Dark Nights of the Soul

SongDeva

This term came up in a reading I did in the exchange recently. It was new to the querent, and so I gave a brief description, and promised to ask y'all for more.

What does the phrase "Dark Night of the Soul" mean to you?

Would you care to share/describe such an experience of your own here?

Please do! I'm gonna' ponder on it and add my own later.

I feel like it's a time when you are sorely tested and caused to question everything, and in such a way that is stronger than every before. Could the Tower precede such a time? Or does dark night itself lead up to the Tower?

It's perhaps a time when the dark stuff you've refused to acknowledge heads out into the light regardless of your wishes...and the reading made the point that if you head into the dark on purpose and with intent, it's a much different experience.

I really want to hear from you if you've got something to share.

Thanks.
 

zorya

i think of 'dark nights of the soul', as a period of time in which everything you believe about yourself and/or the universe, falls apart. it feels like the very foundation you stand upon, is crumbling at your feet.

in my experience, there were tower events that led up to this. (although in retrospect, there was also a process that led up to the tower events.)

while in it, it felt like there was no end, nor any hope. but once through it, i've found this kind of personal or spiritual crisis, has lead to real spiritual awakening. it's felt like i had been flayed alive and purified to be reborn.
 

Chronata

When I think of this phrase, I think of that time when you hit bottom. When in a depressive state, it seems inevitable, as you can sense it comming from a long way off.

When everything, especially the Universe...seems to be against you, when you question your very existance, and when nothing can be trusted. It is often a time of facing your demons...and your fears, and while much of it is illusionary, while you are going through it, everything sems so real, and nightmareish and exagerated. That is the Dark Night.

After the Dark Night Of the Soul, comes the Light of a New Day, when Hope has finally made it's way through.

But sometimes that Night can last for months.
 

Kiama

I agree with Chronata and Zorya completely, but will just add something else...

I think that the Dark Night of the Soul (the phrase was coined by St John of the Cross, when he wrote a poem about it) is a most important part of one's mystical path... It is a mystical experience all in itself, and as has already been said, leads to something better afterwards.

It is indeed the Tower, where we realize what we previously believed is rubbish, and we are left bereft... But the beauty of this is that it clears the way of rubbish, and allows us to rebuild, better. Hence, the Star card after the Tower, or Temperance after the Hanged Man and Death.

The Dark Night is also a time where you don't move or grow very much - you are, essentially, incubating. And what is it we see on the Art/Temperance card in the Thoth deck? "Visit the interior of the Earth. Through rectification you shall find the hidden stone." (In Latin.) This is an important part of the alchemical work of the soul - the breaking down, decay of the soul (Nigredo - the Black Dragon) as the solve part of the solve et coagula formula. When you're in the depths of despair; when you feel alienated from God and others; when you are in your own personal hell and everything you once knew is falling down around you... When you are stripped of all your pretenses down to the bare bones... It's a test, it's a challenge, it's an opportunity. You get to rebuild, you get to re-evaluate, you get to strive towards light once more.

But most importantly perhaps, when you come out of a Dark Night, you know darkness, you have faced it, and hopefully you have learned to work with it so that it does not overcome you.

Neitzsche had a lot to say about this, though he didn't realize it. He spoke of the Dionysian Man, the tragic pathos, wherein one doesn't curl up into a foetal position and weep at the first signs of a Dark Night, or pain, or suffering. Instead, one says Yes to it all - including the pain and suffering and Dark Night. One descends into the dark, carrying the light of one's Yes-saying into the Abyss so one can see it for what it really is, and see one's own face reflected back... To do otherwise would be saying No to an entire half of life! Instead, he says we should be like Dionysus, who is torn apart but puts himself back together again, better than before. This, he says, is the Uberman.

(As you can guess, these issues are very close to my heart...!)

There are many myths that I personally associate with the Dark Night. Persephone's Descent into the Underworld, and her mother's frantic grieving and searching is one of them.

In Egyptian mythology, the Sun God Ra enters the Underworld every night, and sails through it on a boat. This would be an easy journey, if it wasn't for all the demons of the Underworld (minions of Set) that are there trying to tip the boat over, kill him, etc - anything to stop him rising again in the morning. But every morning he does.

And of course, there's Lord of the Rings, where at the end everything seems hopeless, when you're certain Sauron will win... But one final frantic effort towards the goal and they've won. That's kinda like the Dark Night I think: you feel as though nothing is going to help, but you've just got to keep on pushing and pushing and pushing until you're out of it.

And it's worth it.

A couple of months ago, I was scrying a Lunar Mansion (I've forgotten which one now - sorry!) that is related to the destructive aspect of the Goddess, and during the scrying I had a particularly potent visualization that sums up what I felt when I went through a Dark Night:

The Goddess was holding me by one foot, and I was in the Hanged Man's position, upside down, over a swilring black abyss. I looked up at Her at looked into Her eyes, pleading with Her not to let go. I scrabbled frantically upwards, trying everything to get Her to hold on to me, but she let out a great cackling laugh and let go. I screamed, falling into the Abyss, where I was bereft of light, of contact with the Divine, where demons and unsavoury 'things' pulled and grabbed at me, trying to draw me further in. I stared into a pool of black, inky water, full of crawling things, and saw my face - but my face was ugly, it was distorted, and I saw all my flaws, allmy nasty sides, all my bad habits. I also saw the power I had to cause others hurt and pain, and saw how easily that could be done. And that was probably the worst part of it all - being faced with such stark truth, to be faced with the fact that you're not all nice. But my hand wrenched a lantern from my chest and threw it into the Abyss, and I understood the vision of me in the pool.

