“The Dark Night of the Soul” (Spanish: “Noche oscura del alma”), a poem by the 16th-century Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross, describes the soul’s journey as it sheds its attachment to everything and eventually passes through a personal experience of Christ’s Crucifixion. The poem consists of eight stanzas “in which the soul sings of the fortunate adventure that it had in passing through the dark night of faith…to union with the Beloved.”