Black sun, depression, a blazing despair within of unfathomable, melancholy power. But also, potentially, the beginning of creation anew, each present, each now.
I searched for other witnesses to the Black Virgin, who are men. I came across a book by Jean Markale, Cathedral of the Black Madonna (1988), which describes his visionary encounters with the black madonnas at the Cathedral of Chartres, France.
He writes, that as a young professor he was led by a young woman into the blue radiance o fthe cathedral on one dark cloudy day:
I can swear that on this damp winter day, the Chartres cathedral revealed an impossibly beautiful "black sun" (italics added) that had the gift of making iridescent the smallest particles of stone or the tiniest glimers of glass that shone overhead. And then somewhere, surrounded by the luminaries with the flickering flames, the statue of Our Lady loomed out of the darkness on her pillar…"
This black light, which cannot be seen, may suddenly flood the earth with a sheen such that the darkness shines.
What if there were a deep connection between these two black suns, the one of abysmal depression, and the other of creation in the dark, each present, each now, as a matrix of life and spirit wherein all creatures enter and depart like shades?
What if around us lives an underworld, that shines in black light, which we rarely discern in our sunlit busyness?
The black madonna habors the celestial light from above, down below. She reigns this underworld, this sefirot of Malkhut in Kabbalistic lore, this prima materia in alchemical lore — the darkness that harbors the celestial light we are blind to, and cannot yet see for ourselves.
This is the light we cannot see