Splendor Nigri Solis
I figure that I'm just anonymous enough on this blog to share this here. I've had an overwhelming urge to share my discoveries and revelations, but have been holding back because there is nothing to accomplish by attaching my name to them except for being mistaken for pretentious and vain.
Recently, I finished Stanton Marlan's brilliant The Black Sun: The Alchemy and Art of Darkness, and so many pieces fell right into place for me. Up until I finished the book, I'd long seen depression as an enemy to be conquered. But now, I'm starting to see that it is so much more than that. Can depression itself not be molded to benefit the sufferer? Is there no rapture in melancholy? No ecstasy in the worst agony? From this point forward, I may need to give a trigger warning for discussion of suicidal ideation and graphic descriptions of my intrusive thoughts.
All my life, I have lived and struggled with depression. Though I've seldom reached the point of wanting to end my own life, there have been occasions where such thoughts have passed through my head. Many of them, luckily, haven't been much more than intrusive thoughts, but they could get disturbingly vivid. At least once, while my mom was away on a vacation, I imagined my corpse lying sprawled out in front of the stairs, lying in a pool of my own blood from my slit wrists or throat, and her coming home to find me there. That is probably the worst my intrusive thoughts have been. On the other hand, there were times where I was edging dangerously close to planning my suicide, only to be unwittingly saved by the kindness of others. One such instance being when I was falling behind in my classes during my last semester of college, and I could hear Trent Reznor's screams of "KILL ME" from the song "Eraser" looping through my head while I considered blowing my brains out. As such, it doesn't seem unreasonable for me to have seen depression as nothing more than something to overcome.
But even before I read this book, I often felt traces of a joyous sensation at the beginning of my descents into melancholy. Indeed, only now have I begun to realize that this sensation is seductive in nature and led me deeper down into the darkest corners of my psyche. Not to destroy them, but to integrate and find unity with them, without being overcome. Such is the purpose of shadow work. In my case, I have often been thoughtlessly compassionate and empathetic, constantly offering assistance to others at my own expense. Now, though, I've come to realize that such acts have little to do with compassion or empathy, but rather, with a chronic need to be the hero, a la Agent Cooper as of the final season of Twin Peaks. Worse, it's a trauma response, a compulsion, or at best, pity, rather than authentic kindness. A means of garnering validation and gratitude, and a fear of condemnation if I refuse, rather than heroism by doing what seems to be the right thing. It is these notions of compassion that I have come to realize that I must kill in order to be truly reborn.
Now, make no mistake, I value empathy. It is a virtue that is absolutely mandatory for one's own development, for without empathy, one is condemned to needless suffering, and may spread this suffering to those they hold dearest, which I shall discuss later. But those aforementioned notions of empathy come solely from the ego and as such, are flawed, or at best, incomplete. That is why they must die.
It is important to note, however, that the line between suffering through the nigredo stage — the alchemical stage that corresponds to shadow work — and suffering through one's own stagnation which the nigredo exists to destroy. As of this writing, I have terminated five relationships this year alone. Three of these were voluntary (two possibly mutually voluntary), while two were involuntary, though I had previously wished to heal one of them. Initially, I was heartbroken over the ending of that friendship. This was one I had cultivated for nearly two years, and I have nobody to blame but myself for its end. I still regret how it ended. But with the passage of time, I’ve come to realize that it was not a good or even great friendship to have. Likewise, the relationships that I have terminated since then, I have come to care less and less and accepting of the knowledge that they needed to end. It should be noted that it was after I had endured great trauma that I parted ways with each of them, but another common thread among each of them is that I had made efforts to help them. To “save” them. Especially in a way that drained me, and further, that I felt compelled to do. In the end, though, my efforts were rendered meaningless. It was a complicated mix of things: in my misguided attempts to help, I would be faced with even more trauma, and my consequential trauma responses would serve as a detriment to the people I tried to help, as well as to me when they would reject my help.
I’d long tried to keep my feelings of revulsion, resentment, and hatred — all of them also manifestations of my depression — buried. Tried to deny them or sugarcoat them. When my efforts to help were rebuked or were later met with requests that would set me back, the raging stream would continue to crack the levee and create holes through which tendrils of the stream my could escape. Popular media, rational thought, and some “right hand path” brands of spirituality like to portray giving in to such negativity as an inherently bad thing, or as a sign of a weak will. But is it, really?
Marlan quotes Peter Tatham, who acknowledges that there "will be times when the pull of the black hole is too great and our attempts to avoid it will be of no avail. Then we may have to be mere witnesses to a violent ending of physical and/or psychological life. Then there is ‘no alternative but to submit to its embraces knowing what it means and without hope. There are some experiences into which we can enter willingly, while into others we can only fall screaming.’” Further, Marlan states, “The horror of such experiences breaks down our rational ideas and naïve visions of light and eternity.”
