Or Stop Saying "Shadow Work," ffs
Somewhere I have a mimeographed copy of Starhawk's first ever sermon to the Pagan communities of America to stop using "white light" as a spell for healing and empowerment. Basically, stop using "white" to mean good, and "dark" to mean bad, she insisted. This was back when Reclaiming was a real, paper, Xeroxed newsletter, and I had complained about using "masculine" and "feminine" energy as synonymous for sex role stereotypes in one issue around 1985.
Of course, white people didn't listen then, and in general, as racism permeates forms of European descent paganism, white people are busy fighting Nazi appropriation and forgetting small language changes. This is what rightwing and fascist organizing is always about, btw: forcing progressives and socialists from important work in our communities to endlessly battling the brown shirts of various conservative and rightwing groups. Yes, do keep fighting against white supremacists appropriating European paganism.
But we still need to think about and remember language. 20 years ago I sang a version of "This Little Light of Mine" at a Unitarian Universalist church in a sermon about multiracial families challenging racist norms. I proposed this version I used in my years of teaching daycare and preschool:
"The Dark inside of me, I'm gonna let it grow,
The Dark inside of me, I'm gonna let it grow.
The Dark inside of me, I'm gonna let it grow,
Let it grow, let it grow, let it grow."
The reason Starhawk, me, and many anti-racism activists,including Aradhna Krishna and Cord Whitaker, have called for this language change - for about 50 years - is because the endless equation of darkness, shadows, blackness, brownness, and night with evil, badness, difficulty, challenges, hardship and ugliness is a deep-rooted form of European racism. It came into Europe with the Indo-Europeans: ya know, those conquering patriarchs who wiped out the thousands year old Goddess and dark worhsipping civilizations that preceded and which archaeologist Marija Gimbutas worked her entire life to uncover and teach. Gimbutas' work has been confirmed recently by genetic sequencing; when the Indo-Europeans invaded continental Europe, sweeping away matriarchies that had lasted millennia, they also wiped out the Y DNA of the indigenous peoples, possibly by genocide. And they brought their sky God and their hate for darkness, women, children, earth, and life itself. We are still dismantling their legacies that European descent peoples like my family have spread worldwide.
Part of paganism for modern pagans concerned with reclaiming any European indigenous religion, part of addressing social justice and racism for anyone concerned with equality and equity, and part of being an ally or traitor for people of color demands we dismantle racism. So 40 years ago Starhawk admonished us to quit saying "white light," and also to quit with portrayals of "the" Goddess or any Goddess as blonde, buxom women from Victorian imagery.
And that means we stop using Shadow Work as a metaphor for addressing our experiences of trauma, abuse, poor parenting, triggers, or anything else from the psychological work of the (very racist) Carl Jung. I am seeing too many Instagram posts about "shadow work," and calling for witches to do their "shadow work." The idea is often to encourage healing for people, which is kinda nice. But naming trauma, triggers, difficulties and challenges as "shadowy" is just simply racist.
We as pagans and committed allies and justice seekers ourselves, must dismantle racism in our pagan practice. We have to stop with the buxom Goddesses, the blonde worshiping, and the racist language. Paganism is rooted in the country in it's very meaning. Country is soil and woodlands; country is seeds and fertility and fallow times and death; country is dark nights and dreamtime. We need to reclaim the dark from those distant genocidal Indo-Europeans, and we need to reclaim the dark to see the totality of the beauty of life and living and dying on our threatened planet.
The dark, the shadows, the night, are all beautiful. We come from the darkness of our mother's wombs, and we live off the bounty of the darkness of soil and seeds and roots deep in the earth. Night is for rest, for hunting, for growth, for seeing differently. Shadows are nourishing havens in summer and protection for plants and species needing a different light. My shadow garden is as beautiful as my sun garden. Shadows whisper to me when I search for my ancestors, and shadows call for coolness and succor. The shadows aren't places we address difficulty or hardship. The shadows are places of growth and beauty and haven.
So if you want to do to emotional work with intergenerational trauma, with experiences of oppression and trauma, with patterns of behavior we hope to change and address, we need to use language that is inclusive of all people and our whole earth. Naming is essential in feminist witchcraft, it is essential in feminist and anti-racist activism, and it is essential in healing.
So name your work with truth. With power. "I'm working on intergenerational trauma." "I'm working on addressing behaviors I learned due to violence in my life." "I'm trying to dismantle the oppressive language I learned growing up." "I'm trying to learn new ways of being present to the people in my life." "I'm working on new ways to set boundaries." This is consciousness work. It is old fashioned consciousness raising. It is community and political work. Name it. Name it. Name it.
Because in naming we reclaim the dark in ourselves, the stuff several millennia of violence has tried to erase: females of all color, men of color, children, communities and nations of color, the earth, the land, animals, our homes. Letting those parts of the world grow is essential to the planet. We need women of all colors; we need men of color; we need forests and soil and land and children and community.
Fuck yes, let them grow. Let darkness grow.
Some resources:
How did white become the metaphor for all good things?
Is saying "dark" to mean "bad" an offensive, racist metaphor?
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