The following short article is made possible only by the near daily exchanges between myself and my wife Kochav. As consummate Star Wars and Spirituality nerds, we are always discussing the spiritual implications of the Star Wars text. While i may have written the text, the ideas are as much hers as mine.
The specific format is inspired by The Divine Feminine: Biblical Imagery of God as Female by Virginia Ramey Mollenkott
There is no ignorance,
There is knowledge
There is no fear
There is power
I am the heart of the Force
I am the revealing Fire of Light
I am the Mystery of Darkness
In Balance with Chaos and Harmony
Immortal in the Force
-Je’daii Code
The above is a quote from the short-lived Star Wars comic series Dawn of the Jedi, which presented readers with the earliest incarnation of the Jedi Order, known as the Je’daii. Formed from the coming together of many different cults, philosophers, knowledge seekers, and wise women, this incarnation of the Order is one that embraces a wider view of the Force, instead of the narrow, dogmatic view that would precipitate the near complete eradication of the Jedi millennia later.
Where later Jedi are wary of darkness, teach Jedi to avoid the dark side of the Force, and sidestep their fear to embrace a sanitized version of light that casts no shadow, the Je’daii looked at the life-born life-giving power of the Force and recognized their own inadequacy to see it fully. They didn’t dare to arrogantly split the Force into pieces that would be dissected bit by bit and understood only in part. They embraced the fire of light and mystery of darkness, and let the Force be what it is.
The interplay of light and dark is an important part of both Star Wars and the spiritual legacies that my wife Kochav and I move through. The Torah, Psalms, Gospels, and Qur’an are full of references to the burning of light and cool darkness, as well as the danger found alone in the dark and the safety light can bring. Both Light and Dark carry hurt and healing, both are divine. Unfortunately in much of the “orthodox” teachings that have come out of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, darkness is debased to exalt light. Following the example of Shaykh Dr. Ibrahim Baba, I wanted to explore the ways Darkness Divine winds its way through the Star Wars mythos. This present piece constitutes part one of that exploration.
Je’daii
Returning to Dawn of the Jedi, we see the different aspects of the Force, Light and Dark, come to play in the narrative as in their wholeness. On the world of Tython the Je’daii test themselves in both calm and storm-ridden places, places where different aspects of the Force are stronger and more present. This shapes how the Je’daii, unlike later Jedi, understand balance. Whereas the more familiar light-aligned Jedi Order treats a Jedi as “unbalanced” when they touch the dark at all, a Je’daii is deemed to be out of balance when her relationship with the Force has drifted too much toward any one aspect of it.
The iconic Jedi tool, the lightsaber, also receives an origin story in this comic, and it is one that i think highlights the error made by the Order when they lifted this weapon up as the symbol of their peacekeeping nature. The lightsaber’s origin is, surprisingly for some of us, steeped in the dark side. The earliest version is a weapon called the Forcesaber, used by force-hounds of the Infinite Empire, a galaxy spanning conquering nation. Force-hounds are force-sensative slaves of the Empire that are used to hunt and kill potential threats to the Empire. Their weapon, the Forecesaber, is powered by the dark side being funneled into it through its wielder. The Je’daii discover it when they are being invaded, and it precipitates their fall from an order committed to balance, to an order committed only to the Light. The Forcesaber is inherently an unbalanced weapon, and while the later Jedi lightsaber ostensibly operates on an entirely different principle, i find it interesting that the galaxy’s peacekeepers adapted a weapon from the galaxy’s conquerors. Perhaps their own unbalance and fall is presaged in their use of this weapon?
The Magic Tree
The music que for one of the most iconic sequences in Star Wars, Luke Skywalker entering a cave of Dark side energy to face “whatever he takes with him” is called “The Magic Tree”.
In this scene we have the quintessential dark side, and for all that one hears throughout Star Wars the need to be wary of the Dark, that it is a pathway to easy power, and can lead one to lose oneself to evil actions – it is a necessary part of Luke’s training that he must enter the cave underneath the Magic Tree. There is a mystery here, both danger and necessity. Luke faces off against a version of Darth Vader that, when defeated, is revealed to be Luke himself. A result of Luke dismissing his teacher’s warning to leave his lightsaber outside the cave. One wonders at the nature of the unbalance Luke encountered,-He finds Vader in part because he entered the cave fearful and ready to fight, so he sees a vision of himself corrupted by those emotions. But if he had entered without a weapon and only his fear, what would he have found? Or was the carrying of the weapon a necessary outcome of Luke holding onto his fear?
