Edit 1:

I think there's some confusion - I'm not claiming that spirituality is directly controlled by ethnic background. However, I do think that for some people, ancestry can play a role. For example, the vast majority of indigenous religions in North America revolve around one's ancestors. As for Judaism, it's obvious that ancestry plays a role, considering that it's repeatedly referred to in Jewish religious texts and that the biblical Israelites are defined as a group of ethnically related people.

I'm specifically interested in how this affects one's practice of Jewish mystical traditions, especially within a Kabbalistic framework, for those of us with greater affinity for the demonic subset of spirits.

Original post:

For some context, I'm a queer witch who has been intermittently working with demonic spirits throughout my life, in the sense of invocation and petitioning. I've always felt a strong pull towards spirits traditionally classified as demons. To me, demons are more grounded in the tangible material world and have more nuanced moral inclinations, which are characteristics that I have a strong affinity towards.

Up until recently, I never knew much about my ethnic background. I grew up Catholic-ish (non-practicing Catholic mom, atheist dad) and I did attend a Catholic high school as a teenager. As a queer person, I developed a strong distaste for Catholicism and for YHVH, the Abrahamic god. Any god who is narcissistic enough to demand eternal adoration while giving nothing in return, and who condones the killing of queer people just for being queer, is not worthy of any amount of respect in my eyes.

This is going to sound strange, but despite this fact, I always had a fair bit of respect for the Jewish community. I know their God is technically the same entity as the Christian god, according to most academics, although admittedly some who study gnosticism have disputed this equivalence. That being said, I have a lot of respect for Jewish culture and Jewish mystical traditions, although up until now, I've avoided using those traditions myself because of concerns about potential cultural appropriation.

And now, for the interesting part. I've recently done whole genome sequencing (30x deep sequencing by Nebula Genomics) and mapped my ancestry based on my genes. Despite growing up thinking that I'm mostly British, it's more complicated, and I have a fair bit of Jewishness in me.

I'm 4.5% Israeli, 7.1% North Caucasian (southern Russia, i.e. Dagestan, Ossetia, & Chechnya), 4.8% Far Eastern European (Moscow area), 5.3% Eastern Central European (mostly Ukraine), and then a bunch of other European stuff on top of that. After digging into my patrilineal line, it appears that I'm partly descended from a village of Ashkenazi Jews in what is now Ukraine, who themselves migrated from Israel up through Russia and over to eastern Europe. It therefore seems likely that I'm a total of 21.7% Jewish Eastern European.

But wait, there's more! According to my Y-chromosomal patrilineal ancestry, I'm descended from a group of Jews belonging to the Cohanim oral tradition, sometimes spelled kohanim, or kohen in the singular. This group is sometimes called the Aaronites because according to Jewish mysticism, we ultimately descended from Aaron, brother of Moses. Kohen is a Hebrew word translating roughly to priest, and prior to the takeover of Rabbinic Judaism, this was a form of inherited Jewish priesthood.

For reference, since my link to Jewish ancestry is primarily patrilineal, I am only considered a Jew according to Reform Judaism. For more traditional rabbinic Judaism, like Orthodox or Conservative versions, they follow the halakhical matrilineal tradition, so they would not consider me as a Jew. For more ancient traditions before rabbinic Judaism took over, I'm not sure what the rules were, and I'm still researching that area.

So to sum it up, I'm apparently partly a Jewish hereditary priest who, ironically enough, works with Goetic demons. I guess this is why I've had a continuing fascination with Kabbalah.

Part of me feels that this significantly affects my spiritual path and that there must be some meaning and usefulness in these revelations. Do any of you have insights you can share, especially those of you with Jewish roots, and/or those of you who are familiar with Jewish mysticism or Kabbalah?