Marisa Handler and Donald Rothberg give an overview of the nature of the "Dark Night." Marisa speaks particularly about her Dark Night experiences; Donald gives a brief account of the Dark Night in the work of St. John of the Cross (1542-1591), a Spanish Christian mystic who coined the term (“La noche oscura del alma”) in his writing, and then looks at how elements of the Dark Night appear in shaman's accounts of their initiatory experiences as well as in Buddhist tradition.