One of the great curses of our modern times is that we’ve forgotten the holiness of the dark places.

The dark receives a lot of negative projection. We literally lock the doors to keep the dark out.

Yet the dark occupies half of our existence. On the physical plane over the course of a day (depending on the time of year) and throughout the year light and dark balance out so that in each year we receive equal measure of both.

Just as the natural world is made up of light and dark, we too, psycho-spiritually, are made up of them both. And yet the predominant spiritual path in our mainstream culture is light-oriented.

My experience of light-oriented spirituality was that my darkness grew stronger. All of my unprocessed pain and trauma magnified when I focused on the light. I felt an internal shame for not being able to reach ‘enlightenment’.

Then I came across the path that could take me to the depths I was craving. The path of the Deep Feminine literally saved my life.

I was 29 at the time. On a year-long journey of feminine initiation I was gifted the opportunity to meet my shadow and I felt such relief at the invitation to descend. 

In a circle of women, we gathered to reveal at long last all of the hidden and distorted places within us so that all of that programming could be re-wired into a tapestry of beauty and love.

I was gifted the tools over the next 8 years of my apprenticeships, to navigate the path of descent, the underworld, of going down into the fertile terrain of darkness. There I unearthed ancient and primal memory stored in the bones of Gaia, where she sat waiting for the ones who were brave enough to get down and dirty.

When we can descend all the way down into darkness and do the alchemical work of transmuting our deepest wounds, pain and traumas, then we become our own soul-making alchemists. This is the path of our own becoming.

When we integrate the unconscious with consciousness we once again become whole. This is the 1st step. Then when we become whole enough we open up portals to the realm of soul, where our deepest magic, love and power: the well of our deepest fulfilment, ecstasy and love reside.

Then we come to see that the darkness is holy.