Fresh Rain

Sophia, Wisdom, Darkness

by Sabah Raphael Reed

Here we are in the darkening months of the year. Outside the light is fading, trees exhale, leaves blaze then fall to earth. Plants and creatures close their eyes. The dying time comes near. The dark invites retreat, descent, incubation, transformation ~ even, whisper it, annihilation.

Many mystical traditions honor endarkenment.

In ancient Greece people visited sanctuaries of the god Asclepius, to be wrapped in cloth and placed in the dark of the abaton ~ a rock cut chamber ~ to rest and receive a dream of healing. In Tibetan Bön dark retreats, adepts spend time in total darkness, for days, months, even years ~ working with Dzogchen practices to still the mind and awaken to their true nature. Shamanic traditions invite journeying into the lower world, through altered states of consciousness, to receive a teaching. Indian spiritual streams bring us Kali ~ the deity of darkness, death, destruction. Taoism returns us again and again to the wholeness of creation ~ yin and yang, dark and light ~ with the Tao or Way described as dark enigma. David Hinton, the scholar of Chinese poetry, writes:

Dark-enigma means that existence-tissue cosmos, before we name it or apply concepts to it … As soon as we use words, the world is objectified and separated from us. So the intent is to inhabit that dark-enigma cosmos without the separation. To dwell.

And mythic stories across time and space have pointed to descent as essential to initiation and awakening. The Sumerian myth of Inanna in the underworld is but one example. The Alchemists called this time in the Nigredo or the Blackening. Francis Weller in his essay Baptized by Dark Waters reminds us:

It is helpful to see this as an inevitable and necessary time, a time of shedding and letting go, of sitting close to the furnace of death as it cooks away all that is spent and no longer serving life.

In truth, all spiritual traditions that value the dark, surrender us to mystery. To quote Sufi Inayat Khan: ‘In the light I hold Thy beauty, Beloved; in the darkness Thy mystery is revealed’.

So, why is it that many contemporary cultures, both secular and spiritual, eschew the dark, or are even fearful of it? And what have we lost through this erasure of the dark as a sacred source of awakening?

Our industrial societies depend upon artificially over-lighting our world. This loss of darkness matters; having time in the dark, to rest and repair, is vital to the health of all plants and animals including humans. It also signals a psychic as much as a physical dissociation from the cosmic energies of dark matter ~ that which constitutes a vast amount of the universe from which we are birthed.

The rationalist perspectives associated with the Enlightenment brought incredible advances in human society but also some significant losses, most especially severance from other forms of wisdom. Respect for the earth, for indigenous ways of knowing and feminine wisdom were eclipsed or even denigrated as the dark arts, witchcraft or ‘evil’.

The Abrahamic spiritual traditions, as translated and codified over the centuries, have reinforced association of the dark with evil and with sin ~ through the devilish work of Satan, apocalyptic visions of Hell and the actions of a fallen Eve.

More recently, therapeutic practices arising from the work of Freud and Jung associate the dark, the shadow, with all that human consciousness finds it difficult to bear. Whilst integrating that which is held in the unconscious is seen as essential for creativity, healing and wholeness, a lay misunderstanding is that shadow material is primarily negative, troublesome or dangerous ~ a ‘problem to be solved’ rather than ‘a mystery to be faced’ (Connie Zweig and Steve Wolf).

Restoring our connection to the dark as a place of fertile wisdom, and embracing the journey of descent into unknowing as a return to source, feel like important medicines for the soul and for the hard times we are facing.

For me, this means bowing down to Sophia.

Sophia. Wisdom. That which Thomas Merton in his poem Hagia Sophia, calls ‘invisible fecundity’ and ‘hidden wholeness’.

Embracing the dark is a good way to hear the whisperings of Wisdom, to be suffused with hidden wholeness. In my own journey with Sophia, I have been deeply moved by what has been revealed. Gifts of the dark light include growing clarity that:

~ our vulnerability, our falling down, engenders deepening and connection to source
~ everything is sacred, including all that we try to hold at arms length and disavow
~ restoring wholeness, healing, is the essence of the mystical and the manifest path
~ the wisdom of the dark, the earth, the body, the feminine are essential to awakening.

Honouring Sophia is entirely congruent with the lineage of the Sufi Way. Inayat Khan wrote:

The word Sufi comes from a Persian word meaning wisdom. From the original root many derivations can be traced; among them the Greek word Sophia is one of the most interesting.

Perhaps, we might even have been called the Sophia Way! I wonder ~ what does that suggestion evoke in you?