Shadow Dragon

The translation and interpretation of the above by Doreal states the Kingdom of Shadows was that octave of vibration in which were placed those brought from a lower cosmic cycle when the gateway was opened by man.

This was in the Third or Polarian Cycle and the delvers in darkness were men who loved material power rather than to devote their lives to spiritual things.

The beings called up were formless, as only the consciousness was brought up and bodies must be formed here. They, like the elementals, being separated from their own cosmic consciousness and its creative powers, were not able to combine with this cycle because they had not developed its primal curves.

Only by the will of man and the extracting of spirit from blood could they take form. Thoth goes on to state, “that in the form of man moved they amongst us but only to sight were they as are men. Crept they into the Councils, taking forms that were like unto men. Slaying by their arts the chiefs of the kingdoms, taking their form and ruling o’er man. Only by magic could they be discovered. Only by sound could their faces be seen. Sought they from kingdom of shadows to destroy man and rule in his place.”

Doreal translated this as they were able to cast a hypnotic glamour around them and appear to assume the features of men. They assume the form of leaders who were secretly slain. And gradually, they and the men who called them took over the control of the nations.

Manly P. Hall stated in The Secret Teachings of All Ages, that ceremonial magic is the ancient art of invoking and controlling spirits by a scientific application of certain formulae.

A magician, enveloped in sanctified vestments and carrying a wand inscribed with hieroglyphic figures, could by the power vested in certain words and symbols control the invisible inhabitants of the elements and of the astral world. While the elaborate ceremonial magic of antiquity was not necessarily evil, there arose from its perversion several false schools of sorcery, or black magic.

Furthermore Hall stated, that Egypt, a great center of learning and the birthplace of many arts and sciences, furnished an ideal environment for transcendental experimentation. Here the black magicians of Atlantis continued to exercise their superhuman powers until they had completely undermined and corrupted the morals of the primitive Mysteries.

By establishing a sacerdotal caste they usurped the position formerly occupied by the initiates and seized the reins of spiritual government. Thus black magic dictated the state religion and paralyzed the intellectual and spiritual activities of the individual by demanding his complete and unhesitating acquiescence in the dogma formulated by the priestcraft. The Pharaoh became a puppet in the hands of the Scarlet Council – a committee of arch-sorcerers elevated to power by the priesthood.

These sorcerers Hall stated, then began the systematic destruction of all keys to the ancient wisdom, so that none might have access to the knowledge necessary to reach adeptship without first becoming one of their order. They mutilated the rituals of the Mysteries while professing to preserve them, so that even though the neophyte passed through the degrees he could not secure the knowledge to which he was entitled.

Idolatry was introduced by encouraging the worship of the images which in the beginning the wise had erected solely as symbols for study and meditation. False interpretations were given to the emblems and figures of the Mysteries, and elaborate theologies were created to confuse the minds of their devotees.

The masses, deprived of their birthright of understanding and groveling in ignorance, eventually became the abject slaves of the spiritual impostors. Superstition universally prevailed and the black magicians completely dominated national affairs, with the result that humanity still suffers from the sophistries of the priestcrafts of Atlantis and Egypt.

It should be more than evident that humanity still suffers to this very day by these black sorcerers. Orchestrated global events, child sex trafficking and elite pedophile rings, orchestrated war and genocide.

Poverty, government corruption, divide and conquer agendas, propaganda in the form of the main stream media, poisoning of our food supply through GMOs, pesticides, and fluoride. The poisoning of our air through geo-engineering, state-controlled education, and counterfeit fractional reserve banking system with debt-based money.

A medical mafia with false medicine keeping us sick for their own profit and an energy cartel addicted oil and suppressing free-energy. Rigged stock markets and economic policies to serve the rich. Man-made viruses and diseases with false medical solutions such as vaccines. Orchestrated terror attacks, mass shootings, and government policies that continue to erode our liberties.

The creators of this blog have in depth research throughout the entirety of human history on these black sorcerers. We have come to realize in our research that there is an agenda to digitally enslave humanity. Total control and surveillance of every aspect of human life.

The agenda goes by many names: The New World Order, The Great Reset, Agenda 2030, or the Transhumanist Agenda. Besides power, control and wealth, these human and nonhuman black sorcerers have had one goal above all others.

