{"id":470,"date":"2012-04-11T12:22:24","date_gmt":"2012-04-11T17:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.wordpress.com\/?p=470"},"modified":"2012-04-11T12:22:24","modified_gmt":"2012-04-11T17:22:24","slug":"sex-gender-and-magic-1n1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/2012\/04\/11\/sex-gender-and-magic-1n1\/","title":{"rendered":"Sex, Gender, and Magic 1\/n+1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Preface<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I was already drafting this in my head as a response to a reddit thread<\/a>\u2014particularly this comment<\/a>\u2014when one of the bloggers<\/a> I follow decided to wade into the subject.\u00a0 It\u2019s something I\u2019ve talked about before from time to time, but usually only in reference to Wicca.\u00a0 There is a great deal of gender essentialism and heterosexism in the occult community, and the privileged apologia<\/a> that tends to accumulate when someone calls bullshit makes me fucking furious.<\/p>\n

Now, let\u2019s look at the two OPs, first: a woman asking for people to share their experiences of gender difference in different forms of occultism, and gay man exploring the possibility of a huge oversight in the (human understanding of) Hermetic Law.\u00a0 The first got a few genuinely thoughtful answers, but the response to both (overwhelming in the one case, so far singular in the other) amounts to \u201chow dare you ask that fucking question?\u201d<\/p>\n

That response infuriates me.\u00a0 It drives home the fact that, just as the neo-Pagan community is rife with mainline American anti-intellectualism (a rant for another time, but just look at popular responses to Hutton\u2019s Triumph of the Moon<\/em>), the occult community as a whole is permeated by outdated and debunked ideologies of sex, gender, and sexuality.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

1 \u2013 Sex, Gender, Culture<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Next, let\u2019s get one thing laid out right from the start: sex and gender are not the same thing.\u00a0 Sex is biological, a manifestation of genetic code and possibly some environmental factors.\u00a0 Gender is socially constructed.<\/p>\n

\"Graham<\/a>
Graham and Megan attempt to reinforce their gender roles through performing traditional female tasks. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a whole, the human species is sexually dimorphic\u2014that is to say, there are male and female bodies with complimentary reproductive roles.\u00a0 But let\u2019s not let that apparently clear reality seduce us into reductionist thinking.\u00a0 There are also intersexed people of countless varieties\u2014some of whom are fertile, some of whom aren\u2019t\u2014and all the legit science points out that the differences among women and men are far greater than the \u201caverage\u201d difference between women and men.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Gender roles do not come naturally to people of a particular sex: we are trained in their performance from birth.\u00a0 Anthropologists and historians (when they\u2019re not buying into anachronisms that support their personal bigotries) have clearly established that gender roles differ radically across times and spaces.\u00a0 Hell, just look within America (or wherever you\u2019re from; I know I have an international readership, but I haven\u2019t lived enough places to speak of anywhere else) and across the last hundred years: the gender roles of our generation are different from those of our grandparents or our great-grandparents; further clear differences can be observed regionally\u2014cf. the South versus the Paciffic Northwest.\u00a0 Further: if gender roles were biologically determined, then no one would ever be uncomfortable with them and we would not have a social crisis in America revolving on the redefinition of masculinity and femininity and their relationship to eachother.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 It would be physically impossible to vary from those roles, and they would be homogenous across time and geography.<\/p>\n

Saying “social gender roles” have no part in spirituality\/magic\u2014like the commenters linked above\u2014is essentially the same as saying that psychology has no part in spirituality\/magic.\u00a0 It is literally an argument that cultural context plays no part in magic.\u00a0 It’s also an argument I most frequently encounter when it’s being deployed by (male) magicians when someone (usually a woman, though\u00a0 often a queer) suggests that occult communities might not be immune from the sexism of society at large.\u00a0 If you really believe that the context of your daily life has no bearing on your magic, then you\u2019re probably what\u2019s colloquially referred to as an armchair magician<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you believe that psychology and cultural context play no part in magic, answer me this: why has nearly every generation needed to \u201creinvent the wheel\u201d?\u00a0 Why are we not all\u2014every goddman one of us\u2014working from the Greek Magical Papyri?\u00a0 Wanna say that got lost (a fair argument), how about Agrippa?\u00a0 Or, more to the point, why were contemporaneous magicians in Hellas, Persia, and China all doing radically different things?<\/p>\n

Finally, in case the above thought-exercises failed to convince you, take a look at Phil Hine\u2019s recent post<\/a>, where he delves into the origin of the very idea of two sexes.\u00a0 For further reading, check out his series of posts unpacking the 19th Century ideologies and \u201cscience\u201d which lie at the heart of many \u201cmodern\u201d occult ideas: Part One<\/a>, Part Two<\/a>, Part Three<\/a>, Part Four<\/a>, Part Five<\/a>, Part Six<\/a>, Part Seven<\/a>.\u00a0 I point to Phil Hine rather than, say, Kate Bornstein, because his research is more targeted to the occult community, and because of his credibility within that community.<\/p>\n

