darkness calls, understanding beckons -- will you enter?

Many people think in metaphors, but as a Pagan, I find that metaphors often express a deeper reality (that I call Meta) which would be difficult, if not impossible, to talk about otherwise. One set of such metaphors is Light and Darkness. Our culture equates light not only with goodness, but also with simplicity, clarity and understanding. Darkness, seen as Light’s opposite, thus equates with evil, as well as complexity, obfuscation, and incomprehensibility. I think there's more to the story. A large portion of the human brain is devoted to vision, which requires light. During daylight hours, we see what we focus on *, which naturally seems to be what matters most. Come nighttime, we are at the mercy of what we smell, hear, feel, and taste (or what we don't perceive until it's too late). It's no wonder we tend to prefer conditions that play to our strengths. But darkness can teach us many things, including living with uncertainty, ambiguity, weakness, failure, and death. Darkness embraces all that we fear, including ourselves.

Light exhorts us to put a brave face on our lives, admit no fear, go down fighting, never accept defeat. Light says we can always be happy, if we just try hard enough. Light says positive thinking wins the day. Light says death can be vanquished; eternal happiness awaits us in a next life.

Darkness is pragmatic. The abyss awaits us all. Only if I enter it respectfully, mindfully, can I learn its lessons, and potentially emerge, reborn. But I have to die first. It will hurt. It will be more than I can bear.

I will encounter my shadow aspect(s) **, and other pieces of me long missing. Sometimes the scariest part is realizing these pieces are just as much me as the pieces I like. Then I have to befriend them, treat them kindly, and learn to love them.

When I take this road, I take it alone. Even finding the right questions to ask is difficult, and there are no easy answers. There are long periods where nothing seems to be happening. My efforts to fill this void come to naught. I must be patient. It is only by fully inhabiting this emptiness *** that I make possible significant emotional growth.

I have undertaken this journey several times. It doesn't get easier. Once I have descended, and then ascended, I am a very different person than I used to be. People of light find me disruptive, uncomfortable, even unpleasant. Some of my most significant relationships have foundered in such a way. I had to let them go.

I used to be an unqualified optimist, but the more I go through this process, the more nuanced and complex my thinking gets. Sometimes I need to grieve for what I've lost. Sometimes I need to fully explore my doubts. Sometimes I need to feel despair. Sometimes I need to say, “I learned useful lessons by doing X, I don't regret doing it. But it was dangerous and painful and I paid a high price. I bear scars.”

+++

I am a child of Earth. My gods are chthonic ****, and so am I. Our spirits dwell in earth and the depths of seas, where everything is dark, within and without, and everywhere in between.

We are born out of darkness, and in time, to darkness we all return. The wheel of life turns, what was created is destroyed, and new possibilities arise. Nothing lasts, so we must enjoy every moment we have.

Darkness illuminates truths that daylight obscures. ***** In darkness I perceive beings at widely different scales [cells, animals, humans, trees, stars], and I see that we are all part of the universe, and we all matter. We all face challenging situations, we all make moral choices, we all wonder if we’re doing the right thing. When I die, my atoms and molecules will enter darkness, and be taken up by other living beings. My parts will be recycled, some of them staying in earth, and others becoming part of worms, soil microbes, trees, fungi, grazing animals, predators. Perhaps someday parts of what used to be me will become part of a river, a mountain, or a tectonic plate. Parts of me will get to be a turtle, a slime mold, a squidworm, a paper birch, a lichen. Wherever “my” parts go, I will remain a child of Earth.

+++

I stand in the dark of night at a sacred site, speaking to trees and the moon. Leaves rustle, and I hear a large animal moving towards me. It's probably a deer, maybe a fox, yet I feel a sense of dread and awe and uncertainty swelling within me. Part of me wants to flee in fear, but I stay, increasing my comfort with not-knowing.

Around midnight, night after night, I traverse my neighborhood, open to whatever experiences cross my path. Each experience differs subtly, but the dread and awe and uncertainty remain. I renew my relationship with darkness, with mystery every time.

--Laiima

---

Notes and links:

* For an in-depth explanation of the cognitive processes of visual thinking, read Colin Ware’s book, Visual Thinking for Design.↩

**The Wikipedia entry on the shadow in Jungian psychology gives a good explanation of this phenomenon.↩

***See Clive Hazell’s The Experience of Emptiness, pp. 114, 115, 121.↩

**** Chthonic, strictly speaking, refers only to “beings who dwell in, or under the earth”, not ocean depths; but for me it evokes any place that is deep and dark and, in some sense, unfathomable. ↩

***** I do recognize the irony of using ‘illuminate’ as a verb when the subject is darkness. My thesaurus gave me these synonyms for illuminate: “make understandable or lucid, throw light on, elucidate”. Its antonyms were: “darken, becloud, cloud, obscure”.↩

---

 

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Comments

[Sixwing]

Laiima, that's beautiful.

I have similar experiences with darkness - there's a saying that I am probably misremembering, something to the effect of "if you want to know who you really are, look at what you do when the lights go out."

Challenging, yes; frightening, yes; difficult, too. But in a sense, it can be very comforting to go into the dark places and be oneself, without the need of light-time masquerade.

[Froborr]

According to TVTropes, bastion of all knowledge, it's "character is what you are in the dark." Standard TVTropes link warnings apply: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhatYouAreInTheDark

The post itself was highly evocative, but I need more process time to respond coherently.

[Ross]

Last week, the subject of Stephen Baxter's Doctor Who Missing Adventure HG Wells fanfic sequel "The Time Ships" came up over at Slacktivist. This article is sort of interestingly timed in light of that, because to my mind, one of the more powerful scenes in that is when the Time Traveler is talking with one of the advanced Morlocks on the Dyson Sphere they built around the sun. He accuses the Morlocks of being horrible because they spend their time skulking in darkness (One of the major themes of the book is the Time Traveler coming to realize how many of the things he just takes for granted as EvilBadWrong are projections of his own subconscious. Though he only figures it out after he's permanently disfigured his Morlock sidekick due to freaking out when he wakes up to the sight of him), and his sidekick Morlock (Who has been assigned to take care of the time traveler because, like most of his people, this particular Morlock has two professions, and his are ancient history and teaching preschool) demonstrates why they did it by showing him what the stars look like when you can turn off the sun to look at them.

[Literata]

That "Darkness illuminates..." was perfectly poetic to me. Thank you.

[Josh Enigma (who is a Cthulhuic Entity)]

Wonderful post.

I often wonder if people overplay the dark/light divide. There is darkness, and there is light, but for some of us comfort is found in either. I prefer dawn and twilight. Dawn for the renewal, twilight for the wisdom.

