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Pregnant Darkness

Alchemy and the Rebirth of Consciousness

NICOLAS-HAYS, INC.

CHAPTER 1

The Psyche's Alchemical Language

In the dead of night something with wings comes from out of the darkness toward your single flame, and toward the smell of sulfur burning drawn irresistibly.

The transformational processes in the alchemical rounds of renewal have been depicted through the ages of humankind and in all cultures in some manner, and remain alive and available in the depths of psyche. The call for the birth of the new light out of the dark comes to us any time we encounter something new that requires development beyond our current capacities. For example, many changes occurring in love relationships require transformations in both parties. Every long-term couple experiences marriage crises. The couple's consciousness of the relationship patterns must change in order to nourish the changing individuals over time. One such couple came for counseling at the nadir of despair. Both parties' "good intentions" were getting them nowhere. Struggle, criticism, and trouble riddled their interpersonal field. After ten years, the old constellation of the marriage, with all its merger qualities, was breaking up. The depth of the darkness they experienced as this seismic shift hit was enormous. At the crux of the crisis, the woman had a dream that illustrates in modern terms the ancient principles of the alchemical cycle:

Downstairs, in the lowest floor of our retreat home, I meet my mate in the dark. The feeling of the tremendous crisis we are in fills the dark house. We are instructed by an over-voice in the dream to go into the bathroom. Here we see a small, dark-blue light that has just appeared and is dancing in the darkness over the toilet. Then we are instructed to go to the laundry room together. The doors are open on the washer and dryer, and the laundry is there, too. Here we are told that the future depends upon our attention, that we each must work with our own "seven devils" in the darkness.

Then I see him go from the laundry room into the living room. The coming of new light in the house depends upon how each of us deals with his or her devils. It feels like the devils will be manifesting to each of us separately, and our own private attention to them and how we deal with them is crucial.

Part of what is so moving about this dream is its portrayal of the psychic reality that the birth of the new way, the new light in the darkness, depends on the work of ego consciousness in turning toward the darkness and the conflict—entering the nigredo, the first stage of the alchemical round. In the beginning of this dream, there is no light source, no consciousness yet sufficient to light the new way; how it will be worked out is not known. With the two figures turning toward the darkness, the first dark light appears, and there is the promise of more light as the masculine and feminine work with their respective "seven devils." This is also a subjective mirror, where her inner counterpart and she must go through a separatio, which is another alchemical operation at the beginning of the work. It was clear that they needed to separate out their own elements from their tangled complexes and interpersonal patterns or the repetitive patterns of suffering would lead one of them to end the relationship.

That each partner is seen as having "seven devils" is interesting. Mary Magdalene is reported to have had seven devils. In ancient astrology, the texts speak of seven lords, each with a planetary being, who also have devilish sides with which human beings must deal. Each individual must come into relationship with each lord (each archetype) and create an inner harmony, an inner music of the seven lords, as they imprint upon the individual's life and personality. The dreamer reported that, during an active imagination she subsequently entered, the seven devils showed up in the seven chakras, the (body's primary energetic centers). In ancient Eastern traditions, the seven chakras of the body correspond to various archetypal energy configurations. In Chinese alchemical astrological texts, the chakras correspond to the seven rungs of the planetary ladder. It seems that this dream image refers to a process of embodying relationship with the archetypes and the shadow manifestations inherent in each center of being—a prescription for individuation, and no small task. Indeed, it is an ongoing life task.

The black light birth, this dream points out, can also mean seeing into the mysterious centers of personality, including our embodied relationships with the archetypes—the light and dark sides. The "seven devils" suggest a need to imagine into the different personifications of these centers. Most likely, this dream image refers to the constellations we must learn to master in our life, constellations that can wreak devilish havoc with life and relationship. As this dream points out, relationship life can mirror the need for more light in the dark, more consciousness.

"Devilish" energy—fear, insecurity-power problems, addiction, compulsivity, mania, crippling inner-critic thought patterns, and self-denigration—appears in our lives when unconscious dynamics take hold and threaten our essence. These patterns require the light of consciousness to loosen their hold. Then the "devils" potentially become initiatory allies. They change as well, to some degree, in their manifesting nature and in their degree of autonomy from the overall unity of the personality. Anything, of course, can become devilish. Discovering the devils and being willing to suffer them in the nigredo, in the darkness, and await the transformation are the dream's guidance. Then new freedom of essence may come.

