The Black Sun of Alchemy in Depression and Dark Nights of the Soul

A Great Moot talk
By Eowyn CG

How many people here have experienced some form of depression in their lives? How many of you often feel sad about life, are grieving a loss or are despairing of the state of the world and often question what the heck it is all about and just want to resign? Well, according to the medics, you folk in the second group are depressed too! Welcome to the insane world!

In medical language, depression is characterised as an illness- a biological, psychological, social, or spiritual disorder. Long-term sadness and “low mood” also qualify as depression. Anxiety and depression are often diagnosed together, thus qualifying the sufferer for a cocktail of anti-depressants in an apparent bid to “recover.” The history of the diagnosis of mental illness has led from the burning of witches in medieval times to the modern day partnership between psychiatry and drug companies who amass profits of $80 billion from the peddling of psychotropic drugs to an unsuspecting public. Mental illness- as defined by any ruling elite- has always been an invisible tool that chooses who and what is demonised, thereby shaping the perceptions of civilised society according to its will. Modern psychiatry is the 21st century Malleus Maleficarium! Those suffering from depression might not be burned at the stake, but they might well be one of the 700,000 who suffer adverse reactions to the prescribed medication or one of the 42,000 who die from depression medications annually. These drugs will increase their risk of cardiac arrest, atherosclerosis and many other health problems. 15% may go into long-term remission; most won’t and often get worse; thoughts of suicide and attempts in others increase with medication use. And just to add to the soup of confusion, in being defined as a pathology, anxiety and depression carry a huge social stigma which adds to the individual’s suffering.

There is no doubt that genuine mental illness does exist. Some people are born with “faulty wiring”, so to speak, in which their biology is so damaged that without medication they simply could not function. Some people develop mental illness- for whatever reason- from which they will never recover. Then there are those who are just temporarily felled by circumstances and who, (in the infamous words of one person here!), just need to “man the fuck up” instead of popping pills! However, that leaves vast swathes of people with various depths of depression, some of which can last into a good proportion of a life. For this latter group in particular, a much more sophisticated approach is needed. For their so-called depression is more a condition of the soul, which simply cannot be treated merely as a physical illness. The ancients called this a dark night of the soul.

Now, it is common practice these days to refer to the body, mind and spirit but not soul. Many simply don’t know the difference between soul and spirit and certainly, many of the differences are blurred; but there are definite differences. The soul is those aspects of oneself that feel life- the senses, emotions and meanings one ascribes to experiences. The soul is grounded in daily life- family, friends, home, work, food, beauty, art, connection and nature. It is memory, depth of feeling, our past- personal and collective; soul is the wellspring of life that loves to preserve buildings, stories etc and to go deep within. It is cyclical and eternal.

Conversely, the spirit is lofty- religion, education, visionary, transcendence- the creativity that moves us to a better life. Spirit asks the big questions about life, death, morality and law; it seeks knowledge and is future oriented. It appreciates modernity, newness, clarity and metaphorically looks upwards and forwards. It tends to view linear progress. Both soul and spirit are essential to our lives.

However, there has long been a Demiurgic-inspired agenda to dissect us from our soul parts and its greatest tool is the Cartesian model that worships the mind to the exclusion of the soul and regards the body as a mechanism that can be “fixed” by chemicals and surgery. Consciousness is viewed as nothing but a by-product of chemical reactions; nature is just a dead machine whose parts can be used for our own convenience. Virtually the entirety of modern western culture has at its roots in this view, which dissects us from our our feeling natures and the anima- soul- of the world.

Art and poetry mediate the soul and it is interesting to consider the fact that many inspired artists and poets have been described as being mad and depressed. One artist who portrayed much about the human condition was the Norwegian painter and printmaker, Edvard Munch (1863-1944). One of his best known paintings, “The Scream,” has been widely interpreted as representing the anxiety of modern man. Munch’s stated goal for painting was the “study of the soul” and here he writes of how “The Scream” came into being:

“I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature.”(1)

Munch was later treated for mental illness and subsequently, his paintings were of brighter themes- portraits, landscapes, etc with much less reference to deeper, so-called “morbid” themes; much of the original depth to his work was lost. This later work proved more attractive to public opinion and won financial patronage from German-Jewish benefactors. Eventually, he was made a Knight of the Royal Order of St. Olav “for services in art.”

