I’ve tried in the past to write an explanation of where I currently stand in the crossroads of religion, philosophy and craft. And here I’ll try again. This is not intended to persuade, merely to inform. To provide an insight and a bit of chewing material as you gnaw on your own ponderings on the existence of universe and how so much bloodshed has come to pass as a result of differences in opinion on these matters which are so personal.

First, my backstory.

I was raised Christian. Not overly so, my immediate family has always been quite secular and unsheltered. My father was not religious in any form, but my mother was raised in a strict Baptist home wrought with a heavy emotional cloud. We attended church off and on but mostly on, though we struggled to find a church to call home. I attended a bible camp every summer from first grade to… eleventh? I want to say…

My maternal extended family had often ostracized us for being too secular, too sinful. Though my mother has historically been on-the-fence and middling in most social issues which overlap with Christian belief, I’ve been strongly pro-choice, a supporter of Queer liberation – We are all deserving of rights and dignity.

By high school my explanation for my beliefs was that the Bible taught that sin was to be forgiven. Only God can judge the weight of a person’s transgressions – and why persecute when we can love instead.

Throughout childhood, I’d always had a fascination in some of the peripheral myths surrounding Christianity – the Book of Enoch’s tales of angels and demons – though I didn’t understand enough about theology to fully put it into context.

Beyond high school, I spent many days of research, so much time, engaging with Christian deconstruction. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s the conscious effort to unpack and remove colonization, patriarchy and white supremacy from Christian belief and practice. The podcast Reclaiming my Theology hosted by Brandi Miller offers an excellent entry point to this if you’re interested in learning more.

I explored Christopaganism, Gnosticism and Mysticism. How could I justify my acceptance that all religions are right in their own way, when Christianity espouses “one true God”? Did I need to find a new religion entirely? There’s Wicca and there’s Thelema, but much of their roots stem from cultural appropriation, or simply repackage the very same harmful beliefs I was attempting to escape. I was desperate to find a path forward that could be tied to my own heritage, that felt like home. But when you’re white, occupying a land not your own, generations removed from any cultural heritage other than melting pot ancestry and American settler colonialism – there isn’t much to find.

All I knew was that I had no interest in tying myself to another organized and hierarchical system where an individual or a group had positioned themselves as more enlightened, the keepers of spiritual knowledge. I believed, and still do, that any person could and should be able to access spirit and divine knowledge for themself. We are our own priest or priestess. Is it helpful to have a circle of companions to keep us grounded? Yes, but they are our peers.

I would not go back to being told what or how to think, or how to interpret my lived experience.

It was diving into the depth of the ongoing and pervasive appropriation of Judaism that was like flipping a switch. I let Christianity go, I let go of any need for finding a spiritual heritage to adopt.

Let’s take a look at history.

As we know, the Old Testament is a repackaging of the Hebrew Bible, the Torah. In broad and oversimplified terms which undoubtedly do a disservice, it tells of the ongoing persecution and trials of the Jewish people, and how faith brought them empowerment. Then we have the New Testament, which presents the Gospel of Jesus.

If you asked me, Jesus, whether a real individual or a story figure representing a multitude of speakers of the time, was a public speaker. It seems to me that he was an advocate for the Jewish people, which we know has undergone generations of oppression and still does to this day. He was calling on people to have heart. His teachings, stories and inspirations were pulling up unrest for the Ancient Roman empire, so they accused Jesus of blasphemy and ordered his crucifixion.

Keep in mind the history of the Ancient Roman empire, with their tactics of religious syncretism. Polytheism was their dominant religious belief, and when they crusaded upon other territories in their quest for expansion and power, they would adopt the local deities into their pantheon. They would tell them, “your gods are like our gods, they are the same, we are the same.” Doing so afforded them cultural stability, social cohesion, and political influence.

The Jewish people and the Christian converts, however, abided by monotheism, which held practices and beliefs in opposition to those of the ancient empire. Being outside of Rome’s influence in such a way, they were largely prosecuted instead. Eventually, leaders in Rome would grow more indifferent to the Christian presence, and ultimately transitioned to conversion. This paved the way for the formal establishment of churches in the region.

By the time the medieval era came about, after the Goth’s sacked the empire, Christian religious knowledge had transitioned from grassroots, community-led discipleship focused on scrolls and oration, to structured, hierarchical and gatekept theology. This is when the Roman Catholic church began it’s dominance, where the Bible came to be formalized, and when intolerance reigned, leading to forced conversions of the Jewish and Pagan communities. The connection between the dominance of Christianity, the formalization of the Bible, and forced conversion is important – this informs us of the lens in which Christianity was officially organized. This was the bedrock of Christianity which developed into what we know today, born through ideological violence against Judaism.

I personally don’t believe it was a coincidence that they formally adopted the Hebrew Bible as their own. This was a way to encourage conversion, as informed by the religious syncretism practiced by their not-too-distant ancestors.

I recognized the harm.

All of this is to explain that Christianity has appropriated Judaism in the spirit of harm. My reaction to this knowledge has been to deconstruct and acknowledge the violence of this, and disconnect my beliefs and practice from the Old Testament, including Genesis. It can be important to acknowledge it as a history in context, but those words are not for Christians. That is not the Christian God.

