When I explore my own nature, or experience the sacred, most often I feel a deepening into darkness. Although dominating theologies create binaries, in which light is good and darkness is evil, when we recognize the multivalent nature of all that is, we see wave upon wave of dark and light.
by Rabbi Fern Feldman
Some say they want to “embrace the dark” when they mean, embrace the grief, anger and suffering in the world, and be present with it, rather than denying, ignoring or hating it. But that is not the aspect of sacred dark that interests me most.
What interests me is how in darkness all separation dissolves into oneness. Darkness is depths, womb, soil where seeds sprout, soothing shade, night in which we grow and make long-term memory. Darkness is source, essence, innermost being, transcendence, nothingness, emptiness, mystery.
When we discount the power of darkness, we devalue all one might associate with it—dark skin, women, and the earth. Audre Lord wrote: “The woman’s place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep.” (from “Poetry is not Luxury”, in Sister Outsider, 1984)
We need the holiness, and the liberating power, of deepening into the dark.
Jewish tradition evokes many forms of sacred darkness. Nighttime study brings a thread of loving-kindness into the world. Divine presence can be a sheltering shade. Revelations occur at caves. Torah was received in darkness, formed of black fire on white fire, and still the ink is black. The infinite source of all is imagined as a burning black coal or a deep spring. Before God said “Let there be light” there was already darkness, the darkness of wisdom and beyond. These images, and the texts that hold them, are openings that take us deeper into the sacred.
In Genesis, before God said “let there be light” there was “darkness over the face of the deep, the spirit/wind [ruach] of God brooding/hovering over the face of the water” (Gen.1:2). Biblical poetry is often structured with two parallel stitches in a verse. In this case “over the face of the deep” parallels “over the face of the water”, and “darkness” parallels “the spirit/wind of God”. There is something profoundly holy about this darkness, which Genesis tells us pre-existed what we think of as creation.
The creation story starts by saying “B’reishit bara Elohim et hashamayim v’et ha’aretz”, a strange grammatical structure saying something like “With a beginning of, God created the heavens and the earth.” The 4th-5th century CE midrashic collection, Genesis Rabbah (and subsequent Jewish tradition) interprets this “beginning” to be wisdom—Ḥokhmah. That is, with wisdom God created the heavens and the earth. In the proof text for this interpretation, Proverbs Chapter 8, Ḥokhmah is envisioned as a crone, standing at the crossroads. She says
It is Wisdom calling, Understanding raising her voice. She takes her stand at the topmost heights, by the wayside, at the crossroads…God created me at the beginning of His path (reishit darko).
Here we are given a vision of ancient dark female wisdom, assisting in the birthing of the world. The darkness in which all boundaries dissolve is a pathway that can take us beyond our individual selves into something bigger.
Featured Image: Nick Foster (UK), via Flickr
Continue to learn about Darkness in the Zohar, a primary text of Jewish mysticism, or return to the Gateway of Darkness.
For me, everything created perfectly. Without some one, it’s not possible. I call the creator The God who is invisible and Jesus Christ is the visible image of the God.
Thanks for sharing your beliefs as a Christian. On this site, I’m teaching about Judaism, but there is so much that we share. Blessings to you.
I am a Medical scientist and I strongly belief in my faith in the Lord. And at the sametime parallel my faith with what science establishes. I have for long worried about the darkness before creation. If ther was darkness before creation then something was existing inside the darkness. I wish you could throw more light in this? The entire space galaxy are completely dark but are illuminated by the stars; how significant of this to the creation of light by God???
That’s a deep question “above my paygrade” as they say!
Hello,
I don’t mean to be considered mean or harsh, but I felt compelled to say that GOD and the DEVIL are an invention by mankind. This can be examined very Easily though.
Simply ask yourself: What value or importance or significant meaning would god have or be if there were no devil? Or vice versa. You can’t have one without the other lose god and the devil is no longer evil, since there’s no comparison. Just as there is no god if the devil isn’t so, meaning both need one another to exist at all. Otherwise they lose meaning all together. The Bible was written to create order, however the original writer or most recent writer as well basically out many errors in it if it was at all true, being as that there were over a dozen “gods” before Christianity and they all were born of a virgin, on the 25th, died for people’s sins on a cross and were perfect. I’m sorry but god and devil are a concept and did not create the world. In fact, it’s been proven that entropy is reason for most disorder in the universe and world including emotion, why we age, why we die, why we fight, why we have problems. It’s not the devil. Eventually we will all have come to this realization.
Thanks for your sincere comment. I’m glad to say that in traditional Judaism there is no idea of the “devil” as you are describing it.
There is an idea of Satan (pronounced, “sah-tan”) who is not a power equal to God, but a kind of divine prosecutor, a servant of God sent to
test people. However, most Jews don’t believe that literally; it is more metaphorical, like those forces that tempt and accuse us in life.
Also, as I wrote on the page: https://wellspringsofwisdom.com/our-words/,
there is not just one way that Jewish people believe in God (if they are believers). There are many concepts of God, from mystical to rational. And one doesn’t have to be a believer to appreciate the poetry and symbolism of ancient lore. (Also, this site is about Judaism, not Christianity, so we don’t believe in the virgin birth and other Christian doctrines that you mentioned).
“We should not drop eternity out of our reckoning, but accustom ourselves to ask continually, Will this course be pleasing to God?”
I am reading scripture with the help of the Holy Spirit. I am finding scripture far beyond the written scripture. I am being taught so many things that I never dreamed of. I am being exposed to the world that was in being long before God created the heavens and earth. Right now I am learning about what was happening going on in the earth, the deep and the darkness before creation. This knowledge is increasing my ability to read scripture more accurately making it come to Life. It is the living word! I have so much to be exited about I have to stop writing and go read some more scripture and everything I can get my hands on that has to do with scriptures.
Blessings for your studies! One guideline I like from Jewish tradition is to be like Moses and be sure to “come down the mountain” of our spiritual journeys, to translate our personal learning into doing good for others. May your learning continually inspire you to serve humanity with love.
Black was never evil because it was at the beginning of creation so I don’t how black or darkness became so evil if God made it exist I do believe.
I agree. Darkness and light are both essential to creation.