Later he said of “The Scream: “I was stretched to the limit: Nature was screaming in my blood.”(2)

Something very sad happened here. “The Scream” was an honest, extrasensory mediation of Nature’s suffering at the collective human suppression of the soul. The diagnosis of so-called “mental illness” and subsequent “treatment” succeeded in squashing his soul (psyche/anima), which is nature, thus bringing him into line with the establishment facade and thereby perpetuating its agenda! The modern interpretations of “The Scream” miss its point, which was about Nature in man’s soul screaming at him to heal the rift for the sake of all life.

Many years ago in my youth, I recall looking at a tree and weeping for no apparent reason, since I felt happy enough within myself. But my profound feeling was that I was “crying for Nature.” Our soul and nature are integral to one another for they evolved together. We have already seen this from C.G Jung’s writings in our consideration of the archetype where he stated that:

“In the realm of the psyche, archetypes organise images and ideas; in the realm of the physis, they organise the structure and transformations of matter and energy and account for acausal orderedness.”(3)

The label of “depression” is a meaningless blanket term in a mechanical myth that replaces the deeply engaged study of the varying responses to loss and disappointment in life that assail us all; for as we age, the complexity of life and our experiences fail to keep pace with our ideals so naturally, self-doubt and varying degrees of mortification ensue. Loved ones die and we suffer grief. Mid-life- also known as Saturn’s return in astrology- is a natural rite of passage in which we suddenly see the crassness of our lives and question the meaning of it all. How much of the life we are living is an unconscious attempt to please our families, a set of unconscious myths based upon wider society’s skewed view of the world instead of our folksoul expressing itself authentically? It is a deepening of soul that cracks the safe shell of the ego that has thus far protected us and leaves us vulnerable and in chaos. Scientific myth labels us as “sick” and gives us a pill to return us to a fictional state of health! Yet ancient mythology saw these raw events as rites of passage, the incursion of gods- in this case melancholic Saturn- into our lives: like a knife, he gouges out the crucible of our souls and enriches it with the soil of experience. Our mood states are the gods working within us to build and define our character; the process is the tending and cultivation of the garden of the soul.

One of the richest repositories for the wisdom of the soul-making process is in the ancient science of alchemy, the divinisation of matter and man. Outwardly, immortality must be incarnated through the transmutation of base metals into gold; inwardly, it is in the development of the subtle body- known as the diamond body in Buddhism. It is both art and science of soul, an endless round of initiation involving suffering, death and resurrection. The substance- whether material or human- must change character, be separated out then reformed into something other: it must “die” to be “reborn.” Always, some part of us is dissolving and others are reforming. If we feel “stuck,” it is because we are blocking the process of life flowing through us. Our very desire for a “solution”/”soul-ution” to our problems is found by placing all the stuff- “good” and “bad” alike- into the “solution” of a vessel and impartially feeling what we have. ‘Solve et coagula’ as the maxim of alchemy means “dissolve and coagulate”- breakdown and reformation. Your stories- emotions, memories, hopes, fears etc- are the prima materia, the first matter for this process. Such vessels could be deep conversation with a trusted friend, therapy, family, a diary etc. This “Great Work” of alchemy- the magnum opus of one’s life- is often described as a series of four stages represented by colours:

nigredo: a blackening or melanosis
albedo: a whitening or leucosis
citratus: a yellowing or xanthosis
rubedo: a reddening, purpling, or iosis.

Each stage culminates in the alchemical marriage, the conjunctio, the union of Sun and Moon, Sol and Luna, the masculine father principles of radiance, light, heat, and energy with the feminine mother principles of magnetism, mystery, beauty, feeling, and water. The inner marriage- often described in alchemy as a “chemical wedding”- is akin to the Taoist’s yin and yang and the Tantric yogi’s fusion of Siva and Shakti in the channels of the subtle body. It is represented as the union of the king/male and queen/female aspects of the ego. The king and queen embrace in a sealed pear shaped vessel or retort: this is marriage, a sealed, watery place where the two elements can dissolve and coagulate like chemicals, ripening the soul. It is a dark process: you can’t see the mysterious deep subconscious work and so its alchemy is often confused with surface personality issues. Alchemy describes Jung’s unification with the anima (female psyche) and animus (male psyche). It is the search for the Beloved, the eternal return to enlightenment, the chthonic deities guiding and deepening our lives with a dark light of illumination. This alchemy is the black sun, a dark luminosity that becomes you and which is less innocent and more interesting than naïve sunshine.