I realize that depression is just a chemical imbalance in the brain. That, like any mental illness, can drive one to do terrible things to oneself or to others. I have, myself, harmed others and destroyed friendships while gazing into the face of despair, and I take no pride in doing so. In the end, I only destroyed them like I did because I was delaying the inevitable. I refused to face the fact that these were things that were coming to an end. That they had to come to an end. That any preconceived notions that I had that these things would last forever in my life, stay as they were, were pipe dreams that were far more irrational and absurd than the horrors that would, in the end, liberate me.
But trying to give a name and a face to these horrors in the hopes they would one day free me from my pain and repression — both self-inflicted and otherwise — was a pipe dream in and of itself. I wanted to exact revenge upon a world that I felt had betrayed me, while having little understanding of just what I was bringing into my life. In the end, I traded one delusional worldview for another. It took me turning to violence towards another and facing the consequences to finally eventually realize that my way was wrong.
Years passed, I'd long since reconciled with the person I'd hurt while still feeling the pangs of profound remorse, my teenage years had finally come to an end, and I was finally feeling something like happiness again. But, as I should have learned by then, nothing gold can stay. Several of the foundations of my newfound happiness were not as rigid as I'd previously believed. Many of these foundations were other people who I'd come to love and appreciate like family. Most of them turned out to not be the people I thought they were, both literally and figuratively, but even when initially faced with this revelation, I denied it. I wanted so badly to retain their companionship. I couldn't bare to be faced with the knowledge that this world I'd built was still imperfect.
After that was said and done, as years passed once more, I kept falling into the same trap, in different forms. It all came down to believing I could find jubilation in other people, my accomplishments, and in my hopes for a better future. In the end, the result has always been the same: being left broken when faced with the truth, promising and giving more than I can promise or give, and paying for it in the end.
I see now that I've been putting too much stock in notions that have been ingrained in me from a young age. From the expectations that someone or something else, be that a person, a deity, a success, or even a concept could save me or shield from despair. While I have long held an adoration for the "darker" things in life — chiefly among them horror movies and literature, black metal, death metal, goth rock, etc — the idea of musicians and artists such as Per Yngve "Dead" Ohlin and Øystein "Euronymous" Aarseth of Mayhem embracing inherently negative ideals (and those who follow in their footsteps following suit, such as Erik Danielsson of Watain) has always been alien to me. After all, Dead was clinically depressed and believed that he was not a living person, while Euronymous embraced a nigh-sociopathic persona and drove his former bandmate to suicide, all in the name of a genre of music. But now, I'm starting to think that perhaps they may have found something, only to lose their way.
Where they and I differ is that I do not see darkness as any more of a savior or something to be served than light. Such an ideal is no better than what many Satanists — both theistic and atheistic — would call reverse Christianity. We project our own preconceived notions of good and evil, right and wrong, clean and unclean, strong and weak, onto the concepts of light and darkness and have been since the dawn of our species. But what so many fail to realize is that light and darkness are one and the same, and that light cannot exist without darkness. The black sun is, itself, an illustration of this duality, and while unlike its dayside counterpart, it cannot create life in and of itself, it can guide one towards creating life themselves. As such, I do not "serve" the dark. Rather, I grow to embrace the discomfort and thrive in its sinister yet benevolent glow. To embrace what I have been taught to reject. To face oblivion and see the beauty that lies therein. To see the truth behind the truth. To see despair as more than an enemy. To find my own splendor and joy. I grow disgusted with the sanctimony and hypocrisy of the dayside and its adamant rejection of all things of the nightside that can help one thrive. I choose to let them walk their path, but to paraphrase Jung in The Red Book, my path is not their path.
Depression has long been the ultimate taboo to me, and I am learning to break my own taboos. I will continue to take my medication, for I have no chance of thriving without them. Recently, when I ran out of medication and spent four days without it, I nearly lost control of myself. But even in that rage, I had a moment of clarity that brought me closer to realizing my own liberation. To who I really want to be. To who I really am. In summary, it is not about giving in to depression or despair for me, nor is it about having a weak will, but rather, about transforming it to break my chains rather than keeping me chained to what I misguidedly see as freedom. Accepting the end of things rather than dragging them out instead of allowing the decay to take its course. I would now like to close this long essay with a quote I found on the Facebook page The Shadow Self - A Journey into the Occult:
"In my view the shadow self should not necessarily be categorized as an Archetype and not just that which may be referred to as the darker side of the self. It is that which contains the true self beyond the persona which is bursting to be acted out but which has not been given permission by the self to do so, through lack of an arena or opportunity."