I recently did some research on chthonic* entities for a short story I'm writing to enter a contest in August. I called the story "The Gravedigger's Union," and because I finished it on Monday and I'm getting ready to start proofing it, the timing of this post bringing up the subject matter is uncanny. Wikipedia isn't a lot of help on chthonic entities: it was just Greek entities and nothing but. However, over the course of my research, I did some guilt by association and figured that the aos si could be considered chthonic as well, and different forms of undead from classical folklore are also chthonic. The whole Earth = Darkness thought process is correct; cuz, y'know, it's dark in there (and by extension, all of the female qualities being associated with darkness speaking symbolical; the earth is a womb. It's dark in both places, but life is created and nursed in each.)**

* My spell checker is officially awesome. It suggested "Cthulhu" as a replacement for this word.
** Which would officially make Mars postmenopausal, and Venus and Mercury part of the child-free movement ;)

[Literata]

The connection between Earth as a womb and potential place for worship of rebirth was something that was brought home to me very viscerally when LitSpouse and I visited Ireland and toured some of the megalithic sites. I'm no archaeologist, but by the end of the time there, I was getting pretty irritated when just about every single structure that had any human remains inside it was continually and often solely referred to as a tomb. As far as I could gather, at many sites (like Newgrange) there was evidence that some of the places had small amounts of human ash in them, but not nearly enough for a whole person, and probably from multiple people, implying that ashes might have been taken into the structure and then taken out again, with a small portion left behind on purpose or accidentally. Think of Christian cathedrals: many of them had people buried in them, nearly all of them had dead people in them for a time before ultimate disposal elsewhere, but they're a heck of a lot more than tombs. Sorry, I'll return the soapbox to its proper location now...

[Lonespark]

Haven't read the whole post yet, but thanks to N.K. Jemisin I equate Light with Itempas, and he's really kind of a dick. I guess I've equated light with harshness for a while (interrogation lights, the Arizona sun OMG) for a while now, and Itempas fits in with that.

[Laiima]

@Lonespark, I absolutely agree about Itempas!

Twenty-some years ago I also read Judith Tarr's Avaryan Rising books, in which one of the main characters, Mirain, is literally a child of the sun god, and at one point goes off the deep end and starts to burn up the whole world, sort of. He definitely doesn't understand moderation, or how plants need a rest, both at night and during an off-season, as do animals and people. That's probably when I started thinking about how "all sun/light all the time" is really not healthy for anybody. Plus I was always drawn to darkness, but of course that's stereotyped as evil or wrong or "dark magic" (in a bad way).

[Lonespark]

Oh, this is beautiful and profound, and filling my brain with a profusion of Deep Thoughts and blog post brainstorms.

Also, this,
Parts of me will get to be a turtle, a slime mold, a squidworm, a paper birch, a lichen. Wherever “my” parts go, I will remain a child of Earth.

prompts me to quote LeGuin in The Dispossessed:
"There are souls...whose umbilicus is never cut. They never get weaned from the universe. They do not understand death as an enemy; they look forward to dying and turning into humus."

That sums of the my Heathen approach pretty well, and reminds me a bit of Wendell Berry. That quote and yours above both make my soul sing.

[Lonespark]

There is darkness, and there is light, but for some of us comfort is found in either. I prefer dawn and twilight. Dawn for the renewal, twilight for the wisdom.

So now we've got the NightLord, the Dayfather and the Grey Lady all getting praise. Cool. Perhaps the universe really wants me to write some sort of spoilerific guest post about The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms? It might help with the unbearable wait for the third book.

[Lonespark]

I saw dawn from the non-traditional side this morning. It imparted a lovely sense of balance and possibility, and maybe even kinship with nocturnal beasts.

[Lonespark]

** Which would officially make Mars postmenopausal, and Venus and Mercury part of the child-free movement ;)

Neat.

[Laiima]

@Lonespark, I have not read _The Dispossessed_, but your quote makes me think I need to track it down. Thanks for suggesting it!

[Lonespark]

I recommend it. It's not mostly like that, so much, though. The person described is main character's partner, who is a biologist or something, but she isn't in most of the book. It is a wonderful book, and I also love the companion short story "The Day Before the Revolution."

[Jeff Lipton]

I was just wondering the other day... most cultures see light (and, by extension, white) as good, pure, holy, whatever and dark as bad, dirty, unholy. But, I wondered, of cultures where the people are themselves dark? Anyone with experience in anthropology who doesn't mind educating a curious, but largely uneducated lay-person is encouraged to e-mail me: jhlipton [at] yahoo [dot] com.

Thanks in advance.

[Lonespark]

But I don't think it's true that most cultures worldwide through time see light as good and dark as bad. The majority of cultures I'm aware of have many deities or powerful spirits representing many aspects of the world... Hades isn't evil or bad, just Cthonic, etc.

"White" was and maybe still is pejorative in Scandinavian culture. "White Christ" was cowardly and weak compared with "Red Thor." I appreciate this every time I have the opportunity to call someone "Lily-livered." And Heimdall is the "brightest/whitest of the gods," but that probably means he's very shiny and/or has white hair. (Which means both he and Itempas could be played by Idris Elba with a wig or some bleach exposure...hmmmm...)

And here I want to say something about Vodun and/or Aztec deities, but I think I'm a tad out of my depth. Anybody?

[Lonespark]

I should have just said bleached hair. What I said doesn't make sense at all. D'oh.

[Lonespark]

Also Hinduism generally and Kali specifically and again, probably shouldn't open my insufficiently educated uneducated mouth, but I know there's something to be said.

[Literata]

"Dark am I, yet lovely, O daughters of Jerusalem, dark like the tents of Kedar, like the tent curtains of Solomon." - Song of Songs 1:5 NIV.

[Josh Enigma (who is a Cthulhuic Entity)]

@Jeff -

White is not a good, pure and holy color in Asia. White represents death and disease, because that's the color of pale skin. That was true for the Greeks, Romans, and others as well. I'm not entirely sure when white shifted to mean pure, innocent, and good, but that is exclusively a European (and by extension, American) thing, and probably saw first use with the development of white wedding gowns (the white is supposed to represent innocence and virginity).

As for why light became so important: First and foremost, humans are animals. Being animals, we have necessary drives instilled in us by evolution; a fear or being uneasy in the dark is one of those drives hardwired into you by many millions of years of evolution. It goes something like this: Humans have two incredibly important senses (not including the vestibular-kinesthetic one); sight and smell. Human sight is powered by light - the light hits the rods and cones in our eyes and that information is transferred back to the brain, which creates the images that we see. No light means you can't see. If you can't see, that forest suddenly becomes very, very dangerous - especially when there are predators that can see in it. Thus, because light is necessary for continued existence in more ways than one, it took center stage in the human psyche; it defeats the darkness, it drives back the shadows, and it helps confront and displays the unknown (and, on a more basic level, it helps you see what can eat you and gives you a chance to defend yourself - or get a good head start running from it). Light isn't important to the psyche of just humans - it's important to the psyche of all animals that ar diurnal. Other animals that lack the ability to see at night become just as nervous as humans do, because they don't know if there's a predator out there waiting for them or not.

Not to mention there's the fact that, without light, things have a disturbing tendency to die. If you remove a flower from the sunlight, it dies. If you keep a human away from it long enough, they become sick. The draw to light has nothing to do with any cultural phenomena; it's strictly evolutionary and strictly biological in nature.

[Josh Enigma (who is a Cthulhuic Entity)]

That should be "dead skin," not "pale skin."

[Laiima]

I think I vaguely remember something about white being the traditional color of death and mourning in China, or maybe other places in Asia.

Not *quite* the same thing but apparently the color associated with the goddess of death, Giltine, in Lithuania is yellow, because that's the color of bones. And she herself dresses in white clothing.

Lithuania is in northern Europe, slightly east and/or south of Scandinavia, and its people are Caucasian, with a high proportion of people born with towheaded hair (which darkens as they age).

I had read somewhere that people in northern climates prefer pale and sort of watery colors, while people in southern climates prefer bolder, darker colors. Not sure if that's true or not, but if it were, it might be a correlation with melanin levels in their skin.

