O Holy Darkness: My journey through Seasonal Affective Disorder to discovering the spiritual treasures of Samhain

“To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is travelled by dark feet and dark wings.” Wendell Berry

Like many of us I have an uneasy relationship with darkness. Fear of the dark is an ancestral fear – our ancestors lit fires to ward off nocturnal predators. As a child I remember sleeping with a night light, because I was afraid of the monsters that might jump out at me in the dark. Fear of the dark is thus fear of the unknown, or rather, what we project onto the unknown. As a country, we are stepping into an unknown political future. It can be hard not to feel anxious when facing such uncertainty.

I wouldn't want to suggest that all suffering is good for us, but sometimes sticking with a painful process and examining the root of our discomfort and sorrow can transform our experience and allow us to gain new perspective. Painful experiences prompt us to reconsider what is important to us. They can be part of the process of discovering what makes our heart and soul sing.

In around 1578, when St John of the Cross was imprisoned by his Carmelite brothers, who opposed his reforms of their Order, he wrote the poem, Dark Night of the Soul.  The phrase 'dark night of the soul' has entered common parlance to refer to a spiritual crisis. St John's writings explore the painful journey of the soul through what he termed 'purgative contemplation', in which the will, intellect and senses are darkened, towards spiritual maturity and the union with God in unconditional love.

Catholic writer Jeannie Ewing describes how St. John of the Cross taught her about the beauty to be found in the quiet of winter, when all life seems to be dead or sleeping, and yet the restoration and renewal of life is actually hidden in the womb of the earth during those long months of the year: “Most of us errantly conclude that all darkness is an unholy darkness. St. John of the Cross introduced countless generations to the gift of a holy darkness, one that is bestowed to certain people as they deepen their faith journeys, one that strengthens their resolve to believe when they cannot see anything beyond “the dark night of the soul.”

In Jeannie Ewing's account, I recognised my own journey through season affective disorder to a healthier relationship with darkness and winter. I think I probably experienced 'winter blues' for most of my adult life, although it took me a few years to recognise them. Darkness increases rapidly during October and November. At the beginning of October, sunset time in Manchester was 18:46. Today the sun set at 16:33 – one hour of this shift is natural, one hour is because of the clocks changing.

Every year, as autumn advanced, my energy and my mood would plummet with the fading light. I would struggle to get out of bed in the mornings. I would feel despondent and irritable with myself and wish I could hibernate like a bear and sleep away the winter.

As a society we associate light with positivity and dark with negativity, which is reflected and reinforced by our language. We talk of en'light'enment and happy people have a 'sunny' disposition, but when we are unhappy we are in a 'black' mood and we are plunged into the darkness of despair.

A few years back, I started to work with the wheel of the year as part of a course on pre-Christian Celtic spirituality and shamanism, led by Nicola Smalley of the Way of the Buzzard. My relationship with darkness and winter began to change. The essence of working with the wheel of the year is to attune to the natural energies of each season by learning from nature.

One side of my family still make a living from the land as farmers. If you go back just a few generations, so did all our ancestors. They had no choice but to adapt to the cold dark winter. There was a real risk that they might not survive to see the new year. Their priority in the autumn was to ensure that they had enough food to last the winter. At the end of October they would gather in the last of the harvest and kill all but the breeding livestock so that they had the minimum number of mouths to feed through the winter. They would then preserve the fruits and meat for their winter food stores, just as the crows and squirrel bury their winter stores of nuts.

As the trees shed their leaves and vegetation died back down to the earth, they would also remember their own dead at this time of year. The Celtic festival of Samhain at the end of October celebrates the end of the harvest and the remembrance of the dead. The veil between the worlds of the living and the dead, of matter and spirit, is said to be thinnest at this time. These traditions have passed into the Christian calendar with All Hallows, All Saints and All Souls Days, and Martinmas in early November. My family still take their cattle to market at Martinmas (11 November or Old Halloween).

