A significant number of practitioners of modern alternative spiritualities adopt rituals, histories, and worldviews from at least one culture that is not their own. The widespread commodification of ideas and values enables the consumption of spiritualities much like the material goods that practitioners may also purchase. The power dynamics between those engaged in cultural appropriation and the group from which they appropriate influence the negative effects of appropriation. The hierarchical power structures of race, class, and colonialism characterize acts of cultural appropriation. Whether an act of borrowing is syncretism or cultural appropriation can often be determined by examining these power differences.
The following analysis will first give a brief background of the primary religions written about in “The Tarot of the Orishas,” Candomblé and Umbanda, and their reception in Brazil (Zolrak and Durkon, 2013). Then it will examine the way Zolrak’s discourse reflects one of the many nuanced interpretations of Umbanda, as well as the cultural heterogeneity of syncretic religion in Brazil. The discourse from the book is presented alongside the context of Brazil’s “politics of whitening,” which attempted to scrub African elements out of the country’s multiculturality. Finally, it will examine the role of Indigeneity in Umbanda and the Noble Savage discourse and imagery present in Zolrak’s interpretation of Umbanda. The Tarot of the Orishas\u27\u27 embodies the nuances and intersections in syncretism and cultural appropriation