[Josh Enigma (who is a Cthulhuic Entity)]

Wait, I have a theory as to why White shifted from "death, decay, and sickness" to "good, pure and holy."

Christianity did it.

See, in Christianity, what animal represents Christ? The lamb. What color is the lamb's wool again? White.

[MercuryBlue]

Which would officially make Mars postmenopausal, and Venus and Mercury part of the child-free movement ;)

I initially read that as the Roman gods, which...

Great post, Laiima.

[aravind]

What interesting though is how light is mapped to colors. In Europe and various colonies, it seems like white is equated with light. As Josh just pointed out, white wasn't seen as light but as death in a lot of Middle Eastern cultures. That said, light was still pretty strongly valued. The example that's coming to me at the moment are all the representations of lamps in Mamluk architecture (in Egypt mainly). The light from the lamp represented knowledge (both Quranic and otherwise) and wisdom. Sometimes this was even pretty literally applied, with the highly decorated mosque lamps illuminating spaces enough that the Qu'ran could be studied without daylight. Intriguingly, from a modern "Western" perspective, is how all of this imagery and valuing of light was divorced from the new equation of light and white coloration.

[Literata]

There's also some interesting things about "sweetness and light," which was a formulaic phrase for a while, as being about twin novelties enabled by the Industrial Revolution, namely affordable, common light at night, and sugar. (Especially white sugar, just to cross more wires.)

Josh, you're right about the evolutionary importance of light, but darkness also has a tremendous role to play, and it's not just in terms of increasing nervousness. Think, for example, of the fact that keeping prisoners in permanently-lit cells is considered inhumane.

[hapax]

I have struggled for *years* with the dominant metaphor in Christianity of Light = Good, Dark = Evil. It absolutely permeates not just the Scriptures, but the liturgy, the hymns, the theology, to the extent that so often it is forgotten that the distinction is metaphorical in the first place (see the "Light metaphysics" of the Franciscan theologians, which probably inspired the pioneering works in optics by Bacon)

Setting aside that Light is all too often conflated with "rational" and "masculine" under "good" (which leaves "emotional / intuitive / mystical" and "feminine" for Team Evil) it also (as both the OP and every commenter has noted) ignores or defies the lovely, nurturing, comforting, inspiring, healing aspects of Darkness. The life-giving, peace-providing womb and bed of the Earth. The wisdom and union that can only be found in apophatic theology.

I really think that there needs to be a movement promoting Chthonic Christianity.

-----

On another note -- yes, Itempas is cruel, arrogant, violent and an *ass*, but honestly, the rest of his family is no great shakes either. And at least he shows a (tiny, hesitant) capacity to learn and change that I haven't seen in the rest of the gods.

[Laiima]

We can see at night, that's what our rods are for. We don't see colors (cones), and I assume our night vision is not stellar, compared to nocturnal animals certainly, but we are certainly not blind at night.

I can see quite a bit with truly minimal levels of light in my apartment in the middle of the night (only light source is green blinks of electronics).

[Laiima]

@Literata, I had no idea that's where/how that phrase originated -- fascinating!

[Sixwing]

hapax, a Cthonic Christianity movement would be -so awesome.- Can there be something in there about the three days in the tomb, and how Sheol != Hell by any sense of the translation?

Hmm, what else belongs..?

[aravind]

I'm not Hindu, so seriously take this with mounds of salt, but you are on to something with Kali, Literata. She, and assorted other Hindu goddesses and even their Shakti or female energy, are pretty regularly connected to birth and death and darkness and earth. That being said, those chthonic female deities come with a built in narrative of them being "wild" and having to be "tamed" by male deities that tend to be not so chthonic and frequently light-oriented instead.

So, yes, Hinduism in a broad sense values its gods and goddesses of darkness, but primarily (exclusively?) within the context of them being constrained by the deities of light. I'm pretty sure that when they aren't those gods tend to go down anti-hero avenue, some even reaching villain status. On the other hand, light-oriented gods and goddesses seem pretty much heroes regardless of whether they're balanced or not. The chthonic-ish deities seem to be limited to secondary statuses as a result.

[aravind]

Hapax: Chthonic Christianity

Oh my god. I'm with sixwing, I need this in my life. I need it in my life now.

[Josh Enigma (who is a Cthulhuic Entity)]

There's a funny thing about Chthonic religions.

Most chthonic religions are matriarchal religions, precisely for the reasons noted above. Who are the key figures in the Greek chthonic pantheon? Demeter and Persephone. Hades is important too, but it's mostly those two, because they're associated with the earth.

Christianity and Buddhism have some elements of that. The virgin birth, and the value of Mary as the mother figure links back to that older, matriarchal (and thus, chthonic) element. However, God acts through light, making Christianity a very patriarchal, male-dominated religion by virtue of the existing duality. The chthonic Chrisitianity that hapax hints to (Chtholic Christianity? *badumtish*) would be more centered around Mary as the descended from the fine tradition of Isis/Hera/Frejya/other mother figures I'm know I'm forgetting, with a focus on those healing aspects, rather than her being relegated to the Madonna/Mother of God and nothing else.

[Sixwing]

@Josh: *groooooan*

I now need to go research more about Mary, in relation to the deities you mention.

[Literata]

Aravind, that was Lonespark, but yeah, what you're saying is in line with what I've been familiar with as far as Kali and other Hindu goddesses' imagery. I also remember a story passed down in my family that when my great-grandmother, who was a missionary in India (now Pakistan), wanted a white dress for her wedding while she was there, the people she worked with were horrified, because it was the equivalent of wearing black to a wedding in the west (well, before black became the new black at weddings). And can we please verbally throw things at Queen Victoria for the white wedding dress meme?

Laiima, I can't absolutely swear that that's where the phrase came from originally, but there's a very good argument to be made that the phrase came about at the same time as the whole IR-brought-in-good-things-and-now-we're-clean-and-happy period, and that the concurrence helped reinforce it to become a set phrase. It's especially ironic considering that at that time, the real human impact of sugar was that a slave died for just about every five pounds of sugar. It was still profitable because humans are adapted to be addicted to the stuff.

[Literata]

Josh, Mary's role in Christianity is way more complex than that. It depends heavily on the imagery and stories told whether Mary is a Divine Mother figure, a savior of womankind who redeems the Sin of Eve, an impossible standard who leaves mere mortals in the dust, a merciful intercessor and kind co-redemptrix who saves people from TurboJesus, a devout and pious image of how women ought to collaborate in their own oppression, or all of the above in different proportions. See motto above.

[hapax]

Forgive the self-pimpery, but something I wrote several years ago on the "Light" motif in Christianity.

I'm happy to bring a more feminine face to God in the pursuit of Chthonic Christianity, but personally, I'd rather not do it through Mariolatry.

Miriam the mother of Yeshua may have been a great and good woman. But the mythology that has accreted around her in the past two thousand years has not been kind to real live women at all.

See also: what Literata said.

[Lonespark]

On another note -- yes, Itempas is cruel, arrogant, violent and an *ass*, but honestly, the rest of his family is no great shakes either. And at least he shows a (tiny, hesitant) capacity to learn and change that I haven't seen in the rest of the gods.

