The Dark Night of the Soul

The exchange between Cami and Gallino in the sixth episode of the second season of Landman introduces a spiritual and psychological axis that quietly reorients the show’s otherwise abrasive realism. When Gallino reveals the horse’s full name—Noche Oscura del Alma—the reference reaches far beyond a poetic flourish. He is invoking one of the most influential texts of Spanish mysticism, composed in the late sixteenth century by the Carmelite friar and poet St. John of the Cross.

[Cami] So, what’s this horse’s name?

[Gallino] His name is Noche. But his full name is Noche Oscura del Alma, which means “the dark night of the soul.”

[Cami] Well, that is quite a unique name for a horse.

[Gallino] It’s from a poem by St. John of the Cross. It means different things to different people, but for me it’s about… about finding comfort in, in a time of crisis. You’re in a time of crisis, I believe. Maybe you should read it.

The title refers to a poem that would later become the conceptual core of two extensive theological commentaries, The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night. What began as a brief lyric meditation evolved into one of the most enduring attempts in Western thought to describe inner transformation through deprivation rather than illumination.

The origins of the Dark Night

John of the Cross composed La noche oscura during one of the most severe episodes of his life. In 1577, he was imprisoned in Toledo by members of his own religious order, opposed to his efforts at reform. Confined in near-total isolation, subjected to darkness, hunger, and silence, he shaped verses that would later be refined and expanded into systematic theological reflection. The circumstances of composition matter, not as biographical ornament, but because the poem’s imagery emerges directly from lived experience: enclosure, concealment, ascent without sight.

The poem traces the soul’s passage from its familiar habitation toward union with God. The “night” at its center is neither moral corruption nor existential void. It signifies purgation: the progressive unmaking of attachments, certainties, and self-images that bind the soul to what it already knows. Darkness functions as discipline. Deprived of sensory and intellectual supports, the soul learns to move by an inner orientation rather than by external markers. The night is therefore called “blessed” precisely because it suspends distraction and forces attention inward.

A modern psychological reading

Detached from its strictly theological frame, the Dark Night has often been read as a description of a recurring human experience: the moment when inherited identities and established meanings cease to function, while no new framework has yet taken their place. It names a phase of disorientation rather than despair, marked by loss of bearings rather than by nihilism.

Gallino’s remark about “finding comfort in a time of crisis” gestures toward this interpretation. The comfort does not lie in reassurance or resolution. It lies in the recognition that breakdown can function as passage. What feels like collapse may also be a necessary clearing, an interval in which familiar narratives dissolve and something more durable begins to take shape. The poem insists on endurance rather than escape, on remaining within uncertainty long enough for transformation to occur.

Resonance with Landman

Placed within the world of Landman, the reference acquires particular force. West Texas appears as a terrain of extremes: extraction and exhaustion, sudden wealth and moral precarity, inherited power colliding with personal vulnerability. The characters operate under relentless pressure, improvising survival strategies in an environment that rewards speed and punishes hesitation.

Cami’s situation in this episode reflects a moment of suspension. Family legacy, economic forces, and private responsibility converge without offering clear direction. The horse named Noche becomes a tangible emblem of this condition. In Western iconography, horses often signify mastery, escape, or domination of space. Here, the animal embodies something quieter: persistence through obscurity, motion without spectacle.

When Gallino suggests that Cami read the poem, he proposes neither consolation nor advice. He offers a framework in which uncertainty acquires meaning. The Dark Night teaches that progress sometimes occurs without visibility, that guidance may come from within when external structures fall silent. The soul, John writes, travels “securely” through darkness, led by a light that does not illuminate the world but sustains movement within it.