I’ve also been able to hold space and acknowledge that the Jewish people do not recognize Jesus as Messiah. Jesus was a person – if a person at all – like you and I. He was speaking up against the ills of the time. A martyr perhaps, but not Messiah. By Jewish accounts, he was a charlatan.

Judaism is a closed practice. They are not interested in evangelizing and converting outsiders to their ethnoreligion, preferring to pass their teachings to others born into their community. Who they share their beliefs with is their decision, to be done on their terms. This is to preserve Judaism, protecting it from being colonized, stripped of their cultural and historical significance and repackaged in new ways. Closed practices should be respected, and to do otherwise is to continue the ideological violence against them. That is a colonizing act.

Yes, there are pieces of Christian mythology, belief and practice completely removed from Judaism – you’re welcome to explore those areas. But always be mindful of the interwoven roots of harm towards the Jewish community, as well as other cultures, races and women, and how that may be an influence in those areas of Christianity as well.

If you’d like to read more on the appropriation of Judaism and proliferation of antisemitism throughout Western spirituality and occult spheres, I highly recommend A Lesser Key to the Appropriation of Jewish Magic and Mysticism by Ezra Rose.

Gatekeeping or closed practice?

Some will argue that respecting closed practices is akin to permitting the gatekeeping of spiritual knowledge, of allowing oneself to be told what you can and cannot think and what you can and cannot believe, which I stated earlier I was against. This is a fallacy. This ignores that gatekeeping is a weapon used to exclude marginalized communities from accessing circles of power, to exclude diversity, to maintain hierarchy. Closed practices exist to preserve diversity from colonizers, who would otherwise steal, profit from and whitewash their beliefs, dismantling them into parts in favor of assimilation, erasure and religious syncretism.

Some will argue still that their lived experiences of spirituality has drawn them to closed practices. To that I propose seeing if moving forward as a guest is an option. Only enter in the spaces you are invited to enter, approaching with cultural appreciation rather than appropriation. For some closed practices, initiation or conversion are an option. Your education should come from the community directly rather than what you can stumble into with your own research, and you should not call those practices your own until accepted by the community.

I also wish to pose the possibility that it is not actually those closed practices that you have experienced, but rather the morphed or diluted fragments of the practice which have already been appropriated and profited from by colonization.

Alternatively, could it be that what you have felt and seen has indeed been an authentic experience of this spiritual practice, to which you were a witness? Yes, a spiritual presence may have been there and made itself known to you, and that can be a very heady feeling – but that does not entitle you to insert yourself to find it again. When I watch public Indigenous ceremonies I am routinely brought to tears, feeling the weight of their ancestral power and connection – but I recognize that I am only an observer.

Just as there is no such thing as reverse racism, it is not possible for closed practices to be a form of gatekeeping. Equating gatekeeping with respecting closed practices is a white supremacist mindset. If this still does not convince you… well, you still have quite a bit to unpack that will not be undertaken here. I have no control over what you think and believe, and would not want to. I can only give you something to consider.

In summary, I broadly steer clear of any form of religious thought which circles Judaism, including much of Christianity. I will read on theology and religious philosophy, but I am very selective with what I will allow myself to subscribe to. Am I being too harsh in my divorce with Christianity, or assuming more appropriation than is actually present? Perhaps. Regardless of your feelings on the issue, the end result for me is the same. Christianity does not serve me, it only serves to empower white men.

So, what do I believe.

Well, if I had to put words to it, I identify as an agnostic omnist soft-polytheist. Basically, I don’t know what is beyond. I think there’s something, and that all depictions of deity are accurate in their own right. In my mind, there is a Spirit, Light, Universe, which can take many forms, is unknowable and incomprehensible to our insignificant human minds – which molds itself into what we need. It is the spirit of Death, and the spirit of Life, and the spirit of Earth. It is the concept of Space, of Time, of Past and Present and Future.

I don’t need a singular name for my religion. It’s mine, and that’s all that matters. I enjoy engaging with religious philosophy, with myth and poetry. I learn what I am called to learn – while considering the thinkers and believers that crossed each path before me, and giving respect for the practices I am not welcome to engage in, watching with love and appreciation from afar.

I utilize prayer and quiet to connect with the spirit within myself and around me. I utilize art and craft to make physical representations of my hopes for myself and the world. I acknowledge the art of symbolism – the changing of seasons, birds flying – and how these can serve us spiritually and philosophically. I utilize the knowledge of food and plant medicine where it is reasonable to do so. I trust in the possibilities of randomization leaving room for spiritual influence in divination and butterfly effects. I recognize the potential for elements of physics to have correlating or causational impacts on how physical reality manifests for us individually and collectively, and the unknowns in between where spirit might live.

I am not perfect, and will undoubtedly stumble into rooms I should not enter, and speak words that should not be uttered from my lips. But I will continue to do the best I can and learn in the process. People will undoubtedly attempt to pick this apart, to find fault and harm and wrong-doing. Though it may hurt me, I can only hope to hold space for differences and room for bettering my understanding.

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