This same woman also dreamed, around this time, that a male lover said, "I am so torn this night, I don't believe in redemption." This anguish is the reality of darkness. This dream brings the perspective of the inner one who is torn by the night, and brings to the fore the cry from the depths, expressing how he sees and feels the inner night. When it is that black, there is no sense of, no link to, nor any comfort in "redemption," in change and transformation. When it is that black, what the hell does redemption even mean?! The dream voice wants her to hear the reality of the inner darkness, wants her consciousness to be penetrated by the cry. The inner lover tells her that he is so torn this night. Torn is a powerful word and denotes such feeling. We use being "torn" to express deep inner pain. "I am torn between this and that," "I am torn in half," "I have a tear in me so great." It is a pure cry out of the depths. Darkness like this means that we really do not see a way. Our bereft cry from such depths expresses an honest human standpoint. At times, only that honesty from the depths of our experiences of utter darkness penetrates the barrier between our humanity and the divine within. Only this outcry gets us into dialogue with the divine powers so that help can arrive.

Another angle to this potent dream line comes in as we view the word believe. A crisis of faith arrives sooner or later when our connection to the mysteries relies on belief. Believing is nothing more than a childlike projection or wishful thought-form. Discovering from inner experience what might be "redemption" is another matter. Opening to the mystery of the night—to all that is beyond solar or ego consciousness—we discover interplay, dialogue, subtlety, ambiguity, relationship with the mysterium, where belief in anything is of little consequence. Instead, responsibility is placed in the growing inner body of wisdom, which requires experience—the gathering of evidence in our lives—combined with reflective processes of differentiation and then embodied via fruitful living.

Returning to the dream of the seven devils, the images of the bathroom and laundry room shed light on the alchemical bridges the dream world offers between the pain and chaos and the hope for transformation. The bathroom is, of course, the room in all of our homes dedicated to what the alchemists called prima materia, the "shit." In an experience of facing the darkness and the place of the usually devalued shit—the psychological stuckness and emotional tangle or suffering—the first hope of the dark light is born. The new dawning of consciousness in the dark situation begins with facing the darkness, the shit. Regarding the value of facing psychological darkness, an alchemical text says, "When you see your matter going black, rejoice: for that is the beginning of the work." As in this dream, conscious endurance of darkness potentially nourishes the Self.

The dream instructs her to go to the laundry room. After the first dawning of consciousness in the dark situation, the dreamer must learn to do the "laundry." Alchemists saw this stage of the process as one of distillation and circulation. The fire of transformation heats up the water and the contents in the water. It cooks, cleans, and whitens. In alchemical texts, the flame of calcinatio purges and whitens. In psychological terms, this valuable inner psychic heat of struggle or pain becomes the flame of transformation via our attention to the inner darkness. Contact with the inner darkness and unknowing brings an experience of "purgatory," wherein we consciously suffer the lostness but also—with grace—a new way out of this state. Then the nigredo brings about the albedo; that is, the washing of the old, dark, unconscious state brings about a whitening as new illumination is discovered. The dreamer must begin the sorting, heating, soaking, rinsing, and drying processes of the dirty laundry, the prima materia, the chaos of the stuck complexes, for a new spirit to alight in her life.

Thinking of her dream in the context of relationship work, soaking the problem in the heating water could be like consciously feeling into the nature of the emotional tangles or complexes. Washing dissolves dirt; dirt is of the earth. The earthy fixity of the situation, the old form of the problem, dissolves. Perhaps by looking into the earthy, sensation-level facts involved in a given problem, she can liberate the spirit of relatedness and dissolve the old, fixed pattern. The drying also removes the old emotional qualities, perhaps by taking out the old energy. The whitening, the alchemists say, brings the caught spirit, the tangled psychic pattern, into freedom, back to its pure essence, where it unites with source—the moon—which brings "clarity and perfection," insight and freedom from the old pattern.

This process includes what the alchemists called the "whitening work of the moon." As the alchemists pictured this process, in "doing the work of the washerwoman" (see figure 1 on page 7), the whitening of illumination takes place.

