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| Photo by Thomas Bresson, via Wikimedia Commons. CC-BY-3.0 |
The Hunter Moon has reached the peak of its illumination, and now the shadow once again begins to creep across the face of the moon's disc. In most modern pagan spiritual practices, the moon represents intuition - the universal language that everyone speaks. We all have instincts and impulses, and we all try to see into the future in our own way, even if it's just checking the weather forecast so we know how to plan our day tomorrow. We know how to recognize patterns; it's our greatest evolutionary advantage as a species. It's what allowed us to connect the movement of the stars and sun with an understanding of the seasons and the growth of plants, which paved the way for agriculture and, in turn, civilization itself.
But the moon also has another side in pagan spirituality: illusion. Our propensity for pattern recognition has an unfortunate tendency to make us see patterns even where they don't actually exist, and this makes us prone to superstition. The classic Waite-Smith tarot illustration for the Moon shows this duality of intuition and illusion in the form of a dog and a wolf: the tamed, trained, disciplined side of our mind, and the side that runs wild through the dark. This developed sense of recognizing patterns can cause us to "fill in the blanks" when we don't have all the facts, and that gives us prejudices that make us susceptible to manipulation by people who are skilled in exploiting those prejudices. It also makes us susceptible to falling into the traps of spiritual fluff: the kind of toxic positivity, harmful self-soothing, and syrupy psychology that I've spoken of before as something we should try very hard to avoid.
In my spiritual practice, I base a lot of my active introspection and action on the cycles of the moon. As the moon waxes and becomes brighter and brighter, that is a time for tapping into the light reflected by the moon from the sun's fiery furnace of potential and focusing on achieving my goals. The full moon is a powerful moment for spell work and other things that help me focus on my intentions. But if you've followed me for any length of time, you know that Anubis - and indeed, the universe itself - demands balance in all things. The light from the moon flows freely for a time, but each month, it inevitably ebbs away into darkness once again. It is in the growing dark that I turn my thoughts inward, away from accomplishing my goals and towards examining myself.
The term "shadow work" is frequently invoked in pagan mysticism, but in point of fact, it likely has its origin in the work of the 19th and 20th century Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. Jung described the "shadow self" as an aspect of each person's character. To Jung, the shadow was comprised of the unconscious parts of ourselves that we often repress, either deliberately or simply because we've simply never recognized them. In much of modern pagan thought, "shadow work" is about purging self-negativity or processing crises. To be clear, there's value in that; I know I tend to criticize mainstream paganism quite a bit, but I'm not meaning to completely slap down the worth of self-soothing. When your mind is in chaos because of some internal or external crisis you're facing, I fully understand that sometimes you can't fully process what you're feeling without using some self-soothing mechanisms to quiet your mind. However, it's important to understand that whatever value that has, that's not what shadow work actually is - and make no mistake: true shadow work is absolutely necessary for spiritual growth.
In Jungian therapy, shadow work isn't about purging negativity; it's about bringing the repressed parts of ourselves to the surface and confronting them. I've repeatedly stressed in this blog that spiritual maturity requires us to be radically honest with ourselves, and that's what shadow work really is. It's the spiritual self-audit that we need to do from time to time in order to keep ourselves balanced. Now, to be clear, there are pitfalls to avoid in this too. One of the problems with depression and anxiety is that they create illusions for you that can be hard to reckon with, because they are traps woven from the fabric of your own mind. It's very easy to look at yourself and say "You're right, I need to just be honest with myself. I'm worthless, I'm failing at everything, I'll never be successful." That's not honest self-reflection. That's self-victimization. That's wallowing. That's surrendering your agency and your sovereignty because embracing the familiar misery of depression is often much easier than confronting what actually prevents you from becoming a better person. In bluntly honest terms, that's not shadow work - it's a cop-out. The ethos of this blog is that I'm not going to offer saccharine comfort, but neither am I going to sanction avoidant self-flagellation.
There are so many spells and rituals out there that focus on getting rid of or protecting yourself from "negative energy," and I think that does a disservice to the whole concept of seeking to align with the energy of the universe. In my own grimoire, I am very careful to avoid talking about "negative energy." I prefer to use terms like "unwanted energy" or "energy that harms me" because those terms are more honest, and those are energies that naturally build up in the cycles of life's ups and downs. A fire is welcome in the fireplace, but not in the granary. Energy isn't "positive" or "negative"; it is simply energy. Its significance is not in what it is, but in how it affects us. By the same token, shadow work isn't about purging "negatives" and embracing "positives"; it's about recognizing our internal mechanisms and catalysts, including - especially - the ones that we tend to avoid thinking about. It's about learning to recognize the sources and channels of the energy that flows into us and out of us, and understanding those sources. The first step to processing our feelings is letting ourselves feel them. Whatever feelings you have, whether they are joy or anger or sadness, you have to let yourself feel what you feel. To process those feelings, don't push them away - instead, recognize them, acknowledge them, and take time to honestly seek to understand them. Think of where those feelings are coming from, why they are affecting you as they are, and where you may need to direct them.
When we try to purge the perceived "negative" parts of ourselves, we're never going to succeed at doing anything except driving them deeper - and we may be able to hide them, but we'll never be rid of them. When we talk about letting go of things that "do not serve us," that doesn't mean we can just get rid of all the things about ourselves that we don't like - it means that we reject the guilt and shame that those things trap us in. There are parts of ourselves that we need to come to terms with, and many of those parts are often sources of guilt or shame for us, but they are also necessary parts of our being, like anger or sexuality or fear. Anger can grow out of control if we let it rage untamed, but properly directed, it is also a powerful impetus for necessary changes in our relationships or in society more broadly. Sexuality is a primal urge for most people in some form or another, but if we don't temper it, it can lead us to make stupid decisions or cross inviolable boundaries. Uncontrolled fear can paralyze us and make us hide from the world, but it is also nature's way of protecting us from danger. The parts of ourselves that we think of as "bad" are often just like fire: welcome on the hearth, but not in the storehouse.
Shadow work is all about balancing the ledger: coming to terms with the core of ourselves so that we know where the wells of our inner strength lie so that we can draw from them when it's time to confront our weaknesses. When we've done spell-work throughout the growing light of the moon to control our energy and focus, there will be feelings that we may have had to push aside in order to do that; shadow work during the waning moon is the time to stop repressing those things and come face to face with them so that we can reckon with them and be in a place of balance when the light begins to return. In the ancient Greek holy place of Delphi, the Temple of Apollo was inscribed with three maxims. One was "nothing too much," which can be taken as a way of saying "everything in moderation." Another was "give a pledge and trouble is at hand," which is a good way of defining boundaries and understanding how one comes to carry too many obligations. But the last, the most enduring, and certainly the most important for the purpose of capturing the essence of shadow work, was two simple words that have echoed throughout the millennia: "Know thyself."