This image of marriage is crucial because it alludes to one of the deepest esoteric aspects of life. Marriage itself is a rite of passage that usually begins with love; love is the heildom of the heart and hearth, the deepest expression of the soul that lives in the heart. Love is central to human experience, an affair of the soul intimately tied to one’s destiny. Love is a kind of madness, symbolically represented as an adolescent youth, Cupid blindfolded etc. and often arrives- or leaves- unexpectedly. It can make one feel younger, carefree and crazy in its flightiness, hence its symbolism. You don’t “feel like yourself” in its flush; and it is this intensity of emotion that is required to break the ego to reveal the deeper self so that its dark work can begin. Love itself- or the fruitless search for love- are both vessels for a dark night of the soul. Love’s battlefield binds couples, families, communities; it is the language of life expressing itself authentically.

Thus it is no accident that in esoteric practices down the ages, the cultivation of the heart energies has been central practice. Its highest expression is compassion. But unlike the rather noodleised, airy fairy approach of many western Buddhists who are often “stuck in their heads,” the genuine practice involves feeling the truth of things with the heart. The Greeks called this alethia, an unveiling and unforgetting, “a deep remembering of the nature of things, so subtle, as to be expressed in poetry rather than dogma,”(4) about what is important and how things are. It is not the dogma of so-called “proof” of reality science today prefers and which, in reality, is a fantasy of the brain! Often, alethia feels painful: the Odinic heart knows this well. One of the main reasons people don’t recover from depression is that they are trying to use their minds to deal with what are actually issues of heart and soul, believing in the psychiatric fantasy of recovery as a perfect, static state of endless health and happiness! The fact is, depression and dark nights colour life and must be integrated within to add depth and dimension to the soul. Regret for example, is a static egotistical state that maintains guilt. Remorse is fluid and heart-based; it allows re-evaluation- and thus transformation- in the dark light of experience. You do not co-opt the soulful gods of the underworld into the shallow light of the intellect! If you try, emotions are merely repressed and subject to inappropriate “acting out” as reflected by the mass psychosis of modern society. As Jiddu Krishnamurti noted:

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”(5)

The archetype is as an internal and external image-making force- the source and directing force of our thoughts, emotions and interpretation of the biosphere. It precedes all of our image-making and informs us about ourselves. We live in an ancient and eternal symbiotic relationship with it that is fractal in nature. Hence, our mythological and cultural structures and practices are fractally self-similar. They have part-whole relations that recur at all scales; thus the relationship is holographic by nature. This fractal self-similarity has implications for character and it helps us perceive similarities at different scales in seemingly unrelated phenomena. Fractalisation is the key to an intricate web of communication across the biosphere. Obviously, this is crucial for the deepening of the folk soul- our evolution- and the attainment of Odin consciousness.

Central to fractal communication is electric and magnetic waves of energy produced by all lifeforms at an infinite number of frequencies and amplitudes via a phenomenon known as oscillation. All life is embedded within the electric and magnetic energies of the earth. Cells become entrained to one another and self-organise into intelligent life-forms that function symbiotically with the earth’s energies. Organs become exquisitely refined biological oscillators that respond constantly to electrical, magnetic, pressure, chemical and temperature variations in an eternal feedback loop; oscillators simultaneously broadcast and receive information.

Humans have three main biological oscillators: the heart, gut and brain. The most powerful is the heart: it generates an electromagnetic field some 5000 times more powerful than the brain. Interestingly, humans can alter their mode of cognition by altering focus within the body. The verbal/intellectual/analytical/linear cognitive mode (which the zeitgeist of the modern era prefers) is the brain’s domain. The second- the holistic/intuitive/depth mode is the domain of the heart and was that used by our ancestors to know the world intimately, to “speak” with plants and know their medicine without recourse to the unreliable scientific research of today.

