What is Nigredo? 13 Signs You’re Having an Alchemical Breakdown 

Skulls, ravens, black suns, darkness. 

All these are symbols of the process of crisis, breakdown, and ego death that represent the first stage of spiritual alchemy: Nigredo.

Are you suffering from some kind of intense, consuming inner struggle right now?

Perhaps there’s no chaotic crisis, but instead a vacuous feeling of emptiness, isolation, or disconnection from your Soul and sense of meaning in life.

Maybe you’re at a crossroads in life, are experiencing a death of old ways of being, or are suffering from a Dark Night of the Soul.

Whatever the case, if you’re feeling a sense of confusion, lostness, emptiness, anxiety, depression, grief, or disconnection, you’re experiencing the first level of spiritual alchemy, which is Nigredo.

What is Nigredo in Spiritual Alchemy?

Nigredo is Latin for blackness, and it represents the first stage of Soul Work, which involves the putrefaction, death, and decomposition of old, rigid, false, and delusional ways of thinking and being.

In this stage, we begin to face our shadows and the challenging parts of our egos that sabotage our growth, happiness, and fulfillment in life.

The work that we do here on lonerwolf (and Shadow & Light) is primarily focused on the Nigredo stage, and its goal is to help you move to the next stage, Albedo (whitening or breakthrough), and then Rubedo (reddening or integration).

What Does Nigredo Feel Like? 13 Signs You’re Experiencing It

Nigredo is an incredibly challenging season in life. Here are some signs you may be experiencing it:

1. Something important to you (or life in general) seems to be falling apart.
2. You’re in a season of decay: there are many painful inner and outer deaths or endings.
3. You’re no longer interested in what once motivated you, and you feel flat, restless, or demotivated.
4. You feel lost and aimless, with no clear sense of direction.
5. You’ve lost your sense of self, and you don’t know who you are anymore (identity crisis).
6. You lack a sense of purpose and meaning in life. 
7. You’re having painful confrontations with your Shadow Self, and your flaws, errors, and shortcomings are on full display.
8. You may struggle with nightmares and disrupted sleep.
9. You may struggle with a mental health crisis (anxiety, depression, OCD, etc.)
10. You may struggle with addictive tendencies as a way to numb the pain.
11. You may experience strange/frightening altered states (visions, dissociation, etc.)
12. You’ve lost trust in yourself and are filled with self-doubt.
13. You feel emotionally fragile and vulnerable a lot of the time.
14. The world, people, and situations easily overwhelm or exhaust you.
15. You crave solitude and more time alone than you once did. 
16. You feel disconnected, hollow, and distant from your Soul (Dark Night of the Soul).
17. You feel an inner sense of being dissolved, ‘purged,’ or broken down.

How many of these signs can you relate to? If you think I’ve missed any, let me know below in the comments.

Nigredo Throughout Myth & Legend 

It might comfort you to know that experiencing Nigredo isn’t a personal failure; it’s a natural process of inner maturation and Soul evolution.

At some point in life, we’re all bound to go through this blackening process. Looking at old myths and stories from around the world helps to remind you that this is the case.

In The Black Sun, psychotherapist Stanton Marlan gives examples of the descent into the underworld that define the Nigredo process:

• Goethe’s Faust
• Book of Job in the Bible
• T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Wasteland’
• The life-death Japanese goddess Izanami
• The Greek Kore-Persephone
• The Roman Psyche
• Fairytale heroines who go to Mother Hulda or Baba Yaga
• Sumerian story of Inanna and Ereshkigal
• Dante’s Inferno

As you can see, mythologically and symbolically, the Nigredo process usually involves images of the deep dark woods, desolate landscapes, haunted figures, or hell itself. 

If you were to give an image to the darkening process you’re going, what would that look like? Write about it or draw it – you’ll find the process quite soothing.

I did this a few years ago during the depths of my own Nigredo experience. Here’s the image that hangs on my wall to this day:

This image depicts the Black Madonna, who is said to help people through their periods of Nigredo darkness. 

Her white sun heart represents the next alchemical Albedo stage (illumination,) and her red garment represents the final stage of Rubedo (integration).

We Are Experiencing Collective Nigredo (But There is Light in the Darkness)

In Hinduism, we are said to be living in the Kali Yuga or the age of darkness, defined by spiritual impoverishment, war, and destruction. 

In alchemical terms, we are living in the stage of Nigredo – the darkening. This process is defined by the first five stages of alchemy: 

• Calcinatio (burning), 
• Solutio (dissolving), 
• Coagulatio (coagulating), and 
• Mortificatio (mortification)

Yet despite the collective Soul Loss we’re experiencing and the darkness pervading all corners of the globe, there is hope to be found. As the 16th-century alchemical text Rosarium Philosophorum states,

When you see your matter going black, rejoice, you are at the beginning of the work.

Nigredo is the first stage of our Soul’s Work on this planet. We know from observing nature that after the night comes the dawn of a new day, and after winter comes spring. So too with the process of Nigredo.

After Nigredo (the darkening) comes Albedo (the lightening). After death comes rebirth. In the words of awakened teacher Adyashanti,

Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretence. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.

This is a powerful description of Nigredo. In order to find the Inner Light of the Soul, all the dark layers of crud in our minds must be burned and dissolved first.

Sage and psychotherapist Carl Jung mirror this truth, writing,

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

Nigredo is the process of making the darkness conscious, which is where our Soul Work always begins.

We don’t have to do this work alone. If you feel called to get started, we offer two paths:

1. The Alchemical Soul Work Workbook – a structured journey through the seven stages of spiritual alchemy to help you find more clarity and direction in life.
2. The Shadow & Light Membership – weekly guidance and support to help you dissolve the shadows that obscure your Soul and feel more at home within your Self.

In the words of medic and psychiatrist Edward F. Edinger,

This work is difficult and strewn with obstacles; the alchemical opus is dangerous. Right at the beginning you meet the “dragon” … the “devil” or, as the alchemists called it, the “blackness,” the nigredo, and this encounter produces suffering. In the language of the alchemists, matter suffers until the nigredo disappears, when the “dawn” … will be announced … and a new day will break, the leukosis or albedo.

What has the experience of Nigredo been like for you? What is dying and therefore slowly transforming within you? Share with me below in the comments.