I recently saw some discussion around the idea of “closed practices” – those spiritual methods that are not generally available to the public. It’s an idea that is regularly misused or misunderstood, so it seemed worth exploring more deeply.
Generally, closed practices fall into one of two categories: those that include an initiatic lineage, or those that include a vow of secrecy.
The first case covers traditions where one is initiated into the tradition by an existing member. This initiation confers some power, authority, or spiritual contact that would be otherwise unavailable. An initiate of such a tradition can trace their spiritual lineage through their initiator, their initiator’s initiator, and so on back to some guru or founding personage.
A good example of this is the idea of apostolic succession in Christianity. The Catholic church holds that when the apostles of Christ established the original church, they were granted by Christ a special authority to conduct the Christian sacraments. This authority was in turn granted by them to others, and so on down through the generations. Every modern priest who holds the apostolic succession should (theoretically) be able to trace their initiatic lineage back to the original apostles.
What makes the apostolic succession a good example of an initiatic closed tradition is that it is not strictly the same as Christian ordination. Once conferred, the apostolic succession can never be revoked. Even if a priest is defrocked or excommunicated, they still – per Catholic doctrine – have the power to conduct illicit but valid sacraments.
Over time it has also “escaped” into the wild, meaning some people hold the apostolic succession who have never been ordained as Christian clergy. These people can also conduct valid Catholic sacraments, because they hold the proper spiritual initiation. Initiatic closed traditions are also encountered in Wicca (for example Gardenarian and Alexandrian Wicca) and among a number of the African diaspora religions (for example Lucumí or Palo Mayombe).
The second category of closed practices are those that are passed along with some sort of promise to keep the practice secret. This can range from a formal vow of secrecy, to a simple request that the practice not be re-shared. This shows up a lot in occult organizations and orders (the Freemasons or the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn – though the documents of this latter have been so thoroughly leaked at this point that few secrets remain). Most of the closed practices I have been given fall in this category. Some traditions are closed in both senses – they come with a lineage of initiation, and convey mysteries that are not to be revealed to those who do not hold said initiations.
There is a third category that is sometimes referred to as “closed”, which is what originally prompted me to write this post. That is the idea that there are certain spiritual practices that are only available to people of certain racial or ethnic backgrounds, and that to employ them outside those backgrounds is somehow inappropriate.
This is an idea that is repeated by a number of different segments of the political spectrum. On the right, it generally looks like Volkish Heathens claiming that the only people who can rightfully engage with the gods of the Norse pantheon are those with Scandinavian ancestry.1 On the left it looks similar, but with different ethnic groups. The claim is that for a person of one ethnicity to engage with the spiritual practices of some other ethnicity is “cultural appropriation” and therefore somehow disallowed.
Like all pernicious lies, this one has some kernels of truth to it. First, it can be really powerful to work with the spirits of one’s blood ancestors. Even in cases of acrimony or trauma, getting right with the spirits of the people without whom you literally wouldn’t exist can be profound. This does not, however, need to be one’s only or even primary spiritual practice.
Second, spiritual practices often include some baked-in elements of cultural context. If you walk up to anyone in a predominantly Abrahamic society, and tell them you know how they can be saved, they will know what you mean. They may not believe you, but even staunch materialists will know what you’re talking about. In contrast, the phrase would not evoke the same ideas to a member of an uncontacted Amazon tribe. Even if all the words were understood, the phrase itself would be meaningless. Saved from what? Is there something dangerous here?
In a similar way, I am missing context for cultures other than my own. If I want to learn my spiritual practices from a Bon sorcerer in Tibet, or a Jívaro shaman in Peru, I will have an uphill battle. Not because I am somehow ethnically unsuited, but because I need to learn not only the spiritual practices themselves, but the cultural context that embeds and encodes them, through which they make sense. But that simply makes such learning challenging, not impossible.
I don’t believe there is any such thing as an ethnically closed practice. I know black Heathens and white Lucumí priests. In the end, spiritual traditions are living, evolving systems that thrive through authentic transmission, not racial gatekeeping. If you can find someone in a relevant tradition willing to initiate you or impart the associated mysteries, you’re good to go.
The spirits don’t care.
- By which they mean white people. No further proof of Scandinavian ancestry is generally required. ↩︎
Leave a Reply