"Hidden in the darkness is an ancient secret suppressed by every aspect of our light-drunk modern world-there is a Great Mother from the bottom of time who has always guided us through perils and calamities. Now is the hour of Her return. Is darkness synonymous with ignorance and evil? Or is it the original matrix from which all life emerges, and the Mother to whom it returns? Increasingly high levels of artificial illumination have suppressed our contact with the numinous since the Industrial Revolution, with dire consequences for society, our planetary ecology, and our souls. In Waking Up to the Dark, Clark Strand weaves together paleobiology, memoir, history, science, and spiritual archaeology to lead readers back into the lost mysteries of the dark and diagnoses with urgency and cultural coherence the problems at the heart of modern life. Strand offers penetrating insight into the spiritual enrichment that can be found when we pull the plug on our billion-watt culture. He argues that the insomnia many of us experience as "the Hour of the Wolf" is really "the Hour of God"-a wellspring of rest and renewal, and an ancient reservoir of ancestral wisdom and inspiration. And in a surprising yet powerful turn, he shares an urgent message for the world, received through a mysterious apparition he calls Our Lady of Climate Change, about the challenges that are coming"-- Provided by publisher.