Signs of the Dark Night of the Soul

The Dark Night of the Soul is a very common spiritual experience that many of us on this planet are currently undergoing or coming out of. I noticed my own DNOS started around the time of the Saturn Pluto opposition in 2001 and deepened towards the year 2004. I did not fully understand then that a lot of the lostness and darkness I was enduring was not only personal but ancestral and collective too. Of course I can see more of the entire journey in retrospect now having travelled further along but when I was ‘lost’ in it, it truly was like being taken to the Underworld and watching everything die or dissolve around me, including structures and my sense of meaning. It also foretold the launching onto a quest for a more soul centred sense of meaning for me that was both personal and collective.

Sadly the Dark Night of the Soul can be misunderstood, mislabelled o misdiagnosed as depression or psychosis or even breakdown, when what it really is is more of a state of spiritual emergence and emergency something therapist Stanslav and Chirstina Groff explored back in the 1990s.

I remember reading the story of Christina who was also in addiction recovery shortly after I got sober in 1993 and it really resonated with me. After that I was guided to explore the journeys of others writing about it or undergoing it. Carl Jung underwent his after his ‘break’ with Freud and under a strong Neptune transit to his Sun which like me is square to natal Neptune in his own chart. In many ways he was a harbinger for us as he had prophetic experiences of images of Europe bathed in blood just prior ot the outbreak of the First World War. He also foretold the rise of an archetypal ‘superhero’ who was malevolent which foreshadowed the rise to power of anti Semitism and Hitler many years later in some of his writings.

I have also found Thomas Moore’s excellent book on the DNOS very helpful to my own process.

I just wanted to share the following link that I came across while doing an image search on signs of the Dark Night of the Soul from the Loner Wolf website and another from Fractal Enlightenment. They may be helpful to others breaking their linkages with the old world order and launching into their own DNOS or those already smack bang in the middle of it or on the other side.

While every experience of the Dark Night of the Soul is different, the one common thread is that it is a path of initiation. You are in the dark so that you can understand what Light is. You are disconnected so that you can know what connection is. You are lost so that you can find your way back Home. If these explanations of the Dark Night don’t resonate with you, please go ahead and discard of them. I’m not here to tell you what the Dark Night of the Soul should mean because ultimately you must figure that out for yourself. You need to be the one to make meaning out of your experience. I can only offer my own understanding.

7 Omens That Herald the Dark Night of the Soul

10 Things I Learnt from My Dark Night of the Soul