Our culture no longer encourages us to live according to the seasons. Our supermarkets stock all foods at all times of the year. Technology means we can have artificial light all year round; smart-phones, tablets, tv screens, and city street lights, disrupt our circadian rhythms. We can push on through winter and be as busy as we were in summer. I work in the education system and the autumn term, far from slowing down, is often one of the busiest times of the year. And then comes December with its gaudy lights and frantic Christmas preparations.

Pushing on through eventually takes it toll. Most plants shed their leaves in autumn to conserve their strength, because it would weaken them to continue to try photosynthesising and growing through the winter. If we continue to live our lives through autumn and winter at the same pace as summer we too become exhausted. Our bodies are attuned to the rhythms of the year as well as the cycle of day and night. Night-time provides an opportunity to rest and let go of the day. In the wheel of the year, winter provides the same opportunity.

I no longer use a SAD lamp to increase my exposure to light and resist the dark. Instead, I try to accept the invitation of the increasing darkness to listen to my body and slow down, to deepen into silence and stillness, to try to embrace a simpler existence, and (most difficult of all) to practise letting go and saying no.

For all of us there was once a time when darkness was not scary, but safe. We each grew in the womb in darkness. Darkness was our original state. Sight becomes our primary sense in early childhood, but vision is the last sense to develop in the womb – touch first starts to develop at 3 weeks gestation, then taste and smell, then hearing, and lastly, vision. A developing baby's eyelids open at around 26 weeks and it can distinguish light at around 6 months, but there is little light stimulation and the womb is mostly dark, with the baby's vision remaining relatively undeveloped at birth.

Just as the earth nurtures the seeds in darkness over winter, and animals gestate their young, we too can use this time to nurture ourselves, and in nurturing ourselves, we conceive and nurture the seeds of new plans for the new year, ready for birth in the spring. In letting go of the old, we make room for the new.

Creative inspiration can only come when we make space for it. In her book, The Celtic Spirit: Daily Meditations for the Turning Year, Celtic scholar Caitlin Matthews recounts the tale of the 17th century traveller, Martin Martin, who toured the west coast of Scotland and reported on the training used in the last of the bardic schools, whose methods of composition had not varied from earliest Celtic times. Students composed poems in the House of Darkness: a long, low hut divided into cubicles devoid of light, in which the students lay upon couches alone and worked on each poem in darkness. Inspiration was able to spark more brightly when the subtle senses are able to work, without the distraction of our physical ones.

I invite you to join me and the rest of nature in accepting the invitation of the dark nights to wind down, withdraw and take good care of yourself, to let the velvety darkness swaddle you and nurture you. You may wish to use the time between now and the winter solstice / Christmas to reflect on some of the following questions:
What can you let go of that burdens you and drains your resources? Perhaps you may be holding on to bad habits, toxic relationships, quarrels or grudges.
What changes have happened in your life in the past year? How can you take stock of the past and come to terms with it, in order to move on and look forward to the future?
As birds that do not migrate flock together to form companies to keep them warm and safe by roosting close to each other, how can you nurture yourself and your relationships with your loved ones?
What burdens the world and drains its resources? How can we contribute to building a just world of peace and harmony?

I'm still not completely in tune with autumn and winter. I'm still not great at saying no. I still pack my diary too full and I have to work hard to resist the temptation to fill up space as soon as I create it. I still have bad days when I struggle to get out of bed. I admit that my favourite time of year is the opposite time on the wheel of the year – the period between Beltane at the beginning of May and the Summer Solstice, when nature is blossoming and blooming with verdancy and the light is increasing. But I no longer dread the dark, for it is full of possibilities.

Having reflected on my journey, my healthier relationship with darkness is being built with the three pillars of 1 Corinthians 13:13, “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” Faith in the process, in the transformative powers of darkness, Hope of achieving a lasting balance, Love of myself, my fellow inhabitants of the earth and the mysterious Loving Presence that holds us all.