Black envelops and swallows,
is cave and abyss,
the holes of space,
the bowels of the earth,
night, melancholy and death.
Mourning sinks into black
and rests in its muffled
sadness.
The widow’s veil of
separation and loss,
the judges`s robe of sober
authority,
are all black.
The black vestments of the
cleric
renounce the bright-hued
pleasures
of the sensual, material life,
the black elegance of evening
wear
engages them.
There is Bible black, ebony
black and
the black of scarab, crow and
cat.
Black is foulness, decay and
dirt.
But life arises from the black
fertile
covering of soil and earth.
In Ancient Egypt black evoked
death.
Black encompasses the terrors
and beauty
of the underworld and its
tenebrous precincts
of healing and irritation.
The Navajo see sinister in
black but, because it
also confers invisibility,
black`s capacity to protect.
Black comes from the North,
the direction of danger
but also from the East, the
place of sunrise.
Black con-notates the seasoned
individual,
achieved social status and
authority,
patience and the ability to
wait.
Is black a colour or the
absence of colour?
Black is primeval chaos, the
polar heart,
hidden centre and locus of
emergence.
“The dark night of the soul”
- a turning away
or a turning towards is
trans-formative,
sublimation and purification
of all emotions,
the luminous darkness of
self-understanding.
Black or nigredo is
a state of disorientation,
exhaustion, self doubt,
depression, inertia,
confusion, and disjunction.
Alchemists description “black
blacker than black”,
black
sun, widow, orphan, caput corvis
or
“head of the crow”.
Nigredo was
in fact a cause for rejoicing;
it expressed conjunction with
psyche`s illimitable,
teeming potential, conceiving
the golden embryo of self.
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