Sonia

Reflections on borrowed spiritual practices, the quest of meaning and healing and what it means to truly honour one’s roots. There is beauty in the way cultures have started colliding in so many different ways. Merging, borrowing. And yet the appropriation by white people of cultural rituals, or spiritual modalities coming from indigenous people is also an issue. Deeply meaningful gests, created with the land and the sky, the waters and the animals. The plants and humans. A concertation of the spirits put into movements, words, sounds. Repeated for thousands of years find themselves taken, stripped of the whispers of the soil. Stripped from the soul. Put on display, in the race of specialness. I fell right in it. In the search of myself, I borrowed as many modalities as I could. I learnt about a breath patter that would bypass the mind and drop me into my heart. I learnt about meditations, those connecting to my essence, those connecting to other realms and entities, those connecting to universal consciousness. I got hi on Akasha, Qi, and life force. I travelled with Cacao Spirit, and the grand mother, the golden teacher. I met so many spirits. There is beauty in that. But at a certain point, I had to contend with the fact that none of these traditions were mine. As I deepened the work of finding myself under the layers and layers of rotten leaves – Under the stories, the events, the heartaches, the grief, the deep suffering. Under the shoulds and musts, under the ought tos and the “it’s it is. It’s how we’ve always done it” – I slowly came closer to myself. I remembered I had roots. I had never felt grounded. Wings is what I had grown. To escape, to create, to prove, to play. Wings felt safe. But wings only are unsettling. Finding all these modalities, that allowed me to sit with myself for a long time. Maybe the first time. I reconnected to parts of me, to versions of me. I started to remember. And with the memory of who I am came the memory of who came before me. I started having visits in dreams and meditation from my ancestors. I remembered how to communicate with them. I remembered gests. Ones I had no idea were in me. Ones I am not sure my mother remembered. Though she too practised magic. She spoke about symbols, and read future in lead, she cursed. I remember her coming back to that side of our line when her heart got broken and she became lost. I found magic again too when my heart broke and when I finally had the strength to start looking at the pieces. But for me, it was always about healing myself. Undoing the damage. Kintsugi of my heart as I like to call it. And when connecting to my spirit guides through a native American Jewish woman teaching about an Indian tradition, I eventually found healing. I wanted to share that with others. Modalities came to me and I would study, deepen my knowledge, guide. That’s how I wanted to use my magic. Healing myself and creating a space for others to do the same. There is beauty in the way cultures have started colliding in so many different ways. Merging, borrowing. But there is also a lot of abuse of these practices. No acknowledgement of where they came from. Of what they truly mean. Of what they are truly born from and connected to. They become empty shells when practised without this. Without knowing. And that’s precisely the root of this abuse and often unethical use of ancient modalities. The lack of knowing. Not remembering one’s own lineage. For white people, the erasure is old. Much older than for the colonised. The old fairies, and spirits have been tied up and pushed in the basement. They are not dead, but they are forgotten. Yet their presence lingers. In the echo of capitalism and patriarchy. In the shadow of the colonial machine; we feel the empty space. Khaleek blastek we say in Tunisia. You left your place. Your absence is being felt and nothing can take your place. I think that’s how we feel about our old Spirits, djins, fairies, nymphs, Gods… And no other culture can fill the void for long. That’s why we keep going back. To get our booster, our shot. Spirituality is consumed like a drug in the west. The hungry ghosts are raging. The spiritual body is disconnected, dried up. It needs to be watered, not with just any water, but with the river your ancestors came from. And so for my dear white brothers and sisters, as a half French, I would love for us all to retrace our steps back. Return to the source. Search in archives, in our dreams, in our meditations what names the wind whispers. Find our Spirits again. And so, my dear African, Asian, South American, Polynesian – as a half Tunisian, I would love for us all to retrace our steps back. Return to the source. Search in archives, in our dreams, in our meditations, in our families, what names the wind whispers. Honour our Spirits again.