Recently I was told by a simple-minded being, young girl weabo-yet-european neopagan type, that using vedic terms to describe concepts is cultural appropriation and wrong. I merely used one for expediency as well as it being fairly known academically: Kali Yuga.

While the whole thing is inconsequential, it does motivate me to make a point. Theology being the source of all human knowledge, cannot be said to somehow belong to a specific group of mortals in any way. Truth is the same at the root for every person, and every thing that exists in reality. Culture is the specific trappings that the execution of said truth take when confronted with circumstance and context, and while it has a value as such, in no way can it be said that culture is its own macrocosm that somehow emanates purely from the lives and minds of people.

Schuon and Guénon among others agree that the forms of traditional religion that have existed in the world are simply different representations of the same immanent truth. Keeping that in mind there is no structural problem with correlating concepts across systems provided that the substance behind each concept is well understood in order to make an argument.
For a good while I was quite interested in Zoroastrian theology, both Mazdean as well as the defunct Zurvanite school that Zaehner sought to study, and as a result of that I now use concepts from the old Iranian religion into my own thoughts. Zoroaster himself being the first known anti-tribalist prophet should if anything prove that one does not have to belong to the ethnocultural group he did in order to see the merit of the system he transmitted, and use it to refine understanding.


Today it's easy for people to cling to their ancestral religions not on account of actually caring for the content of them, but just on a pure communitarian basis, as a mark of belonging rather than belief. But I'm sorry to say, that's quite the inferior approach to the understanding of tradition. Just as being born Serbian does not entail dogmatically enforcing Eastern Orthodox theology even if you don't understand it, interest in Eastern Orthodoxy is not a decision that should be constrained on the basis of having been born an ethnicity familiarly attached to it. An unintended offshoot of modernity is that people who oppose that same modernity across the globe, can also have an easier time speaking to one another and lending a hand in strengthening mental and spiritual outlooks on the world.


Choosing to say Saoshyant, Messiah or Mahdi to refer to the same thing is just the result of historic cultural preference, in no way does it mean that said piece of revelation belongs to the group of Zoroastrians/Christians/Muslims.
Politics are already plagued with petty identitarianism where people judge the content of politics on account of who says it rather than what is said, let's try to not pollute theology and philosophy as well.

Thanks.