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          "The Dark Night of the Soul" is the name given to that experience of 
          spiritual desolation that all students of the Occult pass through at 
          one time or another. It is sometimes characterized by feelings that 
          your occult studies or practices are not taken you anywhere, that 
          the initial success that one is sometimes granted after a few months 
          of occult working, has suddenly dried up. There comes a desire to 
          give up on everything, to abandon exercises and meditation, as 
          nothing seems to be working. St.John of the Cross. a christian 
          mystic, said of this experience, that it; 
           "...puts the sensory spiritual appetites to sleep, deadens them, 
           and deprives them of the ability to find pleasure in anything. 
           It binds the imagination, and impedes it from doing any good 
           discursive work. It makes the memory cease, the intellect become 
           dark and unable to understand anything, and hence it causes the 
           will to become arid and constrained, and all the faculties empty 
           and useless. And over this hangs a dense and burdensome cloud, 
           which afflicts the soul, and keeps it withdrawn from the good." 

          Though the beginner may view the onset of such an experience with 
          alarm (I know I did), the "Dark Night" is not something bad or 
          destructive. In one sense it may be seen as a trial, a test by which 
          the Gods examine our resolve to continue with occult work, and if 
          you are not completely whole-hearted about your magical studies, it 
          is during this period (at its beginning) that you will give up. The 
          Dark Night of the Soul should be welcomed, once recognized for 
          what it is (I have always received an innate "warning" just before 
          the onset of such a period), as a person might welcome an operation 
          that will secure health and well-being. St.John of the Cross embraced 
          the soul`s Dark Night as a Divine Appointment, calling it a period 
          of "sheer grace" and adding; 
           "O guiding Night, 
           O Night more lovely than Dawn, 
           O Night that has united the lover with his beloved 
           Transforming the Lover in her Beloved." 

          When entering the Dark Night one is overcome by a sense of spiritual 
          dryness and depression. The notion, in some quarters, that all such 
          experiences should be avoided, for a peaceful existence, shows up 
          the superficiality of so much of contemporary living. The Dark Night 
          is a way of bringing the Soul to stillness, so that deep psychic 
          transformation may take place. All distractions must be set aside, 
          and it is no good attempting to fight or channel the bursts of raw 
          energy that from time to time may course through your being. This 
          inner compulsion to set everything aside results in the outer 
          depression, when nothing seems to excite. 

          The only thing to do is obey your inner voice and become still, 
          waiting for the inner transformation, (which the "Dark Night" 
          heralds), to take place. You may not be aware for a very long time 
          of the results of that inner change, but when the desire to work 
          comes again and the depression lifts, the Dark Night has (for a 
          moment) passed. No one can help during this time, and in many cases 
          there is hardly anyone to turn for advice. One must disregard the 
          well-meaning advice of family and friends to "snap out of it" this 
          is no ordinary depression, but a deep spiritual experience which 
          only those who have passed through themselves (in other words to a 
          magical retreat) but for many, as the routines of everyday life 
          prohibits this, all you can do is cultivate an inner solitude, a 
          stillness and silence of heart, and wait, (like a chrysalis waits 
          for the inner changes that will result in a butterfly) for the 
          Transformation to work itself out. There are many such "Dark Nights" 
          that the occult seeker must pass through during the mysterious 
          process of mitigation. They are all trials but experience teaches 
          one to cope more efficiently. 

          With fractalic greetings and laughter  * Fra.: Apfelmann *