featured image | Milos Lopusina
This Editorial precedes Volume 25, Issue 4 of Kosmos. Scroll down to access featured content.
The Master keeps her mind always at one with the Tao;
that is what gives her her radiance.
The Tao is ungraspable.
How can her mind be at one with it?
Because she doesn’t cling to ideas.
The Tao is dark and unfathomable.
How can it make her radiant?
Because she lets it.
— Tao Te Ching
What is the purpose of darkness?
In this image from the Tao, radiance doesn’t come from control or clarity, but from allowing what is dark, ungraspable, and unknowable to shape us. In darkness objects loosen their grip and reality becomes more fluid. Darkness dissolves our identity in deep sleep, only to re-form us in the returning light.
I can’t accept “darkness for the purpose of light” as a complete answer. Some darkness is too raw, too devastating: ecological unraveling, social fragmentation, personal grief. These defy easy meaning. Instinctively, I want to push them away, disown the dark, deny it. Yet some darkness must be held, endured, and accounted for—not explained away.
And then there is another kind of darkness: the vast, silent depth that underlies everything. The womb of pure potential. To enter this darkness is not to be lost. It is to consent to its fertile mystery, a depth that refuses all labels and holds us in silence.
This issue of Kosmos enters that space with intentionality. Natureza Gabriel’s Tragic Exiles speaks to the human ache to be held in community, even as old forms of belonging fracture. Bridget A. Lyons’s Negotiating Fluidity reminds us that despite the appearance of dissolution, we are never truly adrift. Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee’s Preparing for Darkness invites us to surrender the illusion of permanence and cultivate an inner stillness deep enough to hold grief and traces of light. Abigail Testaberg’s essay, The Mythology of Abuse, reveals the darkness of childhood sexual abuse and offers a potential path toward visible repair for survivors as well as societies. Other voices in this issue suggest that the work of reweaving, after rupture, may itself be a form of illumination.
And as always – always – Kosmos offers the healing balm of Beauty. Jeanne Simmons’ elemental art, Rupture and Reweaving, explores the solidity of nature even in the free-fall of loss. And Mary Putera’s single-painting sequence, Accompanied, bears witness to the creative process: forms emerging, dissolving, and re-forming, radiance coaxed from shadow: Because she lets it.
To “let it,” as the Tao says, is an act of radical trust. It is a letting in of the shadow that allows greater harmony to emerge. Last issue, we spoke of The New Coherence as a movement beyond fragmentation toward a resonant pattern of wholeness. This coherence is not the triumph of light over dark; it is the weaving of both into a living fabric strong enough to hold everything – joy and sorrow, presence and absence, devastation and new life.
Perhaps one purpose of darkness is to dissolve certainty and deepen our trust in the unseen, so we can reweave something more honest and more whole.
We invite you to reflect with us:
What has darkness taught you?
What radiance have you rewoven from it?
How does it shape your sense of belonging, healing, or wholeness?
We welcome your voice in this conversation.
r.fabian, for Kosmos
Kosmos Journal Volume 25 Issue 4
Kosmos Journal publishes a diversity of voices that reflect the complexity of our time and the depth of our shared inquiry. The views expressed by individual contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Kosmos editorial team, Board of Directors, or affiliated partners. We honor the freedom of expression as a path to deeper understanding, and we strive to hold space for perspectives grounded in compassion, truth-seeking, and the well-being of all Life.