The Black Virgin: a Marian Mystery

Jean Hani, professor emeritus at the University of Amiens-where he taught Greek civilization and literature-has long labored to recover and illuminate various aspects of Christianity. His findings have been presented in several works: The Symbolism of the Christian Temple, The Divine Liturgy, and God and the Crafts (also published by Sophia Perennis), as well as Aperçus sur la Messe, La Royauté, Du Pharaon au Roi Très Chrétien, and a collection of articles entitled Mythes, Rites et Symboles. His aim has been to integrate the latest findings in the history of religions with the perennialist spiritual perspective of René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon. Hani's The Black Virgin: A Marian Mystery differs from his previous writings through its sharper theological focus. In Hani's view, the key to the enigma of the Black Virgin was given at Lourdes by Mary herself: in declaring herself The Immaculate Conception, she initiated us into the Marian Mystery in all its profundity. And it is precisely through an apprehension of the Mystery as a whole that the ultimate meaning of the Black Virgin can be grasped-for the Marian Mystery is the Christian expression of the Eternal Feminine, a transcendent reality manifested by the Virgin especially under her black form.