During the course, I felt some discomfort with some aspects of Jason Miller’s teaching style. In this post, I hope to explore and share those concerns.
Observations:
One thing that consistently bothered me throughout the course was Jason’s tone when responding to student questions. He often sounded condescending or dismissive, usually reading questions hastily and sometimes making unwarranted assumptions about the questioner’s motivation. No one else complained, so I dismissed my concerns.
My lukewarm impression of Jason persisted until the final Q&A, when his response to a question of mine brought my concerns into focus. He didn’t address my question and he was annoyed that I’d asked it. Although I’d heard him demean students before, it was only then, after he’d directed his disdain towards me, that I understood how wrong it was. After thinking about his response and the assumptions behind my question, I wrote to him the same day, asking if there had been a misunderstanding. He never responded.
The Question That Highlighted the Issue:
My question revolved around the topic of working with vengeful beings, which had been covered in Lesson 9, in which Jason instructed us to connect with these entities by channeling feelings of anger and vengeance. This approach conflicted with my personal beliefs and past experiences. First, it clashed with my nightly prayer which emphasizes forgiveness. In that prayer, I forgive anyone who has wronged me in any way and ask that “no one incur punishment because of me.” Secondly, I have experienced how debilitating it is to be caught up in feelings of anger. Years ago, after being badly mistreated, I was filled with anger. My rage was so overwhelming, that I actually wanted to forgive and forget, but could not. It was years before I was free of that anger. So, I believe that working myself up into a rage would be debilitating.
In the Q&A after Lesson 9, I had asked Jason if there was an alternative way to interact with the vengeful beings, one that wouldn’t require kindling anger in my heart. He answered that one could only meet them by working with them, but suggested I could choose a more global issue for them to address or that I simply skip working with them.
Since, as I understood the lesson, working with vengeful beings in any way would have required me to kindle feelings of rage and vengeance, I chose to not work with them.
Refusal to Address My Concerns:
When we reached the final lesson in August, I inquired again about working with vengeful beings, hoping for an answer that addressed both my reluctance to kindle anger in my heart and also my desire to engage with all of the course material. Instead of addressing my concern, Jason responded with anger, changed the subject to begin a discourse on the concept of power, and finally asserted that my morals were “broken” and “not equipped to deal with the realities of life.” His response was entirely unwarranted and off-topic.
He had not discussed power in connection with vengeful beings prior to this, and although I agreed with the points he made about the use of power to combat injustice, those points did not negate the validity of my question, which he continued to ignore. I believe that focusing on one’s own resentments and angers would be dis-empowering.
Furthermore, Jason asserted that I must not be able to be in the presence of a soldier or an honorable policeman! That was hurtful and offensive to me, as I both admire and feel reassured by the presence of our soldiers and police officers.
A Classmate’s Insight:
One of my classmates explained what she thought Jason probably meant. She has covered nicely for Jason, but I think she should give herself more credit. Following is what I learned from Ori-Ya:
She explained that, in response to my first question, Jason may have been distinguishing between getting to know vengeful beings and reasoning with them. You can summon them and feel them and watch your emotional reaction to them. However, you can’t talk to them and reason with them because they are primal beings that trigger the primal part of your brain. You can trigger that mechanism in your brain to see what anxiety feels like, but in order to understand what you’re anxious about, you need a different part of your brain. The vengeful beings trigger that primal part of your brain so they’re not introspective, but you can get a sense of what they are.
Her explanation was helpful, but it did not excuse either Jason’s failure to clarify his teaching or his offensive response to my question.
An Alternative Perspective:
Ori-Ya also shared an intriguing ideas from Tibetan Buddhism. One cannot be fully compassionate without also feeling anger, and one cannot refuse to deal with violence, because life is violent. While Jason’s views may align with Ori-Ya's perspective, it does not justify his offensive words or lack of response to my request for clarification.
Ori-Ya feels that Hekatean work with vengeful beings is reminiscent of a Buddhist practice. She explained that there are Buddhist deities full of wrath, extreme anger. Their energy is dangerous and Tibetan Buddhists take work with them very seriously; practitioners may not leave the mandala for ten days for fear of unleashing the immense anger and power of these deities. Ori-Ya suggests that the Hekatean wrathful beings may also have this unmitigated primal wrath, but in Buddhism, these deities direct their anger against our egos. She describes these deities as having “Vajra anger,” the energy of anger without hatred—which is an amazing concept to consider. She says that although Jason did not present them this way, she imagines the Hekatean wrathful beings have the quality of distilled anger without hate.
Ori-Ya agreed that Jason’s words to me were demeaning, but she thinks he might have meant that life is about power dynamics and that we might as well use power to our advantage to do good in the world.
Ori-Ya said it better than Jason did, taught me more, and did not attempt to invalidate my beliefs, or make herself out to be superior to me.
The Search for Clarity:
I wondered if I had misunderstood Jason’s original lesson; perhaps working with the wrathful beings does NOT require that we work ourselves into a rage. My attempts to seek clarification from Jason went unanswered.
His insulting answer and his lack of response to my two messages began to sour my feelings about the course, but I could not allow Jason to spoil Hekate’s magic for me. So I listened to the remainder of the final Q&A, continued my daily mantra recitation, and worked several more rituals with groups of the beings that are part of Hekatean sorcery.
After that, I began to explore other practices, but found I was constrained by knowing only the magic Jason taught, which prohibits bringing unrelated beings or practices into Hekate’s mandala. Since then, I have connected with another aspect of Hekate and I have engaged with the winged ladies of the sea in ways that Jason did not teach.
In conclusion, I found that Jason’s teaching style left something to be desired. His style has both strengths and weaknesses. While he may excel at making complex topics accessible through effective analogies and providing a well structured progression of content, I am concerned about his tone, his handling of student questions, his inability to address differing beliefs, as well as his lack of empathy and clarity. These concerns may impact the overall learning experience for some students. Jason unfortunately seems to lack essential qualities of a good teacher: open-mindedness, patience, comprehension of questions, and an ability to help his students learn.