2 \u2013 As Above, So Below<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Adam<\/a>
Adam and Eve (Photo credit: Wikipedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some people\u2014as Polyphanes\u2019 commenter\u2014like to deploy a what appears to be a reductionist version of the Law of Correspondences.\u00a0 The argument, to the best of my ability to follow it, seems to go like this: 1) Humanity is made in the image of God; 2) God (Kether) is divided into Male and Female (Chokma, Binah); therefore, 3) humanity is divided into Male and Female, whose roles and nature suspiciously conform to 19th Century pseudo-science (see above) and\/or their own personal sexist constructions.<\/p>\n

I find this argument infuriating.\u00a0 Correct me if I\u2019m wrong, but doesn\u2019t the full text of the Law of Correspondences go: \u201cWhatever is above is like that which is below, and whatever is below is like that which is above\u201d?\u00a0 As Above, So Below; As Below, So Above.<\/p>\n

Now, I realize that as someone who utterly rejects a hermetic top-down construction of reality in favor of a fractal construction, my understanding of the meaning of that Law is radically different from many.\u00a0 But bear with me for a moment.\u00a0 We can observe the material world much more closely and accurately than we can observe the immaterial.\u00a0 Given how often we\u2019re wrong about the material world, don\u2019t you think we should be a little more careful about the assertions we make regarding the immaterial?\u00a0 Particularly in terms of projecting our own (or worse yet, our great-grandparents\u2019) social constructions onto the larger world of spirit?<\/p>\n

Intermission \u2013 Conclusion of Rant 1\/n+1<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of course, I realize that no amount of ranting on my part\u2014or even reasoned arguments\u2014will dissuade people from using religion and spirituality as a bludgeon with which to enforce their heterosexism and gender essentialism.\u00a0 I even recognize that, from a particular point of view, I\u2019m using my spiritual experience to bludgeon them with my radical queer feminism.\u00a0 But my magic \u2013which is every bit as queer as I am\u2014works, and that pretty much proves that the hardline arguments are false.<\/p>\n

Remember, folks: \u201cMagic works in practice but not in theory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Further posts in this series\u2014probably to be posted over the summer\u2014will, hopefully, be penned in a less \u201cfrothy\u201d frame of mind, and thicker with citations to both respected academic works and some of the primary GD\/hermetic\/ceremonial sources. They will not, however, be a whit less critical of the unexamined privilege which permeates so much of the discourse.<\/p>\n

To conclude this first part of what will ultimately be a career-spanning screaming<\/span> rant<\/span> monograph, let\u2019s come full circle and answer the posters whose commenters drove me to write this now instead of slowly over the course of months.<\/p>\n

To femagician of reddit: as a (ostensibly) male-identified practitioner, it has been my observation that the world of the GD\/ceremonial magic is<\/em> largely, as one commenter puts it, \u201ca sausage fest\u201d.\u00a0 I have known one or two lady ceremonialists in person, and follow the blogs of a few, but the majority of female-identified practitioners I\u2019ve known do tend toward witchcraft of one kind or another.\u00a0 I think that the reason for this, rather than being rooted in Wicca\/witchcraft\u2019s identification with the divine feminine (which also draws a good number of \u201cmanly\u201d individuals), can be seen clearly in the hostile, hateful, cock-waving territorialism displayed by the majority of the men who answered your question.\u00a0 It\u2019s sure as fuck a lot of what kept me away for so long, and the largest obstacle to my keeping with it.<\/p>\n

To Polyphanes: I\u2019ve never read the Kybalion, so I can\u2019t speak to it beyond what you reprinted and paraphrased in your post.\u00a0 If the construction it employs is useful to you, roll with it.\u00a0 But keep in mind that it is a construction: an out dated one and one which is inherently hostile to your existence as a gay man.\u00a0 You know as well as I do what the Victorians thought of us \u201cinverts\u201d.\u00a0 It is also a construction which absolutely cannot process transfolks or genderqueers.\u00a0 Where in the Law of Gender (even with the Law of Rhythm) is there a place for me?\u00a0 A \u201ccross-dressing\u201d, bisexual, male-bodied shamanic witch and magician who takes \u201cfemale\u201d form (involuntarily) about 30% of the time I descend to the Underworld?\u00a0 Again, I haven\u2019t read the Kybalion, but I suspect that the answer is \u201cnowhere\u201d, which means that not only is the Law of Gender NOT universal, but it flatly contradicts with the Law of Correspondences.\u00a0 Because if I exist here in the material, Powers as genderfucked as I am must also exist both Above and Below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Preface I was already drafting this in my head as a response to a reddit thread\u2014particularly this comment\u2014when one of the bloggers I follow decided to wade into the subject.\u00a0 It\u2019s something I\u2019ve talked about before from time to time, but usually only in reference to Wicca.\u00a0 There is a great deal of gender essentialism … Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[88,89,198,217,292],"class_list":["post-470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scholarship","category-witchcraft","tag-gender","tag-gender-role","tag-phil-hine","tag-rant","tag-weblinks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-7A","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}