This goal is evident since the fall of Atlantis and with the rise of Babylon. To keep humanity from activating the kundalini energy and spiritually awakening. They have kept humanity stuck in their lower three chakras, the animal nature of the human being.

We would like to expose one their tactics before moving on the individual shadow dragon consciousness (shadow self). We believe this to be their most important ploy. In addition, this scheme corresponds to what we believe is the most critical piece in kundalini activation.

Their main tactic is the porn industry! The conservation and transmutation of sexual energy through celibacy and sexual alchemy is the critical piece to everything we are presenting with the serpent’s way. Sexual energy is the key to exit the matrix. The preservation of sexual energy is the way of the white magician.

Samael Aun Weor stated in chapter 3, tilted The Great Battle of his book The Perfect Matrimony the following about these black magicians.

“In Jeremiah, chapter 21, verse 8, it is written: “Behold, I set before you the way of life, and the way of death.” Man and woman can use sexual intercourse and the delights of love and kisses in order to become Gods or demons.

From the dawn of life, a great battle has raged between the powers of light and the powers of darkness. The secret root of that battle lies in sex.

The correct interpretation of the mysteries of sex exists. The white magicians never ejaculate the semen. The black magicians always ejaculate the semen. The white magicians make the igneous serpent of our magical powers ascend through the medullar canal. The black magicians make the snake descend towards the atomic infernos of the human being.

Gods and demons live in eternal struggle. The Gods defend the doctrine of chastity. The demons hate chastity. In sex, the root of the conflict between Gods and demons is found.

The great battle takes place in the Astral Light. The Astral Light is the deposit of all of great Nature’s past, present and future forms. The Astral Light is the Azoth and Magnesia of the ancient Alchemists, Medea’s Flying Dragon, the Christians’ INRI, the Tarot of the Bohemians. The Astral Light is a terrific sexual fire springing forth from the Sun’s nimbus and is fixed to the Earth by the force of gravity and the weight of the atmosphere. The Sun is the one that attracts and repels such an enchanting and delightful light. The Astral Light is Archimedes’ lever. The old sage said: “Give me a fulcrum and I will move the universe.”

The semen is the human being’s Astral liquid. The semen is the Astral Light. The semen is the key to all powers and the key to all empires.

The Astral Light has two poles, one positive and the other negative. The ascending serpent is positive. The descending serpent is negative. When it ascends, it is the brazen serpent that healed the Israelites in the wilderness. When it descends, it is the tempting serpent of Eden.

When we know how to adore and kiss with infinite tenderness and supreme chastity, the serpent ascends. When we enjoy lust ardently and spill the cup, the serpent precipitates itself, inebriated with madness towards the atomic infernos of the human being.

In the region of light live the beings who adore each other. In the region of darkness live the souls who become inebriated with the chalice of lust, and who after getting drunk spill the cup. Those souls are consumed in the fire of their own lust”. 

Furthermore, he stated in chapter 3, tilted White Magic and Black Magic of his book The Revolution of Beelzebub, he stated the following.

There are seven truths, seven sublime lords, and seven secrets…

The secret of the abyss is one of the seven great unutterable secrets…

Abbadon is the angel of the abyss. He wears a black tunic and a red cap, like those worn by the Drukpas and Bons from oriental Tibet and from the regions of Sikkim and Bhutan, also as worn by the black magicians from the altar of Mathra (pronounced “Mazra” by the Rosicrucian school A.M.O.R.C. from California).

The venerable Anagarikas are also red cap magicians. To that end, all of these black magicians are the great hierarchies from the tenebrous caverns…

Theurgy is one thing and Necromancy is another…The internal master of the Theurgist is the Innermost. The internal master of the Necromancer is his Guardian of the Threshold whom they call the guardian of their consciousness, the guardian of the precinct, the guardian of their chamber, the guardian of their sanctum…

The Innermost is our Divine Spirit, our Real Being, our Internal Angel.

The Guardian of the Threshold is the internal depth of our animal “I.”

The Innermost is the ardent flame of Horeb. In accordance with Moses, the Innermost is the Ruach Elohim who sowed the waters in the beginning of the world. He is the Sun King, our Divine Monad, the Alter-Ego of Cicerone.

The Guardian of the Threshold is our Satan…our internal beast, the source of all of our animal passions and brutal appetites…

The Real Being of the Theurgist is the Innermost. The superior “I” of the Necromancer is the Guardian of the Threshold.

