Sensitive topic here, but I have to say it.

We have reached a point where conversations about culture, spirituality, race, and appropriation can become so heated that people are sometimes afraid to ask questions at all. And while I absolutely believe we need to have conversations about cultural appropriation, colonialism, racism, and the exploitation of marginalized cultures, I also think we have lost some of the nuance along the way.

Human history is complicated.

Culture is complicated.

Religion is complicated.

And reducing thousands of years of human interaction to a few buzzwords doesn’t help us understand any of it.

Every Culture Has Borrowed From Another Culture

Every culture has borrowed from another culture. Every single one.

Cultures have always adopted, adapted, blended, and transformed the practices of the people around them. Human beings have never existed in perfectly sealed cultural bubbles where nobody influenced anybody else.

Trade, migration, conquest, intermarriage, religion, art, music, food, language, and just plain human curiosity have created cultural exchange for thousands of years.

The Romans borrowed heavily from the Greeks. Greek culture itself was influenced through contact with Egypt, Persia, and the civilizations of the Near East. Christianity developed within a Jewish and Greco-Roman world and continued adapting as it spread into different cultures. Buddhism developed into numerous traditions as it traveled throughout Asia.

Music does it. Dance does it. Food does it. Language DEFINITELY does it.

This is literally how cultures evolve.

But—and this is important—cultural exchange and cultural appropriation are not necessarily the same thing.

Appropriation vs. Appreciation

There is a huge difference between respectfully learning something from another culture and taking something sacred or culturally significant, stripping away its meaning, renaming it, claiming you invented it, mocking it, or making money from it while completely ignoring the people who created and preserved it.

That’s where I think conversations about cultural appropriation are absolutely valid.

There is also an uncomfortable history surrounding people from marginalized cultures being ridiculed, persecuted, or discriminated against for their traditions, clothing, hairstyles, religions, music, or customs—only to watch someone outside their culture receive praise for doing essentially the same thing.

We SHOULD talk about that.

But simply participating in something that originated outside your ancestral culture does not automatically make it cultural appropriation.

If that were our standard, practically every culture on Earth would be guilty of appropriating from someone else.

The question shouldn’t simply be:

“Does this come from my culture?”

The better question is:

“How am I engaging with it?”

And While We’re Here, Let’s Talk About the Word “Colonizer”

There is another word I absolutely hate seeing casually thrown around online: colonizer.

Before anyone jumps down my throat, I am not talking about discussing actual colonization or calling historical colonizers what they were.

Colonialism happened.

European colonial powers conquered territories, displaced people, exploited populations and resources, suppressed cultures and religions, and created systems whose effects can still be seen today.

I’m talking about using “colonizer” as a blanket insult for white people simply because they are white.

I have a problem with that.

When you take a specific historical and political concept and turn it into a racial label, you aren’t having a meaningful conversation about colonialism anymore. You’re assigning an identity, history, and guilt to an individual based largely on the color of their skin.

Being white doesn’t automatically mean someone’s ancestors were colonizers.

It also doesn’t mean their ancestors weren’t themselves conquered, displaced, persecuted, oppressed, or forcibly assimilated.

History is a hell of a lot more complicated than:

White people = colonizers.
Everyone else = colonized.

European history itself contains conquest, occupation, forced assimilation, displacement, religious persecution, slavery, serfdom, and imperial domination.

And conquest and empire certainly weren’t invented by Europeans.

None of that excuses European colonialism.

Let me repeat that because someone will inevitably misunderstand what I am saying:

Acknowledging the complexity of human history does not excuse European colonialism.

Two things can be true at the same time.

We can acknowledge the horrific realities of colonialism and its continuing effects while also acknowledging that calling some random white person a “colonizer” because of their skin color isn’t historical analysis.

There is a massive difference between criticizing a system and assigning collective guilt to an individual.

Talk about colonialism.

Talk about systemic inequality.

Talk about privilege.

Talk about history.

Talk about the ways colonial systems continue to influence our modern world.

Those are conversations worth having.

But the minute we start deciding someone’s character, intentions, ancestry, or guilt solely from the color of their skin, I think we’ve completely lost the plot.

Now Let’s Bring This Back to Witchcraft

This conversation gets even more complicated when we start talking about religion, Witchcraft, folk magic, occultism, and spiritual practices.

Why?

Because spirituality has NEVER existed in a vacuum.

Religions and magical traditions have encountered one another, influenced one another, borrowed from one another, merged, separated, transformed, and become syncretized throughout human history.

People migrated.

People married people from other cultures.

Empires rose and fell.

Religions traveled along trade routes.

Enslaved and displaced people carried their gods and traditions with them.

Conquered people sometimes incorporated elements of the conqueror’s religion. Conquerors sometimes adopted the gods and practices of the people they conquered.

Sometimes these exchanges happened peacefully.

Sometimes they absolutely did not.

That’s part of the uncomfortable history, too.

So when someone asks:

“Am I allowed to practice this if it isn’t from my culture?”

I don’t think ancestry alone gives us a particularly useful answer.

I think we need to ask better questions.

Where did this practice actually come from?

Do I understand its history and meaning?

Am I acknowledging the people and culture it came from?

Is this actually an open practice, or does the tradition itself require initiation, membership, lineage, ordination, or some other form of entry?

Am I learning from legitimate practitioners and sources?

Am I taking something sacred, completely changing it, and then presenting my version as “authentic”?

Am I claiming authority I haven’t earned?

Am I making money teaching something I barely understand?

Am I treating the people who preserved the tradition with respect?

Those questions matter far more to me than someone’s skin color.

Closed Doesn’t Just Mean “Not Your Culture”

This is another distinction I think gets lost online.

A practice being associated with a particular culture doesn’t automatically make every aspect of it “closed.”

Likewise, something being available in a book or on Google doesn’t automatically make it open.

Some traditions genuinely have requirements for participation. There are initiatory religions, priesthoods, mystery traditions, family traditions, community-specific ceremonies, and practices in which certain knowledge or roles have to be earned or bestowed.

Respecting those boundaries isn’t gatekeeping in the negative sense.

Sometimes there really IS a gate.

The problem comes when random people on social media appoint themselves the gatekeeper of cultures and religions they may not even belong to or fully understand.

That’s why research matters.

Context matters.

And, whenever possible, listening to actual practitioners matters.

Respect Doesn’t Require Cultural Isolation

I don’t believe the answer to cultural appropriation is cultural segregation.

I don’t want a world where everyone is told they can only eat the food, listen to the music, practice the spirituality, study the philosophy, wear the clothing, perform the dances, or appreciate the art associated with their own ancestry.

What a terribly boring world that would be.

More importantly, that isn’t how human civilization has ever worked.

We can learn from each other while still acknowledging where things came from.

We can participate without claiming ownership.

We can appreciate without mocking.

We can study without pretending to be authorities.

We can acknowledge painful histories without assigning inherited personal guilt based solely on someone’s race.

And we can respect genuinely initiatory or restricted traditions without declaring entire cultures completely off-limits to outsiders.

There is a difference between appropriation and appreciation.

There is a difference between cultural theft and cultural exchange.

There is a difference between learning from another tradition and claiming ownership of it.

And there is a difference between acknowledging colonialism and reducing an individual human being to “colonizer” because of their skin color.

Nuance matters.

History matters.

Intent matters, although intent doesn’t erase impact.

Context matters.

Respect matters.

And perhaps most importantly, actually learning about the people and traditions we’re discussing matters.

We can respect cultural boundaries without pretending cultures have never influenced one another.

Because they always have.

And they always will.