I didn't mean to imply otherwise. But I have a harder time appreciating the fullness and Mystery when it comes to Itempas. I think this is in large part because of His place in the power structure in the first book. Plus also I wish Shahar Arameri had her own book. Every time I learn something more about her story it just leaves me feeling like I understand less, sort of.

[Lonespark]

Isis/Hera/Frejya/other mother figures I'm know I'm forgetting,

Yeah, cuz those are totally interchangeable. It's like they're all just the same Lady wearing different clothes. Except not.

I know that's probably not what you were getting at, Josh. It's just, argh, hard polytheist toothgnashing. (And Freya seems like a weird choice for a mother figure anyway, especially when you've Frigga right there and you're talking about mothers of divine sons who might potentially redeem some part of the world, so they have to be sacrificed...)

[Josh Enigma (who is a Cthulhuic Entity)]

@Lonespark: Frig (Baldr's mother) is what I meant - I confused her for Frejya (Freyr's sister) for some reason; it's been a while since I taught Norse Mythology to a 7th grade class (although there are some scholars who think they did stem from the same proto-Germanic goddess). And no, I was aiming for the unifying archetype that underlies all of those characters and more - while you get different stories and different personalities, the fundamental archetype is the same.

@Literata: Oops. My bad; didn't mean to water down anything - normally I'm good about researching before I run off at the mouth, but not this time :-/

[Lonespark]

although there are some scholars who think they did stem from the same proto-Germanic goddess

We recently had a zillion-post-long Troth discussion on the subject, with a thorough review of sources in just about every Germanic language, although I recall the main issues dealing with Anglo Saxon material. The bottom line seems to be that the linguistic evidence used to suggest this doesn't really. That doesn't mean they might not have been worshipped as a single deity in some places and times. I guess the best evidence on that score is some of the ways Odin and Freya's relationship is described and how Freya's husband is identified. But at this point in time it mostly comes down to what individual scholars or practitioners choose to believe on the subject, in some cases influenced by encounters with the Goddesses in question.

[Laiima]

Something I ran across after I wrote this seemed like a goddess that I need to learn more about. I've been buying We'moon calendars for some years now. At the end of a year, I go back through them, and cut out all the artwork and prose that really resonated for me. The excerpts from this piece came from 2009 or maybe 2010 (I didn't think to mark the year on the back).

"Aditi, Goddess of the Luminous Void

Shamans speak of the void as a place of creation, unlimited possibilities. The Hindu goddess of the void, Aditi, is paradoxically also a sun deity. Her domain is "the nothing", no time and no space. She is the primordial womb from which all creation arises. They say she had no birth herself, yet is the origin of all things. [...]

Aditi speaks now from her place of the vast unlimited: 'I am the original manifestrix, the black being, womb of initiation in the luminous darkness. I hold all and nothing. [...] Drink of the dark vastness and be healed. [...] Pray to me. Light a dark candle in your soul. I will find you. I never miss. Your breath is my trail to you.'

Written by Beth Beurkens

[hapax]

Plus also I wish Shahar Arameri had her own book. Every time I learn something more about her story it just leaves me feeling like I understand less, sort of.

Agreed. Of course, there are LOTs of characters (gods, godlings, demons, and mortals) I really want to know more about. I guess that is the sign of a excellent world building.

The problem with Itempas (and to a certain extent, Nahadoth as well) as Jemisin *tells* us continually how beautiful and powerful They can be; but very rarely *shows* us. Consider this analysis Jemisin wrote of His character. It's very interesting, and insightful; but I don't know how a reader would be expected to get all that from the books themselves.

(Please understand that I consider Jemisin a MARVELLOUS, incredible, breathtaking writer. I just don't think characterization -- outside of the first person -- is her strong suit)

Ah, well. At least we're getting Sieh in the next installment.

[Mary Kaye]

I think my own attitudes toward light and darkness were influenced by (a) being so fair-skinned and heat-intolerant that the Sun does not strike me as a benevolent force, and (b) growing up partly in Alaska, where the day/night cycle is very extreme and you had better be able to deal with prolonged darkness or Seasonal Affective Disorder is inevitable. (It's a serious public-health issue there, with specialty clinics.)

Trying to belong to a light-centric religion eventually gives me the same sense of alienation and loss that having all summer and no winter would, or all dry and no rain. My thesis advisor, who was Australian, lived that way for years: summer in California, summer in Australia, no winter, no rainy season. I would feel terrible if I did this.

There is a lot of ritual that I can usefully do only at night. (I'm not positive what I'd do as an adult Pagan if I were still in Alaska. A darkened ritual room, I guess, or foreswearing those rituals during high summer when there's no darkness.)

[Lonespark]

Of course, there are LOTs of characters (gods, godlings, demons, and mortals) I really want to know more about. I guess that is the sign of a excellent world building.

YES.
I adore worldbuilding, and would totally read a shelf of books about the world where the Inheritance Trilogy takes place. I want a whole book about Darr, or at least High North, just for starters. And the Maroland. And...

And then after this the next book will probably be totally different and I'll want a whole encyclopedia of that world, too...

[Laiima]

@MaryKaye, where we live in Maryland can experience temperatures of 90° or above beginning in April and continuing through October. I was born during the summer, and I like hot weather in small doses, but days on end of 90-100 degrees is way too much for my northern European heritage to bear comfortably. I occasionally get migraines from the heat, even when I stay inside. I have to plan my activities around how hot the weather is likely to get, which means I'm essentially hibernating for several months.

So if I hadn't already had a relationship with darkness, I would've had to develop one just so I could leave the house sometimes!

[Mike Timonin]

My copy of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms has just arrived at the library, so I'm sorta going "lalalala" past the semi-spoilers... I didn't think it looked all that interesting when she did a Big Idea for John Scalzi, but I've decided to take a second look at it.

In my D&D campaign world, human society worships 3 deities (generally, assuming humans don't choose to worship a non-human deity) - a Lady of Light, a Grey Prince/Princess, and a Dark Lord. I needed a new and interesting place for a one-shot, so I worked up a desert city where the Dark Lord is the primary deity (as opposed to most of the rest of the continent, where the Lady of Light is prominent), and explained it as a natural response to the desert sun - shade and darkness were more valuable than heat which steals your water.

[Lonespark]

Ah, yes, I'm trying not to be a spoilerizing jerk, but I am clearly not trying very hard. Sorry.

I imagine it's not necessarily for everyone, but I was pleasantly surprised, or maybe surprisingly thrilled? I was afraid that the books would be too dark and violent for me. There were disturbing parts and I wish I hadn't read the whole first book in one weekend, because sleep deprivation makes the unsettling bits worse...the book should probably come with a couple of trigger warnings...

I knew Jemisin as a blogger at Alas, and I was interested from a "Hell yes, more Characters of Color few Kryriarchy Approved perspectives in fantasy!" angle. I was delighted to find that the books also hit my Religion Geek kink really hard.

[Laiima]

I ran across Jemisin's first book, purely by chance, at the library last summer (having never heard of her), and was totally enthralled. Especially by the delicious religious aspects. Also loved the lack of white people doing everything. Yay diversity! (Agree that parts were quite disturbing.)

[Mike Timonin]

disturbing parts - check. I'll be sure to flag them when I review.

[Steve Morrison]

I've seen a different derivation of the phrase "sweetness and light" — it refers to the two useful (to humans) things which bees produce: honey and wax (for candles). It evidently comes from Swift's satire The Battle of the Books.