Maybe the Mystery of the Dark is that it always shows you what you need to see. Luke went prepared for a confrontation, and was shown himself wielding dark power for evil ends. Unbeknownst to Luke, Darth Vader is his father, so perhaps the Force is warning him – in your family the kind of fear you hold onto leads to Darth Vader. Perhaps it was a warning about what he would find when he confronted Vader, not just an enemy, but someone intimately tied to him.
The fact Luke must enter a Cave under a Tree to learn this is important, as Earthly mystical encounters are deeply connected to these locations, often in feminized ways. It is likely no accident then that, outside of the evil Sith and their offshoots, most of Star Wars’ on-screen depictions of the dark side are shown in connection to either nature, women, or both.
Canals Deep into the Earth
Let’s take Rey for example. Decades after the Rebel Alliance defeated the Empire, Rey – a girl from a nowhere desert planet – learns she has a mysterious power, and that the only one who can teach her how to use it is the long lost Luke Skywalker. She eventually finds him and bullies him into teaching her. Their lessons, like Luke’s own from Yoda, take place on a world devoid of high technology – where the natural thrum of the Living Force is uninterrupted. For Luke, Dagobah. For Rey, Ach’To.
It is here we see differences between how Luke and Yoda teach their apprentices. Whereas Yoda was reluctant because of concerns about Luke’s impatience, Luke’s reluctance comes from his fear of himself. His lessons aren’t intended to guide Rey and open pathways to deeper understanding of the Force, they are intended to convince her the Jedi have nothing to offer the galaxy. He berates, and unlike Yoda, does not guide her to face her own darkness. Instead he reacts with fear when he learns she’s found her way to Ach’To’s equivalent to Dagobah’s Magic Tree Cave. A cave whose opening is right on the surface of the earth, inviting any observer deep into the Island they reside on. Like a vaginal canal leads deep into the dark depths of a woman’s body, a source of mystery and confusion for many, the Ach-to cave leads into the deep, cool Earth.
Inside Rey, like Luke before her, sees what she fears and what she needs to see. Herself, reflected over and over again – nothing but herself and her fears that she is ‘nothing’.
Interestingly, the failure in both these instances would seem to belong to Luke. Whereas during his lesson he failed to heed his teacher, it is Luke who fails to teach Rey. For both Luke and Rey the lesson becomes how to heed the call of the dark and the guidance of their Teachers.
Witchy Darkness
Darkness appears in explicitly feminized and feminine ways as well, primarily through witches and witchcraft.
First appearing in Ewoks: The Battle for Endor and in Willow1 witches have become a perennial feature of Star Wars storytelling, with the appearance of the Dathomiri Witch clans the 1994 novel The Courtship of Princess Leia. A strange but delightful book that would define how witches would be presented going forward.
Matriarchal witch clans, males kept as slaves, and the Force understood as magic are elements that have since appeared in later novels, The Clone Wars tv series, and to some degree in the show The Acolyte.
The clans of Dathomir as introduced in ‘94 aren’t aligned with the Dark side, rather they are merely matriarchal societies. Several hundred years before the time of the original film, a Jedi named Allya was exiled from the Order for “dark teachings.” She was sent to a Republic penal colony on Dathomir, where she promptly reordered the society into a matriarchal one, based on adherence to the Light. Men as a whole would be owned by the Women collectively and marriage usually involved the purchase of a male by an individual woman. A man who wished a divorce would seek to have his wife sell him, or pursue purchase by another. It is unclear if female supremacy was one of Allya’s “dark teachings” or merely a result of her time on Dathomir.
The Clans practice magic, using verbal and somatic components to cast spells, allowing them great control over their environment. This magic path seems to have been part of Aleya’s teachings to the women of Dathomir. However, there are those amongst the Clans who use “Nightspells”, a form of antagonistic magic that warps their appearance and is closely aligned with the Orthodox Jedi understanding of the Dark side. They are usually exiled from their clans of origin and join clans of Nightsisters.
The term “witch” isn’t used neutrally in Star Wars, in fact it often is used to indicate that one’s use of the Force, while not necessarily Dark, skirts closer to it than the Jedi Orthodoxy is comfortable with. Whether it is the Jedi outcast Aleya, the Dathomiri witches who use Nightspells, the lightside using Falanassi, or the women found on Brendok in The Acolyte, it is specifically women who are branded witches when they skirt orthodoxy.
In The Acolyte we are introduced to a coven of women Force practitioners who are branded as witches, and we are told, were driven from their homes and forced into isolation.
