Black
Nigredo
The blackening at the start of the work.
Black: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
The alchemical work began in darkness: the nigredo, when the matter in the vessel turns black, “black, blacker than black,” in decay and putrefaction. Jung read it as the first encounter with the unconscious and the shadow, a time of confusion, melancholy, and loss, which is nonetheless the beginning of transformation, not its failure.
Black: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
Saturn and his melancholy, Dürer’s Melencolia I, the black sun, the raven, the dark night of the soul of John of the Cross.
From the Sources
Silberer finds three main phases in the mystical work, black, white and red, and says the black corresponds to introversion and to the first mystic death.
“…a triplicate division that results in the three main phases, black, white, and red. The black corresponds to introversion and to the first [mystic] death”
Dr. Herbert Silberer, Problems of Mysticism and its Symbolism, Part III, Section II, 'The Goal of the Work'. Translated by Smith Ely Jelliffe, M.D., Ph.D.; New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1917 (Internet Archive OCR text). The text, read in part
Redgrove quotes Espagnet's Hermetic Arcanum: the first colour of the work is black, called the Crow's head from its extreme blackness, showing the beginning of the action of the fire of nature and of solution.
“The first is black, which is called the Crow’s head, because of its extreme blackness, whose crepusculum sheweth the beginning of the action of the fire of nature and solution”
H. Stanley Redgrove, Alchemy: Ancient and Modern, Chapter II, § 28, note 40. Second and revised edition; London: William Rider & Son, Ltd., 1922 (first published 1911) (Project Gutenberg eBook #43240). The text, read in part
Each passage is quoted from the text named, which the press fetched and read, and was checked word for word against a fresh copy of it; the link opens that copy. Passages are given as printed, without the editors’ footnote numbers, and with words broken across lines joined.
Where to Read
- Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12
- Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
In the Glossary: Nigredo.
Also among The Colours of the Work
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“Black.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/black.
Symbols That Share Its Terms
Putrefactio (Putrefaction) · Mortificatio (Mortification, killing) · The Eclipse (The black sun) · The Bird · The Raven (Caput corvi) · The Tomb
Nearby in the alphabet: The Bee: The ordered community, and souls on the wing. Blood: Life itself, given and shed. Blue: The colour of sky and depth, of distance and spirit.