[aravind]

Mary Kaye: summer in California, summer in Australia, no winter, no rainy season.

*shudders* I mean, I live in California and I love it (yes, even the summer), but that's a bit much. Living like that would be like eating an entire pie that's just crust or a cake that's without frosting - it would start off fine enough, but quickly get painful.

[J. Random Scribbler]

Sometimes the scariest part is realizing these pieces are just as much me as the pieces I like. Then I have to befriend them, treat them kindly, and learn to love them.

This, indeed. Having just come from the Depression 101 thread, this really resonated with my experience. There's this inner voice that castigates me for every little tiny mistake, and tells me that not being Absolutely Perfect means that I'm absolutely worthless. One of the major turning points in my life came the first time I realized that this voice wasn't evil or my enemy; it's part of me, and in a sense it's trying to be my friend, even though it's sadly mistaken.

It comes from a time in my life when I genuinely believed myself to be so messed up that only by superhuman effort and vigilance could I hope to pass as normal, and even the tiniest mistake or misinterpretation was potential doom. It's still stuck back there, and it thinks it's helping me by screaming about my inevitable human errors, because to it, the danger is still extreme. I used to envision it as this gigantic oppressor looming over me, but it's more like part of my broken inner child.

As is the way with most big "turning points", that realization didn't solve everything. It was like the first time the seemingly immovable stone budges just a tiny bit; at least now you know it can be moved, but it's still just as huge and heavy as before.

Many times I've lost sight of that, and gone back to believing my problems were immovable and unsolvable. There are always ups and downs. But it's the dark times that eventually bring me back to the place where I can just sit with that part of myself for a while, and be close to it. Where it can be quieter itself, and maybe dim that harsh spotlight it thinks it always has to shine at me. And ultimately, where I can remember and really feel that in trying to accept it and comfort it, I'm accepting and comforting myself.

[Julezyme]

I used to envision it as this gigantic oppressor looming over me, but it's more like part of my broken inner child.

JRS, can I have this sentence? Thanks!

[Literata]

Josh, thanks for acknowledging that.

Steve, that's interesting! I'll have to look that up.

JRS, that's wonderfully written. Thank you. Do you mind if I quote you?

Due to the vagaries of what is often misleadingly called "real life," my coven almost always meets at about the same time, and it was actually sort of strange to have full sunlight (okay, setting, but still full light) during the entire period of our last ritual. It made invoking the God easier, but in many ways it felt a little odd.

[Froborr]

I by nature have always been more attuned to darkness than light. I am very (very very very very) pale and very heat-averse, so I'm with the above commenter: the sun is not my friend. Also I have very light blue eyes, so I'm sensitive to bright light, too.

I like dark, cool spaces, and underground is awesome. I used to shy away from light as much as possible; I've gotten more accepting of it as time goes on, but I still find bright hot days with lots of sunlight incredibly uncomfortable and exhausting.

I think the best possible times of all times is dawn on a dry winter morning. Cold, crisp, fresh, quiet--a liminal moment of infinite possibility, when nothing exists and anything could be about to exist.

And that's as mystical or poetical as my dry'n'dusty soul is capable of getting, I'm afraid.

[Izzy]

I'm not sure how coherent this will be, due to the Worst Hangover Ever (speaking of times when darkness would be nice, and by the way, it should be noted that a heat wave affects alcohol tolerance in ways that I didn't realize), but I wanted to note that I love this post.

I like both darkness and light, by and large: I can feel a connection to both. (Oddly, I go more for stars/starlight in rituals than I do for sun or moon, given the option. In 4E, this would mean I worship beings of gibbering hostility. Hopefully that doesn't apply in RL.) Twilight is beautiful, but makes me feel weird: I think it's the liminality/change thing. Back when I was having massive mortality-and-change-induced panic attacks, they generally happened at sunset.

I...cannot really talk much about dawn. ;)

[Literata]

Froborr, you're less dry and dusty than you give yourself credit for!

Has anybody here done extended stints at night-shift work? When I was growing up, my mom did lots of nursing work on the night shift, and it has its own culture in a way. It also meant that the whole family's perspective on time was different; when you meet Mom over breakfast and she's on her way to bed, a perception of daytime as the "normal" active time gets challenged regularly. Yes, a lot of people do that sort of thing in college, but getting up at 5pm to go to work is different from getting up at 5pm because you were up until 9am seeing if you could beat StarCraft without any cheat codes.

[Josh Enigma (who has nothing at all to do with Babylon, with faith, or with a One World Religion, being an atheist from the US)]

@ Izzy - yay Starlocks! (assuming you're talking about the 4e I think you're talking about)

And speaking of heatwave - nothing sucks more than having to wear a dress shirt, dress pants, a blazer and a tie when the heat index is 105 degrees. I love my job but professional dress code sucks :(

[Brin]

aravind: cake that's without frosting - it would start off fine enough, but quickly get painful.

Sounds good to me. Not the endless summer or the pie crust, but I dislike frosting. I could never quite understand why people frost cakes and cinnamon buns by default rather than letting people add frosting as they wished. It makes extra work for them adding it, it makes extra work for me removing it*, some of the cake comes off when removing the frosting, which leaves me with less cake, and then I have to figure out how to discard the icky frosting. Where is the upside here?

*And if it can't be removed, I either have to abstain from the treat or settle for an (often vastly) inferior product.

Literata: Has anybody here done extended stints at night-shift work?

Dad has always had a very flexible work schedule, and he's rather night-owl-ish. When he worked away from home, we had to schedule ourselves around him. We couldn't eat dinner if he hadn't gotten home yet, and he usually got home somewhere between 8 and 10 PM. Family bedtime was at 2 or 3 AM, because that's when he slept given the choice (and he was given the choice).
Mom recently described me in conversation as "a morning person in a family of night owls", and she's probably right. For a while, I didn't realise I liked mornings, because I never saw them. When I was eight or nine, I took to occasionally staying up all night so I could see the otherwise unreachable dawn. (It's only an extra three or four hours in NJ summertime, after all.)
These days, Dad works from home, and our schedule doesn't revolve around his so much. Bedtime is more of a compromise, and need not be at the same time. I have chosen the earliest bedtime in the house, sleeping from 11:45 to 9. It's not early enough to see the dawn or that bright golden early morning sunlight, but it's better than it was.

[Lonespark]

My husband worked nights as an ICU nurse until he started med school last year. He's a "night owl" person who used to love working 3-11, but 7-7:30 was killing him. Along with his kidney issues our crappy air conditioning, and the difficulty of completely eliminating light in the bedroom on Phoenix in the summer.

I did a lot of my lab work during my ill-fated attempt at grad school in the middle of the night. I often focus well then, and there are fewer people and things to distract me, plus the I get to escape the heat in the summer. Every now and then I'll just stay up all night doing something; it's like my brain needs a reboot, and it works well unless I'm expected to be productive the next day, in which case it's a disaster.

[Lonespark]

I thought aravind meant frosting without cake, which, yeah, would quickly become too much of a good thing. The other way round doesn't seem bad at all, to me.

[Froborr]

@Brin: Just curious because I used to also hate frosting, until I realized I only hated the cheap oily frosting virtually all commercial bakeries use--have you ever had homemade frosting? It was a revelation for me. If you have and dislike it or don't care to try it that's cool, just thought I'd put it out there.

