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?
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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.
Table of contents
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:
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- Something important to you (or life in general) seems to be falling apart.
- You’re in a season of decay: there are many painful inner and outer deaths or endings.
- You’re no longer interested in what once motivated you, and you feel flat, restless, or demotivated.
- You feel lost and aimless, with no clear sense of direction.
- You’ve lost your sense of self, and you don’t know who you are anymore (identity crisis).
- You lack a sense of purpose and meaning in life.
- You’re having painful confrontations with your Shadow Self, and your flaws, errors, and shortcomings are on full display.
- You may struggle with nightmares and disrupted sleep.
- You may struggle with a mental health crisis (anxiety, depression, OCD, etc.)
- You may struggle with addictive tendencies as a way to numb the pain.
- You may experience strange/frightening altered states (visions, dissociation, etc.)
- You’ve lost trust in yourself and are filled with self-doubt.
- You feel emotionally fragile and vulnerable a lot of the time.
- The world, people, and situations easily overwhelm or exhaust you.
- You crave solitude and more time alone than you once did.
- You feel disconnected, hollow, and distant from your Soul (Dark Night of the Soul).
- 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.
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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:
- 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.
- 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.
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Nigredo started for me in 2013 after my mother died and I started doing holotropic breathwork on a regular basis, not that I had any idea at that stage that I was going through such a thing. All I felt for a long period of time was confusion, bewilderment, huge physical tightness & pain from the top of my head right down to my toes and I had huge, torrential bouts of weeping & violent screaming, like a volcano or should I say numerous volcanoes exploding. Later on I realised that for the vast majority of my adult life, I had been in a dorsal vagal state of shutdown, resignation & apathy and the deep, underlying motivation of my life was fear. I had no idea at the start where all this was ‘coming from,’ but now I believe that what lies beneath all of it is deep, deep ancestral trauma.
Besides numerous mandalas which have illustrated volcanoes exploding and quite literally holes of blackness, I also have a mandala where I am in a literal and metaphorical desert of utter desolation & despair and another where I’m in a forest of darkness, stuck in a boggy swamp of all encompassing & life-sucking mud, which is as thick as tar. However, when I was experiencing that forest of darkness, I also saw out of the corner of my eye a shaft of sunlight that somehow was managing to penetrate the blackness. With a supreme effort (involving screaming & tears), I hauled myself out of that boggy swamp and crawled on all fours towards that shaft of sunlight & very, very slowly came to a clearing in the trees which led me into a meadow of sunlight that was beyond all my imagining. As I finally stood up, the warmth of the sun dried the mud that was all over my body until it all just fell off me onto the ground. The feeling of lightness was indescribable and after marvelling at the beauty of this meadow filled with butterflies, song birds & wild flowers as far as the eye could see and dancing & running with my inner child, we became so light that we just lifted up off the ground into the air and started flying over this wonderful meadow, until we landed on top of a mountain where the light was so pure, so clear – you could see for miles all around and you could see clearly the tiniest details on the ground… That was the start for me of the next stage in the process, the ‘whitening’ or ‘illumination’ & involved me doing a whole series of mandalas (11 in total) – this was in 2022 – which continue to speak to me.
I feel now that I am gradually progressing into the integration stage, although it is a back and forth process where I go back to releasing further tightness in my body which then leads to a new insight and further integration. It has been a VERY, VERY TOUGH PROCESS, involving not just huge emotional pain but also tremendous physical pain (not usually in everyday activities but during breathwork sessions), but I have been helped through it by breathwork facilitators, fellow breathwork participants and by being able to share my experiences with my sister. My overall health has improved (for 6 years I didn’t have a cold) and I feel more grounded, yet at the same time physically lighter and am often aware of a feeling of quiet contentment inside of me. The bottom line is that I now feel far more connected to myself, to others, to nature and to Spirit and, tough though the process has been and at times continues to be so, it has undoubtedly been worthwhile and I would not go back to how I was before I started my breathwork. I hope this gives encouragement to anyone reading this who might be feeling that there is no way out of their endless seeming Nigredo not to give up because eventually there will be light at the end of the tunnel. If I found the light, then you will too.
Thank you for sharing. I wonder if it took courage to do so. You have put light on my path.
Your story gave me goosebumps – a visceral feeling to an extremely well-articulated description of the process of Nigredo/the darkening. Thank you for your courage, Bella. I truly appreciate you sharing this, and I’m sure many who come here to read this article and your story feel the same way. 💜
Well, here I sit in my dark and gloomy outfit, trying to stay warm in this Wintery Queensland weather. Scraping at the sores, whelts with “potshards” from Job, feeling anxious into the marrow of my bones.
It’s 1:22 am, and I have already slept early. Now for some quiet online action while my beloved sleeps nearby. All is well, as I find some online research fulfillment and eagerly wish to awaken sleeping beauty to share the information. THEN IT HITS!