The powers of the Innermost are divine. The powers of the Guardian of the Threshold are diabolic

The Theurgist worships the Innermost. The Necromancer worships the Guardian of the Threshold.

The Theurgist avails himself with the power of his Innermost in order to perform his great works of practical magic. The Necromancer worships the Guardian of the Threshold for his works of black magic.

We have arrived at the omnipotent empire of high and low magic.

The Astral Light is the battle field between white and black magicians. The Astral Light is the clue of all empires and the key of all powers. It is the great universal agent of life.  All the  columns of angels and demons live within the Astral Light…

In order to attain Theurgy one firstly needs to be an Alchemist, and it is impossible to be an Alchemist without a spouse.

“V.I.T.R.I.O.L.” is one of the clues of the Gnostic Alchemist. The word signifies: 

Visitam Interiorem Terre Rectificatum Invenias Ocultum Lapidum.

Visit the interior of the earth, which through rectifying you will find the occult stone.

The clue is found within the flexible and malleable liquid glass…This liquid glass is the semen. Therefore, we have to sink ourselves within our own organic laboratory to increase, to rectify, our liquid glass, with the goal of heroically expanding the philosophical stone, the force of Nous, the Immortal Logos, the Solar Snake, which sleeps with silent inquietude within the bottom of our ark.

The woman is the vestal of the temple. The vestal is the one who ignites the sacred fire of triple incandescence.

The Elixir of Long Life is the potable gold, and that potable gold is the semen…The secret is to sexually connect oneself with the priestess-wife and withdraw from her without spilling the semen.

We finally attain the marriage of Nous, and we conquer the beautiful Helen, the one for whom all the illustrious warriors of ancient Troy fought.

The beautiful Helen is the igneous mind of the soul who is already betrothed to her eternal beloved, to her Innermost.

The beautiful Helen is the ardent mind of the Theurgist. The Theurgist transmutes the lead into real and permanent gold…The Theurgist grasps the sword and as a King of Nature he resurrects the dead, heals the blind, the crippled and paralytics…He unleashes the hurricanes and heroically walks through the fiery gardens of Nature.

What inductive or deductive logic serves as a foundation for the Neoplatonic Plotinus and Porphirius in order to combat the phenomenon of Theurgy?

All of the infinite existences of the universe are children of the phenomenon of Theurgy…There exists an enormous difference between the mirror of Theurgy and the mirror of necromancy. The mirror of Eleusis is different from the mirror of Sodom.

The mirror of the school of Sodom is necromancy and black magic. The mirror of the mysteries of Eleusis is pure and divine Theurgy.

The Initiate of Eleusis, while in the state of Manteia (ecstasy), pronounced the sacred syllable. Then, the Initiate’s Innermost appeared with light and beauty within the resplendent mirror…Many times the Initiate provoked the state of Manteia when drinking from the chalice of Soma. He was thus transported into the ineffable pleroma of love.

The necromancer of the school of Sodom begs the Guardian of the Threshold to appear in the mirror. Once the vision appears, the candidate becomes a slave of the Guardian of the Threshold and is converted into a black magician.

This ritual of black magic, adapted for this century, is very ancient. Beelzebub started his horrible career as a demon after having performed it in ancient Arcadia. In 1387, with just reason, the Tibetan reformer Tsong Khapa cast every book of necromancy that he found into flames. As a result, some discontent Lamas formed an alliance with the aboriginal Bons, and today they form a powerful sect of black magic in the regions of Sikkim, Bhutan and Nepal, submitting themselves to the most abominable black rites.

Iamblichus, the great Theurgist, said: 

Theurgy unites us more strongly with divine nature. This nature is engendered by itself and acts in accordance with its own powers. It is intelligent and sustains everything; it is the ornament of the universe and invites us to the intelligent truth, to perfection, and to share this perfection with others. It unites us so intimately to all the creative acts of the Gods in proportion to the capacity of each one of us. After accomplishing these sacred rites, the soul is consolidated within the actions of the intelligence of the Gods until identifying itself with them. Thus it is absorbed by the primeval and divine Essence.  Such is the object of the sacred initiations of the Egyptians.

Iamblichus was invoking and materializing the planetary gods.

Firstly, one becomes an Alchemist, then a Magician, and finally a Theurgist. We awaken the snake and become Theurgists by practicing Sexual Magic. The whole secret resides in learning how to sexually connect ourselves with our spouse and to withdraw without spilling the semen (without reaching the orgasm).

