The Cracks Are How the Light Gets In: On Messing Up

So last week I returned from my very first Reclaiming Witchcamp. It felt strange to go from a leadership role in my local community to a “baby priestess” mindset among legendary elders and teachers. I get a lot of social anxiety and all week I felt very small and shy. Nevertheless, I signed up to help out with rituals, and when the organizers of one of the rituals needed someone to cast the circle, I volunteered.

A funny thing kept happening to me at camp. Whether it was because we were surrounded by redwoods and couldn’t see the horizons or because the land spirits were messing with me, my internal compass was reversed all week long. Every night, when the circle was cast, the priestess’s voice would come from the opposite side of the ritual area that I was expecting and I’d have to consciously reorient myself. Whenever I looked at the sky, I had to work to figure out why the moon seemed to be rising in the west. It was the strangest thing! I once knew a person who couldn’t tell right from left–it was a neurological thing–and for the first time I really understood how she felt. I could not, for the life of me, get my directions straight.

The ritual I cast for was the healing ritual on Wednesday afternoon, during which campers could offer each other Reiki and tarot readings and the like. I stood ready in the north. After two other priestesses had led a grounding and an aura cleanse, I raised my wand and felt my priestess instincts take over. Calm and confident. Joyful in my presence within the circle.

I greeted the north quarter, drew the pentacle, and ran to the east. One of the teachers made eye contact with me, and although there was nothing in particular in his facial expression, something about it set off an alarm bell. I was halfway through greeting East when it hit me. My compass had gotten reversed again. I’d started in the South. I was greeting the directions in the wrong places.

Horror drenched me like an ice bath. Almost the entire camp was at this ritual. In the time it took me to finish greeting East–actually West–I did one of those split-second damage control calculations. I could stop casting and start over again. I could correct myself and greet the directions in their proper quarters and just do two of them twice. I could burst into tears and run out of the circle and get in my car and be home by the next morning. Or I could just finish.

So I finished. I kept my energy consistent, my voice strong. I didn’t give any indication that I realized what I’d done. I ran to “South” (North) and greeted it. I ran to “West” (East) and greeted it. I greeted All Above and All Below. Then I shrank back into the circle and prayed for the earth to swallow me up.

The rest of the ritual went fine. I gave tarot readings and people seemed satisfied. When it came time for me to pull in the circle, I had everyone do it together. The moment the ritual was over, I went to my friends and blurted out how mortified I was.

“Wait–what did you do?” one asked, confused. “Oh, really? I would have never known if you hadn’t told me.”

Another laughed and rolled her eyes. “Literally every single person has done that,” she said. “Seriously, it’s no big deal.”

Whether or not they were telling the truth, this is why I love Reclaiming. As my teacher in LA would say, we take our work seriously–but we hold it lightly.

There was one person who was eager to find me afterwards and tell me in detail that I’d screwed up (tellingly, this person referred to themselves as an “elder” the first time I met them) but other than that, no one said anything. In fact, one person reminded me of a paraphrased Leonard Cohen line that was floating around camp: “Cracks are where the light gets in.”

If everything always goes smoothly and without any hiccups, then when do we get to learn and grow? When do we get to make the mistakes that reveal deep truths? Do we really want spiritual traditions that are either so vague or so dogmatic that no one can ever mess up?

* * *

It was hard to go back to Internet culture after a week of working magic off the grid, but go back I did–just in time to see Jason Mankey and John Halstead share some thoughts on the Morrigan. You’d better get out the guillotine, because I liked both of their posts. Jason’s challenges us to deeply examine our relationship with deity (as someone who “worshipped” the Hindu pantheon back in college because they were cool, I can say from experience that even the deepest, most powerful gods can be fads to some practitioners) and John’s posed some interesting questions about the nature of the Morrigan–questions similar to ones that I’ve mulled over myself. In the interest of full disclosure, by the way, I’m both a Morrigan devotee and a Jew who lost entire strains of my family in the Holocaust, and the idea that the Morrigan can fuel nationalism and terrible acts doesn’t bother me. If nondualist monotheists can wrap their heads around the concept of a god who encompasses both good and horrifying aspects of the universe, then surely we Pagans can handle it, too.

I’ll be honest–I’m starting to find most conversations about the Morrigan to be pretty soul-crushing, and the backlash against these two posts was no exception. I myself don’t write about her as much as I’d like because people get so fucking pissed off. “You’re insulting her!” “You’re disgracing yourself!” “Blasphemer!” “Heretic!” Cripes, it’s exhausting. If I wanted this sort of treatment I would join the Orthodox shul down the street.

Here’s something I wonder: why is it that Kali devotees have a reputation for being preternaturally gentle and kind, while Morrigan devotees seem to relish belittling, name-calling, and other forms of violent speech? Yes, I know, they’re not identical goddesses, but I think the question is worth asking.

The cracks are where the light gets in. What if, when we think that someone’s insulted a deity we love, it’s not the deity who feels insulted but rather us? What if the deity doesn’t care? What if the deity engineered the whole thing in the first place? What if that feeling of insult, of being deeply wronged, is an opportunity for us to explore and understand the parts of ourselves that we don’t like to think about?

When I think about what first drew me to the Morrigan, it wasn’t epics written by Christians or the mystique of Celtic royalty or a desire to emulate my distant ancestors. Rather, a large part of it was the idea of being so fearless in facing your own anger and rage and even bloodlust that you come out the other side. This idea felt intuitive to me, very natural. The attainment of clarity and balance–the initiation of a spiritual warrior–seemed to be a journey that the Morrigan wanted me to take with her. In progressive Judaism, the texts are considered a starting point, written by flawed human beings like us, and not the final word, but I simply don’t see that mindset among the Morrigan crowd. I learned from my Buddhist practice that one needs a community, a sangha, to really do effective spiritual work, and I feel deeply discouraged that, as a nondualist whose priority is cultivating compassion and serving what Bill Plotkin calls the soul of the world, I seem to be utterly alone among Morrigan devotees.

But that can’t be true. Surely there are others like me. They just don’t have the loudest voices or the biggest platforms.

Ugh, I’m going to get skewered for this, aren’t I? I never learn.

* * *

I know I titled this post “On Messing Up,” but let me be clear: I don’t think Jason or John messed up. I don’t think everyone has to agree with them, and I don’t think people aren’t allowed to experience emotional reactions to things they read, but I’m glad they posed the questions they did.

I think that we collectively mess up when we allow dogma to shut down thealogy. Right now I’m reading Spiritual Ecology, a terrific anthology, and I think it’s telling that even though the theme is right up our alley, the book contains almost no Pagan voices. We’ve been around more than long enough for people to notice us. We’ve had plenty of opportunities to stand up and join the conversation.

Maybe these cracks will let some light in. Or maybe I’ll just get a bunch of angry comments on this post and more denouncements elsewhere on the web.

Oy. Blessed be our beautiful broken selves.