And that was where the vision changed to something similar but nevertheless irrelevant to this thread...

I have seen peoples' Dark Nights last for days, weeks, months, or years... There's never really any telling as to how long they'll last, but I think it depends on the person. And sometimes they're not always huge events - I think it is possible to have 'mini' Dark Nights that last maybe an hour or two. But the big ones, they are the ones that tend to bring about the most realizations later on.

Anyway, I have rambled on for far too long... I am eager to hear what others have to say on this subject.

Blessings,

Kiama
 

Simone

... and remember that night is always darkest just before dawn :)
 

jumptothemoonyea

it feels like the only way to light is to die
 

Moongold

Please delete
 

prudence

Wow Kiama,
what you wrote about the dark night is so eloquent and so wise. You have described it so perfectly. Next time Im feeling dark and depressed, I am going to read this description, it has such hope.
Thank you,
Astrid
 

augursWell

A Dark Night of the Soul...

It's such a poetic phrase because it captures many of the concepts and feelings so beautifully.

The Soul is what we all have as living beings as our very core and essence. The situation here is one in which we have gone all the way down through grief, loss, hatred, etc. so that the Soul is all that is left. We cling to it in the night since there seems to be nothing else left. Yet all around us is Darkness and we start to even question our own soul. *Everything* is gone or destroyed as far as we can see. We question our very essence, our soul, and wonder just how far our own ignorance and fallibility and lack of understanding has gone. Is there nothing right in all of this?

Yet this is a Night. Nights come to an end with the Dawn. And so we find our way out. And things start to make sense again but not in the same way as "yesterday". The Soul is by nature "light" so is much more at home in the Sun.
 

Sophie-David

Kiama said:
I think that the Dark Night of the Soul (the phrase was coined by St John of the Cross, when he wrote a poem about it) is a most important part of one's mystical path... It is a mystical experience all in itself, and as has already been said, leads to something better afterwards.

It is indeed the Tower, where we realize what we previously believed is rubbish, and we are left bereft... But the beauty of this is that it clears the way of rubbish, and allows us to rebuild, better. Hence, the Star card after the Tower, or Temperance after the Hanged Man and Death.
Hello Kiama

I wasn't sure what to quote because it was all relevant and I can readily identify with your analysis. I can certainly see this process as the Tower, but in my personal experience it has more typically been Hanged Man then Death. It is indeed our path to transformation, an ego death which as you say "clears the way of rubbish".

Kiama said:
The Dark Night is also a time where you don't move or grow very much - you are, essentially, incubating. And what is it we see on the Art/Temperance card in the Thoth deck? "Visit the interior of the Earth. Through rectification you shall find the hidden stone." (In Latin.) This is an important part of the alchemical work of the soul - the breaking down, decay of the soul (Nigredo - the Black Dragon) as the solve part of the solve et coagula formula. When you're in the depths of despair; when you feel alienated from God and others; when you are in your own personal hell and everything you once knew is falling down around you... When you are stripped of all your pretenses down to the bare bones... It's a test, it's a challenge, it's an opportunity. You get to rebuild, you get to re-evaluate, you get to strive towards light once more.
I used the term "Dark Night of the Soul" just the other day, but I am having more and more awkwardness with the metaphor. I have learned to love darkness as much as light: neither is inherently evil or good, and the one which is not in balance is actually the one we need to learn to value and strive for. As I tried to add to this thread I just got myself more and more into knots of confusion, for my normal association with darknesss is not "the depths of despair". I picture the realm of the Moon, the Queen of the Night, and the reflection of the High Priestess archetype who guides me into the unconscious, dreams, intuition, relational understanding, connectedness, holistic growth, transcendent joy, and the gentle healing of positive feminine darkness - in short my Sophie, the Inner Beloved. But as long as I think in terms of "depths of despair", "ego death" or "time of trial" I follow you completely. :)

Kiama said:
But most importantly perhaps, when you come out of a Dark Night, you know darkness, you have faced it, and hopefully you have learned to work with it so that it does not overcome you.
Most definitely - as is typical, the dream which enacted my union with the Inner Beloved could only occur after first dreaming through the suffering of ego death, complete aloneness, and the deep horror of hopeless abandonment. And in my more recent meditational cycle through the Connolly Major Arcana, the willing sacrifice of the Soul's Champion to the slow agonizing suspension of the Hanged One, until Death came as an unfeared joy, simultaneously vanquished the destructive power of the negative feminine within. For love conquers all, even the internalized embodiment of the female sexual abuser from my childhood. From this, Temperance came as an even greater and more intimate union with the positive internal feminine.

I am currently working through the Legend deck my studying the picture and graphic for each card just before I go to sleep. This process of dream programming often produces significant results during the night. A side effect of this is an unconscious sympathy for what will be the card of the night during the course of the day.