“Nigredo” - When The Earth Burns But Does Not Die
“Nigredo” - When The Earth Burns But Does Not Die
Just 2,500 years ago, the Iberian Peninsula was covered by a vast and dense forest. Trees, shrubs, and ferns formed a true Iberian jungle that pulsed with the rhythm of wild life. Today 30% of the territory retains that forest cover. And every summer, a part of it disappears in flames.
In 2024, more than 200,000 hectares burned across the peninsula—the equivalent of the entire island of Tenerife. But the most chilling part is not the number, but the cause: a large portion of these fires were deliberately started by human hands.
Hands without empathy, that drop a cigarette, or strike a match.
Years ago, these fires were lit out of greed: land rezoning, seafront developments, cleared land for extensive livestock farming, or subsidy collection.
Today, in Andalusia, the law forbids rezoning land after a fire. But the law does not stop the fire, nor those who ignite it.
While humans seem to be at war with nature, Mother Earth responds. And she defends herself.
So-called sixth-generation fires are emerging—blazes that break all known patterns, create their own weather, generate lightning storms, and destroy everything in their path, including those trying to stop them.
It’s as if the Earth were willing to sacrifice everything just to wake us up.
When it’s over, and the forest is reduced to ash, silence, and thick air, the impact is brutal.
Biodiversity is lost. Habitat disappears. Animals die or flee. The smallest—reptiles, amphibians—cannot escape.
The soil, wounded, loses its fertility. Plant life halts: some shrubs may germinate after one to three years, but large trees like the stone oak may take decades to return.
And so, where once there was a forest of oaks, rockroses, and biodiversity, there may remain only opportunistic species or sparse grass.
The losses are not only ecological—they are also social, economic, and emotional. Tourism declines, communities suffer, and fear and helplessness settle like smoke in the soul.
But fire is not only a physical or ecological reality. Throughout history, it has also been a spiritual symbol.
In ancient alchemy, fire represents the force that transforms the coarse into the essential. Through heat, matter is burned, purified, reduced to its truest essence.
The first stage of this process is known as Nigredo—the blackness—a phase of decomposition, chaos, and darkness necessary for something new to emerge.
Fire also carries a deep spiritual symbolism.
it can be seen as a collective initiatory crisis— a shared trial that the community and nature go through together.
A form of calcination - it burns away the superfluous, eliminates imbalances, dissolves excess and ego, and, through purification, reveals what is essential before the new rebirth.
After destruction comes the time to look inward, to question the human models that fuel that destruction—greed, disconnection, ego and to make way for new ways of relating to the Earth—more humble, more integrated, wiser. Stepping through the blackness, we await that rebirth with the first rains. The burned earth will smell more intense. The black will deepen. The stream will run dark. And our memory will be melancholic.
But in those first waters, we will see the sign—nature never surrenders, and the first green blade of grass, tiny but stubborn, will rise like a flag.
A sign that life returns.
Let’s build awareness of our forests.
Because they are not just a landscape.
They are the lungs of the planet.
A refuge for life.
A climate stabilizer.
A cradle of cultures.
And a balm for the soul.
Ana García
