If someone... has said, very clearly, "This... is secret, and taught only to initiates who have been trained and sworn secrecy," then... don't put it in your novel.
To this I would add: be sure you know (to the extent that your informants feel it is appropriate for you to know) exactly what "it" is. There are many different ways in which something can be off limits. An entire mythological subject can be secret — or it can be considered sacred such that it's fine for anyone to know about it, but only initiates are allowed to tell about it.
Alternatively, a secret can be a very specific piece of information, such that writing a fictional culture which has a roughly parallel ritual in which the secret content is different would be okay... but it might only be okay if it can't be linked to the real culture except by those who know the real secret. In that case, including a cryptic, parodic echo of the source might be considered an appropriate way to acknowledge a cultural debt that can't be acknowledged openly, or it might be considered adding insult to injury.
What has felt right to me in cases like this (which have come up in my writing, and which I will of course not identify here) is to find multiple members of the source culture whom you mutually trust (and if there aren't any members of that culture whom you mutually trust, why do you know this information in the first place?), ask them, and take their responses seriously.
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-05 08:16 am (UTC)To this I would add: be sure you know (to the extent that your informants feel it is appropriate for you to know) exactly what "it" is. There are many different ways in which something can be off limits. An entire mythological subject can be secret — or it can be considered sacred such that it's fine for anyone to know about it, but only initiates are allowed to tell about it.
Alternatively, a secret can be a very specific piece of information, such that writing a fictional culture which has a roughly parallel ritual in which the secret content is different would be okay... but it might only be okay if it can't be linked to the real culture except by those who know the real secret. In that case, including a cryptic, parodic echo of the source might be considered an appropriate way to acknowledge a cultural debt that can't be acknowledged openly, or it might be considered adding insult to injury.
What has felt right to me in cases like this (which have come up in my writing, and which I will of course not identify here) is to find multiple members of the source culture whom you mutually trust (and if there aren't any members of that culture whom you mutually trust, why do you know this information in the first place?), ask them, and take their responses seriously.