Here’s the thing; at no point did anyone suggest that real life “muggles” are some kind of oppressed class or that you were engaging in some bold new category of ‘-ism’ by using that term. You can use whatever word you want for “people who don’t do magic.” No one really gives a shit. But if your purpose in using that word was to entirely divorce of it’s original context as an oppressive term for a biologically distinct underclass… Why use the word? Why not just invent a completely new term instead? If it’s going to mean something almost entirely different, why carry over those associations?

Now, this is the point where the sane thing to do would be to say “Honestly, at the time when we co-opted the term we just hadn’t done the work of interrogating how messed up the original context was,” and I would completely respect that. Because as I have just stated, I was a fan of those books too. I also let a lot of stuff slide that I really shouldn’t have, and it wasn’t until later that I went back and re-examined the material and started to really piece together just how fucked up Rowling’s worldview is, even as expressed in the context of her children’s stories. So I’m just as guilty as anyone else is in that regard. None of this is a call-out, just a call for further examination.

Anyway, thank you for the offer of the primer, but if I want to learn more about spellcasting I have at least a dozen or so friends I can consult for their expertise on paganism, heathenry, witchcraft, or chaos magick. None of whom have ever tried to use the terms “chakra” and “sephirot” interchangeably, which suggests a deep misunderstanding of either tantra, kabbalah, or both. Lovely art though.