Closed Practices and Cultural Appropriation

A closed practice is a spiritual or religious tradition that requires specific conditions for appropriate participation, conditions that an outside practitioner cannot simply choose to meet on their own terms. These conditions may include formal initiation through an established living lineage, membership in the cultural or ethnic community from which the tradition originates, transmission through family or community relationship, or dedicated study under a qualified teacher who has the authority to transmit the tradition. The defining characteristic of a closed practice is that its boundaries are set by the tradition itself and its practitioners, not by outsiders.

The concept of cultural appropriation, as it applies to spiritual practice, refers to the adoption of elements from a tradition by people who do not belong to that tradition, particularly when those elements are sacred, when the originating community has faced or continues to face oppression, and when the adoption occurs without permission, understanding, or reciprocity. Not all cultural exchange is appropriation; the line falls where the adoption causes harm, misrepresents the tradition, removes elements from their meaningful context, or extracts value from a community that receives nothing in return.

Understanding which practices are closed, and why, and respecting those boundaries, is a basic ethical requirement for any serious practitioner who works across traditions or draws on multiple sources.

Why practices are closed

Closure is not arbitrary or simply protective of secrets for their own sake. Different traditions are closed for different and well-considered reasons.

Initiation as genuine transformation. Some traditions, including the Afro-Cuban Lucumi (Santeria), Haitian Vodou, and Brazilian Candomble, require initiation not as a social formality but because the initiation itself produces a genuine change in the initiate’s relationship to the tradition’s spirits. The orishas, lwa, and other divine beings of these traditions work with initiates in specific ways that require the transmission of ase (divine energy and authority) through a lineage. Without this initiation, the practitioner has no standing in the tradition’s own framework, regardless of how much they have read or how sincere their interest.

Cultural continuity and survival. Many Indigenous traditions have been subjected to centuries of active suppression, forced conversion, and the deliberate destruction of their religious practices. When sacred ceremonies, healing practices, or spiritual knowledge are taken up by outsiders, this can accelerate the erosion of the tradition within its own community, undermine the authority of its own knowledge-holders, and reduce the tradition to a commodity while the community that sustains it continues to face discrimination. The closure of Indigenous practices is often a form of protection and resistance.

Transmission requires relationship. Some knowledge cannot be conveyed through texts or one-time workshops because it is embedded in a sustained relationship between teacher and student within a specific cultural context. The meaning of a practice changes fundamentally when removed from the relationships, history, and community that give it its context.

Examples of closed practices

Ifa/Orisha traditions. The Yoruba-derived religious traditions including Candomble, Santeria/Lucumi, Umbanda, and others have clear lineage requirements for full initiation. While these traditions have always been willing to receive initiated members regardless of ethnic background (the transatlantic slave trade brought their practice across cultural lines from the beginning), formal initiation through a legitimate lineage, with established godparents and the appropriate ceremonies, is non-negotiable. Reading books about these traditions, purchasing their symbols, or performing ceremonies from internet sources without lineage initiation is not the same as being a practitioner of these traditions.

Indigenous ceremonial practices. Specific ceremonial practices of Indigenous nations, including vision quests, sweat lodge ceremonies, the Sun Dance, specific healing ceremonies, and the use of particular sacred plants, belong to specific communities and are transmitted within those communities. The broad spectrum of “shamanism” workshops sold in Western markets often involves the removal of specific Indigenous practices from their cultural context, which is harmful to those communities and typically produces inferior or harmful results for participants as well.

Hoodoo as family practice. Traditional Hoodoo is a folk magic tradition developed by African American communities in the American South, blending African, Indigenous, and European influences. While Hoodoo has never been formally initiatory in the way that Lucumi is, much of the tradition was transmitted within families and communities as private knowledge. The commercialization of Hoodoo through online courses and shops raises complex questions about authenticity, appropriation, and the appropriate relationships between practitioners from inside and outside the originating community.

What closed practice does not mean

Closed practice does not mean that all knowledge about a tradition is secret, or that outsiders cannot learn about it through scholarship, or that all aspects of a tradition are inaccessible. Most traditions have publicly available elements: mythology, general history, the names of deities, and accounts of public ceremonies. Studying these openly available aspects is respectful engagement, not appropriation.

