Jessica “Yeshe Rabbit” Matthews, while in the role of High Priestess of CAYA Coven, abused, gaslit, manipulated, and victim blamed me. She used her role to attempt to force unquestioned following of her orders, even when they were in direct violation of CAYA doctrine. To this day, she denies any wrongdoing, and claims she is being wrongly persecuted.
This is not the first time. I am not the only one. I will not enable her pattern by remaining silent, anymore.
(This post is shareable. I have her blocked. I have zero interest in interacting with anyone defending her, or trying to coerce reconciliation.)
My first interaction with Yeshe, then known Rabbit, at the infamous ZBudapest ritual of checking genitalia at the door. I didn’t think much of her, then, or on the next few brief interactions we had. The one thing I do remember is that she always felt...wrong. I couldn’t ever put my finger on why. She smiled. She seemed nice and genuine enough. Yet, something about her always made a part of me want to hiss at her and run away. The only other substantial initial memory I have of her is the one time I visited the Sacred Well. Being in that shop put me on the verge of having a manic episode, passing out, and vomiting, all at once. (This will be relevant, later.)
The early days of CAYA, I wanted nothing to do with them. They didn’t resound with me, and seemed a little too...focused on female power for my taste. It wasn’t until about 2012 that I began to see them as more than just some coven at PCon. As they began doing more public rituals, and more of the people I cared about began to get involved with them, I became more interested in them as an entity.
The premise was awesome; Come As You Are. No discrimination. No judgment. The rituals were incredible experiences. I felt so safe, so accepted, so at peace, and so joyful. I ended up deciding to become a distance aspirant in 2014. Some life happened, and I ended up dropping out of the year. I reapplied for 2015, and along with my two closest friends, entered the year with great excitement for what might be.
Prior to aspirant training, I had participated in several distance rituals with Yeshe and CAYA. Most notably: Kuan Yin, 21 Taras, and Tea and Chanting. I wanted to connect more to hose things, and yet found myself continuously running into resistance. Though she often reference her training in the tradition, I found myself often feeling like we were crossing the appropriation line, and this was not mine to have or do. I also got a new year tarot reading form her, as a perk for financially backing The Wild Hunt. The tarot reading came at the beginning of 2015, and after Yeshe had given me personal guidance and mentorship on trying to save my struggling marriage.
The reading is notable because it was a lot of telling me how I essentially needed to be a better woman and housewife. There was a lot of push to find mentors to help me learn to do these things better, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that Yeshe wanted me to come to her for more mentorship. Just for the record: I’ve reviewed the notes I took, and absolutely everything discussed either didn’t happen, or the polar opposite happened.
Having been part of the initial distance aspirant program, I thought I knew what to expect for my second time through. Good gods, was I wrong. First of all, year two was mostly being run by the (very few) Dedicants from year one. There was an occasional guest appear appearance from Yeshe or other members of CAYA, but for the most part, we were on our own. It felt so different from the first year I had gone through, and I was rapidly frustrated with it. We were working through Covencraft, and sort of comparing it to CAYA’s doctrine. We were told that we were going to be learning more about CAYA, but we didn’t. It hurt, especially as we watched the local aspirants have training sessions and meetings that they positively raved about. We felt abandoned, uncared for, and irrelevant.
I began to dread our monthly meetings. I didn’t want to. Why bother? I kept going because I hoped it would get better, but it didn’t. Privately, I began using the meetings to have private snark sessions with my friends who had joined me on the adventure. The levity helped keep us moving toward, with the intended end goal being that we would help fix shit, once we were dedicants.
And then November happened.
A male clergy member of CAYA attended our meeting, and started injecting his opinion all over the session. We were asked for our feedback on how our aspirant year had been, and made the mistake of being honest. It was awful. I ended up rage quitting as he was shitty and invalidating.