With this imagery, the alchemists pointed to the renewing phases of the moon as she cycles through her twenty-eight-day round of death and rebirth. The new moon signifies the nigredo, and the full moon, the albedo, the whitening rebirth. Thus, another way in which light appears in the darkness is by our engaging in the alchemical operation of circulation and distillation leading to rebirth. To take something to its lunar state is to cleanse it of its earthly fixity and see into its original essence. By attending to the dream spirit's instructions, and to our own experience of what is stuck, pained, or caught, the specific elements that require these processes become clear. There are many means of achieving circulation and distillation. Circulating awareness through each element (earth, air, fire, and water) or each psychological function (sensation, thinking, intuition, and feeling) distills insight that frees the essence into the intermediary place that exists between opposites.

Curiously, at the end of the dream, the male figure walks from the laundry room into the living room, which suggests the integration of the cleansing experience into the living situation. In a way, the three rooms depicted in the dream process show the three ravens, the three phases of the transformative work that are said to compose alchemy. One text says alchemy is made of three ravens: One is black, one white, and one red: "the black which is the head of the art, the white which is the middle, and the red which brings things to an end." The bathroom, as the container of waste, points to the black raven—the nigredo or blackening. The laundry room, with its soaking, washing, and drying, points to the white raven—the albedo or whitening rebirth. The living room points to the red raven—the rubedo or reddening—the reanimation of fresh spirit by the red blood of experience, in the living of human life. Importantly for the dreamer's situation, the reddening process associated with the living room represents the integration of the devils into the larger psyche, thereby ending their autonomous reign. About the reddening process, Jung says, "Blood alone can reanimate a glorious state of consciousness in which the last state of blackness is dissolved, in which the devil no longer has an autonomous existence but rejoins the profound unity of the psyche. Then the opus magnum is finished and the human soul is completely integrated."

Thus, the dream spirit sees the whole round of the work and prescribes conscious participation in the processes necessary to transform the pain the dreamer was experiencing at this stage in life. It seems to prescribe a deep nigredo experience of honest confrontation with her old patterns and a straightforward cleansing process.

If the nigredo goes so dark, sometimes it is not a theory that helps orient us, or even vision or the theoria of the adept, but a simple human presence and warmth that reaches us and connects with our humanity in the darkness. As a young man, Andrew entered medical school in the 1970s with a freight-load of family expectations on him to become a doctor, like one of his parents. He went straight from college to medical school, unlike many of the other students. The difficulty of the family expectations and the intensity of the work, added to his being young and without much adult identity formed yet, led him to a breakdown. The divorce of his parents when he was younger also had terribly split the family, and he suffered trying to keep love going with both of them. When he got to medical school the pressure without the foundation of love and steadiness in his life pushed him near the abyss and when fell, he fell hard and ended up in a psychiatric clinic for a time.

Having lost all words and registering nothing, he fell into an enormous silence. One of the social workers there, who had tremendous heart and soul, kept a special eye on this young man. When he began to speak in unintelligible "word salad" without coming back to normal connection and conversation, the red flags went up. Would he ever make it back to himself and his life? The social worker took him outside for walks, kindly taking Andrew by the arm and walking with him along the garden path surrounding the facility. Late one night they went for a walk in the dark to a spot overlooking the freeway. Andrew remembers the social worker telling him, "Andrew, there is something I have been wanting to show you. Here you see, we do things strangely, and when you return, you will as well. See the lights that go in lines, one after another, following the way of the road? The red lights form a line of the cars going that way, and the white lights form a line of the cars going this way. This is how thoughts work here among us humans; they go in lines, just like this, and follow a single road. When you come back, you will learn to do this, too. It is not necessarily better than where you are; in fact it may be less interesting. It is just something that happens here."

Later that week, Andrew was in his bed when the team of psychiatrists and social workers stopped to visit. He had a pad of paper and wanted very badly to communicate. He began to write in word salad in a desperate attempt to communicate. The social worker picked it up, with the team present, and said, "I can't understand a word you are saying, but Andrew, you sure have great handwriting!" With that embracing comment, the team laughed out loud, and as Andrew laughed out loud, too, and joined in with them, the spell broke, and his linear thoughts returned. He has communicated just fine ever since. Besides becoming a doctor, he developed a tremendous love for music and plays professionally—communicating movingly out of the nonlinear, passionate side of himself. He continued over the years to work with a caring psychologist to integrate his experiences and heal.
(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Pregnant Darkness by Monika Wikman. Copyright © 2004 Monika Wikman. Excerpted by permission of NICOLAS-HAYS, INC..
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