ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses rites of passage that lead to a new development status. Such rites take place in secluded darkness, similar to working with unconscious processes at night-time through dream work. Within this dark and invisible frame, one enters into the liminal night-time taboo journey of transformation, analogous to the sun as it sets in the west and disappears into the darkness of the ‘other’ side. This chapter explores the colour black as a night-time colour of invisibility. It is not considered negative, but as a potential space to be explored in the unconscious to find what is not yet realised in consciousness. Blackness itself, as described by Hillman, has many shades: there is black that recedes and absorbs; black that dampens and softens; black that sharpens and etches; and black that shines with effervescence. From the analysis of black and the role of Hades in the land of the dead, as the tabooed hidden hider, I examine the role of shamans who undertake the difficult journey to restore lost or stolen soul aspects of the self, using the work of Eliade, Levi-Strauss, Robbins, Merchant, Haule, and others on shamanism. I give two examples of this imaginal fete and compare their journey to the work of psychoanalysis, in particular, Jungian analysis.
