Sol niger

Sol niger

Sol Niger – an image that Jung wrote about in his later writings on alchemy, and although it plays a relatively minor role in his thinking, I believe that its significance deserves much more extensive study. This image showed the darkest and most destructive situations, those that the alchemists called blacker than black - the dimensions of the nigredo. The term nigredo is usually thought of as the process of beginning in alchemy, the equivalent of a descent into the unconscious. In the face of this darkness and suffering that sometimes accompanies the nigredo, there is a natural tendency to withdraw from the soul. While this protective process is needed from time to time, it can also inhibit or bypass the latent potential contained within the darkness itself. The dark side of mental life is both dangerous and at times tragic, but accepting its tragic potential was a necessity for Jung. He noted that the remedy for suffering could be more suffering.sol