The Darkness and the Imprisoned Feminine
Oct. 14th, 2015 02:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
butterflyThe first time we hear about the Darkness directly, it’s from Charlie’s research into the Book of the Damned (10x18).
Okay, here’s what I’ve learned so far. About 700 years ago, a nun locked herself away after having visions of darkness. After a few decades squirrelled away by herself, she emerged with this. Each page is made out of slices of her own skin written in her blood. I told you, it’s eekish. According to the notes I found, it’s been owned and used by cults, covens, and the Vatican had it for a while. There’s a spell inside that thing for everything. Talking some black mass, dark magic, end-of-times nastiness. As far as what language it’s written in, I’m thinking it’s some kind of…uh…
The first time we hear of the darkness, it’s already being associated with women. The Book of the Damned, which would open the key that had locked the Darkness up, was written by a woman who, most likely, had spent much of her life solely with other women.
I also noticed that the book is made out of self-sacrifice. The nun didn’t kill someone else to make the book – instead, she took the time (decades) to do it using her own skin, her own blood. She must have done it a page at a time, then waited until her body was healed enough to do the next page. It was a slow, painful process of dedicating her life to this, not anything quick or easy. The key that opened the lock to the Mark of Cain was made out of self-sacrifice. And, potentially like the Darkness herself, the Book was said to be indestructible (and, so far, that appears to be true).
This self-sacrifice is emphasized again in the next episode. We see that Sam is required to bleed into the lock holding the Codex that will translate the Book. We also learn that the person who wrote the Codex that can translate the Book was a woman – Nadya, a grand coven witch who was murdered by the Men of Letters, her works stolen.
Susie, the reluctant and semi-unknowing guardian of the Codex’s current lockbox, is killed during Sam’s retrieval of the Codex. The next episode, one woman is sacrificed for the cause while yet another has been imprisoned. In season 10, Sam appeared to follow closely in the footsteps of the Men of Letters – women do the majority of the work, but then a man reaps the reward.
But Sam didn’t understand what he was doing, wasn’t able to completely control the person he’d leashed – so instead of Rowena being used up in the process of saving Dean, she turned her weakness (love) into strength (destroying what she loved) and was instead empowered, and walked away from her previous place of imprisonment as a free woman.
In the S10 finale, we get Death’s perspective on the Darkness:
Death: “Creatio ex nihilo – God created the earth out of nothing – or so your Sunday-school teacher would have you believe”.
Dean: “What, so Genesis is a lie, eh? Shocker.”
Death: “Before there was light, before there was God and the archangels, there wasn’t nothing. There was the Darkness, a horribly destructive, amoral force that was beaten back by God and his archangels in a terrible war. God locked the Darkness away where it could do no harm, and he created a Mark that would serve as both lock and key, which he entrusted to his most valued Lieutenant, Lucifer. But the Mark began to assert its own will, revealed itself as a curse, and began to corrupt. Lucifer became jealous of man. God banished Lucifer to Hell.”
We learn from Death that the Darkness existed before God and the archangels. It must have existed before Death himself as well, given that he said in S5 that he didn’t remember whether he or God was the older one. Death focuses on the Darkness as a destructive force and Dean is so caught up in his own fears and focus that he doesn’t ask a very important question – where exactly did God, the archangels, and Death come from?
If the Darkness was what existed first, if the Darkness was what was there instead of nothing, then perhaps the big truth hidden behind God is that the Darkness is what created him. Maybe God looked at his mother, decided that because he couldn’t control her then she shouldn’t exist, and he tried to lock her up for all eternity.
Just as the Men of Letters killed Nadya and stole her Codex.
Just as a book of power originally written by a nun ‘somehow’ ended up in the hands of a despotic and patriarchal family.
Just as Sam put Rowena in chains.
The overriding belief being that feminine power must be confined and controlled by trusted masculine jailers.
But while the feminine power could be kept under lock and key for many, many years… not even God could keep her captive forever. God was able to lock her up, but he couldn’t silence her completely. She whispered into Lucifer’s mind. God doesn’t deserve all his power. Look where he chooses to place his trust and his love – into creatures so much more fragile and so much lesser than you. You deserve so much more than what he’s willing to give you. You should take it.
So Lucifer started a new war. He corrupted the humans to prove that they weren’t as good as angels. He fought a battle against God and though he was defeated, he managed to taint God’s creation. Demons, once created, went on to create more demons.
God thought locking up the Darkness would mean she could cause no harm. He was utterly and completely wrong. Locking up Lucifer was no solution either. And in both cases, when met with opposition, God moved to silence and imprison his opponents rather than deal with them as potential allies.
Death calls the Darkness both destructive and amoral. He does not call her ‘evil’. Charlie’s ‘dark half’ in 10x11 is also destructive and doesn’t care about morality – but the lesson of the episode is that her darkness is still part of her. She can’t ignore it; can’t wish it away or pretend it doesn’t exist. She has to accept that its existence and balance it with the rest of herself.
And just as Charlie’s darkness ached for revenge, so might Amara.
And yet.
“She saved me,” Dean says. It’s the first thing he says about the Darkness. Before he remembers all the bad things he’s been told, his first impulse is to say that she saved him. From what? Sam wasn’t harmed in the initial burst of Darkness over the car. Maybe what she saved him from was her own potential desire for revenge. Dean was her most recent jailer, but he’s not the one who locked her up. He had little knowledge or power over the situation. She could have blamed him for continuing her captivity, but instead she focused on how it connected them.
Her presence, being her prison, did protect him, after all, at the end of season 9. Metatron killed him and yet he didn’t die permanently.
If Sam does talk to ‘God’ this season (as has been rumored) while Dean talks to the Darkness (if Amara is the personification of the Darkness – some are saying it may be another twist like Ezekiel/Gadreel, and, if so, I’m sure we’ll have hints in the upcoming episodes), we may continue to see the split of Sam being associated with the conquering and controlling masculine aspect while Dean is associated with the (previously) imprisoned and restricted feminine aspect who is finally being given the chance to tell her side of the story in the form of Amara.
Making the Darkness evil (as opposed to amoral) against God’s good is the easy way out – simple and straight-forward and steeped in our sexist culture – ultimate masculine power = Good; ultimate feminine power = Evil.
But even if the show does decide to go in that direction, what’s the endgame?
Trap her back into another Mark, knowing that will corrupt another person? And who will they ask to take that burden on – it looks like Dean is assuming that he’d take the Mark back onto himself, but how in the world would he manage to get Sam to go along with that? Sam has already shown himself willing to destroy the world and get their friends killed to free Dean of the Mark. If Dean took the Mark back on, why would I believe that Sam would just accept that and not be willing to lie and kill to get it back off again?
Attempt to find a way to kill her – one that God either couldn’t or didn’t find? Possibly, though neither of the boys has yet thought of that as something that can be done. It seems like this would just be a re-tread of the S6 Eve arc, though.
Amara/the Darkness is obviously both dangerous and powerful. But it’s possible that instead of fighting with her, they should try to do what it seems like God may never have done – perhaps they should negotiate with her. Talk to her. Find out what she really wants and if maybe there’s a way she can get it without hurting or killing people. They could try treating her like a person instead of like a monster.Tags: i tried not to make this about gender essentialism? hopefully i was successful with that it's about what the powers are generally associated with or as in the show body horror cw for talking about how the BotD was made i was wondering if i should post this now or wait until we have more info but i decided to post it now exactly so that i could mark down my current thoughts but i look forward to learning more and seeing how it either reinforces or contradicts what i think right now
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