I don't understand how you're family's schedule could work--didn't anyone have school/work in the morning? Most schools around here *start* at 7 a.m. or earlier--forcing your kid to regularly stay up well past midnight would I think count as child abuse.

[Froborr]

Also, I am *completely* a night owl, but alas my field does not permit me to set my own hours--I must be able to regularly meet with the people whose knowledge I'm documenting, and that means daylight hours.

[Lonespark]

forcing your kid to regularly stay up well past midnight would I think count as child abuse.

I...maybe? But I think the main thing is that the kids get enough sleep to be healthy. A bunch of hours at once is probably best, but if the naps all add up to enough, it could be ok, depending on the age of the kid. And with homeschooling and/or flexible work hours, that's totally possible.

Now I am looking over my shoulder for the Parenting Police because I have let my kids stay up past midnight several times. Usually when it's really, really hot so no one can get comfortable, or when I'm struggling with depressive issues and can't summon the energy to get bedtime organized. But they get to sleep late in the morning and seem to come out alright. I guess I could be setting them up on a bad pattern, but I think we'll all get unavoidably straightened out when the boy starts kindergarten or I manage to get a job, whichever comes first.

[Laiima]

@Froborr, I think Brin is homeschooled, so she's not having to be at school at 7; school starts on her family's schedule, whatever that is.

If the kid in question is a night owl, they will likely find ways to stay up late, school or no school. I sure did. (But then, my big hobby was "catching up on sleep".)

@Lonespark, another night owl here. It's a running joke w Spouse how often I stay up much later than he does (and he's a night owl too, but he has a job). Occasionally it's very close to "all night" (anywhere in the 3-5 am range). But the thing is, when I don't do it for a while, I *miss* it. My circadian rhythms are such that my *really good brain energy* often starts kicking in around midnight.

Once in a while, I go to bed late (2 nights ago it was 2 am), and then I wake up very early (5:24) with a blog post or other piece of writing half-formed in my head. If I don't get up and write -- I've learned the hard way -- those ideas will have dissipated by the time I get up again at 9 or whenever.

[Brin]

Froborr: have you ever had homemade frosting? It was a revelation for me.

Don't think so. I don't think I'll try it: I can't make other people put homemade frosting on their cakes, and when I choose the baked good I prefer brownies to even non-frosting cake. My seventeenth birthday "cake" was actually brownies with ice cream, and 14 - 16 were the same ingredients in a different way (more focus on the ice cream and less on the brownie). I plan on doing the same for the foreseeable birthday future.

didn't anyone have school/work in the morning?

Nope. Dad's workplace allowed him to come in late as long as he also stayed late, Mom's a stay-at-home mother, and the kids are homeschooled. As long as I was awake and reasonably hungry at dinnertime and awake on Wednesday afternoons for Girl Scouts, plus any irregular events, nobody much cared when I slept. (Well, Dad might have cared a little, because he set the Internet connection to shut itself off between 2 and 9 AM. During my all-nighters, I simply played Nethack instead.)

[Laiima]

I like buttercream frosting in small doses, but I hate the truly-prodigious levels of sugar making it requires, so I rarely eat it. The oily stuff made by grocery bakeries? My in-laws love it, but I find it completely inedible.

I don't like frosting/icing on cinnamon rolls either. Too goopy and sickly-sweet.

I've been drastically cutting down on the amount of processed/sugary foods I eat, and find that I prefer more (comparatively) subtle sweetness like that in fruits or honey.

[Dragoness Eclectic]

I played Runequest for years, and my favorite character is a troll, a creature of Darkness. In the world of Glorantha, Light and Dark are enemies, opposites, but neither is objectively Good or Evil. It's a point of view thing (e.g., the Sun worshippers consider creatures of Darkness to be hideously Evil Monsters, and the Darkness gods to be Evil gods, and the Darkness worshippers feel the same way about the Solar dieties, and they happily slaughter each other). Ditto for Storm vs Moon, Western Monotheism vs. central polytheism vs. Eastern mysticism, humans vs. non-humans, non-humans vs. each other, etc, etc, etc. The only objective Evil in Glorantha is Chaos, and there's even some groups who think that's a point-of-view issue and not an absolute, because while unrestrained Chaos is Evil because it will destroy the universe, restrained Chaos is useful. The people who disagree with this (most sane people who aren't Moon worshippers) don't think you can restrain Chaos and that it is just more subtly corrupting when you think you have it tamed... game-world evidence tends to agree with this, but it can be re-interpreted.

It's a fascinating game world, where legend and myth define the laws of physics (i.e., what if the world really worked the way the ancients believed it did? What if the sky really was a dome far overhead with the stars set in it?), and full of many interesting insights into culture and religion.

What do I when the power goes out? Trip over things and look for the flashlight, or just keep working on my laptop. Or go to bed. Darkness is not Evil, it's just dark. Light is not Good, it's just that bright stuff that lets you see. The map is not the territory, the metaphor is not the thing itself.

[Ellen Brand]

This post is really fascinating, Laiima, and it made me think of the magic system for my fantasy novels/homebrew RPG that I've worked on. (It'll be for one or the other! Someday!) Dark and Light are elements, because I play too many JRPGs... they're the ultimate "Extreme" elements... Light is actually a destructive, combat element, while Dark is the healing, soothing, purifying element. White's ultimate spell is Holy Light, which basically blows stuff up anywhere around you, whereas Dark's is Phoenix, which will heal anyone in a certain radius, dependent on the strength of the caster.

[Will Wildman (still on vacation)]

I've always liked light/dark divides, and very much flipflopped between which I preferred over time. As an unnuanced child, I tended toward the light=good, dark=bad theory, but in time I found that boring and started looking for complexity. It helps that I never held to some of the obvious parallels (I like dark winter nights more than blazing summer days). The usual combination that I fall back on is origin and modernity - in one story, for example, light and its powers are about intricate thought, philosophy and progress, while darkness relates to the superficially simple but vastly deep: love, truth, justice, things that are ridiculously complicated and yet so elemental that we have them condensed into single words. In that framework, light is what we pay attention to most often - the road ahead, a direction to rally in, a beacon - but darkness is what makes us people, and will take precedence when disturbed.

---

(Unrelated to the above, I am trying and probably failing to imagine what a person with lifelong blindness would make of all this discussion and insight and general baccano. I bet it would be fascinating.)

[Izzy]

@Dragoness: Oooh, Glorantha. I played a four-year game of that. It's really got some fascinating mechanics (Enlightenment challenges, Chaos Features) and some interesting stuff (gorp) and then...well, unfortunately then there are the Broo. Alas.

My character kept getting possessed by her prior incarnation, who was really evil, and at one point had her heart removed...leaving her able to hide the Book of All Plagues in the cavity remaining. Also, she got turned inside-out and believed, for a time, that this was a good thing.

Strange game.

Re: frosting: Love it myself. Can't eat as much of it as I used to. (Me: "I'm sort of alarmed that I can't eat an entire bag of circus peanuts at one sitting any more." Friend: "I'm sort of alarmed that you ever *could*!") Am not a fan of the bakery-cake style frosting, though.

[storiteller]

As far as I could gather, at many sites (like Newgrange) there was evidence that some of the places had small amounts of human ash in them, but not nearly enough for a whole person

That's odd that they described Newgrange to you as a tomb exclusively. Our guide very specifically pointed out to us that there were indentations that resembled a woman's body when pregnant (one stomach like and one set breast-like), suggesting that it was a place of birth.