It does not mean that traditions never change, evolve, or receive new members from outside their original community. Many traditions have specific and legitimate pathways for outsiders to participate: formal initiation in Lucumi traditions has always been available to people of any background through proper lineage channels; some Indigenous communities offer public ceremonies that welcome respectful outside participants.

It does not mean that every practitioner from within a community is automatically an appropriate teacher, or that every person claiming to offer initiation into a tradition actually has the authority to do so. Discernment is required in evaluating teachers and lineages within closed traditions, not only from outside them.

Navigating these questions

The practical approach for a practitioner who is drawn to elements of a tradition they did not grow up in begins with honest research. Who are the tradition’s own practitioners, and what do they say about outside participation? What are the tradition’s own teachings about initiation and transmission? Are there legitimate pathways for the interest you have, and if so, what do they require?

Approaching these questions with genuine respect, patience, and willingness to hear answers you might not prefer is more important than any specific conclusion. A tradition that turns out to be genuinely closed to you in its central practices may still have publicly available mythological and historical material that can inform your broader understanding without appropriating what belongs to others.

In myth and popular culture

The concept of closed or secret knowledge requiring initiation for access is ancient and appears across many religious and esoteric traditions. In ancient Greece, the Eleusinian Mysteries, the most important of the mystery religions, were conducted under strict secrecy: initiates were forbidden to reveal what they experienced, and the penalty for disclosure was death or exile. The Mysteries were celebrated at Eleusis for nearly two thousand years, and what occurred in their inner rites remains genuinely unknown today, an enduring demonstration of how effectively closed initiation can preserve sacred knowledge. Scholars have speculated but cannot confirm the full content of what was revealed.

In the Yoruba religious tradition from which Ifá, Candomble, and Santeria/Lucumi derive, specific bodies of sacred knowledge are explicitly stratified by initiation level. A babalawo’s full knowledge of the odu and associated itan (sacred narratives) accumulates over a lifetime of initiation and study; portions of this knowledge are genuinely reserved for those who have earned access. The UNESCO recognition of Ifá as an Intangible Cultural Heritage acknowledges both the tradition’s profound cultural value and the community’s right to maintain its protocols of transmission.

Public discourse around cultural appropriation and closed practices expanded substantially in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, driven in part by the commercialization of Indigenous and diaspora spiritual practices through the New Age market. Books, workshops, and online courses began marketing elements of traditions whose own practitioners and communities had not authorized their public dissemination. Organizations including WARN (Working to Advance Religious Naturalism) and various Indigenous cultural groups have published statements addressing what they consider appropriate and inappropriate engagement.

The increasing visibility of these debates in online witchcraft and pagan communities since approximately 2015 has made closed practice literacy a recognized component of contemporary practitioner ethics.

Myths and facts

Several persistent misunderstandings about closed practices are widespread enough to address directly.

• A common assumption holds that if information about a tradition is available in books or online, it is therefore open for anyone to practice. Accessibility of information does not determine whether a practice is open or closed. Many traditions publish explanatory materials for public understanding while maintaining specific rites and ceremonies as requiring initiation or community membership.
• Some practitioners argue that all spiritual practices belong to all of humanity and cannot legitimately be closed. The traditions themselves define their own protocols of transmission, and those protocols reflect serious reasons, including the genuine change that initiation produces, the importance of community relationship to the practice’s meaning, and the protection of communities that have faced historical suppression.
• It is often assumed that working with a deity from a closed tradition is equivalent to appropriating that tradition’s closed practices. Many traditions distinguish between respectfully studying a tradition’s publicly available theology and mythology and claiming to practice its closed ceremonies without initiation. The line falls at the specific ceremonies and practices the tradition defines as requiring initiation, not at all engagement with its deities or ideas.
• Cultural exchange and cultural appropriation are sometimes treated as identical. Cultural exchange implies reciprocity, acknowledgment, and relationship; appropriation typically involves extraction of value without reciprocity, often from communities with less power, without acknowledgment of the source.
• Some practitioners assume that having a teacher or taking a course from someone of a tradition’s ethnic or cultural background is equivalent to proper initiation. Legitimate initiation in traditions that require it proceeds through specific lineage channels with recognized authority; a workshop or class does not substitute for this, even if the instructor is from the tradition’s originating community.