Naked dances, Sexual Magic, and delectable music were something ineffable in the mysteries of Eleusis.

Shiraz Hussain revealed the following in his 2023 book Purity is Power:

The number of visits to Pornhub in 2019 were over 100 million a day! This was in 2019! Now there are hundreds of millions per day.

He stated that this only 1 website. Combine the 10,000 porn websites we have today and think about what the daily number must be! Porn sites get more visits than Netflix, Amazon, and Twitter combined!

Every minute, around 2.5 million people visit porn sites! Around 28,000 per second.

Young girls are being trafficked, and they are made to be sex slaves. They are forced to participate in underage porn to satisfy the sickness of consumers.

Sex trafficking, child abuse, rape, slavery, perversion, adultery, violence, and all kinds of sickness towards women and girls are ongoing and growing at this very moment because of this disgusting disease of pornography. Women are suffering tremendously because of men’s abuse of her.

Clueless children grow up believing that masturbation is good for your health and “prevents prostate cancer” by false “scientific research.” They fall into this trap that pornography is also good for your health, and that if you have not lost your virginity at a young age then you are not even a real man or woman.

Every time a Fortnite character is created, millions of pornographic searches are made for that character.

Additional pornography statistics according to covenanteyes.com, below are the industry porn stats from 2018:

In 2008, the company Hitwise catalogued 40,634 websites that distributed pornography.

According to the research by two neuroscientists, Ogi Ogasa and Sai Gaddam, in 2010, out of the one million most trafficked websites in the world, 42,337 are sex-related sites.

Free websites comprise between 70-80% of the adult material online, typically used as “bait” for pay websites, guiding viewers to premium pay services.

A conservative estimate places 32% of adult membership websites and 58% of free adult websites outside the United States.

90% of free porn websites and nearly 100% of pay porn websites buy their material rather than create it themselves.

In 2009, the Media Research Center (MRC) examined the most popular YouTube searches for the word “porn,” yielding 330,000 results. The study reported on the top 157 videos, all with one million views or more.

28,258 users are watching pornography every second.

$3,075.64 is spent on porn every second on the internet.

28.5 billion annual visits to the Pornhub website.

81 million daily average visits to the Pornhub website.

25 billion searches performed on the Pornhub website; 50,000 searches per minute; 800 searches a second; 4,052,542 videos uploaded; 68 years worth of content uploaded on just this one site. 3,732 pentabytes of information transferred (enough to fill the memory of every iPhone on Earth).

After an analysis of 400 million web searches from July 2009 to July 2010, researchers concluded:

13% of all searches were for erotic content.

The most popular category of sexual searches was “youth.”

35 of the top searched sexual interests account for 90% of all erotic searches – meaning that people’s search curiosities “are clustered together into a relatively small set of common interests.”

By and large, men prefer images and graphic sex sites; woman prefer erotic stories and romance sites.

According to a survey conducted by the Barna Group in the U.S. in 2014 and 2016:

The following percentages of men say they view pornography at least once a month: 79% of 18-30 year olds; 67% of 31-49 year olds; 49% of 50-68 year olds.

The following percentages of men say they view pornography at least several times a week: 63% of 18-30 year olds; 38% of 31-49 year olds; 25% of 50-68 year olds.

The following percentages of women say they view pornography at least once a month: 76% of 18-30 year olds; 16% of 31-49 year olds; 4% of 50-68 year olds.

The following percentages of women say they view pornography at least several times a week: 21% of 18-30 year olds; 5% of 31-49 year olds; 0% of 50-68 year olds.

55% of married men say they watch porn at least once a month, compared to 70% of unmarried men.

25% of married woman say they watch porn at least once a month, compared to 16% of unmarried women.

According to a survey by the Barna Group in 2016, 3,000 respondents had the following perceptions about porn:

90% of teens and 96% of young adults are either encouraging, accepting, or neutral when they talk about porn with their friends.

Only 54% of porn users believe sexual acts that may be forced or painful are always wrong.

Only 44% of porn users believe someone being depicted in a demeaning way is always wrong.

Just 55% of adults 25 and older believe porn is wrong.

Teens and young adults aged 13-24 believe not recycling (56%) is worse than viewing pornography (32%).

