I loved this essay. While I was reading, it occurred to me that maybe instead of (or on top of) distinguishing between material and immaterial spirituality, we could consider the possibility that matter and spirit are not two different entities but in fact are diverse manifestations of the same living, active, perceptive (i.e, spiritually capable) substance. My research is dedicated to studying these kinds of views, and they seem relevant here. Thanks as always for your work!
That makes sense. Some of the philosophers I study think of themselves as redefining matter or perhaps revealing new truths about it — so are ‘materialists’ themselves in a way — but I get that the account doesn’t suddenly become attractive to mechanistic materialists (for lack of a better term; obviously I don’t know the specific details of the views you’re describing) just because the word ‘matter’ is invoked.
Yeah I don’t like the assumption that materialists who don’t believe in spirit are mechanistic. Some are some aren’t. I think those trying to create a theory that blends the material and spirit (sounds super cool to me) will have to accept that there are those who don’t believe in the immaterial at all, but that doesn’t mean their materialism is not dynamic and complex.
Olivia, would you share more about your research? Either things you might have published, or authors you study and align with? I share these kind of views! Thanks!
This is in alignment with the non-dualism of philosophies such as Advaita Vedānta and Shakta/Shaiva tantra, both of whuch are extremely sophisticated and brain-meltingly rigorous systems of thought.
I’m flipping out. I’m so glad you write, and that I read your writing! Lucky lucky lucky grateful grateful grateful.
This reminds me so much of movement practice, exercise as self attunement and medicine. I’m a personal trainer and have often been tempted or shamed by capitalistic crap to buy new exercise gadgets (to be fair some are legit helpful for hurting bodies) and new courses when really? I need to regarde l’objet of my body, and attune to its needs for healthy doses of stress and release, strain and relief, challenge and ease. I am doing better at tuning in to my body’s pleasures and needs for EXERTION, not to change myself to look better, but to wiggle and move and strain and rest my way toward greater health and self empowerment.
Besides what this essay reminded me of, I love your enlightening perspective on materialist spirituality, and appreciate, because tho I hang with woo woo folks, I’m much more pragmatic, immediate, materialist, and I resonate with the immediate wonders of the world rather than mysteries I’ll never hope to grasp.
Hey! I’ve finally got it together to subscribe to Clementine’s urgent, clear writing. This piece did it for me. In my late teens (millions of years ago) I spent lots of time sitting in a magic circle I’d cast and very much identified as a witch; I saw myself as the patiently reconstructing a wrecked indigenous tradition here in the UK through my own process of (self led and self taught) exploration. And I wanted to say that this article has made me love my partner, whom I have often said rather dismissively treats recipe books, instruction manuals and guidebooks as an offence, a little more than I already do. Which is a lot. Thank you, Clementine x
"What the witches of the 2010s didn’t understand.... is that capitalism can and will commodify our spirituality and sell it back to us." well, some understood, both in the 2010s and before then.
"What the witches of the 2010s didn’t understand, and what many woo woo people still don’t understand, is that capitalism can and will commodify our spirituality and sell it back to us."
What this made me think of was how a couple of years ago (& assuming more recently) there was a wave of witches and other woo-adjacent people on Instagram (rightfully) complaining that they were being impersonated and their followers were being scammed, and Instagram was doing nothing about it.
After months of watching the drama of scammers unfolds, I realized that a lot of the people who were upset they were being impersonated didn't realize how little that platform cares. And it would never help witches or woo adjacent accounts fight impersonators. Ever. (1) there's no money in it for them and (2) the witches are seen as scammers themselves. Which is sad but also? Fuck having your spirituality sold back to you, & that includes seeking help in being seen as legitimate from dubious sources.
