Awakening the Below: Navigating Through Darkness and Spiritual Emergency

A guidebook by Oholomo

Official publication will be available from Aeon Books in Fall 2025. For the moment, you are welcome to read the text here on this website for free.

Awakening the Below by Oholomo is a companion for those who are traversing the underbelly of the awakening process (i.e., difficult emotions, trauma, strange bodily ailments, spirits, ghosts, ancestors, demons, the imaginal, the soul, energies of the earth, the elements, the dark feminine, etc). Without any background knowledge to help contextualize these things, surprise openings to “the Below” can be difficult to understand. They are consequently often interpreted as spiritual emergencies or mental health crises rather than the blessings and opportunities that they truly can be. The goal of this book is to validate and normalize such experiences, in order to encourage people to lean into and even embrace the precious dark wisdom that comes from Below.