The Dark Night of the Soul

By Fra.: Apfelmann

"The Dark Night of the Soul" is the name given to that experience of

spiritual desolation that all students of the Occult pass through at one

time or another. It is sometimes characterized by feelings that your occult

studies or practices are not taken you anywhere, that the initial success

that one is sometimes granted after a few months of occult working, has

suddenly dried up. There comes a desire to give up on everything, to abandon

exercises and meditation, as nothing seems to be working. St.John of the

Cross. a christian mystic, said of this experience, that it; "...puts the

sensory spiritual appetites to sleep, deadens them, and deprives them of the

ability to find pleasure in anything. It binds the imagination, and impedes

it from doing any good discursive work. It makes the memory cease, the

intellect become dark and unable to understand anything, and hence it causes

the will to become arid and constrained, and all the faculties empty and

useless. And over this hangs a dense and burdensome cloud, which afflicts

the soul, and keeps it withdrawn from the good."

Though the beginner may view the onset of such an experience with alarm,

the "Dark Night" is not something bad or destructive. In one

sense it may be seen as a trial, a test by which the Gods examine our

resolve to continue with occult work, and if you are not completely

whole-hearted about your magical studies, it is during this period (at its

beginning) that you will give up. The Dark Night of the Soul should be

welcomed, once recognized for what it is, as a person might welcome

an operation that will secure health and well-being. St.John of the Cross

embraced the soul's Dark Night as a Divine Appointment, calling it a period

of "sheer grace" and adding;

"O guiding Night, O Night more lovely than Dawn, O Night that has united

the lover with his beloved Transforming the Lover in her Beloved."

When entering the Dark Night one is overcome by a sense of spiritual dryness

and depression. The notion, in some quarters, that all such experiences

should be avoided, for a peaceful existence, shows up the superficiality of

so much of contemporary living. The Dark Night is a way of bringing the Soul

to stillness, so that deep psychic transformation may take place. All

distractions must be set aside, and it is no good attempting to fight or

channel the bursts of raw energy that from time to time may course through

your being. This inner compulsion to set everything aside results in the

outer depression, when nothing seems to excite.

The only thing to do is obey your inner voice and become still, waiting for

the inner transformation, (which the "Dark Night" heralds), to take place.

You may not be aware for a very long time of the results of that inner

change, but when the desire to work comes again and the depression lifts,

the Dark Night has (for a moment) passed. No one can help during this time,

and in many cases there is hardly anyone to turn for advice. One must

disregard the well-meaning advice of family and friends to "snap out of it"

this is no ordinary depression, but a deep spiritual experience which only

those who have passed through themselves (in other words to a magical

retreat) but for many, as the routines of everyday life prohibits this, all

you can do is cultivate an inner solitude, a stillness and silence of heart,

and wait, (like a chrysalis waits for the inner changes that will result in

a butterfly) for the Transformation to work itself out. There are many such

"Dark Nights" that the occult seeker must pass through during the mysterious

process of mitigation. They are all trials but experience teaches one to

cope more efficiently. With fractalic greetings and laughter.