The Pregnant Darkness: Alchemy and the Rebirth of Consciousness [Paperback]

Monika Wikman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 2004

Author, psychologist, and astrologer Monika Wikman has worked for decades with clients and their dream symbols and witnessed the presence of the divine hand at work in the psyche. In The Pregnant Darkness, Wikman shows readers that the best way to cope with their darkest hours is by fostering a connection to the deeper current of life, those mysteries that give life form and meaning. Wikman’s analysis of dream material leads readers into a practical explanation of alchemical symbolism. Far from being a quaint, ancient practice, The Pregnant Darkness shows that alchemy is at work in contemporary, everyday life. Alchemical symbolism, properly understood, can be applied to unraveling the meaning of visions in meditation, active imagination, and dream work. Wikman shows how readers can participate in the divine energies to help miraculous changes occur in their lives.

Wikman writes: "In Greek mythology, Pegasus, upon taking to the air, pushed hard with a back hoof and penetrated the earth. A spring rose up where his hoof dashed the earth, and in this hole . . . the muses reside. One of the roles of the ‘religious function’ of which Jung speaks is to bring us toward that inner spring of the muses where something beyond ego resides, instructs, and inspires. Like a hole created from Pegasus’ leaping foot, contact with this inner spring often entails a crack in our field of ordinary consciousness. In the inner world, the spring of living symbols and accompanying presences is the source of dreams and visions, as well as the fountain of inspiration at the heart of poetry, art, ritual, mythology, and even religion."

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Monika Wikman is a Jungian analyst and astrologer. She has published articles in the major Jungian journals, Spring, Psychological Perspectives, and Quadrant. This is her first book.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Nicolas-Hays (December 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892540788
• ISBN-13: 978-0892540785
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #462,688 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Drink of Living Water, October 13, 2005

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Coyote Den (Santa Ysabel, CA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Pregnant Darkness: Alchemy and the Rebirth of Consciousness (Paperback)

Pregnant Darkness: Alchemy and the Rebirth of Consciousness
Monika Wikman stories us into transformation. In her case-studies of dream work with clients, both the drama of the personal psyche and our participation in collective myths shine as if through stained glass. The reader's own life takes on extraordinary colors of "what is possible."
What needs transformed? "When we become ill, or lose jobs, or relationships are on the brink," or when we experience the darkness of any unknowing, Wikman offers tools for renewal. For meaning-making that engages the whole of our psyche, she surrounds us with mirrors for psychological healing from dreams, poetry, art, ritual, metaphor, and storytelling.
Her own story shines assurance regarding the importance of conscious transformation. Given a death sentence with stage IV cancer, Wikman describes the experience of surrender to the darkness of unknowing, which opened autonomous energy available in the transpersonal realm for "spontaneous remission." (A resounding title, then, Pregnant Darkness).
She found in C.G. Jung's work the lens that recognized how such "mysteries" are described by alchemists, world religions, and pagan deities. After a doctorate in mainstream clinical psychology with research on dreams of the dying, Wikman earned her diplomat at the C.G. Jung Institut, Zurich.
With Pregnant Darkness she provides the richness of personal and professional experience for a much overlooked arena--how the personal psyche can tap into the "transcendent dimensions of reality that are beyond the ego and ordinary states of consciousness." Such a journey may not be for the faint-hearted, since guiding and protecting forces activate by encounter with inner darkness.
In this dynamic, Wikman's descriptions of work with clients draw us into the poignant "possibility of a renewing drink" from the living waters that reside beyond the ego. Something wise resides in our psychic makeup that instructs and inspires, if we open to what is possible. These cases of healing resonate with symbols that provide both personal and universal guides to transcend our hanging on the cross of "opposites"-desire and duty, known and unknown, shadow and persona, our conscious sun and reflective moon.
Here a brilliant mind and a poetic voice "plunges to the depths", as Jung described this kind of writing. Yet this work also grounds in cultural, political, and ecological attentions. The context is a field of heart, soul, and (from Rumi) "companions who have come before." And Wikman attends to personal love, perhaps the most universal peak experience, how it alters and incarnates meaning. Love lifts into a spiral of personal renewal and sometimes to a larger Self and wholeness, "giving and glowing in all directions."

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stark Beauty Sheila Mc Avers Ph.D., October 16, 2005

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Sheila Mc Avers (Washington) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pregnant Darkness: Alchemy and the Rebirth of Consciousness (Paperback)

Pregnant Darkness is a stunningly deep beauty of a book. Like a dark ruby revealing its many facets, the value of this book grew on me as each chapter unfolds into deeper and deeper chasms of the psyche in dream, myth, nature, synchronicity, creativity.... Wikman takes the reader on a tour du force trek through the living mysteries of the psyche at work in our lives. This is fresh innovative living and writing here, truly an original voice capable of subtly and playfully illuminating the transcendent nature of reality.
Compelling and witty, bright minded and meaty the text brings the work of Jung and the alchemists into modern times now alive in resonances in dream, life synchronicities, nature, myth, culture, cosmos. And then reveals to us the stark beauty of the naked bones of our unfolding humanity as we link with the transcendent in ever fresh ways. Grace is ever newly accessible, that is what I learned over and over in the alchemical mysteries freshly explored.
What makes her work different from other books on alchemy and dreams? Several things. The language is immediate and carries experiential resonances for the reader and curious deep humor while taking you into the belly of the whale of transformative processes. The natural voice for sharing the life stories and dreams of others is refreshing. The care that is given and the complexity of her vision into the human soul in each shared story is half the value of the book.
I found the subtle invitation to discover the places in oneself as a reader that are aching for a fresh drink from the living fountain of renewal to sneak up on me as the pages turn.
Indeed, Wikman awakens the reader to the "god size hunger under the questions of the age" and then assists in turning our hearts and attention to all that is possible of individual relationship with inner guiding forces. Watch your own dreams as you read this, and you will see the opening to the deeper realms is wonderfully contagious! The help that is possible with the divine or transcendent realms is ever more real to me for having found and ventured through this gem of a book.
What is missing? A workbook, a sequel. And please more material on the complex unfolding in the male psyche as she has discovered and shared in Ch. 6. There I found I wanted her to write extensively on the unfolding mysteries of the anima in men as she has witnessed it. So often individuation and the anima issues involve such polarites of ecstacy and misery for men -- and these cases were particularly enlightening and touching.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My I Ching, March 20, 2009

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Gabrielle Jones (Santa Fe, NM.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pregnant Darkness: Alchemy and the Rebirth of Consciousness (Paperback)

I open this book to any page, and it speaks to me. Wikman's writing is intelligent, profound and heartfelt.