The Nature of Light, Darkness, and The Shadow as The Light and Dark Mother
When it comes to The Mother, I experience Her to be everything in creation: light, dark, dimensionality, the fundamental forces, material nature, and shadow.
There is a distinction between darkness and shadow. From a purely physical perspective, shadow is a dark *obscure-cast* of a light-illuminated object. It is illusory in nature and not substantial or material. It has neither mass nor energy. While the shadow is real in that it can be physically observed and seen, it's also not real in a physical sense; it's just an illusion created by those things. It's a dark reflection of what is.
Meanwhile, darkness is empty space absent of light. It is real, but undefinable—scienctists consider it a mystery with mysterious, difficult to define properties—where as the light is currently definable. It takes light, darkness, and materiality to create a shadow.
I think light and darkness have an interesting relationship in that both light and darkness, in combination with matter, create shadow. The shadow is so obscure and can seem to have a life of its own as both object and light source move in space/time. Light is generative in nature, so it takes an energy source to maintain and light the dark and create shadow. Darkness, theoretically, can have both mass and energy (dark matter and dark energy) but its source and nature are currently unknown, though understood to be different and distinct from light in that it does not interact with the electromagnetic field; it does not absorb, reflect, or emit electromagnetic radiation, and so remains illusive. The shadow, on the other hand, is nongenerative in the sense that it has neither mass nor energy, but is a type of darkness created by both.
Light, as far as the naked eye is concerned, does not illuminate the vast dark of space. When we look at stars in the dark sky, we see bright shimmers on a dark backdrop. When not in close proximity to a powerful source of light, that source is not enough to light and fill the entire dark, empty space. And darkness still exists beyond the range of that source. Empty space is vaster and wider than we can know. The Earth is illuminated in the light of the sun because of its size in proximity to the sun, its atmosphere, and its rotational axis. But in empty space, we don't see and experience the sun as we do on earth. This design is necessary for *life as we know it* to thrive.
Light Moving Away, Light Coming Towards
The Doppler Red Shift reveals the measurement of light moving away from the observer and, from a metaphysical perspective, is synonymous with the light of the soul moving away from Source (Observer/Creator) on the Red Road of Life through the Feminine principle. The Doppler Blue Shift is the measurement of light moving toward the observer and, metaphysically, represents the Blue River of Death: the light returning to Source (The Observer/Creator) through the Masculine principle, which delivers the Feminine back home to Source at the time of death.
Arguably, before the time of death when in life we desire to connect back to Source, the Divine Masculine is the Blue River that renews us in the waters of Spirit and delivers us safely whenever we are "born again". When we need to be renewed and connect to Source or The Greater Light, the Divine Masculine is our deliverer. He lifts up our inner Feminine aspect and merges Her with Him in union to unite us back to Source.
The Red Road, the descending Feminine, is creation and the light illuminating the unknown darkness; the walk of life. She is enlightenment and embodied wisdom: the moon that reflects the inner light, the lamp in the dark. Life itself. The bridge to the life and death portal and the underworld.
Interestingly, the left ventricle of the heart pumps out red, oxygenated (energized blood) away from the heart to the organs/body. It returns as blue blood through the right ventricle to be composted, rebirthed, and re-energized as red, oxygenated blood. This is a Feminine/Masculine mystery mirrored in the macrocosm and cycle of birth, death, and rebirth and expressed in many mythological stories.
Life is an illumination of what is unknown. By living life, we can know what is unknown and what the darkness holds. We also know the shadow, which is intimately a part of the Red Road of Life. All of these knowings are incredibly subtle and interacting with us in different dimensions in the macrocosm and microcosm.
The Feminine, who is all of Life and every soul in existence, is expressed in The New Testament Christ story in mythical archetype as Mary Magdalene and, in initiated circles, is called the Lesser Mary/Lesser Sophia (this is not intended to be a hierarchical definition, but to express a relationship between "Mother" and "Daughter", who have the same name and are a macro-micro mirror). The Masculine, expressed in the story in mythical archetype as Christ, sacrifices to return the so called "fallen"—the Feminine light/soul that has "separated" away from Source and embedded in the material creation, obscured and entangled by shadow. In the Cosmic sense, both Christ and Lesser Sophia are born from the Dark Womb and Greater Light, expressed in mythical archetype as Mother Mary, The Immaculate Conception and Greater Sophia, who immaculately conceives by the Seed of God (the essence of No-thing/the essence of Dark).
Mother Mary is also the physical Greater Mary that conceived and gave birth to a physical Christ in The New Testament birth story. The Lesser Mary is even obscured in the story. Her nature and mystical representation is not obvious. This reveals the obscured, veiled, and hidden nature of The Feminine. The Feminine obscured by shadow, waiting to be unveiled and glorified.
