Let's get philosophical: What is the difference between light and darkness

Eight months have passed since my first experience with the occult. Eight months of self-discovery, pain and growth. Before my first initiation in magick I considered, like most people in the world, that light is the good side and darkness is the evil side. But my experiences now tell me otherwise. From what I have understood so far, good and evil are human constructs. There is no good and evil in the spirit world, only us and how we perceive things.
Now that being said though, what does it mean to be of light or of darkness? Users of the forum, me included, use these two concepts regurarly to describe spirits or spells or energies or states of meditation, but what does it mean that to a person’s life? Am I making any sense or am I just blabbering around? What do you guys think?

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I agree that light doesn’t equal good and darkness doesn’t mean evil.
Light can hurt and darkness can be healing. You know when you have a bad headache and you seek a dark room? :smile:

I think of light and darkness as two sides of the same coin. They just work differently and feel different. But some people tend to be more comfortable in darkness, some seek light. One isn’t better than the other.
I guess it’s like water and fire. Two elements, both can be life giving and destroying.

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I don’t really believe in the concept of light and dark outside of elemental energies and the progenitors different flavor of it. Such as Nyx and Kauket won’t have the same flavor of darkness or Eros and Amunnet won’t have the same flavor of light.

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There are different kinds of fire, like a campfire is different than burning oil, and there’s a difference between water from a swamp and an ocean. So why shouldn’t there be different kind of light and darkness?

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Light is energy. It guides, but too much of it can overwhelm your senses and blind you.
Dark is just, the absence of that, on varying levels. Without external stimuli, it allows you to be receptive to other, more subtle energies. But you couldn’t be as receptive if there’s no inner light for it to react to

it’s all a balance :slight_smile:

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Darkness is potential and Light is manifestation.
As you can see, one cannot exist without the other.

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Imo, light is just fantasy and darkness is reality. The power of darkness is the pain and sufferings can help you rise to success. Ain’t no success without failure and you will go through some of the darkest times of your life in order to chase your goals. People will judge you, you will have problems after problems, but you can not give up. The darkness you went through will pay off. Sounds a little cliche, but that’s my basic perspective.

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But you’re associating darkness with problems and pain. Like in the phrase ‘you need to walk through the darkness to see the light’. But darkness doesn’t equal suffering.
Darkness can also be healing.

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Ya you right. Darkness can be anything.

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Darkness can be anything depending on the person and how they react and use the darkness.

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Healing and Pain aren’t always mutually exclusive but I see your point.

Yeah, I’m very aware of that. A spirit I work with once gave me a severe pain in the shoulder that lasted only a few minutes (but I thought I was gonna die) to make me realize I have to treat my body better. Complicated story. And it was one of those spirits that most people associate with light, so…

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Indeed, it’s all grey.

In my experience, the difference between light and dark is how the energies manifest.

Dark Energy is cold and it’s energies goes inward, similar to a black hole. It’s very solid to the touch and it draws other energies nearby towards itself. Just like a black hole or even like a vacuum cleaner.
I refer to this kind of energy as a Lower Frequency Energy, removing the negative connotation and the stigma.

Light Energy is vibrant, warm and electrifying. It’s also solid to the touch, but can give blisters on our skin because it’s energies goes outwards. It often comes with a buzzing sound and vibrating like two electrical circuits are connected.

There’s a consciousness in both currents, which do not reflect negative nor positive action or statements. The consciousness lies within the core of both currents, thus reflecting the feelings within and act it out despite the general consensus of said current.

There’s love in dark and light. There’s hate in dark and light. There’s fear of light and there’s fear of dark. Both need eachother and are equally important.

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Darkness is just light turned inside out.

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This is a difficult one because if you remove the moral presuppositions and implications it becomes unexplored territory. I would say that light is external and darkness internal. Thus, the LHP can be regarded as predominately individualistic self-development and self-exaltation with potential communal aspects attached. Whereas the RHP can be regarded as predominately communal development with potential individualist aspects attached.

The attachments are always there regardless because light and dark go together. One cannot exist without the other. I believe we need to take this beyond language because this is where we hit a linguistic and phenomenological wall.

Let’s take it out of the realm of language and designate light and dark as preconditions or primordial conditions which are necessary in order for either to manifest, and go from there.

The issue with designating that which is sinister to darkness is that there is a level where that which is purely sinister becomes bright, burning, white light. This is something I have experienced in a mediation/exploration.

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Darkness’s is primordial.

In most religions darkness and light or night and day came into existence at the same time. In Gylfaginning (prose Edda) it is stated that Odin sent two beings at the same time to ride their chariots around Midgard (Earth). One being was the night and the other was the sun (day). This means that both are primordial. In Gylfaginning however, fire and ice are the primordial conditions. But if you take it even further back we can determine that chaos or “nothingness” is the true primordial condition of existence. But who is to say that chaos or “nothingness” is not a bright light?

Although if we look at this from a physical perspective; a room can be pitch black and have objects in it. But if you were to ask someone what they see in the room they would respond with: “nothing. I cannot see anything”. It is only when light is cast into the dark or the individual becomes used to the dark and their eyes adjust that they are able to see the objects. So in this sense, yes, darkness would be the primordial condition or the Being of light.

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Light is everything temporal while darkness is eternal.
Life is light, death is dark, because life begins and ends, while death is eternal.

Light can be related with everything that starts and ends.

My philosophy DO dictate that virtues are related to light, and sin related to darkness, which can be seen as “good and evil”, but before going full potato, please keep reading.

First point would be elaborate upon the terms “Virtue” and “Sin”.

Since we are now talking about me and my philosophy, and not the Abrahamic religions, “Virtues” are ideals of divinity, that when enabled in action, leads to a divine life in the light*.
On the opposite end is the human nature, which is the source of strife*, which is enabled by “Sins”.
My philosophy dictates that sinning takes zero effort, because we are driven by our instincts to eat to much, to lie, to cheat, to do violence, etc.

These actions would be falling into sin, and because of its ever-present nature, sins are related to darkness.

Virtues, however, requires effort to keep burning, which would be actions constantly working against our base human nature.
Modesty, courage, etc, you get the deal, requires constant upkeep or else it will just fizzle out.
The reason being that virtues need to be upheld by continuous actions, while sins are simply there, sins being part of the ever present human condition.

Now, imagine every person you’ve encountered that TRIED to live in virtue but failed on an epic scale.
Yea, that is the shit I am talking about.

Darkness is not purely evil, it is as cold and unfeeling as Light, but good and evil literally always boils down to “desirable and undesirable traits”…that is literally all it is.

I should also note, that if it wasn’t clear, this is merely my perspective on the matter, and since I know most were going to “praise the darkness”, I figured I would share my mildly undesirable stance from the point of someone working extensively with the Light.

*This is in accordance with Elenye, my light based philosophy.

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I’d do mushrooms with you

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