After the meeting, I sent an email to our aspirant CAYA email list and requested a meeting with the aspirants, Yeshe, and CAYA clergy/board members, and no others. The main theme that had come out was that the aspirants didn’t feel safe to honestly communicate with the dedicants and other CAYA members in the conversation. Yeshe told me no, and said it was CAYA policy to not allow accusations without the accused present. I rebutted, because her response indicated she had been given information/a summary by others. We argued over several group emails. The end result was she said that we could either participate in a “forgiveness ritual” or walk. I chose to walk.
I’ve heard about the “forgiveness ritual” in which Yeshe talked shit about me, even though the rule was supposed to be that no one present was to be discussed. My feeling that she had already made a decision on what had happened, and how to handle it, was reinforced by other aspirants telling me that she seemed surprised to hear their version of events. In the end, she pressured everyone to consider the issue resolved. When all was said and done, only one aspirant chose to stay. The rest of us left. It was a drastic reduction from even the first year, where only three or four of the original dozen or so of us stayed.
The only good thing that came out of the whole debacle was that the distance program was indefinitely suspended. Too bad the damage had already been done. I was told that if I wanted any further follow up, I needed to go to Yeshe and apologize, because I was wrong for being confrontational and fiery. I felt SO invalidated that I quit everything, and put distance between me and everyone I knew who was affiliated with CAYA. It hurt friendships. It hurt me.
In 2016 I tried to at least return things to an amicable place, but the reality was that I couldn’t shake the hurt. I ground my teeth and dealt with it, but it hurt seeing people find joy in something I had been thrown out of. How could I tell anyone what happened? They deserved their happiness. Maybe me, the person going through a lot of therapy, and with a lot of PTSD, was the one who fucked up.
Then I started asking questions. A trans person and their partner gave me a rundown on the *awful* forgiveness ritual that happens post the ZBudapest ritual. They felt forced, coerced, and simultaneously rejected. Gods, did I relate to that. I found solidarity. I wasn’t crazy. Holy shit. I wasn’t crazy.
That made me both angry, and ready to see what I could do about it. I began watching. Yeshe accepted me as a friend, and was cordial, but kept her distance. Any questions from others were responded to that I had left, therefore *I* needed to be the one or come back. Never mind that I left because I had been wronged and made to feel unsafe and invalidated. Never mind that the tradition Yeshe kept claiming caused her to end up in the hospital, every time she tried to go on the pilgrimage. Never mind that there is a line of people behind me that have been hurt even deeper than I have.
I watched Yeshe preach matriarchy, and snarl at me when I said that swapping the patriarchy for that would just mean changing the rulers of a paradigm causing pain. I watched as there was pressure to acknowledge labia, the vagina, and everything traditionally CisWoman was preached as the bing we needed to reclaim and proclaim. I listened as I was told stories of lesser men, of women who plotted to use men to get pregnant and then leave, because they were truly lesbians, surfaced. I watched as the cult of personality formed.
“Yeshe” Jessica Rabbit does not follow the rules she forces on others. I have been told of more than one instance where victim blaming and running out of those who opposed her and her tactics occurred. I’m not the only one. I’m devastated because I was too damn hurt and scared to actively challenge the involvement people I love had with her. I should have done more. I should have said more.
I was shamed and gaslight and shut out to the point that I thought I was having a manifestation of my mental health issues hat made me need to compromise and forgive and resolve someone who actively abused me. It’s something that still makes me viscerally react to even the mention of CAYA, even though I know she is gone. I have shed so goddamn many tears over being shut out of the only coven I ever tried to pledge to...
I’m not crazy. Oh. My. God. I’m not crazy. FUCK. She did this to other people. I should have stopped this. Fuck. I should have stopped this.
I’m sorry for not fighting harder. I saw you are happy and I felt like it was my problem. I knew better. I was afraid. I’m sorry.
IRT: The Sacred Well: Apparent Yeshe has a practice of putting spells and other things to get people in the stores to buy things. Under the paint. Under the rugs. Yeah...I’m an empath. Whatever was in The Sacred Well hit me so hard I couldn’t function. I remember feeling an overwhelming pressure to buy things, and not seeing anything I wanted. It was commented on by others. Coercion. UGH.