History Main / TheSacredDarkness

->''"To truly see, your eyes must be open to both light… and dark."''

-> Father Balder, ''{{Bayonetta}}''

''"To truly see, your eyes must be open to both light… and dark."''
->Father Balder, ''{{Bayonetta}}''

->"To truly see, your eyes must be open to both light… and dark."

*** More speicifically. It was orignally called "the Tome of the Night Sky", and was simply a repository of magical knoweldge. Being such a thing, various douchenozzles over time took to obtaining that knowledge for the usual reasons evil people would seek it. Their manipulations, across time, resulted in the Book becoming corrupt.

* In Yu-Gi-OhGX, the Gentle Darkness not only is a force for good, it's what actually created everything in the first place. This isn't commonly known information, but it's true nevertheless.

* In [[Yu-Gi-Oh GX]], the Gentle Darkness not only is a force for good, it's what actually created everything in the first place. This isn't commonly known information, but it's true nevertheless.

** In ''Yu-Gi-Oh GX'', the Gentle Darkness not only is a force for good, it's what actually created everything in the first place. This isn't commonly known information, but it's true nevertheless.

Note that this trope is not just DarkIsNotEvil. The usual variant of said trope is that a good person is using dark powers despite their villanous and problematic ways for the sake of good. That is not really this trope. This trope is about some kind of darkness that exists in a form where you can reasonably justify its existance for the good of the world or when darkness is treated in some way as equally as holy or good as Light would be treated. Generally, if your hero can make a somewhat logical WorldOfCardBoardSpeech, a ReasonYouSuckSpeech or simply a RousingSpeech involving the virtues of their particular brand of darkness, it qualifies. Similarly, if following this darkness has a bit of a RightMakesMight feeling to it, it would also count.

* R. Talsorian Games' ''Cyberpunk'' supplement ''Home of the Brave''. A religion called Worshippers of the Night considers the night to be a time of rest and spiritual purification. They patrol the streets at night to "protect the night's holiness against the evil that surrounds us."

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* KingdomHearts: Skipped into this occasionally. While usually DarkIsEvil and LightIsGood, some parts of the story regarding Riku have felt like this, especially in Chain of Memories, where he's told to accept his darkness and uses it to beat Zexion.

* ShiningForce: The Sword of Darkness, despite being a cursed weapon, might count as this, since it's needed to form the Chaos Breaker.
* HeroesOfMightAndMagicV has two example with the dark elves and the necromancer who are two factions who worship two dark gods who are on the good side.

* In [[TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime Ocarina of Time]], the Sage of Light sends the hero on a quest to awaken the Sages of Forest, Fire, Water, Shadow and Spirit, all forces of good required to defeat the Great King of Evil. This theme is further explored in [[TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess Twilight Princess]], with events such as the Blade of Evil's Bane being blessed by the gods of the DarkWorld.
* In LuminousArc, the Twilight Witch is [[spoiler:Cecille, formerly]] of the Luminous Church. Her powers of Darkness counterbalance the Dawn Witch, Lucia's, once it's revealed that the Witches are not evil.

* In {{Warhammer}}, magic is either present in it's raw chaotic form, or is refined into eight winds (which can be further refined and weaved together into High Magic); one of said winds provides magic over death, and other over shadows. Both are very distinct from the chaotic magic used by necromancers and worshippers of chaos gods.
* In MagicTheGathering, while Black magic is often focused on unpleasant things like necromancy, corruption and MindRape, it is not inherently evil, and not only [[DarkIsNotEvil have some protagonists been pure Black]], but, like all colours of mana, Black is generally necessary to maintain planes stable.

* ''WesternANimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' has Princess Luna, who is essentially the [[PhysicalGod Physical Goddess]] of the night. While she turned evil for a brief period ('brief' in divine terms, anyway - a thousand years), her job of making the night fall was so justified in its existence that after Luna was banished, her sister Celestia, responsible for the sun, took over the job of bringing the night into existence as well. In the present day, however, Luna has returned, and presumably has taken to her duties once again. It helps that, according to backstory, both Celestia and Luna stood up together against CompleteMonster Discord, essentially the god of chaos, by wielding the Elements of Harmony.

* DigimonFrontier: Koichi embodies this and also nicely illustrates the change between "corrupted" and "pure" darkness, going from creepy, borderline EldritchAbomination Duskmon to heroic BlackKnight Loewemon, the embodiment of the sanctity of the element of darkness.
* KaraNoKyoukai: Ryougi Shiki uses the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, a very rare and unique power that allows her to see the inherent death of all things. Essentially, this makes her the human personification of the GrimReaper. Nontheless, she is good enough to serve as a hero for this story and to get an almost holy-sounding ThemeMusicPowerUp. It helps that [[spoiler: she's essentially the goddess of the void]].