This is interesting to me. I have a background as a self-taught witch and spent a lot of time in my late teens and early twenties casting circles and sitting quietly to see what happened in them (a lot of phenomena) before I got bored of the lack of teacher and dubious about the neo-pagan scenes that were starting to burgeon then (mid to late 90s). I cannot really bring myself to look at whatever it is that might be going on under those umbrellas on TikTok or whatever, having watched the mess of dilution, commodification and cult of celebrity unfold in the yoga world. But it seems to me that people place an awful lot of faith in social media platforms and fail to understand how we are all really just fodder for the algorithim there, whether what we’re doing is flimsy nonsense or deep, real and true. They literally exist to sell us identity and tribe and a sense of belonging. Ofc good stuff gets shared via sm platforms but quite why anyone thinks of spirituality as somehow outside of the usual ways of operating is a bit baffling to me - other than bc of our collective desperation for connection I guess.
"people place an awful lot of faith in social media platforms and fail to understand how we are all really just fodder for the algorithm there, whether what we’re doing is flimsy nonsense or deep, real and true. They literally exist to sell us identity and tribe and a sense of belonging." - this is poignant.
I've thought about this (selling of an identity on the socials) a lot. I'm a formally trained artist but decided several years ago to stop sharing my work on social media because it felt like I was dropping it into a void. You've articulated something that I've been unable to, which is my despair over why people are participating in our own 'sale of self'? Myself included; I've also used these platforms (very inefficiently, but whatever). It's nice to hear from other people who recognize the dilution of deep knowing, be it yoga, witchery, or anything else spiritually oriented.
I was a teenager in a small northern Canadian town in the early 90s (with a church-going family and a mother obsessed with Satanic panic, lol) so didn't grow into my self-taught witch identity until later in life. I've never found a coven because as a hedgewitch I didn't seek one out, and am okay with that now, but from the outside looking in, I was always curious about the group dynamics of the neo-pagan world.
Hey, thanks for this reply, and for sharing your experiences. I feel I should state that I don’t have direct experience of current neo-pagan circles, but I know what gets called “yogaland” (the indistinct space of modern yoga teaching, practice and community) well.
I wrote some articles a few years back about how the crafting, curating and selling of an identity pulls directly counter to yoga’s own stated aims – I keep thinking I should/(could!) dig them out and re-write – and I think that to some extent what I call the invisible self-project probably holds true across other disciplines and arenas, too. I find it particularly egregious within spirituality, I guess because I am intimate with my own pain and I know how hard I have to work to free myself from the ways I keep those stories going. So to see those old narratives of brokenness perpetuated in the name of keeping something like social media afloat is gross to me.
I know the arguments that we all get to choose how we show up; I know that it’s sometimes deemed empowerment to share every tiny little aspect of your life and to make a brand around that, and honestly it’s enough for me to figure out wtf I should be doing so I would have no clue what’s right for anyone else. I just think that there is a huge and pervasive need for social media to be somehow separate and apart from the bullshit late capitalism structures so that it can give us the good stuff – the re enchantment that Clementine speaks about in this article. This need is at the root of so much of our misery, and like the traumatised beings we mostly are, we look for the solution in the wrong places.
Social media is about information. That’s not nourishment, more junk food. Information, knowledge and wisdom are not the same things. I personally hunger for wisdom and recognising this was a game-changer for me in terms of how I show up online and in “real”, non-online life. It’s up to others what they choose to do and how aware, or not, they are of their own unconscious drives; for me, I will not give my own sacred process up to social media for the sake of a few thousand likes or whatever. It’s worth so much more than that, you know? WE are worth so much more.
Loved reading this. Reminded me of a clip of Zadie Smith asked about her advice to young people, and she said to skip following all these influencers and gurus for clarity and go "straight to the source" — art. As a kid who desperately wanted more structure and support on my path than I was given, I still find it hard not to jump to the next coach/influencer/guru, but when I'm not overwhelmed, being quiet and in the material world usually gives me assurance I can't find anywhere else.
