So let’s say, you are not of Native American blood, but you put on a war bonnet because it looks cool while you’re at your shitty music festival. Or let’s say you want to fit in with the cool kids, so you go from the chick from Clueless to the girls from Friday. When you use the cultural or religious traditions of a minority culture for your personal, popularity or monetary gain, you’re appropriating it.

Now the line between appreciation and appropriation is pretty thin. What some people call appropriation others often see as the appreciation and celebration of ideas and customs. The line is thin and sometimes not always clear.

How does that play into Sephora’s Starter Witch Kit and why were all those witches mad?

The insult came from Sephora and Pinrose so blatantly taking something from Witch culture and mass marketing it. They took things that are quite often part of the being a Witch, threw some pretty shiny colors on it and had the intent to make money off of it. They chose not to cater to the people who believed in those parts of being a Witch. By calling it a “Starter Kit” the audience they targeted was one that did not and had not ever identified as witches.

Let’s take a second to break that down. There is said to be one million Pagans in America. We all know that not all Pagans are Witches and not all Witches are Pagan. So it would be safe to estimate the number of Witches in the United States is much less than one million. In contrast, the number of Christians in America is nearly 240 million. Some of those Christians might be Witches, but I’m willing to bet my left ovary most of them are not. So according to the definition of cultural appropriation (especially the “the adoption of elements of a minority culture by members of the dominant culture” part) the actions of Sephora were clear cultural appropriation.

But wait, I hear you yelling from the back, who are you to say who can and cannot use and have access to Witchcraft! Why are you gatekeeping?

For those not up with all the current Tumblr friendly lingo, gatekeeping, according to the definition that Google spat out, is “ the activity of controlling, and usually limiting, general access to something.”

After the initial complaints about the Starter Witch Kit started popping up, other groups of people online, some witch and some not, started yelling back about gatekeeping. They used the argument that witchcraft was not a religion but instead a practice. And you can not claim ownership over a practice. Everyone should be free to have personal experiences with the practice.