The nigredo, the initial black stage of the alchemical opus, has been considered the most negative and difficult operation in alchemy.

How can we understand a death that means new life or a darkness that shines?

The dark side of psychic life is both dangerous and at times tragic, but the acceptance of its tragic potential was for Jung a necessity. He noted that the cure for suffering might well be more suffering.

"The alchemical operations were real, only this reality was not physical but psychological. Alchemy represents the projection of a drama both cosmic and spiritual in laboratory terms. The opus magnum had two aims: the rescue of the human soul and the salvation ofthe cosmos."'

Janet Towbin, who did a series of black paintings influenced by alchemists, writes:is the beginning of consciousness-you cannot have light without darkness or darkness without light. The dyad of black and white sets up a diurnal rhythm and the contrast is essential to consciousness. This is the symbol of Tao, the yin and yang.In alchemy, the color

"There are as many ways to be lost in the light as in the dark," says storyteller and poet Madronna Holden, who recognizes the peril that occurs when light loses touch with the principle of darkness.' On the cultural level we all too often have become lost in our spiritual, Apollonian, patriarchal, male perspective. Our roots in European languages

This is not surprising since the "self-care system" will "go to any length to protect the Self" in spite of the continual masochistic suffering involved, "even to the point of killing the host personality in which this personal spirit is housed

Hillman warns that the nigredo "speaks with the voice of the raven, foretelling dire happenings,"' and Dante tells us, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."

In the classical and developmental psychologies, the unity of the healthy ego is the essential structure of the psyche. The question of the dissolution of the ego or Self is almost always seen as regressive and detrimental, a fusion, or a return to the mother. Some analysts, however, have raised a different perspective, one that has challenged ego