The dark night of the soul

the long version

The Dark Night of the Soul is the title of an important but now little-read book of the sixteenth century by the Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross. It deals with an experience which is not that of a remote time or place, or special degree of saintliness, but which besets the path of the earnest Christian in every age. Its theme is the sense of spiritual desolation, loneliness, frustration, and despair which grips the soul of one who, having seen the vision of God and been lifted by it, finds the vision fade and the presence of God recede.