Mind and Magic #7 - Seasons of Drought
Just about everybody who is striving toward a goal gets stuck sometimes. Marathon runners call it "hitting the wall." Writers and artists call it "creative block." Cabalists call it "the abyss," the ultimately unbridgeable gap between the supernal realms and the manifest world. Pagans doing the inner work of spiritual and magical self-development experience similar obstacles. It's not pleasant, but it's normal. Perhaps we can even take a kind of bleak comfort in the fact that so many different names exist for the same dreary experience: it's not just some cultural artifact, but a real part of the growth process.
If Sacred Inspiration is sweet, nourishing "juice," these stuck points are the seasons of drought. If we are walking a Path, these are the apparent roadblocks. They seem sudden, arbitrary, almost cruel, and most certainly neither our fault nor in any way our doing. We were working hard at our practice, and seemed to be making good progress, just yesterday. Where did we go wrong?
During dry spells, meditation is just boring. Ritual devolves into second-rate performance art. Nothing seems to be moving or growing inside. The blessed sense of Presence is suddenly and inexplicably absent, leaving us bereft, hurt, frightened - and perhaps angry.
Priestess and poet Angela Huston describes it this way: "How deep is the insanity? How far down does it go? Have I even touched bottom yet? Am I dead or just laboring at it? And why does the wind hiss? There is no charity for the waking dead. There is only sorrow as the darkness bleeds through the cracks in my soul. This sea of sorrow has no bottom, it's an empty pit in which dead eyes glaze fast in the gathering gloom, as fear unlike any other holds tight its icy grip. Am I stuck here? Am I to be condemned here? Why? My heart sought only love and was delivered such poison. A sea of regret floods the rivers of my soul, and its silence is profound. Did you witness the death of my dreams? They died with the glint in my eyes. Lost forever...lost forever. I miss you, my Goddess. Ohhhh such sorrow at love's bitter end."1
Christianity is the predominant theological tradition in our culture, supplying most of our default vocabulary for spiritual experience. Christian mystics speak of the "dark night of the soul," the period when Deity seems to withdraw or hide. Here's a typical statement: "By facing the darkness, we confront that empty place inside each of us. That place marks the end or limit of all the finite things in creation, including the limit of ourself. Our strivings after meaning and purpose - indeed, after God - have brought us to the end of ourselves and our own ability to encompass God. As we stand at the edge of these limits, we face nothing, or so it seems. … In that empty place, we can at last know that which transcends ourself. … We come to God alone."2
This description of the dark night is firmly based on the Abrahamic theology of transcendence, which perceives the Creator as "wholly other" than the manifest world. In this view, all people can do is humbly wait for God's gracious - but entirely arbitrary - self-revelation. The dark night forces aspiring mystics to realize the futility of all human efforts to establish Sacred Contact. When the personal will - the very sense of self - is "broken open," when we accept our limitations, then God may choose to enter that person's heart.
Our Pagan understanding of the relationship between people and Gods is very, very different. "What ultimately distinguishes Paganism from Christianity is not the number of its gods but the nature of its deity. Whereas the Christian God is transcendent, the Pagan godhead is immanent. Spirituality for the Pagan is corporeal or at least includes the physical. The Pagan God is not "wholly other" as is the Christian God. ... In a profound sense, Pagan Gods are human. Their superhuman qualities, whatever they may be or symbolize, are secondary to their essential human nature. It is through this anthropomorphic understanding of the godhead that Paganism affirms its recognition of the fundamental affinity between humanity and its gods. The human being and the divine are intimately related to the extent of sharing a mutually kindred nature."3
This difference in core theology, if we take it seriously, demands a very different interpretation of what spiritual dry spells mean for us. In the theology of immanence, Deity permeates and empowers the world of form. If there is no essential separation, then Deity cannot withdraw - not to humble us with some harsh lesson about the futility of human effort, and not for any other reason either.
Here's a logical, if radical, counter-explanation: Deity does not withdraw. We ourselves tone down, or even temporarily close, our conscious awareness of the Immanent Presence. We stop a while along the Path, not because of any external roadblock, but because our own Inner Wisdom (perhaps with Sacred Guidance) knows, even when rational consciousness does not, that we are not ready to continue. We've feasted; now we need to digest.