I really think that there needs to be a movement promoting Chthonic Christianity.

I think the current focus on light in Christianity without any acknowledgement of darkness also discounts those times of great doubt and spiritual crisis as useless or without worth. The idea of the dark night of the soul is that it's an important spiritual step and challenge that the believer comes out of more pure and committed to God. As a result, people going through modern-day spiritual crises just believe there's something horribly wrong with them and try to hide it. I've always embraced doubt in my faith, seeing it as a natural part of the growth cycle, but my theology is a bit unusual. Also, I've always loved the stars, so darkness with a hint of light has always seemed the best to me.

Has anybody here done extended stints at night-shift work?

I've never done it, but my husband did swing-shift work one summer during college. Swing shift is when you work 6 AM - 6 PM for three days, then have a couple of days off, and then work 6 PM - 6 AM. He would work to switch his sleeping schedule by staying up incredibly late with my friend playing Worms. I have no idea how he handled it though. Now, he works until 11-12 PM, so I'm either in bed or soon to be when he gets home. He normally stays up for a couple hours later after that, because it's hard to sleep right away. It's a weird lifestyle for both of us and will not be a permanent condition.

Now I am looking over my shoulder for the Parenting Police because I have let my kids stay up past midnight several times.

I think forcing your kids to stay up past midnight is vastly different than allowing them to do so. For night owls, I can see that being used as a special treat. But it could screw with your kids' biology to force them to do so every night for years, especially if they have to get up early for school. Kids need way more sleep than adults, even if they don't want it.

[kisekileia]

Froborr, I would say that the schools in your area are being borderline abusive by starting at 7 am or earlier. That's simply not biologically workable for most teenagers--it's essentially forcing them to not get enough sleep, because teens are biologically predisposed to go to bed late and get up late.

[Froborr]

@kisekileia: Oh, I know, it's absurd and disgusting. My own high school took from a much larger than normal draw area, so it started at 8:30 (and even at that, some of the more rural kids had to catch the bus at 4:30 a.m.), and that was a struggle for even those of us who lived nearby.

Is it actually documented medicine that teens need to stay up later and sleep in? That would have been awesome to know back when I was one.

[Brin]

some of the more rural kids had to catch the bus at 4:30 a.m

Please tell me that's a typo. If not, it hardly seems worth the bother of going to sleep.
If they begin the process of getting to school at 4:30, and end the process of getting there at 8:30, what takes up those four hours?

[kisekileia]

@Froborr: Yes, it's documented. There have also been schools that experimented with later start times and got excellent results--better rested kids who learned much more easily.

[Froborr]

@Brin: No, not a typo. And what takes up the four hours is riding the bus. Then school ended at 4:30 p.m., and you got home at 8:30 p.m.

Yeah, the Loudon kids had it pretty rough. I was literally *the only* person in the school who lived within walking distance, they kind of hated me for that.

[hapax]

storiteller: Also, I've always loved the stars, so darkness with a hint of light has always seemed the best to me.

Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

(from THE OLD ASTRONOMER TO HIS PUPIL by Sarah Williams; the rest of the poem is mildly to very irritating, but that couplet is sheer perfection)

[MercuryBlue]

hapax: I love that poem. Okay, yes, mostly that couplet, but still.

[MustelidWithDuckonHead (MWDH)]

I thought these might be of interest to various persons so I leave them here for your collective amusement(s):

http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/07/peeves

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/07/living-with-a-writer.html

[MaryKaye]

My son's therapist agrees that studies show teens should not be forced to get up early. I will ask her for cites next time I see her.

In Seattle the high school schedule is driven by (a) the buses have to be reused for middle and elementary schools, and (b) parents don't like elementary school kids out in the dark, so the older kids need to go earlier. Fortunately for us, my son will be in high school next year and it is *two blocks away*, yay! so even with the earlier start time he can sleep in later.

He actually seems to need 10 hours a day, but it's hard on everyone to arrange for that.

I was super nocturnal when I was a teen. I'm a bit less so now, partly, I think, because Paganism's acceptance of the dark paradoxically helped me to get along a bit better with the day, and partly due to biorhythm changes with age.

[Jeff Lipton]

That would have been awesome to know back when I was one.

I didn't know ANYTHING when I was one! I lerarned it all at two...

:-)

================================

I want to thank everyone for their insightful posts on white, light and darkness. I, for one, found it very educational.

[Amaryllis]

@Laiima: a lovely post.

@hapax: I'd go for some chthonic Christianity, if I could pronounce it.

If it comes to poetry, I think I've quoted this poem before, but maybe this part is relevant here:

But God remembers, and is everywhere.
He even is the void, where nothing shines.
He is the absence of his own reflection
In the deep gulf; he is the dusky cinder
Of pure fire in its prime; he is the place
Prepared for hugest planets; black idea,
Brooding between fierce poles he keeps apart.
-Mark Van Doren, from "The God of Galaxies"

Or, less chthonic and more astronomical, Frost's The Star-Splitter is another old favorite.
So Brad McLaughlin mingled reckless talk
Of heavenly stars with hugger-mugger farming,
Till having failed at hugger-mugger farming,
He burned his house down for the fire insurance
And spent the proceeds on a telescope
To satisfy a lifelong curiosity
About our place among the infinities.

Often he bid me come and have a look
Up the brass barrel, velvet black inside,
At a star quaking in the other end.
I recollect a night of broken clouds
And underfoot snow melted down to ice,
And melting further in the wind to mud.
Bradford and I had out the telescope.
We spread our two legs as it spread its three,
Pointed our thoughts the way we pointed it,
And standing at our leisure till the day broke,
Said some of the best things we ever said.

We've looked and looked, but after all where are we?
Do we know any better where we are,
And how it stands between the night tonight
And a man with a smoky lantern chimney?
How different from the way it ever stood?

[Lonespark]

Amaryllis, just...damn. And thank you.

(Van Doren? Like Van Doren Van Doren? Now I want to go see if I have Quiz Show streaming on Netflix.)

And Frost...is yeah. wow. The first bit reminded me of Spoon River Anthology.

Also Fire and Ice is a love Heathenish poem.

My grandpa once cleaned Robert Frosts's windows as a summer job.

[Wednesday]

I'm amazed nobody has brought this up, but in Thud! by Terry Pratchett, he explores the dwarven culture and its beliefs. Because they're a subterranean culture, being enlightened isn't really a compliment:

The first Brother walked toward the light, and stood under the open sky. Thus he became too tall. He was the first Man. He found no Laws and he was enlightened.

The second Brother walked toward the darkness, and stood under a roof of stone. Thus he achieved the correct height. He was the first Dwarf. He found the Laws Tak [the dwarven god] had written, and he was endarkened.

I remembered it when I read your footnote about the irony of using the verb "illuminate," and I thought, "Oh, you mean 'endarkened.'" (Which I knew had to be PTerry, because who else would have thought of that?)

Sometimes I feel like every time someone stumbles on a lovely idea, if I look very closely, I can find Mr. Pratchett somewhere in the vicinity. But I don't mind.

[J. Random Scribbler]

Julezyme, Literata, and anyone else so inclined: please feel free to quote anything I post here.

I was always a night owl, and never liked mornings when I was a kid; the sun coming into my window meant it was time to drag myself out of bed by the scruff of my neck, do chores, and then have to go to school. Sleeping in was always my favorite thing in the world, when I could get away with it.