Only 43% of teens believe porn is bad for society, 31% of young adults 18-24, 51% of millennials, 44% Gen-Xers, 59% of Boomers.

The average visitor to a pornographic website spends 6.5 minutes per visit.

In 2008, an estimated 3 million Americans purchased pornography online, paying an average of $60 per month.

One can clearly see that humanity still suffers from the sophistries of the priestcrafts of Atlantis and Egypt. We can expose these black sorcerers on all fronts especially in relation to present current events, the medical system, and vaccines. Unmasking every aspect of these sorcerers is beyond the scope of this blog.

We will however, uncover the pharmaceutical companies and vaccines in our blog articles. As they relate to raw food and more spiritual warfare tactics.

We are only concerned here with the porn industry for two reasons. First, we believe this is the most critical piece of their agenda. They are well aware of the power of man’s seed. These sorcerers are highly receptive of sexual energy, sexual alchemy (sacred sex), and the divine function of the Kundalini.

In terms of human evolution and spiritual warfare, the porn industry is their weapon of mass destruction. In regards, to the serpent’s way, the conservation and transmutation of sexual energy is the most vigorous ammunition at our disposal to combat these sorcerers.

Second, reason we are concerned with the porn industry is due to individual lust ingrained is all of us. The next area of the shadow dragon we discuss involves our personal darkness. Shadow work involves making the darkness conscious within ourselves and learning to integrate it.

“Widespread porn is an agenda to keep you as a man docile, weak, and in your animal consciousness. Nofap, semen retention, and sexual alchemy is the agenda to unleash your masculine power, strengthen you as a man, and ignite your spiritual consciousness” – Nakula Das

The black dragon is Samsara, it is the shadow of the white dragon. It represents the very essence of the forces of chaos which resides in our consciousness. It is the black dragon consciousness that has possessed and completely taken over the sorcerer’s who hide behind their perceived powers. This fallen dragon consciousness is what puts the white dragon and the red dragon against one another.

However, the black dragon serves a purpose in alignment and needs to be recognized instead of ignored. As the more you ignore it the more chaos that is unleashed within you that stabilizes your inner order.

In the original seeding, the black dragon served as the feminine negative charge of the white dragon’s masculine positive charge. However, certain events took place that turned the black and white dragons against one another. You could say this represents the age old conflict of male and female but also the masculine and feminine energies within each of us.

INTRODUCING THE SHADOW

According to Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams in the book Meeting the Shadow, the personal shadow develops naturally in every young child.

As we identify with ideal personality characteristics such as politeness and generosity, which are reinforced in our environments, we shape what W. Brugh Joy calls the New Year’s Resolution Self.

At the same time, we bury in the shadow those qualities that don’t fit our self-image, such as rudeness and selfishness. The ego and the shadow, then, develop in tandem, creating each other out of the same life experience.

Carl Jung saw the inseparability of ego and shadow in himself in a dream that he describes in his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections:

“It was night in some unknown place, and I was making slow and painful headway against a mighty wind. Dense fog was flying everywhere. I had my hands cupped around a tiny light which threatened to go out at any moment.

Everything depended on my keeping this little light alive. Suddenly I had the feeling that something was coming up behind me. I looked back and saw a gigantic black figure following me.

But at the same moment I was conscious in spite of my terror that I must keep my little light going through night and wind, regardless of all dangers.

When I awoke I realized at once that the figure was my own shadow on the swirling mists, brought into being by the little light I was carrying. I knew too that this little light was my consciousness the only light I have.

Though infinitely small and fragile in comparison with the powers of darkness, it is still a light, my only light.”

Many forces play a role in forming our shadow selves, ultimately determining what is permitted expression and what is not.

Parents, siblings, teachers, clergy, and friends create a complex environment in which we learn what is kind, proper, moral behavior, and what is mean-spirited, shameful, and sinful.

The shadow acts like a psychic immune system, defining what is self and what is not-self. For different people, in different families and cultures, what falls into ego and what falls into shadow can vary.

For instance, some permit anger or aggression to be expressed; most do not. Some permit sexuality, vulnerability, or strong emotions; many do not. Some permit financial ambition, or artistic expression, or intellectual development, while some do not.

All the feelings and capacities that are rejected by the ego and exiled into the shadow contribute to the hidden power of the dark side of human nature.

