Talking Tuesday: Nigredo/Dark Night of the Soul

I've written a few times in this space about Rhyd Wildermuth's work; he has a unique voice and perspective that I find interesting and refreshing.  I don't agree with everything he writes, but he always gives me something to think about.

Rhyd's substack today was on what he calls nigredo, the part of the alchemy process where the elements are burned down to their most basic essence before being transformed into something else.  He writes:

"Nigredo isn’t a singular moment, however, but rather a repeating process. In alchemy, substances required multiple transformations, a repeating cycle from nigredo to rubedo and then back again. What we think we know and who we think we are likewise must be blackened repeatedly, “destroyed” (though never annihilated) and then reforged like the repeating seasons of the earth. We die, are born, and then die again so to be reborn, all the while still “living” and striving towards a time when the drives that defeat us and the drives that create us become lovers to each other." ~Rhyd Wildermuth, On Nigredo, FFrom the Forests of Arduinna Substack, 12/12/23

I love the imagery in that statement.  It's a different way of talking about theosis, even though Rhyd isn't talking about Christianity (indeed, he is a self-professed pagan).   I'm always interested in taking apart "churchy" words and phrases to get under what they really mean because sometimes words can be culturally drained of meaning by repetition.  Graham Pardun's Psalm translation project is very much after my heart in this way.

Later in the piece, he goes on to note that St. John of the Ladder describes this process at the Dark Night of the Soul.  As a fiction writer, this also resonated with me, since it is a key plot point in any good story.  The protagonist goes through a period where it seems all is lost, that everything they thought they knew is gone and they have to figure out how to go on from that.  

In stories, the Dark Night usually happens only once, but in life, Dark Nights are a feature, not a bug.  Something you thought you knew about yourself, or the world, or whatever, is blown to pieces and then you flounder like a fish on the bank of a stream, flopping about and gasping for air until you can work your way back into the water again to swim.  

Every year about this time, I start feeling a bit low.  I used to think it was because Christmas in my family is so special and I wasn't able to re-create it the same way with my own family.  I honestly felt like Christmas just got beat out of me at some point and it took me a while to find it again.  (Don't worry, I have plenty of lovely traditions with my kids and we have our own rhythm to things that is good, but it took a long time to get there).  

Lately, though I think it is really just part of the season.  I'm not much of one for podcasts because I'm a truly terrible aural learner; my brain wanders for a sec and I've lost the plot, but I've been listening to Spencer Klavan quite a bit this fall when I'm doing stuff around the house or running errands.  He's a very interesting and joyful guy who is so grounded and well-read.  I just finished his book and have very much enjoyed his Substack.  The podcast about C.S. Lewis and what he calls the Seven Loves was an amazing deep linguistic dive and The Ghosts of the Old Gods was also excellent.

Over the weekend, I listened to the podcast Spencer did with his sister about her new book, Christmas Karol, which is a creative retelling of Dickens' story.  Klavan's sister Faith is the keeper of Christmas in their family and loves the season.  She made the great observation that nostalgia and longing are baked in the cake of the holiday because it is the start of the march to the cross.  Even though it isn't explicitly in the holiday, it is in the underpainting, and I think most of us feel it on some level, even if we can't articulate what it is.  One of the gifts of the wise men is myrrh which is used to prepare a body for burial.  So it is there right at the start, pointing the way to where the journey to Bethlehem was going to end.  Of course, it ends in triumph with the resurrection on Pascha/Easter, but there is a long and lonely Dark Night of the Soul before we get there.  

I've thought a lot about longing lately.  It is the thing that propels us through life, really.  The cycle of nigredo and rubedo are the parts of our existence that make life worth living.  It is the striving, the yearning, the curiosity about the world and the people in it, the movement to the reforging of the self that gives meaning and makes us grow.  

So I think it is okay to sit in the darkness for a time, to see what it shows you.  Just don't make it a permanent dwelling place or, like Gollum, you'll forget how to live in the light.

Dark Moss

Another day, another pullover.  This one is the Dark Moss pullover by Teti Lutsak.  It is worsted weight so it initially was about a two week project.  But!  I ended up knitting the sleeves twice and the top half from the short rows up three times.  Yes, three!  Because I am nuts.

The problem is the decreases in the back, which are done while doing the short rows.  If you follow the pattern, the decreases happen too quickly and it is is too tight across the upper back.  If you omit the middle decreases and just do the raglan decreases, you end up with an extra repeat on the neckline that looks sloppy and wide.  I also sized up on the needles one of the iterations and didn't like the fabric.  I ended up knitting on the 8s (which were my gauge needles), omitting the middle decreases and just doing the raglan decreases on the short rows, and then added a couple of rows to decrease in the middle to bring the raglan line together and have the correct stitch count for the neckline.  Third time's a charm, as that seems to have fixed the fit problem across the upper back.

The sleeves were my own fault really.  I should have sized up on the needles and didn't because I was away from home and just wanted to finish it.  So I frogged both to about 10 rows from the cast-on at the underarm and reknit.  I also made many fewer decreases, I think three?  I knit 56 rows from the intial 10 down and then decreased 2 stitches, then knit 15 rows, decrease, then 15, decrease, and then about 6 more rows before starting the ribbing and that seems about right.  

The cable sections at the bottom were fairly easy and enjoyable, especially since they were knit flat and then joined.  I sort of split the difference between the cropped and longer length and am pretty happy with how it came out length-wise.  

I know this light grey is maybe not the best color on me, but I wanted something that was a lighter neutral and liked the subtle variations in the heather on this one.  And anyway, it is warm and comfortable, which was the main point!  

I had another gum graft yesterday to deal with the failed graft from 2016 and am pretty wiped today.  I have to have another graft on my top teeth in January but need to wait for my palette to heal first.  The main problem, as with the previous graft, is that eating is so incredibly painful and tricky.  They gave me a surgical stent to cover the top of my mouth, which helps a lot with that part, but the graft site is very sore and swollen.  I'm taking Tylenol and Motrin around the clock at the moment.  So I'm trying to find liquid calories since I can't afford to lose any weight right now (not a problem I EVER thought I'd have, but here we are).  The stitches come out next Thursday, so hopefully it won't be too bad of a week.