Appalachian Folk Magic and The Question Of Appropriation.
"Appalachian folk magic" is spoken of as if it were a single monolithic Tradition.
It's not. It's really really not. It's threads from multiple intermixed traditions, further intermixed and evolved due to the isolation of the people and the very overt and accepted influence of the spirits of the land and The Knowing/The Cunning/The Sight/etc.
Plenty of us don't even particularly care for the word "magic". Most abilities and operations that will be shared are shared namelessly. It might be referred to by practitioners as witchcraft, a wives tale, a superstition, but usually it's straight up just instructions.
"Appalachian folk magic" is A Blanket Term for all folk magics from the general area. Not a mystical tradition distinct from those traditions. When people don't remember the metadata of "From The Pow Wow Tradition, or From the Ozarks or From Central Tennessee" the secrets get lumped into "Appalachian Folk Magic" and people discoursing appropriation tend to suggest by implication that "Appalachian Folk Magic" is thus a distinct "open" tradition, and that every named tradition (it refers to) is "closed".
That's really a dangerous and knee-jerk skeered sort of oversimplification. Most are "closed" in the sense of being isolated and handled with a sense of reverence and secrecy, but when an appalachian person teaches you to whisper the fire from a burn, it's understood that you will carry it on.
"Appalachian Folk Magic" is not a tradition. It's a generalization for data from some tradition without metadata referring to which. In an angry sense, it's bastardization. In an acedemic sense, it's a loose identification that might refer to many traditions and which one exactly depends on the metadata.
If someone teaches you something, it matters more that you remember the familial origin for it. I. E. "My germanic/scots-irish grandmother from Eastern Tennesee" or etc.
This information can make it a lot easier to determine the actual original tradition the working belongs to, by comparison of locale, approximate era, and rationale of the working. I.E. Uncle Billy who walked to the crossroads to see the man in black is going to have different conceptions of what he's doing than Aunty Jen who was a devout Christian healer with The Gifted Knowing, and It's a weee bit disrespectful to call Aunt Jens charms "witchcraft" when Jen herself, rest her soul, would never ever call it that, you feel me?
Understanding the relation between the worker and the work is key to figuring out which strand of people originated it, but that's never really the point of sharing it in appalachia, because we'll probably tell you where it came from to the best of our knowledge. The idea of cultural appropriation really isn't a thing we think about because usually, we're sharing stories about peoples loved ones. About what it was they did and where it came from and how they understood it. Disseminating that information wholly and completely is almost in itself an act of ancestral worship for us, an act of committed remembrance for our dead.
That information is usually given under the understanding that it will be remembered and not torn up go in someone elses arsenal under another name. That would be appropriation. And a dick move.
If I gave you my dead grandfathers wrist watch, you would remember it was his when you wore it. You should have the same kind of reverence in your head for spooky secrets. Cuz they are way more valuable than wristwatches and most of us take our ancestors and their workings very seriously.
If an appalachian person teaches you something, it's either because we love you, or we loved Aunty Jen and Uncle Billy, or you have a problem we know how to solve.
Moreover, if you had to blackjack someone against the head with Uncle Billy's wristwatch - you'd be grateful to Uncle Billy for it, wouldn't you?