The problem is that this choice to rest is often made deep within, out of the purview of rational consciousness. So it can seem to be externally imposed, as though the Gods have deserted us. And that can lead to panic and despair, the horrible fear that the Gods have gone forever, that all our previous efforts and apparent successes were nothing but wish-fulfillment and self-delusion. In this state of panic, we might give up and flee from the Path, thus making all our own fears real. Seasons of spiritual drought really are natural tests of our perseverance, especially for inexperienced travelers.
Abrahamic traditions, such as Christianity, perceive the basic model of life to be a one-way path. Individuals move once from birth to death, and go on to an eternal afterlife of bliss or torment. The universe moves once from creation to apocalypse.
Our Pagan model is very different: the great pulse of light and dark that manifests in many cycles - the rhythms of day and night, waxing and waning moon, the Wheel of the Year, and even reincarnation. All of these teach us that spiritual tides will also turn, that movement must alternate with stillness on the spiritual Path. They urge patience.
In winter, the good farmer tends to basic chores and mends tools in preparation for the spring that is sure to come. Similarly, for Pagan spiritual seekers, this is the time to attend to the secular aspects of life, to make sure that further spiritual progress will rest on a solid and healthy base in the World of Form. Here are some suggestions: Attend to your physical health. If you're feeling ill or run-down, have a check up. In any case, get plenty of rest and play, eat healthily, exercise, etc. Catch up with other responsibilities at home, school, or work. Whatever it is, take whatever time you need to eliminate any stressors in your secular life. Finish tasks, pay bills, keep promises. Resolve any issues or grievances between you and those around you. Nurture your significant relationships. If your dry spell persists for more than a month, or if it seems to be interfering with your everyday life (work or school, sleep cycles, home responsibilities or interpersonal relationships), have yourself evaluated for clinical depression. Or there may really be an obstacle: an old hurt or unresolved issue from the past, even from early childhood. The things we would rather not know about ourselves can be personified as monsters or demons. Traditional occultists call them the guardians at the gateway. Contemporary therapists call them the shadow.4 They obstruct our entrance to the inner realms and to the Otherworld. Working through this material can be difficult and painful, and may even require the assistance of a therapist. We must do something much more daunting than facing them down: we must make peace with them.
It's very important, in the dry spells, to keep up your basic practice, to keep your spiritual muscles limber, so you can resume your journey more easily when you are ready.
One last thought: Paganism does not draw hard lines between the worlds of Spirit and Form, nor between the personal aspects of Spirit and Body. So I'd like to return to the metaphor of the marathon runner hitting the wall, because I think this phenomenon has something important to teach us.
Our bodies have two ways of storing energy. Short term storage, from what we've eaten in the past few days, takes the form of glycogen, stored within the muscles. Long term storage takes the form of fat. When a runner hits the wall, they have depleted all available glycogen, so the body switches to consuming fat as fuel. For that moment, when the easily available fuel is gone, the runner feels exhausted. It's a natural test of perseverance. Those who keep on keeping on break through into resources that are older, deeper, and far richer.
Judy Harrow
23 Reynolds Avenue
Harrison, NJ 07029
1 Personal electronic correspondence 11/4/03
2 Cronk, Sandra Dark Night Journey (Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill Publications, 1991) pp. 45-46.
3 York, Michael Pagan Theology (NY: New York University Press, 2003) p. 13.
4 See "Mind and Magic #4 - the shadow" in PanGaia #42 (Aug-Oct, 2005)
Bibliography
Cronk, Sandra Dark Night Journey: Inward Re-patterning Toward a Life Centered in God    Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill Publications, 1991
York, Michael Pagan Theology: Paganism as a World Religion    NY: New York University Press, 2003
Zuess, Jonathan The Wisdom of Depression    NY: Harmony Books, 1998.
Biography
Judy Harrow is High Priestess of Proteus Coven and Chair of the Pastoral Counseling program at Cherry Hill Seminary. She is also President of the New Jersey Association for Spiritual, Ethical, and Religious Values in Counseling. Judy has written two books, Wicca Covens (Citadel, 1999) and Spiritual Mentoring (ECW, 2002) and edited and contributed to the anthology Devoted to You (Citadel, 2003). She also coordinated the 50th Anniversary reissue of Witchcraft Today by Gerald Gardner (Citadel, 2004). Judy welcomes any reader feedback and especially your suggestions for future column topics.
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