* Explored in the {{Dragonlance}} novels, pertaining to the different mage orders of White, Red, and Black. At least one character wonders why the "good" mages allow the Black Robes to exist in their order, and it's explained that darkness has its own purpose and that there must always be a balance; tipping the scales either way leads to catastrophe, and in fact, the Cataclysm that devastated Krynn was caused by the Kingpriest trying to tip the scales towards the side of "light"; the same applies to priests, since the evil gods need worship just as much as the good gods. Also explored by Crysania in "Time of the Twins" in the same series, when she muses that fear of the darkness is childish and stupid, and that lighting candle after candle to keep the darkness at bay only results in a house burning down because people can't understand that the darkness has a purpose.

* FireEmblem: Several of the holy weapons used by the PrecursorHeroes are powerful and respectfully treated dark magic, such as the tomes of Apocalypse and Gleipnir. In a similar vain, the dark goddess of chaos is really a pretty decent person.

* The orc gods of light and darkness in DominicDeegan are supposed to form a balance of death and rebirth - bad things happen to both when it is disturbed.

* MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic has Princess Luna, who is essentially the [[PhysicalGod Physical Goddess]] of the night. While she turned evil for a brief period ('brief' in divine terms, anyway - a thousand years), her job of making the night fall was so justified in its existence that after Luna was banished, her sister Celestia, responsible for the sun, took over the job of bringing the night into existence as well. In the present day, however, Luna has returned, and presumably has taken to her duties once again. It helps that, according to backstory, both Celestia and Luna stood up together against CompleteMonster Discord, essentially the god of chaos, by wielding the Elements of Harmony.

* KaraNoKyoukai: Ryougi Shiki uses the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception, a very rare and unique power that allows her to see the inherent death of all things. Essentially, this makes her the human personification of the GrimReaper. Nontheless, she is good enough to serve as a hero for this story and to get an almost holy-sounding ThemeMusicPowerUp. It helps that [[spoiler: She's essentially the goddess of the void]].

* ''ChroniclesOfTheEmergedWorld'': One of the Eight Lands is the Land of Nights, which is costantly covered in eternal darkness. Nevertheless, the darkness is also one of the eight sacred element needed for the Talisman of Power, and the spirit of darkness is the kindest and most helpful. By contrast, the Light spirit Glael come across as a PsychopathicManChild who's willing to resort to DemonicPossession [[LightIsNotGood to end his solitude]].
* Explored in the Dragonlance novels, pertaining to the different mage orders of White, Red, and Black. At least one character wonders why the "good" mages allow the Black Robes to exist in their order, and it's explained that darkness has its own purpose and that there must always be a balance; tipping the scales either way leads to catastrophe, and in fact, the Cataclysm that devastated Krynn was caused by the Kingpriest trying to tip the scales towards the side of "light"; the same applies to priests, since the evil gods need worship just as much as the good gods. Also explored by Crysania in "Time of the Twins" in the same series, when she muses that fear of the darkness is childish and stupid, and that lighting candle after candle to keep the darkness at bay only results in a house burning down because people can't understand that the darkness has a purpose.
* The Dwarfs of the {{Discworld}}, being belowground-dwellers, have many values opposite to those of humans. One of them is that they consider darkness sacred, and their equivalent of priests keep themselves in it whenever possible, many shunning daylight altogether and believing it to be blasphemy. Part of the Dwarf CreationMyth goes: "The first Brother walked toward the light, and stood under the open sky. Thus he became too tall. He was the first Man. He found no Laws, and he was enlightened. The second Brother walked toward the darkness, and stood under a roof of stone. Thus he achieved the correct height. He was the first Dwarf. He found the Laws [[CreatorDeity Tak]] had written, and he was endarkened." This said, however, Dwarfs recognise that there are many kinds of darkness, and some, such as the [[EldritchAbomination Summoning Dark]], are malevolent.

* MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic has Princess Luna, who is essentially the [[PhysicalGod Physical Goddess]] of the night. While she turned evil for a brief period, her job of making the night fall was so justified in its existance that after Luna was banished, her sister Celestia, responsible for the sun, took over the job of bringing the night into existance as well. By now, Luna is back however and presumably has taken to her duties once again. It helps that, according to backstory, both Celestia and Luna stood up together against CompleteMonster Discord, essentially the god of chaos, by wielding the Elements of Harmony.

"Pure" darkness powers can often easily be distinguished from their "corrupted" counterparts. An InstantKill spell by a corrupt villain would likely involve a lot of pain, mutiliation, brutality etc., while a pure darkness spell of that kind might result in something resembling a peaceful sleep or simply dropping dead. Pure darkness powers tend to avert the more obviously negative aspects of darker powers such as MindRape, ColdBloodedTorture and somesuch and instead tend to be more spectacular and flashy, or involving awesome stuff like summoning a black raven to attack the enemy. For instance, if a hero's signature move was a combo attack where he cloaks his blade in light magic, a "pure" darkness counterpart to that move would simply involve cloaking the blade in [[DarkIsEdgy shadow]] instead.