About six years ago I was inspired to infiltrate the woo community and slowly get them comfortable with the idea of revolution. I started by following some of the major players from Hay House publishing, taking notes about what I liked and what I didn’t like, trying to sort the bullshit from the tautologies. I read the Louise Hay classics, listened to a bunch of Esther Hicks/Abraham Hicks. I dabbled in Doreen Virtue, Wayne Dyer, A Course on Miracles. I read Deepak Chopra’s Americanization of Ayurveda. I made my own kefir and cultured vegetables to balance out the gut flora some white ladies were convinced was at the root of the structural oppression I regularly face. I even still have a copy of Gut and Psychology Syndrome laying around somewhere. I also found a couple of neato alien cults that had some groovy ideas about ancient Earth and these dolphin realms. Most of them were ascension cults, some more political and conspiracy-driven than others. The whole project was like the Illuminatus trilogy had fan fiction and it’s author’s just didn’t know about the Illuminatus trilogy. But, the Law of Attraction was the bugger whose world I who called out for my neon redness. She was the one.

I’ve studied psychology and the philosophy of psychiatry and mental disorder in my undergraduate and Masters degrees. These days, I study philosophy of science, learning about the ways in which Western philosophers have used their culturally subjective ideas about science as weapons against our peoples. One of the ways they’ve done that is by claiming certain kinds of knowledge weren’t real science. Inspired by the vital social transformations brought on by the resistance of the oppressed, Western Feminist philosophers helped to protect some space within Western philosophy of science. They were able to articulate to mainstream Western philosophers of science that other ways of knowing can be and ought to be valued.

I consider myself a decolonial analytic philosopher by training now. And I’m hoping I’ll be able to wash most of that off in the process of more deeply reconnecting to my Anishinaabek roles and knowledges. But, I spent the first 18 years of my life thoroughly indoctrinated in Catholicism. I even went to World Youth Day and everything. Can you imagine? But, there was also this indoctrination in those intense Pentecostal services I was also made to attend. I believe I’ve been officially “saved” three times, by Protestant count; four times altogether if you consider I was Catho-baptized first when I was two weeks old (by my uncle the priest, no less). The heathens, as my Anishinaabek family was commonly referred, were likely not invited. And then there was that Jesus camp outside of Allegany. Did I go three times or two? I can never remember. I guess you could say that I know the Christians pretty well. And that’s why I hail Satan every now and then. Gotta balance out that Jesus junk somehow. Learning various ways of hailing Satan led me to learn more about Theosophy, Kabbalah, Hermeticism, Gnosticism and other bits of esoteric thought.

All that apprenticing became the foundation of my infiltration into the woo community. I had liberated myself from the chains of my upbringing. I was tired and chipped by the disillusionment that comes with liberation. I had a lot to heal from, so I didn’t want to add more junk on my plate. There are times when I have room for ruminating. And there are times when I don’t. I had decided that I was going to do something good with all the – leftover rotting whathaveyous mucking up the works of my wholistic me-ing – (which I’ll now refer to as “rotten energy” or “rot” if I have to invoke that concept again, k? neolibs stole “trauma” from the traumatized, and i’m tired. you get it. it’s fine). That’s when I use my rot like a rascal and I move into my creatrixter role. You like her the most, I’ll bet. Or, at least I do. I use my rascally trixter art to liberate scared and sad sweethearts whose stories at the time are in a time of immaculate tension. It’s kinda lewd and gross like the foam at the bottom of the curved falls where I come from. It makes me a bit bashful to tell you about it. Maybe I’ll save that story for later. I had my impressions going in to the project. I had recognized the parts of the woo messaging that weren’t entirely false, from their specific woo group delusions, and the parts of the messaging that were mostly Christian baggage. I was prepared for deeeeeeeeep cultural appropriation and the overemphasis on individualistic and neoliberal values that were essential to pull off the canon understandings of “The Law of Attraction.”

The Law of Attraction is a masterpiece of coloniality. It’s reliance on cultural appropriation makes it seem familiar. They punk from everyone. But they sometimes present it as the Source, other times as just a law of nature – whatever happens to persuade more in the moment or on that particular space on the page. Its friendly-faced hype-people function as authority figures who insist that you are the only one in control of what happens to you. The dissonance between our charitable assumption that they are telling what they believe to be the truth, and our experience with reality can make us believe we’re just not smart enough to get it. Some of them claim that the Universe wants you to have that one specific indulgence you want to have, you just don’t believe yourself worthy of that one specific indulgence. Others claim that the Universe is indifferent, and that this is just how the law works (like unto like, they rip). Eventually the circular reasoning about you being anything you want to be, and you being the decider in your life and all that and you can get convinces you do that you get it after all. You’re just not disciplined enough in pivoting towards positive to recognize how the good has already manifested in your life. Don’t you see? You are not enough on your own, but you are the only one in control of your life. The reason bad things happen to you is because you believe in bad things happening to you. Bad things don’t happen to you. You attract bad things because you’re in a bad mood. You’re in a bad mood because you expose yourself to bad things. Those bad things are attracted to you. They don’t happen. They are attracted. You brought this on yourself, young lady. That’s how abusers usually put it to others. Mine got into the Law of Attraction just as I was liberating myself from those conditions.

Oh, it’s delicious. What a con. Such good conning. I mean, minimally it’s all gaslighting and emotional manipulation, some of it insisting on one particular spiritual truth. If you’re not positive enough, you’re told to change your diet and take supplements, purchase unethically mined crystals for their healing properties, “sage” your environment. It’s your choice not to, but, the Law of Attraction doesn’t work if you’re resistant. No. Eventually, you learn to go with the flow. And the flow is a coloniality cashgrab.