However, not all of them are what we consider to be negative traits. According to Jungian analyst Liliane Frey-Rohn, this dark treasury includes our infantile parts, emotional attachments, neurotic symptoms, as well as our undeveloped talents and gifts.

The shadow, she says, “retains contact with the lost depths of the soul, with life and vitality – the superior, the universally human, yes, even the creative can be sensed there.”

DISOWNING THE SHADOW

We cannot look directly into this hidden domain. The shadow by nature is difficult to apprehend. It is dangerous, disorderly, and forever in hiding, as if the light of consciousness would steal its very life.

Prolific Jungian analyst James Hillman says: “The unconscious cannot be conscious; the moon has its dark side, the sun goes down and cannot shine everywhere at once, and even God has two hands.

Attention and focus require some things to be out of the field of vision, to remain in the dark. One cannot look both ways.” For this reason, we see the shadow most indirectly, in the distasteful traits and actions of other people, out there where it is safer to observe it.

When we react intensely to a quality in an individual or group – such as laziness or stupidity, sensuality, or spirituality – and our reaction overtakes us with great loathing or admiration, this may be our own shadow showing.

We project by attributing this quality to the other person in an unconscious effort to banish it from ourselves, to keep ourselves from seeing within. Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz suggests that projection is like shooting a magic arrow.

If the receiver has a soft spot to receive the projection, it sticks. If we project our anger onto a dissatisfied mate, our seductive charms onto a good-looking stranger, or our spiritual attributes onto a guru, we hit the target and the projection holds.

From then on the sender and receiver are linked in a mysterious alliance, like falling in love, discovering a perfect hero, or a perfect villain. So the personal shadow contains undeveloped, unexpressed potentials of all kinds.

It is that part of the unconscious that is complementary to the ego and represents those characteristics that the conscious personality does not wish to acknowledge and therefore neglects, forgets, and buries, only to discover them in uncomfortable confrontations with others.

MEETING THE SHADOW

Although we cannot gaze at it directly, the shadow does appear in daily life. For example, we meet it in humor – such as dirty jokes or slapstick antics – which express our hidden, inferior, or feared emotions.

When we observe closely that which strikes us as funny – such as someone slipping on a banana peel or referring to a taboo body part – we discover that the shadow is active.

John Sanford points out that people who lack a sense of humor probably have a very repressed shadow. It’s usually the shadow self who laughs at jokes.

English psychoanalyst Molly Tuby suggests six other ways in which, even unknowingly, we meet the shadow every day:

In our exaggerated feelings about others (“I just can’t believe he would do that!” “I don’t know she could wear that outfit!”)

In negative feedback from others who serve as our mirrors (“This is the third time you arrived late without calling me.”)

In those interactions in which we continually have the same troubling effect on several different people (“Sam and I both feel that you have not been straightforward with us.”)

In our impulsive and inadvertent acts (“Oops, I didn’t mean to say that.”)

In situations in which we are humiliated (“I’m so ashamed about how he treats me.”)

In our exaggerated anger about other people’s faults (“She just can’t seem to do her work on time!” “Boy, he really let his weight get out of control!”)

At moments like these, when we are possessed by strong feelings of shame or anger, or we find that our behavior is off the mark in some way, the shadow is erupting unexpectedly.

Usually it recedes just as quickly, because meeting the shadow can be a frightening and shocking experience to our self-image. For this reason we may quickly shift into denial, hardly noticing the murderous fantasy, suicidal thought, or embarrassing envy that could reveal a bit of our own darkness.

The late psychiatrist R.D. Laing poetically describes the mind’s denial reflex:

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.

If the denial holds, as Laing says, then we may not even notice that we fail to notice. For example, it’s common to meet the shadow at midlife, when one’s deeper needs and values tend to change direction, perhaps even making a 180-degree turn.

This calls for breaking old habits and cultivating dormant talents. If we don’t stop to heed the call and continue to move in the same life direction, we will remain unaware of what midlife has to teach.

Depression, too, can be a paralyzing confrontation with the dark side, a contemporary equivalent of the mystic’s dark night of the soul.

The inner demand for a descent into the underworld can be overridden by outer concerns, such as the need to work long hours, distractions by other people, or antidepressant drugs, which damp our feelings of despair. In this case, we fail to grasp the purpose of our melancholy.

Meeting the shadow calls for the slowing pace of life, listening to the body’s cues, and allowing ourselves time to be alone in order to digest the cryptic messages from the hidden world.

