There is darkness in this world.  It is within and without and all
around.  We spend half our life in it.  It is the reason we know there is
light:  dark provides contrast, shadows, relief. 
	In a world without night, there might be very different ways of
seeing darkness, but on Earth, there is a steady cycle where the two
change places on a more or less equal basis.  The night is longer in
Winter, and the day is longer in the Summer.  But no matter what, there is
the dark.  You can spend your life hiding from it, but it won't go away.
It is a fact of human existence.
	The dark is a powerful metaphore.  It has represented evil, death,
destruction, and depression in those traditions based on the light.  The
contrast of black (bad) and white (good) ranges from the most sublime, in
religious symbolism, to the ridiculous, like black cowboy hats for the bad
guys.  And night, too, has had negative connotations, the time of
irrational, intuitive magic and mystery, when we cannot see, when our
rational faculties are subdued.  The white light has also been associated
with the masuline, and the dark night with the feminine.  And although
this symbolism has been with us for many a moon, and though they have
their own power and legitimacy, they are ultimately archaic.
	The darkness is just as good, powerful, and important to our lives
as the light.  One reason that Pagans tend to emphasize "the dark side" is
that the light has been too dominant and exhaulted in our culture.  Those
of us who grew up bathed in a constant stream of "the light" end up
sunburned and suffering.  The dark is, like night time, a welcome relief,
a cool interlude where the stars and moon caress our souls with the gentle
comfort of peace.  The dark, in other words, is beautiful.
	Of course, it can be ugly, too.  Like the "ugly witch,"  darkness
can be scary, intense, challenging.  Just walking out to the sacred circle
on my property can be an adventure at night.  In the day, it's about fifty
feet of pine-needle covered, level ground.  But in the country dark, it's
a journey into the netherworld.  Darkness creates and sustains magic.
It's why many of our magical work is done at night.
	Inside all of us is a little dark.  You may call it the impulse to
evil, to violence and madness, but it's also the underutilized intuitive
sense, the creativity of dreams and visions, the secret depths of
knowledge and startling flashes of genius.  It is the womb of beginning as
well as the inevitable sleep of death.  
	What goth music, "dark" films, and other manifestations of our
night vision offer us is the shedding of light on the dark, the
exploration of these unplumbed treasures from our deeper selves, our right
brain, our dreamtime.  They remind us of the forbidden healing power of
facing the darkness, knowing that the light waits with the morning.  It
frees us from the hot, dry, burning light, and leads us onto paths of
ecstacy and transcendence.
	Many of us who revel in the dark (as well as the light), spend
more of our waking lives at night.  The "early to bed, early to rise"
ethic was, in part, I believe, an avoidence of darkness.  "Things that go
bump in the night" were somehow more strange and terrifying than things
that went bump in the day.  But make no mistake:  the terror came from
ignorance and denial.  Not from reality.
	We have grown up with night as a constant ally.  We live on this
earth and belong here.  We are brothers and sisters to the dark, kin to
the moon as well as the sun.  Do not fear the dark.  Befriend it, become
it's lover, and you will grow and strengthen, literally doubling your
capacity for grace and truth.  
	Embrace the night, and you will know its benevolent pleasures.
	Love the dark.  And if you cannot love it, at least respect it.