Analysis of information flow into the human body has shown that it impacts the heart first: we experience the world through our heart, which then “thinks” about it and sends the data to the brain for further processing. A two way dialogue ensues and the heart “decides” whether what the brain wants will be effective or not. How many times have you acted rationally against “a feeling” and later regretted it? All of us are so entrained to the inferior linear mode of cognition and habituated to it through education, that when we try to return to cognition from the heart, we are still at the unsophisticated five year old stage of talking to fairies; because thereafter, we are educated out of it by culture. Try this simple exercise sometime: focus upon something that catches your attention and really notice its shape, colours etc; notice how it feels. Your physiological functioning will alter noticeably. But you must remain focussed on the object, not upon the expected alteration- not easy!(6)

The heart is a naturally non-linear, irregular oscillator. Heart rate variability is a measure of this non-linear activity whereby the heart engages in spontaneous fluctuations that detect and respond to many frequencies of encoded information in a dynamic way; the greater the HRV, the healthier the heart is. HRV is greatest in young people and diminishes with age and disease. Habituation to brain cognition (the verbal/intellectual/analytical mode) results over time in loss of heart coherence- that displays as reduced HRV. This results in degraded information content, disconnection and increased disorder in organ functioning because the heart becomes entrained to the linear brain instead of vice versa. Increased heart coherence (entrainment) has been found to impact most disease states including (but not limited to): congestive heart failure, arrhythmia, mitral valve prolapse, autoimmune disorders, depression, PTSD, fatigue, diabetes, stress and exhaustion, in fact most disease states. Genuinely re-establishing heart coherence can significantly reduce blood pressure over a six month period, with no need for medication.

The brain cannot perceive holistically, or inside things. It can only perceive the exterior world in linear fashion, as euclidean objects. Thus, man’s brain conceived hubris colonises the soul and seeks dominion through rational fact instead of the higher, heart-based ability to perceive meaning from the world- referred to as aisthesis by the Greeks. With aisthesis, “the soul is set on fire” through its aesthetic and sensate perception of the world: we are inspired by the world and simultaneously, it also breathes us in in an intimate exchange of ensouled phenomena and understanding.

As with any human skill, it takes years of practice to become fluent in developing heart-based perception; our heart intelligence is still working at pre-school level whilst our mind intelligence is postgraduate developmentally speaking. And there are problems. Rapid technological advance has not only challenged human adaptation; but its electronic nature- consisting of man-made frequencies- is of serious concern. I have spoken elsewhere about the HAARP and chemtrail phenomenon so won’t elaborate here suffice it to say that quite literally, we swim in an invisible net of EMFs. And as we have discussed, our own energy fields and those of nature are fundamentally electromagnetic, so it becomes obvious why we are witnessing an explosion of “new” diseases within the population.

The sum total of all the objects and processes driven by our technologies has been dubbed the technium.(7) It contains 170 quadrillion computer chips wired into a mega-scale computing platform; the number of transistors in it now equals the number of neurons in your brain whilst the file links in this network (web pages etc) equals the number of synapses in your brain. In short, this planetary electronic membrane is already comparable to the complexity of a human brain. It consumes 5% of the world’s electrical supply and has 3 billion artificial “eyes” (phones, webcams etc). Most eerily, it seems to be evolving “mutations” that have nothing to do with hacking, machine error or line damage such that a small fraction of the technium’s communications originate from the system itself, not human-made nodes. Evidence suggests it is beginning to behave like an autonomous, self-directed organism: spontaneous organisation with the flow of bits demonstrating a fractal pattern of self-organisation has been witnessed.

Using computers engages the right brain hemisphere, which means they generate emotional involvement and bypass the rational, processing, discerning aspects of the left hemisphere. Reading and writing on a computer is actually much like watching television: a mosaic of images, backlit screens and near instantaneous speed stimulate the right hemisphere and shorten attention spans. We are bombarded by information and images but, because of the medium of presentation, we are unable to place it into a context- that is, to synthesize the threads of data into the whole cloth of knowledge (as with reading a book). This is because the right and left hemisphere’s are conflicted in function when using a computer and so the brain’s protective critical faculty in the left pre-frontal lobe is disengaged. Quite literally, computerised technology is turning us into a species of ADD sufferers! For we rely on projected images (that engage the right brain hemisphere) and sound bites of information to evaluate complex issues (such as politics) that should obviously be evaluated using thoughtful reflection and fine analysis. Additionally, the emotions generated are not direct perception and heart-based; they are more like mental hallucinations!

Electronic gadgetry- phones, computers, TVs, gaming devices etc- split our attention between the actual environment and a virtual, mediated environment. We now have so many layers of noises, signals, devices and habits entrained around the devices, that we are insulated from the natural world and effective connection with it is limited- if not completely eliminated- by this man-made static. And as we all know, global activities- such as politics and the media- are mobilised and synchronised by the great agenda that is seeking to destroy the archetype. We are in a war that is cybertronic, technotronic and psychotronic(8)- that is, one that employs state of the art technology, subliminal programming and malicious occult practices to manipulate the mental atmosphere and to subvert and destroy the Aryan folk soul.

