When Black Shines

The ritual candle I light is black. From The Inner Dimension, on the symbolism of black:

from darkness emanates the power of sight -

The pupil of the eye, whose color --or better, absence of color--is black. The pupil of the eye is referred to in the Torah as the "daughter" of the eye. In Kabbalah the "daughter" figure is always associated with the power of malchut ("kingdom"), the last of the sefirot, which, "possessing nothing of its own" (only that which it receives from above), corresponds to black (the experience of existential lowliness and distance from God, the inner property of malchut).

This is the property of King David, who said, "and I shall [always] be lowly in my own eyes," most clearly alluding to the intrinsic state of lowliness within the eye, its black pupil.

The power of sight emanates from the inner point of the pupil of the eye. As in the beginning of creation, light shines out of the darkness--"darkness precedes light." (as the flame follows and is nourished by the black of the candle)

revealing the changeless essence -

In this world, the changeless is symbolized only by a black, dark coal, not as the revealed light of the flame. Nonetheless the endurance of the flame depends upon the changeless essence of the coal. In the World to Come, the changeless essence will reveal itself within the flame. This revelation of the future is the secret of the fourth head of the shin.

producing true illumination -

Just as light itself possesses the potential to blind one with its radiance (thus testifying to the source of "darkness" included within light), so too does darkness hold within it the potential for illumination (the power of the color black to "shine").

In truth, the hidden light inhering within darkness is infinitely more beautiful than the revealed light which we naturally experience. This is apparent as well from the verse in Ecclesiastes (2:13) which reads: "As the advantage of light over darkness, so is the advantage of wisdom over folly." Although this is the accepted understanding of the verse, a purely literal reading of the words suggests an alternative interpretation: "As the advantage of light from darkness, so is the advantage of wisdom over folly" -- the implication being that the light which emerges from within darkness itself is the true source of wisdom's superiority.

within the worlds of creation -

Kabbalah teaches that the ten dimensions of reality were initially created in potentia by means of the "contraction" of God's infinite light, thereby resulting in the appearance of an "empty space" or "black hole" of "potential" being. Into this primordial "vacuum" enters a "ray" of Divine light, referred to as the "line" or "string." The primordial string "actualizes" the ten manifest dimensions of reality and continues to emanate within them the worlds of creation.

The initial revelation within the primordial vacuum (black hole) is the revelation of light.

Let there be light ...

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