Laiima, I hear you; when I was a teenager I also always found ways to stay up late, or at least stay awake in bed. Some people are just natural night owls. I don't think it hurts kids to stay up after midnight if they're getting enough sleep in general, and if they don't have to get up at some bizarrely early hour for school.

For me the really good mental energy starts kicking in about nine or ten PM, which is unfortunately about the time I really should be getting ready for bed. My job lets me have a flexible schedule, but I've been pushing that rather too hard in recent years, I'm afraid.

Anyway, as intense as I sometimes get about this metaphorical stuff, I think ultimately I agree with you, Dragoness Eclectic; light and darkness have a reality that doesn't much care about whatever meanings we humans attach to the concepts of Light and Darkness. I guess maybe that's what makes it so easy for us to see all these different and often conflicting meanings in them.

[Amaryllis]

Lonespark: And Frost...is yeah. wow. The first bit reminded me of Spoon River Anthology.
Yes, that's what I like about Frost. You start with some ordinary, perfectly observed bit of daily life, and by the end of the poem-- or sometimes within a few lines-- you're staring into the unfathomable depths.

My grandpa once cleaned Robert Frosts's windows as a summer job.
Cool. As the line he puts into Brad's mouth in "The Star-Spitter," would have it, The best thing that we're put here for's to see. And a poet can see much better out of clean windows. ;)

[gallantrose]

Josh Enigma: "See, in Christianity, what animal represents Christ? The lamb. What color is the lamb's wool again? White."

Actually, sheep (and lambs) come in many different colors and have done as long as they're been domesticated. The Mouflon, one of the ancestors of the domestic sheep, is a dark red-brown with white markings--basically all humans have done is split the colors off onto individual sheep. (Except breeds like Jacobs, which are patterned both black and white.)

In his Natural History (written at around the same time as the birth of Christianity), Pliny the Elder mentions, along with white, sheep which are "native"-color, black, red, tawny, and of "their [Tarentum's] peculiar dark tint" (whatever that means). White fleece has certainly been considered valuable for its ability to take dye, but before the advent of cheap chemical dyestuffs (before the 20th C in other words) wool that you didn't have to dye had value as well.

Aaaand I think I'll end this digression because I feel a rant about the alienation of the consumer from the means of production coming on.... (Feels like an imminent sneeze, but in your brain :))

[Izzy]

Random idea: the "white=good/pure" thing might also come from economic factors. As most of us know, white is *very* hard to keep and get clean, and at a guess, pure white would have been damn hard to get in the days before industrial bleaches and similar. If you're a mortal person kicking around in white, you must have a lot of money (or be graceful enough that you never spill soup)*; if you're able to keep your clothes white all the time, you probably have some kind of vast power.

*I know the custom of white weddings comes from this: Victoria wore white for her wedding, because...fuck it, she was the Queen, she had all the money, and people latched onto the custom as a way to show wealth. The purity-and-chastity associations followed quickly, but they did come later.

[Lonespark]

Word, Izzy.
Few things make me more annoyed than people who think it's a good idea for me to dress my children in white clothing, or, gods forbid, white shoes.

[Lonespark]

Of course I guess the white clothing on girls, especially, thing is tied up with not wanting them running around wildly jumping in mud and so forth, or at least not expecting them to. But surely they are at least expected to eat?

[aravind]

Lonespark: Do you really want to ask that question? Let's just say, there's a lot of publications out there that insist that it's more important that women and girls eat daintily than to their satisfaction.

I mean breathing isn't always allowed either, just think of the corsets after all.

[Amaryllis]

"See, in Christianity, what animal represents Christ? The lamb. What color is the lamb's wool again? White."

Actually, sheep (and lambs) come in many different colors and have done as long as they're been domesticated.

Whereas the Bride of the Lamb (that is, the Church) is portrayed as clothed in white.
And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints. - Revelation 19:8

hapax would know better than I, but I believe the association of white with joy as well as with purity is a very old tradition in the Christian Church.

[Stella parva]

Thank you for the lovely article! I'll have to re-read it a couple of times to let it really sink in. Even though I disagree with a number of Jung's ideas, he has some lovely almost poetic descriptions of the archetypes he developed.

Thank you to all who posted the poems! I enjoyed them, a lot.

Sorry to spoil the Christian bashing a little: The Zoroastrians with their strong black and white view inpired (or infected) a lot of early Christian thought. Unfortunately, they took the light=good, strength, order, maleness, spirit; dark=evil, weakness, chaos, femaleness, the physical (expand the list at your leisure) very much into their hearts. The Gnostics played a similar role, especially in the spiritual vs. physical part.

Also, I recall reading something about an ancient Greek philosopher who basically said the same: darkness, chaos, evil and women on one side, light, order, good and men on the other. I don't remember the name, which is bad form for quoting (but may perhaps be excused in a teenager), but I remember how upset I had been by that list.

Really pure white has always been something special, because you don't get it just like that. Neither linen nor wool nor cotton cloth is pure shining white from the outset, it takes extra treatment with lime or other substances to get there. Which means white cloth got quickly associated with celebrations.

The white wedding dresses- what Izzy said. It filtered from top to bottom, though the associations were already in place and waiting. Before that, the wedding dress was mostly dark, meant to continue on as the Sunday best with very few alterations.

On the other hand, once you could get sturdy white cloth fairly realibly in the last two centuries, it became well loved by mothers, because you could boil the heck out of it and not screw up any (expensive) coloring. Which means lots of white cotton on babies. (And no, the wedding dresses were much too delicate to be treated like that!)

I actually don't really mind what color my little one is wearing. She gets visible dirt on anything, don't ask me how, and the white stuff at least can stand the bleach. Also: sun bleaching works better than I expected, if you have wet clothes with stains, a green lawn and the sun is shining.

[hapax]

I believe the association of white with joy as well as with purity is a very old tradition in the Christian Church.

The description of heavenly garments (angels, transfigured prophets, the saints in heaven) as pure or dazzling white is prevalent in the New Testament, and may come earlier Jewish traditions influenced by Zoroastrianism (I think there are references in the Dead Sea Scrolls)

But at any rate, white vestments were traditional in the Christian church for as early as we have documentation, and associated with Feast days and celebrations of the Incarnation and the Resurrection as early as differentiated liturgical colors were in use (mmm, I want to say Fifth Century CE?)

At any rate, the association of white with joy and sanctity was definitely codified by 1570. "Purity" was sometimes white (e.g. the lilies of the Virgin Mary) but just as often blue, also a Marian (plus a "celestial") color.

Of course, white was optional (and now preferred) liturgical color for funerals, but that's because they are supposed to look forward to the hope of resurrection.

I think the liturgical association of white with weddings is VERY recent (twentieth century, no sooner), but after all, the role of the priest in the marriage sacrament is pretty minor; the officiant in the wedding ceremony is the couple themselves.

[Mike Timonin]

Aaaand I think I'll end this digression because I feel a rant about the alienation of the consumer from the means of production coming on.... (Feels like an imminent sneeze, but in your brain :))

No, you've got to let those out - if you suppress them, you can blow the back of your head off.

[Ross]

I recall reading somewhere that pre-Victoria, the traditional wedding attire was a new blue dress and an old borrowed hat. No idea if that's actually true.