It is a sickening fact that globally speaking, we lose an area of forest the size of Switzerland annually. Further, we are having what amounts to an artificial brain transplanted into the folk soul, onto Yggdrasil, which we are forced to connect with at the expense of nature through the zeitgeist of the times. This “brain” is a product of the alien archetype of the New World Order, which is dominated and motivated by entropic, anti-natural, materialistic forces. This artificial fractal brain is a direct attack upon the archetype at a level never before known for it is evolving into an energy capable of attacking it upon its homeground within the consciousness of the folk soul and thereby entrapping souls in an endless material cycle that has no space for evolution. Effectively, a new world of illusion is being created- a virtual world devoid of soulful connection with nature and its captured souls merely possessed ants, appendages to the great machine. Left unchallenged, humanity will become nothing but a golem in a New World Order and this artificial matrix will be its nightmare reality.

However, with a powerful application of will and steely determination, we can fight this horror. We do this by deliberately fostering our symbiotic relationship with nature, by continually “re-minding” ourselves that we are a fractal of Mother Jorth. Eating natural foods, grounding/earthing, walking in nature, gardening, switching off phones, computers etc, meditating, establishing an anchoring philosophy of life through reading quality literature are all essential in the war. Activities that ground us in feeling within the moment, fostering love and care are all crucial to this heart-based cognition we must needs nurture in this war.

Before we finish, I would like to show you a very quick way of achieving heart coherence devised by the Heartmath Institute, called Quick Coherence®(9) It will help you find a feeling of ease and inner harmony that will be reflected in your heart rhythms and allow you more access to your higher intelligence thereby improving your focus, creativity, intuition and higher-level decision-making. Athletes call it being in “the zone.” Use it anytime you feel stressed, anxious etc.

So close your eyes and relax.
“Step 1: Heart Focus.
Focus your attention on the area around your heart, the area in the centre of your chest. If you prefer, the first couple of times you try it, place your hand over the centre of your chest to help keep your attention in the heart area.

Step 2: Heart Breathing.
Breathe deeply but normally and feel as if your breath is coming in and going out through your heart area. Continue breathing with ease until you find a natural inner rhythm that feels good to you.

Step 3: Heart Feeling.
As you maintain your heart focus and heart breathing, activate a positive feeling. Recall a positive feeling, a time when you felt good inside, and try to re-experience the feeling. One of the easiest ways to generate a positive, heart-based feeling is to remember a special place you’ve been to or the love you feel for a close friend or family member or treasured pet. This is the most important step.” (10)

Now open your eyes.

I would like to finish by reading you a poem by William Blake taken from a series of his works entitled “Songs of Innocence and Experience.”

The Sick Rose

O Rose, thou art sick.
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

Folks: don’t let the wormtongued gollum destroy the rose of your heart!

Hael Odin!
*** *** ***
FOOTNOTES
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edvard_Munch

2. Ibid

3. http://www.odinic-rite.org/main/defending-the-archetype/

4. Moore, Thomas,
“The Soul’s Religion: cultivating a profoundly spiritual way of life”
(Harpur-Collins, 2002).

5. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jiddu_krishnamurti.html

6. From:
Buhner, Stephen Harrod
“The Secret Teachings of Plants”
(Bear & Company, 2004).

7. Named by Kevin Kelly, editor of “Wired” magazine. Discussed by Geoff Olsen (The Machine’s Embrace) in the Canadian magazine “Common Ground” Issue 259, February 2013.

8. Psychotronics: a term used for the study of parapsychology that was intensively investigated in the Cold War.
Cybertronics: the study and design of electric control systems. HAARP and GWEN towers are capable of controlling populations onto which they are directed and manipulate the weather systems globally

9. http://www.heartmath.org/

10. http://www.heartmath.org/free-services/tools-for-well-being/quick-coherence-adult.html

Additional Resources

A highly recommended resource for those experiencing life’s darkest hours:

Moore, Thomas
“Dark Nights of the Soul:” a guide to finding your way through life’s ordeals
(Piatkus Books, 2012).

Introduction to Alchemy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy
http://www.alchemylab.com/index2.htm