The Shadow is a Part of Darkness, but not Darkness Itself
A black hole has incredible gravitational force that consumes light, pulls it within itself, and appears darker than dark, but is that darkness and power a shadow or something else?
Dark matter and energy do not emit, absorb, or reflect electromagnetic radiation (light). This too is not shadow, but something else. Yet it is substantial and takes up more empty space than visible matter.
I define the shadow as a part of darkness that is real, but illusory. But it is not the entirety of darkness itself.
Darkness/void has many aspects and, for me, is The Great Mystery and The Dark Mother: Unknowable and incomprehensible. It is the No-thing from which all is born—The Dark Womb. It is the space that sustains creation/light, incubates, births, consumes, and recycles light and matter. It is the empty space and resting place between cycles of creation and destruction. It is a darkness that is energized and given mass by an unknown force and source: The Dark Mother, who is Force/Dark Matter that consumes, recycles, and births Life.
Shadow does not birth life/light. It obscures it and is an illusion created by light and matter that casts a dark reflection. It masquerades as and even pretends to birth, but doesn't.
The Shadow as a Conception of Evil
The Mother has shown me that the shadow is present in everything created; as material nature, even She casts a shadow. In a metaphysical sense, that shadow might be defined as evil.
The darkness of shadow, defined as ignorance and unknowing plus the illusory separation from The Greater Light and the Dark Womb, can make life excruciating and painful. This suffering, ignorance, and shadowy darkness is often defined by some as evil, to which its nature is described as a lie because it is illusory, like the physical illusion of a shadow—it is the real-unreal. It is personified, vilified, and given archetypal significance in myth, religion, and history.
Ignorance and animated shadow are the "agents of evil" (this is merely personified language to describe their nature), whose obscuring/hiding/deceiving nature is to further separate us from connection to the truth: The Web of Life formed of light, the knowing of our glory as Light, and the knowing of ourselves as children of The Dark Womb and Immaculate Conception (the Holy Darkness). Additionally, time and death as we know it seem to put us in a cycle of suffering that inherently obscures and casts a shadow over our eternal nature. Therefore they have been called evil.
When we consider that we live in an animistic universe and that all things have life and consciousness potential, it makes sense that our shadows are made conscious and alive by the power we give them and by the stories we tell about evil and evil embodiment/incarnate. We create our own demons.
Like a moving shadow that is seemingly alive, the metaphysical shadow can appear to have a life of its own. Though it is still shadow and lacks a generative source other than, metaphysically speaking, the consciousness(s) which created and sustains it. Our light, the human mind, is cast upon the material creation, which we merely view as object. And so we cast a shadow on that object. If we were able to see the material creation as pure light or dark matter/energy, we would not cast a shadow. But because we objectify creation, we do.
We humans cast our own shadow by our souls' interaction with the material world. We give life to our shadow and form collective shadows. These shadows entangle us with one another because our unconscious shadow aspects cause us to treat one another and ourselves in harmful ways that continue to obscure (create more shadow and hide our true nature). That creates a spider web effect (a shadow version of The Web of Life which I call The Shadow Web), wrapping us in one another's shadow, casting more darkness and creating more confusion and suffering by weaving us into one another's dysfunction and trauma, creating trauma bonds.
It's a paradox because, simultaneously, the shadow is an inherent part of living a physical life. As the real-unreal, the shadow is really experienced, seen, and known, but is still a dark reflection of truth that obscures the true reality: Eternality and Light upon Holy Darkness. The shadow will always be with us in this reality, so we must learn to make peace with it and become conscious of it to bring light to the darkness (enlighten the obscuring dark). This means confronting our fears of darkness, otherness, blackness, the earth, our bodies, the soil, the dirt, the passage of time, the composting of death, death, decay, and dying and unraveling our puritanical/purity/white washed neurosis that are a trauma response to The Shadow Web and our traumatized/trauma bonded state. It means learning to truly see creation for what creation truly is: interconnected light, darkness, and consciousness.
I don't demonize the shadow, but rather I seek to come into a space of acceptance and wholeness with it as a phenomenon of our material universe. I work to see it for what it is, but honor its nature and the way it serves us in self-mastery and embodiment in the Earthly sphere. This is about our relationship with an animistic, conscious Universe and the way consciousness is imbued in creation. Our relationship can be wholesome when we learn to see and connect to that underlying consciousness/power and allow it to guide us and help us unwind our threads from these entanglements of shadow. Because it is a process, we must learn to not dissociate through or bypass our experience, nor project dissociation and puritanical values onto others. Compassion and understanding for the very real challenges and entanglements we individually walk is important. Allow others to be where they are, but, when necessary, call them to relate with integrity. Call them into wholeness.