Oh, but Kwe, no, they say. It’s not all about positive. It’s all about vibes. You feel rich then you are rich and then you act rich and then rich things are attracted to you. Or, you feel poor then you are poor and then you act poor and then poor things are attracted to you. Or is it that you realize you were in Kansas all along, and that poorness you thought was poor was actually richness? Or else, you’re not meditating enough on how you benefit from being poor. You should take more time to meditate. You meditate twice a day? Oh. Well, you need more green juices. The green juices will make you realize that you are attracting this poverty into your life. Think of the extra time you spend on the toilet as “self-care.” You need more self-care. Self-care is the most important kind of care. Because it is all about you after all. Embrace your selfishness, or else you don’t deserve to be rich.

There are some Law of Attraction folx who are more proselytising with it than others. It is such an individualistic and neoliberal propaganda that its main hype-people can get away with telling you ought to surround yourself with people who already abide by the Law, to be prepared to say goodbye to folx who won’t get your new vibe, and to avoid sharing your newfound belief system. Abraham Hicks, for instance, regularly suggests that their audience NOT insist to your family and friends that they’re just collecting the manifestations that emerged from their vortex using the Law of Attraction. It does need to have some distinctions from traditional Christian stuff and suchery, or else, it won’t be as effective at scooping up folx who had already been burned by Christian bullshittery. But, this whole ship is coloniality as heck.

There are hype-people for the Law of Attraction, not because of a motivation to convert others to this way of thinking, but because the Law of Attraction programs are essentially culty start-up guides to get into the Law of Attraction business. I’ll get into that another time. But, the messaging consistently aligned with whiteness and capitalism. Some more than others – but no Law of Attraction messaging I had encountered didn’t uphold and (re)assert whiteness and neoliberal capitalism.

It’s pretty much standard critique at this point, the Law of Attraction is a bunch of victim-blaming, oppressive system justifying bullshit. But, why then does it attract so many good give-a-heck oppressed folx into its clutches?

I think one reason is because it hurts to admit how much it hurts to be colonized. It hurts. And it’s hard work. It’s tiring to admit how much it hurts. It entails all the grief and the trauma. Somehow, we have to endure in the system that keeps us oppressed. Some of us are forced to pretend to be stronger than others. Some of us will do whatever it takes to maintain an image that they can endure and even thrive in systems built to keep us oppressed. Some of us have really good reasons to maintain that image. Admitting to the reality can cost us the stability we need to provide what is required given the roles we occupy and how they are and are not valued under coloniality.

The onus is really on us as a community to provide the resources needed to help support stability so that our roles can be as flexible as our individual capacities and requirements at any given time. Our communities are oppressed, our resources are stolen from us, we have all these imposed roles that seem really strict and needing to be performed more or less perfectly depending on the oppressions that muck up the works of our lives. We do what we can, but we’re stopped from doing what we need to do to support one another. So, some of us get sucked into Western analytic philosophy departments, some of us get sucked into the Law of Attraction. It’s the same abusive colonizer, just with different titles. But, the Law of Attraction folx have been even slower to uptake insights from Feminism than us slow-pokes in Western analytic philosophy. So, ya know. I get it.

Plus, believing that the reason why some of us suffer while others thrive has to do with attitude – what’s in our vortex, our predominant vibes, what we allow into our lives etc., is easier than engaging in a self-critical examination of how we are complicit in the systems of domination that keep us oppressed. But endorsing the Law of Attraction isn’t likely going to result in the (re)search and creation of living real options out of this complicity. Rather, endorsing the Law of Attraction is a lot like endorsing this complicity in the systems of domination that keep us oppressed.

How often have we been shamed by well-intentioned neechies for sharing testimony about how we’ve been harmed by systems of oppression in our personal lives? How often are we lectured about how we play with the cards we were dealt dealt and needing to define ourselves out of our pasts and all that crap? Did those lectures result in living options that helped liberate us from these systems of oppression? Or did they just make us more shy about speaking out against how we’ve been harmed?

I’ve been liberated, instead, by our kin who listen to my testimony about how I’ve been harmed by systems of oppression in my personal life, who see me in my power as I describe feelings of powerlessness, who hold my hand and squeeze it when it gets too hard to talk about all the loss without crying, who admit when they haven’t got a clue what that must be like, and that they’re fighting for me too, and that we’re both worth the fight, and that we have to keep going to make it better for the babies. I’m on the leading edge when I remember the Elders and Knowledge Keepers who remind me of our pitifullness as beings lowered onto the earth. We know nothing. Nothing. The animals and plant nations know it all. And they didn’t attract any of this. What makes us humans so special? That’s what I’d like to know about the Law of Attraction, if it wants to pretend to be so not-colonial. There are certainly more more-than-human kin than us. And they certainly have been suffering for a long time this white brightness of coloniality.

There will be more to say about all this infiltration. Maybe this is kind of just another intro to something longer. Or maybe this is just a long way of saying that I am familiar with the con that is the Law of Attraction. Maybe you’ve manifested this experience into your vortex. Maybe you’re the one who invited me to infiltrate so I can show you the trix of my trade. The victim you see might just be how I shift my shape to get into your head and remind you that we’re not in as much control as we think, we’re just really really really really really good justification machines who want to keep what we want to keep.

I only rant like this when I really like you. Folx have been waiting for me to start my Law of Attraction spread for a long time. Whatever works about it for you works for you, but it’s not because of the Law of Attraction, that’s all I’m saying. Whatever works for you was probably stolen from your own culture and repackaged as part of the woo age.

Okay. Now, go on and try to sell me on it. Just don’t pretend I’m new.