Black Light occupies a singular position in the depth-psychological corpus as a paradoxical figure of the highest mystical attainment — a luminosity so intense and so far beyond ordinary sensory perception that it presents itself to the inner eye as darkness. The concept is elaborated most systematically by Henry Corbin in his study of Iranian Sufism, where it designates the supreme theophanic color encountered at the apex of the visionary itinerary: the luminous Night of the Deus absconditus, the pure divine Ipseity inaccessible to discursive knowledge yet apprehensible through the superconsciousness. Corbin traces the term across three Iranian masters — Najm Razi, the commentator Lahiji on the Rose Garden of Mystery, and Alaoddawleh Semnani — each mapping the Black Light to a distinct stage of the subtle physiology of the person of light. The term stands in deliberate opposition both to the infraconscious darkness of the lower ego (nafs ammara) and to physical blackness; it belongs entirely to the register of supraconsciousness. Hillman’s alchemical reading offers a partial structural analogue in the nigredo, though his concern is soteriological transformation rather than theophanic vision. The tension between darkness as privation and darkness as plenitude — between the blackness of the black object and the Black Light of pure divine Essence — constitutes the central problematic the term poses for depth psychology.
this divine darkness does not refer therefore to the lower darkness, that of the black body, the infraconsciousness (nafs ammara), but to the black Heavens, the black Light in which the ipseity of the Deus absconditus is pre-sensed by the superconsciousness.
Corbin establishes the foundational distinction: Black Light belongs to the superconsciousness and the hidden divine Essence, not to infernal or material darkness.
, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971thesis
there is a profound connection between the meaning of the black Light perceived in the presence of things when they reveal to the visionary their twofold face, and its meaning as he perceives it when things absent themselves from him and he turns toward the Principle.
Corbin argues that Black Light has a dual significance — ontological (the poverty of contingent being) and theological (the inaccessible pure Ipseity of the Godhead) — and that these two meanings are inseparable.
, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971thesis
It is indeed Night, since it is black light and the abscondity of pure Essence, the night of unknowingness and of unknowableness, and yet luminous night, since it is at the same time the theophany of the absconditum in the infinite multitude of its theophanic forms.
Corbin’s most concentrated formulation of the paradox of Black Light as simultaneously impenetrable divine darkness and the inexhaustible source of theophanic manifestation.
, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971thesis
that of the arcanum (Jesus) is luminous black (aswad nurani); this is the “black light,” the luminous Night about which we were informed by Najm RazI as well as by the Rose Garden of Mystery and its commentator.
Semnani’s system of subtle centers assigns Black Light specifically to the arcanum (the sixth latifa), associating it with the Jesus-prophet of the mystic’s being, and confirming the term’s status as the penultimate stage before the green of the divine center.
, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971thesis
the mystic enters the first valley, following an itinerary the successive stages of which are marked by the visualization of colored lights, leading him to the seventh valley, the valley of “black light.”
According to Najm Razi’s doctrine of photisms, Black Light marks the culminating seventh valley of the mystic’s inner itinerary through graduated colored lights.
, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971thesis
we can glimpse the correlation which requires us on the one hand to distinguish between the superconscious and the subconscious and on the other hand between the black light and the blackness of the black object.
Corbin maps the structural distinction between Black Light and mere physical blackness onto the psychological distinction between superconsciousness and infraconsciousness.
, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971supporting
another intention can also be seen in the wearing of this black clothing, an intention corresponding precisely to the practice by certain groups in Sufism of wearing clothing of the same color as that of the light contemplated in the mystic station they had attained.
The outward practice of wearing black is shown to encode a chromatic harmony between esoteric attainment and exoteric sign, with black clothing signifying the mystic station of Black Light.
, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971supporting
The theme of “black light” reminds us here of the paradoxical form in which the black color of the aspect… Lahiji habitually wore black clothing, this being the outward sign of the metaphysical poverty which is the greatest of riches for the being essentialized by the divine being of the Godhead.
Corbin’s note links the wearing of black by the Sufi master Lahiji directly to the doctrine of Black Light as metaphysical poverty and supreme divine richness.
, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971supporting
Their black face, the one the mystic perceives, is their poverty: they have nothing with which to be, they cannot be sufficient unto themselves in order to be what they have to be, it is the inessence of their essence.
Corbin describes the dark face of things perceived by the visionary as the ontological poverty of contingent being — the nocturnal aspect whose ground is the Black Light of pure Essence.
, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971supporting
angelophany is associated with the symbol of the “midnight sun,” of luminous Night, because the first Intelligence, the Angel-Logos, is the initial and primordial theophany of the Deus absconditus.
Corbin connects the Black Light / luminous Night with angelophany, positioning the Angel-Logos as the first theophanic irruption from the abyss of the Deus absconditus.
, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971supporting
Later Iranian Sufi masters refer to the Night of light, the dark Noontide, the black Light. And in the Manichean faith it is the flames of the aurora borealis that are visualized in the Columna gloriae.
Corbin situates Black Light within a broader symbolic cluster of the cosmic north — midnight sun, dark Noontide, aurora borealis — shared across Iranian Sufism and Manichean cosmology.
, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971supporting
There is a subconsciousness or infraconsciousness, corresponding to the level of the nafs ammara; and there is a superconsciousness or supraconsciousness, corresponding to the level of the nafs motma’yanna.
Corbin establishes the vertical anthropological schema — infraconsciousness below, superconsciousness above — that provides the structural framework within which Black Light is located at the apex.
, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971supporting
in the darkness of this black is hidden the light of lights in the quality of Saturn; and in this poison and gall there is hidden in Mercurius the most precious medicament against the poison, namely the life of life.
Jung cites the alchemical formula of light concealed within the blackest darkness, an analogous paradox to the Sufi Black Light, here framed as the nigredo’s hidden luminosity within Saturn’s quality.
, The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and Other Subjects, 1954supporting
Like cures like; we cure the nigredo by becoming, as the texts say, blacker than black – archetypally black, and thereby no longer colored by all-too-human prejudices of color.
Hillman’s alchemical psychology proposes descent into archetypal blackness — becoming blacker than black — as a structural analogue to the transformative passage through the nigredo, resonant with the Sufi Black Light’s demand for total surrender.
, Alchemical Psychology, 2010supporting
black dissolves meaning and the hope for meaning. We are thus benighted.
Hillman’s characterization of blackening as the dissolution of the light of knowledge and meaning provides a Western psychological correlative — though not equivalent — to the apophatic dimension of Black Light.
, Alchemical Psychology, 2010aside
V. THE BLACK LIGHT 99 / 1. Light without Matter 99 / 2. The Doctrine of Photisms according to Najm RazI (1256) 103 / 3. Black Light in the “Rose Garden of Mystery” (1317) 110
The table of contents confirms that Corbin devotes an entire chapter of The Man of Light to Black Light, organized across three Iranian masters and three distinct theoretical framings.
, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971aside