The Benevolent Dark
I was reading a bedtime story to my daughter and a friend of hers a few weeks ago. It referenced “The Light” as good and “The Dark” as sinister, evil. I had to stop reading the book mid sentence and go into a rant (well, maybe more of a lesson) about why the Dark shouldn’t be vilified.
I began my lesson by asking them to hold their hands over their eyes and blocking out the Dark. “Now imagine an ice cream cone,” I said “what flavor is yours? what’s on it? how does it feel and taste?”. By the time I asked them to uncover their eyes, they had big smiles on their faces so happy to imagine eating their mint chip with sprinkles and cookie dough with whipped cream and a cherry on top cones.
“Okay, now remember your ice cream cone,” I invited them to do it again with their eyes open, in the Light. It was harder. “The Dark helps us to see,” I explained.
“The Dark isn’t so bad, right?” they covered their eyes again. “Now remember what it was to be in your mama’s belly. Hear her heartbeat, feel how cozy and warm it is, feel her breathing, remember how nice it felt to be so close and held by her in the Dark”. Again, they had big smiles and made sounds of little woodland creatures all cuddled up in their feathery nests.
I explained that the Dark is a place to see and imagine. That whatever it is you want to see in the Dark, you can invite it to be there and to come alive. I also explained that we come into this world in the Dark of our mother’s wombs. That the Dark is where we grow, dream, and can feel held and nurtured if we just remember the benevolent qualities the Dark can hold.
I went further to explain the way that patriarchal religion had placed God in the sky and associates Divine Love with Light, whereas Indigenous, Earth-based traditions understand the power and fertility of the Dark and that Love resides in the Dark as much as it lives in the Light. I referenced a story we’d read the night prior where all the magic took place in the Dark - it was a story of an Indigenous Native American girl and her little brother who get lost but then are guided by their ancestors who come down to help from a starry sky.
The lights went out and they slept deeply that night, inviting visions of fairies and unicorns, star people, their mamas and whatever they chose to bring into the Dark with them as they slumbered.
This little exploration made me think about how polarized our culture has become and how much we like to hold onto our associations and are so quick to call things good or bad. I wanted to start a new trend of saying Love and Dark instead of Love and Light. I thought about how entire cultures and mindsets have been cut off from the wisdom of Earth-honoring ways that hold the Dark as Benevolent, as powerful, as the place of deep wisdom and Creation. Of Birth and Death and Life. Of feminine mystery. That perhaps even the widespread racism on this planet has been seeded in the view that Light is “good”, Dark is “bad”.
It’s worth looking at and unpacking just how many ways the vilifying of the Dark has influence on our worldviews and how we go about our lives. There’s something deeply healing in befriending the Dark., I know this because I’ve not always been a lover of the Dark. While, now I feel quite at home in Her velvety quiet, the Dark has not always been a place of comfort for me.
I found my love of the Dark after a holiday party one night over fifteen years ago. I left the party alone past midnight and had to walk to my car about an eighth of a mile down a wooded country road. I swore I heard something in the woods next to me as I began to walk. I began to imagine vividly all the possibilities from psycho killer to mountain lion. Fear gripped me harder and harder until I stopped in my tracks.
I asked myself, “what’s in those woods”. “A monster”, I thought. “And what sound does that monster make?”Grrrwwwaaarrrr!!” I growled my most terrifying growl into the Dark and that was that.
I saw in that moment that anything I imagined in the Dark was something I knew intimately as it was generated from my own imagination and therefore an aspect of Self.
By befriending my inner roar, I no longer feared it as something that lived outside of me in the woods or otherwise. I could meet it. I could be as powerful as anything I imagined “out there”. From that night on, I chose to meet other aspects of Self in the Dark. The Divine Mother, the Creative Visionary, the Wild Woman, the Temptress, and any of the other powerful archetypes associated with the Dark that call in Dark moments.
Today, I have a rich and supportive relationship with the Dark. I owe so much of my ability to “see” and work with Dream and Imagination and even healing practices to Her existence.
It’s one of my favorite things to lead people in guided visualizations, and these visualizations almost always start with closing our eyes so we can “see”.
So, in honor of the Benevolent Dark and the beauty found in these Dark days of the year (and despite my voice still being ravaged by this flu that just won’t stop), I’ve recorded a meditation on the Benevolent Dark for you loves, and posted it here:
The Benevolent Dark: A Recorded Meditation
I hope you enjoy it and that working with the Spirit of the Dark brings beauty, wild imagination and much nurturance to your Solstice week. Remember, you can turn to Her whenever things feel much, whenever you need to remember the silence or tap into the place of possibility. Take Her with you in these wild times. The Benevolent Dark.
In love & Dark,
Nico