Massa Confusa is a concept that originates from the alchemical process philosophy. According to alchemists, nature or matter (substance) was not soulless. The alchemical processes were therefore not purely chemical (e.g. production of gold in the laboratory), but were seen as a reflection of inner psychic processes. The alchemical process philosophy has therefore been seen as a way of understanding psychic change.

The first stage in this process is seen as a metaphor for what is called in psychology or mysticism the “dark night of the soul”. It is initiated by an ‘unfortunate’ or ‘disturbing’ event (loss or death, symbolic or concrete) that creates chaos and darkness around the individual. This is where Massa Confusa occurs; a confusing mass where things are in turmoil and in reorganization. 

The individual cannot tell the difference between up and down, past and present, you and I, but gropes blindly, and basically have to move inward to find a firm foothold, thereby starting a breakdown of the existing structures. In the ever-deepening descent into the unconscious, the darkness is finally giving away to a clarity that slowly begins to show fragments of a new structure which finally manifests in wisdom in the rubedo or golden phase.