Their skills are outside the fold of Jedi teachings, so they are viewed with suspicion by visiting Jedi Knights. Viewers are introduced to two women, Osha and Mae, who experience tragedy as a result of Jedi suspicion of their coven’s unique use of the Force. First Mae and then Osha are pulled into the orbit of a Sith Lord known only as The Stranger. He effectively presents an alluring critique of the Jedi dogma, one that wins over the women as they seek both freedom and revenge on the Jedi Order.
It is also worth noting, that despite having seen magic himself, and having read multiple reports from other Jedi detailing the many effects of magical use of the Force, in The Clone Wars S6, Jedi Master Mace Windu describes Magic as an illusion. This is a somewhat humorous example of the Jedi dismissal of Force-use they consider dark.
The Son
The Clone Wars tv show provides one of the few visions of nature-connected darkness that is male and masculine in form rather than female or feminized. The aspect of nature represented is death and decay and rot, all bound up in the person of The Son.
In his first appearance in TCW, The Son is quite enigmatic. Appearing in three episodes as part of a shared vision of sorts between Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Ahsoka Tano, he is supposedly an embodiment of sorts of the Dark side itself.
One of three figures, The Daughter of Light, The Father of Balance, and the Son of Darkness, are said to have so embodied their respective aspects of the Force that they had to retreat from everyday life to a monastery outside normal space and time. Intriguingly, The Father seems more like a jailer, preventing The Daughter from physical contact with other beings, and keeping both of his children confined to the monastery world, Mortis.
The Son seeks to be free from Mortis, and attempts to enlist the help of Anakin Skywalker. Eventually his schemes result in the death of the Daughter of Light and the Father of Balance, as well as his own. The Father tells us that these deaths mean that the dark side will grow in influence in the outside galaxy, and war, death, and chaos will be its vehicle.
Fueling speculation that the entire Mortis encounter occurred outside of time, and therefore the events might take on a more symbolic -but no less real- meaning, Ahsokaa, Anakin, and Obi-Wan return to the galaxy proper with no time having passed at all. Complicating the un-reality of the Mortis events is Star Wars Rebels, where Darth Sidious refers to the three beings as ‘the Mortis gods’, and in the Fate of the Jedi novels they are revealed to be a family of Celestials known as ‘the Ones’. It is in the Fate novels that The Son is revealed to be only one aspect of the Divine Darkness, whose crowning appearance is doubtlessly –
Abeloth, The Beloved Queen of the Stars
As a figure in Star Wars, whose influence is supposedly cosmic and reaches across all time, Abeloth actually appears in very little Star Wars material.2 She first appears in the Fate of the Jedi as a Chaos entity that is on the verge of being released into an unsuspecting galaxy. In a story told to Luke Skywalker, Abeloth is revealed to have started life as a human woman who was a Servant of the Ones, but over time became part of the family, assuming the title of Mother. However, she was still human, and they weren’t. In her desperation to remain with her family, she broke the taboos of Mortis that Father strictly enforced. She drank from the Font of Power and bathed in the Pool of Knowledge, supposedly corrupting these magic forces and herself, transforming her from Mother into Abeloth. She is then imprisoned by Father, Son and Daughter. All this happened eons ago, with the knowledge preserved by a hive-mind species known as the Kiliks.
Throughout the story of Star Wars she attempts to escape multiple times, whenever war and chaos rise and the Force becomes out of balance, each time re-imprisoned by her family. In The Fate of the Jedi narrative she escapes and attempts to forge a new family, but is imprisoned again through the combined efforts of the era’s Jedi and Sith. There are a lot more details to her narrative, and the surrounding events and characters that people the story, but for my purposes we’ve established enough. Abeloth is a Mother, she is the Beloved Queen of the Stars, she is betrayed by her children and their Father who imprison her. The Father then goes on to imprison her Children, only letting them leave the Monastery of Mortis when it is time to imprison the Mother again.
There are some intriguing resonances with this narrative and real-world stories of Goddess figures, such as Medusa, Eve and Lilith. Abeloth is the Divine Mother Goddess of Star Wars, but like so many Earthly goddesses she is villainized, made into a monster, forced into appearing as an entity of Chaos. With no space for the characters to see that her Darkness or Chaos may be just as necessary as the Father’s Balance. Darkness is a Mystery, as the Je’daii said, one that might frighten us but one that we must live with. And to many a man or Jedi’s horror, the same can be said of women and nature, both within the world of Star Wars, and without.
- While 1988’s Willow was not made as an entry into the Star Wars franchise, it was made by Lucasfilm and involved many of the same creative team as the earlier Ewok tv films. The Star Wars Legends Sourcebook Supernatural Encounters incorporated Willow and other Lucasfilm media into the broader Star Wars cosmos. ↩︎
- And the only character who i’m writing about here, whose story i haven’t read in full. ↩︎