“Man’s shadow, I thought, is his vanity” – Friedrich Nietzsche

KNOW THYSELF

In ancient times, human beings acknowledged the many dimensions of the shadow – the personal, collective, family, and biological.

On the lintel pieces of the now-destroyed temple of Apollo at Delphi, which was built into the side of Mount Parnassus by the Greeks of the classical period, the temple priests set into stone two famous inscriptions, precepts that still hold great meaning for us today.

The first of these, “Know thyself,” applies broadly to our task. Know all yourself, the priest of the god of light advised, which could be translated, know especially the dark side.

We are in direct lineage to the Greek mind. Our shadow self remains the great burden of self-knowledge, the disruptive element that does not wnat to be known.

The Greeks understood this problem all too well, and their religion compensated for the underside of life. It was on the same mountainside above Delphi that the Greeks annually celebrated their famous bacchanal revels, orgies that glorified the forceful, creative presence of the nature god Dionysus in human beings.

Today, Dionysus exists for us only in degraded form in our cloven images of Satan, the devil, the personification of evil. No longer a god to be acknowledged and receive our tribute, he is banished to the world of fallen angels.

Maire-Louise von Franz acknowledges the relationship between the devil and the personal shadow when she says, “The principle of individuation is actually related to the devilish element, insofar as the latter represents a separation from the divine within the totality of natue.

The devilish aspects are the disrupting elements – the affects, the autonomous power drive, and such things. They disrupt the unity of the personality.”

NOTHING TO EXCESS

The other inscription at Delphi is perhaps more telling of the times which we live. “Nothing to excess,” the Greek god proclaims from his now-crumbled earthly shrine.

The classicist E.R. Dodds suggests an interpretation of this motto: Only a people who knew excess, he says, could have lived by such a maxim.

Only a people who knew their capacity for lust, greed, rage, gluttony, and for all things excessive – who have understood and accepted their own potential for inappropriate – extremes – can choose to regulate and humanize their actions.

We live in a time of critical excess: too many people, too much crime, too much exploitation, too much pollution, too many nuclear weapons. These are excesses that we can acknowledge and decry, though we may feel powerless to do anything about them.

Is there, in fact, anything we can do about them? For many people the unacceptable qualities of excess go directly into the unconscious shadow, or they get expressed in shadowy behavior.

In many of our lives these extremes take form of symptoms: intensely negative feelings and actions, neurotic suffering, psychosomatic illness, depression, and substance abuse.

The scenarios might look like this: When we feel excessive desire, we push it into the shadow, then act it out without concern for others; when we feel excessive hunger, we push it into the shadow, then overeat, binge and purge, trashing our bodies; we we feel excessive longing for the high side of life, we push it into the shadow, then we seek it out through instant gratification or hedonistic activity such as drug and alcohol abuse. The list goes on.

In our society, we see the growth for shadow excesses everywhere:

In an uncontrolled power drive for knowledge and domination of nature (expressed in the amorality of the sciences and the unregulated marriage of business and technology).

In a self-righteous compulsion to help and cure others (expressed in the distorted, codependent role of those in the helping profession and the greed of doctors and pharmaceutical companies).

In a fast-paced, dehumanized workplace (expressed by the apathy of an alienated work force, the unplanned obsolescence produced by automation, and the hubris of success).

In the maximization of business growth and progress (expressed in leveraged buyouts, profiteering, insider trading, and the savings loan debacle).

In a desire to control our innately uncontrollable intimate lives (expressed in widespread narcissism, personal exploitation, manipulation of others, and abuse of women and children).

And in our ever present fear of death (expressed in an obsession with health and fitness, diet, drugs and longevity at any price).

These shadowy aspects run the width and breath of our society. However, the tried solutions to our collective excess may be even more dangerous than the problem.

Consider, for example, fascism and authoritarianism, the horrors that arose in reactionary attempts to contain social disorder and widespread decadence and permissiveness in Europe.

More recently, the fervor of religious and political fundamentalism has reawakened on our own shores and across the seas in response to progressive ideas, encouraging, in W.B. Yeat’s words, “mere anarchy to be loosed upon the world.”

Jung understated the case when he said, “We have in all naivete forgotten that beneath our world of reason another lies buried. I do not know what humanity will still have to undergo before it dares to admit this.”

“The evil of our time is the loss of consciousness of evil” – Krishnamurti