this” -> “we hate Jewish people” -> “Ugliness and evil looks like this”
Of course, once both tropes (ugly witches, ugly Jews) were established, I imagine that they fed into one another, but I’m dubious of the claim that the source of the ugly witch was the Jewish woman, especially since northern European ideas of beauty and fears of malevolent witches seem to go back further than northern European stereotypes of the ugly Jewish woman.
bai-xue
Augh, and COMPLETELY forgot to talk about this, but the stereotypical witch outfit? It comes from traditional English brewsters/alewives, aka, female beer-brewers.
Who used brooms mounted above the door as a way to signal their trade to passerby:
And who made their trade making strange concoctions in cauldrons:
And who happened to wear hats just like this:
Brewsters/alewives used to have a monopoly on beer-making. They handed down brewing secrets from mother to daughter and basically controlled the alcohol market. And men weren’t terribly keen on that - they wanted in on this immensely lucrative, influential field. There were some male brewsters, but the trade was overwhelmingly female, to the point that even male brewsters were still called brewsters - a female noun.
So what do men do when they want to push women out of a trade? They demonise them.
Suddenly the broom isn’t just a business sign, it’s a tool for going to meet the devil. The cauldron isn’t just a tool, it’s a place to create evil. The hat isn’t just a trade uniform, it’s a mark of malevolent intent and arcane knowledge.
Coincidentally, many women who became brewsters/alewives became independently wealthy and quite powerful locally. They didn’t need to marry and could provide for their entire households with their trade. They could grow old without marrying, or they could stay unmarried after their first husband dies rather than remarrying. They could also pull strings and influence things in their favour, making local politics ‘mysteriously’ go their way.
And so the stereotype of the ugly spinster brewster-witch is born.
And, as I’ve said above, ugly women look a certain way: harsh, marred features, dark, tangled hair, and above all, old.
Note old Mother Louse up there. She was a well-respected brewster in her town, with plenty of influence, but here she is already being portrayed with stereotypical witch features: a big, hooked nose, and a pointy chin, hollow eyes, sharp cheekbones (not a good thing in premordern times - beauties had rounder faces, as sharp cheekbones were a sign of hunger or oldness). Mother Louse isn’t being portrayed as Jewish, but as an elderly, ugly spinster, who engages in the lucrative, powerful - but suspect - business of brewing.
Know who else this happened to? Midwives. Another female trade, passed down from woman to woman, dealing in business secrets from which men were barred - and this in regard to the most mysterious power of all: the power to bring life into the world. And midwives do pretty well for themselves, too: plenty of families are willing to pay a bundle to make sure their babies are delivered safe and sound in a world with high infant mortality. Just like male physicians, midwives knew how to create tinctures and mix herbs, but now, once again, rudimentary chemistry and herb-lore become demonised when women are the ones doing it. Now, if your baby is born sick, deformed, or dead, it’s clearly the spinster midwife’s doing, full of spite because she has no children of her own.
Anyway, there’s your witch history for the day. The hooked nose and black hair are already something of a stretch, but the claim that the typical witch hat is somehow linked to anti-semitism and not brewsters is totally ahistorical.
These notes….. Y'all don’t know Gal Gadot is a Zionist who supports the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West bank and Gaza? She used to be a member of the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces), and accused Palestinians of using their children as human shields during the 2014 Israeli slaughter in Gaza when it was the Israeli government who targeted orphanages, hospitals, and schools. I know Brett Ratner is a piece of shit, but y'all need to get find an advocate who doesn’t support genocide.
Do you guys educate yourselves? Do you read? Do you actually logically read things instead of reblogging posts on tumblr with innacurate information? Gal HAS NEVER said she supported the killing of innocent Palestinians. She has on record said that in her perfect world she wished that there was peace and that people can get along. The individuals who were in fact using women and children as human shields are Hamas and are in fact a terrorist group in Palestine. She was part of the IDF because every Israeli citizen is required to serve for a minimum of 2 years. Her job was a fitness instructor. She never went out in the field. She never shot innocent Palestinians. Stop this inaccurate chain of false information to fit a narrative that isn’t there. And also, fuck you for implying that Israeli citizens who have to serve in their country’s defense force support genocide.
flungouttaspace
So much of the criticism of Gal Gadot is basically just thinly veiled antisemitism.
interstellar-dad-bod
If you ever accuse someone of being a Zionist you’re probably just an anti-semite
The United Nations proposed a law condemning nations who sentence people in the LGBT community, among other minorities, to death.
And the U.S. voted against it.
They refused to condemn countries who SENTENCE THE LGBT COMMUNITY TO DEATH!
The United Nations isn’t one of those gray areas. All of the laws and legislations are intentionally black and white. In this case, you either condemn killing the LGBT community for the sake of being gay/trans/etc. Or you don’t.
There’s no middle ground. There’s no interpretation. There’s no reading into it.
On October 3rd, 2017, the United States refused to condemn sentencing the LGBT Community to death. Which can only mean that they’re in favor of sentencing the LGBT Community to death.
This is inaccurate. The LGBT community was barely a mention. The US voted against this because we are, unfortunately, a country in which the death penalty is legal.
So I'm pretty sure there's a poem that I tevlogged from you a lot AGES ago. It's the one from the Last Unicorn I think, the only line I can remember is "dies on land and softly is trod upon" it's about stuff I'm not even sure you can help but it's driving me insane
Sorry, I haven’t checked this in ages! It is the “Song of Elli,” an archetype of Old Age that Mommy Fortuna embodies in the Midnight Carnival. It reads as follows: “What is plucked will grow again, What is slain lives on, What is stolen will remain What is gone is gone… What is sea-born dies on land, Soft is trod upon. What is given burns the hand - What is gone is gone… Here is there, and high is low; All may be undone. What is true, no two men know - What is gone is gone… Who has choices need not choose. We must, who have none. We can love but what we lose - What is gone is gone.”