I loved this essay. While I was reading, it occurred to me that maybe instead of (or on top of) distinguishing between material and immaterial spirituality, we could consider the possibility that matter and spirit are not two different entities but in fact are diverse manifestations of the same living, active, perceptive (i.e, spiritually capable) substance. My research is dedicated to studying these kinds of views, and they seem relevant here. Thanks as always for your work!
I think this aligns with how I see things, but it wouldn't align for pure materialists.
That makes sense. Some of the philosophers I study think of themselves as redefining matter or perhaps revealing new truths about it — so are ‘materialists’ themselves in a way — but I get that the account doesn’t suddenly become attractive to mechanistic materialists (for lack of a better term; obviously I don’t know the specific details of the views you’re describing) just because the word ‘matter’ is invoked.
Yeah I don’t like the assumption that materialists who don’t believe in spirit are mechanistic. Some are some aren’t. I think those trying to create a theory that blends the material and spirit (sounds super cool to me) will have to accept that there are those who don’t believe in the immaterial at all, but that doesn’t mean their materialism is not dynamic and complex.
Olivia, would you share more about your research? Either things you might have published, or authors you study and align with? I share these kind of views! Thanks!
Same!
This is in alignment with the non-dualism of philosophies such as Advaita Vedānta and Shakta/Shaiva tantra, both of whuch are extremely sophisticated and brain-meltingly rigorous systems of thought.
I’m flipping out. I’m so glad you write, and that I read your writing! Lucky lucky lucky grateful grateful grateful.
This reminds me so much of movement practice, exercise as self attunement and medicine. I’m a personal trainer and have often been tempted or shamed by capitalistic crap to buy new exercise gadgets (to be fair some are legit helpful for hurting bodies) and new courses when really? I need to regarde l’objet of my body, and attune to its needs for healthy doses of stress and release, strain and relief, challenge and ease. I am doing better at tuning in to my body’s pleasures and needs for EXERTION, not to change myself to look better, but to wiggle and move and strain and rest my way toward greater health and self empowerment.
Besides what this essay reminded me of, I love your enlightening perspective on materialist spirituality, and appreciate, because tho I hang with woo woo folks, I’m much more pragmatic, immediate, materialist, and I resonate with the immediate wonders of the world rather than mysteries I’ll never hope to grasp.
Yes. 🔥🔥🔥
Hey! I’ve finally got it together to subscribe to Clementine’s urgent, clear writing. This piece did it for me. In my late teens (millions of years ago) I spent lots of time sitting in a magic circle I’d cast and very much identified as a witch; I saw myself as the patiently reconstructing a wrecked indigenous tradition here in the UK through my own process of (self led and self taught) exploration. And I wanted to say that this article has made me love my partner, whom I have often said rather dismissively treats recipe books, instruction manuals and guidebooks as an offence, a little more than I already do. Which is a lot. Thank you, Clementine x
Really loved this essay. Like a lot of good writing it unsettles and comforts at the same time
Fantastic......!
"What the witches of the 2010s didn’t understand.... is that capitalism can and will commodify our spirituality and sell it back to us." well, some understood, both in the 2010s and before then.
"What the witches of the 2010s didn’t understand, and what many woo woo people still don’t understand, is that capitalism can and will commodify our spirituality and sell it back to us."
What this made me think of was how a couple of years ago (& assuming more recently) there was a wave of witches and other woo-adjacent people on Instagram (rightfully) complaining that they were being impersonated and their followers were being scammed, and Instagram was doing nothing about it.
After months of watching the drama of scammers unfolds, I realized that a lot of the people who were upset they were being impersonated didn't realize how little that platform cares. And it would never help witches or woo adjacent accounts fight impersonators. Ever. (1) there's no money in it for them and (2) the witches are seen as scammers themselves. Which is sad but also? Fuck having your spirituality sold back to you, & that includes seeking help in being seen as legitimate from dubious sources.