I started to question the meaning of my life for some reason, and to feel the cold night as if it had form and function is ready to swallow me whole. As I rise to go to the restroom, I begin to worry that I am responsible for awakening our narcissistic neighbour through paper-thin walls and making too much noise in the stillness. Then overthinking sends my thoughts and feelings into a major tailspin, and a mental stress vortex spins on the inner plane. Breathing exercises and using relaxation tapes JUST DON’T WORK! Then the physical soreness from anxiety sets its teeth into my neck, I AM IN FOR A LONG HAUL
This was the beginning of what I believe was and possibly still is Nigredo. Throwing off the old fears of emptiness and loss. Exposing the decomposition of illusions and tight, rigid ways of coping with life. THOUGHT I JUST NEEDED TO LOOSEN UP …LET GO!
And it would all just go away and let me rest on my laurels. NO WAY! I could not think clearly or make decisions one way or another. So I blamed my age, my poor life skills, poor upbringing, and anything else just to get free and relax, NO WAY! I felt like an old bin emptied of trash, waiting in the light of reason for a wash and relining ( redemption)
Even prayers and new-age mantras failed to stifle the pain and isolation. Finally found safe old recliner and jumped in to attempt sleep as I DID NOT KNOW WHAT THE F** to do.
Please let others see this message, as it may help them get a grip when its their turn!
The night has a way of enhancing the feeling of Nigredo – you describe it so well, John. Sometimes all we can do is curl up in a ball in the foetal position, and brace ourselves. But as you’ve shown, the extreme parts of it pass. And sometimes the best thing we can do is find something safe and cozy and try to sleep.
Great quotes from Adyashanti and Jung. It’s a long, hard, painful journey. Glad you are writing about it. The “toxic positivity” that abounds elsewhere is disheartening and disconnecting. I’m sure folks mean well, but they seem to be missing the boat as Jung says.
Thanks for your affirming words, San. :)
Seems like the current state of affairs of the world have created the catylist that our spiritual side needed in order to rethink this world and our relationship to it that we might otherwise have ignored. Catalyst is the driver of seeking. (I wish I could say that more eloquently!)
When life is comfy we tend to just go with the flow. It’s times of high stress and uncertainty that we get a boot in the spiritual ass, and rethink our relationship to the world and those in it. Can you see it?
“When life is comfy we tend to just go with the flow. It’s times of high stress and uncertainty that we get a boot in the spiritual ass, and rethink our relationship to the world and those in it. Can you see it?” – Yes, absolutely, Ken. It reminds me of something I think Ken Wilber said, “breakdown precedes breakthrough.” We humans are predisposed to comfort-seeking, and crisis, as you say, is often the only way we actively involve ourselves in conscious evolution.
I was taught from an early age to be that good, well-behaved child who should always be there for others. Both in my childhood and adolescence, as other people realized this, in addition to the fact that I was a different child who didn’t fit in, I was bullied and ended up isolating myself. I grew up as a person with low self-esteem and no prospects in life. As an adult, I worked in the worst jobs because I didn’t believe in myself or my potential. Then, in my last job, I encountered the greatest difficulty of my life: gaslighting, gossip, and narcissists. For me, it seemed like the end of everything. But that’s when a spiritual revolution began in me. I realized that the shadows within me were not necessarily my enemies, and that by setting boundaries and saying no to others, I was not a bad or selfish person (I was just prioritizing my well-being). It was from that moment on that I began to understand that I should not stop being who I am in order to feel accepted or fit in, that some people will like me and others will not, and that’s okay. Being tough on bullies does not make me a bad person, but rather that I am preserving the only one I should seek validation from: myself. Find your true essence. It is in the darkness of chaos that the star is born and where the light shines brightest.
“It is in the darkness of chaos that the star is born and where the light shines brightest.” – Wow, you put this so beautifully, Hans. I am inspired by your story of power retrieval and spiritual growth in the face of such difficulty. Thank you so much for sharing! Pain is, or can be, a catalyst for profound transformation.
Interesting post. Did not know that even in middle ages people were already aware of that. I think the current world in the west is pushing people into nigredo. Globalisation and technology are evil and putting us in danger. This is very real and acute. It would be important to deal with this stuff first. The moment the west falls there will be no time and possibility to do spiritual stuff. It will be survival of the fittest.
I keep reading stuff like this but no one mentions how that “integration” part/world would look like. What exactly is the end goal here?
You listed introversion and the need to be left alone as something bad which i think is wrong and narrow minded. The more i awake the more solitude i crave and need and enjoy.
I don’t think introversion and solitude was listed as something bad, just a natural response to the process.
Hi Zoey. Solitude is certainly not something I see as ‘wrong’ – just a symptom as San says. If you’ve read any of my other work, you’ll see that I celebrate its healing qualities. The integration part happens first internally, then ripples into the external world. True change starts from within, as the old saying goes. You can’t create change using the same level of consciousness that created the current problems. Living as ensouled human beings looks like integrating our psycho-spiritual growth into our daily life: being of service, living our soul’s purpose, being compassionate, living lightly, continuing to do the inner work needed to respond with sensitivity to ourselves, others, and this world. It’s a work in progress. Integration is living the truths we’ve discovered, rather than just compartmentalizing them. I hope that makes sense.