This is interesting to me. I have a background as a self-taught witch and spent a lot of time in my late teens and early twenties casting circles and sitting quietly to see what happened in them (a lot of phenomena) before I got bored of the lack of teacher and dubious about the neo-pagan scenes that were starting to burgeon then (mid to late 90s). I cannot really bring myself to look at whatever it is that might be going on under those umbrellas on TikTok or whatever, having watched the mess of dilution, commodification and cult of celebrity unfold in the yoga world. But it seems to me that people place an awful lot of faith in social media platforms and fail to understand how we are all really just fodder for the algorithim there, whether what we’re doing is flimsy nonsense or deep, real and true. They literally exist to sell us identity and tribe and a sense of belonging. Ofc good stuff gets shared via sm platforms but quite why anyone thinks of spirituality as somehow outside of the usual ways of operating is a bit baffling to me - other than bc of our collective desperation for connection I guess.
"people place an awful lot of faith in social media platforms and fail to understand how we are all really just fodder for the algorithm there, whether what we’re doing is flimsy nonsense or deep, real and true. They literally exist to sell us identity and tribe and a sense of belonging." - this is poignant.
I've thought about this (selling of an identity on the socials) a lot. I'm a formally trained artist but decided several years ago to stop sharing my work on social media because it felt like I was dropping it into a void. You've articulated something that I've been unable to, which is my despair over why people are participating in our own 'sale of self'? Myself included; I've also used these platforms (very inefficiently, but whatever). It's nice to hear from other people who recognize the dilution of deep knowing, be it yoga, witchery, or anything else spiritually oriented.
I was a teenager in a small northern Canadian town in the early 90s (with a church-going family and a mother obsessed with Satanic panic, lol) so didn't grow into my self-taught witch identity until later in life. I've never found a coven because as a hedgewitch I didn't seek one out, and am okay with that now, but from the outside looking in, I was always curious about the group dynamics of the neo-pagan world.
Hey, thanks for this reply, and for sharing your experiences. I feel I should state that I don’t have direct experience of current neo-pagan circles, but I know what gets called “yogaland” (the indistinct space of modern yoga teaching, practice and community) well.
I wrote some articles a few years back about how the crafting, curating and selling of an identity pulls directly counter to yoga’s own stated aims – I keep thinking I should/(could!) dig them out and re-write – and I think that to some extent what I call the invisible self-project probably holds true across other disciplines and arenas, too. I find it particularly egregious within spirituality, I guess because I am intimate with my own pain and I know how hard I have to work to free myself from the ways I keep those stories going. So to see those old narratives of brokenness perpetuated in the name of keeping something like social media afloat is gross to me.
I know the arguments that we all get to choose how we show up; I know that it’s sometimes deemed empowerment to share every tiny little aspect of your life and to make a brand around that, and honestly it’s enough for me to figure out wtf I should be doing so I would have no clue what’s right for anyone else. I just think that there is a huge and pervasive need for social media to be somehow separate and apart from the bullshit late capitalism structures so that it can give us the good stuff – the re enchantment that Clementine speaks about in this article. This need is at the root of so much of our misery, and like the traumatised beings we mostly are, we look for the solution in the wrong places.
Social media is about information. That’s not nourishment, more junk food. Information, knowledge and wisdom are not the same things. I personally hunger for wisdom and recognising this was a game-changer for me in terms of how I show up online and in “real”, non-online life. It’s up to others what they choose to do and how aware, or not, they are of their own unconscious drives; for me, I will not give my own sacred process up to social media for the sake of a few thousand likes or whatever. It’s worth so much more than that, you know? WE are worth so much more.
As some who has recently started dating a materialist, yes 🔥🔥🔥
Loved reading this. Reminded me of a clip of Zadie Smith asked about her advice to young people, and she said to skip following all these influencers and gurus for clarity and go "straight to the source" — art. As a kid who desperately wanted more structure and support on my path than I was given, I still find it hard not to jump to the next coach/influencer/guru, but when I'm not overwhelmed, being quiet and in the material world usually gives me assurance I can't find anywhere else.